Just a Kiss Away Read online

  The jungle thickened. The machete couldn’t cut through fast enough. The bushes blocked Sam in. He dropped to the ground and crawled under the wood ferns, dragging himself over the hard exposed roots and clammy earth. Lizards shot past him. Several bamboo beetles over two inches long crept over from the thick humus that covered the jungle ground. Twigs and damp leaves caught on his hair, pulled at his eye-patch string. He stopped to unhook it, breaking off the green twig that had snagged it. A milk white sticky sap dripped from the broken vine. Sam rolled, dodging the liquid. It was a leper plant whose sap could eat an acid path through human skin in less than two minutes.

  One deep relieved breath and he crawled farther. The vines and jungle seemed an endless trap. The sound of hacking still echoed from behind him. They hadn’t reached the thick stuff. That knowledge sent him on, crawling over the damp ground, completely entrapped by twisted jungle cover. Sweat still eked from every pore in his body. It was sweat from the humidity and sweat from his nerves.

  A slick black vampire snake with a bite more torturous and deadly than a stake through the heart slithered among the vines near his head. He lay still as stone. The sound of hacking knives and splitting bamboo broke from behind him. Without taking a breath, he watched the small reptile’s glassy green stare. Luckily, the snake’s thick-lidded eyes were turned away from him. Its jet-colored triangular scales undulated as it slid in a sinuous motion up, over, and through the tangled roots.

  From behind him, the hacking stopped. So did Sam’s heart. The men had reached the dense thicket of jungle. His heart took up the beat again, growing louder and louder. Between the snake and the soldiers, Sam was trapped.

  The narrow street swelled with people—Spanish, Chinese, and native—a common island sight, unlike the frilly pink parasol that was the exact color of the Calhoun azaleas. It twirled like a brilliant silk top above the dark natives who milled in the busy street. The parasol paused, letting a Filipino family pass by. The woman turned and chided her daughter along. The daughter, a lovely girl of about thirteen, giggled and, in their native language, said something to her parents. The man and woman laughed, joined hands with the smiling daughter, and disappeared into the crowd.

  Beneath the shade of that absurd little pink parasol, Eulalie turned quickly away, her stomach somewhere around her throat. It didn’t do any good to wish for something that could never be, but she couldn’t help feeling a little lonelier and a little sadder.

  She picked nervously at her high lace collar, now little more than a damp bit of scratchy linen that had flopped over her mama’s wedding cameo. She tried to block out the image of the family while rearranging the collar. Her fingers hit the cameo, paused, and unconsciously ran over the delicate carved contours of the brooch. She attempted to smile, but failed, swiping in agitation at her damp hair instead. She looked heavenward, at the sun, as if seeking the strength she needed to ignore her desire for the loving parents she’d never had. A long moment passed before she moved her parasol a bit closer to her head, an attempt to block out the heat of that withering tropical sun.

  Her expression pensive, she gave a small sigh for what could never be, and she walked through the Intramuros, where the old walled sections still protected the inner city of Manila. She went out one of four dark gray-stone arches and into the outlying northern streets, heading for the marketplace. Josefina said the Tondo market was a busy, teeming place where she could bide some of her time until her father returned from the interior that night. She had been so nervous and anxious that she’d spent the morning pacing and watching the tall clock in the salon. Finally she’d chewed one nail to the quick before she decided that the housekeeper was right.

  Parasol twirling, she stepped up on a primitive walkway and continued along, her small, squat heels tapping a hollow sound like a bamboo marimba, only slower, for a lady never hurried. Instead, she glided, just as Madame Devereaux bred into her girls, imagining the yards of skirts as sails, moving around her in a slow undulating rhythm like a wave hitting the shore. A true lady could feel the correct tide of rhythm as naturally as a native felt the beat of a drum.

  Her French kid shoes—the new ones with the darling square toes in shiny black creaseless patent leather—crunched on a bed of slick stones inlaid in the middle of the dirt walkway. She’d heard tell that the stones were there to pave the dip where tropical rainwater and mud collected nine months out of the year.

