A Paper Son Read online

  “Time to go,” he said. “Now.”

  “Four women,” I said again. “I’m looking for four women.”

  He shook his head. “Wrong place,” he said. “Warehouse, not whorehouse.” He allowed himself a small smile at his joke—apparently my threat levels were decreasing. “You should learn how to spell. Let’s go.”

  “No, please,” I said. “Mahjong players. I’m looking for the mahjong players in that machine shop. With the printing equipment.”

  He lowered the pipe a few inches but his face showed no recognition.

  “Does that sound crazy?” I said. “Do I sound crazy to you?”

  “Crazy or drugs,” he said. “Either way, time to go.”

  “What about a magazine?” I said. “A journal? Is there a journal here?”

  He shook his head. “No books here,” he said. “It’s a warehouse, not a library.”

  “No, its offices,” I said. “The Barbary Quarterly. Is its office here? Do they print something here?”

  He shook his head.

  “Publishers?” I said. “Editors?”

  “Shipping only,” he said. “Nothing else.”

  “Do you play mahjong?” I asked him.

  Impatience flashed back across his face. The pipe rose; the threat levels were rising again. He stepped away from the stairs and pointed down them with his empty hand. “We can talk more outside.”

  I glanced back into the storeroom and beneath a low shelf along the back wall I noticed what looked like the corner of a small white block. “Hang on,” I said. I darted in, ignoring the man’s shout. I picked up the block and turned it quickly over in my palm. It was cool and heavy and smooth, and it seemed very old. A Chinese character had been carved into one side, and painted blue. I slipped it into my pocket just before he rushed through the doorway. He was holding the pipe in both hands now, like a batter ready for a fastball.

  I turned away from him and tried to cover my head with my arms. “I’m sorry!” I said. “I’m going, I’m going!”

  He stayed in the doorway, the pipe still raised. I stole a look at him through the useless barrier of my arms. He was searching the room, perhaps trying to figure out if there was anything at all in there worth stealing. Eventually he backed up, but didn’t lower the pipe. “You need help, buddy,” he said.

  Once outside I called Annabel. “Where are you?” I said.

  “Still at school,” she said, “working on my report cards. How are yours coming?”

  “Don’t leave,” I said. “I’ll be right there.” I flagged down a cab and ten minutes later I was in Annabel’s classroom. I dropped the tile into her hand.

  “It’s a mahjong piece,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. “I found it.”

  She took it and turned it around and over in her hands. “It’s hand-carved,” she said. “Ivory. Rare. Where did you get this?”

  “Pier 23.”

  “The bar?”

  “The office in the warehouse. Remember when I asked you about the Chinese quadruplets?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “I went back. So what does it say?”

  “Bak. North.”

  “North?”

  “It’s one of the wind tiles. The North Wind. Bak Feng.”

  “Come with me,” I said.

  “Where?”

  “To the top of the hill.”

  On our way out, Franklin noticed us through his office window and gave us a wave. We walked up the few blocks that led to the crest of Russian Hill and the view to the north opened up before us. The clouds seemed a little less dark than they’d been lately and though the rain was steady it had lessened a bit. The Golden Gate Bridge was mostly visible; only the tops of its towers were hidden in clouds. At the far end of the span the hills of the Marin Headlands bristled with thick scrub, all the way down to the waterline. The bay, gray and empty, stretched back and around, narrowing as it reached inland for the delta. A lone ship traversed the water, a passenger ferry circling slowly around Angel Island.

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking for,” she said.

  A trio of pelicans cruised through the rain in a loose wedge, far away and high above us.

  “Neither do I,” I told her.

  She slipped her hand into mine and we stood there watching for a time, waiting for something to reveal itself.

