Lucky Turtle, page 29
“She owns the building,” he said. “Rental units upstairs, rental unit in the basement. She occupies the first and second floors, new steel deck out back, which must have views clear to Taishan.”
“Focus,” I said. “We’re here to ask about Lucky.”
“That was about Lucky!”
We climbed the high stoop.
Ricky, no hesitation, banged the polished knocker six times, one for each day of my journey. Shortly the door opened, and it was no servant but the woman herself, a little stooped, and that was it for aging, as tanned as ever, eyebrows raised high: we recognized each other. She didn’t invite us in, even blocked the doorway. Behind her you could see it was a nice old apartment, big bright windows in back, the Pacific horizon. She wore a surgical mask, not the first I’d seen, but close, the pandemic and what to do still such a mystery, not for long.
“Grandma,” Ricky said.
“Oh Lord,” she cried. Because here was the only man who could move her, this one right in front of her, her only grandchild. She tugged her mask tight, and they fell into a hug—Dora Dryden Conover, a hug! Well, I’d seen that before. She held her breath, held him out to look. “You’re a big creature,” she said, audibly conserving that breath. She backed away, took a big gasp of air. “The news from Italy, terrible,” she said, meaning the Covid-19 news, which very soon we’d all of us be paying closer attention to.
“Is my father alive?” Ricky said, always to the point.
“I said just you,” she said sharply.
“Hello, Dora,” I said.
“Your father is alive,” she said only to my son. “But I’m afraid it’s bad news. He’s homeless. He’s broken. He’s irretrievable. I wouldn’t go looking.”
“Alive,” I said, calling her out for the lie.
“If you call those shelters living,” she said unrepentant. Then to Ricky alone, “Oh, Richard.”
“Mountain Turtle,” Ricky said.
She jerked her gaze to me. What rubbish had I been feeding him? She took another deep breath, stepped forward bravely, always with the theatrics, took his face in her hands.
“Your father was abandoned. Left to his days in prison. Now in a prison of his own. He speaks ill of your mother. He shouts at tourists on the sidewalks. He spits and swears. Tell her she best not go looking. She was the root cause. The repercussions ruined me as well.” She stepped back, breathed. Stepped back a little farther.
“You look pretty comfortable,” Ricky said, not one for drama.
Hers or mine. Because I’d fallen into tears. With her words she’d pushed me back through the membrane of magical thinking, self-recrimination: Lucky alive, Lucky harmed, my fault, this blondie with her beautiful life.
On Dora went, now safely back in her foyer, easing the heavy front door into our potential paths: “But there’s something you can do to help. You, Ricky. A battle we can win, though your father may be lost.” She shoved the door shut behind her, a massive blue-enamel thing, precision fitted, her finger in the air to say, Wait.
Ricky put his arm around me, pulled me to him. “Alive,” he said.
“Don’t listen to the snake,” I said.
“I’m hearing only the good words,” he said.
And then the old viper was back, flick-flick of her forked tongue. She handed Ricky a plain folder labeled montana. “Simply put, I need an heir,” she said. “More important, Far Turtle needs an heir. These Free Men have gone mainstream. They are the local government up there, and the media, and the banks; they own all the businesses. Mind your birthright, young man. They killed Far Turtle, your kin. They ruined Lucky every way they could from a child to this very afternoon. They’re not done with you either, is my guess. But at last, you must win for me, dear Richard, you must win.”
“But what is it I’m supposed to win?”
“Richard, dear boy. Pay attention. There’s a trumped-up lawsuit to strip us of Turtle Butte Ranch, articles of abandonment, they’re calling it. These men want to seem like concerned citizens, but in fact they’re thugs. They’ve made their own laws, but they can’t change Federal law, and our claim is absolute. Your claim, I should say.”
Ricky stood taller. “What about Lucky Turtle?” he said. “What about my dad if he’s alive?”
“He’s not,” I said.
