SEVENTY-TWO

 

 

Three weeks later, Miles let it be known around town that he'd be away all day, taking the mostly healed Chinese girl—who an interpreter was finally able to tell him was named Yin—to the deportation station in Port Townsend, as was his duty. Yin was, after all, an illegal immigrant, since federal law explicitly and specifically banned the immigration of Chinese.

First thing in the sunny morning, he retrieved Yin from Meredith Bailey's house where she'd been convalescing, drove her to the docks, and took her aboard Luke Gruden's waiting boat. Then the three of them motored out of Friday Harbor, witnessed by half a dozen fishermen and dockworkers who were there going about their business.

Miles gazed at her as they motored out into the channel, wishing he could learn more about her. About the place she'd come from, and why she'd come to America. He could only fill in the blanks with guesses. Everything he knew of her came from a very brief and somewhat comical telephone conversation she'd had with a Cantonese interpreter in Seattle. She'd never seen a phone before. And when Miles tried to put the receiver to her ear, she'd recoiled in terror, as if the phone were some sort of torture device—which, to Miles, who hated talking on the phone, it was. When he finally pantomimed how to use it, finally convinced the wide-eyed and utterly mystified Yin that it wouldn't hurt her, she was able to answer a handful of questions from the interpreter, who then passed the answers on to Miles. What he learned was that she came from a small village on the Pearl River. That she was a farm girl. That her family was very poor. Her older brothers conscripted into the army. Her baby brother sick. Her father hurt—too hurt to work the land by himself. She did not know why she'd been sent away. She did not know her intended destination.

As far as anyone in Friday Harbor knew, she was now being sent back to China. But once Gruden's boat cleared San Juan Channel and entered Juan de Fuca Strait, instead of continuing south to Port Townsend, they turned east, motored past Lopez Island, then turned north—just as they had when they'd taken Sean Brennan's mother, Clarice, back to the Bellingham senile folks' home, where Miles had already prepaid for three months of care from funds he'd been saving to one day build a house.

They motored up Rosario Strait, past Anacortes, past Lummi Island, toward the small village of Point Roberts. There, Miles and Henry had arranged for Yin to be met by a Cantonese speaking family who ran a small restaurant and laundry. They had two daughters who were roughly her age and were willing to take her in and see to her education, provided she helped out with the family business. Henry assured Miles that they were good people—despite what Henry continued to describe as their Cantonese willingness to "eat anything"—and that Yin would have a good life there.