Calling on a strength she didn’t know she had, she squared her shoulders and handed the unexpected gift back to the lieutenant. “Thank you, but I will do as my father asks.”
The lieutenant’s expression didn’t change, but something like disappointment flickered in his tilted cat eyes.
Nathan patted her approvingly on the shoulder. “Good girl.”
A sudden, most uncharitable urge to yell at Nathan seized her. Instead she spun around and hugged Zhenzhu. She buried her face in the older woman’s soft neck, breathing in her familiar scent, wishing she would never have to let go.
“Goodbye, Mama,” she managed to choke through unshed tears. “I’ll come back. I promise.”
Zhenzhu stiffened and then hugged Genie fiercely back. “Good luck and good fortune, my Beautiful Jade. My little daughter.”
Forcing herself to let go, Genie turned to her father. Despair clogged her throat as she gave him a final silent hug—a bittersweet one that she wanted to remember forever. It nearly broke her, but she managed not to cry as he kissed her on the cheek. Then, with no one left to say goodbye to, she bent to pick up her pack.
Nathan reached it first. “Here, I’ll carry that for you.”
“Nope.” Lieutenant Younan stepped on one of the straps, pinning it to the ground. “She carries her own pack. We’re going to be covering a lot of ground in the next few days and can’t afford being slowed down because you’re doing double duty.”
“Then we’ll divide her things between us. There’s no reason to abandon chivalry because you’re in a hurry.”
“Look, the longer we’re on the trail, the more dangerous it is for all of us. Either she carries what she’s got or she repacks. But we carry our own gear.”
“I’m fine, Nathan.” With deliberate nonchalance she slung the backpack onto her shoulders. Like her father, she was tall and athletic and also relatively strong for a woman, which would have made Nathan’s concerns laughable if they weren’t so predictable. Sometimes she wondered if he thought her capable of anything.
Wu Fang studied her while the others buckled on their own backpacks. He had donned his own pack earlier with surprising ease, considering he was missing most of his right arm. The only concession he had made to his infirmity was to knot his jacket sleeve at the base of the stump to keep out the morning chill. Once everyone had their packs on and their straps adjusted, Wu Fang turned silently toward the path that led northwest away from the village and its fields and along the river as it cascaded down between the steep hills.
The lieutenant followed next, then Genie, and Nathan brought up the rear. The valley’s early-morning silence was broken only by the twitter of birds, the sibilant slide of water over the rocks as they walked. Except for an occasional crunch of stones under the lieutenant’s boots and the clunk of a metal canteen on the side of a pack, their passage was silent.
The path began to climb, and the dense foliage of the hills began to crowd closer, signaling the end of the valley. Genie slowed, all too aware that the village she had called home for the past ten years was about to disappear from sight. Throat tight with unshed tears, she stopped and started to turn.
“Don’t look,” Nathan said softly from behind her. “Be not like Lot’s wife, pining for the past. Better to remember a place with your heart than your eyes.”
She hesitated, wondering if Nathan was right. But what if the image wasn’t impressed firmly enough for her to remember the rest of her life?
“For heaven’s sake, if she wants to look, let her.”
Genie looked up at the lieutenant, who had stopped a few feet in front of her.
“No god will smite her for wanting to catch a glimpse of her family one last time,” he went on, sounding exasperated.
Her heart skipped with sudden, sharp longing. “Do you think they are still there?” she asked him.
The lieutenant’s stern expression seemed to soften a little. “Maybe, maybe not. But I think you’ll feel better for checking.”
Still she hesitated, torn, afraid that Nathan was right and that it would only bring her a fresh wave of pain.
“I was in your shoes once,” the lieutenant said, his voice turning surprisingly gentle. “And I didn’t look back, because of my pride, because I wanted to look brave. It’s something I’ve regretted ever since.”
Convinced, she whirled around.
The valley was spread out beneath her, a patchwork of small fields and open pastures, beautiful even in its winter raiment. Smoke curled lazily from a dozen chimneys as the morning meals were prepared, the ancient stone walls surrounding the village keeping all threats at bay. And there, where the path separated, with one heading up to Temple Mountain and the other down to the river that wound like a narrow, dark ribbon toward the far end of the valley, stood a lone figure. Not her father. Not Zhenzhu. But Li Ming.
