Thirteen Orphans

by Jane Lindskold

  The Chinese man continued his forward motion, and Brenda thought she saw him touch her dad with something small and round, but she couldn’t be sure. Too much was happening. She kept expecting her dad to reach up and rip the paper off his face, but he just stood there. Then the paper started sinking, melting into the flesh of Gaheris Morris’s face.

  Brenda stifled another scream with her clenched fist and ran forward, not knowing whether to grab the Chinese man, or to root out whatever it was that was burying itself in her father’s face. She managed to do neither. Although she crossed the intervening space with the speed born from pure panic, the black paper was vanishing like frost on a windowpane with the first touch of sun.

  The Chinese man was vanishing too. She caught a glimpse of his features as he faded away, as if his very existence had been tied to the paper he had thrown. Her only comfort was that his expression held raw confusion. Clearly, events had not gone according to plan.

  “Dad!” Brenda said, keeping herself from screaming with an effort, reaching up and touching his face. “Dad! Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Are the muggers gone? Are you all right? I’m sorry I pushed you down, but I thought one of them had a gun.”

  “There was only one,” she said, beginning to understand with a horrible certainly what must have happened. “A young man, maybe a bit older than me.”

  “That may be all you saw, Breni,” Dad said, patting her arm. “I saw more. I’m certainly glad Mr. Adolphus decided to walk us back to the car. Denver is a lot more dangerous than I realized.”

  Riprap was staring at them both. Then he bent and picked up something from the pavement near the car. It was another of those strips of paper, the yellow one the young man had thrown first. Although the green writing on it looked like Chinese to Brenda, it seemed to decide something for Riprap.

  “We’d better get out of here, Mr. Morris, in case the muggers come back. I’ll tell you where I’m parked.”

  “Good idea,” Dad said. He looked at Brenda again. “Sorry you ripped your jacket, Breni. I’ll get you a new one.”

  “No problem, Dad,” she said weakly.

  During the short drive over to where Riprap had parked his car, Brenda asked a few questions, but it was the thing with Albert Yu all over again. Mention of neither mah-jong nor of the number thirteen brought any hint that her father remembered them as significant.

  Finally, in desperation she said, “But, Dad, what about the Thirteen Orphans?”

  “Isn’t it a little late to go to a movie, Breni? In any case, you know my feelings about first-run theaters. They’re really too expensive.”

  Brenda wanted to cry. The only thing that kept her from feeling she was going crazy was the look Riprap gave her when he got out of the car. The look said, I remember. You’re not nuts.

  What Riprap said aloud was “I’ll call you in the morning, Mr. Morris, so we can discuss that business offer.”

  “I’ll look to hear from you about noon,” Dad replied cheerfully.

  Brenda hid a shiver. That reference to “noon” showed how selective whatever had happened to Dad’s memory was. He remembered that Riprap had said he’d call around noon the next day, but not why the other man was going to call.

  “Or earlier,” Riprap said, getting into his car. “Maybe much earlier.”

  Then he slammed the door. Brenda heard the locks snap shut before he started the engine.

  Gaheris Morris pulled out into the street, and headed for the hotel, but for all his cheerful chatter along the way about the tourist sights they might hunt out and what souvenirs they should buy for her mother and brothers, Brenda couldn’t help but feel that a complete stranger was driving the car.

  The rest of that night and the early morning was a nightmare. Exhaustion let Brenda sleep, but it was a sleep tormented by nightmares. In the morning, she tried to prompt her dad’s memory, even going so far as to pull out the mah-jong set and ask him for a game.

  His answer chilled her. “Not now, Breni. I can’t think why I brought that heavy old thing with me. It should be in a safe, or maybe a museum. Old man’s folly, I suppose. Let me get my slides in order. I think Mr. Adolphus might make a good client.”

  So Brenda left her dad to organize slides of custom bobbleheads and other sports paraphernalia that she suspected Riprap Adolphus would have as little interest in as she did. She thought about asking to take the car out shopping, but didn’t want to risk missing Riprap’s call.

