Dreams of the Red Phoenix (14 page)

Shirley handed him the pan. “You may cook for me and my
son until our own cook returns. Thank you again for offering.”

She left the kitchen and wondered how she was going to ex
plain this to Captain Hsu. Not only could she not cook for her
self, but she seemed to have engaged the enemy in doing so for
her. She was too tired to even consider the problem. When she
reached the front hall, she sat down on the piano bench and let
her head droop onto her folded arms as they rested on the key
board. A moment later, she opened her eyes again and looked
past her lap and recognized the pair of size eleven Jack Purcell
sneakers covered in yellow dust. She bolted upright and threw
her arms around her son. For once, he didn't flinch or pull away
but let her hold him there, his head tipped onto her shoulder.

“Oh, Mother.”

“I know,” she said. “It's all so terrible.” She wanted to hold
him and rock him to sleep as she had when he was small. Reluc
tantly she let him slip out of her arms but kept hold of his hand.
“Supper will be ready soon,” she said and caressed his thick red
hair. “You must be starved.”

Charles nodded but then started to pull her after him across
the front hall.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked. “Be careful, now, step
around these people.” She had no choice but to follow as Charles
maneuvered through the sleeping Chinese. “What is it, darling?”
she whispered. “Is something bothering you?”

He stopped midstride and looked back at her. “Yes, Mother,”
he said with a smirk, “something is bothering me.”

She felt strangely grateful for his quintessential teenaged tone.
“Sorry, silly question,” she said. “It has been such a day in such a
week.”

As they rounded the corner to the former dining room, Dao-
Ming popped out and scampered away. Shirley let out a gasp and
whispered to Charles, “That girl is constantly underfoot and ev
erywhere at once. Whenever I come upon her, my heart skips a
beat. It can't be good for my health.”

“Oh, Mother, of all the things to complain about,” he said.
“That's the least of our problems. Now, follow me.” He contin
ued to weave through the cots. “I was down in the cellar earlier
today, looking for that special sweeping tool Father used on our
chimney last fall.”

“What tool?”

“A long broom with lots of bristles at the end. I need it to fix
something.”

“What on earth are you up to?” she asked and stopped at the
center of the clinic. “Come, now, Charles, that's enough for one
night. Can't this wait until morning?”

“No, it can't.”

As stubborn as he had been as a toddler, she thought as she
untied her filthy apron, took it off, and balled it up. But since no
laundry would be washed anytime soon, she carried it to the coat
tree beside the front door. She tried not to notice her husband's
crumpled fedora tipped jauntily on a brass hook. If she did, she
might start to weep.

Charles opened the cellar door, took the kerosene lamp off
its hook at the top of the steps, and lit it. As with the kitchen,
Shirley had been downstairs only once or twice. From Lian, she
had heard that snakes enjoyed the cool damp down there, but she
wasn't going to mention that now. The steps creaked, and when
they reached the bottom, Charles started across the mud floor, his
footsteps squishing loudly.

“Dinner will be ready any minute,” Shirley said as she ducked
under the stairwell and followed Charles. “Aren't you starved for
a bowl of
mien
? I never thought I'd say that with such relish, but
here we are, aren't we?”

She knew she was prattling on. If Caleb had been here, he'd
have turned and kissed her on the lips to get her to shut up. Her
husband would have known she was frightened. But she couldn't
show that to her son, who seemed oblivious to the dangers all
around.

Charles stopped and lifted the lamp. Before them was a small
door held closed by a rusted metal hook. “Have you ever noticed
this cabinet?” he asked her.

Shirley shook her head and let out a high, worried sound. She
couldn't bear another tragedy, especially if it involved her pre
cious boy. But instead of a bed of snakes, a Japanese soldier in
waiting, or another dead and bloodied body, when Charles raised
the hook and opened the door, Shirley saw before them Caleb's
ham-operated radio transmitter. The clumsy old thing sat on
a tidy little shelf. Headphones hung beside it from a nail. The
inked image of a Chinese mystical phoenix had been stamped
in red on the wall, a signature of sorts, Shirley guessed. And a
microphone was positioned in front of a single stool on which sat
a rosy pink pillow with lovely embroidered chrysanthemums. At
least a year before, the pillow had gone missing from the wicker
sofa in the parlor, and Shirley had accused a day laborer of taking
it. But here it was, no worse for wear. Upon it, to Shirley's amaze
ment, sat her husband's driving cap. She would have recognized
Caleb's cap anywhere, and apparently so had her son.

“Father, must have—” Charles began.

But she hushed him. “Not a word,” she whispered and
pressed a finger to her lips. Then she gestured for him to close
the door and return upstairs. She took her boy firmly by the wrist
and pulled him after her. When they reached the steps, Shirley
pushed Charles before her, and up he went. She stepped lightly
after him, trying to make as little noise as possible.

