The boy led him to his grandfather’s hut. Ashburn greeted the old man, as he came out to welcome him.
Later, over a bowl of pho served by Khai, the two men spoke of enemy movements, the welfare of the village and how much the boy had grown.
Nguyen Khai (family name before given name) ran his small hand over the buckle on Ashburn’s belt.
“What is VMI, Captain Lonnie?”
“It’s where I went to school, Khai. It is a school that trains great warriors and leaders of my people.”
“Why don’t the others have that?”
The tall American laughed. “Well, Khai, first off, they didn’t go there. And second, it’s not official Army issue. It’s my good luck charm. It was given to me by Captain Nate. You remember Captain Nate, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir. Did he go to this VMI?”
“You bet, kid. Someday we’ll tell you about being Brother Rats.”
Khai was startled.
“You do not look like river rat, Captain Lonnie!”
No one noticed the quiet villager silently leave the village boundaries.
And no one saw him return.
“Thank you again, Nguyen Phong.
Khai, thank you for cleaning my boots.”
He carefully pulled the combat boots on and laced them up.”
Ashburn shook the chief’s hand, signaled his men and began to move out.
“Nate, when are you going to call me Martha or Marty or … oh, I don’t know!”
He looked down at the girl he kept calling Miller. She had an amazing way of pouting, her gray eyes and silver-blond hair flashing in the Saigon sun. He was walking around now, nearly healed from his appendectomy, and they had stopped off at a sidewalk vendor of noodles and pho, the Vietnamese equivalent of Ramen and fish soup.
He grinned and continued to slurp the pho down with gusto.
Suddenly, her voice dropped.
“Don’t move, Nate!”
His shoulders tightened as he felt her grab his service .45.
Two loud reports shook his ears.
He turned and saw the two black, pajama-clad VC lying in the road, their foreheads blown off and their automatic pistols unfired.
He dropped his soup bowl and hugged the now-trembling young nurse.
Ashburn and his squad moved back along the jungle trail to the pickup site. The Hueys (helicopters) would be there. The squad remained vigilant, but their stalkers knew the area far better.
A hand signal from the starvation-thin VC lieutenant and his five men raised high-powered rifles. A volley of shots rang out.
Ashburn saw five of his men knocked forward, their heads almost non-existent. By reflex he moved one step before starting to drop when he felt the trip wire of the hidden mine move under his foot.
His last conscious thought was “Oh, shit!” before the explosion hurled him backwards, the impact yanking him out of his boots.
He didn’t hear the V.C. lieutenant stand at his head.
He didn’t feel the whooshing impact of the machete as it came down and severed his head from the rest of his mangled body.
His head felt no pain as it was impaled on a post stuck in the ground.
Nguyen Khai was shaking. He had witnessed the slaughter and recognized the Cong Lieutenant as the same man who had tortured and killed his father. He remained quiet, hidden from view, trying to plot out both his escape and a death strategy against that VC soldier.
He didn’t have to worry.
Two of Ashburn’s squad had survived the withering fire. Wounded, playing dead, they suddenly rose and took out the VC squad in a volley of shots. The lieutenant they saved for last.
He lay wounded in all four extremities, as two grim-faced Green Berets approached him.
It wasn’t too hard to take his machete away.
It was even easier to remove his head the same way he had done to Ashburn.
The only difference was that he was alive when the whoosh of the blade came down on his neck.
They didn’t see the young boy who had grabbed the Captain’s boots, belt buckle and head. They were too filled with the blood lust of revenge.
The boy sat behind his grandfather’s hut and stroked the head of the man he had called Captain Lonnie. He whispered in the dead man’s ear.
“I will bury you here. I will honor you always.”
The recovery team brought back ten bodies, one of them headless.
Berkson wept that day .
Dearly Beloved
“Come on, Kristin, we’re gonna be late!”
“Quit fussing, Beau. We’ve got plenty of time.”
“You know how my mother is, Kris. I swear she has a stopwatch in her brain. Besides, we don’t want to keep General and Mrs. Green waiting.”
Kristin Belmont looked at her future husband and smiled.
It’s only two weeks away.
Beau Jensen looked at his future bride and smiled back.
Has it only been eight months?
“You sure you want to be Mrs. Beau Jensen?”
“It’s got a nice ring to it.”
The fingers of her right hand caressed the engagement ring he had given her.
“And, speaking of ringing, there goes that damned phone!” he exclaimed.
She flipped open her cell phone.
“Kristin Belmont soon-to-be Jensen speaking. Who’s calling?”
She had laughed as she said it, but her expression changed instantly.
Beau watched his fiancée carefully. She had that look again.
“Yes, Ms. Miller, I understand. We’ll stop by on our way to the chapel. It’s our rehearsal day.”
She blushed, as she heard the older woman offer both apologies for disturbing her and profuse congratulations.
“You and the Commandant are coming, aren’t you?”
Beau heard the “wouldn’t miss it for the world” come through Kristin’s phone loud and clear.
“Okay, wife-to-be, what’s up now? Is the Canterville Ghost haunting the Barracks?”
