Sarah Canary (34 page)

Miss Dixon reached down for Sarah Canary’s wrists, dragging Sarah Canary up to the seat beside her. Sarah Canary resisted at first, then shot through the coach and out the door on the other side. Chin ran around the rear to catch her, but before he could do so, his head was jerked painfully back. He slid to a stop. His head was jerked again. He tried to turn. Out of the corner of his eye he could see a little boy behind him, dirty and in short pants, holding the end of Chin’s queue.

‘Stop that!’ Miss Dixon said, looking out from her seat in the coach. The little boy released Chin and ran away back toward the docks, into the crowd. Chin looked around again, conscious of a new stiffness in his neck. Sarah Canary was running away from him, across the street and down along the bay.

She was not so far ahead. Chin began to run after her. ‘I will get her, Miss Dixon!’ he shouted.

He heard a horse whinny behind him and the clatter of hooves. B.J. called out, something Chin could not understand. The distance between Chin and Sarah Canary had shrunk. He did not dare take the time to turn and look back. He did not dare take his eyes from Sarah Canary’s fluttering black skirt. He reached out a hand as he ran.

‘Chin!’ B.J. shouted. ‘Please, Chin.’

Chin approached a vegetable vendor, Chinese, wearing a bamboo hat, baskets of fruit and greens on either end of his pole. Sarah Canary ducked under one basket. Chin ran around. ‘What are you doing?’ the vendor asked in incredulous high-pitched Cantonese, turning so that his baskets swung like a scale, up and down on his shoulders. ‘Why are you chasing the white demoness? Are you crazy? Now the demon is chasing you.’

A large, red-faced man blocked his path. Chin bumped into the man before he could stop. B.J. ran into Chin from behind.

‘What are you doing to the lady?’ the white man asked, pushing Chin away, which pushed B.J. back as well. His tone did not suggest that this was really a question. His hands were curled up threateningly. He seized Chin’s shirt in one fist, raising Chin onto his toes until they were face to face. Chin could smell peppermint and brandy on his breath. ‘Let her alone.’

Behind them, Chin heard the sharp, sudden clap of a gunshot. For one moment, all other noises stopped. The white man dropped him. ‘Chin,’ said B.J., panting. ‘Will you listen? It’s Miss Dixon.’ Chin looked behind him back to the coach where they had left her. It was moving at great speed up the street in the general direction of the Tangrenbu Gate and the Lane of the Golden Chrysanthemum. The neck of the brown horse arched with the effort she was making. And instead of the driver, Harold sat in the driver’s seat. He was using the whip, but not on the horse. Miss Dixon leaned from the coach with a gun. She was trying to hold it steady, trying to sight along it. It was her right hand and the left-side window, so her angle was very awkward. She leaned farther out, almost to her waist. As Chin watched, Harold brought the whip down again and again on Miss Dixon’s hand. The gun flew up into the air, spinning like a firecracker.

Sarah Canary pushed back past the angry white man. Her mouth was open and she was panting slightly from her recent run, her rib cage growing and contracting against her dress with each breath. She came to stand docilely between Chin and B.J. as they watched the carriage turn uphill, the horse straining in her long strides, her blinkered muzzle rising and dipping, and Miss Dixon calling from the window, calling, surprisingly, for Chin. The angry white man ran after them, although he was obviously far too late. Chin would have gone himself, of course he would have, if it hadn’t been obviously far too late.

~ * ~

17

Afternoon in Woodward’s Gardens

No Notice Gave She, but a Change—

No Message, but a Sigh—

For Whom, the Time did not suffice

That She should specify.

Emily Dickinson, 1863

‘What do we do now?’ B.J. asked frantically. He had taken Sarah Canary by the hand. ‘This is all your fault,’ he told her, and Chin thought how true that was. All of it. All of it from the very beginning. Sarah Canary stood and panted. Her brief run along the bay seemed to have worn her out. Chin thought she did not look well. Her eyes had an opaque, inward turn to them. A feverish cast. Even her dress drooped like a wilted flower. If Chin had not been so worried about Miss Dixon, it might have concerned him.

