Authors: Jill Barnett
“He forgot to untie my hands,” said little Miss LaRue, daughter of one of the most influential Americans on the islands, and the perfect bait for Aguinaldo’s junta.
“Colonel Luna doesn’t forget anything,” Sam told her, knowing the colonel’s reputation as Aguinaldo’s henchman. Luna handled any and all of the dirty work involved in suppressing other rebel factions, especially those that tried to supplant their power. Sam’s commander, Andres Bonifacio, led the most prominent of those other factions.
“Well, of course he forgot.” She gave him a look that said he was the dumb one.
“How do you figure that?”
“He knows my daddy, so the colonel is obviously gonna send him a note about me. He said he had messages to send.”
“He’ll send him a note, all right.”
She gave him a puzzled look. “This was all some kind of mistake.” She stared in dismay at her bound hands and tugged at them futilely, then added, “You heard him laughing.”
“He was laughing because you gave him exactly what he needed.”
“Oh?” She jerked at the ropes. “What was that?”
“A hostage.”
“Me? A hostage? Now, that’s just plain silly.” She tried to wave a hand of dismissal but the ropes made it impossible. She frowned at them in obvious annoyance.
Sam shrugged and watched while she struggled to get up. Her skirts rustled, and she braced her bound hands on the ground. She rearranged her legs until she was on her knees, pink-covered frilly bottom up. She pushed herself into a standing position, wobbling a bit when her hem caught on her foot.
This was some show.
“There,” she mumbled and hobbled over to the door, teetering on the squat heels of her fancy shoes. She raised her hands and knocked on the door. It swung open. One of the guards stood with his bolo knife pointed right at her. She looked at the knife with surprise and said, “Oh, good.” She held up her hands. “Would you cut these off, please? Colonel Luna must have forgotten before—”
The door slammed in her face. Her back stiffened in surprise, and she muttered, “Well, I like that.”
Sam shook his head as he laughed. She was so green.
“I don’t think that’s the least bit funny!” She glared at him, then raised her hands again and pounded on the door for a good minute.
It flew open again. This time both soldiers had their knives drawn.
“That was very rude. I want you to cut these off right now, you hear?” She held out her hands.
One of the soldiers said something to the other, and they both turned and smiled at her.
Sam groaned. The soldiers looked like Cheshire cats with a cornered mouse.
“Turn!” one of them ordered, grabbing her by both shoulders and spinning her sideways.
She raised her chin and gave Sam a smug smile. He just watched and waited.
“Hands out!” The soldier kept his hold on her shoulders. She stuck her hands out and turned to the soldier who held the bolo knife. She smiled. “Go right ahead.”
He raised the knife up in the air at arm’s length, then slowly he lowered it, letting the blade rest for a full minute on her wrists, like an executioner about to behead his victim.
Sam mentally counted, one . . . two . . . three . . .
“Oh, my Gawd!”
Four seconds, he thought. She was slowing down. He revised that thought when she jerked her hands back faster than he could pick a pocket. Hmmm. He hadn’t thought she could move that fast.
The soldiers laughed and pointed at her, having a great sadistic time at her expense.
Green. She was so green she made the jungle look pale
.
She turned her horrified face toward him. “Did you see that? They were gonna cut off my hands!” She turned around as the soldiers stepped outside and said, “I don’t think that’s the least bit funny. I want to see Col—”
They slammed the door again, but their laughter carried back inside.
“Still think this is just a little waiting party, Miss LahRoo?”
She faced him, her face as naive as her next words. “You heard him. He as much as said he wouldn’t hurt me.”
“Only a fool would believe that.”
She was quiet for a moment, then said, “You told me the same thing.”
“Yeah. Well, I meant it.”
Her nose went up a bit. “It escapes me, sir, why I should believe you and not the colonel.”
“Because I’m telling you the truth.”
“How am I supposed to know that?”
“You don’t.”
“That’s the point I’m tryin’ to make here, Mr. . . . What is your name?”
“Sam Forester.”
“Mr. Forester—” She stopped speaking, staring at him as if he’d grown horns. “Do you know anything about some kind of guns?”
“No . . .” He gasped in mock horror. “Me?”
She tried to cross her arms but couldn’t. “You don’t have to be rude, you know.”
“Why the hell do you think we’re in this mess?”
“I don’t know. I’m askin’ you!”
“Well, don’t ask. Your ignorance could save that sweet white neck of yours.”
She frowned. “That’s what those soldiers wanted in the marketplace. They kept asking me something about a forest of guns.” She looked at him. “It was Forester’s guns, wasn’t it?”
One . . . two . . .
“They think I know about your guns!”
“Five seconds. Will wonders never cease?”
“Well, you don’t have to be so smart-mouthed about it!”
“One of us has to have something smart come out of his mouth.”
“You, Mr. Forester, have no manners, and I find you right rude!” With that pronouncement she proceeded to pound on the door and tell the soldiers that she wanted to see Colonel Luna “right here and now!”
Fifteen minutes later she was still at it. Her repeated pounding on the door matched the pounding ache inside his head. He wanted to pound her.
His only consolation was that her voice was getting more and more hoarse, and as he rubbed the bridge of his nose and closed his eye, he sincerely hoped her hands were just as sore as his ears.
Eulalie didn’t know
her hands could ache so or that anyone could be so mean-spirited, ignoring her like those guards did. She could hear them talking through the door. They thought it was funny. To them she was a joke, and that sort of treatment was foreign to her—at least until she’d met the Yankee. Her gaze went to his corner. He hadn’t said a word, just ignored her, like the guards. Even with all the noise she’d been making he acted as if she wasn’t there. But she was here, in this dirty, silent hut, and she hated it. She sighed and gave up trying to get the guards to fetch the colonel. She walked into the center of the hut and sat down, staring at the grass walls and listening to . . . nothing. It was too quiet.
