Red Skies (The Tales of the Scavenger's Daughters) (3 page)

Chapter Three

B
y the next afternoon, the rain had not relented. With one hand on the tattered rope, her ladder over her shoulder, and one hand clutching her camera bag, Mari led the camel down the rocky path to the parking lot. In her cheap plastic slippers, her feet were already soaked, and since she’d run out of the apartment late and forgotten her raincoat, the colorful outfit she wore would soon be wet too. With her long, dark hair already damp, it would be a long walk to get the camel to his shed, and then back up the hill for her equipment, then a long walk to the bus stop where she’d get her ride close to home. Even thinking of it exhausted her. She just hoped the weather was a passing shower and wouldn’t turn into a thunder and lightning storm. Her small patio garden could use the rain, but only if it continued slow and steady, instead of becoming the torrential downpour that threatened.

The camel grunted behind her and stopped. Mari turned around and faced it.

“
Guo lai,
Chu Chu.” She urged it to come along. It stood its ground, glaring at her in defiance. It was no secret that he preferred to be handled by her husband. The beast hated women and always had.

Mari tugged again.
He will not win this battle
. Yes, the camel was cranky and tired, but so was she. At least she had been for the last few months, since her husband had fallen off the blasted animal and hurt his back. Now the business—their only livelihood—was totally in her hands. No longer did she simply bring customers in with gentle smiles and persuasion, hand them off to Bolin, then sell them a photo. Now she had to bring them in, get them dressed in traditional Chinese garb, help hoist them onto the camel, then even take their photo. What had always been too much for even two people now fell on her shoulders alone.

Finally Chu Chu moved forward a foot, and Mari sighed in relief, despite the pinch the ladder was making in her shoulder muscle. Then the camel stopped again.
What does the stubborn animal want?
Mari had already fed him, and she’d even covered his back with an old plastic tarp because she knew he hated the rain. Why did they have to own such a snippy old creature? Was he too drunk from the beers she’d given him? She knew alcohol wasn’t good for Chu Chu, but the tourists loved it, and Bolin made her promise she’d do it to give them a better chance at more tips. Now besides him being stubborn and drunk, the rain was making him smell horrid.

She looked behind the camel to see people hurrying down the lane, too inconvenienced by the rain to continue their sight-seeing on the Great Wall. They walked—some running—with their bodies bent and newspapers, bags, or umbrellas over their heads to keep from getting wet.

On each side of the road, the street merchants with small shops worked fast to pull their items in so they could close the wooden shutters and save their merchandise. It’d be a tough afternoon for most; because of the rain, they’d lose a lot of sales before nightfall. Mari cursed under her breath. She’d really started to hate her life and the selling competition that was such a big part of the Great Wall experience. But they were lucky. Permits to work at the Great Wall of China were hard to come by, and even with it, the government still got the largest piece of profit. It’d taken them three years to finally secure a permit for their meager business. Still, it had been better than working the farm. At least with their new life, they had some time left in the day that wasn’t dictated by watering, seeding, picking, or caring for animals.

Mari looped the strap of her bag around her neck and pushed the ladder higher on her arm so that she could use both hands to pull the camel. She dug her heels in and whistled, then pulled.

Chu Chu didn’t move an inch.

“Hello! Uh…
Ni hao
….”

Mari turned to see who was witnessing her embarrassing moment of tug-of-war with the camel and found herself face to face with a tall, light-haired foreigner with the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. He looked like what the elders called a foreign ghost.

“
Ni hao
,” she answered, then went back to tugging on the rope. Her humiliation reached a new level.

“You speak English?” he asked from over her shoulder.

Mari wanted him to go away. It was times like these she wished she was still a girl growing up in the warm comfort of the small neighborhood
hutong
in Wuxi. She missed the days when everyone knew her as the local scavenger’s daughter.

“Yes, I speak English.” Of course she’d had to learn basic English in order to do her job well. Most of her customers didn’t speak Mandarin, other than the occasional
ni hao
or
zaijian
. And learning English was one of the few things she’d done that her sisters hadn’t—something her parents proudly bragged about. But obviously this stranger assumed she was too poor or illiterate to speak another language. She stopped moving and took a long slow breath to calm herself. It wasn’t the man’s fault that her camel was a devil.

“You have your hands full. It looks like you’re leaving—or trying to—but I wanted to see if you have time to do one more photo. You’re the girl that does photos of tourists on the camels, right?”

She pushed a wet strand of hair out of her eyes. “I’m one of them, yes. But it’s raining.” She pointed at the sky, as if the man needed to look closer.

He laughed, and Mari was taken aback by the way his voice rang out, deep and pleasant, but strong, too. Strangely, he was not the least bit perturbed by the weather.

“I can see that. But it’s like this. If you’d take just one more customer, you’d help me out tremendously. I’m staying here in Beijing for a while, but my boss—see that man coming up the lane?—he’s come from the States to check up on me and sightsee while he’s here.”

Mari shrugged.
How is that supposed to affect me?

The man leaned in close and lowered his voice. “This will sound so silly, but here’s the deal. He leaves tomorrow, but he promised his bratty kids he’d get a photo of him on a camel at the Great Wall. I can take a photo, but I don’t have access to a camel. And if I don’t make this happen, he’ll
lose face
—as you people say here—and there’ll be hell to pay.”

