The Rock Child (28 page)

Since he was offering his hand, I took it and said my first name. So did Daniel.

“We’re looking for a gent,” says Daniel. “Englishman, new to town. Strong fellow, heavy mustache, big scar here.” Daniel drew a diagonal line across his left cheek.

“Captain Richard Burton,” says Tommy.

Flabbergastonia some more.

He smiled a gentleman’s smile. Except for the color of his skin, he neither looked nor sounded nor any way acted like a Chinaman.

Daniel nodded to show understanding. “You have good sources of information in Virginia.”

Tommy nodded, too, taking it like a compliment.

I pushed in. “What about Sir Richard?”

Tommy Kirk frowned slightly. “I wasn’t told he’s Sir Richard, simply Captain Burton.”

“It’s a pet name for him,” says Daniel.

Tommy looked at me in a kind of appraising way. I realized that he probably wasn’t showing curiosity about us because he knew all about us. I shivered, supposing that included Sun Moon, where we were staying, and where she was alone and sick.
He’s a whoremaster
.

“Can you help us find him?”

“I’m sorry, I cannot.”

“He didn’t come back to his rooms last night, nor so far tonight. He has … vices. We thought you might know.”

“If I had any knowledge of his whereabouts, I could not divulge them.” His smile could light up a room, but it didn’t mean a thing. He had a peculiar effect, this Tommy Kirk. He made you all at once want to come hither and go thither. Outwardly he was affable and inviting. Yet you knew something about him was deadly, like an iron bar in winter—it looked normal, but if you touched it, your hand would stick to the cold and freeze there.

Daniel considered for a long moment. Finally he says, “I’m honored to meet you.”

“Thank you,” says Tommy, just sitting and waiting.

“I’m told you’re a businessman.”

“I invest in enterprises I believe will be profitable.”

Another long moment.

“I have something in mind,” says Daniel.

Tommy just smiled at him.

“Perhaps you’d join me for a drink tomorrow?”

“At the Heritage?” says Tommy, letting us know just how smart he was.

Daniel nodded.

“Three o’clock?”

They shook on it, and we got up to leave. Tommy was still beaming at us. Meek-Looking showed us out. At the door Daniel slipped him another coin, and in return got another bow.

Outside the stars were on fire, and so was I. “What’s going on? Who is that coon? Why does he dress like that? Where’d he get that accent?”

Don’t know how many questions I blurted out afore Daniel cut me off with some answers. “Tommy Kirk is a most curious character,” says he. “The report is that he’s half-Chinese, half-Brit. Born in Shanghai from a liaison between one of the British diplomats and a celebrated courtesan. That may be exaggerated.” He gave me a sidelong look. “Much of this may be exaggerated. Got his schooling in the little enclave the Brits built to keep out local influence. Got his real education on the streets of one of the world’s roughest seaports. Neither side likes him, they tell it, the white or the yellow. So Tommy’s making his own way. His capital is the spirit of adventure and a complete lack of scruples.”

Daniel shrugged and paused for breath. We were heaving back up the mountain to the respectable part of town. “What seems certain is that he’s come to Virginia with some money and the intention to make more. He arrived with a dozen female slaves, age ten to fourteen. He built that opium den for white folks only, if you can imagine that. It’s genteel. It’s said he has several dozen regular customers, including a few women. It’s also said he now owns other brothels in Chinatown, and opium dens and gambling hells, and aims to own everything.”

Says I, “The world is most peculiar.” Those days I was keeping my word flabbergastonia to myself.

Daniel chuckled. “And more than peculiar,” says he, “and yet more.”

“Sirs, Sirs!”

The voice came from behind us. We turned and saw a man as big and rough-looking as you’ll ever see. Chinaman. We waited.

When he got within talking distance, the big fellow says, “Captain Burton is with lady. Safe. Home tomorrow.” He had an earring looked like a question mark dangling from his left ear.

“Thank you,” said Daniel, and held out a coin.

Question Mark just shook his head no. Then he says, “Captain Burton say I go with you. Lady need watching, he say.”

I could have eaten a frog.

“I bodyguard,” he said. He started walking back up the hill, and we fell in. “People call me Q Mark.”

That’s how Sun Moon gained a watcher. Any time Sir Richard wasn’t there, Q Mark or another mean-looking Celestial was. I knew we should be more afraid of Porter Rockwell than Q Mark, but not by a lot.

