Ride the Tiger (7 page)

Sensing her worry, Gib fell in step with her as they moved toward the house. “Is anything wrong?”

Taking the wooden steps quickly, Dany placed the rake against the wall and opened the rear screen door. “As always, your being here jeopardizes my neutrality, Major.”

Gib stepped inside. He watched as she took off her bamboo hat and set it on the floor. “I won't stay long,” he told her.

Dany gestured for him to follow her. She didn't have the heart to chide him further. Her pulse wouldn't settle down, and she poked nervously at her damp hair. She was sure she looked utterly disheveled, and she wished mightily that Gib had called first. For some reason, she didn't want him to see her like this.

Leading him into the main part of the house, Dany called for Ma Ling to bring iced tea. Then she took Gib on to the enclosed veranda at the front of the house. “Let me have a quick shower and change into some clean, dry clothes,” she said quickly. “I'll join you shortly.”

“Sure,” Gib said. “But you look beautiful just the way you are,” he couldn't resist adding. He saw her cheeks flame scarlet.

“Oh—” Dany's heart tripled its beat. Licking her lips nervously, she backed off the veranda and hesitated at the entrance. “I'd better change. I'll be just a moment.”

Sitting down on one of the bamboo chairs, which had huge, soft pink cushions, Gib wondered at her reaction. Wasn't Dany used to being complimented? Apparently not—she'd blushed like a schoolgirl.

Ma Ling appeared with two chilled glasses of iced tea. She set the accompanying pitcher on a small bamboo table covered with thick etched glass. A plate of sliced lemons and a sterling silver sugar bowl completed the ensemble.

Gib thanked her and got up to squeeze lemon juice into his glass and add two heaping spoons of sugar. This time, Ma Ling didn't give him the accusing stare. He grinned, taking the glass back to his chair to sit down. Maybe it was the maid's way of praising him for showing up in civilian clothes.

Dany quickly slipped into a long, pale pink cotton skirt that brushed her ankles and a sleeveless white blouse. Her hair hung in damp sheets about her shoulders. She quickly ran a brush through the strands to smooth them into place, then captured the mass into one long braid that hung between her shoulder blades. Her ever-present grief lifted slightly at the thought of Gib downstairs. Dany glanced at herself in the bedroom mirror. Wispy strands swept across her forehead, barely touching her brows. Tendrils curled against her temples, softening the natural angularity of her features. Smoothing the cotton blouse, she hurriedly left her spacious bedroom, furnished entirely in bamboo pieces, and skipped down the stairs.

Gib stood when Dany entered the veranda. She looked fetching in the simple skirt and blouse, incredibly beautiful and fresh. His smile deepened when he realized she was still barefoot.

“You're a country girl at heart,” he teased, stepping over to the table and offering her a glass of iced tea.

Smiling shyly, Dany sat down. “Thank you.” She drank half the glass of tea thirstily—or had she done it out of nerves? Somehow Gib made her wildly aware of herself as a woman.

Gib took a seat opposite her at the table and opened his briefcase, taking out a number of papers and a pen. “How are you doing since the funeral?” he asked.

Sitting back in the bamboo chair, Dany drew up one leg beneath the voluminous skirt. “I have good days and bad days,” she answered simply.

“It'll cycle like that for about three months.”

Her mouth twitched. “Don't say that.” Pointing to her eyes, Dany added, “Look at my dark circles. I've had nothing but broken sleep and nightmares since it happened.” With a frustrated sound, she said, “There's too much work here that demands my attention. I can't keep going on like this.”

“You wake up tired and go to sleep tired,” Gib guessed softly. The urge to reach out and fold Dany into his arms was tangible. She looked so young, seemingly untouched by the war that escalated daily around her.

“Yes,” Dany said. She managed a small smile. “The work keeps me from thinking...feeling, I guess.”

Hearing the raw pain in her voice, he lifted his head and held her sincere gaze. “Grief does funny things to us,” he agreed.

Dany set the glass on the table. She tried to remind herself that he was a marine, someone who posed a threat to the plantation and her people. Just as she was going to speak, she heard a young boy calling her name as he ran around the corner of the house. It was Hanh Vinh, Ma Ling's twelve-year-old grandson.

