Enjoy
VIKING LADY
Prologue
A.D. 980
An arrow pierced
the villager’s chest almost to its goose feathers. He fell against the ox he had been goading,
then sank to his knees, and toppled over.
Viking warriors, some carrying burning torches, sprinted past him toward
the Northumbrian village.
Men,
women, and children screamed as they were cut down. Flames crackled above thirty-three thatched
roofs, creating dark spires in the still air.
But for the crackling and a few barking dogs, the village was
stilled. The acrid smell of burning
thatch quickly spread.
Aden, captain of
the Vikings, and his second in command, Janborg, burst into the last
cottage. Besotted with ale, its owner
drew his sword, but the effort was futile.
Aden looked at the dead man’s calf-high leather boots; they would probably
fit. He loosened the thongs that bound
his badly worn boots and pulled them off.
The new ones fit well and were not even blood stained. A full wineskin hung from a peg, and Aden
slung it over his shoulder. He saw
nothing else of value.
“Kith
and kin?” he asked.
“Under
the hay or maybe with the hogs?” Janborg
rubbed his eyes. Smoke from the burning
cottages began to drift, choking the two Vikings as they thrust their swords
into the nearest hay pile. A woman and
two children rose up, looking like straw-filled scarecrows.
The
woman glared at them, then arched her neck and drew a forefinger across her
throat, eyes fixed on Aden.
“One of them has the walnuts, anyway.” Janborg grinned and raised his sword.
“Wait. I’ll take them,” Aden said. “Get some rope.”
“With
all we took from the abbey and the village we have little room for— ”
“Get
the rope!”
Janborg went back
into the cottage. He returned with a
length of barnacle-encrusted line and tied the woman’s hands, looping the rope
around her throat.
Aden nodded toward
the cottage. “Burn it.”
“The
pigs?”
“Kill
them. Tell Wulfken to sink the boats at
the dock before we leave. Move. All this smoke will bring others.” Aden squinted at a mass of storm clouds that
had cast a sudden darkness over the carnage.
The wind stiffened, sweeping the smoke inland.
“Signal the
recall.” Aden pointed at the roiling
clouds, which were moving as if hurled by the gods. “I’ll start for the longships. If the children don’t keep up, you’ll find
their bodies along the way.”
But
Aden wouldn’t do that. Behind his back,
his warriors called him the “children’s friend,” for he’d never been known to
kill one, carrying many back to his estate near
the port of Kaupang, in the Vestfold region of the Norseland, there to be
raised as thralls. It made little
sense to the other Vikings. The older
thralls bred readily enough.
Aden
yanked on the rope and started toward the longships. Buffeting winds, along with distant rumbling
and muted flashes, heralded the coming storm.
Huge waves crested far out upon the horizon. The rope bit into the woman’s neck, and she
stumbled trying to keep up with him as he quickened his pace.
A pig squealed its
death agony, answered by wailing from the older child.
Aden didn’t look
back.
Chapter 1
31 August
1967
Homecoming
God, I can’t even remember what my wife looks
like. The Continental DC-8, Flight 317
out of Travis Air Force Base, lurched, and the LA Times, folded to show
the headline: Twenty-three Marines Die in Vietcong Ambush, slipped to
his feet. Lorring asked for his
fourth cup of coffee from a smiling stewardess.
His hands shook.
“Dammit!”
“I’m sorry.
Did I overfill your cup?”
“No, no. Uh,
just an article in the newspaper. No
sweat.”
The ever-smiling stewardess moved to the next
row. Lorring glanced at his watch and
cinched his seatbelt tighter. He felt a
lot older than thirty. His tanned arms
and face were dark against his summer Air Force uniform—paper thin and bleached
white from too much sun, monsoon rains, and the tender mercies of his
beetlenut-chewing mamasan. He hadn’t
worn his hours-old Bronze Star or any of his other ribbons. Officers only wore ribbons on the Class A
uniform. He thought of the presentation
at Headquarters, 7th Air Force, Tan Son Nhut Air Base, on the
outskirts of Saigon. How many hours ago
was that?
“Attention to orders.
Citation to accompany the award of the Bronze Star: Captain Lorring
Arthur Wilson, USAF, distinguished himself during the defense of the
Headquarters 7th Air Force compound on the night of 5 December
1966. In the face of intense Vietcong
mortar, machine gun, and small arms fire, he . . .”
Lorring checked his right shoulder for body odor and
wasn’t surprised. He smelled the
fear. In less than an hour he would
arrive at Baltimore Friendship Airport, and Ginger would be there. Waiting.
