ON THE ROAD, GENTLEMEN ARE RARE (1885)ON THE ROAD, GENTLEMEN ARE RARE (1885)
The darkness within the Big Tunnel began to lift as a nib of light grew bigger in the distance. Our footsteps sped up and sounded lighter. Near the entrance we heard banging sounds, the thud of iron on rock, the ringing of steel on tempered metal.
The damn railway was finished, wasn’t it?
Canada was linked from ocean to ocean now, wasn’t it?
Weren’t all China men heading home to safety and peace?
Loud cursing and the thrum of saw blades grew louder and then clearer. The boy darted ahead to the curved road and we stopped.
The railway vanished under soil and rock jumbled higher than a house. Leafy treetops that were once aloft in the sky lay under loose earth. Boulders had split open, showing jagged eggshell edges. Threads of white roots wormed through dark soil and layers of yellow clay. Shiny crystals in the newly exposed rock caught the light and glittered.
Yes, redbeards might bleed from the land’s unyielding edges, but you would never hear them cry surrender. They sauntered away, hands in their pants pockets, hats tipped back on their heads, whistling cheery tunes. Why shouldn’t they? China men were already on hand to do the dirty work and restore redbeard order. The King of Hell invited guests, and these fools rushed forward.
China men clambered over the wreckage, chopping at mops of hairy roots and sawing at tree trunks. They heaved rocks to the ground and drilled holes for blasting powder. Teams of horses dragged laden skids to the railway, to a flat-deck car piled with debris.
That Sam was right. If all China men left Gold Mountain and went home, then the redbeards would be forced to do all the dirty work. They would have to pay more for everything and stop strolling around like pigeons afraid to dirty their feet.
I asked Sam, “Turn back?” and pulled the boy toward the tunnel. No one could scramble over the treacherous debris while towing a lively child and carrying a heavy pack. At the start of this trek, Sam had said Lytton was four days away by foot. A delay now would render my ticket worthless.
He paced back and forth, his face dark. He must have had many customers ahead, awaiting his bottles. I suspected only small bunches of China men were left, mangy weeds like Fist and his uncles, and they couldn’t afford to buy much liquor.
By the black remnants of a campfire was a kettle. Sam kicked it over the edge of the clearing.
“Stinking bastard!” someone shouted. “What’s that for?”
“These jobs, they belong to Native people.” Sam stood with feet apart, hands at waist, elbows out.
The China men peered at him, stung into silence. Such insults were not often issued in our own language. They yelled muddled slurs.
“Lazy worms. You slink off at the first word of fishing.”
“After payday, no one can find you.”
“Last to join the work, first to leave.”
“We aren’t slaves.” Sam raised his chin. “We have freedom. We have families.”
They told him to eat chicken shit and limp off with his rotted corpse.
“Did you know?” He turned to me. “These shit-hole fiends mock the China men who leave for home. These men say, ‘We don’t know the word death.’ But they keep feasting off our lands.”
“Go fetch the kettle,” I said. “If they beat you, I won’t help you.”
“I look after myself.”
“If they hear about the liquor, they’ll kill you for it.”
After a moment, he stalked off.
“Who was that turtle head?” One worker ran up. “Screw his mother!”
“We got work!” A man atop the debris waved his hat. “Our eyebrows got long while waiting, but the jobs finally came. There’s work for weeks!”
“Can we reach the iron road ahead?” I asked.
The man beside him spoke. “Go to the river.”
“Are there boats?”
“Go look yourself,” said the man. “Don’t you have eyes?”
“You’re the blind one,” I said. “When redbeards see this, all you dogs will fight for drippings of shit.”
“It’s the same work as before.”
“Jobs were plentiful back then. Not now.”
A sawyer atop the rubble knotted a rope at his waist and tossed the other end to workmates. He thrust a sturdy triangle of wood, its smooth sides planed at a mill, into the notched break of a fallen tree. He leaned back and slammed his sledgehammer into the wedge. The tree split with a loud crack and one end rolled off, sending rocks and boulders sliding and teetering. For a moment, the sawyer clawed at empty air, but his friends yanked him to safety.
Had such ropes been common along the line? Was it only my crew that had failed to use them and suffered the bloody results?
