by Virginia Pye
Only Caleb Carson, Charles had come to realize as he got older, would inflict such an experience on a small child while wearing a smile and repeating the Golden Rule. His knees felt weak as the realization swept over him again that the reliable, wise person of his father was no longer alive. Charles swallowed and tried to focus on the problem at hand. If his father wasn’t here, then he could at least summon up what he would think: something must be done about Lian’s faulty chimney.
Charles looked away from the roof and noticed an old woman crouched on her haunches outside the door. Beside her, a girl who Charles guessed was around his age sat on the stone bench. The two ate with fast-moving chopsticks from bowls and seemed to be engaged in a heated argument.
He bowed. “Pardon me, esteemed grandmother,” he began, “I am sent from the Carson household, where Lian works. We would be honored to have your company at our home.”
The old woman looked up with eyes milky from cataracts. She tipped her head to the side and shouted in a different dialect—one from the countryside that Charles happened to recognize because many of the mission servants spoke it.
“Who is it that speaks so poorly to us?” the grandmother asked the girl. “His voice hurts my ears.”
The girl answered her grandmother in the same country dialect. “Hush,” the girl said. “He is a white boy. American, I think. He must be the son of that witch Lian works for.”
Charles tried not to laugh. He continued in the more formal dialect, which the girl seemed to understand, not wanting to embarrass them by showing that he had grasped their rude comments.
“Lian works for us, and my mother would like to invite you to come with me to stay at our home.”
The old woman said, “He sounds like someone caught his tongue in the door.”
Charles felt a flame of indignation. No one had ever said he didn’t speak well. He would have to ask Han for his honest opinion. The old woman must have cotton in her ears.
“My grandmother thanks you for the kind offer,” the girl said, “but we are quite contented here. Lian’s home is not large, but there is room for us. She is at her employer’s so much of the time, year in and year out, that we rarely see her, but we are quite happy to be here now.”
Charles noted the dig she had slipped into her reply. So Lian felt she worked too many hours and days. No doubt, Charles thought. He would speak to his mother about that.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” he asked again. “We have food and mats for sleeping. Don’t you want to be with your Auntie Lian?”
The girl turned to the old woman again and said in the country dialect, “He says they have food and a place to sleep. How about we go?”
“They poison us with their food. I don’t trust foreigner devils. How do we know they are any different from the Japanese dogs? They come to rob us. No, we will make our own food. I remember when all we had was stone soup. I remember when the Righteous Harmony Society chased them all out! That was the right idea!”
The girl waved her hand and said, “I’ve heard your old stories, Grandmother. Maybe I don’t want to eat stone soup.”
“All right then, go! Leave me here. I will sit like this all day.”
As the girl stood, she swayed slightly, light-headed, Charles guessed, from hunger. He wanted to offer her a hand but didn’t reach out. The top of the girl’s head barely came to his shoulder, her collarbone protruded, and her arms were as thin as young bamboo. But her eyes, dark, iridescent pools, still caught the light. Nothing about her seemed dull to Charles, but clearly she needed more meat on her bones.
“We thank you for the invitation, but my grandmother has been through a lot. It took us days to get here. Lian’s food is the first we’ve had in a while. My grandmother needs to rest before we move anywhere.”
“I understand,” Charles said, “but I’ll drop by again soon to see—” he looked down at the grandmother—“how she is doing.”
The girl blushed, and Charles realized that his cheeks were warm, too. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, and before he knew it, he had reached out to shake hers. The girl’s hand seemed to have no substance to it at all, and he hoped he didn’t squeeze too hard. When they let go, she sat down quickly, and he turned away fast.
“Also, I’ll bring something to fix the chimney,” he shouted over his shoulder as he started down the alley. “It really shouldn’t smoke up the room like that. That’s not right.”
“Yes,” she said, “not right,” though when he glanced back, she was smiling.
Eight
Charles didn’t rush on his way home, and when he emerged from the alley, he saw that the central courtyard remained as crowded as when he had left. He wasn’t sure what he had hoped for—perhaps that the Chinese would have all gone back to wherever it was they had come from. It was only the end of the first day since their arrival, and he felt worn out with them already. Charles could hear his father whispering a stern reminder to not be selfish—to think of others, not only himself.
Someone bumped his shoulder, and he stumbled over a stack of straw suitcases held together with a cracked leather belt. More Chinese pushed past, and Charles ducked under the branches of his favorite cherry tree. He reached to grasp the black, slick limbs that he had climbed when he was small. Chinese of every sort surrounded him. Families mostly, with children stumbling along, as burdened as the elders, lugging their own things. The rise and fall of Chinese intonations washed over him in a hot tide, and the shade of the tree did little to cool him. Charles breathed through his mouth to avoid the stench that had started to rise in the courtyard, where latrines had not yet been set up.
He felt certain that he had nothing in common with these desperately poor people who were now victims of war, and yet, as he looked around, he felt an affinity with them. They had all faced their own personal tragedies to arrive here. The Chinese before him huddled so close that their bowed heads practically touched. Charles realized that he and his mother, in the wake of their family’s great loss, had lost track of one another. He wanted to be more like these Chinese, he thought, and set off to tell her so.