‘I don’t know,’ Chin answered. His thoughts flew like agitated birds from one roost to the next. Miss Dixon. Harold. Sarah Canary. Miss Dixon. He forced himself to think the situation through in one straight line. Perhaps things were not so bad. ‘Harold must believe he has Sarah Canary. Soon he will discover his mistake. He doesn’t want Miss Dixon. He will release her and she will go, as she planned, to the Occidental Hotel. She never talked about anyplace else. Except for the women’s rescue mission.’

‘Except for the Cliff House,’ said B.J. ‘She did say she’d take us to the Cliff House.’

‘Why would she go there?’ Chin asked.

Chin and B.J. could go to the police, of course. But Chin had never enjoyed his encounters with police. Never found the police to be helpful. His relationship with Sarah Canary was so hard to explain. And then he and B.J. had left the Steilacoom asylum under conditions that were probably illegal and certainly not ideal. It would be so much better if someone else informed the police. Miss Dixon had been kidnapped with gunfire in front of a dock full of witnesses, after all. A hack and a horse had been stolen. The police were bound to notice.

Chin led Sarah Canary and B.J. over the blocks to Montgomery Street. A carriage would have been nice, or a streetcar, and then Sarah Canary might have rested inside it instead of stumbling up and down the hills at the end of B.J.’s hand like an opium addict. One of San Francisco’s balloon cars rolled by, a globe on wheels, a pumpkin drawn by a single horse.

The balloon cars each ran a regular route. A wooden disk had been set into the street where the routes ended, a disk large enough for both horse and car. When a car finished its run, it would park on the disk, which was manually rotated until horse and car faced the opposite direction, ready to reverse the route. B.J. pointed to the car in amazement. But Sarah Canary had made her feelings about carriages all too clear. It was better to save the money, anyway. Chin had very little money left. Montgomery Street was not so far from the docks.

They turned toward Market Street. The pavement was crowded with pedestrians and lined with shops, all sporting the same green blinds. The windows displayed tortoiseshell earrings, little hats with veils of different colors, dresses, men’s neckties. In the bank windows, the currency from many countries was arranged in fans. A beggar woman, wearing a shawl and an apron whose pockets were all filled with flowers, tried to hand a bouquet to B.J. He reacted in alarm, backing almost into a small fountain, trying to escape. Three times Chin saw a small woman in black approaching them and his heart skipped and fluttered anxiously, but it was never anyone he knew. He made B.J. ask a banker how much farther the Occidental Hotel was.

But when they actually arrived he was a little sorry. The Occidental Hotel had been such a clear goal. On-the-way-to-the-Occidental-Hotel had been an unimpeachable condition. They were doing something. Having reached the hotel, they were no longer doing something. They entered, instead, the condition of wondering what to do next. This was a much harder place to be.

Chin went into the lobby quietly. The hotel was more elegant than he had expected. He began to think, uncomfortably, of Miss Dixon as a wealthy woman. She had provided steamship tickets as well as pocket money for Chin and B.J. in Tacoma. He had been under the impression that the money came from a group of Caucasian monks who specialized in aid to the shipwrecked. Now he was forced to wonder.

The hotel was a gaslit world. Voices were hushed. Soft footsteps descended the mahogany staircase. Each stair was carpeted and edged in brass. Chin, B.J., and Sarah Canary would have been out of place here even if they’d been clean.

‘May I help you?’ a large, clean white woman in a long black apron asked B.J. She wore her hair piled in curls on top of her head.

‘May she?’ B.J. asked Chin.

‘Tell her you are here to meet someone,’ Chin suggested awkwardly. ‘Someone who may not be here yet but will be coming soon. A Miss Adelaide Dixon. Tell her you wish to wait.’

‘Not here,’ the woman said to B.J. firmly. She guided them instead into a private sitting room, small but very elegant. Sarah Canary sat astride the arm of a stuffed chair, her skirts pulled up rakishly beneath her. She rolled forward and back pleasurably. B.J. watched her but said nothing. His expression was so pronounced, Chin tried to read his face. If it wasn’t disapproval, then it was triumph. It was definitely one of the two.

B.J. took the chair beside her. Chin remained standing. ‘Would you like something from the kitchen?’ the woman asked B.J.

