A Superior Man Read online

  “Sam told me to take the boy to China,” I said.

  “He’ll find the mother. He speaks all languages.” He saw my face and then said, “Don’t want a mix-blood, is that it?”

  “Hey!” The boy tugged at him to resume playing.

  With no need for me to watch the brat, I left them to their gleeful shouting. I visited nearby Chinese stores and watched the games. None of the gamblers looked at me. When they paused, I asked about a guide. Everyone praised Sam, as if he had recently saved their lives at great risk to himself. I nodded at their advice and bought new stockings.

  Back at the washhouse, the brat was bawling. He had run along the corridors of hanging clothes with his arms outstretched, grabbing items and pulling them to the ground. Yang had beaten the boy with the back of a scrub brush. The brat was still screaming and stomping his feet. A thread of saliva hung from the washman’s mouth, glistening.

  “Stop!” I grabbed the brush and threw it aside.

  Yang picked it up to wave in my face. “No beating, no growing.”

  “I’ll hang the laundry up.” I wiped the boy’s tears. “You don’t need to do anything.”

  “He needs restraint.” Yang lunged at the boy, but I blocked him. “These children get wild blood from their mothers.”

  I pushed him away. “That’s why your girl ran off?”

  He growled and backed off.

  I brushed dirt and sawdust off a shirt, and then saw sap leaking from the floorboard. That was causing the trouble. “You should have kept a clean floor.”

  “You sweep it.” He took bedsheets to the door and held them to the light. “You’re no superior man. You drag the boy to his mother, saying it’ll be better. Truth is, you don’t want him in China. You’ll lose face.”

  “Taking him to China would be easier than this!”

  In the end, we rewashed several bedsheets and shirts, squatting side by side at a tub, using soap and washboard. Yang cursed the extra work.

  “When do you go to China?” I tried to distract him.

  “Can’t go!” He answered as if my question was the stupidest thing he had heard. “I stay to watch my daughter.”

  “Her husband does that,” I pointed out.

  “Who trusts the redbeards?”

  “You let her marry one!” I almost burst out laughing. This old stick talked in circles.

  “Wee-yum has a good business. He’s not old. He’s friends with Native people. It was the best I could do.” He glared at me. “I was good father, not like you.”

  I ignored him, but he went on. “Don’t dump that boy at church. No one loves a child more than the trueborn mother.”

  “I know—”

  “His people must get strong again. Redbeard sickness killed them by the thousands. You want the boy’s mother? You need Sam.”

  “You think the boy should stay here? But Sam says he should go to China.”

  “The boy belongs here.”

  “Then we have no quarrel.” I slapped the crate. “We can talk as friends.”

  “You’ll go home high-high-glad-glad. I’ll go home sad and weeping, never to see Jane again, as if she suddenly died.”

  “Parents cry when daughters are married out.”

  “Jane was as big as your boy when her mother died. I raised my daughter. You, you won’t miss your son. You don’t even know him.”

  “You said you’re not going back to China.”

  “No one here respects me. China men pestered me, asking me to sell them time with my wife and daughter. In the next breath, they called Native people dirty and stinky.”

  I finished washing the shirts, and the boy followed me outside.

  Two children ran by the iron road, giggling and bickering, using sticks to keep a metal hoop rolling between them. Children at home did the same, but their hoop was of bamboo.

  Good thing I was taking the child to Mary. Raising a mix-blood child had driven this washman crazy.

  7

  THE ROAD AHEAD ALWAYS SLOPES UP (1885)

  All night I fretted about paying Sam. Too little and he would brush me off or make only a half-hearted effort to find Mary. Too much and he would gloat over my dread of the wilderness, lack of common sense, fear of falling. Having money didn’t make things easier. Squeezing too tightly crushed the bird in hand, but too loose a grip let it escape.

  The store clerks had advised going to Lytton and then hiring a guide, but I wanted to ask about Mary’s whereabouts before I got there. Her people moved around, from summer to winter camps, from hunting in the mountains to taking food by the river. They married into one village from another and travelled and traded between them. They weren’t like China men, stuck to one village like flies to honey, from the day they were born until they were buried.

  Yang could advise me what to pay, but I wanted to avoid him. During dinner he had asked how long I had spent with Mary.

  “A year.”

  “Bullshit,” he crowed, making me a liar, “wasn’t more than six months.”

  This cockhead knew nothing about me. “She left me!”

  “Of course!” His eyes gleamed. “She saw you with a Chinese whore.”