Genie’s heart constricted painfully. She raised her arm in farewell. Amazingly, Li Ming must have seen the gesture, because she raised her arm, too. Then her friend turned and made her way slowly back to the village. Genie stifled a small sob.
Nathan’s hands settled gently on her shoulders, offering silent compassion as his attention locked on the man behind her, his narrow face tight with anger. “Satisfied?”
“There’s no avoiding the pain,” the lieutenant said evenly. “Only the opportunity to trade a greater regret for a smaller one.”
“He’s right, Nathan,” Genie said, wiping her eyes as she moved back, away from her father’s assistant. “Nothing can make me like leaving, but at least I got one last look.”
“What did Tiger say?” Wu Fang asked in Chinese as she and the two men rejoined him.
Genie rapidly translated the conversation into Chinese, her heart catching with fresh pain as she remembered Li Ming’s wave.
Wu Fang’s mouth became a flat line. “Tiger is right.” He looked up at the sky and then the mountaintops. “Come. We’re wasting time we don’t have.”
Genie frowned slightly as Wu Fang made his way stiffly up the path. If she hadn’t been mistaken, his eyes had been suspiciously moist as he had turned away. But then, he, too, was leaving someone beloved behind, except his wife was no longer alive. She wondered if a second parting would hurt less than the first. She let the contemplation of loss and regret distract her from her own grief as the trail grew steeper and less traveled, and the passing minutes turned into an hour or more. Wu Fang had lost his beloved Mei while fighting with the Communists. Her father had lost her mother. Zhenzhu had lost her family to a cholera epidemic. And the lieutenant had hinted at a loss of his own. So much parting and heartbreak. Maybe that was the true nature of life, more than happiness and contentment.
The sun was high in the sky when Wu Fang veered off the trail. They followed him out onto a broad rocky ledge that overlooked the narrow river valley. Genie shivered as she shrugged off her pack, the wind cold on her perspiration-streaked skin. At least the sunshine was warm. Next to her, Nathan took off his pack with a grateful sigh and laid it next to hers. The lieutenant was last and reluctantly shrugged his off only after Wu Fang pantomimed vigorously that he should do so.
The lieutenant eased himself onto a rock, and Wu Fang shot him an inquisitive look.
“I’m fine.” Then he sucked in a sharp breath as he gingerly extended one leg and then the other.
“Yu Jie, come here,” Wu Fang ordered as he dug into his pack. He pulled out an old shirt and ripped it into two. “Climb down to the river and soak these. Do not wring them out before coming back.”
Perplexed, she took the ruined shirt strips and started toward the edge of the precipice.
“What are you doing?” the lieutenant asked sharply, and she realized Wu Fang had spoken in Chinese. So used to being addressed in that language, she hadn’t even noticed. But she would have to start. Someone needed to translate for the lieutenant so as to keep him in the conversation.
“Going down to the river. Wu Fang wants these wet.” She held up the
cloths.
“I’ll do it.” He started to get up but then grimaced as if in pain.
“Stay,” she said quickly, a little surprised that a mere half-day hike would have him in such a state. What would he be like in three days? Or even five? “It’s not that far, and I’m used to these cliffs.”
Sensing Wu Fang’s impatience, she clambered off the rock shelf and then half climbed, half skidded down the hillside to the snow-fed river that rushed through the narrow canyon. Crouching at the edge of the icy torrent, she dunked the shirt strips several times to soak them through, gritting her teeth against the sting of the cold water. As soon as she was satisfied, she left the stream and made the arduous ascent back up to the ledge.
The lieutenant still sat where she had left him, but he had bunched his trousers up to expose well-muscled calves . . . and severely bruised knees.
Wu Fang took the dripping cloths from her numb fingers and draped them across one of the lieutenant’s knees. The lieutenant inhaled sharply, and then was still as Wu Fang did the same for the other knee.
Genie winced. She could only imagine how much they hurt. The dark purple color as well as the swelling told her the injuries were recent.
