PROMISES OUGHT NOT TO BE DODGED (1885)PROMISES OUGHT NOT TO BE DODGED (1885)
A loud thud caused the coach to lurch and tilt. Curses rang out as those facing the front crashed into a corner while those across the way slid at them on the floor. The horses galloped on, but the carriage had hit the ground and was scraping and bouncing along, causing them to whinny in fear. The car was slanted so steeply that no one could stand, no matter how we tried. I hugged Peter’s head and screamed for the driver to stop before the horses swung around a tight corner and flung us to the rocks below.
The horses thundered on. We heard the driver shouting and then the squeal of the brakes against the wheel rims.
Should have gone north to Mary, I scolded myself. I should have asked His Holiness which way to go.
The animals trotted to a stop that let us tumble out. One big rear wheel was gone, leaving the coach lopsided. The driver hurried to unharness the horses and lead them to the side of the road, which was little more than a narrow ledge chiseled out of the cliff. We stood at its edge, shaking our heads, watching the rapids below crash over rocks. That heaving river was still threatening me, Water to batter the sturdy Earth until it crumbled. Getting off the mainland wasn’t going to be easy. The passengers jabbered away as if only loud voices could keep them alive.
“Thank Heaven, thank Earth.”
“Survive a disaster, good luck comes faster.”
“His Holiness is robust, his power stretches far. Wait until Boss Joe hears.”
“I’m the saviour!” Seven raised his hands once they were freed. “My virtue saved us. If not for me, you’d all be dead.”
“You’re a stinking piece of dog shit,” I said.
“If not for you,” added the escort, “we’d be safe in Lytton.”
The boy clung to me and whimpered. I squeezed him to see if he winced, checking for broken parts. As I stood up, he grabbed my shirt and spewed vomit onto it. I backed off but he hung on, head bent. The slush contained cookies, apples, and rice porridge.
“On the ground!” I slapped his face away.
“He’s sick,” Seven said. “You want blood?”
The escorts were laughing. “He vomits the words you were stuffing into him,” said one. “They don’t suit his appetite.”
“I say Hok won’t take his boy home,” the other said. “He fears the wife!”
The boy wailed and stamped his feet, his face a smear of tears, vomit, and saliva.
“Can’t you stop the crying?” demanded one escort. “He weep-ruins us.”
I slapped him again.
Seven pulled the boy away. “Oxen don’t step on ants.”
“No spanking, no growing.” I was brushing slop from my shirt. The brat kept his clothes clean but left me stinking for the rest of the ride.
“For sure he’ll die in China,” said Seven.
“What, do dogs chase mice?” He should tend his own affairs. “I can protect him.”
“You couldn’t even pretend to be a scary ghost.”
The redbeard passenger went looking for the wheel but returned empty-handed. Boss Joe’s man spoke to the driver and reported to us, “The roadhouse at the bridge is a few miles away. We’ll walk there, stay the night, and wait for tomorrow’s coach. The driver needs a man to lead each horse.”
First we lifted the broken corner and half-carried, half-pushed the coach to the side of the road. Holes and cracks had punctured every surface of the carriage even before this accident. The unhitched horses refused to stand still, eyes bulging and muzzles swinging side to side. As we tried to calm them, the brat came running to help. I wanted to swat him away until he showed me some respect. The driver heaved a padlocked strongbox onto his shoulder and led the way. I recalled the convoys my bandit gang in China had attacked. Good horses always fetched fine prices.
Seven and his horse came behind the boy and me. He called out to our fellow passengers, “This fool takes a mix-blood boy to China. Wouldn’t you say he’s crazy? Wouldn’t you say he lacks family teaching?”
To my surprise, the conversation ran away from Seven.
“Families at home are always adopting boys,” the ranch cook pointed out. “What difference is there? A boy is a boy.”
“Screw you, the difference is as big as Mount Tai,” Seven insisted. “No man adopts until it’s his last choice. If his wife cannot bear him a son, he can take a second wife, even a third.”
“What if those wives are barren too?” retorted the cook. “For the rest of their lives, they will still get fed by their husband. Wah, wouldn’t they revel in luxury with no children to raise!”
Seven pressed his case. “The man could marry his daughter to some beggar who will take his wife’s surname.”
The other rail hand said, “But the beggar can run off at any time and take the children. He’s still the trueborn father.”
“Best thing is for the man to take his brother’s son as his own,” said the cook.
“What if he has no brother?”
“Go to his grandfather’s family.”
“But remember, as long as the boy has trueborn family around, the new father’s claim can fail.”
