Forgiven (6 page)

“Sure is.” He flashed me his toothless grin, hopped back onto his cart, slapped the reins, and was off before I could blink.

My trunk! “No!” My shout landed dead in this noisome place.

All my things—everything I owned in the world, my belongings were all in that trunk, my trunk that was still, with my hatbox and hamper, in the back of his cart.

“Stop!” I yelled. “Thief!” I ran and flailed, heart pounding, stomach lurching. “Stop him!”

I tried to run after him, but he moved that cart so fast through the staggering populace I was sure someone would be crushed, and before even a block I was trying to press through a crowd myself, helpless, watching as the cart carrying all my worldly goods turned a corner and disappeared.

Chapter
EIGHT

March 28, 1906

 

 

 

 

I SLOWED AND SWALLOWED THE LUMP THAT FILLED MY throat. Smells assaulted my nostrils, and I pressed one gloved hand against my nose and mouth. The crack of glass mixed with the raucous music. I didn’t know which way to turn.

A man came up from behind me and gave a firm squeeze to my backside.

I whirled, aghast, and he lurched backward, which didn’t stop him leering and moving back in on me. “Just wanted to know how much you’re charging. Pretty thing, you are.”

“Be off!” I shoved him away, my voice shaking. A titter floated down from one of the windows looming over the street.

He muttered something unrepeatable, and then said, “You come back here at dusk. Maybe then you won’t be so uppity. Native girl like you shouldn’t be uppity anyhow.” He glowered at me as he stumbled away.

I clutched my reticule tight to my body and pushed down the middle of the stinking street, moving as fast as I could, running, in fact, back in the general direction from which I’d been driven.

Within a few blocks I was able to slow down, as the passersby were less threatening and better dressed and the number of bawdy houses and saloons thinned and disappeared. And as I slowed, the shock of what had happened set my body to shaking all over.

I hadn’t been in San Francisco an hour, and already I was robbed and abandoned. Touched in disgusting familiarity. A victim. And what an idiot I was. Shouldn’t I have known better? Mrs. Gale had warned me about the Barbary Coast. Named after the place of pirates, somewhere in Africa. Barbarous, that’s what it was. Filled with pirates.

No police stood around this neighborhood. And except for his gap teeth, how could I even describe the boy robber? I’d been hoodwinked but good. Was this what it was like, when my pa and his gang stopped a coach or a train, was this how a passenger felt when liberated of her possessions? The heat of shame crept up my neck.

I straightened my back, set my jaw, moved my trembling legs. My anger was mostly directed at myself. Stupid me, taken in by a robber, stupid, stupid, stupid.

I pressed on, following the growing crowd of pedestrians and coaches onto a larger avenue. I might as well have been in the buffeting current of the Yellowstone River, pressed this way and that and helpless against that current, alone and lost and stripped of most everything I owned.

I’d worn my meager collection of jewelry on the train, thank goodness—the cameo, my one pearl necklace, the earbobs, the chain with its key. Those were still with me, as was my money, what little I had. But all my clothes—gone. The blue velvet gown and yellow shawl I treasured. My handful of books—gone, including my favorite Dickens. My embroidered gift for Miss Everts—my attempt to win her sympathy and show her my skill by crafting elegant flowered tea towels—gone.

What remained, save my jewels, were the dark plaid traveling skirt and jacket I wore now, and those garments were in sore need of a cleaning after three days on a train.

I gave up on my hair, letting it tumble down my back, and I plastered my boater on top of my head, and let my legs work through the shakes.

Clay and Jones. I stopped walking and looked up. I was still on Clay. I wasn’t about to go back the way I had come. I made to turn up another broad street—Grant Avenue. Above me stood a building adorned with curving tiered roofs capped by red tiles. Chinese lettering covered the signs; a painting of a red dragon curled over one doorway. I remembered the other things Mrs. Gale had said. Chinatown.

