by: Marty Chrisman

Luke was sitting against the wall of the shed in a daze. There was nothing else to do for hours at a time except to sit in one place, so Luke generally let his mind wander. He had been in this prison for a week but it already seemed like a lifetime. Suddenly the door to the shed slammed open and four guards came inside. Two of them stood by the door, keeping their guns trained on the other prisoners while the other two began scanning the crowd. One them grabbed Luke by the arm, roughly pulling him to his feet, while the second guard grabbed Henry and jerked him to his feet.

Luke’s heart started pounding frantically as the guard gripping his arm jerked him out of the shed and into the brilliant sunlight. He blinked his eyes, the glare of the sun hurting his eyes after being accustomed to the dimness in the shed. Two of the guards took Henry in one direction, while the other two guards forced Luke to walk in another direction. They led Luke into a small hut and forced him to sit down in a chair sitting in the middle of the room. One of the guards grabbed his arms and pulled Luke’s hands behind the chair, trying his wrists together tightly.

Luke tried to keep the fear he felt from showing on his face as another Viet Cong came into the room. He was obviously a higher ranking officer than the two guards who stood on either side of the chair where Luke was sitting. The man glared at Luke for several minutes and then demanded in broken English “Who are you?”

“Sergeant Lucas Kristopher Duke. United States Marines Division D.” Luke told him that answer got Luke a punch in the jaw that rocked his head to one side and made the entire right side of his face ache.

“Wrong.” The man snarled “You are nobody. You have no name. You are our prisoner. If you live or if you die, it is all up to us.” The man looked into the dark haired man’s eyes fully expecting to see panic and fear however he was surprised, and angered, to find how calm Luke’s sapphire eyes looked even in the face of danger. “Where are you from?”

“Hazzard, Georgia.” Luke responded, only to receive another vicious punch, this time to his stomach, taking his breath away and making him gasp for air.

“Wrong! You have no home. You have nothing unless we tell you that you do.” The man repeated the same questions several more times, each time punching Luke viciously when he refused to give them the answers they wanted to hear. By the time they finished questioning him, Luke was barely conscious and his whole body ached from the punches.

Luke felt one of the guards cutting his hands loose and then jerking him roughly to his feet. The two guards half pulled, half drug him back outside. But instead of throwing him back into the shed with the other prisoners, the guards drug Luke further into the jungle where several small wooden cages stood in the middle of a small clearing. They shoved Luke into one of the cages and locked the door securely. The cage was so small that all Luke could do was to sit on the ground, hunched over in a cramped position and there was no room to even turn around. Luke sat there with his knees drawn up to his chest, trying to ignore the aching of his body where he had been beaten, especially the throbbing pain in his left flank where he had been struck repeatedly. He choked back the bile that rose in his throat and blinked back the tears that gathered in his eyes. He had never been more scared in his life. He might be twenty-two years old but at that moment, he felt like a small terrified child.

A noise caught his attention and Luke raised his weary eyes to watch as two guards appeared in the clearing, dragging Henry between them. They threw him into a cage across from Luke and locked the door, disappearing back into the jungle. “Hey, Luke…” Henry said in a dry hoarse voice “How ya doing?”

“I’ve been better.” Luke replied

“Yeah….me too.”

“Why’d they put us out here instead of back in the shed with the others?”

“I can answer that. We’re from a special Unit so we get special treatment.” Henry told him with a dry laugh

“Yeah? Well….I’d rather not be so special.” Luke said

“You got that right. Me neither.”

“God, it’s hot out here.”

“Yeah, I know….and it’s gonna get worse.”

It was still early in the day and already the temperature was in the high nineties. The air was so hot and muggy that it burned Luke’s lungs with each breath he took. As the temperature rose, sweat began to pour from his body and breathing became more difficult. It was so bad that eventually Luke passed out from the heat. The feel of something crawling across his bare foot awoke Luke with a startled cry. He swatted at the huge spider that was crawling over his skin.

“You okay, Luke?” Henry asked when he heard Luke’s startled cry

“Yeah, just a spider crawling on my foot.” Luke said, taking a deep breath to try and slow down the racing of his heart.

“Yeah, I know. They been crawling all over me too…spiders, bugs….damn insects. Suckers hurt when they bite too.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Luke muttered, trying to clear the cobwebs out of his foggy mind.

The day seemed to drag on with no end in sight. But when night fell it was even worse. The darkness was overwhelming, covering everything like a blanket. And it was still so hard to breathe. There was little relief from the heat; it was only slightly cooler than it was during the day. And what made it even worse was that the spiders and other animals that crawled over them in the darkness could not be seen like they could during the daylight. It was impossible to do more than doze off for brief periods at a time. Luke could feel himself getting even weaker than he already was. Death seemed almost preferable to this continuous torture with no end in sight.

A guard came early in the morning with a small cup of rice and water, their ration for the day. Then they were left alone. The loneliness was almost unbearable. All Luke and Henry had was each other, so they used that to keep their sanity. They talked about everything and anything they could think of just to pass the endless hours of boredom and isolation.

“Tell me some more about Hazzard.” Henry said in a tired voice

“My Uncle has a farm there. One hundred and sixty acres of the best bottom land in the south. That’s where I grew up.”

“What do ya raise?”

“Cotton, corn and moonshine.” Luke told him with a soft chuckle.

“Moonshine, huh?” Henry said with a chuckle “Is it any good?”

“Best shine in three states.” Luke said proudly “Secret family recipe. Been passed down for five generations.”

“You a  ridge runner?” Henry asked referring to the talented drivers who made the moonshine deliveries.

“I was till I enlisted.” Luke answered

“You got any brothers or sisters?”

“Nope…just two cousins…Daisy and Bo.”

“Older or younger?”

“Younger. I’m the oldest.”

“What happened to your parents?”

“They were killed in a car accident when I was four and I went to live with Uncle Jesse.”

Henry and Luke continued talking all day trying to forget just for a little while about their precarious situation. Luke was glad that he wasn’t out here in this cage by himself without anyone to talk to. If he had been, he would have lost it by now from sheer loneliness.