“Buying a stranger’s son is best. You pay the cash and sever all ties to the birth family.”
I knew all these schemes. My pig brain never thought they had anything to do with Peter. He was my firstborn son, just as I was to my father. But Grandfather had picked my father’s wife, while nobody had chosen mine. I had a son but no mother for him. Stupidly, I had done things backward.
The two-storey roadhouse sat in the midst of a thick clutter of tree stumps. The ground at the front door had been worn into a rounded pit of hard earth, a sign of steady customers. A China man wearing an apron hurried out and introduced himself as the kitchen helper Fung. He was a small man, the size of Fist, so he was quite brave to be working here alone among the redbeards. When Boss Joe’s men described last night’s fire, right away he asked about His Holiness. When he heard about the loss of our wheel, he shook his head and remarked, “First comes a leaky roof, then heavy rains at night.”
In a low voice, he added, “Avoid the roadhouse. It’s full of redbeard rail hands. They look for work but get drunk and fight among themselves.”
“There are jobs?” I asked, surprised.
“A few. Ranchers need grazing cattle brought in. Farmers need crops harvested.” He advised us to go stay with the Native people. “You have money, no? The village is not far. They will cook rice and feed you. It’s not cold; you can sleep outside. No need for trouble just when you head home to China.”
He was a bit too timid, too helpful for my liking. I wouldn’t mind seeing a no-holds-barred battle between China men and redbeards.
We passed a mining site like many others that Sam and I had skirted along the river, a huge stretch of overturned land with pits deep enough to bury scores of corpses. Puddles of water reflected the sky. Clean and dirty sides of boulders showed they had been flipped over. Trees and bushes had fallen, exposing their roots. Except for the neat walls of rocks stacked by the ditch where they had been washed, it was an untidy mess, as if giant hands had seized the surface of the land and shaken it like a dirty rug. Many sites had been abandoned to weeds and ruin, but this one was still being worked.
“My people could grow crops here,” Sam had grumbled to me, “but your people washed away the topsoil and left the rocks.”
“Redbeards did it too,” I had reminded him. “If you’re constipated, don’t blame the hard ground.”
One China man broke the ground with a pickaxe, thrusting his back and arms into every swing of the sharpened tip. A second fellow used a shoulder pole to carry pails of debris over the rough ground to dump into the sluice. A low wooden trough brought water from a distant stream to flush away the dirt and leave the gold. A third man chopped at a tree to expand the claim into the forest, where a ragged tent was pitched cockeyed under the trees. You could barely see the three miners, so well did their grimy presence blend into the woods.
“Have time to stroll?” The digger’s scornful tone labelled us as idlers who ought to be working instead.
“Redbeards evicted us from Lytton,” replied the escort, “so we go home.”
The miners frowned to hear about the fire, but only Spade Head spoke.
“Railway workers make trouble for everyone. The sooner you go home, the safer we will be.”
The men protested that they were not all rail hands, and Seven retorted, “Screw you. You miners make plenty of your own trouble. Whose land is this?”
“We paid money for this,” exclaimed Spade Head. “Redbeards were mining here when we saw a ditch in good shape. We have papers.”
“Were they real?” Seven snorted. “You can read English?”
This stir-shit-stick picked fights with everyone, no matter what they stood for.
“These men are working hard,” I said. “Leave them alone. They don’t bother you.”
“They bother the peace and the Native people.”
I asked the miners, “How far will you dig?”
“As far as it takes to find gold.”
“Water is low.” Seven pointed to the flume. “Redbeards sold you piss and shit.”
“Come spring, it will rise.”
“Did you find much?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
Every miner I had ever met answered that question the same way as if one holy sutra could protect everyone.
“Go home,” Seven said. “There’s no gold left here.”
“Go bother the redbeards,” Spade Head replied. “You take the road while we cross the bridge.”
He cursed us and turned away. We walked on.
“In Lytton you wanted to go beat the redbeards,” I said to Seven, “but here you have three mouths and two tongues. If China men don’t help China men, then who will?”
“Heaven, if they are good men.”
At the Native village, we were sent into the forest to cut pine boughs for bedding. Our beds were on the ground, under lean-tos made of woven mats. Giggling children called out to Peter, and they raced into one of the great round houses built into the ground. Each structure had a wooden ladder emerging from the cone-shaped roof. The village looked clean, and its people were well fed. They tended dusty fields of potatoes. I wished Mary lived in these forests rather than the desert lands of Lytton. Big meaty animals fed among the trees and could be hunted for food. After we came back, we started a fire in a pit of rocks. An elderly woman brought over tea leaves. We sniffed and found them to be a superior grade to what was served in teahouses. To have China men accepting tea from a Native woman was to be eating shit and excreting rice: the ways of the world were reversed.
