TZU-LU SAT AT HIS DESK, in the farthest corner of his grandfather’s store, staring at an unmarked sheet of paper.
He was supposed to be writing a theme for school, but his enthusiasm for the project was sorely lacking. The topic was about as old as they get—What I want to be when I grow up. Every spring, Miss Wu, the teacher at the St. Frances Chinatown One-room Schoolhouse, assigned them this very same subject. In years past, Tzu-lu had written detailed essays celebrating the pleasures of a life of piracy, or as a cowboy on some far-flung ranch. But he was fourteen now, in his last term at school, and so had no more time for childish dreaming. The other boys all wanted to find work on steamships. Jimmy Chiu hoped to sign on as cub bartender aboard an old sternwheeler called the Glistening Birch. Only white men could be engineers or pilots, of course. But a Chinese man, if he was lucky and worked hard, might manage to secure a position shoveling coal into the boilers, loading cargo or serving passengers. Servants got to roam above-decks and wear uniforms, so it was to this lofty position that the boys cast their sights. All but Tzu-lu. He didn’t want to make beds or serve drinks. In fact, the only aspect of river life he considered even remotely attractive was the travel. Between St. Frances—where his grandfather and mother had their store—and New Lyon, away down on the gulf, lay more than two thousand miles of glittering river. That was a powerful lot of world for one boy to see.
Tzu-lu dipped his pen and had just begun to scrawl his name onto the upper right-hand corner of his paper when Lion-dog came prancing up the aisle toward him. His grandfather, Master K’ung, had given him the Golden Pekingese for his tenth birthday. It was far and away the nicest gift Tzu-lu had ever received. Lion-dog gazed up at him a moment, licking her lips as though she were trying to decide whether the pen in his hand might not be good to eat.
“Go on,” Tzu-lu whispered, shoving Lion-dog away with his foot. “Get back to the kitchen.” His mother hated for anything to disturb him while he studied. It was she who’d placed his desk in the store in the first place, just so she could keep an eye on him. If she thought he was playing with his dog rather than writing his theme, she’d fling Lion-dog out like a shot.
Madame Yen—that’s how Tzu-lu’s mother was known throughout Chinatown—sat in her usual spot, on a high stool behind the front counter, tallying the week’s receipts. Tzu-lu could hear her working the abacus and muttering curses under her breath. All of Chinatown did business at K’ung’s Store. They sold produce, hardware and dry goods, just like any shop anywhere, but they also had whole shelves devoted to nothing but cheap magical bric-a-brac—what Tzu-lu’s grandfather called “junk for wishful thinkers.” Among the more ridiculous items were an enchanted collar to make your singing voice clear, brass rings to make you lucky at gambling, and hats to grow hair. But not everything sold at K’ung’s was fake. Behind the front counter, well out of the reach of curious children, were products concocted by Master K’ung himself. There were charms to ward off demonic eavesdroppers, potions to cure everything from stomach ulcers to skin lesions, and incense meant to attract friendly spirits. If a person needed a yard of virgin silk to make new clothes in honor of a household god, rice wine to toast a wedding, or hell money to buy a loved one’s soul out of damnation, K’ung’s was the place. Even a few curious white folks came in, hoping to catch a glimpse of the renowned alchemist. But though it bore his name, Tzu-lu’s grandfather rarely appeared in the shop. From sunup to sundown, Master K’ung remained locked in his basement, studying ancient texts and concocting ever more powerful potions, tinctures and alchemical artifacts.
Tzu-lu had finally written “What I want to be when I grow up” across the top of his paper, when he heard the bell over the front door tinkle, followed by the clatter of heavy boots and the jangle of spurs.
These were sounds rarely heard in K’ung’s, or anywhere else in Chinatown. Tzu-lu couldn’t resist taking a peek. He slipped quietly down off his chair and pressed his cheek to the floorboards. If he got low enough, he could see beneath the shelves all the way to the front door.
The boots were dirty and scuffed. Tzu-lu guessed they’d once been black, but had turned dull gray from wear. A clod of horse manure was stuck to one heel and the spurs were spotted with rust. Slowly they marched to the front counter and stopped.
“Master K’ung in?” There was an icy quality to the man’s voice that made the hairs on the back of Tzu-lu’s neck stand straight out.
“Downstairs,” Madame Yen replied.
The man strode around the counter, heading toward the basement door. Tzu-lu was amazed. In all his years he’d never seen anyone go into his grandfather’s basement uninvited. Not even his mother was allowed down there without permission.
