“I’m sorry; I can’t. I have to get back to base.”
She turned to the others. “Nathan? Wu Fang?”
From the way the old Communist was shaking his head, she knew he had followed enough of the conversation to know what she was asking.
“Many years ago,” he said slowly in Chinese, his face grave, “when your father persuaded the village to take me in, when I was ill and would have died, I told him I would someday pay back this favor. And so I am. Once I have delivered you safely to the Kuomintang, my blood debt will be repaid, and I can return to my comrades in the north.”
“So no one will help. No one cares if I ever see my family again.” She looked at the three men, from one to the other, traitors all.
Nathan reached his hand out to her. “Don’t be distressed, Eugenia. Remember Ephesians six: ‘Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.’ And this is what your father wanted. For you to be here with me.”
A scathing retort rose in her throat, only to be choked off by truth: this was what her father wanted. And that betrayal was the bitterest of all.
“Do you need help preparing dinner?” Nathan asked gently. His offer surprised her, but then maybe he could tell how close she was to breaking.
She shook her head, afraid she might scream if she opened her mouth. The worst part was that she understood why they had refused her. Well, at least why the lieutenant and Wu Fang had turned her down. A blood oath was sacrosanct in China, and she knew of the lieutenant’s commitment to return to the war. But Nathan . . . he could have helped her yet had refused. And she would never forgive him. Not for as long as they both lived.
Chapter 8
She kept to her promise all the next morning, despite the punishing pace set by Wu Fang. Not once did she ask to slow down, even though her thighs now burned as if stabbed by red-hot pokers. The air was growing thinner, and each new breath scalded her lungs. She might be a woman, but she was not lesser. She did not need to be coddled like a rare orchid. She was that strong tree pushing back against the wind, just like Li Ming had told her to be. She would make her friend proud. And more important, she wouldn’t give the lieutenant a reason to reverse his good opinion of her.
She stepped on a stone and almost blasphemed as her ankle twisted. Ahead of her the backs of Wu Fang and Lieutenant Younan were slowly receding. She was falling behind. Again. Redoubling her efforts, she pushed on through the knee-high grass, sweat running down her back.
Two days down, four to go. No, three and a half. She wanted to cry at the thought, except she didn’t have the energy.
Hitching up her pack to relieve the ache of her shoulders, she focused on taking her next step. Even though the afternoon sun was hidden behind a thickening layer of clouds, its heat was still palpable through the brisk mountain air. Her heart pounded, crying for oxygen that wasn’t there.
Suddenly she was pitching forward, her foot tangled in something. She tried to catch her balance, but her reflexes were too slow, her muscles too starved for air. The ground rushed up, and then pain exploded from her knees, hips, shoulder, and palms. A flash of light as more pain registered. Then . . .
“Eugenia.” Nathan’s voice seemed to come from far away.
She cracked her eyes open. A long second later, her lungs expanded in a gasp. A sharp whistle made her flinch. The grass was oddly prickly and sharp beneath her cheek, and her nostrils were filled with the musty scent of dirt and dead vegetation. Muffled thumps shook the ground as she flexed her fingers and then her toes. She needed to get up.
“What happened?” Wu Fang asked in clipped Chinese.
Embarrassment washed through her. Shaking and chilled, she began to push herself up and got as far as her knees before the ground started to spin. A muttered expletive close to her ear startled her. A pair of strong hands grabbed her shoulders, shoving her back down.
“Don’t move.” The lieutenant’s voice.
Calloused fingers lifted her chin, and she blinked to clear her vision. The lieutenant’s fierce expression swam into focus. His taut, angry gaze scanned her face, though she had no idea what he was looking for.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes.” With an effort she tried but failed to push herself off the ground. Her legs were shaking too badly.
A water canteen appeared in front of her, the cap unscrewed and dangling from its chain.
“Here, drink. You’ll feel better,” Lieutenant Younan said.
Her hands trembled as she took the metal tin from his hands. Her own water pouch had run out a while back, but true to her new resolve, she hadn’t said anything. If the men could keep going, so could she.
