Sarah Canary (11 page)

He jumped slightly when B.J. spoke. ‘Sarah Canary is happy to be outside. She’s talking to the birds.’ B.J. stood looking ahead of them, up the incline through the trees. Chin tried to follow his gaze. He couldn’t find Sarah Canary’s figure anywhere, just trees and trees and more trees. A sparrow dipped through the branches of one, circled Chin’s head, and went north. It was an omen, but Chin wasn’t sure if it boded good or ill. To see a sparrow walking was good luck. Chin had only seen them hop. To have a wild goose land in your courtyard was good luck. The year he left for Golden Mountain, their domesticated goose had joined the wild ones overhead and never come back. The geese were flying in formation that day; they wrote the character for man and took it east across the sky. It had made his mother cry with fear for him and for her own old age without him. Very bad luck. He thought of Tom’s owl. Very bad luck.

‘She’s waiting for us,’ B.J. said. ‘Maybe she knows where she’s going. Maybe she knows a place we can stay.’ He walked away and Chin followed, shifting the roll to his other, stronger shoulder again. It threw his weight to the side, making him stumble and hop. He was filled with self-pity. Poor little bird with one wing. Very bad luck, little bird.

B.J. continued to look up. Chin watched B.J.’s back and then his heels and then looked down at his own feet. When a journey has no destination, progress can only be measured by counting steps.

The path went down and then up and then down. The tree shadows shortened and shortened and disappeared. A stream appeared at their left, parallel to the path, masking the sounds of the two men walking with its own running commentary. The earth talks to us, but we don’t speak its language, Tom had told Chin. Chin listened harder. Fallen tree here, the stream said. Rocks. More rocks.

B.J.’s voice was almost as incessant. Chin had not seen Sarah Canary since they left the asylum, but B.J., walking ahead, gave him regular reports on Sarah Canary’s activities. ‘She’s picking up leaves now,’ B.J. said. ‘She looks happy.’ Chin counted steps. The path ceased to be a path and became the ghost of a path. They stayed beside the stream. Chin stepped over a puddle. He stepped over a rock. He saw Sarah Canary’s heel-print in the crushed leaves of a fern. ‘She’s leaning against a tree and looking up at the sun,’ said B.J. ‘She’s hugging herself like she’s cold.’ The fir needles beneath Chin’s feet were bound together at the tops like miniature wok brushes. Chin walked in and out of the sunlight. He noticed that the pine smell was sharpest in the shadows. He noticed he could smell wet rocks in the stream.

‘She has a stick in her mouth.

‘She’s throwing a stone at a tree.

‘She’s stopped to . . . urinate.’ B.J.’s tone was hushed. He turned back, facing Chin with his eyes closed. ‘Into the creek. Don’t look.’ They waited a few moments and then began to walk again. The trail sloped downward and the trunks of the trees bent at identical angles, keeping the branches upright. Hemlock crowded out the fir, long cones abundant at the ends of the branches, the top shoots curving over in an arc of new green. Chin saw the scars of an old fire.

‘She’s caught a frog!’ B.J. said. ‘She’s getting smaller. Are we going down now?’

‘Yes,’ said Chin.

‘Oh, well, that explains it. I mean, she would then, wouldn’t she? Get shorter.’

‘I don’t see her at all,’ said Chin.

‘She’s just ahead. She’s putting flowers in her hair. Phlox. Pink phlox.’

‘Where is she getting the flowers?’ Chin asked. He saw no flowers. It was the wrong season for flowers. B.J. did not answer.

The absence of a path led to a narrow gap between two rounded stones. The stream turned sharply to the left. B.J. chose the passageway. His shoulders were almost too wide for him to walk through squarely, and Chin had to hold the bedroll in front of his body. It was slippery underfoot; between the stones and the trees, no sunlight penetrated, so the ground was perpetually damp. As Chin passed through, the stones around him shuddered. A ripple of earth lifted Chin slightly and then set him down. He heard a tree crack. ‘Did you feel that?’ Chin asked B.J.

‘Feel what?’

The passageway ended in the air. Chin stepped out beside B.J., who stood staring over the edge of the cliff. Chin’s next step would take him out onto the treetops. A cold wind blew the loose hair from his queue back off his face. ‘Where did Sarah Canary go?’ Chin asked.