“Uh … Beau, I don’t think he was headless, was he?”
Beau Jensen had become, as of May 6th, a graduate of the University of Virginia. August would bring orientation and the start of his new life as a medical student at UVA. In another two weeks, he would be married.
It was May 8th, wedding practice day at the chapel.
Does life really move this quickly?
Was it only eight months ago that he had met the spunky young woman and her dying father on Bluff Mountain? Was it just a twinkling in time since they—no, she—had solved two, twenty-five-year-old murders and restored honor to a dead Virginia Military Institute cadet and his family?
How could I not fall in love with her?
When he had told Jake Williams, the old reporter at the Lexington News Gazette , that he had proposed, Jake turned with a knowing grin, slapped the tall college grad and emergency medical tech on the back, and laughed as he said “what took ya so long, kid?”
His father’s response was typical, as he stood in the living room of the real estate magnate’s large home.
“Well, now you’ll have to get a real job and drop this medical school nonsense.
There’s always a place for you at my office.”
An “I told you so” lay unspoken on the older man’s face.
His mother had muttered a “hush up, Gunther,” to her husband and took Beau’s hands in hers. Her head tilted upward to look into her son’s eyes.
“She’s a lovely girl, Beau. But isn’t it a bit … uh … sudden? Your father and I were engaged for three years before we married. Is there something you’re not telling us?”
He blushed then fought to control the rage that made his blush pale in comparison.
“No, Mom, she’s not pregnant.”
Hermione Jensen uttered a “Thank God. What would my friends have said?”
Beau turned to leave then looked over his shoulder and called out, “Oh, Dad, don’t wor
ry. The tuition’s taken care of. You won’t need to spend a penny.”
Gunther Jensen raised an eyebrow.
“Did you win the lottery, son?”
“Dr. Shepland took care of it.”
Beau was halfway out the door, when he heard his mother’s plaintive whine.
“Gunther, dear, I can’t seem to find my taupe shoes. Have you seen them?”
Beau’s next stop was the office of Dr. Richard Shepland, his mentor, confidant, and guardian angel when it came to Beau’s career decision.
Shepland was old now, well past the age when the average guy would hang it up. But, as he never stopped telling Beau, “I’ll work as long as I’m still learning and still having fun.”
The old doctor listened and smiled, as Beau kept repeating himself about his wedding plans, and how he couldn’t thank him enough for picking up the tuition tab.
“Slow down, boy, slow down. That’s what money’s for. And, yes I’ll be there at your wedding rehearsal; and wedding. But where is ‘there?’”
“Oh, geez, Doc, I forgot, didn’t I? It’s at the VMI chapel.”
“How did you manage to swing that? You’re not an alumnus.”
“It was kinda special. I mean, you know Kristin, right? Well, she spoke with Ms. Green in the Alumni Office and, all of a sudden, that’s where it would be held.”
“How does your fiancée like working at VMI?”
That was another blessing from heaven, compliments of the Alumni Office.
“Have you met anyone from Kristin’s family, besides her late father?”
“I went to her graduation at William and Mary. It was just me and her uncle Denny—General Denzil Johnson. He was a roommate and Brother Rat to her dad.”
“Didn’t her mother show up?”
“No, seems she’s on a cruise with her new boyfriend.”
“Is she going to come to the wedding?”
“We sent her an invitation and Kristin called her but….”
Beau suspected that her mother never forgave her for going with her father on his last journey.
Shepland nodded. He had seen it too many times during his career.
“Doc, you will be there, won’t you? I mean the rehearsal and the wedding.”
“Yes, Beau, and I’ll be at your White Coat Ceremony at the medical school in August, too.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
He hugged the old man and ran out the door.
That and more crossed the young man’s mind as he stared at his future mate.
“Headless? What the hell’s going on? Do they have another ghost to exorcise?”
“It’s probably nothing. The Commandant’s secretary said the cadets are seeing a headless mangled body wandering through the Barracks hallways after Taps and lights out.”
“So?”
“She wondered if we could help. She says the Commandant is … uh … very disturbed by the ‘manifestation.’ I think we swing by there before chapel and get some of the lowdown.”
It was the most important day before the wedding: rehearsal day—a dress rehearsal in jeans at the chapel.
“Kris, come on!”
“I’m ready!”
She kissed him then looked down at his feet.
“Wait, Beau, you aren’t going to wear those, are you?”
He looked at his sneakers.
“Why not? It’s just a practice.”
“Please, honey, wear your black shoes.”
We Are Gathered
“Dang! Now where did you put your shoes, old woman?”
I must be getting old. I’m talking to myself now.
Abigail Mayhugh turned the OPEN sign to CLOSED and locked the front door of her little antique shop in Lexington then headed back to her bedroom in the back of the store.
She washed and changed out of her dull-gray house dress. It was almost a uniform that she had worn daily for years.
No, Abigail, you need to dress up for those two young ’uns.
She took the ceil blue dress from her closet. She had last worn it when her Donnie’s name was cleared in the special VMI ceremony last year.
