by Stacey Lee
She shifts behind me. “Lots of women marry men they don’t love.”
“‘Don’t love’ is not the same as ‘dislike.’ ‘Don’t love’ is how I feel about cats—but they’re cute sometimes, even if they’re a little cocky. ‘Dislike’ is how I feel about squirrels. They scamper up your walls and down your clotheslines, always making a nuisance of themselves.”
“I told you, he’s my best prospect.” Her voice lifts with frustration. “My brother gets the restaurant. How else am I to make my way?”
“What I think,” I say slowly, “is that you know many ways to cook a noodle.”
We approach a pair of soldiers rummaging through a leather trunk as the owner stands by, and it provides a convenient end to further discussion on the subject. There’s a track mark in the soot from where the man dragged his trunk down the sidewalk. One soldier holds up a child’s stuffed bear, which is missing most of its parts but still managed to hold onto its fur. Not finding any purloined goods, the soldier waves for him to move on. The sight of the old man gently tucking the bear back among his clothes makes me want to give those soldiers a good dressing-down.
I tap Winter with my heels and move us along. A part of me understands the need to keep order, but another part worries that we are being led to fear the wrong things.
It’s just like Chinatown and all the laws passed to contain us. We were never the enemy. The enemy was our country’s own fear.
“Seems like insult on injury to have one’s home opened like that for the whole world to see,” says Francesca, directing my attention to a house whose front facade has completely fallen away. Save for a few broken lamps and scattered books, each room remains almost intact. On the ground floor, a chandelier swings over a grand piano, and a wall clock is frozen at 5:12. On the top floor, unmade beds and dressers with drawers pulled open keep the panic of the moment when the earthquake hit frozen in time.
“Yes. But I bet whoever lived there doesn’t care about that anymore. It seems the quake made us all rethink what’s important.”
We pass a store selling musical instruments. As with most stores on this street, the windows have shattered, leaving the instruments ripe for the picking in the display windows. But no one seems to have any use for a brass tuba, or a clarinet. There’s even a bugle, shiny enough for the angel Gabriel himself to play.
We approach Market Street, where the air seems to darken and clot. Dazed citizens stream around us, along with a handful of automobiles, but few seem to be going our direction. Something bad must be ahead.
I feel for Jack’s penny, still in my pocket. It may not be lucky, but its presence has remained a comfort, even a reminder that luck isn’t something to bank on. To the contrary, the only way to overcome hard luck is hard work.
A woman wails, “She’s gone! She’s gone!”
Another voice wails, “Blue! Bah-loo!” A small child points at the sky, which is so thick with smoke, you could drag a finger through it.
His mother tries to pull him along. “It’s not blue. It’s black, dear. Come along now, come along!” She yanks his arm.
“Blue!” he insists, plopping down on the sidewalk.
Winter moves us past them, and I don’t see what becomes of the little boy who the sky let down.
We cross Market, and move down Valencia into South of the Slot.
It’s as if the dragon and the tiger waged their final battle here, breathing fires across rooftops, stomping big holes in the ground, biting chunks out of buildings. The earth is a jigsaw puzzle, with cable car tracks sticking up at dangerous angles, and dust bleeding from every crack.
Several houses have sunk completely, all except their chimneys, stony periscopes into the chaos. Firemen and civilians run at the buildings that have not yet caught fire, stamping out smoke with wet sacks. The dragon’s hot breath is everywhere. A living, wheezing hell.
I don’t see any sign of Ba or his cart through the thick veils of debris. Winter stumbles on the loosened cement, but recovers. After several more paces, the Valencia Hotel appears in the distance, like a black smudge in a grainy world without color. Dark figures scurry around the front of the hotel, which appears much shorter than the four stories I remember.
Four thumbs its nose at me again.
I urge Winter forward, not sure I believe my eyes. The whole hotel seems to have bent so the top floor hangs over the street, like someone inspecting the rug for fleas.