  She stepped on a stone and sank ankle-deep into mud. She jerked her foot out of the mud hole and hobbled over to the adobe building across from her. She closed her parasol and leaned it against some stacked baskets lined up like tin soldiers along the walkway. Hankie in hand, she cleaned her shoes and then stared at the ruined hankie. It wasn’t worth saving, so she tossed it into a spittoon and turned to retrieve her parasol. In one quick motion, she popped it open and turned, never seeing the baskets teeter and fall, one by one, like dominoes down the walkway.

  Of course she went in the opposite direction of her father’s house, nestled in Binondo. The streets were filled with wagons, carts, and crowded horse-drawn trolleys emblazoned with the name Compailia de Tranvias. Josefina had told her about the trolleys and how her father felt about them.

  A fatal disease called surra ran rampant, sucking every bit of life from the native horses. The trolley company didn’t care, choosing instead to run the poor animals until they literally dropped dead in the streets. Sympathy for the horses and anger at the company’s cruel practice kept her father from using the trolleys.

  As she rounded the corner just a few blocks from her new home, she saw why he refused to ride them. Horses—ponies really, no bigger than three-month-old calves—struggled to haul a loaded trolley through the street in front of her. She’d never seen horses look so poorly.

  She stood there, stunned, immobile, trying to come to terms with something so pitiful and foreign to her. The horses at Hickory House and Beechtree Farms were her brother Harrison’s prized possessions and treated as much. They were almost part of the family. These animals were as thin as the skinny lizards called geckos that scurried all over the island. She’d never been exposed to animals so feeble and sick. The sight turned her stomach. Nothing, not the hot sun, or the crowds would make her set foot on one of those vehicles.

  Before she’d ever seen the trolleys she’d make the decision to walk, since that was what her daddy did, and she was eager to please him. Now, as she watched the horses struggle to pull the loaded cars she felt ashamed that her first reason for walking was selfish, only to please the father she so needed to please. Because of her own worrying she hadn’t thought about the animals.

  But it was hard for her to understand something she’d never seen. Diseased animals were surely not something she could ever remember seeing. Not in Belvedere, at Hickory House, at Beechtree Farms, or at Calhoun Industries, not at any of the homes of the families with whom they mixed socially. And if there were any, her brothers would have shielded her from the sight.

  The LaRue men protected her. She was the last living female in the LaRue family, a respected, honored southern name as old as the hickory trees that lined the long drive of the family estate. Her mother had been a Calhoun, another name that was practically an institution in the state of South Carolina, a place where blood lines determined social acceptance.

  Her mother had also been a true lady, cherished and coddled and loved by all the LaRue men. But she had died when Eulalie was so young that the only image she had of her mother was from the picture over the salon mantel and the descriptions by her brothers and the others who’d worshiped and adored her. Like her mother, she’d been sheltered from anything her five brothers deemed the least bit dangerous or unsavory or unrespectable. Other than Madame Devereaux’s—a school she’d been expected to attend, where she’d been escorted to and from that bastion of female propriety in the family carriage—church, and an occasional soiree, she had always been attended by at least two of her five brothers.

  Thus
she hadn’t mixed much, hadn’t seen much but her well-guarded little world, where everything ran its smooth and normal course, where her name gave her acceptance and opened the magic doors of society, where ladies behaved as such and were in turn cherished and protected by their menfolk.

  All except one man, the man whose name she bore, her father. The one man who hadn’t been around to cherish Eulalie was her father. He was the reason she was here, and he was the reason she was so nervous and unsure, wondering how one went about meeting the father she hadn’t seen in seventeen years, wondering what his impression would be. When he finally returned tonight that meeting would take place, and more than anything she wanted it to be perfect.

  His heart pounded louder and louder, booming like cannon blasts through his head. The snake slithered on. Sam exhaled for the first time in almost two minutes. He was free again, almost. He had to get to the river. He moved on, dragging his body through the brush. He could feel the thorn vines scratching through his shirt. A deep mulch of [eaves blanketed the ground, and soon the vines grew sparser. He crawled farther, until wet, loamy dirt as black as a moonless sky covered the ground.

