Dreams of the Red Phoenix (32 page)

“Oh, Caleb,” she whispered to the barren room, “you tried to
tell me, but I wouldn't listen.”

Outside, the rain continued, insistent and hard. It would go
on like that for days, mesmerizing and casting a spell over ev
erything. Shirley wondered how she would manage without her
husband here to light a fire as he always had. How would she
manage anywhere without him, and without her son, too? With
out them, her life was as empty and eviscerated as this house. She
needed to leave China, and not alone. She didn't belong here any
longer. She didn't know where she belonged. But she understood
that she must find Captain Hsu and do what needed to be done
in order to join Charles, no matter the cost.

Light-headed and exhausted, she stepped outside and folded
herself down onto the porch floorboards, leaning against the yel
low-brick exterior. Out of the corner of her eye, she sensed the
Japanese soldier at the side of the porch, hidden behind a post
and a
shrub the name of which she had never learned, its deli
cate yellow blooms just ending. Some part of her assumed the
Japanese soldier would kill her whether she did General Shiga's
bidding or not. But as she started to drift off to sleep, she let her
self consider that the presence of the soldier might actually mean
Shiga intended to keep his word. With that conflicted and yet
dimly promising thought, Shirley shut her eyes, tipped back her
head, and within moments was asleep.

Some time later, she felt tugging at her arm and tried to knock
whomever it was away. Her mind filled with an image of the
dogs standing over the old man at the entrance to the mission,
their teeth bared and growling. Shirley awoke with a shriek and
scrambled to her feet. No dogs surrounded her, but before her
stood Captain Hsu. She threw her arms around him and said,
“You're alive!”

He pushed her away gently and took her hand. “We have to
get inside. It's not safe out here.”

“Wait, I need air,” she said as she took him by the sleeve.

Shirley brought him to stand at the railing so that their voic
es could be heard above the rain streaming down the tiles. This
would be the moment, she thought. If she did as the general
asked, would the Japanese soldier take Captain Hsu to his exe
cution in the town square or shoot him right there on her front
porch? Would he kill them both simply to have it over with?

“I want to help the injured troops at the camp in the moun
tains,” she said. “Charles is gone with the others, and I can't make
it to Shanghai in time to join him. Please, Captain, let me be a real
Red Army nurse.”

“You must come inside. You have a fever.”

“Please, for my husband's sake,” she made herself continue. “I
want to carry on his good works.”

Captain Hsu studied her hard, and Shirley wondered if he
could tell that she was deceiving him. But then a surprising and
kind light came into his eyes as he said, “Yes, I think you're right.
The Reverend would want that.”

“But where is the camp located?” she asked. “By what route
will we travel?”

So the good captain told her. He said the road and the pass
they would take to get there. He mentioned the name of the range
and the distance. He spoke casually, helpfully, not knowing how
his words would be used against him and his comrades. Shirley's
mind reeled with the magnitude of her betrayal. When he fin
ished, she grabbed his hand and hurried him over the threshold
and into the house. She expected the sound of gunshots but heard
only the front door slamming and the scrape of the heavy bolt as
it fell into place.

Captain Hsu placed his cool palm on her forehead. “You're
burning up. We'll have to leave while it's still dark, but you can
rest for an hour first. Here, eat this.”

He pulled an oatcake from his pocket. She bit down on the
hard surface, chewed, and swallowed with a dry throat. She
started to follow him upstairs, but when they reached the land
ing, Shirley's gaze drifted down, and she saw the curtain rustle
by the front window. Then the basement door creaked closed.
On the dusty floorboards in the front hall, she thought she rec
ognized small footprints where there had been none before. The
captain raised his pistol.

“It's nothing,” she said, “only the storm. Someone left a win
dow open in the clinic.”

But she prayed that it was not the wind but instead the mirac
ulous young woman, Dao-Ming. She prayed that the girl would
somehow know to warn her comrades. That was Shirley's only
hope to reverse what she had done.

In her bedroom, she was startled by her reflection in the van
ity mirror. Bent and ghostly, Shirley looked as old as Lian but
thin and drawn, the way her mother appeared after one of her
benders. Shirley turned away and ached for bed. The blankets,
quilts, and even the sheets had been taken. Captain Hsu led her
to the mattress and helped her down. She curled on her side, and
he covered her with his Red Army jacket. Shirley longed for the
peacefulness she had felt at the Communist camp. Her life, and
the lives of the Chinese around her, had seemed so full of promise
then.

From the bed, she looked across to the window, where out
side everything was monochrome darkness. All light had been
snuffed out in the night, and she started to close her eyes. At that
moment, from the southwest wall, a sudden flurry of pale wings
caught the air as the flock of pigeons that Charles and Han had
trained flew off into the pelting rain. Shirley sat up and followed
them with her eyes as they flapped frantically against the harsh
night.

Captain Hsu saw them, too, and looked across at her, an ur
gent question on his face.

“Run!” Shirley whispered.