T
he Reverend Caleb Carson gazed up at the scudding clouds
and counted his blessings in seeing another day. He had al
ways thought of himself as a man of simple pleasures, and one of
them was to be out-of-doors on a fine summer morning like this
one. To breathe in crisp mountain air that reminded him of his
boyhood in New Hampshire, though little else about this rugged
setting was the same. The cedar trees here were spindlier, the
scrub brush more spiked, the rocks more jagged than those in the
mountains of his youth.

Even when he had crossed this range in North China as a
healthy man, he had felt it blanket his spirit with barrenness and
gloom. At dangerous bends in the trail, the Chinese had placed
simple altars to their ancestors and gods. Over his five years of
expeditions to the outlying churches, Caleb had come to under
stand that stopping to pray in any fashion was entirely the right
idea. Otherwise the setting felt altogether too godless and the
poor traveler abandoned to his fate.

Yet the sky overhead now on this summer morning struck
him as promising. With some effort, he turned his head to his
good side and gazed over the cliff toward the long valley below
and the town too far in the distance to see. That he suspected
he would die before ever returning to his home in that distance
caused a literal dull ache in his heart, while the rest of his body
was shot through with a simpler, more searing pain.

Eight weeks before, during a break in the spring rains, the
clouds had lifted and sunlight had caught on every shining pale
green bud. Caleb's heart had felt as it always did in springtime:
as if the Lord himself had scrubbed clean the earth, and he, too,
needed ablution. A garbled message arrived just then on his
two-way radio. American marines on a reconnaissance mission
were cornered in the North. Now was the moment, he thought,
to purify his heart and his goals by assisting in the communica
tion between the brilliant, though somewhat naive and isolated,
Communist leaders and the outside world.

Caleb told his wife he must visit the outlying churches. It was
a matter of urgency, he said, and as he expected, she did not in
quire further, preoccupied as she was with her own affairs. He
left at dawn, before Shirley and their son awoke. He took Cook
with him, since the older man had proven himself an excellent
companion on previous trips. Captain Hsu tried to dissuade them
from departing by reporting that the road was more dangerous
than ever—slick underfoot and overrun with not just the usual
bandits hoping to make up for profits lost during the rains but
the Japanese invaders as well. Caleb would hear nothing of it.

They left the mission in chilly darkness, but by the time they
reached the foothills, the path reflected pink sunrise. As they rose
up into the mountains, switchback after switchback, all seemed
vivid and hopeful. Until, at a point where the trail narrowed be
cause of a rockslide farther up the mountain, Caleb's mule re
fused to go on. As he assessed the situation, he wondered if per
haps the animal was of the correct opinion. But his mission was
imperative, so he tried coaxing the beast with words, then with
his heels to its sides. He even climbed down off the animal and
tried to yank it forward. Cook's mule seemed prepared to cross
the dangerous pass, but Caleb felt he should be the first to try
terrain so extensively drenched and unstable.

As is so often described, the more he pulled, the more his mule
dug in. Finally Caleb gave up and turned away, and in that mo
ment, the contrary animal took one step forward—one fateful
step that set off a series of mishaps. Still holding the reins, Caleb
lost his balance and stumbled backward. The animal lurched for
ward, and their combined weight caused the ground beneath to
give way. Down they fell into a rocky crevasse on a slide of mud.

The earth was the color of the purest honey, and Caleb had
come to know it well. Yellow dust from the Gobi turned to paste
in springtime and coated every surface. As he fell, he swam
through it, slipping with increasing speed on its thick and sticky
consistency. In retrospect, the descent took an awfully long time.
Slowly he tumbled, aware of the animal rolling beside him. Tree
limbs and rocks tore into him, inflicting punctures and lacera
tions. Even at the time, there was an endless quality to the inci
dent, long enough for him to think over the error of his decision
to force the animal where it did not want to go.

His fall came to an abrupt end, and Caleb found that he was
covered in mud and unable to move. He passed out for a short
time, and when he came to again, he tried to wriggle his arm, but
the pain was too much. He shifted a single finger, and although
that pain was also penetrating, he managed to create a pocket of
air near his lips. He sputtered out foul dirt and realized that with
each inhale, he was sucking it back in again. He heard muffled
voices and sensed movement nearby. Before he blacked out for a
second time, he heard his cook's voice shouting and thought that
if there was ever a man good enough to rescue him, Cook was
that man.

Cook fashioned a stretcher from branches and green vines
and dragged Caleb out of the crevasse. Passing Red Army sol
diers then carried him the rest of the way to the their camp over
exceedingly treacherous terrain. How Cook and the soldiers had
managed it was a miracle of the type that only the Chinese can
achieve, Caleb thought. A more industrious and ingenious peo
ple did not exist on the planet. Being in the care of such routinely
heroic types gave him hope that he might survive to see his family
again.

Since the morning of the accident, he had been on his back on
a military cot in the cave at night; in the day, they brought him
outside to take the air. His lungs were still lined with mud, and
his breathing was badly impaired by internal ruptures. No doctor
had seen him, but he had no complaints about his care.

“Reverend hungry?” Cook asked in his faulty English.

