by: MacSas

The following afternoon, Luke and Shawna decided to take a drive so they could talk privately. As much as Luke loved his family, they made no excuses for being curious about his relationship with Shawna. Though Luke had told his family about Shawna when they had been dating, he hadn’t told them that he had met the woman he wanted to marry. He’d kept that to himself, hadn’t even discussed it with Shawna. It was just as well, he thought now. He’d been in no position to marry her or give her a secure life.

When he’d first met Shawna she’d been a fiery, stubborn, independent girl of sixteen. She’d just moved out of her family’s home in San Antonio and was making a life of her own. It would have been the classic tale of waitress falls for newbie recruit, except there had been no happy ending for them. Luke had never led her on though. He may have seen her as the girl he could settle down with, if they’d met in another time, but Shawna had nursed no illusions about their relationship. She knew that he was starting a new career and was not willing to give it up for permanence at home. She wouldn’t have asked him to either, no matter how much in love she’d been with him. He didn’t want to go into combat leaving a new bride behind, possibly making her a widow before she had become used to being a wife. What kind of life would she have had?

*   *   *   *

“This has been a long time coming” Luke murmured, looking out over the scenery.

They were at the top of Eagle Point, a huge rock mass that sat high above the county. The top was completely flat which made it ideal for looking at the county below. Shawna was packing up the picnic basket that Daisy had packed for them. She wrapped her arms around her knees, rested her chin on them and focused her attention on the lone figure in front of her.

“I don’t know where to start” He kept his back to her. “So I’ll tell you this and no more”

Shawna understood the warning against questions in his voice.

“That morning, I had a bad feeling about the mission. I’d already seen firsthand what bad Intel could do. It was bad Intel that caused the deaths of my men, and had gotten me injured” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “But it wasn’t bad Intel that got Kane killed”

Shawna remained quiet as Luke looked away again and continued to talk; almost to himself.

“I was worried that this mission would fail as well. Maybe I was nervous because I was leading a smaller group. This was my first time taking the lead again, since I’d returned from the Naval Hospital. My men were itching to go that day. We’d lost a lot of ground and a few good men in the days beforehand. The fighting had gotten so scrappy; we often weren’t sure who was calling the shots. Many of us were sure that the guys in command had lost the plot. We were losing the war and the men were losing faith. It was no secret among us that folks back home were turning their backs on the war. Care packages often had newspaper articles smuggled in them, so we kept up to date on some of the news. I often thought about those protests as I’d sit in the pouring rain night after night, on another watch”

He paused and looked at Shawna, though she was sure he didn’t actually see her.

“They had no idea what it was like for us. Not all of us wanted to be there”

He remained silent for a moment, then, putting his hands in his pockets, he looked at his boots and continued.

“Things were going fine, although the men were jumpy. War can be addictive, you run the risk of getting a thrill for combat, and nerves make you punchy. And that was what caused one of the guys to shoot at a shrub, thinking it was the camouflage that the VC were fond of using on their heads” He shook his head. “A stupid shrub. Well, that just announced our position to the VC that were hiding off to our other side. It wasn’t long before we were out numbered. I was one of the ones that was captured”

Luke stopped at Shawna’s gasp. She quickly covered her mouth, hoping the noise wouldn’t distract him from continuing.

“I was led to a bamboo cage. My boots and socks were removed; my feet were put in shackles. An iron collar was put around my neck. It had a rope attached to it that secured me to the side of the cage. It was cramped and I couldn’t move. It took six men to carry that thing with me in it. At the camp, my cell was just as small. There were no windows. My feet were shackled to an iron bar at the edge of the doorway. I could sit up or lie down, but little else”

He shook his head and started to pace, his story picking up speed in an effort to get it over with.

“The place smelt of … I tried to escape once. Only made it as far as the edge of the camp. My punishment involved being buried up to my neck in the ground for almost a week. One of the guards asked me if I knew why I was there at the camp. I told him I was a POW. He laughed and told me that I couldn’t be a POW as there was no war. And since we were the without having given an official declaration of war, I was a war criminal. Mind games. Man, they were good at those. I could hear other prisoners being tortured, yet the guards were trying to convince me that I wasn’t in a POW camp. I was simply being detained because I was guilty of war crimes.”

Shawna had closed her eyes in the midst of Luke’s memories, trying to avoid looking at his pain. It took her a moment to realise he’d stopped talking. She opened her eyes to find his shadow looming over her. She had to squint in the afternoon sun as she looked up. He had a look she couldn’t decipher, his hands clenched at his sides, his voice thick.

“A lot of men got fungus infections. It begins like ringworm and spreads to cover most of your body. You constantly itch because you’re always sweating. The more you scratch the more you break your skin. The more that happens, the more your clothes stick to you. So you pull your cloths from the pussy spots, only to start the itch off again. There was a POW I met that had the infection. He was so bad he was nearly all bones. I was ordered to clean him up. That involved scrapping the puss off his body. His ulcers were so large I could out my fingers in them. The poor man was already dead in his mind – it wouldn’t take long for his body to catch up. I sat with him, hoping he knew he wasn’t alone. One day, he started talking to me. Talked about his wife back home, how he was a newly wed. She’d be expecting him to return home, they’d just bought a house in Houston before he left for Nam…”

Shawna started trembling. It couldn’t be.

“He said, ‘You won’t forget me, will you’ No, I said. ‘You remember who I am?’ he asked”

Luke paused and looked Shawna in the eye.

“ ‘Of course I do, Kane’ He said ‘Don’t ever let her know I was here, I don’t want her to know how bad it was for us’ I agreed not to tell you, Shawna. I promised your husband that you would never know that he’d died in my arms in the middle of a filthy POW camp”

Shawna blinked, took a deep breath, exhaled it loudly and got to her feet.

“Oh my God” she whispered. “He was there all the time?”

“It would seem so”

“What happened?”

Luke looked at her sadly. “I held his hand the night he stopped talking. His eyes rolled back and he …” he finished with a shrug.

Shawna closed her eyes. Now she knew. Kane was dead and had been for years. She could have moved on in 1971, but she had believed that there was a tiny hope. There had been nothing, and no one had bothered to tell her. Actually, Luke hadn’t bothered to tell her. Why? Because he’d made a promise to Kane. What about her? She was mad. She was confused. She was grieved. But she also felt a sense of peace, a relief that the truth was now known. 16 years she had fought for closure. Now she had it.

“Where’s his body?”

Luke looked up. “I guess they buried it somewhere outside the camp”

“Oh my God” she repeated. “What he went through. What you went through. I can’t get my head around it! Thank goodness Kane never knew the truth”

Shawna stopped suddenly, aghast at what she’d just let slip. She covered her cheeks with her hands and looked at Luke.

He leaned against the hood of the General Lee, the more reliable of the Dukes cars, long legs crossed at the ankles, his arms crossed over his chest. His gaze on her was strong and unwavering.

“The truth about what, Shawna?”