  Anyhow, she was a little scared. What if that Chinese man was out there, stalking them? He’d looked startled right before he’d done that queer vanishing act, but whatever he’d done to Dad might have given him confidence.

  Instead, Brenda took the mah-jong set and vanished back into the bedroom section of the suite. The room was equipped with a desk, probably in case two people were traveling together and both needed a place to work.

  Setting the box on the desk, Brenda studied the ornamentation on the lid. Although the lid of the case was a masterpiece of elaborate inlay, the style in which the rat itself was represented reminded her of Chinese paper cuttings she’d seen. The lines were curved and sinuous, really quite lovely. The rat looked neither cute, like the rats and mice that seemed to be just about omnipresent in kiddie stories, nor sleazy and sinister, like rats in horror fiction.

  For all that it was depicted in a few rather simple lines, the rat presented an impression of flexible strength, of tenacity. Brenda found herself thinking that if one had to be the Rat, perhaps this was not too bad a rat to be.

  Dad was still busy at his computer, so Brenda opened the box and inspected the tiles stacked on top. The box held a row of ten across, and five down. There were three such layers, with a few empty spaces, making for a total of 148 tiles—four more than were needed to play the game.

  Brenda sat cupping one of the red dragon tiles in her hand, remembering how Dad had implied that there was more to the red dragon—to any of the mah-jong tiles—than he had time to explain at that time. He and Pearl had made really clear there was lots you could do with a set of mah-jong tiles. Brenda knew one of those things now. You could use them to divine how twelve other people were doing. What other things could you do?

  What other … Brenda almost hesitated to frame the word in her mind … other magics could you work?

  She stared down at the red dragon tile, letting her imagination wander. Her eyes blurred and her vision became unclear. For a moment it seemed like the rectangle stretched out, elongating in all four directions. The image became three-dimensional. The line in the middle no longer touched the sides, but went directly though the center of the square, pointing toward something.

  Brenda leaned forward to see …

  Dunt-da-da-dunt-da-da-dunt-dunt-dunt!

  In the other room, her dad’s cell phone chirped out a brief rendition of the Lone Ranger’s theme, and Brenda jumped. The tile in her hand was nothing but a bit of bone and bamboo.

  “Yes? This is Gaheris Morris.”

  Brief pause.

  “Mr. Adolphus! You’re up early. Would you like to come by our hotel or is there somewhere you would prefer to meet? Okay. Do you know where …”

  Brenda stopped listening as her dad started giving directions, concentrating on fighting down relief that Riprap hadn’t decided they were crazy Southern whites having on an honest black man. He was coming. Maybe they’d get a chance to talk. How quickly things had changed. Yesterday she’d wondered if she’d know how to talk to a black person. Today she couldn’t wait for a chance to talk to this particular one.

  Brenda set the red dragon tile back beside its companions in the box, and tried to think how she’d manage to arrange a private chat with Riprap. A few ideas came to mind, but she knew she’d need to refine them when she had a sense of how Riprap was reacting to the situation.

  Dad had come to the door of the bedroom.

  “Breni, that was Mr. Adolphus. He’s going to be here in half an hour,
maybe twenty minutes if traffic isn’t too bad. I thought I’d show him my presentation, then offer to take him to lunch somewhere. Least I can do, even if we don’t make a deal.”

  Brenda nodded agreement, then decided to try jogging Dad’s memory one more time.

  “Hey, Dad. I was looking at these again. Do you remember which are the flowers and which are the seasons? This set is different from our set at home.”

  He moved over to her side. Brenda pointed with her finger at the flower and season tiles, the only tiles in the mah-jong set that could be considered unique, because, although there were two groupings of four tiles each, each flower and season was unique in itself.

  Gaheris Morris pointed, “Those would be the flowers, Breni. You can see that there are four distinctly different plants. Therefore, the others would be the seasons. Our set at home does have different pictures, doesn’t it?”

  He leaned forward. Brenda held her breath, hoping something was awakening. She concentrated on keeping him looking, begging for one of those ancient tiles to contain something that would break through to his real memories. However, when after a few moments of studious inspection Dad stood up, his words were disappointing.