Then the brat ran by, with Sam chasing him. What was that? I shook my head, thinking that my eyes had gone flowery from lack of sleep. Sam was with his woman and his child, back in Lytton. But the mix-blood guide scooped up Peter and hurried over.
“Yang Hok, we sail to China together!” He gave me a wide smile, and his voice was real.
“What are you doing here?” I felt my bones shrink. Bad luck was snaking up my shit-hole. The last thing I wanted now was to go to China with him and the boy. I may as well bring an entire village of eager Natives. “Was your child born?”
“A girl. The mother insists I am not the father.” He did not mind my fellow travellers hearing all his shame. “You won’t go to Mary?”
“Didn’t you see the fire?” I poured him some tea.
“I was ahead of you! The mother’s people didn’t want me there. They wouldn’t even let me see the baby. I left yesterday, boarded Skuzzy, and reached Boston Bar last night. I didn’t hear about the fire until I saw Fung at the roadhouse. He mentioned a China man with a mix-blood boy from Lytton, so I came to see if it was you. It’s the right thing, changing your mind.”
“I need money to buy his passage.” I waved at the brat. “You have money for your own ticket?” Surely this would thwart his plans for China.
“Those two boys sold my bootleg.” He laced his fingers around the mug and sipped the tea. “And I gambled last night. In China I can help you watch the boy. I can translate for your boy, make his life easier. He won’t be so scared.”
“Did you stop in Boston Bar and get my money back?” I reminded him that he too had once been too weak to piss.
“I caught a ride on a wagon. I planned to wait for you in Yale.”
“People in China will tell you to limp off with your rotted corpse,” I said.
“I promised my father I’d go home.”
“Kinsmen will smother you and bury you and no one will look for you. The countryside has its own laws.”
“My father’s ghost and mine would haunt them.”
“Village people don’t trust strangers.” I spat out some tea leaves.
“You wanted to see me recite the family tree to my relatives.”
“People in China kill each other over land. They slaughter entire families. No one has enough. That’s why we work abroad, to buy more land at home.”
“A fellow with a wagon is waiting for me.” He handed me the empty tea mug. “You can come with me now.”
“I go to see Fist.” My mouth saved me before I could think. In truth, the fire had devoured One Leg and his troubles and cast them out of my mind.
Sam’s eyes narrowed and his voice was accusing. “You weren’t planning that.”
I looked away. “In jail, I asked Heaven to help me escape. I promised to help Fist, so I went to the temple.”
“You change your mind all the time. Ever stand on both feet?”
“It’s the truth.”
Sam stalked off, shaking his head. The boy ran after him, calling his name. Sam spun him around, spoke a few words, and sent him stumbling back to me. By the time he arrived, he was wailing again, and the men blamed me for getting weep-ruined.
How dare that Sam presume that I would go with him to China? Yesterday’s fire in Lytton had changed everything. How could that stupid cockhead not see that? I had to look after my son now, the same way he was caring for himself, pushing his way into China.
Seven spoke up. “If you don’t want that mix-blood man in China, then why take your boy there?”
Luckily for me, the rail hand threw out a handful of dice and started a game for all the men. I said the boy needed to nap and took him away with my cup of tea.
When we returned to the roadhouse next day, the stagecoach had arrived and the horses were being replaced with a new team. The boy ran toward them. Fung stood chatting with Boss Joe, who held a large bundle in his arms. A thick knot showed several layers of stiff new cloth rolled together. Sharp corners poked out to indicate a box.
“Is that His Holiness?” Seven demanded.
Boss Joe nodded.
“You got nothing from Red Tie,” Seven went on, frowning and shaking his head, “and now you leave Lytton for good.”
“A homesick heart is a speeding arrow.”
“You should have let me stay there,” snapped Seven.
The lead escort stepped up and greeted his employer.
“Couldn’t sleep last night and kept thinking about the temple,” said Boss Joe. “Good thing I didn’t let you take His Holiness yesterday. What if you dropped the statue?”
“If His Holiness was on the stagecoach, we would have reached Yale yesterday. The wheel wouldn’t have gotten loose.”
When I told Boss Joe about my plans to go see Fist, he cried out, “Don’t waste time with those fool pigs. They will never leave. What His Holiness said won’t make any difference to One Leg.”
“I cannot not go.”
