Thirteen Orphans

by Jane Lindskold

  “He ended up by saying ‘Riprap, you’re probably wondering why I didn’t tell you this before. I guess the truth is, I didn’t want to alienate you. I’d meant to tell you all along. That’s what those stories were for, so you’d have a foundation. Then when I was about ready, something would come up. I’d be gone, or you’d have a test, or there was some big game and I didn’t want to rattle you. I thought I’d have a long time. I’m not that old.

  “‘I have a bad feeling about this upcoming tour, though, and so I’m not taking any chances. Here it is, with my apologies that I didn’t do more to prepare you.’”

  Riprap hit the turn signal with unnecessary force and turned his car in to a paved lot on the edge of a park that bordered a pretty large pond, maybe even a small lake. Signs indicated the direction to the natural history museum.

  Riprap muttered softly, “My dad didn’t need to apologize. He did just fine.”

  “I’m sorry,” Brenda said again. She heard the echo of her words to Dad that night when they’d gone out to dinner with Auntie Pearl, and Dad had told her about his dad.

  Her heart ached for Riprap. At least she’d gotten to tell Dad in person that he hadn’t messed up. She fished around for something else to say. “When you were repeating what he wrote, you had him call you ‘Riprap.’ Is that what he called you?”

  “My nickname from the first time Dad had to go away and leave the family back in the States,” Riprap said, easing the car into a parking space and switching off the engine. “You know what riprap is?”

  “I don’t,” Brenda admitted. “I thought maybe it had something to do with rap music.”

  Riprap laughed and got out of the car. “Nope. Nothing like that, though you’re not the first to think so. You’ve seen riprap, even if you’ve never looked twice. Riprap’s those heaps of stones that are used to curb erosion or for the foundation of something, loose rocks, piled tight. They hold things together, even though nothing is holding them together.”

  “Oh.”

  “When Dad first went on a tour where the family couldn’t go along, I wasn’t more than about eight. People who meant well kept saying things like, ‘Charlie, you’re going to have to be the man of the family now, and help your mama.’ I got pretty scared. I went to my dad and asked him if he really had to go, because I wasn’t at all sure I could hold even myself together. He took me for a walk, and showed me where some riprap was, and then he said, ‘Charlie, what’s holding those rocks together?’

  “‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘except that they’re all together.’ And Dad said, ‘That’s right, and yet they are so strong in that being together that they can hold up whole buildings, and keep rivers from eating away their banks. That’s all you need to do while I’m gone, Charlie, be riprap. Hold yourself together, hold on to your mama and sisters, and everything will be fine.’”

  Brenda shook her head in disbelief. “That’s a lot to put on a kid.”

  “Not really. All Dad was saying was that I just had to be myself, and the rest would follow. He was saying I didn’t need to be the man of the family. He was saying I could just be me—or Riprap. That’s what he started calling me before he went, and pretty soon everyone else was too. I liked it. Charlie’s a family name, and being called Riprap made me feel like a unique me, not just one of the Charlies.”

  “I guess, but it still seems like a lot.”

  They’d left the car and started walking while Riprap told his story, going through the parking lot, and down through some plantings of roses toward the lake. The air blowing off the water was brisk, and Brenda’s long-sleeved shirt didn’t seem quite warm enough.

  “Hang on a minute. I want to get my jacket on.”

  Riprap waited, standing politely, and not looking to see what else was in the daypack, although Brenda bet he’d guessed.

  “That jacket got pretty torn last night,” he said. “Did you hurt yourself when you hit the pavement?”

  “I’m a little bruised,” Brenda admitted, “but less than I thought I’d be. I’ve been helping my brother Dylan practice his soccer scores. Goalies do a lot of diving.”

  “Good. You want to walk, or go into the museum?”

  “Let’s walk a bit. It’s easier to talk without being overheard.”

  “Right.”

  And it might be harder for someone wearing Chinese robes to sneak up on us, Brenda thought.

  “I haven’t forgotten that I promised to tell you about what’s changed with my dad,” she said, “but would you answer a couple questions?”

  “Ask. I’ll tell you if I can.”

  “Okay. You said your dad said the mah-jong set could be used to do other stuff than play the game. Can you tell me what?”

  “Sure, but I don’t know much. One is that it can be used to check the well-being of twelve other people.”

  He glanced at her, and she nodded that she understood.

  “The other thing Dad knew how to do was read who would inherit being the Dog. Apparently, it doesn’t always shift to the current holder’s kid. That’s part of the reason my family lost touch with the other Orphans. My dad inherited from an aunt, and that aunt wasn’t sure she liked that her kids were being passed by. She told my dad the bare minimum, and, of course, the mah-jong set didn’t come to him until after her death. My great-aunt didn’t even tell Dad who the other Twelve Orphans were.

  “My dad did a lot of research, though, and asked his mom, whose older sister this aunt was, for family stories and such. That’s the material he used to create the Brave Dog stories. To be honest, I’m not sure how exaggerated the Dog’s deeds might have been. Good stories tend to grow in the telling. What’s your other question?”

  “I saw you pick something up last night. It looked like the piece of paper that man threw at my dad. Was it?”