When we walked into the room, she said, “Note came from Harold.” I read it while Q Mark explained his duty to Sun Moon in Chinese.

Dear Captain Burton, Asie, and Sun Moon—

I am sorry, but I have set out for Salt Lake City. I looked for you twice at the hotel, after I figured out you were here. I have finished our business, and my father expects me back quickly.

If you see Muley and Carlson, give them a raspberry for me!

Thanks for your company—you made the trip dangerous and delightful. Would be pleasured to see any of you again. Asie, if ever you want a job, you have only to ask.

Your friend,

Harold Jackson

Well, thanks for the offer, Harold, but my destiny is not Saintly.

One day at lunchtime Sir Richard and me met Sam Clemens up at the office of the Sergeant Mine to go down and have a look. I was moderately curious about how it was done, getting all that dirt and rock and ore out of a big hole in the ground. Or, as I learned, a little hole that opens into a huge tangle of holes, like a honeycomb.

I showed up with a sack lunch, and Sam put the kibosh on that right off. “You can’t take that down,” he informed me. “They keep down crumbs in the mine. Crumbs rot and stink, and the one thing a miner needs is to be able to smell.”

We got into a little car set on a track and running down into the inclined shaft. It took miners down and brought ore up, Sam showed us,
and ran by steam power. As we descended, there was considerable talk between Sam and Sir Richard on hoisting machinery, donkey engines, horsepower, and an eight-inch pump. I took little interest in it.

When we got off the car and started walking, my mind was grabbed by the huge empty boxes that seemed to hold the earth itself up. Down a ways big shafts ran off in different directions, and some of them were many stories high. (Sam spoke of ore bodies forty, fifty, sixty feet wide, but my mind is not drawn to those kinds of bodies.) The question I saw was, When you dig this mammoth bunch of ground out and haul it up, how do you keep the rest from falling on your head? I am pretty sure the miners had the same question.

The answer was, You build open boxes out of big timbers, boxes as tall as three men and just as broad. When that isn’t high or broad enough, you put them side by side and stack them right to the top. Whole shafts were supported in this way, like some giant construction a kid might make. “Remarkable,” said Sir Richard, and other upper-crusty exclamations of wonder.

When Sam began to talk of the money being taken out of the earth, I asked again about the miners. “How come you say the men get rich high-grading? What’s high-grading?”

“I’ll explain when you see the bridal chamber,” says Sam.

Sam started one of his complicated explanations of how things work. He should have been a mining engineer, or a drummer for a mining association. Sir Richard asked questions I suppose were intelligent and got answers that passed for the same. Myself, I got to watching a miner sitting on a ledge, eating his lunch, and playing with a rat.

The critter sat on its hind legs, looking at the miner. The man’s face, not his hand. Yet the hand was holding out scraps, bread and meat it looked like. Some sort of deal was being made between the rat and the miner. I eat, you don’t whack me. I eat, you don’t grab my tail. If you get tricky, I bite your finger. Or if you’re nasty, gobble your eyes.

At least that’s how I imagined it.

Sam and Sir Richard noticed my fascination and stopped to watch the rat and miner.

The rat waddled forward. It was fat, and as it came, its body swung in an S shape. It stopped. Scooted backward. Waddled forward. QUICK! made a dash for the goodies. SWOOSH! skiddooed off. Disappeared.

“They never kill rats in a mine,” observed Sam. “Rats begin to run about queerly in advance of a cave-in. It’s the only warning the men
have. Also, they clean up the scraps of food the miners leave, which keeps the air clean of putrefaction. There’s hardly a pint of air down here anyway. If you let food stink …”

“How do the men relieve themselves then?” asked Sir Richard.

“Can’t do it just anywhere. The way the air is, no man could work below ground. So they have ore cars for shitters. They haul it up just like the rock and ore. Howsomever,” said Sam with a grin, “that carload don’t go to the assayer.”

I was looking at the miner’s face, which was burned blue in places. Sam noticed my look. He whispered, “Nothing more common than that in Washo. A mining fool tries to tamp his powder with an iron bar or the butt of a steel drill. Iron strikes a spark, powder flashes, and the poor bastard gets a tattoo designed by the god of chance.”

The rat made a second entry. Slowly, ceremonially, it repeated the whole dance. Forward. Back. Forward and back again. The dash for the eats and the skiddledeedoo retreat.

The man looked up at us and gave an easy smile. “Napoleon,” he said in an Irish brogue. “That’s is name.”