“Then you should have told me earlier, in Lytton,” he snapped. “Don’t play me for a fool. I would have paid your way just to this bridge. We get no refunds here.”
“Hey, Boss.” The other escort had spoken to Fung. “So you revenged yourself against Red Tie.”
“Where’s that fool Seven?” Boss Joe looked around. “He should hear this.”
They dragged him over and the story started. “Yesterday I went nosing around my store, looking for melted gold dust. I heard a squealing, very faint, like the mewing of kittens. I stood still and listened. It came from a corner of the floor that had escaped the fire, where water from the overturned barrels had seeped in. Under the boards was a nest of baby mice, just big enough to start running on their own. I scooped them into a bag. Then I went to Red Tie’s store and asked for him. When his clerk went to fetch him, I opened the bag and released the mice, ten or so of them. They scampered under the counter. When Red Tie came, I gave him the keys to my safe, which was sitting on the street, and said, ‘It’s yours.’”
I pictured Red Tie’s store stretching long and narrow so the light from the front windows weakened at the back. The mice vanished, wriggling, into narrow cracks in the wall, their tails whipping behind them. A clerk’s eyes widened. He chased them, his long apron flapping, with a broom. A woman flung a brown-paper packet of raisins onto the counter. When an oil lamp was lit, it showed black pellets of mouse shit nestled amidst the dried fruit. The woman and her friends marched from the store in a huff. My stomach was suddenly warm with fresh-cooked rice.
“So, only you can take revenge, is that it?” asked Seven. “You’re the big hero?”
Boss Joe arched an eyebrow. “My deed harmed no China man.”
“You play with mice, you hide like mice. That’s no great deed. No redbeard will hear about it.”
“You want your hands tied and your mouth gagged?”
“May I bring His Holiness a question?” asked Fung.
“Here?” The lead escort frowned. “Don’t be stupid.”
“Why not?” Boss Joe clapped Fung on the back. “His Holiness serves his followers wherever they are.”
“We have no incense or wine,” protested the escort.
“I have everything,” said Fung, offering a cloth bundle.
“This place is too exposed, too dark.”
“Fung came twice to the temple this year,” said Boss Joe. “He has urgent matters.”
“It’s nothing.” Fung reddened at the sudden attention on him. “I keep thinking to go home. I asked His Holiness if the time was right, but both times he told me no. If His Holiness is leaving Gold Mountain, then this is my last time to seek his advice.”
The escort untied the knot and opened the crate. The box was lined with more red cloth. He knelt, bowed his head, and whispered a short prayer before lifting the statue out and placing it on a flat tree stump. The escort was right: His Holiness was dwarfed by the trees and the clearing around him. The temple in Lytton had been a tight space where it was possible for His Holiness to assert his powers in a room of familiar trappings. Fung fetched the worship items, lit the candles and incense, and poured wine. Then he knelt and brought his forehead to the ground. Boss Joe handed him the charms, which he cast onto the ground. Everyone crowded in to see. The answer was no. He cast them again, and received the same answer.
Fung sighed. “Still not the right time.”
I shook my head at this cockhead. If he wanted to go home, then why not just leave? That lucky bastard had none of my stupid problems. Why seek advice from His Holiness? Could there ever be a wrong time to head for home? Didn’t home and family trump all other considerations, even money? What did he fear?
From the road-house, the boy and I walked to the bridge. The canyon narrowed here, which had allowed a crossing to be built long ago. The tightened river gave advantage to fishermen, and they crowded the banks with spears and nets. The boy poked his head through the railing and called. The men and women below waved and shouted back.
The boy gave a whoop of joy on seeing the railway, as if the shiny beams were his old toys. At first he tried to walk along one track, his arms spread wide to balance himself, but then he darted ahead. When I hurried after him, the boy thought we were playing chase and ran faster, laughing and screaming. I ran too but let him stay ahead until we both ran out of breath.
A chase from long ago came to mind. A feast of the food left from the annual rites had just ended. My pals and I had just caused our arch-enemy, the spoiled grandson from the richest family among us, to slip into the muddy bank of the river. A sampan bearing coloured banners had drawn us to the water.
Then the grandson’s furious minder chased us, waving a bamboo switch. We sprinted by the vegetable plots on the sunny side of the village. We raced through the stone laneways between the black brick houses. We split up to force the minder to choose one quarry.
The minder bore down on me, a set look on his dark face. I stopped. The men of the village squatted in front of the ancestral hall, fanning themselves and smoking tobacco.