  Riprap hesitated, and Brenda thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he said, “I’ve got it with me. Come over to that bench out of the wind while I pull it out.”

  Brenda obeyed, and Riprap fished a small folder out of the long pocket on the inside of his windbreaker. He opened it, and let her examine what it held. On the surface, it was not very impressive: a long strip of pale yellow paper on which had been written in bright green ink five or so Chinese characters.

  “Do you know what they say?” Brenda asked.

  “No, and, sort of, yes. You see that one character there? The one that looks like a small ‘t’ walking with a raindrop next to it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s the character for ‘Dog.’ I think that man was throwing this at me.”

  Looking at the slip of yellow paper and thinking how a similar one had melted into her father’s face made Brenda shiver, never mind that her torn jacket was perfectly warm. She sprang to her feet and started walking.

  As soon as Riprap joined her, Brenda told him everything she could recall, starting with going to see Albert Yu, and what had happened there, then repeating what Auntie Pearl had told her.

  Riprap was a good listener.

  “So your dad really hasn’t changed a lot,” he said when she had finished.

  “No,” Brenda agreed. “That’s what has me so crazy. I mean, a week ago, he’d just seem like Dad. Now he seems like Dad, but not … What scares me is how well he fits things together around what must be holes in his memory. Like this morning he remembered meeting you, even remembered that you were going to call around noon, and he made up a reason why. But he didn’t remember the real reason that meeting had been set up. I’m sure of it.”

  “And if you hadn’t been there, and he hadn’t confided in you, no one would know the difference.”

  “That’s right. No one but Auntie Pearl, I guess, and some other members of the Thirteen—if they remember anything about anything. If this had happened some other way, Auntie Pearl might not even know, not for weeks or probably even months. It’s not like we live in the same city and get together a lot.”

  “I’d like to meet this ‘Auntie Pearl,�
�” Riprap said. “The notes my dad left talked about the Tiger, but they never mentioned who she was. Actually, I thought the Tiger was a he.”

  “I wonder if your dad knew,” Brenda said. “Auntie Pearl inherited from her father, and your family might have been already ‘lost’ when she took over.”

  “True. Tell me. If I found an excuse to get to Santa Fe while you’re there, do you think you can arrange introductions?”

  “Count on it. The plan from the start was for all of us to meet up and talk. Dad may have forgotten, but I haven’t.”

  7

  Pearl Bright walked briskly along the sidewalk bordering the east side of the Santa Fe plaza, glancing into the shopwindows as she went along, but seeing very little of the colorful chaos displayed within.

  The store that was her destination was adorned with, in comparison to its neighbors, relatively sedate window displays, but this did not mean that the clothing that was the focus of those displays was any less expensive. A relatively simple men’s shirt might be had for several hundred dollars, a woman’s skirt for three or four times that amount.

  Pearl paused in the cool depths of the doorway, looking to see if Des was within. He was not difficult to locate. In a city where the majority of the population was either Hispanic or Anglo, a pure-blooded Chinese stood out. However, Des Lee would have been noticeable in the heart of modern Chinatown—although not in the Chinatown of a hundred or so years before.

  Taller than the average and quite lean, Des wore his shining black hair in a long braided queue that reached past his waist. His forehead was shaven so far back that from some angles he appeared completely bald. As if to balance this, he wore a long mustache and a wispy chin beard. Neither of these concealed beautiful cheekbones and a strongly sculpted face.

  Pearl remembered a time when Des’s employers hadn’t permitted him to shave his head. He’d had to make do with theatrical makeup when he’d taken part in plays and authentic historical re-creations. His interest in theater was how Des had become friends with Pearl. When Des became involved with historical re-creation, the Rooster had not hesitated to call upon the Tiger for advice.

  These days, Des’s employers didn’t mind his odd style, partly because outré fashions were “in,” especially in trendy places like Santa Fe, partly because Des had become quite well known, at least among collectors of Western art.

  Des had posed for numerous paintings and had been the subject of one life-sized bronze. Hanging on the shop’s walls, Pearl noted, were prints featuring Des as a gold-rush miner, a railroad worker, even a cook. Des Lee was listed in the credits of numerous Hollywood movies, and was thanked in the small print of Broadway programs. His home was packed with photos, costumes, and other props, and he was not averse to wearing historical clothing on the street.

  Today, like all of those who worked in the store, Des was attired in an elegantly simple shirt and trousers meant to glorify the expensive attire he was selling. It said something about his personality that Des Lee looked neither ridiculous nor even particularly out of place, only exceptional.

  A saleswoman who exuded “friendly and approachable” from every pore moved toward Pearl when the Tiger crossed the shop’s threshold.

  “Welcome! Are you looking for anything in particular?”

  Too early in the spring for summer visitors, too late for snowbunnies. She’s hungry for a commission, Pearl thought, but she returned the woman’s smile with one equally warm—and equally false.

  “I’d like to speak with Des, but I see he’s with a customer. I’ll just look around until he’s free.”