“We should slow down,” Nathan said as she took another swallow. “Eugenia is clearly exhausted, which is why she fell.”
It wasn’t true, but her throat was too parched at the moment for her to argue. Besides, she wasn’t opposed to the idea of slowing down, as long as it wasn’t she who had to ask.
The lieutenant made a frustrated sound and glanced at the sky, reminding her of the danger they were in. If there had been a hole to crawl into, she would have done so.
“Ask Wu Fang what our options are,” he said.
The older man’s answer made Genie choke. Horrified, she recapped the canteen and staggered to her feet, the weight of her pack nearly pulling her down to the ground again. Nathan reached out to steady her, but she brushed him off.
“We can keep going. I’m fine.”
“Is that so?” The lieutenant’s dark eyes reflected his doubt. Maybe because she was swaying like a reed in a high wind, but it couldn’t be helped. “Sterling, what did Wu Fang say?”
“That we either need to reach the highway by sunset, if we hope to catch a ride, or we turn back to find better shelter for the night, since it’s going to rain.”
Not waiting to hear more, Genie spotted the path of bent and broken grass left behind by Wu Fang’s recent return and headed for it. Every step was torture, but she would crawl before she would make them turn back.
“Hold on there.” Lieutenant Younan snagged ahold of her arm, and she staggered, almost falling over. “How ’bout we get a plan first?”
“We have one. We walk.”
“Not without making a few changes first.” He started sliding the pack off her shoulders. She struggled and then gave up. He dropped the pack on the ground and unfastened it.
“What are you doing?”
“Redistributing the weight. Sterling, come over here and help me out.”
“No.” She grabbed one of the straps and tried to pull it back. “You said everyone carried his own pack.”
“I changed my mind,” he said, easily reclaiming her pack from her.
Nathan slung his pack down next to hers and then knelt. “Give me the heaviest items.”
“Don’t insult me.” Lieutenant Younan began pulling things out of Genie’s bag: cooking supplies, foodstuffs, the copper pan. “Here, open up, Sterling. We’ll split it.”
“That’s enough.” She leaned down and yanked her pack from his hands when he started pulling out undergarments. “The rest are clothes.”
“Are you sure? I’ve got plenty of room in my pack.” Amusement glimmered in the lieutenant’s dark eyes as he watched her shove the intimate items back down and out of sight.
“No, thank you. I can manage.” Her fingers fumbled on the buckles, but at last she managed to fasten them securely.
Wu Fang glanced at the sky. “We go?”
She eased the pack onto her sore shoulders and stood, staggering only a little this time. “I’m ready.”
Behind her Nathan muttered something to the lieutenant too quietly for her to hear.
“Relax,” Lieutenant Younan said, sounding annoyed. “I know.”
Wu Fang motioned toward the hill in front of them. “It’s not far to the crest,” he told her. “Maybe two thousand bù. And the highway is on the other side.”
A quick conversion of bù to the English equivalen
t almost had her throwing up. Another two miles. She closed her eyes and silently prayed for strength.
Nathan was more verbal. “This is ridiculous. Eugenia is in no shape to continue. I vote we find shelter for the night and then press on tomorrow.”
“And I say if Miss Baker can’t walk, then one of us will carry her. I’m not missing our ride to Kunming. You want to talk about long walks?”
Wu Fang stepped between the two men and pushed them apart. “Enough. Nay-tan take Yu Jie,” he said in heavily accented English, effectively silencing them all. “Tiger take packs.”
“Why Sterling?” the lieutenant asked as Nathan shrugged out of his pack. “I’ve got a better chance of getting her up that hill.”
“I’m not as weak as you think, and Eugenia is my responsibility. Not yours.”
Genie bristled at having her independence stripped away yet again. “I’m not anyone’s responsibility. I’m fine.”
Wu Fang shot her a hard look, cutting off any further protest.
“This is stupid,” the lieutenant muttered as he picked up Nathan’s pack. Genie heartily agreed but recognized they were both going to lose this battle.