Gib heard the high, excited call and turned in his seat. A skinny young boy dressed in a pair of faded cutoffs and a white T-shirt, his straight black hair cut in a bowl fashion, came galloping up the stairs.

“Missy Dany, Missy Dany! Look what I found!” Vinh called excitedly. His brown eyes widened at the sight of Gib, and he jerked to a halt.

“It's all right, Vinh,” Dany said kindly. “This is Major Ramsey. He's here to investigate my mother's death.” She spoke slowly to him in English, as she often did. Dany wanted her workers to be fluent not only in their own language, but—English and French as well.

Vinh flushed, dodged around Gib and proudly marched over to Dany. “Look what I found!”

With a cry of delight, Dany reached out toward Vinh. “A kitten?”

“Yes, I found it crying along our fence line where I was clearing some brush. Look at it! Look at the color. I've decided to call him Milky, because he is the color of milk.”

Dany gently took the kitten into her hands and cradled it against her breast. She glanced over at Gib and saw genuine interest and compassion in his face. “This little one can't be more than four or five weeks old, Vinh.”

“May I keep him, Missy Dany?” the boy begged, clasping his hands together. “Please? I promise, I will take great care of him.”

Dany examined the white kitten, then said wryly, “Sweetheart, I think your kitten isn't a him, but a her.”

Vinh's eyes widened. “Yes?”

“It's a girl.”

“Well, is that not good?”

Petting the scruffy little kitten, who obviously was starving, Dany smiled into Vinh's eyes. “It means that when she grows up, she can have babies.”

Vinh shrugged dramatically, flashing her a winsome smile. “We need cats to chase and kill the rats!”

Returning the kitten to Vinh, Dany laughed. “Yes, we do need some mousers.” She gave him a stern look. “You promise to take very good care of Milky?”

Clutching the kitten to his chest, the boy bobbed his head several times. “Yes! A thousand yeses, Missy Dany! I will see that Milky is fed, and I will find a comb for her white fur. I will take her with me everywhere I go. She will fit nicely in my pocket here.” He patted his cutoffs. “In fact, she can help me clear brush along the fence! Then I will draw pictures of her!”

Struggling to hide a smile, Dany maintained her serious expression. “You have many duties, Vinh. You go to school, you have your art instruction once a week and daily art assignments to fulfill. Are you sure you can discipline yourself enough to also take care of this little kitten?”

Vinh's face turned sincere as he gently petted the kitten now purring noisily in his slender hands. “I will take care of Milky as if she were my sister.”

“Then you may keep her,” Dany said, finally allowing her smile to surface. “Ask Ma Ling if she will favor your kitten with some fresh cow's milk and some soft food.”

Vinh rushed over to Dany, threw his skinny arm around her neck and gave her a wet kiss on the cheek.

“I love you so much, Missy Dany! Thank you!”

Dany embraced him gently, not wanting to squish the kitten he held so carefully. “And I love you, too.”

Vinh beamed and backed off. He gave Gib a long, curious look as if he wanted to say something to him, but shyness overcame him. Ma Ling appeared silently at the screen door and allowed him into the foyer, her face stern. Dany smiled up at her
mamasan.
Ma Ling's eyes danced with amusement, but her face remained stonelike.

After peace returned to the veranda, Dany looked over at Gib. The expression on his face touched her heart.

“You're a soft touch,” he teased, his voice husky.

With a shrug, Dany sipped the iced tea. “Vinh has favored status around here,” she told him conspiratorially. “He's such a bright young boy, and a wonderful artist! You should see his tempera paintings. When he was seven, I caught him in his hut drawing, and I was amazed at his talent. He's Ma Ling's grandson, so I asked her if she thought he might do well to have art lessons. She agreed. I discovered a retired art professor who lives in Da Nang and I drive Vinh up to see him once a week.”

Gib smiled. “He's a nice kid. And he knows how to get his way with you.”

Dany laughed for the first time. “These people are my extended family, Major. I could never turn them down on something they really needed or wanted. Over the years, five children have grown up, gone to the university in Saigon and now have professional lives. I'm proud of what we do to help them.”