The stranger had reached the end of the counter, and was about to push the door open, when Lion-dog suddenly came tearing out from behind the shelves, yapping furiously. Normally, Lion-dog paid little attention to the customers. She’d once bit Jimmy Chiu on the thumb, but that was only after he’d snapped her on the nose three times, and even then she seemed sorry to have to resort to such brutality. This was different. Lion-dog sounded as though she might attack this man. Tzu-lu had no idea why she found him so offensive, but he did know one thing—nothing good could possibly come from having his dog bite a customer.
Tzu-lu leapt to his feet, shouting for Lion-dog to come back.
Alarmed, the stranger spun to face Tzu-lu, his hands dropping to the heels of the two largest revolvers the boy had ever seen. He drew neither gun, but Tzu-lu’s heart beat just as hard and fast as if bullets had gone whistling over his head.
The stranger was a white man—tall, lean and rough as they come. He had a scraggly mustache surrounded by at least a week’s growth of beard, and wore an old blue coat with gold stars over the shoulders and a long line of brass buttons on either breast. Round his neck hung a sweaty bandanna, brown as a field of new-turned earth. On his head was a flat-brimmed black hat.
“This your boy?” he asked, hands still resting lightly on his guns.
“Yen Hui’s son,” Tzu-lu’s mother replied.
“I see a resemblance.”
Lion-dog continued to snarl and yap. The stranger peered down at her, and then looked at Tzu-lu again.
“She yours?” he asked.
Tzu-lu nodded. He couldn’t have squeezed a syllable out for money.
“Got quite a mouth on her, don’t she?”
Lion-dog barked even harder.
The stranger glared at her for what seemed a long time, and then finally touched the brim of his hat. “Pardon me, Miss,” he said. “No offense intended.”
Abruptly, Lion-dog fell silent. In fact, she went right back to wagging her little stump of a tail just as though nothing had happened. Tzu-lu was astonished.
“I’ll be headin’ down to talk to Master K’ung now,” the stranger said to Tzu-lu’s mother. “Unless you’d like to announce me first.”
She shook her head.
The stranger turned and pushed his way through the basement door.
“Who was that?” Tzu-lu asked, once the man was out of ear-shot.
“Jack Straw,” his mother replied.
Tzu-lu could scarcely believe his ears. Jack Straw was as famous as any man alive, though Tzu-lu had never known anyone to actually set eyes on the fabled gunfighter. Every boy in the west—even in St. Frances, where the only men that wore gun-belts were marshals—knew at least one story about him. Tzu-lu’s favorite was the one where Jack gunned down the feared bandit, Joaquin Murrieta.
“Does grandfather know him?” he asked.
His mother nodded. “Jack helped your father and grandfather many years ago.”
“My father knew Jack Straw?”
“They were friends.”
Tzu-lu’s mind raced. He had so many questions he couldn’t decide which to ask first. How had they met? Where? Was Jack there when his father died? Tzu-lu tried to envision his father shaking hands with Jack Straw, but found it difficult. He had no memory of his father, and only the haziest sense of what he’d looked like. Jack, by contrast, was so magnificent, so real.
“Do you think he’s in the army?” Tzu-lu asked. He was thinking about Jack’s coat. Tzu-lu had seen coats very much like it on cavalry officers headed for the territories—never one with stars on the shoulders, but otherwise identical.
His mother didn’t answer. She stared at the basement door.
“What do you think he’s doing here?” Tzu-lu asked her.
“I wish I knew.”
“Maybe I should go downstairs. Grandfather might need a fresh pot of tea.”
His mother glared at him. “No.” She seemed almost angry at the suggestion.
“But—”
“I want you to strip the beds and take the laundry to Chung’s.”
“Now?”
“Right now.”
“But … I have to write my theme.”
“You can do it after supper.”
Tzu-lu didn’t know what to say. Put off his homework? His mother had never suggested anything remotely like that before. Not ever.
“But Jack’s only going to be here for—”
“I don’t want you thinking about Jack Straw,” his mother said. “Understand?”
Tzu-lu nodded.
“Understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now, you mind what I told you. Strip the beds and take the laundry to Chung’s.”
It was so unfair! This was the most exciting thing to happen in the history of the store—maybe even in the whole town—and Tzu-lu’s mother was making him miss it. What did she have against Jack Straw anyway? Jack was only the greatest gunfighter in history. Tzu-lu was so mad he could spit. He could hardly stand to look at his mother as he trudged through the store with the laundry sacks in tow.
