A Superior Man (28 page)

“His store burned. Didn't you see?”

“He'll buy the other shops. He wants to do business, that's what he wants.”

After a while, the ranch cook passed around dry cakes and cold tea. I declined but the brat ate happily. When the clerk passed around crunchy apples, they talked about the fire.

“I fetched the churchman. He came running but did nothing.”

“We moved the safe. The boss dropped the keys and lost them, so three of us pushed and dragged the iron box outside.”

“Those boxes can't burn,” someone said. “You could have left it there.”

“No, fires can roast everything in an iron safe into black ash. Papers don't even need to burn.”

As mountains slid across the horizon, I mulled my choice from last night. A few mix-blood children, boys usually, were taken to China from here. No news of them ever drifted back to Gold Mountain, as if they dropped down a deep well the moment they set foot in the frenzied pushing and shoving of China. Had they attended school or guarded flocks of noisy geese? Were they speaking Chinese and using chopsticks? Were they happy? Or had angry kinsmen pressed heavy quilts over the children's faces and smothered them in the dark? Had family members awoken to a death dismissed with: “He never got used to our water and soil”?

Grandmother had no views on the local Chinese who gave up their friends to follow the redbeard Jesus men, translating their speeches and singing hymns in the streets. Grandfather clung to the idea of respect: he lashed out at the rowdies who hurled insults and soft fruit at the Jesus men.

“Live to a hundred, learning doesn't halt,” he said.

One day Grandmother bought British cotton at one-third the price of Chinese cloth. Grandfather flew into a rage and denounced her until she agreed to exchange it for local material, even though by this time she had lost her bargaining advantage. She vowed that Grandfather wouldn't get new trousers that year.

In town, Grandfather and his cronies mocked the teenage son that the rice merchant had brought home from the north. The lad spoke with a slight accent but the men insisted they couldn't understand him. They hooted and dubbed him with rude names. Yet when the brothel keeper imported a northern woman who hardly grasped our local dialect, Grandfather and his friends rushed to see and praise her.

The village wags would sneer at how I had aped Ba's brazen ways and spawned offspring abroad without any family blessing. “Like father, like son,” they would crow, “all badly taught, not a speck of respect for traditions.”

If matters worsened in the village, then I would take Peter to Hong Kong and work there. I had pulled heavy loads alongside mix-bloods on those docks. Chinese women who slept with redbeard men had been raising such children since the days of the first Opium War. Those with well-to-do patrons got stipends and sent their children to English schools. Those with shabby connections to sailors or common workers, or no ties at all to the fathers, reared the children in their own families and sent them to work. Hong Kong was a free port. If you made decent money, then you were a decent man.

Taking Peter home would be easier if I had my bankroll. That would let him become part of my golden success, where I not only earned money but created sons wherever I went. Sons born abroad foretold of sons to be born at home. A first-born male led the way, opened the path for long lines of boy children to follow. I prayed for the gods' help: if I climbed onto this tiger's back, then it would be very hard to get off. Sam and China men like Lam wanted me to take the boy to China. Their talk was cheap; the heavy work fell to me, to win goodwill for the boy after my colossal failure overseas.

The redbeard nodded off to sleep and threw off anguished snores. I looked across the river and saw the fallen mountain already draped over the railway. Screw, we had already passed Sophie's camp. Now I couldn't ask Lam for money. I had wanted to point out the camp so that Peter could see that his father too knew a thing or two about this landscape and could track down people when
needed. With Sam gone, I grew taller. Peter poked his head out the window, waiting for curves in the road ahead that would show the six horses thundering by. I looked too but the dust scratched my throat and made me cough.

Seven nudged me with his foot. “You lump of shit, you should have spoken earlier,” he muttered. “We could have made things right.”

“I need to watch the boy.”

“What China do you go to? If we don't fight the redbeards, then we should cut off our pigtails and stop calling ourselves China men.”

“You should have acted on your own.”

“Shouldn't men fight for their honour?”

“They want to go home. Don't you?”

“They do nothing but talk.”

It was time to teach Peter some Chinese: surely that would win him toothy grins of approval in China. I chanted from
Three Word Classic
, rocking from side to side in time with the rhythm.

People at birth, pure and kind
.

Alike in nature, not in mind
.

If not taught, one's nature falls
.

Get a master, learn to focus
.

“He can't learn that!” The men slapped their thighs, laughing. “He doesn't understand.”

“That's classical Chinese!” cried Seven. “No one speaks it!”

“His mother taught him Chinese,” I insisted. “He speaks Chinese. I heard him!”

But no matter how I pressed the boy, he refused to call me Baba and left me looking like a fool and a liar.

14
14

P
ROMISES
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UGHT
N
OT TO
B
E
D
ODGED
(1885)
P
ROMISES
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UGHT
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B
E
D
ODGED
(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.”