Three hundred sixty-five and a wakeup; three hundred sixty-five and a
bag drag. Lorring silently intoned the
mantra all GIs used to track the time remaining on their tours, changing the
number every day. He’d taken the last One-A-Day
vitamin pill from a bottle of 365 just twenty-four hours earlier; the
malaria pills had run out last week. His
FIGMO chart was finished, each segment of the nude woman colored in one day at
a time. Yesterday, it had been the right
nipple. He was going home.
He’d spent a
year wanting to get back; now he desperately wished he had two weeks— a
month—left on his tour. He wasn’t
ready. Lorring shook his head and rubbed
his eyes. Ginger’s last few letters were
full of repairs to the clothes dryer, the car, a broken window, but no mention
of wanting him. His shoulders sagged as
he pictured Mai Lee— without a photograph.
Or clothes.
Tan Son Nhut Air Base was hot, humid, dirty, noisy, smelled
bad—the GI food terrible. He’d lost ten
pounds and looked like a POW. Traffic in
the center of Saigon, where his “hooch” was, made Paris, Tokyo, and Istanbul
combined look like a piece of cake. He’d
worked long hours with little time off, but his job as an intelligence officer
was interesting, sometimes exciting.
Halfway through his tour the infidelity genie climbed out of its lamp,
and he’d gone “broken arrow,” as the GIs
called sleeping with the natives. He’d
lasted a lot longer than most guys.
He
rationalized: I’m in a war. Could get
blown away tomorrow. This is an
exception. Practically every guy in the
outfit has a “Vee-na-mee” girlfriend, except maybe the chaplain. It’s not like I’m really cheating on my
Ginger Cookie. A guy can’t go a whole
year without getting his horns trimmed a few times, can he? I mean Cookie’s got air conditioning, good food,
friends and family nearby, a baby to take care of. Besides, women are different; they don’t have
the same needs as men. But the
rationalizations didn’t really work—especially now.
Lorring
had another dragon, too. All his life,
until Nam, he had played by the rules.
He married a virgin and considered himself almost one at the altar,
having had sex with a co-ed three times his senior year—the sum total of his
“all-the-way” experience.
“Ginger
and I are a couple of cookie-cutter-kids.
We’re prisoners of the morality of the uptight fifties,” he had moaned
to Gil, a weather forecaster and foxhole buddy, as they ate lunch at the base
officers’ club. “I can’t believe they
threw the rule book out overnight.
Flower power, pot, free love, Playboy clubs. Can you believe how much time I wasted? Man, was I stupid.”
“Yeah,”
Gil said. “I sat in the same pew.”
Lorring
would get even with “them,”—all those puritans.
He had found a way to have his cake and eat it too, at least in
Nam. It began with Mai Lee.
The Continental
stretch eight lurched hard. They were in
the clouds. He thought about Gil, who was already home.
Forever. Arlington National
Cemetery. I’ll go see him. Call Sherry.
And say what? Sorry he was
standing on the flight line when a mortar round splattered him all over
it? The letter he wrote her had sounded
so hollow. Why Gil and not me? Shit.
“This is
Captain Everard. We should be on the
ground at Baltimore Friendship in about thirty minutes. It’s seventy-four degrees and overcast with
light winds. Thank you for flying
Continental. We hope you fly with us
again soon. And to all you vets
returning from Southeast Asia, let me add my personal thanks for a job well
done.”
Was it? Lorring shook his head, remembering the cold, drizzly
evening in Zweibrucken, Germany when he’d told Ginger he had volunteered for
Nam.
“You volunteered? Without even talking to me first? How could you do that, Lorring? Rachel is hardly out of diapers. Where will we live? For a whole year?” Tears shimmered in her eyes, and she jumped
up from the dinner table and stood before the slider to a tiny balcony. The backs of grim concrete military quarters
looked even bleaker in the rain.
Lorring
tried to put his arms around her, but she shrugged him off.
“Cookie,
I’m sorry. You’re right, I should have
come to you first. But I’m a career
officer. It’s my place to go.”
“Do
you ever think of anyone else besides yourself? No, I don’t think you do. Well, when do you ship out? When do I start being a war widow?”
“I
don’t know. Probably a couple
months. I’ll get a delay-en-route leave
to take you home and get you set up. We
can find an apartment near your dad.