B.J. shrugged. ‘I’m hungry.’ His hands and knees were shaking. ‘I think it’s time for my medication. I feel kind of trembly.’

‘Where is Sarah Canary?’ said Chin.

‘Really. I feel sick.’

‘When did you last see her?’ Chin sat on the heels of his heavy mining boots in the small square of ground they shared and opened the bedroll. He had taken some of the asylum bread; he removed it now from his blanket. B.J. sank beside him, holding his legs with his hands to try to keep them still. Chin watched him. You’re an opium addict, Chin did not say. I see what kind of medication they had you on. ‘You’re just tired. You probably haven’t walked for a while.’ A second tree cracked behind them. ‘I don’t think we should sit on this ledge.’ Chin gathered up his belongings. ‘Just go back through the passage. Then we’ll eat. You’ll feel better.’

Once B.J. had mentioned food, Chin became ravenous. He broke the bread with his fingernails. It was hard and had retained its shape. He tore off a piece for B.J., puncturing the crust and wedging his thumbs inside. The second piece came away easier. Chin went to the stream and bent over it, drinking water from his cupped hands to help him swallow the bread. He drank until he began to worry about stomach cramps. Later he noticed how tasteless and odorless the bread was. He noticed how much chewing was required. He noticed how wide B.J. opened his mouth for each bite and how loudly he chewed. He remembered with a start that he had lost Sarah Canary. He should have called to her. How could they follow when the path was no longer a path? Why hadn’t he called to her hours ago? The bread in Chin’s stomach turned as hard as the bread in his hand.

Coward, he accused himself. He had not called because she had been so far ahead, he would have needed to shout, and he was afraid that someone else might hear. He had been prudent and now she was lost. Or he was. And everything she could have brought him was lost.

Such a small decision, not to call to her. It had come to Chin ready-made. He had not thought about it at all.

He folded his arms and told B.J. a story of despair. ‘In Penglai there is a statue of Su Tung-p’o. He was a poet in the Sung dynasty. One day, the eight Immortals appeared to him at the Marble Bridge disguised as eight blind beggars. He followed them to the pavilion of Shelters from the Wind and fed them food from his own hands. It was a great feast. There was duck and monkey brains and thousand-year eggs.’ Chin’s tongue coated with saliva. He broke off another ragged piece of bread and offered it to B.J.

‘Maybe they only looked like thousand-year eggs,’ B.J. suggested.

‘Then one by one, the eight beggars leapt off the cliff above the sea. “Leap out with us,” the last one said. Su Tung-p’o looked over the edge. He saw the eight beggars each on a lotus throne. There was a ninth throne, which was empty. But below the thrones was a three-hundred-foot drop into the sea.’

‘Jump,’ B.J. encouraged Su Tung-p’o. ‘Jump!’

Tears came to Chin’s eyes. ‘Would you jump?’ he asked. ‘Would you really jump?’

‘No,’ said B.J. ‘It would be crazy. Wouldn’t it? Unless it only looked like three hundred feet and was really a lot less. A
lot
less.’

‘I wouldn’t jump,’ Chin admitted. He remembered how, when he’d removed the chair, Tom’s boots had taken their last walk several feet above the ground. He thought again of the Chinese miners herded into the air by Indians. No illusion of thrones then. No leaps, no choice, just the unavoidable indifferent rocks of fate. Someday Chin would be pushed over that cliff. And who could say this was not what he deserved? How many mistakes could he expect Sarah Canary to forgive him? Assuming she really was an immortal, which Chin didn’t, in fact, believe anymore. Not that he believed otherwise, exactly. He allowed himself to occupy the narrow ledge of belieflessness. The tears disappeared back into Chin’s eyes without falling. ‘Su Tung-p’o didn’t jump. He was prudent. He was afraid of losing everything. How many people are offered a lotus throne? He waited too long. The Immortals disappeared and he kept on waiting. He thought they would come back and give him another chance. The statue is of him waiting. I have never actually seen it,’ Chin said. He redid the bedroll, saving the small stone of bread that was left, wrapping it up in the blanket.

