P. O. W. (21 page)

Mohammed James entered her office without asking permission and took a seat in one of the bamboo chairs. “You look worried,
Lieutenant.”

“Shut up!”

“I think you’re reading too much into what has happened…. Kill a few Montagnards and the rest will come back in line.” James
puckered his lips, and a vicious gleam filtered through his eyes. “Or you could make an example out of Spencer Barnett that
the Montagnards would never forget.”

“Like what? We tried making an example out of that damned boy, and look where it’s gotten me!” She looked out the open window
over to the clump of bamboo where the nine-year-old boy’s body was still impaled on the bamboo stake. The body, swollen so
badly that it was unrecognizable, was covered with a mass of moving bot flies.

“Let me have him….” James took a deep breath. “I guarantee that the Montagnard rebels will hear his screams ten miles away
in the jungle.”

“You guarantee?”

James nodded his head slowly. “Guaranteed!”

Spencer sat in his cage in a catatonic stupor. He stared out at nothing and tried not to blink his eyes. Each time his eyelids
shut he could see the little boy’s face. He tried not to listen because the child’s screams still echoed in his ears. He tried
not to smell—especially not to smell.

Colonel Garibaldi tried talking to Barnett, but the soldier heard nothing he said. The trauma with the Montagnard boy had
been too much for the seventeen-year-old; it had been too much for the colonel. He reached over and touched the base of the
cross he still had attached to the corner of his cage and whispered, “Help him, Lord…. Take the boy’s burden… please.”

Spencer blinked and looked over at the colonel. “We’ve got to bury him.”

The colonel heard the young soldier’s voice for the first time in days and closed his eyes in silent thanks.

“We’ll find a way.” Garibaldi eased out the words. “We’ll find a way, Spence.”

“Guard!
Guard!
” Barnett called the POW guard on duty over to his cage. “
Trung-uy
Van Pao…” The guard understood and went back to his thatch-covered guard shack and called the lieutenant on the field telephone.

James came over with the woman to Spencer’s cage. He wore a brown leather pistol belt and carried a Russian 9mm pistol in
a matching holster. He was dressed in a clean NVA uniform and had actually gained five pounds since he had been taken prisoner
with Barnett.

“What do you want, Spencer Barnett?” Van Pao hated him more than anything she had ever hated before.

“I would like to bury the Montagnard boy.” Barnett spoke through badly bruised lips.

“Fuck you, Spencer Barnett!” Van Pao screamed. “I would like to bury
you!
”

James grabbed her arm and leaned over to whisper in her ear. She smiled and then threw her head back and laughed. “Yes!
Yes!
” She gave the guard orders, and he ran to open Spencer’s cage. Van Pao leaned her forehead against the cold bamboo of Barnett’s
cage and smiled in at him. “You can dig his grave and bury him… but make the hole big enough for
two!
”

The guard pulled Spencer out of his cage so hard he lost his balance and fell backward on the ground. He got back up on his
feet and kicked Spencer twice.

James walked Spencer over to where the Montagnard boy was sitting upright on the bamboo shaft and shoved him down on his knees
in front of the swollen body. “Damn! The fucking smell!” James pinched his nose shut and moved upwind.

Van Pao and two of the camp guards joined them a few minutes later with a length of light chain that they wrapped around Spencer’s
neck and secured with a small lock. The loose end of the chain was wrapped around a six-inch bamboo stalk and secured.

Van Pao pointed to the guard carrying a small NVA field shovel, and he gave it to Spencer. “Now start digging a grave for
that thing…” she nodded at the bloated body with her head, “and for you!”

Spencer glared at her and then over at James.

“Dig!” James tried kicking Barnett, but the soldier was a little out of range.

The small shovel was difficult to dig with in the hard-packed soil, but Spencer struggled until he broke through the top layer
of red clay. He was determined to bury the boy who had been so kind to him and had shown such bravery. It would be Spencer’s
last project on earth, but it would be worth it to keep the flies off the boy’s body.

Spencer worked hard through the whole day and had a hole dug five feet deep and about four feet long. When he stopped digging,
he didn’t have the strength to pull himself out of the hole, and the NVA guards had to help him.