“It doesn’t look possible,” Francesca breathes by my ear.
The building next to the Valencia has caught fire, and men scramble to put it out. Bottles of wine are poured on feed sacks, which are then used to flog any embers. “Isn’t wine flammable?” I ask.
“Not the cheap stuff.”
We cut a circle around them. There’s too much destruction for my horrified eyes to make sense of it all. Winter throws back his head at the louder noises, and I pray he does not bolt.
“Look!” Francesca points at a building across from the Valencia. At least, it was once a building. Now it is only a foundation made from piles of wall fragments and bricks. She inhales sharply and points. “Oh, Mercy.”
A flash of red protrudes out of a pile of rubble. The tongue of a cart!
With a cry, I slide off Winter and run toward the pile. Each labored breath feels like a hot sock stuffed down my throat. I collapse at the pile, gasping, then pry off the smaller bricks, one by one. The rough concrete tears at my skin, but I hardly feel it.
A gray cap peeks out among the rubble.
“Ba!” I scream, my eyes beginning to water. “No!” The bricks that have crushed him are the size of hay bales, but I continue to claw. If I could just—He can’t be gone!
“I’m here now, Ba. Hold on. I’m here.” I shove and strain at the cement blocks, trying to get the top one to budge.
A man runs up to me toting a bucket. “Move away, girl! The hotel’s going to drop soon, and you don’t want to be under it.”
“My father’s under here!” I scream at him.
“That building fell the first day. If he’s under there, he’d be long gone. Unless you want to join him, move away!”
I don’t listen. Instead, I climb through the pile and peek into any openings I can find, jamming my hands in, hoping to feel something. Dust blinds me, and the roar of people and the wind make my body hum. If I could just touch him, he’ll know I’m here.
Oh, Ba!
It all started with him. He bought me sugared peanuts after they refused to let us ride the boats. As I licked my sticky fingers, he told me I would have my own boat one day. I believed him.
Above and behind me, groaning sounds warn me to flee, but I ignore them.
“Move aside!” yells a voice.
“It’s gonna fall!”
It doesn’t matter what comes now. All that matters is getting Ba out.
A hand yanks me by the arm. “Mercy, it’s no use!” Another yank, and Francesca wrenches me off the pile. “He’s gone.”
“No.”
We stare at each other. Me, half crazed. Her, strangely calm.
“You have us now,” she says simply.
The words lift me from my stupor.
She pulls me away, and my traitorous feet follow. Tears stream down my face, and the collapsed balloons of my lungs strain to suck in air.
A loud crash like an exploding cannon deafens me. I stumble, holding my ears, while debris pelts me on the back. I whip around just in time to witness dust and fragments rising from the spot I was digging a moment earlier.
The Valencia Hotel officially lies in shambles.
If Ba wasn’t dead, then he is now. The horror of it sickens me, and my stomach bucks.
Francesca hugs me to her.
“I was too late.” I want to cry, but no tears come. I just feel numb and cold, like the day-old fish the fishmon
ger displays on ice beds.
All those plans I’d been hatching only hours ago flutter like moths and disappear.
I am nobody without my family, and that is the earthquake’s cruelest trick. It reminded me what was important, and then it took it all away.
“He was gone already,” Francesca is saying, sounding out of breath. “You heard the man. That building fell two days ago. It would’ve been quick, Mercy. He probably didn’t feel a thing.”
At least he did not know about Ma and Jack. It is one tiny blossom among a heap of ashes. I will return to the Valencia Hotel as soon as I am able and retrieve his body, or whatever remains.
Francesca hugs me again. “Come on, let’s go back to the park.”
She fetches Winter, who miraculously has not bolted.
Shakily, I begin moving, hardly noticing her beside me. I want to feel hard pavement under my feet, would give anything to mute the pain of having survived. Broken stones jab my soles, and still I don’t feel. Hugging myself, I soldier on. Pain moves us forward.