She’d warned me against Chinatown, too. But I had to press through if I was to reach my target, and nothing, I thought,
nothing
could be worse than the Barbary Coast. I’d seen a few other Chinese, including Min, on the streets of Bozeman. Mostly men who’d come to work on the railroads and stayed after the railroads were finished. They’d stuck to their odd clothing and kept to themselves, their lives lived quiet and secretlike. I remembered sipping Coca-Cola with Caleb while I’d watched such a one make his way down Main Street, his coat buttoned slantwise, his small flat hat perched back on a high broad shaved crown, his long braid strung down his back, his hair as raven black as my own.

I didn’t see how this Chinatown could be threatening. Nothing like what I’d just been through. Surely not.

I pressed on. The narrow street was packed with black-suited men, and there were vendors everywhere—and stands with everything from live chickens and ducks in cages to dead chickens and things I didn’t care to even wonder about, to vegetables I didn’t recognize. People shouted and called out in their mother tongue, and I was buffeted by rank smells that made my lip curl. Chinese people around me gave me no heed at all.

I got turned around for a minute and froze, trying to avoid the crush of a moving cart.

I stood inches taller than most. A tickle of fear rose up from the small of my back. I stood out like an aspen in a pine grove. Eyes locked on me from all directions. Not friendly eyes. What had I done now?

I fixed my shoulders, making force of will my strength.

I turned right around quick and ran smack into an old woman. She tripped backward, dropping the sack she carried on her head, and that sack hit the ground with such an impact that it split and spilled its contents: rice. She began to chide me at once.

“I’m sorry.” I lifted my hands in the air, trying to calm her, getting the full meaning of her words despite not being able to understand a one. “Please. I’m sorry.” There wasn’t a thing I could do; the rice was scattered, ruined. She waved her hands in the air, scolding, as a crowd gathered around me, nodding and adding their own accusations.

I knew I should compensate her. But my purse held so little.

“I’m sorry!” But words served only to inflame the crowd and the old woman.

“Here, missy!” A man waved to me, his broad face bearing a smile—but I didn’t trust something about that smile. It was false. “You come with me now. We take care of.” Even in the midst of this tirade, I knew I shouldn’t go with him. But what was I to do? I took a step toward him.

“Come, missy!” His smile dropped, and he became more demanding, reaching his arm through the crowd to grab my wrist.

And then from behind me came a gentle low voice speaking Chinese. So soft and gentle I turned at once. I came face-to-face with a young Chinese man, as tall as me. He leaned around me and spoke in hushed tones to the old woman, who turned her chatter on him until he’d soothed her like my pa soothing a panicky horse and then he put a few coins in her hand. She lowered her voice to a mutter, cast me an evil glance, but went off. The crowd dispersed, and the young man took my elbow and steered me away.

I searched the street for the other man—the broad-faced one—but he vanished with the crowd.

I turned to my rescuer. “Thank you.” I mimed with my hands; I didn’t expect him to understand me.

I pulled right up in surprise when he returned, with no shade of an accent, “You look more than a little out of place.” And his face lit up with a smile so like the sunrise that I melted before it. “In fact, you stand out like a sore thumb. Come on. Where’re you supposed to be?”

Chapter
NINE

March 28, 1906

 

 

 

 

I DIDN’T KNOW WHETHER I COULD TRUST HIM. AS USUAL, I didn’t know whether I could trust anyone. But I was alone in San Francisco and had little choice. And he had a quiet, calm manner that eased my mind a little.

He introduced himself as David Wong. He didn’t seem to mind my standoffishness when I said only, “Miss Baker.”

“How’d you find your way into Chinatown?”

“That wasn’t my intent.”

His eyebrows lifted. “You don’t live in San Francisco.” It wasn’t a question.

I shook my head. “I just arrived by train. I’m visiting.”

“Maybe we should get you out of here and on your way.”