James returned to inspect Barnett’s work. He looked down in the small pit and smiled. “It’s going to be a tight fit for two….”

“It’ll do fine….” Spencer croaked the words out through dry vocal cords.

“You thirsty?”

Spencer nodded his head.

“Why didn’t you tell me!” James removed a bottle of Johnny Walker Black from his nearby rucksack and handed it to Spencer.

“Water.” Spencer pushed the bottle of scotch back at James.

“This or nothing!” James pushed the bottle against Spencer’s chest.

“Nothing.” Spencer dropped down on his knees, exhausted.

“You motherfucker!” James pushed Spencer down on his back and held him there using one of his knees while he unscrewed the
top of the bottle. He poured the scotch over Spencer’s face and then forced open the POW’s mouth using the open end of the
bottle as a lever. The scotch burned Spencer’s dry throat and split lips.

“I’m going to kill you….” Spencer croaked out the words.

James slapped Barnett’s face. “You ain’t going to kill a fucking
fly
… soldier boy!” He glared at the soldier, who didn’t have enough strength left even to stand up. James hated him. Where did
Spencer Barnett get his willpower? How could he stand up to the torture and the suffering? He was supposed to have been broken
under torture a dozen times, but each time Barnett survived and flaunted his strength at him! “Bury the fucking Montagnard!”

“I need something to wrap him in….” Spencer struggled to his feet.

“Throw him in the fucking hole like he is!” James drained what was left in the bottle.

“I want to wrap him up in something!” Spencer had nothing to lose. He knew that James was going to kill him, but if they wanted
the boy’s body taken off the stake, they were going to have to provide a burial cloth for him.

James kicked some of the dirt back into the hole and watched it shatter apart when it hit. “All right! Use
your
blanket!”

Spencer nodded and started walking back to his cage. It was pathetic the way the seventeen-year-old struggled to remain on
his feet. It took him as much determination to walk the hundred meters as it would have taken a healthy person to run the
Boston Marathon. Spencer made it to his cage and pulled his worn blanket out of his prison cell.

Colonel Garibaldi watched the heroic struggle and cried openly. He knew that they were going to kill the boy when he was finished
digging the grave, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

Spencer stopped and stared into Garibaldi’s cage on his way back. The guard’s rifle butt failed to get him to move until he
was ready, and then he started a slow shuffle back to the hole.

James had replaced the first bottle of scotch with a second one while Spencer had gone to get his blanket. “Now—bury him!”

The Montagnard boy’s body was so bloated from sitting in the sun for three days that Spencer could not recognize it as his
friend. The smell was horrible, and when Barnett touched the dead boy’s arm a sickening gas hissed out of the body. Spencer
gagged but didn’t stop. He was going to bury the boy.

No one saw the Montagnard man watching from the edge of the jungle. He was so well camouflaged that you could pass by him
within a few feet and still not see him. He watched the young American struggle with his son’s body and remained motionless.
He had been waiting for three days for a chance to sneak the body out of the camp.

Spencer wrapped the decomposing body in his blanket and dragged it to the edge of the hole. He didn’t have the strength to
lower it in and looked over at James for help.

“Fuck you! I ain’t touching that stinking thing!” James shook his head and then tilted it back to drink.

Barnett used his feet to push the boy over the edge of the hole. The blanket held the corpse together, but when it hit the
bottom, all of the gas in the boy’s intestines was forced out. The smell was awful. Spencer started pushing the red clay over
the boy’s body, at the same time reciting the only prayer he knew, The Lord’s Prayer.

“You getting fucking holy on me?” James laughed the words out.

Barnett ignored him.

“Don’t put too much dirt in there…. You have to leave some room for you!” James staggered to his feet and looked down in the
hole.
“Stop!”
He held both arms straight out like an umpire would do declaring a base runner safe. “Set down in there on top of that dirt!”
He pointed into the partially filled hole.

Spencer dropped down in the grave. He was too tired to resist anymore. He was hoping James would kill him; at least all the
hurting would stop. Spencer sat down Indian style on the soft dirt mound at the bottom of the grave. He could feel the earth
pack down under him.