“Lucky won’t take part,” Lucky’s own mother said. “Lucky won’t see me. Lucky won’t see you either, is my guess. After prison, the one you put him in, Cindra”—flick, flick, forked tongue—“I collected him, I took him in, I tried to open him back up, but they’d broken him. He lives from shelter to shelter and alley to alley. He drags a wagon hither and yon. He lives on the docks. He begs for food. There’s nothing to be done.”
“There’s something to be done,” I said.
“Well, it won’t be you who does it,” Donut Dora said.
“We’ll find him,” Ricky said, calm as topsoil. “And whatever’s to be done, we’ll do it.”
“You will do it, Richard, just you. Ask your treacherous mother if she recalls the name Dale Drinkins.”
“Do you remember that name, treacherous Mom?”
I laughed and said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake. Dora, you’re pushing every button.”
She scowled, she glowered. “Richard, of course she remembers him. Well, now he’s their fixer. Tried getting me out on a date. Well, in fact I went. Dinners in Billings after Lucky was put away. Thought he’d charm me. I learned soon enough. Never signed a thing, none of his phony papers. Your mother brought him down upon us. It’s you who must take this on, Richard. Think of your birthright.”
“Take what on, Grandma?”
“Please don’t call me that.”
“Win what?”
“We’ve a court date in ten days. The info is in that envelope along with authenticating artifacts. There’s no way I can attend with my health. Your appearance here today is auspicious. You are in fact the heir. Where I was but an illegal wife. Our lawyers will be there. I’ve long since told them about you, and they’re very excited we’ve found you. The goal is simply change of venue, Federal court. Where we will prevail. But you must be there. The lawyers will call.”
“Grandma, I’m in grad school.”
“It’s your heritage, Richard!”
And that was it. Silhouette against the big light of her windows, she backed into the safety of her home, shut the door against considerable air pressure. How long had she been preparing this speech? Ricky, unperturbed as always, asked his phone for an Uber, and we walked downhill to the intersection to wait, still under the eyes of that house.
“Let’s see,” he said, and opened the big envelope, discovered more envelopes inside. The first held Lucky’s grandfather’s railroad ID: Robert Sing, address and birth date both listed as unknown.
“Authenticating artifact,” Ricky said wryly, but put it to his heart, pressing hard.
Next envelope held four photographs, poorly kept, perhaps always in Dora’s purse, tearing at old folds. Two close-ups from the same sitting, same sober gentleman, slicked black hair, shirt of mattress ticking, tightly closed collar, burningly intelligent eyes, delicate features, almost pretty, tight lipped in one, vague smile in the other: Far Turtle, Robert Sing, Lucky’s grandfather. The next shot was of a kid in uniform, US Army, the name Sing above his shirt pocket. Lucky’s dad, Thomas Sing, who’d rejected his Turtle name. The next photo was of him and Dora, his arm around her, dazzling beauties, both of them, children, really, the triumphant smiles of those who have escaped their fate: also the unending kiss.
Why no picture of Lucky? We studied the shot of the happy couple, soon to be parted. “See what’s in her hand?” Ricky said. He thought it was a bouquet and this their wedding, but no way they’d been wed: I thought it was money, a huge thick wad of cash, pai gow.
In the next packet were more photos, those square old Brownie shots, some with deckled edges, all dated in the borders, midsixties: Thomas Sing’s first photos. Not offered as examples of his living hand and eye but simply as evidence. Far Turtle with horses, Far Turtle with sheep, Far Turtle with two men. One of whom—oh my god—was Clay Marvelette, handsome cowboy, age about mine now. The other must have been Joh Johman, broad shoulders, big toothy smile, the only smile to be seen, ten years older. Far Turtle, then, ten years more, posing beside the house he’d built and been shot in, the little house that Lucky had grown up in until that date, demolished in sorrow by the time I got to Challenge. Ricky and I handed the photos back and forth in silence under hot sun, stared at each one a long time: Far Turtle.
“Nice of her to give these to us,” he said.
“It’s not nice,” I said. “It’s self-serving. And there must be many more. Thomas Sing was a photographer most of his short life, remember? She’s got a cache somewhere. She and Far Turtle must have treasured them.”
