Dreams of the Red Phoenix (28 page)

Captain Hsu stepped out of the shadows, a cigarette glowing
in his hand. “Comrade Carson,” he said, his white teeth showing
as he smiled, “that uniform looks good on you. But did you not
like your sleeping accommodations?”

“I was assigned a problematic bedmate.”

“Soldiers do not usually have a choice in such matters. I be
lieve you were treated in a special way again.”

“Yes, I'm afraid so. There's no disguising it. I am a foreigner
here, with all the privileges and complications that entails.”

He took a drag on his cigarette and passed it to her, and she
took it.

“We should get some sleep,” he said, “even for an hour or two.
Here, come with me.”

She went with him into the second large, open-sided struc
ture. In the flickering light, she saw the sleeping bodies of several
hundred Chinese soldiers. Some lay curled on their sides on mats.
Others lay on their backs on the hard dirt floor, their mouths
open and snoring. Many pressed up against each other in a jum
ble, like puppies, Shirley thought. Captain Hsu did not pause but
stepped over and around the sleeping men, and she followed.

When they reached an opening large enough for them both,
Captain Hsu sat down and began to unlace his boots. Shirley
glanced around and saw they were near the very center of the
space. It made her uncomfortable to be surrounded by men on
all sides, but no other spot appeared available. Captain Hsu took
off his cap but left his boots on. Then he offered her his hand and
gestured for her to wedge herself in beside him.

Shirley sat, too, and took off her cap and canvas shoes as the
captain settled into a sleeping position on his side. Seeing no oth
er options, she lay down on her side in front of him. He scooted
forward and, as if it was nothing unusual, leaned his chest against
her back and draped an arm over her shoulder. Shirley and Cap
tain Hsu spooned. She lay stock-still, her limbs rigid, her mind
buzzing with concern. As she was trying to think what to say to
him to clarify their friendship and to make sure that he did not
misunderstand her fondness for him, he began to snore.

Shirley smiled to herself as her tense and exhausted body
leaned into the good captain. She listened to his breathing, then
to the exhalations all around. Slowly she became quiet inside. Her
own breathing blended with the waves of the many other breaths.
As she started to drift off, she remembered Caleb's words:
We are
one.
In a room crowded with Chinese soldiers, Shirley felt safer
and more at peace than she could ever recall feeling before.

...

Voices woke her with a start, and she sat up, Captain Hsu no
longer at her side. Only a few soldiers remained in the vast tent.
Shirley couldn't imagine how she had slept through the depar
ture of the others. Morning sunlight sliced over the nearby rocks,
signaling that it was long past dawn. She yanked on her canvas
shoes and cap and hurried outside. Soldiers ran in all directions,
carrying supplies and rifles on their shoulders. She wove through
them and did not stop to ask what was going on, hoping to find
Captain Hsu at the center of the camp.

But at the entrance she was slowed by the sight of incoming
wounded, some carried on stretchers, others stumbling against
one another. Shirley knelt beside a new arrival, a young man shot
in the shoulder. She would need hot water and pincers to remove
the bullets and was furious again for having left her medical kit
back at the clinic.

“Excuse me,” she asked a passing soldier, “I need boiling wa
ter and surgical instruments. And bandages. I'm a nurse. I'm
here to help.”

The young man stared at her and finally gestured to a nearby
tent before hurrying off. Through the open flaps, she could see
several men leaning over a patient as they performed what ap
peared to be a surgical procedure.

“I'm here to help,” she said to a soldier at the entrance.

He did not respond, and she remembered that these boys
came from all over the country. There was no telling what ver
sion of the language they spoke.

“I'm a nurse,” she tried again.

He motioned with his rifle for her to leave. When the boy
glanced away, she slipped past, but a different soldier stepped
forward, his rifle pointing directly at her. He shouted in a dialect
she didn't know, although his meaning was clear. More soldiers
formed a circle around her. Shirley pushed away from them and
marched off. She searched again for Captain Hsu. She felt useless
without him. She wondered if she could possibly hurry to the
mission that morning and return with nurses and supplies. The
trip had not seemed long the night before. She spotted the old
mule that had brought them and had known the route. Shirley
headed toward it now.

But just then, a horse-drawn cart pulled up, and Shirley saw
the strikingly blond hair of one of the passengers. She went to
greet the foreigners and offer them assistance but stopped short.
On the bed of straw in the back lay a pale man, his neck sliced
almost all the way through and his chest punctured. If he wasn't
dead yet, he would be very soon. His wife and daughters sat
weeping over him. They, too, were splattered with blood, overly
bright and gaudy in the morning light.

“Where are you from?” Shirley shouted to be heard above the
many panicked Chinese voices. “How did this happen?”

The mother kept her arms around her daughters, who shook
and wailed against her sides. She was a fine-boned blonde wom
an in a pretty calico dress ripped open all the way down, blood
over her cheeks and legs. The daughters' dresses, too, had been
torn, and their hair was matted with blood and their eyes glazed.
The mother finally looked up and saw Shirley but didn't seem to
recognize that she was a foreigner, too.

“We'll take care of you,” Shirley said. “You're safe now.” She
reached over and closed the woman's dress. “Where did this happen?”

The woman's voice was hardly a whisper. “Our home.”