“Well… well… well! You’ve
finally
decided to start cooperating with us! Well, it’s too fucking late!” James removed his Russian 9mm pistol from its holster
and pressed the barrel hard against Spencer’s forehead. “Do you have any last words?”

“Fuck you… James.”

James laughed and moved his hand a couple of inches to the left of Barnett’s head and pulled the trigger.

*   *   *

Colonel Garibaldi flinched when he heard the shot and reached up to touch his cross.

James laughed again. “It’s not going to be that easy, Spencer Barnett…. You are going to suffer a lot before I kill you.”
He nodded at the guards, and they started pushing the dirt in around Spencer. “Keep your arms down at your sides or I’ll have
the guards break them.”

Spencer sat with his eyes closed and felt the cool earth against his skin. The guards packed the red clay down around his
neck, using the butts of their AK-47s.

“You have a good night’s sleep. I’ll stop by later on, and then,
maybe
, I’ll kill you… if you beg nice.” James strolled back to the longhouse he shared with his Montagnard woman. She was the only
Bru who hadn’t escaped… yet.

Barnett thought only about good things. He had decided that he wasn’t going to die bitter, thinking about the pain that wracked
his body. He was going to die thinking about good things. He let his mind slip back to South Carolina. The years he had spent
in the foster care system had produced only one good set of foster parents, and they had
really
loved him. He had fit right into the family as the younger brother to the only child his foster parents had. They didn’t
play any favorites and treated him exactly as they did their own son. What was unusual was that their son accepted him as
his younger brother. Spencer had loved living on their farm, even the good-night kisses. At first he acted like he didn’t
like it when they came into his room to say good night. He was eleven years old, and kissing old people, especially his foster
father, was for perverts, but when they were late coming to his room and he thought they had forgotten him, he would almost
cry. Those were good times, until the social worker decided that he was becoming too close to his foster family and it would
be better to transfer him to another home. He still couldn’t figure out why they had done that to him. He went berserk and
broke the social worker’s nose and kicked one of her helpers in the nuts. They declared him emotionally unstable and placed
him in a juvenile home that was over ninety-five percent poor southern blacks. He had gone into the juvenile system a normal,
happy boy right off a farm with loving, caring people around him and had come out—after being treated by professional psychiatrists,
psychologists, and social workers—a hostile, prejudiced, mistrusting teenager. He joined the army to escape from the emotional
vampires who were feeding off him.

Spencer changed his thoughts to the Recondo School and Master Sergeant McDonald. He had been attracted to the man in a very
strange way. He felt that there was more to the professional soldier than the man would allow people to see. Spencer had been
around a lot, especially when he was in the juvenile center, and he had been propositioned by men and women alike. McDonald
wasn’t like that; he was the kind of person you would want for a father. That was it! Spencer finally figured out what attracted
him to the master sergeant—he was the perfect father figure.

Barnett smiled and felt a beetle crawl next to his neck. He tried twisting his chin against the ground, but it only made the
insect more determined to burrow next to his neck behind his ear. His body had warmed the dirt that was packed around it,
and he was comfortable except for the cramped position he was sitting in. He let his mind slip and remembered what he was
sitting on and felt a rush of nausea.

Good thoughts!
He had to think good thoughts. Fishing… swimming in the cool farm ponds… running after the coon hounds. Good thoughts!

“You sleeping, motherfucker?” James had returned in the dark.

Spencer didn’t answer.

“I said, are you sleeping!”

Spencer remained quiet.

“Well, I don’t give a fuck if you are!” James plopped down less than a foot from Spencer’s exposed head and reached out to
feel in the dark for his ex-teammate. He touched Spencer’s dew-covered head. “You honkies are all alike. Your hair is too
fucking soft!” James ran his hand through Spencer’s hair like a man would do to his dog. “Why have you been so hard on me,
Spence?” James’s voice was friendly. The scotch was talking now. “What the fuck did I ever do to you? It’s fucking hardass
honkies like you who make us like we are.”