Return to Tomorrow (6 page)

He nodded, spoke softly in English. “Ahnle has a child.”

“Is the baby ill, deformed?” The Hlông loved children but their life was harsh and demanding. Frail, sickly babies did not long survive the rigors of that life, as she knew only too well, and to her everlasting sorrow.

Father Dolph shook his head. “The father is unacceptable. His family has been at odds with Ahnle's for generations. They would never have met if they hadn't come to the camp. He has since left for Germany. He did not claim the child.”

Rachel's heart went out to the young girl, still only a child herself. Ahnle remained standing quietly but she'd raised her head to stare at a point just past Rachel's left shoulder. Her hair was a glorious shade of ebony, so black it seemed to take light into itself and hold it in its depths. Her eyes were almost as dark as her hair. She was
small and slim, just an inch or so shorter than Rachel, about five feet, tall for a Hlông woman.

“So she is unprotected and her child has no ancestors to revere.” A dire fate for one of her people. Rachel squared her shoulders. Ahnle wouldn't suffer any more fear and disappointment if she could help her. “I imagine we can work her schedule around the baby.” She spoke in Thai again so that Ahnle could understand. She smiled and held out her hand, half expecting the girl to do the same. Ahnle didn't smile. She bit her lip and shook her head, blinking back tears once again.

“No baby,” she said holding out her empty hands before curling her fingers into her palms.

“The child was a boy,” Father Dolph said quietly.

“A boy child.” Rachel let the words sift from between stiff lips. Boy babies were very precious in Hlông society. Any irregularity in his birth would be overlooked in Ahnle's village if he grew tall and strong. She longed to take Ahnle into her arms and comfort her, but resisted. One did not touch a stranger in Ahnle's world.

“Ahnle's brother has no male children. He has taken the baby back to the village, and will raise him as his own.”

“He will have ancestors,” Ahnle said miserably. “I cannot care for him here. It is best.” She started to cry.

“Don't cry, Ahnle.” Rachel touched the rough cotton sleeve of her blouse. “The pain will pass.”

“No. I will always grieve.”

Rachel shook her head, denying Ahnle's words but understanding only too well the agony behind them. “Someday you will not grieve.”

“How do you know?”

“I lost a son,” Rachel said, leading the girl out of the cool, dark room. Then she spoke a deliberate, comforting lie. “You will not forget but someday you will remember without pain.”

“I
STAR
B
OONY
?” A
HNLE SAID
, repeating Rachel's words as best she could.

Rachel laughed at the fractured pronunciation. “No, Ahnle. It's Ea-ster Bun-ny,” she repeated, enunciating each syllable with exaggerated care.

“Eei-star Bun-y.” Ahnle made a second attempt.

“Close enough.” Rachel went back to her task of stirring hard-boiled eggs in the cups of food coloring dyes that she'd received in a package of Easter goodies from her mother. She'd been hoarding her ration of hen's eggs, one per day, for a week. She'd also traded some of the gaily wrapped Easter candies in the package to a woman from Ahnle's village who kept chickens in bamboo cages outside her hut for five more. Now she had an even dozen, two for each color of dye, the smallest amount you could decently color—at least according to Rachel's mother.

“Do bun-nies lay eggs in America?” Ahnle asked in her careful English. Her tone said she wouldn't be a bit surprised if they did.

“No.” Rachel racked her brain for a simple explanation for the tradition of coloring chicken eggs and having them delivered by way of basket-carrying rabbits. “It's a custom of the ancestors to please the small ones.” It was the best she could do.

Ahnle nodded, accepting the words, pondering their meaning. She learned so quickly. Rachel couldn't believe how much progress she had made in the past six weeks.

“It is good to make children happy.” The familiar look of loss and longing came into her eyes as she thought of her son. Rachel bit her lip. Nothing she could say would help ease the pain. Only time would heal that wound.

“There.” Rachel lifted the last egg out of the dye. She kept her tone brisk, deliberately light. “Now we'll put them in the baskets.” She suited action to words, lining up four small woven baskets she'd traded more candies for along the street of makeshift huts where much of the camp's trading went on. She lined them with the improbably colored styrene Easter grass her mother had used as packing.

“This is very strange,” Ahnle observed, poking some of the grass, a particularly lurid shade of lavender, with the tip of her finger. “Is it from a bun-ny nest?”

“If Easter Bunnies made nests, it would probably be with this,” Rachel admitted. She had not attempted to explain the religious significance of the holiday to Ahnle. That was Father Dolph's department.

“America is strange.”

“In many ways.” Rachel smiled. “But it is also beautiful and full of wonderful things.”

“I will see it someday. Maybe.” Ahnle watched as Rachel piled three colored eggs in each basket, then sprinkled them with brightly colored, foil-wrapped chocolates in animal shapes.