They had eaten lunch on the steamer not so long ago. Chin felt through his pocket for his money. ‘Tell her you would like some coffee,’ he said to B.J. ‘Bread and butter. Tell her to please notify you immediately when Miss Dixon comes in.’

B.J. opened his mouth. ‘Certainly,’ the woman said.

A flea appeared on B.J.’s forehead. Chin reached for it hastily, hoping to catch it before it was seen, but it must have leapt from his fingers. He scratched B.J. without meaning to.

‘What are you doing, Chin?’ B.J. asked in an interested, unoffended tone.

Chin did not answer.

‘I’ll just get the food then,’ the woman said. She looked at him with suspicion, sweeping her skirts aside as she turned away, and Chin was certain that whatever she’d thought he was doing was something much more contemptible than flea catching. Some exotic, heathen Chinese custom that only Caucasians knew about. He tried to imagine what it could be.

On her way to the door, the woman stopped to speak to Sarah Canary. ‘Perhaps you’d like to tidy yourself, dear?’ she offered. Sarah Canary put her hands together on the chair arm and raised herself slightly by straightening her elbows. She dropped herself back. The chair teetered.

‘Maybe later,’ said Chin to B.J.

‘Maybe later,’ said B.J. to the woman. She nodded suspiciously and left the room.

A Negro waiter brought the coffee and bread. He returned to clear the dishes. Chin chose a chair. When he closed his eyes, the floor rolled beneath him as if he were still on the ship. His blood rocked inside his body. Sarah Canary nodded and hummed with her eyes closed. B.J. dozed fitfully in his chair, waking every five or six minutes to ask Chin what was happening. He had one bad dream, started awake with a very white face.

‘What is it?’ Chin asked him, but he wouldn’t answer. He shook his head, breathing heavily. ‘Women,’ he said. He went to the bathroom once. When he came back, he asked if anything had happened while he was gone.

‘No,’ said Chin. He was wondering if they oughtn’t be doing something else besides wait. He was wondering how long they would be allowed to go on waiting. If Miss Dixon did not come by nightfall, they would surely be asked to leave. Then what? He tried to remember the name of the women’s rescue mission. Kearny. He remembered it was on Kearny. Even if he could find the mission, Chin could not imagine sitting and discussing Sarah Canary or Miss Dixon with a group of white demonesses. He had been counting on Miss Dixon to do the talking. She was such a vocal person. He could not imagine sitting to one side and quietly prompting and wondering what B.J. would say next while a whole group of white demonesses stared at him. It was unthinkable.

Chin could go to Tangrenbu and buy information. The Chinese were not likely to know anything about an affair involving only white people. But it was always possible that Miss Dixon had been taken to a house that had a Chinese servant. Information was expensive in Tangrenbu. Even if no one had any, it would cost Chin to find this out.

The waiter came in with a note. ‘It’s for you,’ he said, handing the paper to Chin. The note was folded four times over into a triangular shape like a flag. A single word was printed on the outside.
Trade.

‘Who brought it?’ Chin asked.

The waiter shrugged. ‘A boy.’

‘Did he stay?’

‘No.’

Chin unfolded the paper.
Woodward’s Gardens. The large animal cages. Twenty minutes. If you’re late, you’re too late.

‘Where are Woodward’s Gardens?’ Chin asked the waiter.

‘Mission Street between Thirteenth and Fifteenth. Fourteenth runs down the middle of the park.’

‘Can we get there in twenty minutes?’

‘Possible. Let me get you a carriage.’

B.J. opened his eyes. ‘Has something happened?’ he said.

‘We have to go to Woodward’s Gardens,’ Chin told him. ‘And trade Sarah Canary for Miss Dixon at the large animal cages.’

‘Then we’ll have Miss Dixon,’ B.J. pointed out. ‘But we won’t have Sarah Canary.’

‘I know,’ said Chin. ‘We’ll have to think of something while we go.’

He was already thinking. He continued to think all the way to the gardens, bouncing up and down on the cushions as the wheels spun into potholes and out again. He thought that there would probably be other people at the large animal cages. This should make it difficult for Harold to carry out a second kidnapping. As the carriage arrived at the Mission Street entrance, Chin thought they had, at most, five minutes to spare.