An old Chinese man, their number-one boy or cook, had fall
en against one of the wooden wheels. He had been badly beaten,
his shoulder dislocated, the arm hanging wrong.

Shirley crouched beside him and asked, “Where are you
from?” But his gaze did not rise from the ground. “The Anglican
compound to the west of town? Is that it?” she asked.

This must be the new British family that had arrived not long
before. She and Caleb had planned to invite them to tea, but then
he had gone on his expedition to the outlying churches and nev
er come back. Shirley shouted for some Red Army soldiers to
carry the foreigners into camp. As stretchers arrived at the wag
on, Shirley stood and went for Captain Hsu's mule but spotted
a horse tied up nearby. She unhitched it, grabbed the reins, and
mounted with ease. She dug her heels into the animal's sides and
galloped out of the camp, frantic to return home to her son.

As clouds crossed the sun, she followed the winding trail
down from the rocky ledge. After a half-hour descent, she was
able to see far across the plains, her destination of the town and
the mission a simple route through the flatlands. With some luck,
she could be there in another hour or so. She pressed onward and
tried not think about Charles and the others, although they were
all she could think of.

At a bend in the trail, a stream crossed, and Shirley felt the
frothing horse balk. She should have noticed it was already worn
out when she took it, probably having just arrived from some
great distance. She decided to let the animal have a quick drink.
She dismounted, and the horse hung its head over the bank. The
branches of a weeping willow skimmed the water, dragging thick
green tendrils of summer. The breeze was up, and the clouds had
grown darker, rolling in from the mountains to the west. She
needed to get home before the rain arrived. She needed to get
home to be sure her boy was all right.

As Shirley started to gather up the reins, she heard fast-ap
proaching horses and saw that Japanese soldiers rode them. Be
fore she had a chance to mount, the cock of a rifle sounded close
behind her. The two soldiers began to shout as they jumped down
from their horses. A moment later, she felt the point of a bayonet
between her shoulder blades. She lifted her arms, stepped away
from her horse, and stumbled in the direction of the stream. They
knocked her to the ground, and a rock cut her knee. Her canvas
shoes slipped off, and the Red Army cap toppled to the dirt.

“I'm American,” she shouted. “Not Chinese. See?” She tried
to point to the whiteness of her skin, hoping it could save her.

With the butt of his rifle, the younger of the two soldiers rolled
her onto her back. He reached down and yanked the gold chain
Caleb had given her from around her neck and stuffed it into his
pocket. The phoenix charm flew off and landed in the water with
a quiet plop and was gone, never to rise again. The Japanese sol
dier pressed the wooden handle of his rifle between her legs and
started to lift it to strike her. She had seen Chinese women with
broken pelvises and now knew that this was how it was done.

“I'm American,” she shouted again. “Not Chinese! Please. Don't.”

The second soldier watched impassively as the younger one
paused to unhitch his belt. She hoped that the older one wasn't in
favor of the new barbarism of the Imperial Army. But as she tried
to form the Japanese words to appeal to him, he surprised her by
sweeping his bayonet past her face. A searing pain burned her
cheek. Shirley covered the cut with her hand, and blood leaked
over her fingers.

The younger man leaned down and ripped open her tunic.
She covered her exposed breasts as the two men laughed. She
wanted to scream but had suddenly lost her voice. As the young
one raised the rifle again to hit her, she opened her mouth and
croaked out the words “General Shiga!” Hearing her own voice
gave her courage, and she shouted again in English, “I am a
friend of General Hayato Shiga. Do not harm me!”

The older one gripped the boy's arm.

“I am his nurse!” She scrambled away from them in the dirt.
“I am Nurse Carson. Have you not heard of me? I am special
nurse to General Hayato Shiga. Hal. We call him Hal. Shiga.
You know the name. Shiga!”

She sensed that neither man understood anything she said ex
cept the general's name. She repeated it again and climbed up
from the dusty ground. She wrapped the torn tunic around her
self and rose to her full height. She towered over them, and even
though she continued to shake all over and her heart was beating
frantically, she glared into their anxious faces.

“General Shiga would not want you to touch a finger to me.
General Shiga very angry if you harm American woman. Gen
eral Shiga says no!”

This last point seemed to register. They conferred. She tried
to think of how to escape, but it was impossible. With the ex
posed trail across the open plains, the Japanese soldiers would
simply shoot her in the back as she rode away. The older one
took over then. He pushed her with the butt of his rifle toward
her horse. She climbed on, and he took the reins as the soldiers
mounted theirs. The three started off. Shirley glanced back at the
spot where she had been attacked, her shoes and the Red Army
cap left in the dust.

C
harles woke to pounding on the door. He untwisted his pa
jamas and threw on the dragon-patterned silk top but didn't
bother with the buttons. Before hurrying downstairs, he checked
for his mother in her room. The bed appeared not to have been
slept in, and he saw no signs of her return. Out the moon window
on the stair landing, autumn sunlight struck the mission wall,
less harsh than in summer, more golden. He assumed she was
making her way back to the mission through that soft haze over
the plains. But it wasn't lost on him that he now had not one but
two parents missing out there. The thought no longer made him
feel weak in the knees or panicked. Instead, a hard resolve tight
ened in his chest.