When you’ve killed somebody, people look at you differently. You come walking up, and the sea of people parts like you’re Moses (he of the commandments) because you’ve performed an act of biblical gravity. Then again, maybe I had it wrong. Maybe people drew back because I was like one of those lepers from the Bible stories, cast out from society and made to cry “unclean, unclean.”
My gut twisted into knots. It didn’t seem to occur to anyone that I’d not actually attacked the Celestials’ camp. I was only standing near the attackers when it happened.
Patrick reached across the chasm that evening. “You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said, not quite looking me in the eye. So how much did he believe his own words? “’Twas an accident. You didn’t mean to be there.”
I tried to nod my thanks before he turned away, but that nagging voice inside me probed: Didn’t I mean to be there? Hadn’t I followed the U.P. men to see what would happen, when I could all too easily guess the outcome?
Jesse, after spitting a stream of his tobacco juice and giving a shrug, made light of the situation. “What difference does it make? You haven’t put no more than a dent in their population.” He scratched his ear. “I do miss Brina, though.”
I wanted to climb out of my skin.
The joining-up ceremony didn’t happen the next day, Saturday, as it was supposed to. The clouds opened and let a hard rain pour down with a vengeance. It was still raining come Sunday. On tired horses and tattered tents, on iron rails and the unclaimed relics of shattered bodies. Officials from the Union Pacific Railroad telegraphed that they couldn’t even make it to the site, so the ceremony was put on hold. Rumor had it that the delay was due more to guns than weather, that angry U.P. workers who were owed a load of back pay were holding the train hostage. Meanwhile, Promontory wallowed in a sea of mud.
When I could no longer stand the furtive glances and suspicious whispering that multiplied throughout camp, I flipped up my collar, tugged on my cap, and slogged through the rain and the mud to find Blind Thomas. Instinctively I braced for Brina’s exuberant lunge to my hip, her busy tongue slobbering my hand. But only a distinct void shadowed me, and aching with that emptiness, I continued alone.
Blind Thomas stood with the other horses, head down, patiently waiting out the weather. I sidled up to his shoulder, announcing my presence with a murmur, and laid a wet hand beneath his stringy mane. He lifted his head and arced it around. Locating my shoulder, he nuzzled it gently. Then he bobbed his head, pulling me in. His thick lips felt as warm as fingers, affectionate, nonjudgmental. Tears filled my eyes. Good old Blind Thomas. Faithful Thomas. So selfishly grateful was I for his blindness then, because I couldn’t have borne it if he’d looked at me as so many others now did.
That hadn’t stopped Ducks from looking at me in that way. Over and over in my mind, his final look of shock and sharp disappointment shot through me, his flash of awareness that I was less than he’d thought. He’d seen me standing beside the man throwing the explosive, and he’d gone to his grave believing I hated him. When I didn’t.
Nor could I stop revisiting the way Ducks, in his last breath, had tried to shield Brina from the blast. Poor, poor Brina, who hadn’t even been asked if she wanted to come on this trek, and yet I’d put a rope around her neck—which had become a noose now, hadn’t it—and dragged her here to her death.
That’s when I cried. Couldn’t help it.
It was later on that same afternoon that Mr. Strobridge sent for me.
I trudged through the rain again, this time like I was going to my own hanging. Which I was.
Mr. Strobridge kept his office in the same railcar where he lived. I’d never been inside and didn’t care to have the privilege now, so it was with a heart sunk low that I pulled myself up the steps. A good part of me was hoping he’d been called away, but there he sat, of course, his towering frame bent over the storm of papers strewn across his desk. A brass lamp cast a puddle of yellow light on his work, and that made a warm contrast to the cold, gray skies pressing against the curtained window. Within reach of his large, calloused hands sat an incongruously dainty teacup and saucer, and beside it, a matching pot hooded by a cozy. Although several chairs, straight backed and cloth covered, dressed the room, I was so dripping and muddy that I stood in the entry until he finally lifted his head and motioned me forward. Beyond the wall came the animated sound of women’s voices—one of them his wife, no doubt—and the clatter of pots and lids. I smelled a good Irish stew cooking. That aroma called to me something fierce, and I was a child again.
Mr. Strobridge let me just stand there, and I waited, thoroughly miserable, as his black eye patch, judge and jury both, measured me up and down. The verdict was soon rendered: Found wanting. Lacking a backbone or any character. Lacking a voice.
“Mr. Gormley, is it?”
I nodded. (“Gorm Li?” I heard Ducks echo from far in the past. “Li is Chinese name.”) Some little brother I’d turned out to be.
“We count five Chinese dead, one missing, and three injured in your shenanigans of Friday last. In addition, one laborer for the U.P. is dead. Since it appears he was the one who hurled the nitroglycerin, his rightful punishment has already been delivered.”
The number of deaths shocked me anew. I hadn’t meant—hadn’t meant . . . what?
“Those two other hooligans at the scene are being handled by the U.P. As for you, your employment with the Central Pacific is terminated. The wages due you for your last two weeks will instead be handed over to the Chinese to help cover the expenses of shipping the dead back to their families.”
This was the time to give back the gold coins. They rightfully belonged to Ducks and the others. The money could be used to ship home Ducks’s body, if the pieces of it could be gathered.
“Do you have anything to say on your behalf?”
Say? I moved my jaw, but the words wouldn’t come—as usual. They never arrived in time. More and more often, it seemed, I stood by and let others speak. Even when it was wrong. Burning with shame, I shook my head.
Mr. Strobridge pushed back his chair and eyed me with undisguised distaste. “Nothing at all?”
I didn’t mean to! I wanted to cry. I tried to stop it.
“We couldn’t have come this far without them, you know. The Chinamen.”
I nodded agreement. It didn’t seem enough, and it wasn’t.
He studied me longer, giving me the chance to say something, anything, in my defense, but misery held me mute.
“Pack your things,” he said at last, and jerked his head toward the door.
I stepped out into a colder rain.
Since all the trains were coming toward Promontory and none were heading back until after the joining-up ceremony, I had at least a couple of long days to wait. A lot of hours to kill. So that night after supper, feeling itchy and willfully reckless, I joined the poker game in our sleeping car. Jesse dealt the cards, as usual, and the betting proceeded, as usual, but something was different. During my afternoon absence, something seemed to have been decided and an invisible curtain had been pulled between the others and me. They now communicated wordlessly, through confederated expressions and subtle cues, and I didn’t have the code.
I’m not saying they were cheating—I’m not—though the cards dealt me that night stood so far apart, they might as well have been warring. No two cards would pair up or even line up. Hand after hand, I drew scattered small numbers and mixed suits. But I couldn’t drop out of the game; I couldn’t. I had to belong somewhere. And so, even though I was losing a whole lot more money than I had, I kept right on betting.
The funny thing was, it was as if everyone at the table knew I was in over my head yet had a secret agreement to keep dealing me cards. And when it came time to toss in another coin and my pockets were empty, no one commented. Patrick just rose from his chair and sauntered over to my bunk, reached under it—while my heart clawed its way up my throat—and dragged out my haversack. No! He dug his hand into it and lifted out the bag of gold coins. “I think you’ve more than enough here to put things right.”
“That’s the railroad’s money bag!” exclaimed one of the other men, as if reading from his script.
Jesse shook his head sadly. “It’s like we never knew you, Malachy.”