“You treat your people the way we do ours back on our family ranch in Texas,” Gib said. “Our manager is from Mexico, and we've helped put his six kids through school.”

Dany tilted her head. “And is everyone in your family a farmer?” She liked the idea that Gib was ultimately a man of the land.

“Yes and no. Jim, my younger brother, joined the marines and followed in my footsteps. He's scheduled to fly F-4 Phantoms out of Tan Son Nhut in five months, right after I rotate out of here. Travis is a year younger than Jim, and he's a navy doctor currently stationed at Norfolk, Virginia. I understand he's trying to volunteer to get over to Nam, but the navy's telling him that only one military member of a family can be in a combat zone at a time, so I don't know if he'll make it. My sister, Tess, is over here as a U.S. AID specialist and works with three villages not far from here. She's in a civilian capacity, so the military rule doesn't apply. The family kinda broke up after Mama died. Our foreman, Miguel Ferrari and his wife, Vivi, take care of the place in our absence.”

“Will you ever go back to them and ranching?”

Gib shrugged. “When my six years were up, I could have gone back to ranching. But flying helicopters got into my blood. I decided to put in my twenty years with the corps, instead.”

Something hopeful shattered inside of Dany. If Gib loved flying and the marines that much, there would be no place in his personal life for the land. Or for someone like her.
The thought was crazy in the first place,
Dany chided herself. “You like what you do?”

At the puzzlement obvious in her eyes, Gib guessed what she was really asking. “I like flying. I don't necessarily like war, Dany.”

Relief cascaded through her. “I think war is horrible,” she said. “It's wrong. I don't care what the politics or the reasons are. Taking another human life is unconscionable.”

Gib toyed with the pen in his hands.

“How do you feel about it?” Dany demanded.

“I believe in defending freedom, Dany. Communism is overrunning Vietnam. If we can make a difference for the people here, I feel it's worth it. If I didn't think so, I wouldn't have volunteered for a second tour.”

“But you fly a gunship, designed for killing.”

He met and held her accusing green gaze. “I see my aircraft as a way to protect the ARVNs and marines on the ground,” he said softly. “To defend a village against an attacking VC or NVA force, or a MASH unit that's under fire, is okay in my book. A gunship is an offensive weapon, but it's also a defensive one.”

She shuddered. “You don't look like you enjoy killing.”

“I don't. Most men don't.”

“How can you live with it, then?”

His mouth twitched with pain. “Some nights I don't sleep well,” he admitted. “I lie awake justifying what I do. I try to look at the positives of the situation, at the lives I've saved by being the intervening force, not the lives I've taken.” His eyebrows dipped and he studied the pen. “I don't enjoy it, if that's what you think. I don't like taking a life. But I also won't allow the lives of innocent people, civilian or military, to be taken, either. Not if I can help it.”

Dany heard the underlying anguish in his tone. There was a hidden vulnerability to Gib Ramsey, a surprising layer that she wouldn't have expected to find in a man of war. The look of torture in his eyes when he talked about his sleepless nights tore at her heart.

“Perhaps,” Dany ventured, “you'll find healing with the land if you go back to ranching.” She stared out the screen toward the avenue of silk trees lining the drive. “If I'm upset or worried, I can always sink my hands into the earth and feel so much better. If I work with the earth for an hour or so, I feel whatever is bothering me go away.” She smiled gently. “You understand what I mean, don't you?”

“Better than most,” Gib agreed. “The land has been good to six generations of Ramseys. Me and my siblings were the only generation to leave the land in favor of something else—although Tess is an agricultural specialist in rice development. She's the only one of the four of us who stayed in touch with the land.”

The tenuous, invisible bond that joined them was there, alive and wonderfully joyous. Dany absorbed Gib's presence like land starved for sunlight. “I feel women have always had a closer tie with the earth,” she said wistfully. “The earth is like a mother to all of us. She clothes us, feeds us, keeps us alive with her air and gives us her water to drink. I look at the soil as if it were alive and breathing in my hands.”

“You'd like Vivi Ferrari, our foreman's wife. She has very strong feelings about the earth being alive, too.”

“Still,” Dany said firmly, “the soil is in your blood. Why you traded the solidity of earth beneath your feet for wings to fly in the sky is beyond me.” She smiled.