Charles pushed away from the cherry tree, stepped over and around more people, and went up his porch steps. He slipped into his home, apologizing to those who pressed to follow him inside. He shut the heavy carved door, rested his back against it, and shut his eyes.
A moment later, a woman’s voice said, “Had a long day, honey?” His mother’s friend, Miss James, leaned against the wall beside him. “You always wanted more to happen around here,” she said. “Now you’ve got it.”
He tried to smile.
“I’m sorry your dad’s not with us anymore. He’d know how to handle this.”
Charles looked down at his shoes, covered in yellow summertime dust. He’d forgotten to stomp his feet before entering. He’d probably forgotten a lot of other normal things, too, because nothing was normal anymore. He wished people wouldn’t mention his father so often.
“Your mother’s going to be real busy from now on.” Miss James nodded toward the dining room, where his mother was instructing several Chinese men on where to place some cots. “If you need anything, kid, you ask me, okay? The single ladies’ dorm isn’t nearly so overrun as your place. We have a few empty bedrooms with perfectly decent beds. You come over anytime, and I’ll sneak you in. This house is going to be crazy now that it’s a medical clinic.”
“A medical clinic?”
“She says they enlisted her, though I can tell that she loves it. You know how she likes to be in charge.”
Miss James seemed to be trying to get a rise out of him, but he wasn’t sure why. She always acted as if they were in cahoots, though Charles never knew about what. He supposed it was just her way of showing that she thought of herself as a younger sister to his mother, even though they were close in age.
“But we’ll help her out, won’t we, Charles? We’ll roll up our sleeves together.”
He tried to dodge h
er hand as she reached to pat down his hair.
“You might even become a doctor someday because of all this. That’s looking on the bright side.”
“I hate the sight of blood,” he said.
She wiped something off his cheek with her thumb, and he wriggled away. “Oh, you’ll get over that. I can picture you in a white doctor’s coat. You’ll be quite the catch.”
Charles doubted he’d ever get over his squeamishness, and he didn’t feel so great about Miss James right now, either. She was his mother’s best friend, and he knew that meant he should like her best, but sometimes she acted strange.
“Have you had anything to eat today?” she asked.
Charles shook his head.
“I see how this is going to be. Your mother’s still not taking care of you, you poor thing. You need to come over to my place, and I’ll feed you. Right now. Let’s go.” She took him by the wrist.
“I just got back, Miss James. I want to tell Mother something. And I think we have food here. I’m okay. Really, I am.”
She patted down his collar and said, “All right, but I’ve got my eye on you. We can’t have you being neglected, can we?” She pointed a long finger at him and offered a flash of white teeth. Her hand hovered a moment longer, and as if she couldn’t help herself, she started to adjust his jacket where it was hitched up wrong on his shoulder.
“Stop it,” he finally said and shifted away. “I can take care of myself.”
She laughed a little, as if it was funny that he didn’t want her pawing at him.
“Remember, now, if you need anything,” she said again, “just let me know.”
As she reached for the front doorknob, Charles spoke up. “Actually, Miss James,” he said, “I’m trying to find my friend Han. You know, our cook’s son?”
“Sure, I know Han.”
“No one seems to know where he is.”
“I’ll ask around. But don’t worry too much. Everyone’s a little out of place right now. And by the by, call me Kathryn. It makes me feel old when you call me Miss James.”
As she headed out the front door and negotiated the crowd outside, he heard her apologizing to them for their wait. She wasn’t so bad, he realized, just a little peculiar around him for some reason. Charles then went to join his mother, who stood with her hands on her hips in the middle of what used to be their dining room.
“I found Lian’s mother, and a girl was with her,” he started right in. “Probably her niece. Did you know that Lian has a niece?”
His mother continued to point at the cots and bark orders at the men helping her.
“I forgot to ask her name,” Charles continued. “Do you happen to know Lian’s niece’s name?”
Finally his mother stopped what she was doing and took him by the shoulders. “Charles, thank goodness you’re back. I was worried sick.” She kissed him hard on the forehead. They stood eye to eye now, and her usual kiss to the crown of his head was no longer possible, so she had substituted this awkward placement. He wished she wouldn’t kiss him at all, especially not in front of everyone. He wasn’t a little boy anymore.
She let go of his shoulders and said, “We have so much to do, son, it’s mind-boggling.”
“The thing is,” he tried again, circling around and blocking her way, “I couldn’t find Han anywhere. Have you seen him?”
“Han? No.”
“I have to find him, Mother. He’s my friend.”
“He’ll turn up. Everyone’s gone a bit missing right now.” She offered a quick smile.
“But what if he doesn’t? What if he ends up like those men lined up by the Japanese this morning? We have to do something. We have to find him!”
His mother turned. “Darling, I understand your concern. But I want you to look around and notice. All these people need our help, not just one. We have to think about the whole, not just the individual. Captain Hsu was saying something to me this afternoon that resonated so deeply. ‘The people, and the people alone, are the motivating force in the making of world history,’ he said. Isn’t that a simple, yet staggering, thought? These people, Charles, these people right here are the makers of world history. We need to face that extraordinary fact and help as many of them as we can.”