Ba’s ears were rigid. He was dependable, formidable, a warrior armed with his weapons of dolly and tub. He was fighting for our future, an endless, wearisome battle for a decent life. No man should have to work sixteen hours on his feet. He barely had time to sleep.
And now, sleep, he shall.
43
WHEN FRANCESCA AND I WALK WINTER past the music store again, the bugle is still there, winking at me, begging for me to play Taps.
I need that bugle, not just for Ba, but for Ma and for Jack. I don’t have their ashes or remains, but I’ll go to Laurel Hill Cemetery and burn paper for them. And after that, I will play taps. Anyone can play the bugle; there are no slides or valves. All you need is hot wind.
I dig into my pocket and pull out my five-dollar bill. The hang tag says one dollar, but I don’t need change.
“What are you doing?” asks Francesca.
“Buying a bugle.” I look around for somewhere to put the money. There’s no cash register. Someone must have taken it.
“Don’t you dare go in there. It’s like Gil’s Grocery. The ceiling could fall any minute.”
She’s right. As I stand in the doorway, debris snows from the ceiling. After the building collapses and catches fire, the money will burn, another offering for the dead. I place the money in the window, near the tuba, but Francesca retrieves it. “We’ll keep it. One day, we’ll find the owner and pay him.” She steers me away.
Lifting the bugle from its place in the broken window, I tuck it under my arm. The brass feels warm.
Francesca has begun to limp.
“You ride.” I hold Winter steady.
“Only if you do.”
I sigh. Her cheeks are rather bossy as well. “After you.”
We mount up, Francesca in front this time, and make our way back through the streets.
The smoke finally thins after we cross Market Street and continue west. The neighborhood, though crowded with people turning their houses inside out, looks positively idyllic when compared to the hell that is South of the Slot. Directly overhead hangs a cocoon of a sun coiled tight with gray clouds.
It must be past noon. Ah-Suk will be worried. Minnie Mae, Katie, and Harry must have already left. We never took that last walk.
People seem especially excited on this block, but maybe it’s because they’ve heard about the nearby fires and are anxious to save their belongings.
“—just around the corner. You don’t see that every day—”
“—must be searching for someone—”
“Maybe it is a sign—”
“George, leave that lamp. I’ve been itching for an excuse to get rid of it—”
“Chessie?”
Winter halts with a snort as three soldiers draw up in front of us, guns held at the ready. People scatter like chaff in the wind.
“Marcus!” gasps Francesca.
“I’ve been looking for you all morning.” He motions to one of his soldiers. It’s the man who shot the dog, Candlewax, and beside him, Private Smalls. Candlewax grabs Winter’s bridle.
Marcus narrows his eyes at me, and his sloped nose twitches. “You again. You know, Chessie, when you lie with dogs, you end up with fleas.”
Pressure builds on my insides, and it takes all my strength not to burst. “But, Chessie, don’t you know that when you are too liberal with your musk, even the fleas leave you alone?” I say.
Francesca bumps me with her elbow. “We are tired and quite thirsty. Kindly let us through so we may return to our camp.”
Private Smalls moves his horse beside us and eyes the instrument under my arm. “Lieutenant, she’s holding a bugle.”
“A bugle?” A smile makes Marcus’s oiled mustache hang like scarecrow arms. “Hand it here.”
“No.” I lift my chin, giving all a fair view of my cheeks, which despite my despair and loss propel me to defiant behavior.
Then Candlewax swipes it from behind, almost unseating me from Winter’s back. I grab onto Francesca, and the whole ship rocks.
Soon, the bugle is in Marcus’s hands, the price tag dangling from the neck. “Why, this looks brand-new. I don’t recall you having this last night, or surely you would’ve played it along with the rest of the hillbilly orchestra.”
Private Smalls scratches at his peeling neck. “Sure looks looted to me.”
“Marcus, it isn’t what it looks like.” The pleading note in Francesca’s voice makes me hate him all the more.