Out of courtesy, the good man had kindly switched over to a
language he had never mastered. Since the accident, Caleb had
been unable to understand the local dialect. He couldn't even
have managed the more refined Mandarin, not that Cook spoke
it, either. Caleb's mind simply did not work well enough any lon
ger to accomplish it. He let out a slight sound in reply.

Words, English or otherwise, had become too great a chal
lenge for him, although he knew he needed to keep trying. That
was the thing—he had come to realize that life was one long se
ries of tries. A nice summation, he thought, worthy of a sermon.
Caleb wished he could dictate his ideas to someone for future les
sons. He had never been a deep thinker, never the wise minister
he had hoped to someday become. His mother's brother, whom
he had never met but had heard of as a boy, had come to North
China over thirty years before, and the elders here still spoke of
him in mythic terms, as someone not only comfortable with the
natives but inspiring from the pulpit as well. Caleb, by contrast,
simply helped people by seeing that tasks were accomplished in
the name of the Lord. He was a minister of the trail and of duty,
not of words.

The irony was that he had finally achieved the proper distance
on life to be able to sum it up, and yet he could no longer speak.
He had become the sage that the collar he wore was meant to
suggest, and yet he had lost the words to convey his thoughts.
And wasn't that a lesson in and of itself, he thought: the madden
ing lesson known as life?

He let Cook lift his head so he might sip mild broth. Caleb
suspected it was nothing more than stone soup, but he relished
the taste. The turnip added a bittersweet tang to the water that,
had he been healthy, he would hardly have noticed. So much in
life is overlooked, he thought, while our minds are busy on other
things. Under normal circumstances, he would have spit out this
thin concoction and not noticed how even its smell suggested life
itself—the rock-hard reality, the mineral quality, the very soil to
which we all must return in time.

His mind tended to go down the path toward death with al
most every thought now. After too many weeks in pain, he let it.
At first, he had tried to rally. He had hopes that he would soon
return home to see his wife and son. He would walk again. He
would sit up. All grand ambitions, as it turned out. In reality, his
energy was better spent on the simple acts of clearing his breath
ing passages and using his nostrils to their fullest extent. Air was
what mattered. The taking in of air.

Cook set Caleb's head back on the hard pillow. That the Chi
nese had not discovered feather pillows seemed a surprising over
sight. Historically they had chosen instead lacquered blocks in
the finer homes, but out here on the trail, it was a pile of pine
needles pressed together and wrapped with string. Caleb shiv
ered uncontrollably, and the wretched wool blanket was placed
over him again. The damned thing was a curse that chafed the
skin under his chin, but he did not complain. And wasn't that
how life revealed itself to us, with every ounce of comfort over
shadowed by accompanying irritation? The miracle of the Lord
on the cross was not as Caleb had once thought it to be, not only a
higher lesson in salvation but also one of simple survival through
everyday trials. The poor savior's palms and feet where the nails
had been stuck must have not just ached but also itched terribly.

When Caleb awoke again, he heard voices and commotion
over at the heart of the Communist camp. He thought he detect
ed Captain Hsu's sincere and gravelly tones. Never so fine a man
as that one, Caleb had come to realize. And the fellow had no
higher education to speak of. No advanced degrees except those
given out by life. That distinction, Caleb realized, was fodder for
at least one Sunday morning's lesson. How life's school was all
around us, there for the taking, if we only opened our eyes, which
he accomplished now with some effort.

The missionaries here in China could stand to be reminded
of that, Caleb thought, not to mention certain parishioners back
home who were overly preoccupied with the credentials of their
minister and treated him like a boyish puppet. He had gone to
great lengths at seminary to stand out, to be deemed as having
promise. He had been rewarded with a small, established parish,
where, unfortunately, perhaps because he was still so young, the
stout ladies and bent deacons had continued to assess and hover
and criticize until the Chinese hinterlands had sung to him of
freedom. Tales of his uncle's adventures in this distant land had
risen to the surface of Caleb's memory, and although that story
had not ended well, he felt certain the world had changed suffi
ciently with modern times for him and his family to have a more
successful outcome. But where had his newfound freedom taken
him? he asked himself now. As far from civilization as imagin
able and longing for a potluck supper of casseroles and Jell-O
compotes under his congregants' watchful eyes.

Caleb wished now that he had not learned so assiduously
from books nor labored so painstakingly over the complexities
of human foibles but had gathered wisdom instead only from the
woods. Thoreau had had it right. Although, Caleb recalled, while
at Walden Pond, the philosopher had lived just down the street
from his dear mother, who continued to take in his laundry every
week. Wouldn't Shirley have gotten a kick out of that? Caleb
thought. Then he promptly reminded himself not to let his mind
wander to his beloved wife. It only made his body hurt more ra
diantly when he considered his brilliant, complicated, and often
vexing partner. Hers were the human foibles he had tried most
to parse, often without success. His son was a much simpler crea
ture, but recalling him was entirely out of the question. For as
many hours of the day as Caleb could manage, he kept his mind
on anything but his boy.