“Hit them on the instrument panel when I landed,” the lieutenant said in answer to her silent question. “The nose kinda crumpled on me.”
“When you crashed, you mean?”
His eyes narrowed. “I didn’t crash. It was a perfectly executed forced landing, at least until the landing gear hit a rock.”
“So you meant to land in . . . wherever it was you landed?” she asked curiously. She had never heard of anyone choosing to land anywhere but at an aerodrome.
He flexed his right knee and winced. “Given that the alternative was hitting the side of a mountain, yes, I thought the rice paddy looked like a better option. Though I was kind of hoping to make it back to Kunming.”
“Yu Jie,” Wu Fang interrupted. “Dinner.”
Genie, not yet done with her questions, nodded and dragged her pack over beside the lieutenant. It wasn’t every day she got to talk to a pilot, even if he was surly from pain.
“Why risk a forced landing at all?” she asked as she began removing what she needed to prepare a meal.
“The engine quit. That’s when I noticed both gauges were on empty. If I had to guess, I’d say a bullet punctured one of the fuel lines. Funny thing about airplanes—they don’t fly well without gas.”
Nathan snorted from his perch on the ledge. “You were lucky you didn’t explode.”
The lieutenant glanced at the other man. “True. But as my CO always says, ‘Better lucky than good.’”
“Were you injured elsewhere?” she asked, trying not to think about him caught in an explosion. Not long after she had moved to the village, a small boy had caught fire standing too close to a bonfire. The memory of his horrific screams still shook her.
“Wrenched my back pretty good, but it seems okay now. And hit my head on the control panel.” He pushed back his hair to reveal a thin, inch-long scab along the hairline. “Knocked me out for a bit. If there’d been a fire, I would’ve been a goner.”
Genie’s hand stilled as an unbidden image appeared before her eyes. The plane in flames with the lieutenant slumped behind the controls . . .
“Hey.” The lieutenant’s warm fingers touched her hand, his dark eyes round with contrition. “I didn’t mean to upset you. As I said, I’m fine. Nothing caught on fire—which only supports my fuel-line hypothesis.” He sat back and laughed without much humor. “Be thankful for the small things, I guess.”
She busied herself with emptying the pack, hoping he wouldn’t notice her hands shaking. “Not so small, in my opinion. Thank God you’re all right.”
“Yeah, well”—the lieutenant began massaging his thigh—“you can thank who you want, but God and I are kind of on the outs with each other at the moment, so he may not have had much to do with it.”
Shocked by his irreverence, she stared at him. “Of course he did. God watches over us all, a loving Father to each and every one of His children.”
“Really?” A muscle in his jaw flexed as he worked on his leg. “Was he watching over my friend whose plane did slam into a mountain? Was he watching over the three Japanese pilots I shot down? Was he there in Burma when the Japanese bombed civilian targets? Seems to me if there is a God, I shouldn’t even be here. Nor should there be a war forcing you from your home.”
“Man’s actions have been his own ever since the Garden of Eden,” Nathan interjected calmly. “You can’t blame our heavenly Father for this war. We have no one to blame but ourselves and our own sinful pride and greed. God is the one showing us the way out of conflict.”
“Your god, maybe. But Japan’s god is currently urging them on.”
“There is only one true God. Their mistake is from our failure to spread our message.”
“Then should I hold you accountable?”
“No more,” Wu Fang said in his heavily accented English, glaring at the two men. “We eat now.”
Genie handed out the food Zhenzhu had prepared, as eager as Wu Fang to be done with the conversation. She had been around unbelievers all her life and had listened to her father argue with them since she was a child. Still, it was unsettling and a little shocking to hear Lieutenant Younan be so blatantly blasphemous. If her father had been here, she wondered if he would have been still so eager to send her with the American pilot.
The lieutenant sniffed the unwrapped doughy bundle.
“It’s char siu bao,” she said. “Steamed pork buns. Or I have some cold egg rolls, if you would prefer. I was going to save them for tomorrow, but it doesn’t matter.”
The lieutenant took a tentative bite while she handed a cloth napkin to each man. He made an appreciative sound and then took another bite.