‘I heard a story like that once,’ B.J. said. ‘Only instead of a poet it was a princess, and instead of eight Immortals it was seven swans, and instead of having to jump off a cliff she had to be silent for twelve years, and instead of immortality it was love she wanted. Except for that, it was the same story.’

‘So she lost love?’ Chin asked.

‘Oh, no. She did what she was told. She was silent for twelve years. Women will do anything for love.’ B.J. shook his head, wiped bread crumbs from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Oh, I see what you’re saying,’ he added. ‘That’s another difference. I was forgetting. No, women will do anything for love. Women would jump.’ B.J. sat another moment, absently staring downward. His hands twitched; his mouth was open. ‘Oh, I see what you’re saying.’ He looked at Chin. ‘You’re wondering if Sarah Canary jumped. Well, she would. Women prefer love to immortality.’

‘No, I don’t think she jumped.’ Chin stood, shouldering the bedroll. ‘We should go and look for her.’

‘They think love lasts forever. They think love
is
immortality. Women are crazy,’ said B.J.

B.J. walked behind Chin now and his movements were slow and vague. Chin, who felt a constant pressure to go faster, had to stop and wait for him on several occasions. Of course, if Sarah Canary had gone to the right at the passageway instead of the left along the stream as they had done, then going faster was only taking them farther away from her. There was no correct course here. There was only walking and not walking. Chin walked. Chin stopped and did not walk. Chin walked. ‘Have you ever heard of ghost lovers?’ he said. He was still thinking about love and immortality.

‘People who love ghosts?’ B.J. asked.

‘Ghosts who love people. Beautiful women who seduce you for a single night and when they leave, centuries have passed.’

‘I’ve heard that story,’ B.J. said. ‘Only it wasn’t beautiful women, it was dwarves. And it wasn’t centuries, but it was a very long time. And he wasn’t seduced, he bowled. But except for that, it was the same story.’

This information was like cold fingers in Chin’s chest. Chilling. Clarifying. Predictable. Chin began to walk faster, trying to leave B.J. behind.

Everything in Golden Mountain was a fraud. Cross an ocean and find a cracked-mirror version of a world. Three dollars’ wages becomes seventy cents when costs are deducted. Nice rooms and fine foods and play all day becomes the
Ville de St Louis
and the Memphis Plan. Mountains of gold become mountains of stone, and you lay the dynamite no matter how many of you send your bones back to China afterward.

Seduction becomes bowling.

So why was he following a crazy, ugly white woman through an Indian-infested forest with angry asylum attendants following behind? Even if it were a test set by immortals, who could say, here in Golden Mountain, what his reward might be? Railroad work? Bowling?

He was glad she was gone. So he had struck her once. So much noise as she made was not safe. He had done it as much to protect her as to protect himself. And he had paid by staying in Steilacoom, where the Indians were so angry with him, long enough to release her from the asylum. Now he had put her back in the forest just as he had found her. No harm done. The immortals should be satisfied with that.

Chin turned quickly to the right because there was obviously no path in this direction. If he could only lose B.J., too, he could retrace his steps, not all the way to Steilacoom, of course, nor any place very close to Steilacoom, but back in the direction of his uncle and Tenino and the railroad.

A huge tree blocked Chin’s way. He tilted his head to look up at it, stretching his neck so that his mouth fell open. It was a Douglas fir, the beautifully clear shaft clean of limbs for a hundred feet. It rose into the air above all the other trees and yet, sadly and obviously, was through growing. Chin could see the brittle, golden needles on the branches high above him. He was aware of the enormous weight of the dead tree.

He circled the trunk on the right. He could hide on the other side until B.J. was gone. If B.J. followed him this far, then he could circle the trunk again and again, keeping the tree between the two of them until B.J. decided he was mistaken as to Chin’s whereabouts.

The tree coughed. Chin stopped walking. He examined the motionless tree. He put out a hand, touched the scabrous surface of the bark, and quickly pulled his hand back. He took seven careful steps around and finally came upon a white man, poking what appeared to be a pen into a horizontal crack in the tree’s trunk. The man withdrew the pen and measured a distance along it with his fingers. He dropped to his knees and made a notation in an open ledger which lay on the ground. He looked up at Chin.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Were you looking for me?’

‘No,’ Chin answered. ‘I’m walking to Tenino.’