Dreams of the Red Phoenix

by Virginia Pye

  Dreams of the Red Phoenix

  by

  Virginia Pye

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are either the

  product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

  to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events,

  or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Unbridled Books

  Copyright © 2015 by Virginia Pye

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof,

  may not be reproduced in any form

  without permission.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Pye, Virginia.

  Dreams of the Red Phoenix : a novel by / Virginia Pye.

  pages ; cm

  ISBN 978-1-60953-123-2

  I. Title.

  PS3616.Y44D74 2015

  813’.6--dc23

  2015011742

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Book Design by SH • CV

  First Printing

  For John, after all and before much more

  “But whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all.”

  Plato

  “If I knew for certain that a man was coming to my house with the conscious desire of doing me good, I should run for my life.”

  H. D. Thoreau

  “If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.”

  Chairman Mao

  N O R T H C H I N A

  S U M M E R

  1 9 3 7

  Part One

  One

  At dusk, the pigeons came home to roost in a flurry of white wings and damp air. The rains had finally stopped, and Charles and Han waited on top of the wall to reward them with seeds from their palms. After the birds landed and strutted about, the boys gripped their trembling bodies and stuffed them into the coop.

  “You were right,” Charles said. “They came back.”

  Out beyond the upturned tile roofs of the town stretched fields of millet and hemp that had never produced a bountiful harvest. The pear and apricot orchards begrudgingly offered up shriveled fruit each summer, and further in all directions stretched rocky ground that to the west ended in forbidding mountains. In winter, wind swept across the plains, carrying dust from the Gobi Desert. The ground stayed hard and crusted with snow for months, cracking into fissures that healed only with the spring rains.

  But on this day, the arid earth glowed as new leaves softened the landscape. This brief, bright, promising moment in June wouldn’t last long. Soon the sun would beat down and turn the fields brown, the trees limp. Rain might return in autumn, although the farmers knew not to count on it. This part of North China remained dry and desolate for much of the year, nothing like the lush visions Charles carried in his mind of America, where he had seen fields of tasseled corn so green it hurt his eyes.

  As he gazed out at the countryside now, he felt more convinced than ever that he belonged in that other, distant place he still called home. The harsh landscape before him had caused the Carson family nothing but heartache. Six weeks before, Charles’s father had died on the trail in the mountains west of town, his body not yet recovered. Reports pointed to a deadly fall in a mudslide, the cruel earth swallowing the Reverend Caleb Carson and offering little in return.

  At his funeral, his fellow ministers had reminded the congregation that he was in a better place now: heaven, they said, not the hard ground, held the Reverend in its embrace. Charles had been raised to believe that, but it seemed just as likely to him that his father hovered somewhere over the plains like the terrifying characters in his amah Lian’s bedtime stories. Those frightening spirits swooped down and skimmed the earth, flying senselessly from place to place, impossible to catch and impossible to contain. Charles feared that his father’s spirit would be forever trapped in this restless purgatory known as North China.

  “Where the devil is our last bird?” he asked his friend now.

  “You have to be prepared to lose one or two on the first run,” Han said. “They fly off into the wilds, or someone from the market snatches them and claims them as his own. It is to be expected.”

  “But not our Little Fat One. He’s too clever to be caught.”

  “No, not Hsiao P’angtze. He will return.”

  “I would never let anyone steal my birds.” Charles crossed his arms over his narrow chest. “You can’t let people walk all over you, Han. You need backbone.”

  “So you have said, Charles.”

  “It’s high time you people got rid of these bastards. It’s been more than five years since the Japanese occupied the North, and no one’s doing anything about it. This would never happen in America. Every farmer in Ohio would tote out his rifle and shoot the Japs right off his land.”

  Han let out a little puff of air and turned again to the countryside, his eyes scanning the horizon. Charles knew his friend saw things out there that he never could. The Chinese were uncanny like that, which was why the situation seemed so galling.

  “You think maybe the Reds will finally get rid of them?” Charles asked. “Guerrilla tactics seem the way to go.”

  The corners of Han’s mouth rose, and he let out a slight laugh. “What do you know about the Communists, Charles?”

  “Not much.” He shrugged. “Father said they’re hiding up in the hills to the west.”

  “You should believe what Father says. Reverend Carson was a very wise man.”

  “But I want to know what you think, Han. There’s something you’re not telling me. Like what are all these Reds doing in our town all of a sudden?”

  “Putting on plays.”

  Now it was Charles’s turn to laugh. “Those are the strangest performances I’ve ever seen. Imagine thinking that people would want to watch a play about land reform? Back home in America, they’d be hooted off the stage, but here, everyone loves it.”

  “That show was not so good. The one about the death of the landlord was much better.”

  “The Reds must be doing more than just putting on plays. I bet they’re itching for a fight.”

  “And on what basis do you make this deduction?” Han asked.

  Charles threw up his hands and said, “I don’t know. Maybe I’m itching for one. I wish something would happen around here.” Then, to show Han he meant what he said, Charles stepped forward, tossed back his head, and spat over the wall.

