One Man's War. Lindsay McKenna

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      “Yes.”

      “That’s all you have?”

      “We didn’t get soap until about six months ago, Captain, so I’m not complaining. It’s a step forward.”

      Pete’s heart went out to the little girl, who sleepily rubbed her eyes, then nuzzled deeply into Tess’s arms, her face pressed against Tess’s breast, as if she were her mother. “Where are her parents?”

      “The mother’s dead. She stepped on a mine meant for an ARVN soldier in one of our rice paddies earlier this month.”

      “Oh.”

      “This is the frustrating part of being over here. I know about tetanus shots, antibiotics and everything else available in the real world. But they don’t exist here.” Tess’s voice lowered with pain and weariness. “In fifteen months I’ve seen so many needless deaths just for lack of simple things like vaccines and antibiotics.”

      Bitter memories surfaced in Pete, and he struggled to keep them at bay. He watched almost with jealousy as the little girl in Tess’s arms gradually fell asleep, warm, obviously loved and protected.

      Looking at Tess in the dim light, her damp red hair curling softly as it dried, Pete felt his heart respond powerfully to the expression on her face. In the shadows her features glowed with such care and concern for the child in her arms. Each stroke of her long, work-worn fingers across the child’s injured extremity tore at his closely guarded heart. It was the look of love on Tess’s face that suddenly gripped him, held him as nothing ever had in his entire life. There was such compassion in her large green eyes fraught with anguish. The richness of her mouth, her lips parted as if in a silent cry for the helpless child, startled him.

      Shaken deeply, Pete suddenly got to his feet and backed away. He scowled, feeling a mixture of pain, hope, anger and need. It was a stupid array of feelings to have churning within him, but he wanted to be in Tess’s arms, being stroked by her caring hand, seeing that look in her eyes for him. Muttering a curse under his breath, Pete walked to the door of the hut, unable to sort through what was going on within him. Why should this particular scene, a not-unfamiliar one, get to him? Why now? Was it Tess? Him?

      “I hate Vietnam,” he ground out in frustration. “Everywhere I look, there’s nothing but stinking poverty and suffering.” He gripped the orange curtain with his fist and pulled it aside to stare blindly out the opening.

      Tess looked up. “Captain, some things, with time, you’ll get used to.” She glanced lovingly down at the child in her arms. “Others, you never will.”

      “How could you have signed over for a second tour?” Pete demanded in a strangled voice.

      Leaning down, Tess pressed a small kiss on the sleeping child’s brow. Looking up to meet his tortured gaze, she whispered, “How could I not?”

      Pete froze at her softly spoken words. He saw the hope of the world in her eyes, and realized that she was one of those people who had a heart larger than her body, larger than her brain, and that it was going to get her into trouble someday. She gave more than she ever got. He tore his gaze from her lustrous eyes. Pete took more than he gave, and he knew it. But then, everything had been taken away from him since birth—he wasn’t about to give any precious piece of himself back to anyone or anything that might run away with it, hurting him all over again.

      “You know what a scrounger is?” he said abruptly.

      “No.”

      He jabbed his thumb into his chest. “I’m one. Every squadron has a guy who’s good at getting things, scrounging up whatever is needed from God knows where.”

      A slight smile hovered around Tess’s mouth. “Is that more or less like a wheeler-dealer? A used-car salesman?”

      A thaw went through Pete as her smile gently touched his walled heart. How could her one, sad smile, get to him so easily? Completely off balance in Tess’s quiet, serene presence, he nodded. “Yeah, I’m the guy who can double- and triple-talk anyone out of anything. Look, why don’t you come back to Marble Mountain with me? While you’re there, I’ll scrounge up some tetanus vaccine and antibiotics for this kid.”

      Tess gasped. “You could do that?” Even her brother, Gib, who wasn’t immune to the recent suffering of the Vietnamese people, hadn’t been able to requisition any medical supplies for her villages—as much as he’d wanted to.

      Grinning cockily, some of his old spirit returning, Pete nodded. “Honey, I’m the best scrounger in the world. What you need, I can get.” Without reason, he wanted her to come back with him. A hunger ate at him to know Tess better—much better. Normally, he didn’t care what was in a woman’s head, it was always her body that got his undivided attention. But curiosity about Tess transcended his normal needs regarding women, and Pete was at a loss to explain why.

      “Well—”

      “Come on. You can’t do this girl much good here. If you come with me, I’ll make sure you get your medical supplies. Now, how can you pass up a deal like that?” he cajoled.

      Smiling with relief, Tess nodded. “You’re right: I can’t. Not for her or the people of the three villages I work with. Okay, I’ll go with you.”

      “According to Gib, you’re supposed to come back to Da Nang every night, anyway.”

      Tess gently placed the girl on a sleeping mat and rummaged through a large rice-mat chest. She felt more than saw Pete draw near to look over her shoulder at what she was doing. “Gib would like me to go to Da Nang every night, but I don’t,” Tess said. Her precious supply of bandages—thin cotton strips that she’d torn from her old shirts, washed and then boiled thoroughly—were almost gone. With care, she took a vial of iodine from the chest.

      Pete snorted as she laid out her meager medical items. “God, is that all you have to work with?” He looked at the strips of cotton in lieu of true bandages or dressings, a lousy one-ounce bottle of iodine, a pair of scissors and a set of tweezers.

      “That’s been it ever since I arrived here.” Tess set to work scrubbing out the girl’s infected foot with cool, soapy water. Afterward, she placed more iodine into the puncture wound, bandaged it, then covered the girl with a thin excuse for a blanket and allowed her to go to sleep.

      Tess got to her feet. “She’ll sleep for a while. Let me go next door and ask the woman to check in on her while I’m gone.”

      “Where’s the rest of this kid’s family?”

      “Her father is a sergeant in the South Vietnamese Army, her two older brothers have been kidnapped by VC, and you know what happened to her mother. She has no one. I’ll be right back.”

      Pete stood in the hut, alone with the sleeping child. As much as he wanted to bar the raw, rising emotions from his heart, he couldn’t. Looking down at the girl, her small hands gently curled in sleep—some of the pain she was suffering eliminated through Tess’s care and love—he felt tears flood into his eyes.

      “What the hell?” he rasped, and took a step back toward the door. Blinking furiously, Pete retreated, unable to deal with the quandary of feelings that Tess had unknowingly evoked within him. What was the matter with him? Why should he feel anything for this little rug rat?

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