She owed it to Kris and Beau to show up for the wedding rehearsal and the wedding. She smiled, as she remembered how the young couple had come by personally to invite her. Her heart fluttered as she heard the words young Kristin had called her: “Aunt Abby.” That very day she had called her lawyer and changed her will. The kids would be her legal heirs.
The tinkling of the sleigh bells hung on the storefront door interrupted her thoughts.
Thought I locked that door.
She yelled out, “We’re closed.”
The bells jingled again.
“Dang, double dang!”
She padded out front in her slippers.
“Who’s there?”
No answer.
She went to the front door. It was still locked. She opened it and looked up and down the street.
No delivery trucks, no cars.
Nothing.
She locked it again.
As she turned around, she spotted a small box on the counter. It wasn’t there before.
Not expecting any deliveries .
She went over and picked it up.
Cardboard, marbleized color, old. The lid came off easily. Inside a gold pocket watch reflected the dim store light.
“Huh, you did forget again, old woman. Don’t you remember sending out Papa’s pocket watch to be cleaned and serviced?”
The mid-19th century pocket watch gleamed in her hands. Pre-Civil War period, solid gold, it had been passed on from father to son, starting with Great Grandpa Eustace. Her father had only twin girls, so Abigail got the watch, and her sister got some of their mother’s jewelry.
She nodded. “Perfect gift for Beau.”
She stuffed the box in her dress pocket, went back to her bedroom, and sat down on her bed.
Now, where did I put my shoes?
Slowly she got down on arthritic knees and looked under her bed.
Ah, got you, you little devils!
She slung the errant shoes on the bed but didn’t get up.
The storage box called out to her. Open me .
She slid it out and reentered the door to her past.
Her boy, Donnie, smiled back at her from the gilt-framed photo, proudly wearing his cadet uniform.
“You’re finally at rest, now, boy.”
She kissed the glass-enclosed picture then picked up another frame.
My mausoleum of love.
A somewhat older young man, almost the twin of her Donnie, in Army uniform and Green Beret, seemed to blow a kiss at her. The carefully printed words at the bottom tore at her.
“Love you forever, Abby.”
She held the framed photo next to her heart.
“Lonnie, Lonnie, did you know you had a son?”
She rocked back and forth, his picture tightly pressed against her chest, reliving that last night before he left.
“You know I have to leave, Abby.”
“Couldn’t we … uh … get married? We could go to the Justice of the Peace. Maybe my sister and Sam could come, too.”
Once more she saw his head shaking. He held her.
The old woman cried silently and alone.
“Okay, Abigail Mayhugh, pull yourself together. You can’t disappoint those kids.”
She placed the framed pictures back in the box and slid it back under the bed. She straightened her dress, brushed back a few strands of gray hair.
She opened the door, stepped out, inhaled deeply, and relocked it.
“Maybe Kristin and Beau will have the life I never had.”
In the Presence of God
The gray-eyed woman was intimidating.
I can’t begin to imagine what this woman’s life was like.
Kristin thought about the Commandant’s secretary, as she sat once more in the anteroom to his office.
That first time, nine months before, had been bad enoug
h. But now there was something, some miasma that filled the room.
“Ms. Belmont, I’m not sure where to begin, but the way you helped us with the Ashburn boy, well, Ms. Green said I should call you.”
Kristin felt that familiar knot in her gut.
Beau stood by her side, protective and concerned.
“Ms. Miller, can we cut to the chase?” he said. “We’ve got a wedding rehearsal in one hour.”
Miller smiled knowingly. She had experienced the same protectiveness years before. It had never really ended between her and Berkson.
“Yes, cut to the chase I will, young man. Strange as it seems it may well involve an Ashburn.”
“But Donnie was cleared,” Kristin blurted out.
“Not Donnie, Kristin. Lonnie Ashburn, his father.”
Kristin closed her eyes. She knew the old woman’s secret. She had revealed Abigail Mayhugh’s connection the last time she was here.
Miller continued.
“The Commandant and Lon Ashburn were Brother Rats and the best of friends. They served in Vietnam together. Nate got sick—appendicitis—the day he was supposed to take a patrol out. Lonnie took his place.
He never returned, until today.”
“You mean, he’s alive? My God, we should tell Aunt Abby.”
“Uh … not quite, Kris. That’s why I asked you here.”
Martha Miller stood up.
“I called you because there have been reports of a headless specter walking the halls of the Barracks the past several days. I think I know why.”
She knocked on the Commandant’s door, heard the familiar “come in,” and beckoned the couple to follow her.
Kristin took one step into the room. The miasma was now a black wall. It engulfed her, and Beau had to catch her before she fell. He carried her to a chair and placed her carefully in it.
Her mind cleared.
She saw the miniature portmanteau sitting on Berkson’s desk. Berkson stood and stared at it.
Miller stepped forward and turned the box around to face the girl.
Slowly, she opened the lid.
Kristin saw the cone of light emanating upwards. It took the form of a military man. She had seen that face before.
Shoes: Tails from the post Page 10