“Far Turtle is dead,” Ricky said. “And Thomas is dead. But my father is alive.”
“‘Homeless,’” I said. “‘Ruined.’ It’s nonsense. She only wants to hurt me. She only wants you to do her dirty work. Your father is dead.”
“Mommy, he is alive.”
The car pulled up and we climbed in back. Ricky opened the next envelope, drew out a brittle document, handwritten, perhaps by a scribe, dated 1933, the cursive so elegant that today it might be mistaken for a font. Ricky looked at it closely. “Letter of Understanding,” he read. “I hereby place under the custody of Joh Johman the lands of the Turtle Butte Ranch as purchased from Aapo Johman and as outlined by the coordinates designated herein below and upon the enclosed deed of ownership. Be it known that this custody is in constitution a formality meant only to aid in the legal registration of said deed.” And signed Robert Sing, same handwriting, Chinese characters alongside, indescribably beautiful, not so much for their form but for the realization that Lucky’s grandpa had drawn them, sitting side by side with Aarto’s, maybe another decade older, Joh, as well, who’d have been barely twenty-one. We touched the characters wordlessly—perhaps the old name was not lost after all—the car falling down the grand hill, our driver oblivious of the momentous doings in his back seat.
I said, “She’s had this stuff in her possession all along.”
“All along,” Ricky said.
In the next envelope was the deed itself, original signatures.
The next document was Lucky’s Seattle birth certificate. We looked that over closely, too: Lucky Sing. October 8, 1972.
“I’ve never known his birthday,” I said.
“A Libra,” Ricky said.
“Whatever that might mean. He was Lucky Turtle, he would say, and not a Libra or anything else.”
“He’s alive,” Ricky said.
“If we can believe Dora.”
“If we can believe Maria.”
“Those are two big ifs.”
“Well, let’s go with it. Let’s say we believe. Let’s err on the side of believing. It’s a non-zero possibility. I mean, why do we believe he’s dead?”
“Death certificate?”
“From Walter, Mom.”
“Oh, Ricky,” I said.
“And why do we think he’s in San Francisco?”
“Maria,” I said.
And Ricky, so focused: “So that’s better than non-zero. Now we’re into non-negative. And if we believe based on non-negative possibility, then we know my father is homeless. In San Francisco. Momma, we can find him.”
“How do you propose we do that?”
“There are homeless shelters. We’ll visit them all. People on the street know one another. We’ll ask around.” And then, as the Uber driver carefully bumped over streetcar tracks (crowds coursing obliviously, a mask here, a mask there), Ricky drew out the thickest envelope, opened it, found it full of newspaper articles. The car climbed precipitously. No time to look. We’d arrived at the diplomat’s secret driveway, maze of inclined streets under Coit Tower.
“You take all of this with you,” Ricky said. “I have class at three-ten. Take all this stuff, look it over, and ponder. I’ll be back tomorrow. I’ve got lab all morning, class at one, so after that.”
“The seventh day I arrive.”
“That’s right. Stay positive, Mom, okay?”
“I’ll stay non-negative, how’s that?”
In the diplomat’s house I watered plants, I fed the fish and the reptiles. After a shower, after a nap, after a snack of pet-store crickets, just kidding, I pulled out the newspaper clippings, several dozen, all short, all about my escape from Camp Challenge. The whole affair had been framed as a kidnapping, Dora Dryden Conover throwing her own son into the fire in multiple stories, calling him an “errant Indian.” Her own son, let me repeat. “A misguided Native youth,” she called him in an extended interview that turned into a plea for donations. A youth whose true heritage she knew, and intimately. I was identified in various articles as a camper, a minor, a model Challenge inmate, never named. She hadn’t wanted to lose her grants! Lucky was identified as Mr. Turtle, which would have been amusing if it were amusing. Francie was identified as a minor from New Jersey and left at that.
But there was one more story, a young woman of thirteen who’d committed suicide at the camp, one Azalia Martinez. Ocelot, my little tough night buddy! I knew it wasn’t true—Ocelot a suicide?—knew something else had happened to her, something official, something to do with the trouble that must have come after Francie and I disappeared, something to do with Vault. I couldn’t go on searching, because there’d be much more, and every fragment would leave me bereft.