He sulked all the way down to Chung’s Laundry, which was on the south side of Chinatown, not far from the docks. Tzu-lu just knew that Jack would be gone by the time he got back. In fact, it hardly seemed worth it to go back. His mother would be angry—she was expecting him to help her do inventory that afternoon—but at the moment Tzu-lu didn’t care. He’d stay out all day and all night, just to spite her.
Tzu-lu had just dropped off the laundry, and was wondering how he could waste a whole day, when he happened upon Jimmy Chiu, coming from the direction of the docks. Instantly, Tzu-lu saw a way of enjoying his exile.
He stopped Jimmy, asking him if anything interesting was happening down by the river. Tzu-lu was gratified to hear that only one old side-wheeler had come in all morning, and it’d mostly just unloaded a few bales of cotton at the customs house before continuing up and around the bend. The pilot hadn’t even whistled.
“What’ve you been doing?” Jimmy asked. “Working on your theme?”
“Actually, someone came into the store. Guess who.” Jimmy offered a few names, but soon grew tired of that game. “Tell me,” he said.
“Jack Straw.”
“Liar.”
“Am not. Apparently, Jack was best friends with both my grandfather and father years ago. That’s what my mother said.”
“Your mother said that?” Jimmy was impressed. For the next hour he begged Tzu-lu to take him back to the store, but Tzu-lu steadfastly refused. He doubted that the gunfighter would still be around, but couldn’t risk it. At present he held the monopoly on Jack Straw sightings, and he intended to keep it that way.
Finally, Jimmy suggested that they head back down to the docks where there was a whole group of kids they could tell.
The boys were as jealous as if Tzu-lu had been to a circus. Even the girls showed a marked interest, though they acted as if a rough and dirty gunfighter was beneath their notice. As the afternoon wore on, Tzu-lu became ever more liberal with his account of the morning’s adventure, claiming that Jack Straw had not only reached for his legendary pistols, but actually drawn one.
Not to be entirely outdone, the other boys recounted every last story they could remember—and a few they made up on the spot—about Jack Straw. The best were loaded with shooting and swearing, an art with which a few of Tzu-lu’s friends were showing distinct promise. The girls tended to like the sappier tales, wherein Jack rode to the rescue of some maiden taken prisoner by bloodthirsty Apaches, or led a starving family to safety through the hoodoo forests surrounding the infamous canyon known as the Hell Mouth. The youngest boy told a ridiculous tale about how Jack Straw had once arm-wrestled Bigfoot. It was barely worth making fun of.
The sun was going down, and most of the other children had gone to dinner before Tzu-lu finally returned to the shop, slipping in through the rear door to avoid ringing the bell. Nothing much had changed since he’d gone out. His mother was measuring a bolt of red silk for Mrs. Wang, whose daughter had recently given birth to a son. Mrs. Wang also bought rice flour and a bottle of magical elixir, which Master K’ung had concocted especially for newborns as a preventative against childhood demons.
While his mother walked Mrs. Wang to the door, Tzu-lu crept around the counter. He knew Jack Straw must have long since gone, but wanted to see if he’d left anything behind. Quiet as he could, he pushed open the basement door and slipped down the stairs.
At the bottom of the stairs was a short, very dark tunnel, and at the end of the tunnel was a door. Light poured from beneath the door. Tzu-lu got down on one knee and pressed his eye to the keyhole.
The room beyond was small, but cozy. A Persian carpet, threadbare at the corners, lay across the plank floor, and a kettle of hot tea sat steaming on the desk. A rack of bottles stood against the rear wall, containing all the ingredients necessary for his grandfather’s potions. Most of the bottles appeared to contain nothing more than ordinary spices, but a few glowed powerfully, bathing desktop and walls in mysterious light. Across from his grandfather’s desk was a bookshelf, stacked floor to ceiling with scrolls, boxes and books. Tzu-lu’s grandfather sat on a straight-backed chair—the kind a white family might have placed around a dining-room table—with a volume open in his lap. Normally, his grandfather rested his feet on an ottoman. But not tonight. This evening the ottoman was occupied, and by none other than Jack Straw himself.
Like Tzu-lu’s grandfather, the gunfighter was reading. Tzu-lu could see his lips moving, his eyes flitting back and forth as he scanned the page. Both men read quietly for what seemed a long time. At last, Jack broke the silence.
“Can I see that other book now?” he asked, placing the volume he’d been studying on the edge of the desk.