“Did you cook this?” he asked between mouthfuls.
Nathan snorted. “If you knew Eugenia better, you wouldn’t ask. Her cooking is awful. One meal in particular had us violently ill for days.”
Embarrassed heat climbed up her neck. “That wasn’t my fault. How was I to know oyster sauce goes bad? Fish sauce doesn’t.”
“You can make a sauce out of oysters?” the lieutenant asked with a lift of his eyebrows. “I’ve only had them steamed or raw.”
“It’s a delicacy of sorts. My father brought a bottle back from one of his trips to the coast.” She picked at the pork bun on her napkin. “For Zhenzhu, who’s the real cook in our family.”
“I’m sure you’re just fine at it,” the lieutenant said, the gentleness in his tone surprising her. “All it takes is a little practice.”
“Yes, well . . .” Nathan coughed and wiped his lips. “She’ll have plenty of time to practice once we’re married.”
Genie turned to stare at Nathan in disbelief. Married?
The lieutenant stilled, his expression alert. “You two are engaged?”
“No, we’re not.” She swung her attention back to her father’s assistant. “What in heaven’s name—”
“I’m sorry, Eugenia.” Nathan shot her a warning look as he folded his napkin and handed it to her. “I know you wanted to wait until we reached your aunt to announce our engagement. But with our traveling arrangements, I didn’t want the lieutenant getting the wrong idea.”
“Wrong idea?” she asked furiously, outrage building at his audacity.
“Now is not the time to discuss this.” Nathan’s tone brooked no argument. His gray eyes bored into hers, a silent, almost desperate plea for forbearance in the wintry depths.
Confused and uncertain, she bit back her protest. Appetite gone, she silently gathered up the remains of lunch. As much as she wanted to set the record straight, she couldn’t entirely discount the possibility that Nathan had a good reason to lie. One that she would definitely ask about later, in private, as seemed to be his request.
While she cleaned up, Lieutenant Younan gingerly removed the wet cloths from his
knees and rolled his trousers down. Nathan took the now-useless rags from him and then extended his hand. With a grateful look, the lieutenant accepted Nathan’s help and staggered to his feet.
“Thanks,” he said, once he had caught his balance.
Wu Fang tapped Nathan on the shoulder and said in Chinese, “Tell him if he needs to stop and rest, he must speak up. I’m not a nursemaid.”
Nathan relayed the message. The lieutenant’s jaw tightened. “Tell him not to worry. I’ve survived much worse.”
A small smile touched Wu Fang’s lips, though whether he understood the words or only the tone, Genie didn’t know. With no further comment, the old man slung his pack over his shoulder and disappeared into the thick foliage at the forest’s edge. Nathan scrambled to get his own pack on, and Genie hurriedly stuffed everything back into hers. By the time she was finished, both men were ready and watching her, the lieutenant with his habitual impatience, Nathan with . . . well, she wasn’t exactly sure.
She hurriedly shrugged on her pack. “No need to wait. I can catch up.”
The lieutenant hesitated and then, apparently taking her at her word, he headed off into the brush after Wu Fang. Once she was ready, Nathan gestured for her to proceed in front of him, saying nothing as she passed him and plunged into the forest.
Chapter 6
Six hours later, Genie shifted her pack on her shoulders and then stifled a sharp gasp as it landed on a sore spot. Hungry and tired, with every new step setting off a wave of pain, she wanted nothing more than to ask Wu Fang to slow down. But she didn’t. If the lieutenant could keep going despite his damaged knees, she could ignore her own discomfort. Her pride demanded it. Already she had been forced to ask the men to stop so she could relieve her bladder. They, of course, had only to step off the trail to take care of their needs, barely breaking stride. If only she were so lucky. Clearly the Good Lord had been distracted when he had made Eve. How else to explain all the inconveniences that came with being female?
In front of her, the lieutenant and Wu Fang disappeared behind an outcropping of rock. Biting back a groan, she picked up her pace so they wouldn’t get too far ahead. The sun was starting to set, leaving the forest steeped in shadows and making the path harder to see.
A Girl Divided Page 5