She took a deep breath and broke the frightening silence. “So your Christian name is Sam?”
He nodded slightly, shifting against the wall.
“Is that short for Samuel?”
“Yeah.” He pinned her with his bloodshot brown eye.
“I see.” She nodded, searching for something else to say to fill the void. “You’re from the North. Chicago, right?” He grunted something she was sure was an affirmative. It looked like she was gonna have to carry this conversation. “I already told you where I’m from.”
He mumbled something that sounded like “a hundred times.” She ignored him and went on, “My full name is Eulalie Grace LaRue. My grandmother, on my father’s side, was a Eulalie, and so was her grandmother and a great-great-aunt on the French side of our family. They were all Eulalies. Now, the name Grace was my mama’s idea. At least that’s what my brother Jeffrey told me. He’s the oldest? Well, he said, ‘Eulalie is an old family name, but Grace . . . well, that’s just a name our mama loved. So she named you Eulalie Grace.’ “ She paused for a breath and to give him time to soak in the whole story. “So I’m Eulalie Grace.”
He had a blank look on his face, and that bloodshot eye appeared a little glazed. She blamed that on the bad light in the hut.
“I suppose,” she went on, still trying to carry the conversation, “that given our circumstances and the fact that this is our second meeting, we can address each other by our Christian names.”
He still didn’t say anything, just picked up a tin cup that sat beside him and stared into it.
“So I’ll call you Samuel and—”
“No!”
His shout startled her.
“No one calls me Samuel,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Oh. All right. I’ll call you Sam, and you can use the name my friends and family use.”
He raised the cup to his mouth and drank.
“They call me Lollie.” She smiled.
He spit a good three feet, then choked and coughed. She started to crawl toward him to give him a pat on the back, but he finally got his wind back. He looked at her strangely, and with his mouth twisted into a suppressed grin he asked, “Your name is Lollie LaRue?”
She nodded, frowning at his tone.
“I don’t think I’ve ever caught your act.”
“Pardon me?” She didn’t understand what he meant, but something in his grin said he was making fun of her.
He laughed and laughed. It wasn’t very nice or well mannered. She surely didn’t see anything odd about her name. It was a fine old southern French name. Back home, Eulalies were always called Lollie; everyone knew that. And no southerner would ever laugh at someone’s name. It was rude to make fun of something someone couldn’t change.
But this man didn’t care, because then he said something he really thought was funny. Something about her buying fans in the marketplace to use in an act. She didn’t understand, but it hurt that he was obviously laughing at her. A little angry, she turned her back, partly to keep from watching him laugh at her expense, but mostly to keep him from seeing she was hurt by it.
The hut was quiet.
Too quiet. It drove her crazy. She didn’t like the silence, because it scared her. She looked over at the Yankee in the corner. He was asleep again. They hadn’t spoken since she’d turned her back on him, and the only sounds had been an occasional shout or noise from outside. Inside there was no sound, which made her situation all that much harder to deal with.
No one to talk to. Time passed in glacial increments. Out of nervousness she began to hum “Dixie,” unconsciously choosing to fill the chilling silence. She’d just hit the “land of cotton” verse when she thought she heard a deep, pain-filled moan coming from Sam’s corner.
She stopped humming and looked at him, wondering for the first time if maybe he had groaned because he was wounded. Craning her neck she watched him silently. His shoulders moved a bit, as if he’d gotten relief from whatever pained him. She didn’t see much in the way of wounds, except that brown, bloody area where the bandanna was tied around his calf. Maybe that injury was more serious than it looked.
He’d managed to tote her home without breaking stride, and never once had he limped or appeared the least bit pained. Maybe something else hurt him. Maybe he had a headache. She got headaches in the middle of summer whenever it was particularly hot and sticky. A nap always helped her, so she figured she ought to leave him alone, let him sleep, even though she had a thousand questions she wanted answered to put her mind at rest. And she needed to talk; the urge was just festering inside her.
Humming helped and it shouldn’t bother his sleep. Maybe a lullaby would be a good compromise. She slowly began to hum her personal favorite, not even realizing when instinctively she began to sing the lyrics:
“Hush, little baby, don’t say a word.
Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.
If that mockingbird don’t sing,
Papa’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.
If that diamond ring don’t—”
“Do me a favor. Pretend you’re that mockingbird and shut up.” One angry, bloodshot brown eye glared at her.
“I was just tryin’ to help.”
“Help what? Bring down the walls of the hut with your screeching?”
She inhaled a deep indignant breath. “I do not screech. I’ll have you know that I sang contralto in the choral group at Madame Devereaux’s.” Wanting to stand up for herself but uncomfortable with what she considered bragging, she looked down at her lap and smoothed some wrinkles from her skirt, then added, “According to the music instructor, my voice was very clear and resonant.”
He barked with laughter. “For a dying alley cat.”
“Obviously you know nothing about voice.” She tried to look down at him, but she couldn’t get her chin up that high. He was being rude on purpose, and even his awful upbringing was no excuse for purposely hurting someone. She sensed that this man wanted to hurt people, and any pity she’d felt for him was fast disappearing.
“I know about knives and bullets, torture and pain, and your voice, Miss Lah-Roo, is a pain in my ears.”
“Well, that’s just too bad, now, isn’t it. I’m gonna sing if I feel like it. This is for your ears.” She began to sing “Carolina” in full tremolo.
He stood and moved toward her as if to shut her up himself. She was just debating giving in for the sake of her welfare when the lock rasped again and the door flew open.