The first worker brought over a dandy who was dressed for town in a grey suit and blue tie. Only the top button of his jacket was fastened, revealing a checkered waistcoat.
“Boss Soon, here’s the cockhead,” said the worker.
I expected the Chinese headman to scream at me for interrupting the work.
“Need a job?” he asked.
I snorted. “The King of Hell marries off his daughter: nobody wants her!”
“Ah, you’ve worked. Where?”
“They never told us. Can we get to Lytton?” The boy grabbed my hand when the headman eyed him. “The boy’s mother is there.”
“Good for you. Usually she never finds the father.”
“The trueborn mother is best.”
He nodded. “My brothers and sisters were raised by a stepmother.”
I looked him up and down. “You always dress this fancy?”
“Company sends a bigwig to inspect us.”
“You speak English?”
He nodded. “Can’t you work a few days? I need strong men. These ragged beggars can barely stand up.”
“Give Sam a job. Then he won’t make trouble.”
“Tell that stir-shit-stick to go die.”
He wished me luck finding the boy’s mother and sent a worker to fetch the kettle. As we headed down a narrow path to the shore, I asked where they had come from.
The town of Kee-fah-see was where Sam planned to make the third stop of our trip. These men would have been Sam’s customers, but now the Company fed them. No wonder Sam saw fire and berated them.
The kettle lay at his feet, at the foot of the path.
“You’re lucky they didn’t stomp your bones,” I said to Sam.
“Boss Soon kneels to shine the redbeards’ boots. He doesn’t know shame.”
“You sound like a China man.”
“They should all go home.”
“When they’re ready, they will.”
Two Native men in a dugout thrust paddles through the water, ferrying three passengers. Around us, a steep slope of small stones rose straight from the river. We squatted and leaned back to let our packs anchor us. Sam muttered about wrapping his goods in blankets against water damage. I kept a tight grip on Peter, who wanted to play in the water.
If he could find gold, then I’d let him jump in the water all day.
In China, cheery tradesmen sauntered through the countryside, tools and kits on their backs, come to mend pots or bowls, to repair bricks and mortar. Some of them flagged rides from boatmen, others trudged over the mounded dikes. Women and children flocked like flies to the men’s news and gossip. They voiced loud opinions while working. If there were no jobs, they sipped tea and ambled to the next village. They smiled freely, but Grandmother sighed for them, for how they lacked a wife, a home, and a waiting meal each night.
“Better to be alone.” Grandfather puffed on his tobacco. “Sleep in peace, work in peace.”
As a boy, I had thought that travel meant moving at your own pace, going wherever you wanted, and evading tiresome talk. I reckoned that explained Father’s fondness for rolling up his bundle and leaving on another sojourn.
“Does the boat go to Lytton?” I asked Sam.
“Are you stupid? The current is too strong. The boat crosses the river but doesn’t go north. We walk to Boston Bar on the wagon road and then come back to this side.”
“You prayed too late to the mountain,” I said. “When did that landslide happen?”
He shrugged.
I thought that the railway people in Yale should have known. Word would have gone down to the station through the telegraph.
“That boat will waste our time,” I complained.
“Not so,” he retorted, “we cross over, sooner or later.” He caught my frown and hooted. “You didn’t know, did you? Another bridge further north takes the railway over the river to the east side, just like the wagon road crossed over at Alexandra Bridge.”
Heavy footsteps crunched beside us, and then two redbeards called and waved at the boat. One cradled a rifle while the other held a skittering dog on a leash. The animal flattened itself and looked up with keen eyes. The two men stuffed their stockings into their boots, laced them together, and slung them over their shoulders. Rolling up their pants, they showed legs as white as paper.
Being so careful, they had to be husbands with tiger wives. Peter eyed the dog and moved closer.
When the dugout arrived, three China men waded ashore. One fellow called to another but aimed his words at me. “Don’t we have enough workers?”
“That’s so, we’ve got plenty of hands.”
“Stinking bastards.” I spoke loudly to Sam for them to hear. “Boss Soon just asked me to work for him. I refused him.”
The redbeards pushed forward and offered the boatmen more money, so they were taken aboard first, leaving us to wait.