  “That one tile definitely shows a bamboo, but as for the others, I can’t tell. We should compare with our set at home.”

  He tousled her hair, and then went briskly back to his computer. She heard him humming what sounded like a college fight song.

  Brenda stared down at the tiles. The flowers and seasons were marked with characters in Chinese that she was willing to bet said which was which. Her dad had been speaking Chinese just yesterday, fluently even. Had he forgotten how to do that, too? Or wasn’t he interested enough to make out faded signs inscribed into old bone?

  As she stared down at the tiles, once again the figures blurred and her vision became unclear, but this time the reason was nothing more than her eyes flooding with tears.

  When Riprap arrived, closer to the twenty-minute mark than the half-hour, Brenda had put the mah-jong set away, washed her face, and combed her hair. The hotel room was comfortable enough that the clothing she’d packed for California would do.

  Riprap greeted them both with the exactly right measure of friendliness and formality; then he let Gaheris put him in a chair where they could both look at the computer screen. Brenda sat on the small sofa to one side, trying to read the book she’d brought for the plane, and listening to them talk.

  She gathered that Riprap played several sports, but that these days he was mostly a coach for various teams of junior-high and high-school-aged kids. Most of these were not affiliated with schools, but with organizations like church groups or the Y or Boys and Girls Clubs of America.

  That was why Riprap worked as a bouncer, so his afternoons and early evenings would be free, and so he would have a flexible schedule on those occasions when one of his teams went on the road. It also became clear that he was passionate about what he did.

  “Denver is not New York or L.A., Mr. Morris,” Riprap said. “In fact, there’s a saying around here that you know you’re from Denver if you think Five Points is a slum. Even so, we have our problems with drugs and gangs. Sports can fill some of the same need to belong, to be a part of something. Shirts like these your company sells, even hats or decals, those can substitute for gang signs, give a sense of belonging that has nothing to do with crime.”

  Brenda wondered if her dad was disappointed that Riprap didn’t have any big account to draw on, but he didn’t seem to be. Maybe he hoped the Boys and Girls Clubs or the Y would come through. Maybe he was just being nice. Dad supported similar groups back home. No matter how prosperous an area was, there were always those at risk.

  “Why don’t we go out to lunch and talk about this more?” Dad said. “Is there anyplace near here you can suggest?”

  Riprap suggested a Mexican place. “It’s going to be different from what you get at a Taco Bell, but it’ll be good.”

  It was, and over the meal Brenda found herself drawn into the conversation. She had played some sports, mostly soccer and volleyball, in high school. Riprap had a way of listening that made her want to tell a few of her favorite stories. By the time they were finishing their meal, she’d almost forgotten the craziness of the night before.

  She remembered, though, when Riprap said, “How long are you going to be in Denver, Mr. Morris?”

  “A few days, give or take,” came the reply. “We’re driving to Santa Fe to meet up with an old friend of my family. You might have heard of her. She was a famous actress once. Pearl Bright?”

  “Shirley Temple’s rival? Or was she her successor as the big child star? Sure. I’ve heard of Pearl Bright.”

  Brenda, marveling that Dad remembered that they were to meet Auntie Pearl, even if he had forgotten why, nearly missed what Riprap said next.

  “Listen, it’s going to be pretty dull for Brenda to sit around the hotel room while you work out that proposal you want to give me. Why don’t I take her and show her some tourist sights. Our natural history museum is pretty well known, and there’s a nice open park right next to it.”

  Dad looked at Brenda. “What do you think, Breni? I know you had a late night last night, so if you want to catch a nap?”

  He was giving her a way out, if she wanted one, and Brenda appreciated that Dad didn’t expect her to entertain someone who clearly he thought of as nothing more than a business contact.

  “I’d like to get out, Dad, if you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t. You have your cell phone?”

  They made arrangements. Back at the hotel, Brenda made an excuse about needing a few things from the room. Feeling like a thief, she grabbed the Rat mah-jong set and bundled it into her backpack. She thought Dad would be okay, but she was worried that the mysterious Chinese man might come back for the set. She remembered, too, how Auntie Pearl had taken Albert Yu’s set.

