A Superior Man (16 page)

“Let's all eat.” He waved for us to start.

“Let's all eat.” We echoed him but waited for the eldest to begin.

Only Fist failed to repeat the invitation. Yet, as the youngest one present, he was the one most expected to do so. Nor did he pick up his metal spoon.

“Today we have guests.” One Leg looked at Fist. “Can't we be grateful for this?”

“Very sweet.” I took several sips. “What broth is this?”

Fist refused to reply. We ate in silence for a while until One Leg pointed to the antlers drying by the stove. “Fist shot a deer.”

I had mistaken them for tree branches because they lay in the shadow. “You three ate a deer?” I asked. “How did you carry it?”

“Butchered it in the woods and took pieces to town to sell.”

“Some days we sit there until dark,” said No Brain. “Nothing comes near, not even a squirrel.”

“Look at him,” said One Leg. “Won't talk, won't eat, won't do a thing, all to show his contempt.”

I ate as fast as the hot porridge allowed, but Fist turned to me. “Uncle, can you ask at the Lytton temple for us?”

“Get Sam to do it,” I said.

“He's not our kind.” Fist pointed to a tatty print of Ghost Subjugator, ripped from an almanac and pinned to the wall. “He doesn't even know what that is.”

Sam took a moment before speaking in a drawl. “I've been in temples. I can toss the charms.”

“Ask His Holiness if One Leg should go home, yes or no,” said Fist. “Ask if I should stay here or not.”

One Leg slurped his food and muttered, “Pay him no heed.”

“I won't come back this way,” I said. “My ship to China leaves in six days.”

“All China men go home, except this ox head,” Fist said. “Tell him to be reasonable.”

“The older the ginger, the hotter its bite,” I said, resenting the sting of One Leg's tongue from earlier.

“You're no different from One Leg,” said Fist, “leaving your boy here for the same reason he stays: fear of people laughing at you.”

“
Mares need a stud, sons must be true-blood
,” I retorted.

Fist slammed the table and then ran outside.

Sam fetched more porridge as the brat chewed with false vigour, mocking my itch to leave. When Sam emptied the plate of sausages into Peter's bowl, the boy grinned at him.

“Go to Fist,” One Leg said to me. “Tell him to go home. He can say our injuries will kill us soon.”

“He won't listen. He hates me,” I said.

“He hates proverbs. Tell him not to buy extra ship tickets.”

“Why doesn't he just go?” I threw down my spoon. My bowl was empty, and I didn't want any more.

“He promised his father to tend his uncle, No Brain, who won't leave without me.”

“His father waits at home?”

“He died here. But people in China know about the vow.”

“Go talk to Fist,” Sam said. “Aren't you a superior man?”

I cursed them all.

The sun had broken through the grey clouds, and the faces of tree stumps were bright yellow basins, adding light to a gloomy day. They floated above the broken ground. I skirted them, suddenly fearful that they were a part of the graveyard. Across the river, cloud shadows hung like giant blankets over the cliffs, broken by airy shafts of white light. The distance reassured me. We needed to get back to the road, to find Mary. My family was waiting. Grandfather wouldn't live forever.

By the graveyard, Fist had lit another roll of tobacco.

“Didn't learn much from the railway, did you?” I asked.

He exhaled smoke and looked away.

“
Trust the mountain, but mountains slide
,” I said, forgetting One Leg's warning.

“What did the old man say?”

“That you should leave him and No Brain here. That you should not waste money.”

The afternoon light caught bright and dark shades of green stirring among the trees. Just as I wondered if a deer might be watching us, a sudden movement crashed through the bushes behind us. We turned but saw nothing.

Fist needed to be an animal with sharp claws and fearsome growl. He needed to sprint through the forest like a hunted deer. Canada was a dense forest, with stiff branches and prickly bramble blocking your every step. The longer he stayed, the more this place would drain him, until he cracked and fell apart like that overlong wooden trough.

He shook his head. “That cockhead One Leg thinks I can make a life here.”

“He should kill himself. Then No Brain can go with you.”

“Tell him!”

“Those two are fragrant already.”

“You don't need to enter the temple,” Fist wheedled. “Just come back and tell that shit-hole prick to go home. Tell him you asked and His Holiness said he must go.”

“Lies are no good.” These cockheads were all liars. Fist claimed he was told to make a life here, yet One Leg said he told him to go home.

“You can save them both,” Fist pleaded.

“Fools came for the iron road,” I said, turning away. “The only bigger fools are those who don't know how to go home.”