“Eugenia, come here.” Nathan turned his back to her and squatted slightly.
She hesitated. Given a choice, she would much rather the lieutenant carry her, except it wouldn’t be proper. She barely knew the man, whereas Nathan had been her bane for years. Reluctantly, she put her hands on his shoulders and let him toss her up onto his back. His grunt as she landed did nothing to improve her mood.
Nathan hitched her up higher to balance her weight, forcing her to cling to him. His shoulders were mostly bone under her arms, the sharp angles of his hips beneath her thighs unsettling. She fought the urge to jump back down, the consequences be damned. Then she caught the lieutenant’s grimace of pain as he slung Nathan’s pack up alongside his own.
Dismay washed through her. Because of her weakness, the lieutenant was now carrying double the weight. No, more than double, because Lieutenant Younan now carried most of her pack as well. On top of a wrenched back and damaged knees.
She looked away, unable to bear the sight any longer. Tears blurred her vision. If he had forgiven her presence on this trip before, surely he was regretting it now.
Wu Fang, apparently satisfied by the new arrangement, nodded and then started off toward the hill crest. The other two men took their usual places, with Lieutenant Younan second in line and Nathan bringing up the rear. Desperate to distract herself from her misery as well as from the unpleasant dampness of Nathan’s shirt and its nausea-inducing scent of new sweat layered over old, she focused on the wild, raw beauty of the land. How would she ever survive anywhere else?
“Genie, stop strangling me,” Nathan growled. “I’m having a hard enough time without you cutting off my air.”
With a start, she relaxed her grip and then carefully slid her arms farther down around his chest. Then her attention drifted to the scenery again. Off in the distance, a bright ribbon of white water spilled through a notch in the high rocks, cascading down into a jade-green river far below.
“Nathan, you grew up in the US. Does it look like this?”
“Parts.” He readjusted his hold on her, and this time she was careful to not let her arms creep up around his neck again. “Eastern Kentucky has the thick forests and steep hills, though the hills aren’t as tall, and there’s no bamboo.”
She tried to place Kentucky in relation to the rest of the US. The effort made her head throb, so she gave up. “What about California, where Aunt Hazel lives?”
“Again it depends on what part. Where your aunt lives it’s mostly farmland, but there are mountains and forests. And beaches along the coast.”
“It sounds pretty.”
“It can be.” He was starting to sound increasingly winded.
“You don’t miss it? America, I mean.”
“No.”
There was no hesitation his answer, which surprised her.
“What about China? Will you miss it?” She would. She had no doubt about that.
“Not a bit. It was never my first choice of ministries. And now, with the Society having cut off our funding—”
“Wait! The Society cut my father off?” Her heart squeezed. Please don’t let it be because of Zhenzhu . . .
“Your father thinks the stipends were lost somewhere in the chaos of wartime. More likely they were siphoned off by corrupt bureaucrats, assuming they arrived at all. But your father, being who he is, refuses to believe that.”
“Of course.” Her father was the eternal optimist, though apparently not when it came to the Chinese army and its ability to protect them.
The unwelcome acid of anxiety and anger scorched its way through her veins again, knotting her stomach. Did her father not know how much his and Zhenzhu’s safety meant to her? To be sent away, not knowing if she would ever see them again, to be rendered unable to defend what she loved most, was the worst punishment imaginable. Yet if she turned back, she would be putting her own selfish wants in front of his. And to what end? What good would she be, really, against the Japanese? She couldn’t fire a gun or wield a sword.
Her gaze wandered to the lieutenant walking several yards ahead of them, the doubled-up packs on his shoulders bobbing with each step in a mesmerizing display of strength. I bet he can do both. Perhaps if she had been born a male, she would, too, though she had heard rumors that the Communists had allowed women into their army. She doubted those women would feel as useless as she did now, being hauled around on Nathan’s back like a tired child. For a stolen, foolish moment, she imagined she was on the lieutenant’s broad back instead, feeling the muscles of his body flex and contract.
