Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [93]
His head was filled with old fears as Zocco drove him northward to the ranch. He reminded himself that he was a respected merchant and that soon he would have enough money to pay the Elders their full five percent. He told himself to forget the past, but his heart was like a lump of charcoal, burning with hot remembered pain as the long valley unrolled in front of him.
Francie ran eagerly onto the porch to greet him. She was big with the child and his eyes darkened with tenderness. He thought she looked like a child herself with her pink cheeks and her blond hair falling like a cape around her shoulders. She was laughing at the pups, tangled in their leads around his feet.
“Two puppies, Lai Tsin!” she exclaimed.
“One female and one male. In time you will have more Great Danes. I hoped they would please you.”
She laughed again. “I shall call them Duke and Duchess—in memory of Princess. And now I have something to give you,” she said proudly. “My house is your house, Lai Tsin. It is our home.”
As she led him through the simple rooms he saw there were no things of great value, no precious silk rugs, no ornaments of nephrite jade, no paintings or carved blackwood chairs such as he had seen in the Elder’s house. But the little ranch house glowed with warmth and welcome like no other place he had ever known.
Annie bustled, smiling, from the kitchen to greet him. She had prepared a feast for him and they sat at the long pine kitchen table and she served a tomato soup made from their own tomatoes, fish from the river, vegetables from the garden, a pie made with apples from their trees and cream from their own cow. And though he had never eaten such food in his life he smiled and said it was a wonderful gwailo feast.
After supper they sat by the fire and Annie looked curiously at him. His new clothes hung on his thin frame and his face, with its prominent cheekbones, looked gaunt, but Lai Tsin had the strength of steel and she guessed he had acquired it the hard way. Francie said she had been afraid to ask about his past but Annie’s curiosity knew no such boundaries. Slipping off her shoes, she stretched her wool-stockinged toes toward the warmth of the fire. Wriggling them pleasurably in the heat, she said bluntly, “Tell us what brought you to America, Lai Tsin.”
Lai Tsin was silent, wondering how he could tell them. It was dark outside and the cold night wind beat urgently at the windows. He stared around at the snug little room lit by the dancing flames of the log fire. He had never felt this before, the security of four walls and the company of friends, people he loved and who he knew cared about him. His heart was very full as he replied in his light, cool voice, “My dear friends. You have been free and frank about your own lives. I am the stranger, the foreigner in your midst and you are right to be curious. I will tell you why I came to America.”
Their eyes were fixed on him, waiting for him to begin. A log fell in the grate amid a shower of vermilion sparks and the pups growled restlessly in their sleep. After a while he said, “Where I lived, in Anhwei Province on the banks of the Yangtze, the village lord owned everything: he owned the land and the houses on them, he owned the ponds with the ducks, the rice fields and the mulberry fields. He owned us all. My father was in charge of looking after the ducks, which were much prized for their meat. Every so often the village lord would send his ducks to Nanking to be killed and sold for food. My sister and I would be given the job of herding them from our village to the Great River, prodding them onward with long canes, though we were careful never to harm them. Mayling and I were sad for them and sometimes we wondered if the ducks knew their fate, because they would squawk and complain and try to fly away. But their clipped wings only fluttered uselessly and they would waddle tiredly on down the long road toward the Great River and their