  ***

  That night a vicious surge arrived and killed five people across the Bay Area, three of them in San Francisco. Of these, two were the victims of a car crash in which a little pickup truck, going too fast down Valencia, had hydroplaned through a red light and slammed into a bread delivery truck. I watched the coverage on the little television in my room when I awoke. The graveyard-shift camera crew revealed the scene—a crumpled pickup on its side, the banged-up bread truck, and all around them loaves of bread wrapped in cellophane, pieces of metal, broken glass. The shards glinted in the cameraman’s spotlight and looked like a constellation in the roadway. The third death was an elderly man who had fallen, hit his head, and drowned in his flooded backyard. The newscaster, wrapped in a shapeless black raincoat, stood out on the sidewalk, ropes of black hair whipping around her face. She squinted into the wind and rain and shouted wild speculations about sleepwalking and medication. Behind her, the paramedics wheeled a gurney through the rain, a white sheet draped over the body. A sudden gust of wind came up and pulled back a corner of the sheet, revealing a booted foot.

  I arose and climbed into the shower with the image of that boot stuck in my head. I have never liked seeing dead people’s shoes. I don’t mean the slippers sitting on the floor next to the hospital bed, or the loafers on the guy in the casket. I mean the regular shoes of people who awaken and get dressed with no idea they will die that day. The pictures appear on the news: the jeans and worn-out tennis shoes sticking out from beneath the earthquake wreckage in some third-world backwater with no building codes; the basketball shoes and too-long shorts on the inner-city kid caught in a drive-by. I always picture these people on the morning of their deaths, in that quiet, concentrated moment as they tie their laces, or clasp their buckles. I want to go to them then and say, I’m sorry but you’re going to die today—are you sure those are the shoes you want to be in when it happens? When I die I don’t want to be wearing shoes. I want to have just enough notice so that I can pull them off and get comfortable. Shoes mean death snuck up on you. Shoes mean you had other plans.

  In the living room Eva was asleep on the couch and Lucy had stretched out on her piece of floor behind my desk chair. She heard me in the kitchen and after some stirring and grunting she opened her eyes.

  “Hey,” she said when she saw me. “I need your help.”

  “The guy?” I asked.

  “I got a job interview.” She yawned and shot a dirty look at the weather.

  “I think you’re supposed to do those on your own,” I said. “Do you want some coffee?”

  “Sure,” Lucy said. “I just need a ride. And maybe a reference, but not as my brother.”

  “What, as your landlord?” I said. I went to work grinding the beans.

  “As a teacher.”

  “That wouldn’t be too much of a stretch,” I said. “What kind of job is it?”

  “A nanny,” she said, “in Tiburon.”

  “A nanny? Do you even like kids?”

  “It’s live-in,” she said. “They have a separate cottage on their property and I’d get some meals and cash and all I’d have to do is hang out with a couple of kids. It would solve the majority of my current logistical issues.”

  “Boys or girls?”

  “One of each.”

  “How old?”

  “I don’t remember, exactly. One of them, the boy, was kind of young, I think, and the girl was kind of in-between.”

  “In between what?”

  “In between young and old.”

  “Wouldn’t you need a car?”

  “They want me to use o
ne of theirs,” she said. “So maybe you could say that I volunteered in your classroom, and that I’m great with kids, and whatever. You’d know what to say.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But under two conditions. Come volunteer in my classroom, and be great with the kids.”

  She sat up. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. When’s your interview?”

  “This weekend.”

  “Better get your ass up,” I said.

  ***

  “It’s been raining twenty-four days in a row,” Kevin said to Lucy, by way of an introduction. He turned to me. “Hey Mr. Long,” he said. “Did you see about that guy that drowned in his yard last night?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He hooked his thumbs beneath his backpack straps. “And did you know that a fish can drown?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Well they can,” he said.

  “You mean if they’re taken out of the water?”

  “Even in the water it can happen,” he said, “if there isn’t enough oxygen. Isn’t that weird?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It is.”