  To talk further with him would only invite more taunting. After railway work, I had stayed away from all China people, whores included. It was the only way to steer clear of the iron road and its unending noise: men coming, men fleeing, fights here, and blood everywhere, and all men cursing in foul and violent moods, trying with shit luck to make the best of an ugly situation. If the men were suddenly sullen and quiet, then someone had recently been killed, and no one wanted to discuss bad luck.

  After dinner, Yang had shown me a photograph stuck to stiff cardboard. A middle-aged redbeard man sat in front of Yang and a young woman who held flowers and wore a white veil. Father and daughter peered with large eyes like doubtful servants into the camera while the groom’s pleased smile stretched over a mouthful of uneven teeth. The creases in Yang’s stiff Chinese jacket poked up in straight lines, unlike the redbeard’s suit, which was rumpled as a baby blanket. Yang demanded to know who was prettier, his daughter or my Mary.

  “They could be sisters,” I said. “Mary was so pretty that I feared for her. I told her to run to our people in case of danger. I taught her to shout in Chinese, ‘Redbeard chases me. Help!’”

  “Why would she come to us?”

  “She ran to me all the time.”

  “Did she go to school?” He pointed to a pile of books. “I sent Jane.”

  “She taught you English?”

  “I taught her!”

  In the morning, I awoke at the sound of the front door. Yang led in Sam, who held out a brimming wooden bowl. The brat whooped with joy and started stuffing red and purple berries into his mouth. Mixed in a white mash, they slipped to the floor. He picked them up to eat.

  I burrowed into my blankets. No doubt Sam’s grandmother had sent food to make peace.

  He nudged me. “Do you want me to take you to Lytton?”

  “No use. Mary doesn’t want the boy. She dumped him once already.”

  Through half-shut eyes I watched him crown the boy with a furry hat. Two animal horns jutted from its sides; a thick brush of a tail looped down the back. The brat started singing in an old man’s quaver as his little body turned in circles, feet shuffling from one to the other.

  I pictured villagers in China screeching in outrage, yanking away their children, covering their eyes and ears, and cursing the boy as a demon spawn who called up ghosts and evil spirits. Good thing he was going to his mother.

  “The hat is for older boys,” Sam said, “but Yaya thinks Peter will like it.”

  Yang pulled me to my feet. “I told Sam this morning that the boy needed his mother.”

  I almost slapped his grinning idiot face. “I said I didn’t want Sam.”

  “He’s the best.”

  “Sam and his grandmother are right,” I declared. “The boy should go to China.”

  Yang shook h
is head as Sam broke in. “My grandmother knows the boy’s mother; she told me where to find Mary. She’s near Cache Creek. Her husband is Secwepemc—a man called Louis.”

  “You changed your mind.”

  “Got to sell my goods.”

  “Mary said Lytton,” I said.

  “You think she wanted you to find her?” He paused and then added, “Lytton is on the way to Cache Creek.”

  “By the clear river or the muddy one?”

  “The clean one, Thompson.”

  “If you have trouble before Lytton,” Yang said, “we have kin in North Bend.”

  “I don’t need help,” I snapped.

  “Today will be tough,” Sam said. “We climb four hundred feet. I warn you, in case you get scared.”

  “Can’t be that high,” I said. The pack dug into my shoulders. “The trains would eat too much fuel going up.”

  “Wah, aren’t you clever? Shouldn’t you be prime minister?”

  Pompous ass, I thought. Then I asked, “Do we go past Ee Yook Moon?”

  “What’s that? You mean Hell’s Gate?”

  “I want to see it.”

  “You haven’t? Didn’t you work on the railway? Everyone saw it.”

  “Nobody pointed it out.”

  “You were too stupid.”

  “We didn’t want to step on horse shit.”

  Dark clouds threatened rain as we hurried along. Mountains at the horizon, steep cliffs along the river, and dark forests were all overnight rice, served a second day. The river flowed in a steady thrust, glistening wherever it caught the light. Sparrows and blue jays chirped and flitted in the trees. Grandfather told me long ago that when birds sang in the woods, it meant safety, it meant that no wolves lurked nearby. The memory made me grin; it had never risen before. I went to tell Peter this lifesaving tip but stopped myself. If Sam translated it, then the boy would see him as the expert, not me.

  “Ever hear of a China man taking his Native wife to China?” Sam claimed that his grandmother had asked this, but I reckoned it was his own question and did not reply until he put it to me again, louder.

  “No.”

  “Ever hear of a China man taking children from here to China?”

  “Of course. He needed help raising his son.”

  “What did people in China say?”

  “How would I know? I wasn’t there.”

  “Do men tell their wives in China about the women they meet here?”

  “Do you tell your woman about Goddess?”