But Sam and the two boatmen took time trading news and jokes, chuckling now and then. The redbeards fidgeted and cleared their throats. Finally they nudged the boatman to put aside his cigar and get going.
The other shore lacked a useful beach. We climbed to the wagon road, clutching at plants and rocks, hoping they were firmly anchored. Across the water, the jumbled wreckage of the landslide stretched for over a mile. Heaven punishes, the earth destroys. A god had thrust a giant pitchfork into the cliff and yanked with supernatural strength to gouge the mountain. Over the railway and river below, rubble had swirled out as though from a spinning dancer.
Didn’t the railway bigwigs expect more landslides? High steep mountains all along the canyon had been shaken, like clutches of fortune sticks jiggled by temple worshippers until one stick dropped from the holder. Did the Company call upon Jesus men in lofty churches to pray for protection over the iron road? Perhaps people all along the line went to church to send up massed songs seeking favour. Maybe there were eerie secrets to building an iron road that we China men never saw.
At the edge of the slide, two thick lines of gleaming silver thrust out, hems along a grand grey curtain. Redbeards had conquered cliffs and forests with the railway, lashing it like a belt over the seething ground. Even when angry gods let loose landslides, the Company pressed on.
“You like the railway?” said Sam.
“Never thought it could be built.”
“Didn’t redbeards use black powder to blast China’s forts and win the war?”
“We fight back,” I said. “Your people should do the same.
“We use guns now. Soon we drive train engines too.”
“Redbeards won’t allow that.” I backed my pack onto some rock, groaned at the weight, and demanded, “Where’s that Hell’s Gate? Haven’t passed it, have we?”
“Soon, soon.”
After a while, we saw men coming toward us, kicking at pebbles on the ground, like surly children. We had been climbing steadily on the wagon road. In some places the path was carved out of the mountain, packed hard and flattened by wheels and animal hooves. We looked up to our side and saw trees growing straight up against a steep slope. In other spots, to cross deep gullies, the road was a wooden trail that bumped over layers of logs, trees crisscrossing each other in neat rows forty or fifty feet deep.
I frowned. The approaching men held the high ground. They could run at us, gain momentum, and shove us over the side.
One man with a walking pole dragged his right leg, thickly wrapped at the ankle. The fellows were spread out, looking in different directions, not talking, as though peeved with each other. They were China men in dirt-stiff clothes with bundles on their backs. Their dark faces were sulking and bitter as they passed around loaves of bread, tearing off chunks with hands and teeth.
They ignored Sam’s greeting and his raised hand. He walked on with the boy, who turned to peer at them.
China men usually made minimal gestures of respect to Native people, aware that they were everywhere, armed and seething near boiling point, a huge mound of dry kindling about to be ignited. We took care not to offend them. Their poverty and suffering was everywhere, but what could we do? Redbeards, not China men, ruled here.
The lead fellow stopped me. “Where do you go?”
“Town ahead.”
“Don’t go. All stinking bastards.” His blackened teeth were chipped; dried blood stuck to the corner of his cracked lips.
“Redbeards or China men?” I asked.
“We are railway men. The Company ate us up and spat out our bones. What do you carry?”
The men pressed in, reeking of stale urine and herbal oils. I tried to push my way through. “Is it better walking here, away from the railway?”
“Lend us some food,” Black Teeth said. “The shit-hole pricks gave us stale bread. They kicked us out of town, even though the day is ending.”
“No China men there?”
“Not even a shadow of their ghosts.”
Sam was heading back toward me, strolling without hurry. He should have grabbed a sturdy pole. I didn’t see Peter, so he must have been told to lay low and stay still. Hopefully the worm would listen. If these oafs around me had any brains, they would grab the boy. Bandits had won great riches holding sons for ransom.
“These goods have been sold,” I said. “They are not mine to give away.”
“Don’t give us anything,” Black Teeth said. “Just lend us a bit.”
“Do good, receive good,” his men called out. “Don’t fear your good heart.”
“What, lend pigs to hungry tigers?” I tried to get them to laugh.
“Better to give a mouthful of food to a beggar than a bushel of grain to a rich man,” someone said.
“Screw his mother!” The men were suddenly aroused. “Grab his goods!”