  He shook his head as though awestruck by the world’s great nuances and headed to his desk for a session of multiplication drills. I invented a couple of activities for Lucy that morning to get her involved with small groups of some of my more reasonable kids, but just after lunch I had a better idea. I collected the class on the floor, planted Lucy on a stool, and handed her my worn copy of James and the Giant Peach. My plan was to knock out a couple of progress reports while Lucy and Roald Dahl occupied my kids for twenty minutes or so. But when I sat down at the computer I couldn’t shake the image of those little red flowers.

  Throughout the summer the strange plants continue to grow. The grains grow at their normal rate—perhaps even a bit faster, some say—and as autumn approaches the town throws itself with zeal into planning the annual harvest festival. It will be in proportion to the crop: twice as long, twice as festive, twice as debauched.

  It is within these heady days that Hui, who has spent much of the summer out of sight, emerges, and begins to voice his concerns. As bountiful as the crop is this year, he cautions, it is a bad omen. He has been studying the signs carefully, he says, and he has found nothing in the calendar that foretells this fortune. The ancestors are indifferent to this year, he says. It is great luck, yes, but it is misplaced. It is someone else’s luck. He is too easy to ignore, however. There is dissent, even among the council. Hui’s interpretations become even easier to disregard when he issues his recommendation—if the plants are producing twice as many grains as they should, then half of the crop ought to be destroyed. Balance will be restored. The coming debt will be averted. Those who have been ignoring him continue to do so, and those who haven’t react with anger. What Hui is asking is unthinkable. Many of them have already spent much of the money they will be earning after the harvest. It is madness, they say, for him to try to erase this fortune. His age is catching up to him; the stale air and the incense in his rooms have softened his brain. But Hui is persistent. This winter will bring cold and misery, he says. Once the crop is harvested and sold, he says, the ancestors will find a way to collect their due. When the crop is harvested and sold, the villagers retort with laughter, and the winter grows cold, we will be able to burn our riches, and warm ourselves by their fires.

  And then early one foggy morning Peng-tze makes his third discovery. He wades into the paddies to check on his plants and when he reaches the first row, he finds that some of the developing grains have fallen from their panicles. He bends closer and finds the empty spots are stained a dark red. A light breeze arises, and as he watches, another grain loosens and falls to the water below. In the resulting wound, a single droplet of blood appears. Peng-tze leans closer, feeling cold and ill. The droplet grows, begins to droop, and finally it lets go of the plant. It plummets to the water and spreads into a flower, with ragged petals that grow and thin, and disappear. Another grain falls, and then another. Peng-tze turns and runs back to the village, as he has done twice before. By the time the other farmers have made it into their fields, there is no need for a careful examination. The sound of rice grains splashing into the water is like a hailstorm. The farmers retreat to the fields’ edges and watch the water change from brown to deep red.

  The first of the sicknesses is discovered that afternoon. It is one of the farmers’ sons. He lies on his bed, the color drained from his face, his mouth dry as a desert, his eyeballs shrinking in their sockets, his breath rasping in his chest like the sound of a breeze stirring up dead leaves.

  The council convenes immediately, and nobody speaks as Hui declares, in quiet tones, what must be done. It is decided.

  TWELVE

  The bell was ringing. I looked up with surprise and more than a little disappointment to find my class watching me expectantly and Lucy sitting with James and the Giant Peach in her lap. This wasn’t where I wanted to be. It was time for their afternoon recess, or it would have been if their playground hadn’t been buried under six inches of water. Lucy had been reading for nearly an hour.

  I hopped up from my desk. “Okay, bathroom break,” I said, pulling myself out of my story. “Get some water. Do some jumping jacks. Come back dry.” They stood and shuffled out of the room, still subdued from their extended story time.

  “Sorry,” I said to Lucy. “I got hung up with something.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “I could read this book all day long. I forgot how good it is.”

  “They like you,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been able to keep them quiet for that long.” Not that I would have tried. I had to hope none of my kids would report that their teacher’s sister had read to them for half the afternoon. Too many of their parents considered it their personal duty to ensure that I was properly spending California’s tax money, which usually meant I was to be doing things at all times that they themselves couldn’t do at home—and they could all read James and the Giant Peach.