Tzu-lu’s grandfather took an old notebook from the shelves, blew a layer of dust off the top edge, and handed it to Jack. “The third entry is the most interesting,” he said.
Before even cracking the notebook open, Jack fished a cigarette from his breast pocket and lit it with a match. “I reckon I’ll start at the beginning,” he said.
The gunfighter read and read, only pausing every few minutes to turn a page. As he read, he puffed at his cigarette. Smoke quickly filled the room. It even swirled under the door. At last it got so thick that Master K’ung coughed.
His concentration broken, Jack squinted at the pale vapors curling amidst the objects on the Master’s desk. “Sorry ‘bout the smoke,” he said.
And then, to Tzu-lu’s astonishment, Jack did something amazing. No, it was impossible. He reached out, somehow managing to catch one of the denser wisps between his thumb and forefinger, and then, like a spider dragging in the myriad strands of its web, he pulled the smoke toward him, winding it into a tight gray ball, which he stuck into his coat pocket.
Tzu-lu’s mouth hung open. He’d seen birthday party magicians and petty sorcerers often enough, but nothing like this. He wished he could see the trick performed a second time, and hoped the room would once again fill up with smoke. But that wasn’t to happen. From then on, every last curl of smoke automatically wound itself into a perfect silky-white strand, coiling directly from the gunfighter’s lips to his pocket.
By the time he’d finished reading the notebook, Jack’s cigarette was little more than a tube of ash. He stubbed the remains out on his boot-heel.
<<Is it him?>> he asked.
Tzu-lu was so surprised at hearing a white man speak Chinese that he very nearly missed what came next.
<<I believe so,>> his grandfather replied.
<<So why has he gone west?>>
<<The whole world is going west. He doesn’t want to be left behind.>>
Jack considered a moment. <<Can you help them?>>
<<I’m too old for adventures,>> Master K’ung replied. <<If Hui were alive, I’d send him. But—>> He paused. <<Maybe there is another. Of course, he will need training.>>
“I’ll be escorting MacLemore and his daughter to the other side of the Hell Mouth. That gives us two months at least. Maybe three. Any fool ought to be able to learn to light a fuse after one or two lessons.” <<Does he know anything at all?>>
<<Fireworks, a bit. And he can learn.>>
They must be talking about Lung, Tzu-lu guessed. Lung was a local orphan who mostly hung around the docks, running errands for the customs agents and selling penny cigars to men fresh off the steamboats and hungry for tobacco. All the kids in Chinatown were fascinated by Lung, and a little bit scared of him as well. Lung had come to the store each of the last three years to help Master K’ung load and wrap the firecrackers for the New Year’s celebration, for which he was always paid a dime. Tzu-lu always had to help, too. But his grandfather had never paid him so much as a cent.
“If you’ll vouch for him, I’ll take him,” Jack said. “But the territories are getting awful dangerous. I can’t promise anyone’s safety. Plus, after we cross the Hell Mouth I’ll be gone. … You’re sure you want to send him?”
Master K’ung thought a moment. “It will do him good,” he said at last. “A young man needs to learn to stand on his own feet, to stretch his own legs. Speaking of young men—” Master K’ung took a scroll down from the shelf and handed it to Jack. As it passed from one hand to the other, Lu noticed a pair of crossed swords printed on one end, and surrounded by a half-dozen Chinese symbols. “I think you might find this interesting.”
Jack and his grandfather went back to their studies, and Tzulu took the opportunity to sit and rest his knees. What an amazing day, he thought, as he leaned back against the wall of the tunnel. He could hardly wait to tell the boys at school about the trick with the smoke. Wouldn’t they love that? Of course, he’d also tell them about how Jack spoke Chinese, but he wondered if they’d believe him. For some reason, that seemed the more difficult bit to swallow.
He sat a long time, hoping to hear more. Eventually he must’ve fallen asleep, because the next thing he knew, something hard struck him square on the shin.
With a yelp, Tzu-lu opened his eyes. He was shocked to find himself gazing up at his grandfather, cane gripped in his fist like a saber. Jack Straw peered over the old man’s shoulder. Neither looked particularly pleased.
<<He needs discipline,>> Jack said.
Master K’ung raised his cane, preparing to strike the boy another blow to the shin. But before he got the chance, Tzu-lu leapt out of the way. He never looked back as he bounded up the stairs.
“Good!” his grandfather called after him. “To bed with you! And tell your mother that I wish to speak to her!”