So, to action. I Googled homeless shelters, and one by one began to call, all around San Francisco and then Oakland. My question was simple, put to people who were used to frantic relatives (also, no doubt, uncaring relatives), warm people who wanted to help.
“Do you know a man named Lucky Turtle? Or just Lucky? Or maybe Lucky Sing?”
They did not. And likely wouldn’t have told me if they did, though most were willing to walk a fine line. They consulted logbooks, databases, dug in their own memories, offered me next phone numbers to call. I mentioned the waterfront, as Dora had said something about the docks. But perhaps she was remembering Far Turtle’s story, assigning it to Lucky. Finally the articulate young man on the phone at Sixth Street Shelter suggested a place that hadn’t come up in my searches. A smaller facility, he said, privately run, with a strong focus on mental health. One of the better ones, with counseling, job training, social opportunities, community support, showers even. Harmony House, it was called, nice.
I talked at length with a woman there named Carol Washington. “Your husband!” she said. But she didn’t know that name. “I’ll put it out there,” she said. And took my information, phone, email, relationship. “And you wish to see him? If he wishes to see you?”
“I do.”
I stayed non-negative. Almost giddy in fact.
Ricky called and we talked so fast, confident we’d found the path. Afterward, to calm down, I worked in the diplomat’s gardens, thinning, pruning, aerating the soil around truly exotic shrubs, raking the mulch high, moving terrace to terrace, all of it planted so beautifully, so logically, one level hanging into the next, pulling weeds, watering, coarse composting, every gesture I made aided by tools and supplies already in place, these good people, their good hearts alive in their gardens, the feral parrots squawking above, all the various hummingbirds coming to the feeders strategically placed, wind chimes quietly singing, grace.
As the spring gloaming descended I crept inside, craving brightness, washed my hands at the capacious stone sink in the kitchen, found some cheese in the small fridge, which had been left freshly overstocked by my kind hosts, found some crackers, found a cucumber in the large fridge, found a bottle of wine in the cooling tower, such privilege, opened it carefully, put a towel on my arm, reused the glass from champagne, climbed the stairs to sit with the fish, the loneliest I’d been since Walter’s death. I thought to call Ricky, got out my phone. And on its face a notification, just a phone number, and inside a long text:
Cindra, hi. This is Carol Washington from Harmony House. So good to speak today. Our outreach person was in this afternoon. Outreach is our eyes and hearts on the street, as not every person in need will come to us, in fact not many. We gave Outreach your information sheet and they say they might know your person or at least a possibility and will try to arrange a meeting. Probably you should be prepared to move quickly, as we have no mechanism for holding people, should this be the right person and should he want to visit. You are a beautiful soul, don’t forget.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
I can’t say the month or day, but it was a chilly morning, quiet of birdsong, Lucky and I in bed awake, things passing between us as if we were sunlight and window. In sleep I’d worked his thigh between mine, woke from my wild dreamworld clamping that taut, tall leg, gripped it tighter as he woke, too, that one sly thing in his eye, that thing only for me, and it was there and I gripped his thigh between my own and rocked looking square into his sleepy face, taking his kisses on my chin, my throat, soon my breath coming short and soon his, too. I climbed atop him. I’d learned to be more noisy, and Lucky had learned to say things, love and forever and beauty things, those little Lucky compliments. To which I was responding with theatrical cries when we heard Aarto come through the elk hide in his brusque way, flapping and scraping, footsteps loud and hard. I stepped up the shouting, showing off as Lucky pulled out in the midst of his—
But our bedroom door flew open, and Mr. Drinkins was there, me all atop Lucky.
“Dog fucker,” Drinkins shouted. He instantly had me by the hair, pulling me back and off Lucky, had me naked on my knees by the bed, something drawing a sharp line on my throat. He shouted, “Where’s my fucking piece? Where is it? Get me that gun, dog-fucking whore. And my papers, my goddamn papers.”