  An instant later he was free again. He shot upright and ran on. Birds burst like buckshot from a giant banyan tree. Their dark shadows filled what little sky bled through the jungle overhang. Feathers rained down. Unknown animals screeched and rustled off.

  Suddenly he was surrounded by a sea of color—red frangipani, yellow hibiscus, and purple orchids. The sweet smell of tropical blossoms swelled in the air and over his dry tongue and throat. He was in a floral jungle, layer after thick layer of flowering plants. He tore through it. The perfume faded.

  Then it was there. Water. He could smell the river. Humidity and dankness swelled around him, signs that the river was nearby. The taste of silty water filled the air. The hum of Spanish and native dialect faded behind him in the distance, replaced by the rush of fast-moving water.

  If he could reach the river, he might make it. The Pasig River led to Tondo, outside Manila. The crowded market streets were his only chance of losing the men who chased him. They were Aguinaldo’s guerillas, and they wanted him. He had information on a gun shipment that the Spanish, Aguinaldo, and Sam’s commander, Andres Bonifacio all wanted. If anyone but Bonifacio caught him, he was as good as dead.

  Eulalie moseyed around the corner and there it was. The Tondo marketplace. A bustling, noisy hub of activity where everything seemed to scurry so fast it almost made a lady dizzy. Primitive wagons and gray weathered carts stood in clusters with their gates down, while rainbows of merchandise spilled out into the cobbled square. Everywhere there were merchants hawking their wares.

  Drawn by her exotic surroundings, she wormed her way through the marketplace, mesmerized by the colors—a myriad of glistening Chinese silk moires and downy velvets in royal purples, rich dark reds, ocean-deep blues, and glowing saffron yellows piled in teetering stacks of thick and thin bolts that towered above the small Chinese merchants. She moved farther into the crowd, where a cartful of giant tubelike rolls of wool and silk rugs blocked her path to those wonderful silks. She paused, looking around, seeing only native heads and colorful baskets surrounding her.

  As she stepped back to find a new path, something caught her eye. She stopped and stared. The Filipino women walked around the circumference of the marketplace with baskets of merchandise atop their heads. Although it wasn’t a new sight to her—the washerwomen back home carried their baskets the same way—these baskets were twice as big, and the women were so small they were almost half-size. The tall baskets held heaps of golden papayas mixed with green and pink mangoes, and some right strange orangish melons that were foreign to her.

  Rising from her right was the strong odor of the sea, and she turned toward it. A few carts stood catawampus to her, and they were smothered in a whole mess of dead fish. The fish sellers poured buckets of ocean water over the catch, trying to keep them fresh in the intense island heat of the afternoon. Every time they doused the fish, the odor subsided for a short time. But soon the smell returned and sent her moving away through the crowd and away from its stench.

  The excitement and freedom of the frenetic atmosphere of the Tondo marketplace captured Eulalie just like those snared fish. Fate set the line, destiny the hook, and she was lured by her fascination with the crowd, completely unaware of the deep, raging waters toward which she swam, and of how this one afternoon would take her small, sheltered, protected, socially prominent and lonely little life and shoot it all to hell.

  Chapter 2

  Sam wasn’t dead yet, but he felt as if he were in hell. He was damned tired, soaking wet, and his lungs burned as if he’d inhaled fire. Still running, he ducked beneath a low banyan, jumped a knot of exposed roots, and thundered in. He’d have given a month’s mercenary wages for the soothing sear of whiskey down his throat instead of the ragged scorch of exertion. If he could lose them, he’d head straight for the nearest bottle of imported malt whiskey. He could almost taste the Old Crow right now. The image spurred him on.

  His machete whacked a path along the river edge, severing the thick bamboo. He could hear them behind him. They had gained on him, were closing in. Their voices were nearer. He could make out some words, Spanish and Tagalog. He cursed under his breath. He wasn’t as young and quick as he used to be. A bolo sailed past him, stabbing into another banyan trunk with a sharp, deadly twang.