They yanked apart my arms and dodged as I kicked at them.
“Stop!” Sam shouted. “Or this one dies!”
He held one railway man by the neck and pressed a shiny blade to his throat. It was the fellow who had hobbled with a walking stick.
“Leave those goods,” Sam barked. “Walk away.”
“Kill the cripple, go ahead,” Black Teeth said. “One less belly to feed.”
“Kill me,” said the hostage. “I can die standing up or lying down. If my friends get to eat, then I’m content.”
His friends shouted at him to shut his mouth.
“He wants to die for you stinking bastards,” Sam yelled. “I’m happy to help.”
The men fumbled in their clothes, seeking weapons, wanting to rush over.
“What are you?” I demanded. “Coffin makers praying for clients?”
“Better a broken jade cup than a solid clay pot,” said the hostage.
“Let him die.” Black Teeth clawed at the knots of my pack.
“You so-called friends will leave him?” I demanded. “Old clothes have more fleas tending them.”
One man stomped away. A moment later, the others followed him. Only Black Teeth was left.
I grabbed a teapot-sized rock and smashed it into his cheek. There was a crunch of breaking bone and bright red blood spurted from his face.
“Drink that, you bastard.”
Rocks slammed into my back as Sam and I ran away. Good thing I had quit the railway long ago. It would have been easy to fall into that nest of snakes and scorpions or turn into spineless worms like One Leg or No Brain. I could have clung to that fool dream about hours and days being the only blockage to earning money and going home rich.
The brat ran out from nearby bushes. Too bad he had been too far away to watch me do battle and draw blood.
“You hit him too hard,” said Sam.
“Damn your liquor bottles. I could have outrun them.”
“I saved your life again.”
“That man could have pulled a knife and stabbed you.”
“End of my self-respect.”
“End of your useless life.”
How often did a bandit get robbed the same way as his former victims? As often as you saw a chicken pee. I almost shouted at those thugs, You think you’re tough? You ever hear of Centipede Mountain? That was my gang’s lair. You see me walking behind a mix-blood and reckon that I’m a broken stick of firewood? Think again! You don’t want to fight me! You want to die?
The win over the bandits gave us energy, and we made good time until Sam suddenly stopped and muttered, “Screw those bastards, we passed Hell’s Gate.”
The river had taken a curve and now mountains on both sides dipped to the river, their jagged slopes cutting into each other like interlaced fingers. They cut off any extended view of the rushing waters behind us.
I shrugged. “I’ll see it on my way back.”
He pointed downward, at the opposite bank. “That’s China Bar, where your people took the gold.”
“Never heard of it,” I declared.
Even from our vantage point, we saw that the river was running low. A dark, ragged ribbon slithered over the rock face and giant boulders, marking the reach of springtime water when melting snow and ice had raised its level. Now, a stretch of shoreline had emerged, cluttered with rocks and gravel. We had passed many such sand bars earlier, where miners had left behind lengthy pits as well as fields of overturned boulders. Those men had pushed their way inland too, tearing down bushes, trees, and Native buildings to get at the treasure underneath.
“’Course not, that’s redbeard talk,” said Sam. “My people call that place by its real name.”
“We should have a name too,” I said. But what? At home, every spot was China. We lived throughout the Central Kingdom, where fitting names for sites and cities had been handed down through time and everyday use. On this river, China was that faraway place mocked by redbeard miners as backward and barbaric.
“See that waterfall?” Sam pointed further north, along the railway tracks. A steep waterfall crashed through a violent crack in the brown rock. “We call it Sq’azix. The redbeards used that name for the boat that China men pulled through Hell’s Gate.”
I strode on. I knew about Skuzzy but refused to discuss it with Sam. He would only sneer at how we had been used as beasts of burden.
The road narrowed and then widened, broad enough to let delivery wagons pass each other. The grey and cracking telegraph poles would soon be removed from the wagon road in favour of the new ones along the railway. We flattened ourselves against the mountain wall when a stagecoach roared by. Six horses churned up clouds of dust over the twisting road. Finally, it opened into a clearing of farms and houses.
