The Kings and Queens of Roam: A Novel by Daniel Wallace Read Free Book Online Page B

could hear the wagon coming long before he could see it, and at these first sounds his heart began to beat like a hammer on a nail. He tried to bridle his hopes, for he could not have lived through the disappointment if he thoroughly imagined them, his wife and sons, only to see Elijah arrive with a wagon full of wheat and rice.
    At the top of the ridge, far, far away, the wagon came into view. Elijah was at the reins, and he paused briefly to raise a hand and wave it Ming Kai’s way. This had to mean he had been successful, for what man would raise his hand and wave if he had not?
    So Ming Kai looked closer, and there, right beside Elijah, was Sing Loo, his wife. Sing Loo! Oh, how beautiful she was! She was even more beautiful than he remembered—and he had remembered her many times as the dark nights passed. And there, the two little black dots bobbing in the wagon behind her, Chang and Tan! They had grown. He had missed a part of their lives because of Elijah McCallister, and he hated his friend for that. But now look what he had done for Ming Kai: he had atoned. Ming Kai waved at them until his arm turned to rubber. Oh, happiness! He felt as though he were beingborn all over again. It was the ecstasy of his life, of being alive, to have one’s ultimate dream realized, and this had been his dream from the day Elijah knocked him out and kidnapped him. He couldn’t wait. He ran up the hill to meet them.
    The wagon and Ming Kai met but a minute later. Ming Kai’s chest was heaving as he tried to catch his breath. Elijah had a smile on his face so large it looked as if his entire head could fit in his own mouth. This is the beginning , Ming Kai was thinking. My life has been returned to me.
    Ming Kai stood, frozen, a smiling statue of himself, but then, slowly, his smile waned, and finally disappeared altogether. He looked at Sing Loo, and then at the two young boys. A tear came to his eyes. Then, he spoke.
    “That is not my wife,” he said. The two smiling children in the back peeked at him and laughed, then hid behind a bag of corn. There was a little black dog with them, a puppy, and it barked once. “Those are not my sons.”
    Stunned—or so he appeared—Elijah looked at the woman beside him, the woman who had not said a word through the course of their travels because she knew none he would understand. He looked at the darling black-haired children behind him, who had not cried once on the long journey, who seemed forever bright-eyed and happy, and at the cute little puppy he had purchased for them at the last outpost, because Elijah wanted to be thought of as the kind of man who would buy a puppy for a couple of Chinese kids, even if he was not.
    “Not your wife?” Elijah said. “Not your sons?”
    Ming Kai shook his head.
    All joy had drained from Ming Kai’s face: it had become hard, petrified. He said something in Chinese, and the woman said something back to him.
    She had a sweet voice.
    “Her name is Wu Li,” Ming Kai said. “She is from Shanghai. She is not my wife.”
    “But . . .” Now it was Elijah’s turn to fall mute. At that moment it was hard to say whose heart was more broken, Elijah’s or Ming Kai’s. Both had dreams that were shattered: Ming Kai’s dream of love, and Elijah’s dream of riches. Ming Kai wanted to die; he knew he would never see his real family again. But Elijah was the sort of man who, in the absence of authentic hope, created his own. He was the sort of man who could build a town in the middle of nowhere in order to conform to a dream, the sort of man who saw a wall not as a thing to go around but as something to be driven through.
    He snapped the reins, and the horses began their descent to the place that would one day be Roam. Ming Kai had to move out of the way lest he be trampled—it was as though Elijah were no longer able to see him. But as the wagon passed, Elijah spoke.
    “You’ll get used to them,” he said.
    Ming Kai did get used to them. It took