You’d be close to your friends from the University of Delaware,
too. And when I get back, we’ll buy a
house. I’ll get my first choice of
assignments, probably back to Fort Meade, and we can get a nice one.”
“If
you get back.” Ginger’s head sagged
against the cold glass.
“Hey,
Cookie, I’ll be a headquarters weenie.
They don’t send Signals Intel guys out in the field.” He knew that wasn’t true but hoped she
didn’t. “It won’t be any different than
when I visited all those bases in Turkey last year.”
“Lorring,
they weren’t sending body bags back from Turkey.”
* *
*
Ginger finished
balancing the checkbook and looked up at the mantle clock. He’ll be home in four hours. Four hours!
She’d forgotten to make Rachie’s lunch.
Shit. She threw together
yet another PB&J with Oreos and chips and waited for Rachie to emerge from
the potty.
“Rachie, hurry up
in there. Nana Wilson will be here any
minute.”
“I’m tying my
shoes, but the bow keeps slipping out.”
Ginger checked
Rachie’s overnight bag. Her “horse
statues,” as she called them, a yellow hairbrush, and two teddy bears spilled
out of a Safeway grocery bag near the door.
Rachael skipped
across the room. “Mommy, look. I got ‘em tied.”
“That’s just
great, Rachie.” And on the right
feet. “You are getting so grown up.”
Nana Wilson said
the same thing as Rachie jumped into the backseat of her car.
Ginger poured
another cup of coffee and sat at the desk.
She was proud of having learned how to balance the checkbook. Not to mention the taxes. And she’d gotten the car fixed twice. And the dryer. Though her dad had helped her with buying the
new house, it was a gutsy thing to have done on her own. The military might refer to her as a
“dependent,” but she wasn’t. Not now. Not anymore.
Who needs a
husband? I do. She clasped her hands behind her head, bent
over, and pulled her arms over her ears, as if to prevent any other
thoughts. It didn’t work.
Why
did most of my old friends turn out to be raving, anti-war-demonstrating
peaceniks? They stopped calling me. Except Greta.
She called me a Fascist.
She
glanced at Lorring’s last letter. He had
berated her—again—for not writing with more passion. Why couldn’t he understand how hard it was
for me to write like that? I’m the
laundry and housecleaning lady, repairman, nanny, and checkbook balancer. Where’s the passion in that? Besides, why get my withers in an uproar when
he isn’t here to take care of them? I’ll
bet some Vietnamese girl took care of his, though. Her heart shrank, as it always did when
she pictured her husband with some petite Asian woman. “Dammit,” she mumbled, suddenly feeling fat.
Someday she’d have
to burn a lot of his letters, they were that torrid. But she could feel tingling down there,
feelings she’d stuffed for a whole year, except when she’d read his letters. She had to get going, had to shower and dress
before she left for Friendship. In less
than four hours she and Lorring would be. . . .
A flush crept up from “down there.”
A carry-on bag
slung over one shoulder, Lorring hoisted his duffel bag and suitcase off the
carousel and headed for the airport exit.
But Ginger was right there, just outside the baggage claim area, wearing
his favorite blue dress, her short, wavy hair perfect, eyes locked on his, her
smile showing the dimples he loved. His
gear dropped to the floor, and in a few strides he held her hard, kissed her
hard, breathed her hard, and his throat closed up. She dabbed her eyes with a crushed tissue.
She
told him he looked skinny. He told her
she looked great. She promised to fatten
him up. He said they would attend to
first things first. She blushed. He was hardly aware of stowing his gear in
their ’64 VW wagon or driving out of the airport parking lot. His heart raced and his face felt hot. He smiled till it hurt.
“Aren’t you going to shift into high, Lorring?”
Ginger asked.
He looked down,
saw he was still in third gear, and heard the engine winding up. He was in the
wrong gear. He shifted into high. Shifting his emotions, his whole being, was
going to be a lot harder. Where is my
internal clutch? He wondered how his
guys at Tan Son Nhut Air Base were doing without him. He hoped Charlie wouldn’t pay them any more
visits.
Ginger
had bought a three-bedroom colonial in Bowie, Maryland, about fifteen miles
from the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, where Lorring was to report
the following Monday. Lorring said the
house looked great and insisted on a complete tour after dumping his gear
inside the front door. But mostly he
watched Ginger.
She looked
different. He could see tension in her face,
and her movements were awkward. She had
always been so graceful and coordinated, could beat him at tennis two out of
every three games. For an instant he saw
Mai Lee in the shower, her body as fluid as the water that flowed through the
silky black hair that almost reached her waist.