  After the final bell, once my kids had all stomped back out into the wet city, Annabel came through the door. I made the introductions. Lucy knew about her, but I hadn’t yet had the chance to tell Annabel much about Lucy.

  “I came out to help you guys,” Lucy said.

  “With school?” Annabel said, looking confused.

  Lucy shook her head.

  “I can fill you in later,” I said. “It’s sort of involved.”

  “An old Chinese phantom rearranged my furniture, led me across the country, and may or may not have had a hand in helping me remember seeing Peregrine drown, which occurred when I was halfway across the country,” Lucy said. “So I’m an official member of this little team here.”

  Annabel looked like she was on the brink of losing composure. She looked at me and then back at Lucy. “Um, welcome aboard?” she said.

  “Thanks,” Lucy said, with a big smile. “Maybe we could get some shirts made or something.”

  “Well, since we’re all here,” Annabel said, recovering, “I’ve got an update.” She pointed at the mazes and their smeared red solutions. “I have a translation. Ready?”

  I nodded.

  “‘I think of my little boat, and long to be on my way,’” Annabel said.

  Chills rippled across the skin of my arms. I watched her face for a smile, a flash in her eyes, some indication that she was putting me on. But none appeared. She was watching me as closely as I was watching her.

  “So clearly something happened there,” she said.

  I would have liked to think I was forgetting something—some template I’d copied, or a pattern from a coloring book, some characters lifted from the back of a cookie fortune, anything—that could explain how this line had worked its way into my mazes. But I knew I wasn’t. The memories of working on them on the floor beneath my mom’s table were absolutely clear. I looked up at them, studied their red strokes. They made me feel very small, small and not myself. And then I re
alized something I probably should have noticed before: I’d hung them up facing inside. She’d read them from the outside. The solutions to my mazes were not the characters themselves, but their mirror images.

  “There’s more,” Annabel said. She handed me another manila envelope the size and thickness of a copy of The Barbary Quarterly. “This was in your box.” On the cover of this one was a photo of an old Chinese man sitting on an upturned bucket, a small stringed instrument perched on his knee and a bow in his hand. I couldn’t remember having seen the instrument before, but somehow the crash of recognition was strong enough to push the mazes right out of my thoughts. I knew the angles of the musician’s wrist and the curve of his right arm as he held the bow against its strings. I could see the way his left hand would dance and tremble up and down its neck. I could hear—had been hearing—the lilt and warble of its mournful voice for weeks now, coming out my shower, coming out of the sea.

  Lucy was looking over my shoulder. She planted a finger on the musician’s chest. “I know that guy,” she said, excitement in her voice.

  “What, personally?”

  “Yeah. I made out with him at a party. No, not personally.” She pointed to the photo’s background. “That’s Sproul Plaza,” she said. “He’s there all the time. At least, he was when I was at Berkeley, however many years ago that was.”

  I leaped out of my seat and started gathering my things.

  “I’m coming,” Lucy said.

  “Me too,” Annabel said.

  It wasn’t yet rush hour but traffic knotted the streets leading to the Bay Bridge’s on-ramps. We learned the reason from a radio report—there had been a wreck on the span and three of its five eastbound lanes were blocked. It took us over an hour to make it onto the bridge and up to the site of the accident, where a tight circle of ambulances, police cars, and tow trucks hid the wreckage, as if shielding it from our eyes. Or perhaps it was us they were shielding, from this reminder of the fallibility of our reactions, the fragility of our cars and lives.

  After another half-hour we’d found a parking spot and were making our way on foot up Telegraph Avenue, where the weather had done nothing to diminish the clamor. Silver jewelry on vendors’ tables glittered darkly inside caves made of tarpaulins. In the air above the sidewalks incense smoke drifted, resisting the rain’s attempts to drive it into the sidewalk. We crossed Bancroft and entered Sproul Plaza, the heart of campus. It was the top of the hour, between classes, and the plaza was busy.