Mari stepped back to get some space between them. He talked so fast, she only caught fragments of what he was saying. The intensity of his stare felt like he saw clear down to her soul. She didn’t like it, either.

She looked over his shoulder. There, huffing and puffing with a face as red as the inside of a ripe watermelon, was the biggest man she’d ever seen. Even in the cool rain, the
laoban
looked overheated but determined as he trudged up the steep walkway. He carried an umbrella, so Mari assumed the wet sheen on his face was sweat, not rain. He also wore a scowl that made him look like he was dragging the thunder right along with him.

“
Dui bu qi
, I was just leaving,” she apologized, but she needed to go on home. She really didn’t want to unpack her camera, set everything back up, then get even wetter just for a few renminbi. She tugged at Chu Chu. He resisted. Again.

“Look—please. I’ll pay you triple what you usually get. And your camel doesn’t look ready to go, anyway. Please.” His voice went up an octave as he looked quickly over his shoulder and saw his boss man getting closer.

Mari felt a rush of sympathy for the man at having such an angry-looking
laoban
. At least she didn’t have anyone but her husband to answer to, and he was in too much pain to care much about anything other than getting the medicine he needed to keep him out of his head.

She wavered. Her first impression was wrong—looking into his eyes, she saw intelligence, but also something more. Something deeper and intense. Something interesting.

He smiled, showing that he took her hesitation as agreement. “Great! You’ll do it. Here, let me lead your camel. Where’re we going?” The man reached over to take the rope from Mari.

“Wait. I didn’t say yes.” She jerked her hand back, keeping Chu Chu attached to her. The poor foreigner didn’t realize her camel would never move for him. He didn’t just hate women—he was also racist and hated anyone not Chinese. Just getting photos with them perched on his back was hard enough, but for a foreigner to lead him was out of the question. Chu Chu would spit right in the man’s face, if he got close enough.

The fat man arrived and bent over, putting his hands on his knees while he breathed deeply. Mari studied him. He was at least a head shorter than the light-haired man. She’d seen big foreigners many times, but this guy had no business trekking around in his condition. She wondered about his lungs and hoped they would hold out. She was wet and tired and didn’t need to be a part of a dramatic medical situation.

The fat man looked back and forth between them. “Are we ready? I have a meeting at the hotel in two hours,” he said, then slowly stood and examined Mari from head to toe.

Mari felt naked under his gaze, and it sent a shiver of revulsion through her. She knew her clothes were beginning to stick to her body, and the flimsy gauze of her costume left little to the imagination. She mentally berated herself again for forgetting her raincoat.

The nicer—and slimmer—one immediately came out of his jacket and took the ladder from her, then draped the coat around Mari’s shoulders. It was huge, swallowing her up and giving her instant relief from the chilly rain. He nodded approvingly. “Here, you can use my jacket until we leave.”

She met his eyes, and a look of understanding passed through them. His expression told her he knew his boss was a creep, but he needed her help anyway.

“Can we do this?” he asked. “It won’t take long.”

He waited for her to answer, and Mari could sense his silent plea. She sighed. She never could say no.

“Fine. But I’ll lead my own camel.” She turned and took a few steps. But to her continued embarrassment, Chu Chu still refused to move. She cursed him under her breath, then begged him to behave. He still stared blankly ahead, not responding.

“Let me try,” The tall one said, taking the rope. He swung his backpack around his shoulder and then used both hands to grip the lead.

Mari’s hands were chapped and sore, so she just let him have it. He was stubborn, obviously, so she supposed he’d have to see for himself that Chu Chu didn’t like foreigners. But to her amazement, the man began trudging up the hill and her stupid camel calmly followed as if he’d known him forever. The fat boss trailed behind them both as Mari stood watching, her hands on her hips.

The man leading Chu Chu turned around for a moment, smiling at her. “You coming? I don’t know where you want us. Can you lead the way?”

Mari threw her hands in the air, wondering what she was getting into. Then she let them flop to her sides and jogged to catch up to them. Could this day get any worse? At least with one more customer she’d be able to bring home a profit. Bolin would be pleased—if she could get him awake.

Mari quickly scrubbed the potatoes and sliced the peppers, then added them to the sizzling oil in the wok. After a quick glance across the room at her husband sprawled on the couch, she balanced the empty strainer on the pile of dishes in the sink, wishing again that she had more counter space. She knew she shouldn’t be ungrateful when so many had nothing, but the truth was she hated their stuffy apartment in the high-rise building. Bolin had acted as though they’d won the lottery when they’d finally been approved for the loan to buy it, but this place—it didn’t come close to feeling like the home she’d left behind when she’d agreed to marry Bolin. But surprisingly, he wasn’t even bothered by the unkempt look of laundry hanging out of every window of the grayish building and sagging balconies supporting plants and trees that wilted from the incessant pollution. Each time Mari walked up the street and their building came into view, she couldn’t repress a sigh of disappointment.

But perhaps things would change and her life would one day be what she’d hoped for when she’d accepted his proposal. And who would’ve thought that her taking the chore of visiting the vegetable market each week would net her a husband? She remembered the first day she’d laid eyes on him. He had been working hard to unload the baskets of vegetables from his father’s truck, the sheen of his sweat glistening on his muscles as he worked. He turned and caught sight of Mari, a glimpse that had startled him enough that he’d dropped the basket of turnips he carried, and they’d rolled quickly right to her very own feet.