“Perhaps.” What if she took Ahnle back to the States
with her? She had promised Father Dolph eighteen months of her life. But after that…

She didn't like to think too far into the future. For so many years she'd had to survive day by day, sometimes hour by hour. She couldn't look that far ahead without being afraid of what might come. She liked Ahnle. They worked well together. They were growing closer each day, despite the difference in their ages. She was old enough to be the girl's mother, it was true. In Ahnle's world she was old enough to be her grandmother. But here, in the hand-to-mouth existence of a camp almost within shelling distance of a hostile border, none of those distinctions mattered. They were two women bound together by the loss of a child. It was a bond they would always share.

“It is time for Mass,” Ahnle said, hearing the recording of a church bell playing from the loudspeaker above the chapel. “Will you go? I will take the baskets.”

“Yes, I'll go.” Rachel picked up two of the small baskets. “This one is for Father Dolph. This one for Brother Gabriel—” the Belgian monk who was Father Dolph's assistant “—and this one for Dr. Reynard.”

“That is three,” Ahnle said counting. “Who belongs to the four?”

“You do,” Rachel said, ignoring the fractured grammar in the last sentence. “Happy Easter, Ahnle.”

“Thank you, Rachel.” Ahnle smiled and bowed ceremoniously, then reached out and touched Rachel's hand, lightly, fleetingly. Among Ahnle's people touching was reserved for family members only. “Happy Eea-star.”

“I'd better hurry or I'll be late for mass.” Rachel
turned away to hide the rush of feeling that surged into her heart.

“I will walk with you.” Ahnle picked up the basket destined for Dr. Reynard. “I will give this to the doctor so you will not anger Father Dolph's God by being late.”

 

A
N HOUR LATER
, R
ACHEL
walked along the dusty main street of the camp, her heart and soul comforted by the timeless peace of the Mass. The heat of the day was beginning to fade. Storm clouds massed on the horizon, reminding her that the rainy season was almost on them. She shuddered to think of what the unpaved streets and pathways of the camp would be like after three or four months of steady, heavy rain.

Ahead of her, near the main gates, a UN Border Relief Organization truck was off-loading sacks of rice to be distributed among the camp residents the next day. They also supplied sugar and salt, canned meat and fish. The food was nourishing but dull. Drinking water, too, had to be trucked in. Water for washing and laundry was supplied from cisterns located in various places around the camp, or from the stream running along the north border of the compound.

Everything the camp used, everything they needed to exist here, had to be trucked in. It was an ongoing process that never stopped, regardless of the weather or occasional random shelling from Vietnamese-backed Laotian insurgents who occasionally infiltrated the next valley. If she walked this way again tomorrow, the trucks would still be there, or others just like them. Perhaps tomorrow the medical supply truck with the antibiotics
and surgical supplies that Dr. Reynard had ordered two weeks earlier would arrive.

As she watched, another vehicle drove through the camp gates. It was a jeep, a U.S. army jeep, old, battered and disturbingly familiar. Rachel stopped in her tracks, watched as it drew to a halt before the camp guards' security hut. Two men got out, both tall and lean, hard-muscled, one black, one white.

“Rachel.” Ahnle's touch on her sleeve was feather light, her voice soft, but Rachel jumped as if she'd been poked with a stick.

“Ahnle! You scared me out of a year's growth.”

The girl looked puzzled and disturbed. “I did not mean to,” she said contritely.

Rachel laughed. “It's just a saying. It means you startled me because my attention was on something else.”

“What?” Ahnle asked with all the curiosity of a child.

“Nothing. Let's go back to the cottage. It is time to eat.”

“I am hungry, too.”

Rachel stood a moment longer at the edge of the wide, dusty main street that began at the camp gates and ended at the front steps of the administration building where Father Dolph had his office. The two men were still inside the guards' office. What would Brett Jackson and Billy Todd be doing here? The sun was going down, hiding its light behind the sharp edges of the western ridge of the valley. The shadows were long, making bright, confusing patterns as they played hide and seek with the setting sun. The two men's actions were no concern of hers anyway. She turned away.

“Mrs. Phillips.”

Rachel stopped, turned slowly to face the man whose voice she couldn't forget. “Brett.” His name slipped out before she could stop herself from saying it. “Hello, Rachel.”

“Hello.”

He didn't return her smile. He stood before her, tall, stern, as unyielding as the mountains at his back.

“Afternoon, ma'am.” Billy Todd touched his fingertip to his temple in a casual half salute.

“Hello, Billy.” Rachel let her smile grow brighter, more assured. “I never expected to see you here.”

“We stop to check up on Father Dolph every now an' again, when we're in the neighborhood.”

Rachel looked away, into the hills, remembering. “I suppose we aren't very far…from the place we first met. As the crow flies.”

“No, ma'am,” Billy answered with a laugh.

“You didn't tell anyone here about the temple, did you?” Brett asked, his deep voice grating on every word.

“Of course not.” Rachel's eyes flashed. Billy grinned harder at her spirited response. “I saw no reason to discuss our meeting with anyone here.”