  Maybe the mah-jong sets weren’t important. Their enemy seemed not to think so, but if Auntie Pearl thought Albert’s set had been worth having, Brenda would follow her lead. Brenda stuffed her torn jacket on top of the mah-jong set and hurried down. She found Dad and Riprap leaning on the hood of Riprap’s car, sketching some sort of sports logo.

  Five more minutes of that, then Dad was on his way inside, and Brenda was in a car with a man who she’d not known existed two days ago, but who was connected to her by shared memories of the strange events of the night before.

  “Your dad seems like a nice guy,” Riprap said once they were on the road.

  “He is a nice guy,” Brenda responded a trace defensively.

  “Hey, easy.” Riprap glanced over at her. “Am I right that something happened last night that, well, changed him?”

  “Yeah.” Brenda ran a hand through her hair, searching for words. “The weird thing is, the only things that have changed are things that I didn’t know existed until two days ago. Superficially, he’s Dad like he’s always been.”

  “Would you tell me what’s missing?”

  Brenda began. Then she realized that to do so, she’d also need to tell about what had happened to Albert Yu.

  “I’ll tell you, promise, but first I’d like to hear your story.”

  “You mean about my connection to all of this?”

  Brenda nodded. “Until two days ago, I didn’t know anything. From what you said in the diner, you know a lot more.”

  “Okay. Fair enough. I was going to tell you today anyhow. My dad was in the army. He was an officer, and we traveled a lot, especially when I was younger.”

  “Is yours a big family?”

  “I’ve got two sisters, both younger.”

  “Hey! I’ve got two younger brothers … Dylan and Thomas. Dylan’s going to be a junior in high school. Thomas will be in seventh grade. It’s sort of a mirror image of your family.”

  Riprap didn’t take his eyes off the road, but she saw him smile. “My sisters are both grown. Lily’s a nurse. Tammy does computer data e
ntry. They both are married and have little kids.”

  He changed lanes. “Especially after Tammy was born, we didn’t always travel with Dad. Sometimes he had posts in places that weren’t great for families. Then we’d come back here to Denver and stay. My mom’s from here, and her family’s all through the area. My folks had gotten married pretty young, and so I’d already moved out on my own when, five years ago, the word came that Dad wasn’t coming back from his current tour.”

  Riprap’s voice slowed and got choked up on that last sentence, and Brenda didn’t know what to say.

  “I’m sorry,” she managed at last, feeling completely inadequate. “Really sorry.”

  “Thanks.” Riprap drove for a couple of blocks in silence, maybe just concentrating on the increasing traffic, maybe not. Then he went on. “After the funeral was when I learned that the stories my dad had told me and my sisters when we were small, basically, for as long as we’d listen, weren’t fairy tales like we’d thought. They were history. Family history.

  “Dad left each of us something personal. I got the mah-jong set. When I took it home and opened it up, remembering how Dad would only let us play with that set on special occasions because it was an antique, I found there was a little envelope inside the case. The envelope contained the key to a safe deposit box, and in that box was … well, it was sort of like a stack of letters, and sort of like a journal. I still remember the first part. I read it over and over, unable to believe it.

  “It began, ‘Dear Riprap. Remember the stories I told you, the ones about the brave Dog who came from China, and how his enemies chased him, and how he lost his master and one day hoped to find him again? They’re true. Each and every one of them. They’re part of our family history, a part that has a special place for you.’”

  “That had to have been …” Brenda paused. “Amazing. Astonishing. Did you believe it?”

  “Not at first,” Riprap admitted. “I thought he’d written a novel or something, and wanted me to get it published for him. I kept reading, waiting for Dad to tell me that the stories were ‘real’ to him the way a good book or movie gets real if you really sink yourself into it. He didn’t though. After repeating a lot of what had been in the Brave Dog stories, he started telling me about the mah-jong set, and how it could be used for a few things, like telling who was to be the next Dog.