We set down our packs. Sam told me to wait while he took the boy into the Native village. Its people would be more helpful to a stranger who had a child by his side, he said. But, to my delight, the boy at first refused to go. Maybe crossing the river had spooked him. The boy had sat with Sam until the boatmen asked him to grab the third oar and help get the boat across. Sam dumped Peter on me, and the brat refused to sit still, kept twisting and fidgeting to go to his hero. He’d cried out for Sam, but Sam ignored him.
Now Sam whispered something into the boy’s ear to convince him to go along. Grandmother once told a neighbour who had a badly behaved boy, “Better a mischief maker than a simpleton.”
I looked down at the shoreline where children shouted and pointed to the foaming spray. With great patience, they squatted and watched for fish in the water. In the river’s middle, fishermen stood braced on swaying boats, anchored by stiff ropes, waiting to swing their nets. When they succeeded, the fish dumped thrashing onto the shore must have weighed twenty or thirty pounds each.
Birds chirped in the nearby woods. In Victoria, sojourners about to return home were often asked what, if anything, they might miss about Gold Mountain. Many said, “Trees and forests.” They liked the convenience of having plenty of firewood on hand. The trees of Gold Mountain had been one of the few things that China men could take without offending the redbeards, who wanted the giants chopped down and burned. Tall trees with grey, furrowed trunks bore three-sided leaves. They filled the springtime air with seeds of fluffy white snow. Other trees with rounded crowns and smooth white trunks put out leaves in the shape of straw fans. They were yellowing and dropping. The evergreens were laden with brown cones of wooden fruit and bundles of sharp green needles. Such pine trees were a sign of longevity in China. I had been away from there long enough that new trees, planted after the Guest Wars, were probably now taller than me.
Sam returned with two young men who unpacked the whisky. The bottles had been wrapped in grimy scraps of cloth. Peter munched on a cold boiled potato. Without a word, the visitors lugged away the liquor in gunny sacks.
I asked Sam if he had gotten a good price.
“They don’t have any money,” he pointed out.
“You trust them?”
“Can’t wait all day.”
“Isn’t liquor bad for your people?”
“I don’t sell to everyone.”
We crossed a creek spilling into the Fraser and saw the town ahead.
Boston Bar was small like Spuzzum but its buildings lined both sides of the wagon road. Carts and horses were tethered in front of a roadhouse, two storeys high over a long covered porch. There, men tilted back on the rear legs of wooden chairs, with hats and caps pulled over their eyes. Across from them, a dour-looking bunch stood around a hitching post, puffing on cigars and pipes, fiddling with coiled ropes as if ready to chase cattle. A little boy ran out to point at Peter, but an adult snatched him up and hurried away.
“It’s drier here,” Sam said in his know-everything voice, “so watch for poison snakes. They rattle when attacking.”
“Tell the boy,” I replied. “He touches everything.”
“China has no snakes?”
“Plenty. The big ones squeeze piglets and children to death and swallow them whole.”
“They’re dead by then, no?”
Then a burly redbeard stepped forward and shoved a rifle sideways into Sam’s chest. Yellow splinters of tobacco were matted in the man’s scruffy black beard. From behind darted a Native man, also armed but wearing a western hat with a long grey feather. His finger tapped the trigger of his gun while its barrel pointed at Sam.
Tobacco Beard spoke English. A lumpy jacket was stretched tight around his middle.
Sam opened his hands in a friendly way to Grey Feather, but shook his head at the same time.
Tobacco Beard picked at his teeth while Grey Feather spat out short terse phrases. None of Sam’s answers appeased him. They must have been arguing over blackmail money, to let us pass.
The two men glared at each other. Grey Feather growled and tipped his gun skyward.
Bang!
I ducked and stumbled. The crowd laughed at me.
Sam untied his pack and set it on the ground. Tobacco Beard pointed his rifle at him while Grey Feather rummaged through it with quick hands. He pulled out each bundle, hefting it, guessing at the contents by feel. With a yelp of triumph, he found the bottle of whisky that we used at the graveyards.
“Take off your pack,” Sam said to me. “Slowly.”
His hands were above his head as Grey Feather patted his pockets and took his knife. “They are arresting us.”
“These are lawmen?” They wore no uniforms. “What for?”