“Who's this?” Billy asked. Rachel tore her eyes away from Brett's hard blue gaze. Billy was looking at Ahnle.

“This is my helper, Ahnle.” Rachel made the introduction in English. Her smile returned, soft and loving. “She is also my new friend.”

Ahnle looked up, smiled shyly, wonderingly, at Billy but remained silent. Rachel realized it was probably the
first time the girl had ever seen a black man, but she didn't seem afraid. She had come a long way from the timid, childish creature Rachel had met in Father Dolph's office that day. She was proud of Ahnle's newfound poise and air of composure.

“Father Dolph is hearing confession,” she told the men when the silence threatened to grow too long. “He'll probably be busy for quite a while. It's Holy Week,” she added, in case they didn't know. A fair number of the camp's residents were Khmer, relocated from the huge camps along the Thai-Kampuchean border. Many of them were devout Catholics.

“I imagine Brother Gabriel can find some use for this, if the padre's tied up.” Billy pulled a wad of bills from the back pocket of his faded jeans. Rachel glimpsed American dollars, Thai
baht
, Indian rupees. It was a considerable sum in any currency.

Where had all that money come from? she found herself wondering. The sale of teak logs? It didn't seem likely. Simon's warnings about Tiger Jackson's line of work came back to her in a cold rush of disappointment and renewed suspicion. Her lips thinned into a straight line. She looked up to find Brett Jackson watching her with a scowl on his bronzed face. She looked away, confused and upset.

“I know where Brother Gabriel is,” Ahnle said softly.

Rachel glanced at the girl in surprise. She had never spoken out that way in front of a man, any man, before. “I show you.” She gestured toward the administration building.

“Go ahead, man. But hurry. We have to get back on
the road.” Brett's voice was rough-edged, impatient. Rachel looked down at her hands. Already she regretted her suspicious thoughts. It was no business of hers where the money came from. It was destined for a good cause; that was all that should matter.

“Won't you stay and eat with us?” She panicked for a moment, wondering how she'd stretch the canned chicken and rice that was to have been their dinner. Then she remembered the vegetables she'd bought from one of the refugees' small garden plots that morning. She could stir-fry those to add to the rice and chicken.

“No,” Brett said abruptly.

“Some other time.” Billy glanced curiously at his friend. “Thanks for the invite, though.”

“Get that money over to Brother Gabriel,” Brett said.

“Check. Lead the way, little missy.” Billy grinned down at Ahnle, his teeth very white in his dark face. He motioned her forward, matching his stride to hers. She looked small and fragile alongside him, barely reaching his shoulder. Rachel felt a curious mixture of pride and worry as she watched Ahnle walk away so trustingly.

“The girl means a lot to you, doesn't she?”

Rachel swung her head back quickly to find Brett watching her with a predator's intensity.

“We…have a lot in common, despite the fact that I'm old enough to be her mother.”

“You don't look old enough to be her mother. Her older sister, maybe.” The corner of his mouth quirked upward in the hint of a smile.

“Don't be ridiculous.” Rachel couldn't help smiling
a little herself. “This gray in my hair isn't some kind of new fashion craze. It's the real thing.”

“It's not gray, more like silver and it suits you.”

Rachel could only shake her head. If she said anything else it would be dangerously close to flirting. She was alone with Tiger Jackson. There was no moon riding high above, no ruined temple in the jungle to lend a fantasy air to the conversation. It was a perfectly ordinary day, a perfectly ordinary, if unexpected, meeting. She was responsible for whatever she said to this man, whatever she did. She knew that. What she couldn't understand, wouldn't understand, was why suddenly her pulse was racing at breakneck speed and her breathing was so shallow and uneven she felt dizzy and light-headed.

“How are you settling in?” he asked, pushing his hands into the back pockets of his khaki fatigues. The movement stretched the soft cotton of his shirt tight across his chest. A pulse beat slow and steady in the hollow of his throat. He looked away, his dark blue gaze following Billy Todd down the street. Suddenly Rachel found it much easier to take a deep breath.

“I'm settled.” Rachel sidestepped a bicycle carrying two boys and a basket of live, squawking chickens that careened past. “The work's hard, harder than anything I've done for a while, but I like it.”

He turned to face her. “The facilities are pretty primitive.”

“We do the best we can with what we've got.”

“There are ten thousand people in this camp, Rachel. The best you can do is still only subsistence.”

“I try. We all try. As hard as we can.”

He looked past her, out across the camp, as though
seeing it through her eyes. She felt free to watch him for a moment. Deep lines fanned out from the blue, blue eyes. Even deeper lines bracketed the corners of his mouth. His chin was strong and shadowed by a day's growth of beard. He looked tough, determined and dangerous, every inch the mercenary, the soldier of fortune he was. Except for his eyes; for the space of a heartbeat they were haunted by sorrow for a homeless people and a ravaged land.