  Han grabbed his sleeve and yanked him away from the edge. “What are you doing?” he shouted.

  “They’ll never know who did it. They’re too dumb.”

  “American fool,” Han said, his black bangs shaking from side to side. “You’ll get us in trouble. You’re too impulsive. You never think things through.”

  “And you sound like a crotchety old maid. Are you Lian? Is that who you are?”

  Charles spun away from Han and spat again, this time with a full mouth. The outraged cry of a Japanese soldier rose from the street below, and Charles said, “Direct hit. Damn, I’m good.” He could curse only with Han, and it always felt excellent.

  “Damn you,” Han hissed as he crouched low. “You’ll get us killed!”

  A shout came up to them. “Who for stands on our wall?”

  “Not your wall,” Charles shouted back as he ducked down beside his friend. “This wall is as American as I am. Belongs to the Congregational board, headquartered at number 14 Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts. You can write them a letter of complaint if you wa
nt.”

  “Go home, America!” the Japanese soldier shouted. “Get off our wall.”

  Charles popped up again and leaned over the side. He tipped his golfing cap and said, “Hey, mister, can you spare a dime?”

  The soldier shook his rifle in the air. “American missionary boy very bad. Come down from our wall.”

  “Told you, not your wall,” Charles said again. “It’s one hundred percent American property.”

  “We come up and arrest American boy and teach him whosoever owns wall.”

  “‘Whosoever’?” Charles repeated. “Big word, soldier. But in this instance, that whosoever is me.”

  The Japanese soldier gave up on his sorry English and resorted to ranting in his native tongue. Charles smiled down at Han, who still huddled on the brick walkway at the top of the wall. Beads of sweat had appeared on Han’s forehead, and he rapped his knuckles against his knee. Charles switched to the local Chinese dialect to set his friend at ease. “Don’t worry, they can’t bother me. I’m not the enemy. And besides, I’m going home soon. You knew that, didn’t you? Mother and I can’t very well stay in China with Father gone.”

  “You are lucky to leave, Charles, and even luckier that no one ever attacks your country,” Han said. “But you shouldn’t be so cocky.”

  “Of course no one attacks America. They wouldn’t dare,” Charles said and began to whistle.

  Down below, the voices of the Japanese soldiers blended with the rattling of wooden carts over the rutted road, the calls of peddlers heading to market, and the braying of mules in a field nearby. The day carried on, uninterrupted. The Chinese went about their difficult business, trade as paltry as ever. The Imperial Army had paved the road leading in and out of town, so now more travelers stopped, though, finding little there, they quickly moved on.

  Still, even the lowliest of merchants felt he had gained from the occupation. Opium dens, prostitutes, and bars selling rotgut and sorghum wine did their best to unburden the Japanese soldiers of their meager salaries. The Mandarins tried to play their cards right, secretly pledging their allegiance to the invaders, whom they declared their liberators, even as they were appointed to be officers in the Chinese Nationalist Army. When Chiang Kai-Shek placed the nephew of ancient Tupan Feng in charge of his forces in the region, everyone knew that the warlord system of bribes and levies would continue, only now with the constant threat of conscription as well. As farmers and coolies shuffled past the American mission compound on their way into town, they kept their heads down to escape the interest of their own army more than that of the Japanese.

  “So where the devil is our Little Fat One?” Charles asked.

  Han stood again. “Patience, Charles. He is coming.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  Han might have offered any number of answers, for he had learned a great deal about pigeons. His father, the Carson family cook, had taught him before he’d headed out on the trail with Reverend Carson. New pigeons must be treated with care. For days before their release, the trainer should place cloths over their heads so that the birds remained blind, their initial flight as fraught as a baby’s first steps. When they returned, they must be rewarded amply, especially if the trainer intended to use them again, and for a greater purpose.

  The finest of the flock finally swooped down, and Han reached into his pocket for seeds. Hsiao P’angtze glided over the wall and landed. The pigeon’s cooing grew louder as it paced and then preened, cautious and yet eager—ready for whatever was needed of it next. Han felt the same way. He fed the bird from his open hand and prepared for what came next.

  Two

  A final chord hung in the air as Shirley closed the lid on the piano keys. The other ladies gathered up their things and thanked her, then slipped across the front hall and out the screen door. During practice, they had spoken in hushed tones and hadn’t even raised their voices on the stirring chorus. Shirley appreciated their delicacy but realized that if the choir were to regain its singing vigor, she would need to convince them that she was all right now—or at least all right enough to endure a full-throated rendition of a song. She doubted she’d ever be fully all right again.

  Mrs. Carr stacked the hymnals, and Mrs. Reed set the floral Chinese teapot and cups on the lacquered tray for Lian to clear. The missionary ladies knew a hundred ways to be of help, Shirley thought, and yet none of their efforts over the past weeks had eased her pain. After word had come of her husband’s death out on the trail, the ladies had taken turns in shifts outside her bedroom door. But, receiving little encouragement from her, they soon drifted off and sent their servants instead with suppers in straw baskets and stacks of devotional readings—dog-eared passages from the Gospel and scraps of sentimental poetry torn from Christian ladies’ magazines. None of it had suited Shirley, not here in China nor back in the States, not while married nor now as a widow.