“Selling liquor to Native people.”
Sam trudged ahead. Tobacco Beard and Grey Feather pointed their guns at the boy and me. When I didn’t move, Grey Feather swung the rifle butt at my head.
“No sell liquor!” I shouted in Chinook. “I go China!”
The words had no effect. Pushed along, I looked through the crowd, hoping to spot a Chinese face. In Victoria, China men landed in jail along with redbeards on the same charge. The police harassed Native drinkers and threatened to arrest them until they pointed out Chinese sellers. What China men hated the most was wasting time in jail, waiting for the judge to reach town and declare his court in session. Sometimes that took as long as two or three months.
The police cabin in Boston Bar was divided into two rooms by logs as thick as those of the outside walls. On the window sill sat the long parched skull of a cow, its empty eye holes big and almost round. At least the bones weren’t human.
Grey Feather stood in a corner and held his rifle over both of us. My hands were clammy. Our packs were rolled onto the floor.
Tobacco Beard thrust out a grimy palm. Sam handed over his money, telling me to follow. I gave up my coins. Tobacco Beard slammed them on the table and rifled our pockets. No more money was found, so he pointed at our boots. Tobacco Beard gave them a hearty shake and then ripped out the makeshift paper soles. Only sandy grit fell onto the floor. He pointed at our stockings.
Sam obliged but not me.
Tobacco Beard nudged me and then reached for his gun.
I didn’t move. He pushed me onto a chair and yanked my stocking.
My roll of bills vanished into his pocket.
“No!” I cried in English. “Please!”
He waved the money at his helper, who flashed a toothy grin.
If Sam hadn’t been there, I would have dropped to my knees and begged. Better to let Tobacco Beard kill me than to have him steal my $400.
The boots were returned. I could barely pull them on. As we shuffled into the jail cell, Grey Feather pulled the boy away before the door slammed.
“Bring boy here!” Sam pounded the wood, but it absorbed all sound. “Don’t let them take your son!”
I slumped against a wall and dropped to the floor. A man dies, then his house falls down. The cell reeked of shit and urine, soil and vomit. I wanted to tie a rope and hang myself from the window, swallow gravel scraped from the ground and choke to death, or plunge my head into a bucket of urine and drown.
I couldn’t go home without a prize to show for all these years. Now, the village was sure to snicker about the black fate of my family. They paid no heed to how much money I had sent home over the years. They knew nothing about rail hands dying on the railway or trying to get into America. I could have been arrested as a smuggler and sent to rot in jail. The neighbours wanted only to touch the costly gifts I brought back, hoping for something new that they hadn’t seen before. If they couldn’t hold or smell it, it didn’t exist. One sojourner brought home a silver fork from a dining set. It got used to dig out weeds.
I should have spent longer nights in Rainbow’s fragrant bed and spurted buckets of sticky bliss. Why hadn’t I given Goddess a day, no—two or three days, to massage her heaven into me? Then I might have been content to die here. I should have devoured fine foods: abalone, mushrooms, roasted duck with crisp skin, the best grades of rice, and the finest aged wines. I would have swept any leftovers onto the floor for the scavenging dogs. Why hadn’t I taken bigger risks at the game tables? Good fortune might have let me return home long ago. A thousand days at home are fair; a morning away, hell to bear.
“Are you crying?” Sam asked.
“No.”
“Not leaking horse piss?”
“Shut your mouth!”
“Don’t China men think that weeping is bad luck?”
Sojourners who had returned to China as sad failures babbled such feeble lies that friends and family were obliged to sigh and pine along with them.
“You earned piles of money but gamblers cheated you naked on the ship? There’s no watching your front and your back at the same time, is there?”
“A thief crept into your room and stole everything? Ah, people have Buddha’s mouth but the heart of a snake.”
“Thugs in Hong Kong pushed you into a dark alley? Not even daylight frightens the crooks there.”
The women of such losers insisted with fearless aplomb that they valued their men’s lives more than money and put on a cheeky show of thanking the gods and ancestors for their safe return. They armed themselves with taut proverbs to refute the smiling but spiteful neighbours come to taunt them:
“Sugar cane isn’t sweet at both ends.”