Color had come back into his mother’s cheeks, and her forehead glistened under her fallen wisps of hair. He could barely follow what she was talking about but thought that at least she wasn’t as miserable as she had been. His mother—lost for so many weeks and gone over to the ghosts—was now replaced by this manic person before him.
“Whatever you say, Mother. That’s swell. But I’m going to find Han. I’ll see you later.”
Before she could object, he had turned on his heel and left the house again.
In the ruins of the splintered guardhouse, Charles found Mr. Sung, the blind self-appointed watchman. With his three-legged stool nowhere in sight, the man crouched on his haunches, his can beside him, as always. The high ping of his betel juice hitting the tin was the most recognizable sound outside the mission.
“Esteemed Mr. Sung, are you all right?”
The old man stopped chewing and cocked his head. “American boy?”
“I didn’t expect to find you, grandfather.”
“I am here,” the old man said matter-of-factly.
Charles looked beyond the dirt road to the ditch, where some of the bodies of the Chinese men had still not been collected.
“Do you want to come inside the compound, sir?” Charles asked. “It would be safer.”
“I must not leave my spot,” the old man said. “It is my duty.”
Charles pressed his forearm against his eyes. “All right, then,” he said, mustering a voice as much like his father’s as he could. “Carry on! Keep up the good work! Fight the foe!”
The old man gave a blackened grin and saluted.
As Charles headed up the rutted road toward town, he tried not to stare at the dead bodies. Contorted in the worst possible ways, they lay in pools of blood, slick and iridescent as tar. Flies lit and swarmed. Charles yanked his gaze away and watched the millet swaying in the fields, golden in the sun. He tried to fathom how such a fine summer day could continue unchanged.
The town consisted of only several shops on one side of the main street. Across the way, the flimsy cardboard and splintered wooden stalls of the farmers’ market displayed meager root vegetables and fruit. The fishmonger also sold his catch there, if he had any. The Chinese usually had very little money, so commerce tended to be irregular at best. Still, Charles hoped to find his friend. He skirted piles of rubble, broken boards, and clods of soil where the land had been ripped open, Charles guessed by grenades. Hand-to-hand combat must have taken place here, but he saw no Japanese soldiers now. Instead, an eeriness filled the quiet town in the aftermath of that morning’s skirmish.
At the entrance to the market, several more Chinese soldiers lay dead. One boy had been bayoneted through the ribs and left to die beside another with his head tipped back unnaturally, his throat slit. Charles stared for too long and had to race to a gully to vomit. When he opened his eyes again, he saw that the churned-up soil before him had also run with blood. He knew he should turn back. He had no business being outside the mission. He had never seen anything like this, and he knew his mother wouldn’t want him to see it. She had tried to shield him for so long, but how could she here in China, where, even before this Japanese attack, illness, starvation, and other deprivations abounded? Charles thought his father had been right to introduce him to the legless beggar years before.
Look him in the eye, he had said, even if his eyes are crusted over and he cannot see you. Search, my boy, for the human soul inside the suffering.
But Charles wondered if even his father would have felt this was too much evil to witness. He wiped his mouth on his rumpled sleeve, then tore off his jacket altogether and, with shaking hands, placed it over the head and torso of the young soldier whose throat had been cut. Charles continue
d deeper into what remained of the market, searching for at least one open booth or anyone who looked familiar. He wanted to shout Han’s name but didn’t dare expose him. Although Charles still had not seen any Japanese soldiers, he worried that they could be anywhere, hidden in doorways or behind toppled carts. Farther down the destroyed row of stalls, Charles noticed that the Japanese fishmonger’s place had been burned to the ground. Sheets of paper stamped with the Japanese flag hung on what remained.
He finally stumbled on a stall that appeared open, two meager piles of shriveled turnips and potatoes displayed before the owner, who sat on a low stool. Charles bowed, but the woman’s dull eyes showed no recognition.
“Madam Chen, I’m Charles Carson. Remember me, from Sunday school? Your son and I, we played together years ago?” When he mentioned her son, Charles thought a flash of recognition passed over the woman’s face.
“Fifty thousand,” she said.
“Pardon me?”
“No less.”
“For turnips?”
She scoffed and looked away.
“Have you seen Han, by any chance?” Charles tried. “You know, the cook’s boy? He was in Sunday school with your son and me.”
“Do not mention my noble son,” she said, glaring now. “The boys are gone. No more boys. You go now, too.” She brushed him off as if he were an annoying fly.
As Charles thought about it, he realized she was right. On his walk through town, he had seen only elders and young children. A few mothers but no fathers, and certainly no young men who weren’t already soldiers in uniform.
“Where is everyone?” he asked. “Where are my friends?”
She spat on the ground. “They are not your friends. They were never your friends.”
Charles staggered back and took off running, dodging the craters in the road and the few remaining Chinese who walked with bundles on their backs or pushing cumbersome wheelbarrows piled high with junk. He passed more Chinese soldiers fallen by the roadside and didn’t want to look but made himself, to make sure they were not Han.