Back at the cabin, Sam had loaded up our packs with new goods, making them heavier than before. I cursed on hearing the solid clink of bottles.

“Good trading is ahead,” Sam explained with a rueful grin. “I had goods stored here.”

“Well-hidden?” Of course liquor was involved.

“A horse brings the stock. Otherwise the bottles are too heavy.”

No wonder he had raged when we sold Moy nothing. Sam was a far smarter businessman than I had thought.

One Leg limped out to say farewell. “Fist listen to you?”

“Uncle, go home,” I said loudly. “It's better for everyone, here and in China.”

“I told him many times to go home.”

“Fools came for the iron road,” I said again. “The only bigger fools are those who don't know how to go home.”

“Do you fight your kind everywhere?” Sam demanded. “That shit mouth of yours won't sell anything.”

“Stupid donkeys.”

“Want to be a superior man?” He matched my pace step for step. “Then clear them out. Push your China men onto those big boats and send them home.”

“You evict the China men but keep the redbeards?”

“China men are weak.”

“Then so are you.”

“Native blood makes me strong.”

I stomped ahead.

He shouted, “You cockheads come with no money but kneel to the redbeards. They give you the shit jobs that even my people won't take. China men have no honour.”

I walked even faster.

We China men had been plenty brave to cross the black ocean. We had rules for safety and politeness: “
Enter a house, greet your hosts; enter a temple, worship ghosts
.”

China had lost its honour to foreign armies and navies, but we
knew that life went on. “
Family at ease, nation at peace
.”

Sojourners were not yam brains. We talked wisdom all the time: “
Don't beat a dog until you know its master
.”

Clearly, Sam's father had not taught him much.

As the path sloped upward, the load tugged at my shoulders. Sam had been right about the steep climb. At Big Tunnel, Sam called a halt, lowered his pack, and dusted himself off. Then he shut his eyes, raised his arms, palms to the sky, and started to chant. Turning slow circles, he tossed crushed dry leaves into the air. The brat watched with solemn eyes.

As we unpacked lanterns, Sam said, “This mountain suffered greatly. Redbeards packed in black powder and blasted its head, chest, and arms into the river. Fish were blocked from going upstream. Native crewmen urged the Company to take action, but it refused. We cleared the rubble on our own. Finally the Company sent some China men to help.”

Big Tunnel curved and cut off the entrance light. I hurried into its cool darkness to show my courage.

“
Baba
!” Peter called. “
Ung mai ngoi
.”

He called me father, asked me to wait! I spun around. “Sam, ask how he learned that!”

“His mother, who else?”

I spoke to the boy in Chinese. “Have you eaten rice?”

Nothing.

“Good morning.”

“Eat sweets?”

“Want to go back to China?”

Nothing.

“Doesn't matter if he speaks Chinese or not.” Sam had strolled ahead. “You're not taking him to China.”

“He has Chinese blood. He should speak Chinese.”

“He has Native blood too.”

The boy pulled me to Sam and took his hand, so the three of us walked together, trying to hurry but not stumble. The darkness didn't bother the boy, who hummed and skipped along. I breathed with relief: Peter would do well, no matter where he went. He would make his mother proud.

“And you?” I asked. “Will you teach your child Chinese words?”

“Won't be there. The mother doesn't want me. At first she said I was the father, but then she said no. Now she says the father is a Native man.”

“You let her take claim?” I was astounded. “But it was your seed that made the child.”

“Child is inside her.”

“Will her family raise it?”

“Of course.”

“The mother fears you are poor,” I said. “Many women think that way.”

“I can care for them, but she prefers her people.”

“Funny,” I said. “Mary came to Victoria and dumped a child on me. Your woman took the child away from you, even before birth. Yet the two are the same kind of children.”

“Not so,” Sam declared. “Mine has more Native blood.”

“That's good?” Of course I was doubtful.

“Of course.”

“Bullshit.”

8
8

T
HE
T
RIALS OF
W
ORKERS ON THE
R
AILWAY
(1881)
T
HE
T
RIALS OF
W
ORKERS ON THE
R
AILWAY
(1881)

To walk into jail was to die. In China, a scruffy convict shuffling through the streets with head locked into a heavy cangue was a walking corpse. If he survived harsh guards, cruel torture, and filthy cells, then angry brushstrokes at the clan hall would cross him off the family tree. If he managed to get released from prison, the guards sliced off one ear so that his record followed him forever for all to see. Death was no escape. If he died in jail, the body was burned among other corpses, the mixed ashes and bone bits dumped far away. Never buried by your family, without a spot on the ancestral altar, your soul was damned to wander homeless forever.