The men looked up. Children running always meant trouble. My father summoned me just as the minder ran up and complained about the muddy insult. My name in his voice made me shudder. To my surprise, my father put on a startled look and said, “Such a small matter? You can beat the boy and make him cry, but if that summons bad luck on such a day, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
The minder backed off.
Every time that memory arose, I wondered if Father had really spoken up for me. Or had he given me a severe spanking later that night? I would ask Grandfather.
The river and the railway were steadfast guides; there was only one trail to follow, where man had clawed and smashed his way through nature. I strode along as confidently as Sam, hoping the boy would think that I knew this land equally well. Some mountain ridges held bold distinct shapes: a saddle, the fan tail of a fish, an even bowl-shaped dip. No doubt the Native people told stories about each site. At home, all landmarks and their stories were known to me. I planned to climb White Wolf Hill with Peter, taking the short route up and the longer one down. I would point out the curves of West River, the two rocky outcrops that formed Await-the-Husband peak, and the busy port of Sun Chong.
I peered into the forests, wondering if we were anywhere close to that camp where I’d been four years ago, where Poy and Onion had died. It would be honourable if I could find those two graves. I had come all this way and paid respects to strangers instead of my own comrades. Could those grave-sticks that I had carved back then still be standing? Could they still be read? Unfortunately I had no name for the camp, and could not recall where along the river it had stood. Everywhere the rocks and river and trees looked alike to me. To find the camp would be hard; it would be far harder to find the graves. I should have drawn a map. But even then, I had known Poy’s bones would never go to China. He had no family.
The brat and I came up behind an elderly couple, bent over, with cloth bundles tied to their backs. The boy called out, and they replied in cracked but cheerful voices. The boy dawdled and chatted with them.
I walked ahead and resisted the urge to shout for the boy. I watched the road to avoid the dung of wild animals. There was little time for him to spend with his own people. Maybe this couple, both with kerchiefs tied around their heads, would leave a strong impression on the boy. He should see that when Chinese and Native faces grew loose and wrinkled with age, they looked very much alike, with fleshy puddles under the eyes, yellowed teeth, and speckled skin. Maybe China would not feel so strange. Maybe he would feel no difference between these people who all despised the redbeard.
When that washman Yang and that miner Lam hinted that they might stay here instead of going home, I thought they were farting brave words and blowing hot air to impress me. To not go home was like chopping off one’s own foot to hobble about as One Leg did, all bitter and twisted. At home I would stroll through the paddy, letting my feet sink slowly, deep into the mud with each step. When I lifted my foot, water would rush in to fill the hole, water that had travelled great distances from the lofty mountains of central China. The well of my footprint, China’s turgid rivers, the squishy soil underneath: these were my natural world, my only home. Best to follow Grandfather, watching his skinny brown legs, scarred and studded with red insect bites, do the same. Later, there would be fresh rice cooking in the kitchen, rattling the lid, sending up sweet steam. On such a rare occasion, Grandmother would sit and hold my hand, wrapping my fingers over hers, but only briefly because she did not want me to see how the soil and water of the paddy had hardened her flesh.
When at last I went to fetch the boy, the couple looked up in surprise. The woman pulled a bulging kerchief from her pocket. She pointed to my hands, and poured dried berries into them. Then she motioned for us to move ahead.
Building the railway had flattened all the tangled, mature bushes, so berries were hard to find by the tracks. That summer and fall when we were together, Mary often went berry-picking, sometimes with her boss’s children. One Sunday, she and I took a pail up into the mountains. We climbed through forest groves, and I chased Mary from tree to tree. A log with a flattened side let us cross a brook. We saw hills of ancient timber, thick with ridged trunks and green with moss. Her white apron became stained with many colours.
When the forest darkened under a leafy roof, the narrow trails vanished from my sight. When heavy rains started, I turned back. But Mary was intent on going higher, to a secret trove of berries. She wouldn’t listen to me so we stomped ahead. When I turned, she was gone. Suddenly, every gap between trees seemed to be my last path. I shouted her name. Birds flew up. I thought that any downward slope would lead home until one led me to the edge of a cliff. I tried to retrace my steps. I found the vantage point where we had stopped earlier, but it was impossible to see through the rain.
I turned, and there she stood with face and hair streaming wet. She grabbed my hand and ran. We struggled uphill. I fought her until we reached a cave. Prior occupants, whether animal or human, had left behind rank smells, and I feared the darkness inside. We were cold but safe from the rain. I doffed my jacket and wrung out my handkerchief to mop our faces. We sat on a rock near the entrance, leaning against one another, and watched the dark clouds go by. I felt safe, even though I had no idea where I was or how to get home.