“Gold won’t buy a breath of life.”
“Man gets seven poverties and eight riches.”
An aging mother hugged her long-away son with tears of joy, but her own funeral would be a small affair that sent her into the afterworld with no extra clothing or servants. A wife pulled her finally returned husband into bed after years of longing and virtue only to find that he was riddled with impossible diseases. Children found a sudden stranger in the house who cursed them for running and making too much noise.
Grandfather and Younger Brother had bought more land and improved the house with my money. They sang my praises to everyone. My grandparents had found an ideal prospect for my bride. I planned to buy Grandmother a new grindstone, one that turned with less backbreaking effort. I wanted to buy Grandfather a plough and a good steel axe. On market days, we would spend the entire day at the teahouse, calling for any dumpling or meat we wanted.
Even if I sprouted wings, there was no flying from this prison. I was trapped for months, waiting for the judge who carried his courtroom on his shoulders. He would fine me, but I had no money, which meant I would have to do hard labour to work off my time. There was no way to get word to the Council in Victoria. Even if I did, it might choose to ignore me, seeing that I was so far away and entirely beyond the community’s sight.
I bit hard on my teeth and cursed silently. From our first meeting, Sam had only been trouble. He should have known about Tobacco Beard and stayed away from this town.
Damn that brothel keeper, that washman, that merchant in Yale. All of them, even that cookhouse man, had called Sam the best. Surely they knew that Sam carried bootleg. Surely they knew the eyes of the law would follow him. Shit covered his name. Those fellow China men were supposed to help me. I was the stranger here, after all.
“Don’t blame me,” Sam declared. “The liquor that they found, that was for your graveyards.”
“You sell bootleg!”
“Those bottles were gone.”
“You look like a Native, so no one stops you going into Native villages. If a China man tries to do that, he gets kicked out right away.”
“They kicked me out too. Shouldn’t you think about the boy?”
“What can I do? My money is gone.”
“Children get dumped onto Native women all the time. Fathers don’t provide a cent, don’t bother looking back. You’re no better than them.”
I turned away. The only light came from a tiny window cut high into the wall. A horse and wagon clattered outside. I took what little running start the cell allowed and threw myself at the wall, trying to reach the window, clawing with my fingers and boot tips. I grabbed the window ledge but something sharp made me scream and fall to the ground. I swore and sucked at my fingers, spitting out any poison.
“Useless,” said Sam.
“If a China man was outside, I would yell to him. China men help each other. Not like your people, who help the redbeards.”
“We keep order. Redbeards use us to chase their killers and robbers. We know the hills and woods where they hide.”
“And you arrest China men.”
“Who quickly pay their way to freedom. Don’t worry, when I get out, I’ll tell China men to come fetch you.” He stood up. “Time for a piss.”
He didn’t go to the pail. Instead, he faced the inside wall.
“We piss through the cracks,” he said, “so the other side will stink.”
I went to the wall and loosened my pants, peering through the dim light. We stood side by side and sighed. For a moment, the urine splashed away the fetid waste stuck to the wall.
That night, I awoke with a start and begged the gods to help me escape. Send a bolt of lightning to knock over a wall. Open a hole under me, a tunnel from long-ago breakouts. Unleash a gale to lift me and the ceiling into the sky.
At home, women were the ones who hurried to temples with prayers and offerings. That was the one activity that Mother and Grandmother had not fought over like alley cats. They returned home from temple visits praising each other and joking. Such peace ended far too soon. On second day, second month they tended the God of the Earth to ensure fair weather for farming. Third day, third month they cooked no meat, to cleanse the body. Ninth day, ninth month, they went to Green Dragon Temple on Pine Mountain to gain favour from the illness-fighting gods. Despite Mother’s efforts, few gods helped her. Indeed, she had ended her life a day after the birthday rites for the Goddess of Mercy, patron of mothers.
I needed to show the gods some sincere intent but had nothing on hand. All I could do was promise good deeds. I had started this trip with one, taking the boy to his mother, and it had ended in disaster. All I could do was make another promise.
Then a ghost tapped the back of my head.
Simple!
Ask Fist’s questions at the Lytton temple and bring him his answers.
Such generosity should win me favour.