The four-storey stone walls of New Westminster's penitentiary held 120 prisoners in small cells. The fifteen sullen Chinese inmates mumbled welcomes and urged me to stick with them in case fights erupted against the redbeards. They warned me who among the China men were rivals. They told me about the two old-timers who liked to poke their cocks up each other's ass, saying that I shouldn't be surprised if they approached me. All that I needed to say was a polite no. Otherwise everyone left me alone. I wasn't the only rail
hand there. Two coolies had been convicted of pilfering a Company warehouse, but they kept to themselves. No doubt they thought,
Close to a judge, get power; Close to a cook, get food
.

Me, I didn't turn into a killer. My cellmate Big Town was a righteous man. He admitted to killing a man, a gambler with a small surname who had cheated him of his savings. He had proof of the gambler's crime as well as witnesses, but getting justice in a town of lazy merchants was beyond his reach. He did the deed, he said, knowing that he couldn't stomach his own indifference. The fact that the victim's ghost never bothered him here meant that Big Town had taken the high road. He claimed that his family in China knew all the gory details and backed him fully for upholding clan honour.

When I complained about cold shoulders from the old-timers, Big Town chuckled. “You coolies came in throngs that filled the steerage deck while we sailed alone, just a handful of China men on the ship. Back then, most people went to South Ocean, to Singapore and Malaya, just a few hundred miles to go. But Gold Mountain was 6,000 miles away, across the world's largest ocean. We timid children prayed to every god and spirit we knew. You coolies arrive with a written contract for job and wages; we came with nothing but rumours of gold. Your bosses feed and house you; we scavenged for firewood and slept on rocks. We learned English and Chinook one word at a time while redbeards laughed. You coolies run to your bookman who calls in a translator.”

I shot back, “We're all safer now that more China men live here.”

Big Town talked late into the nights and confirmed that America was the best place to be. “My cousin and I trekked from town to town there, walking barefoot to save boot leather, doing odd jobs.
Skies were sunny and dry, not rainy like here. Nights were warm; we slept outside. My cousin got a job cooking for a redbeard. That man knew farmers and businessmen who needed workers, so my cousin put China men into work gangs and hired them out. He got rich, erected a two-storey building, and installed a telegraph in his office. He sends home $200 a year.”

I smirked. “Yet you came here?”

“Don't laugh. Every success is followed by fourteen failures. Such is the way of the world.”

When my prison term ended, a guard marched me to the gatehouse for my clothes. The dust and smells revealed they had not been washed or aired since I traded them three months earlier for a brown and yellow uniform. Good thing mice and moths had stayed away; if not, I would have returned to work half-naked. That trek was the start of my darkest time in Gold Mountain.

The escort cuffed my hands to a chain at his waist. On our way to the docks, we passed Chinatown, where compatriots frowned at me.

“I sold liquor and sent money home.” I raised my fists and jangled the chain. “I served my time! They shouldn't tie me up! Tell him to unlock me.”

People kept their heads down.

I needed to break free for America, which Big Town had said was close by. I vowed to get there, sooner or later. But if I died first, then I wanted my ghost to stay and plague the railway so that crewmen would flee the worksite and go home sooner.

The shit-hole prick escort shamed me every way he could. A second chain bound me close to him. When I made water, he stood by me and did the same. We glanced at each other's cocks; no doubt
each of us thought his birdie was bigger. When I needed to squat, he chained me to a tree, my back tight against the trunk so that the shit rolled or streamed onto my feet. If I winced at the foul smells clinging to me, then so did he. Along the iron road, we dodged horse-drawn wagons and covered our ears against pealing hammers. We hurried across logs and planks over gaping ravines. When China men pointed at me, the escort jerked me off-balance or let the chain between us tighten.

Gold miners headed south. Those ragged parties were lone men fiercely armed and groups huddled for safety, bent under packs and rusty tools. I could lug their goods and vanish into their dusty midst, going wherever they went. But I needed pocket money; tightwads like them didn't welcome freeloaders.

On the second night, I awoke in a dark roadhouse. To my surprise, the escort was gone. We had slept chained together the first night. Maybe the stink of my shit was too much to bear. Maybe he had gone for a squat himself. Maybe he went outside to drink and shoot the breeze with his new friends from dinner. Or he had stationed himself at the door, waiting for me to escape so that he could shoot me in the back. I groped for my boots.