“He’s just learning?” I asked.

“God love ya, no,” says he. “We’re mates. Been feeding Napoleon every shift for weeks. He’s followed me right down this shaft, foot by foot. He’s just shy.”

The rat stuck its head back out and waddled back onto the ledge. “Almost erotic, that walk, is it not?” says Sir Richard. Which made me feel odd.

“Let’s go ahead toward the bridal chamber,” says Sam. We trudged and clambered down into the tunnel some more. “We’re back onto the vein now,” says Sam. We followed along where they’d dug and torn up until we came to where we could see another crew taking a lunch break. “We can’t go any closer,” says Sam, “they don’t permit any outsiders to see this, even good friends like members of the press.” Sam grinned. “Especially members of the press. Management is particular friendly to us, except where it counts. In the bridal chamber the digging is in new ground, what you might call it virgin territory—the point where country rock isn’t being taken out for a look-see but actual ore is being excavated. I don’t know how valuable this ore is. Afternoon, boys,” he called out to the crew, “you in bonanza or borrasca here?” They just sort of snickered.

Sam led the way back up the tunnel and off into a side shaft. “They
won’t answer,” says Sam. “That is a trusted outfit, any bridal-chamber crew is. Investors would pay many a buck to know whether they’re into bonanza or borrasca.” He took a sidetrack to explain that borrasca means the opposite of bonanza. He had a big interest in words, which is one of the ways writers is crazier than musicians, who know that words are mainly lame. “If the men in these outfits talk, they either do it very, very carefully, and make sure they get some of the stock profit, or they get fired. If word gets out and management can’t figure which man talked, they all get fired.

“Them’s the boys do the high-grading. Most of that ore they load onto the cars and hoist it out in the right and proper way. Now, it may assay three or four hundred dollars a ton, or three or four thousand, or more’n that. When they luck into high-grade ore, in the thousands, they cache it in their pockets or lunch pails or wherever. A man earning four dollars a day on some shifts may be able to high-grade a hundred. Nobody thinks of high-grading as stealing. Except the mine owners.”

“Why don’t they put a stop to it?” Sir Richard asked.

“No way to do it,” says Sam. “No way.”

He led us back up the shaft where we could get a lift out.

“So they just fly blind in here?” says I. “Digging in every direction?.”

“It is not that haphazard,” says Sam, “but they do have their blunders. For instance, last year two underground companies drifted into each other’s works, which happens now and then. Right quick they tried to smoke each other out—the Chinese stink-pot plan, we called it in the paper. A pitch-pine bonfire was set by one, and the other nearly suffocated. The afflicted then turned the smoke back by covering the mouths of their shafts with boards and wet blankets, and flooded water down. It was a right little war, good as Pukes and Mormons.”

Sir Richard nodded his approval.

We were coming into the light above. “So how do you like the mine?” says Sam.

“Splendid,” says Sir Richard.

Me, I said, “I don’t like me no giant holes in the ground.”

Burton watched Sun Moon make the very contrary of an entrance. For one born a sovereign nomad, she caught on quickly to bearing herself like a servant. She was right—a low demeanor, shy, eagerness half-concealed by hesitation, and true servant’s dress, modest, drab, self-effacing. She followed Burton to a table near the piano. He set the newspaper,
carefully folded, on the table. At the waitress’s solicitation he ordered whisky for himself and tea for the lady. Or rather, the servant.

He gazed admiringly at Sun Moon. Though the chief procurer of Chinatown knew of her presence, and the Heritage was full of whores, she was willing to walk about, protected by her guise. Burton loved audacity.

Burton enjoyed the surprise on Asie’s face when the lad glanced up. He nearly missed a note there. It even made the odd Gentleman Dan look about. The expression on his face seemed rather more complicated.
So would mine do if a woman of color had been murdered for loving me
.

Burton quickly shut the door on the memory of the woman of color he himself had loved, the Persian …
Living in the past, no, that will never do
.

The music clinked through the single large room of the Heritage, from the bar with the footrail to the window tables to the dance floor to the gambling layouts, men everywhere. Burton had listened with care to the native music of half the world. At first he felt impatient of all of it, even the sacred songs of India when he studied Hinduism so deeply he became a Naga Brahmin. The first time any appealed to him was after he embraced the Moslem faith. Those calls to the spirit entered the heart. They converted him to a seeker of the doors of sound everywhere he went, a true listener to music.