The radio played in the parlors of the Foursquares in Minneapolis and in the kitchens on the South Side of Chicago. The sermon reached the ears of senators and congressmen, of preachers tending congregations and reformers attending meetings on Prohibition. It crackled along wires strung through the ether and was reborn in the office of the boss overseeing the migrant workers, the farmer worrying about a crop in the frost, and the factory foreman preparing his production quotas for the next morning’s shift.
The hymn’s marchlike strains played in the small home in Lake George, New York, where Will spoke with a little girl who’d seen from her attic window one cold night a dozen flickering wraiths coming across the winter-frozen lake as the sky churned and flashed above them. Will sat perfectly still as the little girl told him how these ragged spirits seemed to be heading somewhere, drawn by some invisible thread, but that when they came upon a fawn, they surrounded it and fell upon it, feasting with such a frightening ferocity that the poor animal scarcely had time to cry out, and the girl sank down to her floor away from the window, well out of sight, afraid they’d come next for her.
In the studio, the hymn ended.
Sarah Snow pronounced her balm of a benediction, soothing the weary hearts of a skittish nation on the verge of change.
It was followed by a cheery appeal for Arrow shirts, the shirt that makes the man.
A terrible uneasiness weighed on Ling as she made her way to see Uncle Eddie at the opera house. She shouldn’t have let Henry go like that. She should’ve made him stay and drink some tea until he’d sobered up a bit. Maybe if he’d stayed, they could’ve talked about what was really happening inside that dream world and what they needed to do to stop the veiled woman before it was too late.
“Where are you going?” a policeman said, putting up his hand. “Nobody leaves the neighborhood tonight, Miss. Mayor’s orders.”
“I’m just on my way to see my uncle down the street.”
The policeman noted her crutches. He nodded her on. “All right, Miss.”
The opera house was noisy with the banging of hammers. Two of Uncle Eddie’s apprentices pounded the edges of a painted canvas to a wooden frame. The doors of the large wardrobe were open, and Uncle Eddie brushed lint from the colorful costumes inside. Ling ran a finger down the curving pheasant feather of the Da Dao Man’s headpiece. “Uncle, how do you get rid of a ghost?”
Uncle Eddie stopped, mid-brush. “That is a very odd question.”
“Hypothetically,” Ling added quickly.
“Hypothetically? For the sake of science?” Uncle Eddie said, not missing a beat. Ling kept her expression neutral, and after a moment her uncle went back to brushing the costume clean. “Is your ghost Chinese or American?”
“I don’t know,” Ling said.
“Well, for us, we say you have to give a proper burial. In Chinese soil. You must perform the proper rituals and say the prayers to give the spirit rest.”
“What if that isn’t possible?”
“You put a pearl in the corpse’s mouth. For an American ghost…” Uncle Eddie’s eyes twinkled. “Tell it there’s no money in haunting and it will go away. Careful!”
Uncle Eddie’s attention was diverted to the stage, where the two stagehands struggled with the large canvas flat. It wobbled and threatened to fall over.
“Ling, do you want to see something special?”
She nodded and followed her uncle to the edge of the stage. The men had averted disaster, but the canvas flat faced backward now.
“Everyone needs training.” Uncle Eddie sighed. “Turn it around, please! This way!”
The two men turned very slowly, positioning the flat against the stage wall, painted side out.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Uncle Eddie said. “It’s the original canvas from the last time the opera was performed. They wanted to have an American audience, so they made it more like an American play, with scenery.”
The room seemed to come to a point on the stage. Ling’s chest squeezed tight, as if someone were wringing the air from her lungs. She stared at the painted scene, barely comprehending what she saw: Golden hills. A meadow of colorful flowers. Bright sunshine. The red roofs of a Chinese village and a mist-shrouded forest.
Just as Ling had seen them every night in her dream with Wai-Mae.