After declining Ana’s invitation to join them for a beer, Olivia climbed into the van. Before driving away, she said to Alexa, “Wait until Dr. Luckenbaugh tells you about the corpse ship.”
Alexa had obviously misheard. “The courtship?”
Olivia drove off without answering.
“Let’s get out of here,” Ana said.
Darkness had settled in during the twenty minutes they’d been inspecting the bones. Alexa looked back toward the tent, guarded by Mr. Sun in his lonely outpost. The thought of sitting all night long next to a graveyard gave her the willies.
She and Ana trekked down the hill toward town, a ten-minute walk. The lights of Buckingham Street twinkled in welcome. The Four Square grocery store was still open. Across the street from the candy shop, Ana cut through a narrow alley and stopped at a low, blue wooden door. “This is my new favorite bar,” she said. “It’s better I tell you about the corpse ship away from Shelby. It might give her bad dreams.”
“Corpse ship?”
Ana opened the blue door.
Might give me bad dreams, Alexa thought. She ducked her head and stepped down into the square room.
The stone walls, low-beamed ceiling, and flickering flames in the fireplace cast the smallish room in a golden hue. Alexa counted six rough-hewn tables—three occupied—and a couple of tall oaken barrels with bar stools around them. Two twentysomething men leaned against the bar. They glanced at Alexa and Ana and then resumed their conversation.
“This was a cold storage room back in the day,” Ana said over her shoulder. “Sometimes for bodies before burial.”
A morgue-cum-pub? This was a first for Alexa.
Ana pointed to the slate floor. “They had to excavate it to turn it into a bar. Otherwise we’d have to crouch. That’s why I like it.”
Alexa took note of the easy smile Ana gave the lanky bartender. Easy smiles weren’t Alexa’s forte. She was too uptight, too suspicious. Being in a relationship with Bruce, and disappointing her brother by calling a time-out in that relationship (“Running away as soon as things get serious, right Lexi?”), had ignited a dormant self-awareness, as if she were an omniscient narrator watching her own life. Smile more, judge less, the narrator said.
“It was an opium den at one time too,” the bartender said.
“Is that right?” Ana laughed and ordered two Boomtown Blacks.
Alexa cracked a smile and took the proffered bottle of beer to a table near the fireplace. She read the inscription on the label:
It’s 1862. Māori Jack with a pan of black sand from the Arrow River, a crescent of gold sparkling in the sunshine and the rush to this Boomtown is on. An uplifting brew for those empty-pan days.
She pointed to the label. “Who is Māori Jack?”
Ana eased onto a stool. “He was a sheep shearer. He found the first gold, though Pākehā took credit.”
Alexa knew Pākehā referred to white New Zealanders,
Ana flipped her braid to her left shoulder. “I’ll show you the spot in the river. There’s a plaque for Māori Jack. Word spread, and by the end of the year, this place was crawling with European gold diggers.”
Boomtown Black had a hint of chocolate that Alexa didn’t like. She thought it best to keep chocolate and hops in separate corners. “What about the Chinese? When did they come?”
“After the European miners moved to other goldfields, the Otago government ‘invited them.’” She used air quotes. “‘Coolies were docile, cheap, and hardworking.’”
“That’s an ugly sentiment.”
Ana shrugged. “What can I say?”
Alexa sipped her Boomtown Black. With a start she realized she still wore her new glasses. She slipped them into the pocket of her coat. She wasn’t that nearsighted.
“The government wanted to keep people here finding gold, even if it was just the dregs.” Ana’s eyes skimmed the cozy room and then settled on Alexa. “By the 1880s, there were five thousand Chinese in the region, maybe more, and almost all men. The miners came to escape war and famine. To help their families back home.”
“You know a lot about this.”
“That’s my job, to understand the history and culture surrounding each of my digs.” She dug dirt from under one of her short fingernails. “The Chinese never wanted to settle here like the Europeans. They considered themselves visitors. But way leads on to way, right?” Her eyes stayed downcast. “Many of them died here anyway.”
Alexa moved her chair a little closer to Ana, whose voice had softened.