She must have dozed, for the next thing she knew, Nathan had released her legs and she was sliding down his back. They had reached the crest, and far below, as Wu Fang had promised, wound a narrow ribbon of dirt cut into the side of the hills.
“Nice highway,” the lieutenant observed sarcastically. “Let’s hope the truck gets here before the rain turns all that dirt into mud. And does anyone else see that rockfall back by that curve?
“Looks from here like it’s blocking the road, unless the truck, or whatever we’re catching a ride on, can cut below it. But that slope has gotta be at least ten percent. Not much can handle that without sliding a ways down the valley, and likely rolling in the process.”
Genie’s heart sank as she and the three men sized up the situation. It looked like the slope above the road had partially given way.
Wu Fang squinted at the sun, which was sinking ever lower to the west. “There’s not much time before the truck comes. And those rocks must go. Come.” He started sideways down the steep hill, half walking, half sliding, as Nathan translated.
Lieutenant Younan swore softly, and Genie couldn’t blame him. The situation was truly hellish.
Nathan sighed and held out his hand to the lieutenant. “Pack.”
“What about Miss Baker?”
Indeed, what about her? Impulsively, she stepped over the side of the crest after Wu Fang.
“Eugenia, wait.”
The soil was loose and slippery beneath the dead grass and low shrubs. It slid out from under her shoes, and she lost her balance. Adrenaline burned through her in an icy, white-hot rush, driving the exhaustion from her muscles as she scrambled to catch herself. Between luck and effort, she managed to keep her feet under her as she careened down the treacherous slope. Luckily the hill shallowed out the farther she got, and closer to the road, she was able to almost walk normally. Or would have been able to if her legs hadn’t felt like aspic jelly.
By the time she reached the road, Wu Fang was already talking to Nathan. Apparently he had passed her on the way down, and she hadn’t even noticed. Blaming it on the headache she’d been fighting ever since she’d fallen, she looked around for the lieutenant, wondering if he had passed her, too. Lord, she was tired.
The afternoon sunlight s
lanted into the valley, touching an enormous boulder crowding one edge of the road. The relatively flat surface on top, the result of its calving off the cliff above, seemed to beckon to her. She tried to tear her gaze away but couldn’t. To lie down for a few seconds—surely that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. She might even regain enough energy to help the men clear the road.
Exhausted from the scramble down the hill, she staggered to the rock. With the last of her strength, she shucked off her pack and clambered up. The stony surface was breath-stealingly cold against her skin as she stretched out, but she was so tired. She only had to bear it for a little bit, a minute at most, just long enough to rest. She closed her eyes. Not too long . . .
Someone nudged her shoulder. “Miss Baker?”
She opened her eyes and then blinked in confusion. The valley was completely swathed in shadows, the sun having disappeared behind the hills. She must have been asleep for over an hour. Startled, she sat up. Her gaze darted toward where the road had been blocked, only to find it completely cleared.
“Are you all right?” Lieutenant Younan asked.
She shivered as his soft American drawl slid along a sensitive nerve. She wished he would keep talking to her. Something about the long vowels and musical consonants appealed to her, warming her deep inside.
“You need to get out of this wind.” The lieutenant shrugged out of his leather flight jacket, and before she could protest that she wasn’t cold, he had it wrapped around her shoulders. As he tucked the garment around her, she turned her face into the shearling collar and breathed in, unable to resist the curious mix of scents: leather, cigarette smoke, aftershave. And the earthy musk of warm male that was individual to him. Her eyelids drifted shut.
“Stay with me, here.” His tone was sharper this time, almost angry. “When did you last have something to drink?”
She shook her head, trying to clear the fog from her brain. “After I fell.”
“That’s what I thought. Come on. Bottoms up.” A metal canteen found its way into her hands and then was guided up to her mouth.
The water was warm and metallic and yet tasted like heaven. Then she choked from trying to breathe and swallow at the same time. The canteen left her lips for a second, and she managed to push it farther away. “Stop. I’m fine.”
A Girl Divided Page 8