Steven Harper - The Dragon Men

“Humans can be what they were supposed to be,” Gavin said. “No more, no less.”

“Here’s to no more.” Alice raised her cup, and they clinked in a toast.

“Where’s Phipps, by the way?” Gavin asked. “We need to talk to her about leaving, since the ship is finished.”

“Oh. Susan. Yes.” Alice cleared her throat. “Susan is staying on. As the new cultural attache. I believe she and Lieutenant-that is General -Li have formed an. . understanding, and Susan wishes to explore it.”

“You noticed that, too, did you? Huh. I never thought I’d see Susan Phipps with a gentleman caller, and definitely not one from China.”

“Yes, well, I never thought I’d fall for a cabin boy from Boston.”

“Street musician. I was a street musician. Starving artists have a lot more cachet, you know.” He devoured a bean bun. “There’s something I’m forgetting, though. It’s important, but it won’t come.”

“Well, we do need to talk about where we’ll go.”

Gavin set down the chopsticks. “You know, I hadn’t thought of that at all. I’d been so focused on China and the cure that I didn’t think of afterward.”

“We could stay in China,” Alice said. “Cixi would keep us as honored guests forever.”

“That’s a kind offer, but I want to be closer to home when we raise our children.”

At the word children , Alice wordlessly took both her hands in his across the table. “I agree.”

“Should we head for Boston, then? You haven’t met my family.”

“Your pardon, Sir.” Kemp poked his head into the room. A brass nightingale fluttered around his head. “You have a visitor.”

“Hello, hello!” called a new voice. “You there, Gavin?”

The doors to the courtyard slid completely open and Uri Ennock strode into the room, his white-blond hair shining in the morning sunlight. Alice stared, mouth agape.

“That’s what I forgot,” Gavin said sheepishly. “Alice, I’d like you to meet my dad.”

The rickety stairs creaked under Gavin’s shoes as he and Alice climbed the steps of the old tenement building. The place was dirtier and dingier than he remembered, and smaller, too. But the stairwell and hallway still smelled the same-boiled cabbage, urine, unwashed bodies. Doors cracked open, and eyes stared at him and Alice. Their clothes stood out as richer and finer than anything the people here might own, though Gavin had taken care to wear simple twill and flannel while Alice wore a plain blouse and skirt. He swallowed and kept climbing.

“Don’t be nervous, darling,” Alice murmured. “I’m not.”

Gavin didn’t respond to this. Any number of things could go wrong. The worst was that Ma or Gramps might be dead. Or Ma might be angry with him for not writing in so long, or for not sending money. Or worse, she might just be disappointed.

They reached the fourth floor, and Gavin automatically turned right, just as he had done every day when he was a child, though the hallway was narrower than he remembered. The only light came from a high paper-covered window at the end of the hall. The place was scorching in summer and freezing in winter. Right now, in early autumn, it was tolerable, at least. He went to the first door, and for a moment he was six. He even had his fiddle with him.

“I haven’t been here in years,” he whispered. “Do I knock or just go in?”

“Oh good heavens.” Alice reached around him and rapped smartly on the wood.

“Who is it?” came a voice from inside. The familiarity of it stung Gavin’s eyes.

“Ma?” he said hoarsely. “I’m home.”

The door banged open. Carrie Ennock, a short, thin woman with work-reddened hands and graying brown hair pulled into a bun, popped into the hall. “Good God! My Gavin! It’s Gavin!”

She reached up with both hands to pull him down for a kiss, then hugged him hard. The top of her head barely came up to his chin.

“I knew you were coming. I knew it!” Her low voice was filled with emotion. “After that long note that everyone heard. It was you. I heard you. Oh, I’m so glad you’re back!”

“I’m here, Ma.” Gavin’s own eyes were wet. “I’m sorry I didn’t write. It got complicated.”

“You’re here. You’re safe. That’s all I care about.” She hugged him again. “You’re so tall now. A man.”

“I never noticed you were so short, Ma,” he said, trying to lighten the mood.

She tapped his chest with her hand. “That’s enough from you, young man. And who’s this?”

He stepped aside. “Ma, this is Alice, my fiancee. Alice, my mother, Carrie Ennock.”

“How do you do?” Alice extended her hand.

“Well, that’s wonderful!” Carrie shook Alice’s hand, then embraced her, too. “Alice. I have a daughter named Alice. But I’m being stupid. Come in! Come in! This is your home, after all.”

The little two-room flat was just as Gavin remembered it-cramped and bare and cold. Carrie kept it clean, but sewing was spread out everywhere. Clearly she was still doing piecework for seamstresses and tailors, and Gavin wondered about her eyesight.

“Where is everyone?” he asked.

Carrie rushed about, clearing cloth off two ancient ladder-back chairs and offering one to Alice, who took it as if it were an easy chair in a high-class tearoom. She seemed not to notice the lack of light or heat or the cracks in the floorboards or the smoke streaks on the plaster, and for that Gavin was grateful.

“Well, let’s see,” Carrie said. “Jenny is with her Elmer, of course. They have two little ones now-Benjamin and Louise. You’re an uncle! Harry is. . well, he’s out looking for work, I imagine.”

Drinking, Gavin mentally filled in.

“Patrick found work down at the docks, which is helpful, but he hasn’t found a girl yet.” Carrie picked up needle and thread and started sewing again, an automatic gesture. She had to sew, Gavin knew, until the sun went down. Even her wayward son’s return wasn’t reason to stop, since she was paid by the piece. “And Violet’s at the factory. She’ll be off in a few hours. We can all have dinner together!”

Gavin could see she was calculating how to feed two more people on whatever was-or wasn’t-in the little cupboards. He reached out and stilled her hands with his own.

“Ma,” he said, “you don’t have to do this anymore.”

“What do you mean, honey?” She pulled away and went back to sewing. “I’m nearly done with this piece, and I can just get in another before dark. And what have you been doing? Talk to me while I work.”

“I mean, Ma, that you don’t have to sew anymore. Or work. Or live here.”

Her needle never stopped moving. “How’s that?”

From his pocket, Gavin took a thick stack of bank notes. He laid it on the table where Carrie could see it. She glanced at it but kept sewing.

“What is it?”

“It’s yours, Ma,” he said.

“Just like your father,” she replied, still sewing.

At one time, that remark would have made him angry. Now he was just curious. “How so, Ma?”

“You vanish, and you think money makes it all right.”

“Did Dad ever send money?” Gavin asked, surprised.

“For a while. Then it stopped. Just like-well, it stopped.”

“I talked to him, Ma. I found him.”

Now she did stop sewing. “Gavin Eric Ennock, don’t you dare come back into my life with wild stories that-”

“It’s true, Ma. He’s alive. I found him. In China. He’s not coming back, but he wrote a letter that explains everything.” From his pocket he took a handkerchief and unwrapped the silver nightingale. “I don’t blame you for being angry at him, or at me. Not all of it was his fault or mine. Part of it was the clockwork plague, though the plague was more our fault-mankind’s fault-than we knew.”