Captain Hsu held his pistol high and, without a word, hurried
from the room. Shirley heard his soft tread as he descended the
steps and then fled across the front hall. She listened for the grat
ing of the bolt on the door, but it never came. Nor did she hear
his footfalls on the creaking porch floorboards. But then, in the
quiet, she heard a shot, then another, and finally a third.

Shirley raced to the window, Captain Hsu's Red Army jacket
falling to the dusty floor. She saw nothing outside except rain
battering the glass as night sealed the courtyard. She pressed her
fingers to the pane and waited for something to tell her what
had transpired below but saw no movement and heard no fur
ther sound. Her fingers left a ghostly print on the fogged glass,
but that was all.

Some time later, from far off, she heard the low rumble of an
engine. Approaching bombers, she was sure, come to finish off
the mission. General Shia had not ordered her shot because, as
he had boasted, he preferred to destroy all. The tangled histo
ry of this foreign outpost would finally and fully be obliterated.
But instead of aircraft overhead, a black car drove in through
the southwest gate. The beams of yellow light pierced the fog
and rain. The car slowed to a stop in front of her home and idled
ominously, waiting, she realized after a long moment, for her.

Shirley raced to her closet and pulled down a small valise from
the shelf. Her husband's gold monogrammed initials caught the
car light as it reflected off the mirror. She put her only two re
maining dresses inside the small suitcase and closed the latch.
Next, she crouched before the empty fireplace and removed a
brick from the back, then reached into the opening and pulled
out a tin box. From inside it, she stuffed Chinese and American
currency and her family's papers into the pockets of her apron.
She found her raincoat and hat on the hook by the door and
pulled on socks and high Wellingtons. Shirley cinched the belt
of the mackintosh around her waist, lifted the valise, and headed
downstairs. She looked about for Dao-Ming but saw no sign of
the girl.

T
he train slowed, delayed once more by Chinese storm
ing the tracks. They clung to the windows and climbed
onto the couplings between the cars. More Chinese mobbed
the corridor outside the compartment and pressed their faces
to the inside glass. Charles barricaded the door with suitcases,
and Kathryn pulled the frayed curtains closed. Then he hun
kered down on the bench and pulled his father's driving cap
lower over his eyes. He knew he was lucky to have a seat, lucky
to have made it this far through the dangerous countryside.
Lucky, really, to be alive.

Despite the commotion, Kathryn fell asleep with her head
resting against his shoulder. Charles pressed his forehead to the
window and watched the blurred fields pass by. He wondered
where Han was at that moment.

White steam unfurled as it drifted past the window and dis
solved into wet air. He shut his eyes and let the rhythm of the
train lull him until he remembered his father's words again:
Keep
your wits about you, son
.
Steady nerves. Don't fire till you see the
whites of their eyes.
Charles had no pistol, and his father had never
meant for him to carry one. But Caleb Carson wanted him to be
on the lookout for danger in a country fraught with it. Han, too,
had tried to teach Charles to stay attuned to signs and signals, to
listen more, and, as he had politely insisted, jabber less. Both his
father and his friend seemed better suited than he to handle the
adversity around them.

Charles shifted in his seat, and Kathryn finally stirred. Her
charming little hat tipped off her head and landed in his lap. Her
sleeping face under the dark bangs was cocked up toward him at
an odd angle, and he couldn't help noticing that even though she
wasn't close to his age, she also didn't seem so old, like his moth
er. She had insisted he call her Kathryn. And as he whispered it
now, it occurred to him then that she was his one and only friend.
That seemed such a forlorn thought that it made Charles long
once again to see Han. Kathryn continued to snore softly, so he
nudged her harder this time. She swung around abruptly, tilted
her head back further, and, with eyes still closed, pushed herself
up to kiss him. Charles's eyes opened wide, while hers remained
decidedly shut.

“Hey, now,” he said as he gently pushed her off, “what have
you been drinking?”

She snatched her hat back and placed it on her head.

“How about sharing?” Charles asked. “I'm dying of thirst.
Give me a slug or two, and we'll really pucker up.”

She pinched his rumpled sleeve and offered an embarrassed
laugh but opened her silk purse and handed him a tarnished sil
ver flask. She had already finished off a third of it. Charles was
determined to catch up. The booze burned the back of his throat,
heated his chest, and plunged deep into his empty stomach, send
ing heat straight to his brain. A minute before, he had felt friend
less in this world. Now he had a girl on his arm and hooch in his
hand. He'd been around people who drank but had never tasted
liquor before. He'd also never kissed a girl before and felt it was
long overdue. He was finally a young American, headed home.

“That's fine Kentucky bourbon, not some lousy Chinese fire
water,” Kathryn explained as she straightened her skirt. “My fa
ther gave it to me, and I kept it in the back of my closet the whole
time I was here. There were temptations galore to break it open,
but aren't you glad I waited until now?” She took the flask from
Charles, screwed it shut and dropped it into her purse. “But not a
word about any of this, kiddo. It was just a little dream you had.”
Kathryn shut her eyes and rested her head against his shoulder
again. “Go back to sleep.”