  Her friend Kathryn appeared at her elbow and patted her sleeve. “Good to have you back, my dear. But next time, the choir should meet in the chapel. You don’t need us traipsing through your home.”

  “I must grow used to it again.”

  “They say it’s good to have people around after a certain amount of time,” Kathryn offered.

  “But what amount of time, they never say.”

  Kathryn brushed a stray curl from Shirley’s forehead. “You look better. Your eyes are less puffy.”

  Shirley doubted it but thanked her as they made their way to the front door, opened the screen, and stepped out onto the wide verandah. She noticed for the first time that full summer was well upon them, the night air thick and close with no breeze from across the plains. Crickets already sawed madly in their fever, and in the lantern light that shone from the Reeds’ front porch, silhouettes of a few spindly stalks of corn and sturdy sunflowers rose above the communal vegetable garden: proof that time and the world had carried on without Shirley, without Caleb. Lost in mourning, she had somehow missed the month of June altogether.

  Her husband had always been the first with a hoe and rake, but Shirley could see now that this year someone else had stepped in to take over the task. Shirley wished it had been she. Instead, she had passed the spring and early summer beneath her bed’s silk canopy, tangled in embroidered sheets and tossed about on a sea of tears, sleep, and morphine-induced oblivion. If concern for her teenaged son had not periodically bobbed to the surface of her mind, she might still be lost to the shore.

  “You haven’t seen Charles, have you?” she asked.

  “Not to worry, we’ve all got our eyes out for him.” Kathryn tucked an arm into hers. “He and your cook’s son have been hanging about up on the wall.”

  “I hope they aren’t getting into trouble.”

  “I can’t imagine a flock of pigeons causing trouble. Just be thankful he’s not like us at his age. He could be lolling about in opium dens or gambling with the White Russians in town.”

  “We were never as bad as that. A cigarette behind the bleachers hardly compares.”

  “Or a flask in hand,” Kathryn said as she squeezed Shirley to her side. “But he’s a young man now, and you should be aware of the proliferation of prostitutes since the Japanese influx. There’s one on every corner, and that’s during the day. I can only imagine what goes on at night. Russian, Japanese, Chinese, you name it, there’s a girl of every nationality. A young fellow like Charles can get the clap just by stepping outside.”

  “Please, Kathryn.” Shirley let out a soft moan and pressed her cheek against her friend’s bony shoulder. “I just thank heaven he’s still a boy. By the time he reaches that age, we’ll be long gone.”

  Kathryn offered a discordant grunt. Although two years younger and almost a full foot shorter, with straight raven hair instead of Shirley’s light-brown curls, Kathryn had always been Shirley’s match in intellect, if not in appearance or opinion. The two often locked horns but only became closer for it, their devotion to one another deepened by their differences.

/>   “The Lawtons offered to take him out to the countryside with their brood, but he refuses to go.”

  “He doesn’t want to leave you. He’s worried about you. We all are.”

  “But I’m worthless to him. I’m worthless to everyone so long as I’m here.”

  “It’ll be different back home. We just need to get you there.”

  “God help me if Cleveland has become my salvation.” Shirley shifted away and went to the porch railing. “Have a cigarette handy?” she asked.

  Kathryn laughed a little. “Lighting up in plain sight now? Mourning has changed you. I think Caleb would be proud of your independent thinking.”

  “Oh, please,” Shirley said. “He had far more important concerns.” She looked out at the empty courtyard. “Besides, no one seems to be around at this hour, and even if they were, they’d leave me alone. When you’re in mourning, you can get away with practically anything. I could have stayed anesthetized in bed for another half a year, and no one would have bothered me.”

  “Not true. Charles and I were already conspiring to drag you out of there.”

  “You were, with Charles?”

  “I did my duty as a loving auntie while you were laid up,” Kathryn said as she rummaged in her Chinese silk purse. “I came around quite often to make sure the boy wasn’t going hungry. I even told him he needed to start shaving. I think he was mortified, but someone had to point it out.”

  She placed a monogrammed flask on the porch railing, pulled out the matching monogrammed cigarette case, then dropped the flask back into her purse and yanked shut the silk tassels. Shirley smiled at the familiar sight of the tarnished silver. Before China had ever entered Kathryn’s plans, she had cavalierly broken off an engagement to a lackluster college boyfriend and accidentally driven her coupe into a ditch after too many old-fashioneds at the country club. As her father prepared to roundly discipline her, Kathryn concocted a punishment far greater than any he could have mustered: she announced her intention to take up the Christian cause with, in Cal James’s words, a group of uptight, sanctimonious teetotalers halfway around the world. Before she left America, he gave her the monogrammed silver set and a bottle of fine Kentucky bourbon. Shirley would have liked to reassure him now that Kathryn had come to care deeply for the Chinese children she had gone all that way to teach.