It could have been a Renoir canvas.
“—fenced in
backyard. We could even get a
puppy. Lorring?”
He blinked and
shook his head. Ginger’s dress was
short. Way short. But why not?
She’s got great legs. He’d
pictured her in high heels and stockings though, not loafers and white gym
socks.
“Uh, sorry. What about the rest of the furniture?”
“It
all comes Monday.”
Her little
surprise was the master bedroom, which was fully furnished.
“We’ll have to
spend from now through Sunday afternoon in bed,” Ginger said.
“Whoa,
Cookie, I’m jet lagged up to here.” What
if I can’t hack it? What if I think
about Mai Lee at the worst possible time?
What if I call Cookie Mai Lee?
Lorring looked out the window at the row of Leavitt-built houses, all
lined up like aircraft revetments on a flight line.
“Captain, I’ve
never known jet lag to bother you before.”
Ginger smiled and leaned against him, brushing his arm with her
breasts.
Ginger had a more
ample figure than Mai Lee, but she couldn’t ride him as he stood against the
bedroom wall the way Mai Lee had. He
wished Ginger had lost all of the weight she’d gained while pregnant. Cripes, I’ve got to get my head screwed on
straight. Unconsciously, he wiped his
hands on the sides of his uniform trousers.
“Lorring?”
“Ummm. What?”
“I
lost you again. What were you thinking?”
“I,
uh, was thinking about Rachael. When did
you say we would see her?”
“Not
till Sunday afternoon when we go over to your mom’s. Is everything all right?” She frowned, the
tip of her tongue protruding just slightly.
“Sure. Well, yeah, mostly. It’s kind of a shock to the system, you
know. A handful of hours ago I was in
Nam, in a combat zone. All of a sudden
I’m standing here, and, uh, the grass needs mowing.”
“No,
my love, that is not what needs to be done.” She smiled, took his hand, and pulled him
into the one furnished room in their new house.
His
hands were sweating.
* *
*
After the first
two weeks the lust wore off and life wore on.
They clashed over who was going to balance the checkbook. Lorring began to drink more; Ginger drank
less. The joy and spontaneity drained
from their lovemaking. Her ready smile
faded, replaced by a pensive look, later sadness, and finally, anger.
Earlier he’d
yelled at Rachie for watching TV cartoons with the volume up while he was
trying to read and threatened to break her record of The Littlest Pony if
he heard it one more time. Rachie cried,
and Ginger had gone to bed angry.
Lorring stretched
his right leg over and rubbed Ginger’s legs.
It was one of their signals. No
response. He began to massage her back. She stiffened. “Cookie?
You okay?”
“No.” Her reply was muffled.
“You
want to talk?”
“That’s
all we’ve been doing since you got back.
And it hasn’t helped very much.”
She was still facing away from him.
He
was silent for a few moments. “I guess
I’m not all that good at talking, Cookie, but I’m trying. Maybe you could give me a little credit for
that.”
She rolled
over. “You want some real credit,
Lorring? How about you agreeing to go to
a marriage counselor?”
Lorring
groaned and sat up. “Marriage counselors
dispense a bunch of psychobabble and charge for the air you breathe.” It’s bad enough going through all the hostile
interrogations with Ginger, he thought.
I’m not about to volunteer to let a stranger crawl into our bed. Why does it feel like I left one battlefield
to come back to another?
“Look, Cookie, we’ve
been all through that. I’m not going to
change my mind. This is personal between
us. We are intelligent people, and we
can work it out without resorting to some marriage shrink. No matter how hard this is or how long it
takes, I love you. Always have and
always will.” His voice sounded tired
and resigned.
“I love you,
too. I want to love you like I used
to. Honest to God I do.” Her voice broke. “Do you really want us back, Lorring?”
“Hell,
yes.” He was becoming angry, but fear
tempered his anger, as it had of late.
What if she left me? And took
Rachie. My whole life. I’ve got to get my head screwed back on
straight.
“Well,
what are you willing to do to get us back?” Ginger asked.
“Oh,
hell, anything but go to a damn mealy-mouthed shrink.”
“Anything?”
“Yes,
goddammit.”
“Okay. I’ll hold you to that.”
He stalked out of
the bedroom headed for the liquor cabinet.
She surely couldn’t come up with something worse than a damn
shrink. Could she? Why can’t we just talk this out? His hands trembled. Life was so simple in Nam.
* * *
No comments:
Post a Comment