  He got younger real fast.

  Ten minutes later he hit the outskirts of Manila. Five minutes after that Sam ran down an alleyway. The bastards were still on his tail. He raced into the marketplace, glancing left, then right. He heard shouts and turned. The men split up. They would cut him off. He made for the crowd and wove his way through. He was tall, too tall. The soldiers stood a short distance away, pointing at him. Three more closed in. Sam turned, hopped a wagon shaft and shoved a stack of rugs at the closest soldier. One was buried; one fell. He spun and punched the other, then was off again, making his way across the marketplace until he hit its crowded center.

  Sam dropped under a wagon and lay there watching. Boots caked black with jungle mud shuffled by as one soldier shoved his way past the wagon. Soon another, then another, until he was sure they had scoured the area. Slowly he started to snake his way out from under the wagon, belly-crawling to the wagon’s edge. He’d roll out and disappear into the crowd. Tactics decided, ready to move, he edged his right hand out from beneath the wagon.

  A small, square-toed woman’s dress shoe crunched down on his hand. Sam bit back a yell. His free hand shot out and gripped the woman’s foot, wrenching the squat little bone-crushing heel out of the back of his drinking hand.

  He grunted in relief; she screeched. He released her ankle and crawled quickly back under the wagon. The shoes shuffled backward before they were swept up with the crowd. He examined his hand. There was a deep gouge between this thumb and forefinger. It hurt like hell.

  More boots stomped past the wagon, dragging his attention from his hand. Sam lay still. They passed, and he slowly edged out from under the back of the wagon. It was clear. Only native Filipinos milled about.

  Stooping, Sam worked his way through the crowd, ducking when a soldier was near. He moved along, frequently turning his head to the right to check his blind side. He made it as far as the fish vendor. Turning, he looked to the right, then quickly turned left.

  A daggerlike object surrounded by a pink blurr flashed toward his good eye. He reeled back. Christ! he thought, instinctively straightening, he’d almost lost his other eye. He stood there staring at the pink parasol bobbing its way through the crowd.

  He had straightened to his full height—a big mistake.

  A soldier burst from the crowd, coming at him, bolo knife raised. Sam spun left. He spotted the fish vendor with his saltwater pail raised. Sam ripped it from the man’s hands and heaved it at the soldier. Then he ran, overturning two carts to ensure his getaway. Stooping, he plunged into the excited marketplac
e once again and disappeared into the crowd.

  Eulalie could have sworn someone grabbed her ankle. She’d scoured the ground, but couldn’t see a thing, having been swept along by the moving crowd. One thing she’d learned today was what the word “crowded” really meant. She wasn’t used to hordes of people, and while the crowd did frighten her, it also excited her. The marketplace was a new experience, so different from her calm, peacefully protected life in Belvedere.

  The strangest things happened here. That thing with her foot and then, just a few minutes later, she’d been trying to get away from another horrid-smelling fish cart and suddenly there was all this foreign hollering. When she’d turned around, everyone was looking at a man with a water bucket stuck on his fool head. Like the foot-grabbing, she’d paid it no mind and moseyed past an overturned cart.

  Only a few feet away was exactly what she sought. A long wagon displayed fans of every vibrant color and pattern. Lining one side of the wagon were some huge baskets, so she stepped around them and made her way to the business side of the wagon.

  She just couldn’t decide which one would be best for tonight. There was a darling leaf green silk fan with some birds hand-painted on it. It was more colorful than a new patchwork quilt. Then there was a pale blue one with a wharf scene, ships and all, on it. She held the two fans in her gloved hands and tried to choose. Then the vendor, an old woman with bright eyes and a gummy smile, stuck out the perfect one.

  It was deep purple with a bright pink floral design that looked to be the exact color of her parasol—Calhoun pink. She laid down the other fans and snapped her parasol closed. Then she compared the colors. It was a perfect match. To free her hands, she poked her parasol into the dirt, but it wouldn’t stick, so she gripped the parasol handle tightly and raised it higher . . . .