I stopped. No money meant hunger and fruitless begging from strangers.

I pulled on a boot and paused over my cuffed hands. Someone needed to smash the iron without asking questions. Surely a China man would help me, unless he wanted to collect the reward.

The woods churned with wild animals. No one could outrun bears and cougars. If I went out that door, I didn't even know which way to turn. I could trip and drown in the latrine.

Voices and heavy footsteps approached. I lay down quickly, my heart pounding.

I kicked and cursed myself. I wanted to scream aloud, pound with both fists the taut boxes that my lungs had become. The shit-pit prison had softened me into a lump of overripe fruit. We inmates needed only to obey the guards, and then each day was as neat and orderly as a
mah-jongg
layout: Sweep and mop the office floors, even though they were clean, muck out the horse stables, weed the vegetable fields, claw at tree roots, and clear the land to plant more crops. We even built high wooden fences to better imprison ourselves. The guards checked them with care, banging the butts of their rifles on them. We tore down buildings from long ago. At first I feared the armed guards might shoot us for sport. Then it became clear that their jobs depended on herding large numbers of inmates.

A prison sentence stopped a man from earning a living so that his loved ones would starve and suffer. But my faraway family farmed and fed itself without knowing my fate. More China men should break the laws here, I mused, in order to get some peace and quiet in jail. For the first time in my life, I tasted a rich man's day, not fretting about the next day's work.

Heavy rains began the night I returned to the railway camp. By morning, the worksite was a long pool of mud and water. The crew had been relocated, so now we worked outside with no ceiling over us. Men rejoiced that death could not crush or bury us from above. Our job was to dig out the foot of the mountain. We pushed forward
and down, drilling holes and removing debris to carve a path that led to a tunnel.

Rain soaked us and filled the cut. We carried the rubble up wooden planks that climbed along one side of the great pit. The water left the wood slick and slippery, but the bosses shouted insults when we trudged too slowly. Everyone slipped and fell. Poy warned me to drop everything and grab the boards in order to soften the landing on rocks below, where legs and backs got broken. The crew had haggled with the bosses to gain room between each coolie so that one man falling backward would not cause more injuries. Some men claimed they got a better grip walking barefoot, but the bosses stopped them because the men had to sit and remove their shoes, tie their laces to drape them around their necks, and then stop again at the other end to don their footwear. The bosses said this wasted time.

When we stopped to wring out our rain-soaked clothes, to wipe water from our eyes that blurred our sight, the Company brought in wide farmers' hats of stiff straw, varnished to be waterproof, but their prices were steep. We could have made these ourselves had the materials been on hand. Rain pooled atop the canvas tents and dripped inside. In the mornings, our wet clothes and shoes were still damp from the cool nights. But we kept our blankets folded, off the ground and under oilcloth, because sleeping in the damp led to sure death if warmth leaked from body and soul.

Patches of black mold spread inside the canvas tents. My childhood cough returned. When we children had winnowed the rice at harvest, the dusty air caused me to cough and spit. Grandmother tied a wet scarf around my mouth and nose, but I flung it away. Only fussy old women had worn those.

The coughing bent me into a weakling, hacking and spilling my guts. Healthy crewmen refused to sit near the sick ones at mealtime and set up a separate tent for us. “Illness enters through the mouth,” they insisted. I argued that mine was a childhood habit, nothing contagious. But a man in my tent started to cough, and we both got evicted. In the sick tent, men simmered in silent resentment unless one fellow had medicine that he was willing to share. It was there that I heard my first railway ghost story, told by Monkey:

“One day, a washman hurried through a long tunnel, newly finished, with the tracks about to be laid. The washman hoped to get new customers at the other end. The flame in his lantern went out, and then he dropped the matches and couldn't find them. No worry. He saw a prick of light in the distance. Then someone came from behind, marching through the rubble.

“The washman called hello in Chinook and heard a reply in Chinese, ‘Who's there?'

“The washman said he had lost his matches. The other said, ‘Walk fast. Tunnels have ghosts.'

“‘I'll fall,' said the washman.

“‘I worked here,' said the other. ‘Hold my shoulder and come along.'

“So they walked. The rail hand offered water from a gourd.”

“‘Your surname?' asked the washman. ‘Where's your home village?'

“He got no reply. The tunnel grew brighter. He saw a shovel blade propped by the man's ear but couldn't see the face.