I had to follow him—it was either that or stand here, frozen to this very spot. Better this David Wong than the false-smile man who’d tried to snag my arm. Still, my stomach was in knots.

We made our way along this street and then down another, and all at once we were in a different neighborhood of small shops and houses, the signs now in English, no longer in Chinatown. I took a breath of thanks. He looked up and down the street. “Now, then. Where’re you headed?”

“The corner of Clay and Jones.”

He looked startled. Then he drew up. “All right. Well, you’re on Clay now, so all you have to do is walk up about four blocks and you’re there.”

A group of young bucks, all shined up in bowlers and striped vests, passed us on the sidewalk. One of them narrowed his eyes at David and then gave me a dark glance. They muttered among themselves as they passed and were half a block away when one said, overloud, “Mixed up where they don’t belong.”

“Let’s cross the street,” David said.

Once we were on the other side he checked his pocket watch, didn’t meet my eyes. “Listen. I’d walk you up there, but you’re better off not being seen with me. Some people don’t think well of a Chinese man consorting with a non-Chinese lady.”

I straightened, hearing him refer to me as a lady. My hands and fingers worked and fretted as I gripped my reticule. I knew all about it, I wanted to say. All about that skin that didn’t quite fit. “Maybe they were talking about me. About how I look.” I’d heard the name-calling. Heard the references to the blood that flowed in my veins. “Maybe they weren’t talking about you at all. It might have been about me.”

“If they talked about your looks, it’d be because you’re so pretty.” His cheeks went dark, and he stared at his feet. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to blurt that out. It was supposed to be a compliment.”

And I lost words. He stood there, this kind young man who had just saved me, his hands thrust into his jacket pockets, thick dark hair slicked back, his dark eyes lifting to mine and then dropping away in shy retreat . . . I didn’t know what to think. He was sweet and nice-looking, no doubt about it; he lit up some feeling deep in my heart.

Kula Baker keeps her wits about her. Kula Baker does not go soft over a young man.

Especially when that young man is just as much of an outsider as she is.

Well. I smoothed my skirt as I averted my eyes from his, while I was as upside down and inside out as if I’d tumbled over the Gibbon Falls.

Tumbled, that was for sure. Up Clay, down Clay; the wind was knocked clean out of me. I was not feeling scatterbrained about just David Wong. It was also this strange city.

I put my hand on my stomach and tried to breathe. It was too confining here. I wanted to break into a run and run until my feet reached a meadow, run until my own familiar snowcapped mountains appeared to rim the sky, the big Montana and Wyoming sky that opened above me in that piercing blue I knew. Here all I could see were snips and snaps of sky, and hills that rose and fell and were all covered with buildings, and I heard the clamor of the city all around. Here there were men who would hurt me, people who would snatch me off the streets, here there were loss and confusion. What was I doing in this place?

This David Wong was my only firm anchor in a shifting sea, and I had to let go and trust him. I took a deep breath. “I was just robbed of all my things.”

“Robbed? In Chinatown?” David’s face worked, and I nearly thought he would sprint back down the street to recover my goods.

I reached my arm to the air between us, afraid to touch him, even though I surprised myself by wanting to. “No. No, in the Barbary Coast. This boy who picked me up at the station, he took me there and drove off with my trunk.”

“Shall we go to the police?”

Police. Men with badges who pretended to be lawful came straight into my mind. All my life I’d avoided the law because of the risk to my father; now I avoided the law because of that Snake-eyes Wilkie.

I shook my head. “I couldn’t even tell them what he looked like.”

“Is there something else I can do?” His question was so genuine and generous.

I smiled and dropped my chin. “You’ve done enough. Thank you.”

“I’ve hardly done anything.” He’d started my heart pounding, but, oh, this was not something that could ever be. For either of us.

Up the street, the group of boys was now loitering about a shop front, eyeing us. I knew the look of trouble brewing. “I should go on now. I don’t want to make trouble for you.”