  The saleswoman faded back, promising help if help was needed, but too well-trained to poach on her associate’s customer. But then Des was more than a mere salesman. He might work the floor, but he was also one of the store’s buyers. His choices, although often superficially peculiar, never failed to sell, so the manager paid him well and tolerated those times a modeling gig called Des away.

  Des gave no sign he had noticed Pearl, but continued to focus on his current client, giving him perfect attentiveness that never became fawning. Suit jackets, trousers, and silk ties were stacked by the register. When the customer turned to pay, Des gave Pearl the most infinitesimal of bows. Only when the client had departed did Des cross and bend to give Pearl a feather-light kiss on one cheek.

  “Pearl,” he said cordially. Then he dropped his voice and spoke in Chinese, “I was hoping you would arrive today. Your phone call left me very uneasy. The research I have done since has only served to make me even more so.”

  “I spent yesterday making phone calls,” Pearl replied, “before I realized that what I could learn over the phone would tell me little. Have you had any difficulties?”

  “Not here,” he said, “but …”

  He switched to English. “I have a break in about fifteen minutes. Perhaps I can take you for some tea.”

  “I’d like that,” Pearl said. “I’ll go wander under the portal at the Palace of the Governors. Come look for me there.”

  She left, knowing that Des would be as good as his word—and that the young saleswoman would in the meantime be thrilled with tales of just who that upright old lady had been.

  Had been. I still am … Toothless tiger. I’ll show them. Whoever “them” is.

  Pearl crossed the street and made her way through the crowded space beneath the portal. The area had never been wide, and now with over half the narrow walkway filled by Indians—or did they prefer “Native Americans” these days?—their handicrafts spread out on blankets, hardly enough room was left for walking.

  Pearl looked at the turquoise and coral, the blues and reds so familiar from her childhood in San Francisco’s Chinatown. The Chinese had never favored silver as much as gold, though, for reasons that had little to do with relative degrees of expense. White is the color of death, the paleness left when the blood ceases to move beneath the chilling skin.

  Pearls were white. She’d often wondered if her name held any hidden significance for her father. “Pearl” wasn’t an uncommon name among the Chinese, but still …

  Chinese brides wore red, and weighted their arms with gold and jade. Pearl Bright was all American, but if she had married, that old conditioning remained. She would have worn red.

  Des met Pearl within the promised quarter hour, and escorted her to a little café a block or so from the plaza. He seated her at one of the tables scattered under an awning along the sidewalk, and gave her a slight bow—Chinese style, with hands pressed together in front of him.

  “They have learned to make an excellent pot of tea here,” he said, his voice rising and falling in the singsong cadences of a stage Chinese. “This most humble one has had the smallest part in their success. If I might beg to order for the beauteous lady?”

  Pearl mimed throwing something at him, but found herself smiling nonetheless. She needed to smile. Very little of what she had to report would make either of them smile.

  Des emerged from the shop a few minutes later, and seated himself across the small, round table from her.

  “The tea will be out in a few minutes,” he said, his accent now wholly that of northern California, with only the faintest hint of a Chinese accent for flavor. “I ordered some almond wafers as well. They are wonderful.”

  “Thank you.”

  Almost unconsciously, Pearl replied in Chinese. Des had that influence on her. Besides, it would be safer if they held their discussion in a language that few eavesdroppers would understand.

  Pearl folded her hands in front of her. Many, many years ago, when she was still on the stage, her mother had taught her how the posture of the body could influence the mind.

  “Seem calm, and you will be calm, Pearl. Seem a lady of quality, and you will be a lady of quality. The Greek philosophers and those who followed their tradition argue eternally over the separation of mind and body. Those of us who escaped their influence know that mind and body are inseparable.”

  Pearl had ta
ught Des that same wisdom, and knew from his expression that he understood what she was doing.

  “So things are very bad,” he said, taking a seat across the table from her, and accepting, as she had known he would, her wordless suggestion that they speak Chinese. “I suspected as much from my own readings.”

  “Then they confirm what I told you?”

  “Yes. I did as you requested and did not review the e-mail with the details of the reading you and Gaheris Morris had done, nor of the ones you had done on your own until I had my own results. Mine were unsettlingly similar. I have written them down for you.”

  He reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a sheet of white paper. The writing on it was in Chinese, but he had eschewed the elaborations of an ink brush and written in ballpoint pen.

  “Very similar,” Pearl said. She glanced at the date and time of one reading, and felt a thin-lipped smile shaping her lips. “However, I am certain you wondered about this one. What it says about the fate of the Rat does not match the earlier readings.”

  “I did wonder, but I agreed with you that such matters were not to be discussed over a telephone. You do not look in the least surprised. Therefore, you know something.”

  “I had a phone call from Brenda Morris,” Pearl said. “Yesterday. She and her father found the Dog, but in the process they seem to have lost the Rat.”

  “Tell me.”

  Pearl elaborated what Brenda Morris had told her over the phone, including the meeting with Charles “Riprap” Adolphus and what she had learned about him. The cellphone connection had been far from perfect, the signal relayed over several mountain ranges, but Brenda had been willing—even eager—to repeat herself, as if in telling Pearl what had happened, she had handed over responsibility to the other woman.