“I warned you against associating with the lower classes. They don’t think the rules apply to them.” He lifts the bugle like he’s making a toast, and his lip curls. “All I want to know is, why not the tuba?”
The other soldiers laugh.
My spleen has likely turned a poisonous shade of green. “I would think someone like you would appreciate the virtues of a good blowhard.”
His weedy eyes tighten. There’s a faint mole right between them, which Ma would say identifies someone whose life will be short. She says we should always have a kind word for people with marks like that, but even she would be hard-pressed to offer any kindness here.
“We have been ordered to shoot looters on sight,” he says, glancing at the others.
Candlewax’s gun moves like an adder, black and ready to strike, but Private Smalls holds his weapon more like a reluctant garden snake, uncertainly nosing one way and then another. Probably worrying over his future at Wilkes College.
Francesca clutches the reins too tightly, and Winter shakes his mane. “It’s true, she took it. But she wanted to pay for it, and I told her to keep the money for now. No sense in leaving it for someone to take. It’s right here.” Francesca waves the money. “Now leave her be. She hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“Well, I’d say she has you hoodwinked, Chessie. She’s one of the beetles I was talking about—a weevil, scavenging the fine grain of our society.” Marcus paces his horse beside us, his eyes never leaving me. Good ol’ Winter stands his ground, even with three horses boxing him in. “We need to pick out the weevils.”
“Go ahead. Pick me out.”
Francesca casts me a hard look, which clearly means Muzzle it, but I am beyond caring. As Ma always said, a straight foot does not fear a crooked shoe. “Killing a person takes sand. If you’re wrong, and I wasn’t looting, you will hang for murdering a United States citizen.”
He snorts. “Citizen? You are no more a citizen than that horse.”
We stare at each other like two frogs on a stick, seeing who will budge first.
Then, quick as the glint off a penny, he draws his gun, leveling it right at my head.
A strange thrill runs through me. Whether I live or die doesn’t matter anymore, only that I may win this one last battle.
“Marcus! No!” Francesca cries, nearly falling off Winter
in her haste to stop him. “Don’t you touch her. I’ll . . . I’ll marry you. Just leave her alone.” She puts her hands on his gun arm and gently pulls it down.
“What are you doing?” My stomach sickens at the thought that I have led her to take extreme measures.
“Shh, Mercy.” She shakes her head at me.
A smile courts Marcus’s mouth. “Chessie, you wound me. I rather hoped you’d give me your hand in marriage because you wanted to, not because I twisted your arm. I am not a brute.”
“Of course not,” she smiles sweetly, but I feel her tremble. “I was merely hoping that my future husband might show some generosity of spirit, as I know he possesses.”
“Francesca, don’t be foolish,” I hiss at her. “I will not let you do this.”
Marcus grins wide as the hunter who has trapped both the fox and the rabbit in the same hole. “Well, my love, because I am buttered over you, I accept your acceptance of my proposal.” He pulls his mustache, and I’m struck by how clean are his fingernails. “And at your request, I shall not harm this . . . weevil. Take her off.” He waves the bugle at me.
I am pulled off Winter and unceremoniously dumped on the ground, along with a snicker.
“Now then, my parents are waiting for us,” Marcus tells Francesca. “We’ve all been dying for you to make us some of your pasta.” With a sinking heart, I watch the four horses take off, Francesca twisting around one last time to watch me as they ride away.
I wish you well, my friend. May I see you again, one day.
44
THE SURGE OF ENERGY I FELT TOWARD Marcus drains away, and all my hurt rushes back with a laugh.
There is the pain of rising. I brush the gravel from my bloodied palms.
Mrs. Lowry says failure is not in the falling down, but in the staying down, and, Ma, I’m still upright.
There is the pain of forward motion. Joints crunch painfully together. Each step lights a fire in my knees.
There is the pain of memory. My eye sockets pulse, as if my brain is an overflowing vessel of injury.
His little fists grab me so tight. Why do you have to go?