“The winters are freezing. There are floods from snowmelt. And sickness? Flu or typhoid? A broken leg? Forget it. There were no medical services for the Chinese. Maybe herbs or ointments, if you had the means.” She clinked her beer bottle against Alexa’s. “Like the label suggests—there were more empty-pan days than not. Lots of them died with empty pockets.”
Alexa’s neck prickled. She turned quickly. No one was standing behind her.
“There’s a Chinese proverb.” Ana’s voice went husky. “Falling leaves return to their roots.”
The door swung open, startling Alexa. Like leaves, two colorfully dressed women blew in. They joined the men at the bar in a swirl of laughter. “A white wine,” said one. The other ordered an old-fashioned. Something fruity—maybe the drink or maybe perfume—wafted in the air. When one couple kissed, Alexa thought of Bruce. Will I ever kiss him again?
When the foursome settled at a table, Ana cleared her throat. “The Chinese believe that after death, the soul hovers over the grave until he is home. Those buried far from home are hungry ghosts.”
The fire snapped and crackled. Alexa thought of Sun Shing’s words: He has been hungry too long. She reminded herself that she believed in science, not ghosts.
Ana raised and lowered her shoulders. “The miners returned home in one of two ways. Save enough money to go home a hero. Buy a bowler hat and a ticket to Hong Kong. Sail on a steamer.” She paused. “That’s the first way.”
Alexa tensed.
“The other way was to go home in a bag of calico.” Ana’s eyes teared up. The firelight turned them into liquid emeralds. She used a bar napkin to wipe them. “Sorry. I usually disassociate myself from my digs, but this one has gotten to me. All those lonely men, aging and dying far from home.”
A lump formed in Alexa’s throat. She gulped her beer.
“That’s where the corpse ships factor in,” Ana said quietly.
Alexa scooted even closer.
“Chinese benevolent societies arranged the ships,” Ana said. “If you paid in advance—most miners or their families did to avoid the calamity of being abandoned—you were guaranteed a trip home if you died. The first corpse ship, the steamer SS Hoihow, was successful. Members of the Cheong Sing Tong society exhumed almost three hundred miners from graveyards all over Otago, including Arrowtown Cemetery. They cleaned every bone and bagged them together in calico bags. Then they enclosed the bags in zinc boxes covered with wood. Small coffins.”
Alexa tried to imagine the scale of such a mass disinterment. The idea repelled her—What happened if the bones still had flesh on them?—but she kept her expression neutral. “What did the locals think?”
“They thought it was barbaric. They worried about disease. The smell. But permission was granted and, in 1883, the Hoihow took the remains of 286 miners to their families.”
Alexa wondered if Charlie or her father would ship her “home” if she died in New Zealand? Where was home? She was coming up on her one-year anniversary of living Down Under.
“That was the first voyage.” Ana paused. “The next tomb ship was nine years later. Exhuming enough graves to fill it took three years.”
Three years?
“The SS Ventnor sailed from Wellington on 26 October, 1902, with 499 skeletons aboard.”
That funny feeling prickled her neck again. Alexa restrained from turning around. Instead she turned up the collar of her blouse.
“Seven elderly Chinese men were given free passage home in exchange for attending the coffins.”
With the pulsing of her greenstone pendant, Alexa sensed their presence: privileged to be alive amid so much death. The weight of their responsibility. The hope of reuniting with loved ones. When the pub’s blue door opened with a bang, Alexa jumped. An older woman stuck her head through and gazed around the room, maybe searching for someone. She left as quickly as she’d entered. Alexa turned back to Ana.
“At midnight the ship hit rocks.” Ana shook her head. “The captain backed off them, but instead of heading to port, he made the decision to keep going, to try to reach Auckland.”
“Oh, no,” Alexa said.
“Somewhere off Hokianga—the far north of the North Island—the Ventnor went down, taking all those hungry ghosts to the bottom of the sea. Five of the attendants, too.”
The bar had quieted, as if others had listened to the sad tale.
Ana swiped at her eyes. “The miners died twice.”