  “I tell her that Goddess whispers playful words in my ears, puts me into her mouth, and says that having me is like bedding two men of two races at the same time.” He laughed.

  “Screw you.”

  “You should have yanked out your cock if you didn’t want mothers and children chasing you.”

  “I always pulled out.”

  “You couldn’t control yourself!”

  I marched out of his range. Lewd talk was a manly pastime but not with this snot worm. It was common during railway work, especially after the rest day when men had gone to town.

  “Look whose pants are wet and sticky!” They chuckled and made piggish snorts. “He’s dreaming of the sows at home!”

  “Peony stopped bleeding. She’s open for trade now. Better go see her soon.”

  “They fired Jade Face. The grass soups didn’t heal her down there.”

  “Redbeards went to Old Chong’s place. His women said they had wee little birdies.”

  We chortled about the women who were kind and gentle enough to temper our bluster. They reminded us that we weren’t at home with wives, doing our duty to assert clan strength with more children. They saw that we weren’t fully men here because even a redbeard drunk with a walnut brain was backed up by law books and rifles.

  We tried to watch over our own. We rolled in and out of the beds of Chinese whores, after which we strolled to the brothels run by redbeards. We toured those noisy places only once, to bounce on the heavy mats holding coils of springy metal and to test ourselves against thick white flesh. At first we vowed to buy time only from China women so that everyone could go home rich. But they were costly. Doormen took a cut from each client. Owners poked noses to the sky and declared, “Goods from afar, pricey for sure.”

  Then we noticed the mix-blood people. They stood out, with blue or grey eyes, and the big noses of redbeards. All, however, had black hair. Some appeared at first glance to be Chinese, and then not at all, depending on the shade of skin, cheekbone tilt, or brazen look in their eyes. Redbeard men had set up house with Native women, and these were their offspring, so China men thought we had discovered a custom of the land. Soon we beckoned to Native women too. But the redbeards stayed here while China men were forced to think of home.

  During my washhouse days, Lotus was empress over a band of Chinese whores shipped over for the railway trade. Like Goddess, Lotus reigned effortlessly over a loyal crowd of men. She had quick wit and strong views, so clients found her funny and charming. She took all men, from crew bosses to rail hands, from cooks to tea boys, charging them what they could afford. Then, after seeing a China man get thrashed in the street by redbeards, she refused all their business.

  “Help a person, do your best,” she recited, “Dispatch the Buddha, send him west.”

  She told her Chinese clients that if they bedded white whores, then they needn’t return to her. Of course, she couldn’t keep track of where her customers chose to poke their fleshy rods, but her threat made news everywhere.

  Boss Lew had a hefty cock and bragged about it. Word reached Lotus that he’d been sporting with a white woman named Rosalind. The next time that he called on Lotus, she turned him away. Boss Lew stopped going to see her rival who, rumour said, had taken much pleasure from the China man’s time and gifts.

  When Rosalind learned who had barred him, her face turned black as ink. She burst into Lotus’s place to punch and kick her. Lotus fought back with equal measure until some men pulled them apart. Weeks later, a fire at Rosalind’s place took her life.

  The town’s men watched as her body was taken from the smoking ruins. Mary comforted a stricken compatriot who had worked for Rosalind. We China men expected to get blamed for the fire. A few merchants fled town. What a relief when the redbeards did not strike at us. House fires were common then, and no one could prove that we had been involved. Lotus refused to go into hiding and carried on her trade. The China men mused that Rosalind had lost much face among her own kind after owning up to a fondness for Boss Lew. This was a first-rate story to take home.

  Not long afterward, I went to see Mary. We went to bed, and she clung to me long after we were spent. She left town soon after. I didn’t eat or sleep for days. In my mind, we had made each other content, even though we couldn’t say much to each other. We shared a quiet sorrow, nothing that was ever discussed or understood. Many of my own people also lived in that makeshift town that had sprung up around a railway depot, emptying the redbeards’ chamber pots, digging their latrines, and washing their clothes. Both Mary and I were alone and lonely, even though our own people and languages churned around us. Some mighty force had shaken us loose from all that, like apples falling from a high tree and rolling far downhill. The first time that I had called at the engineer’s house, Mary’s dark face brightened when she saw my hat and ironed clothes. Our leather shoes were equally shiny. Arm in arm, we strolled back and forth in front of the hotels and drinking houses where Native women gathered. Mary never spoke to them. But neither of us was free—excitable employers, an error in language, a runaway horse—any simple event could crush us.

  A mile after Alexandra Bridge, Sam said, “Big Tunnel is near.”

  The wagon road had crossed that bridge to the river’s east bank, but we kept following the railway on the west bank. “And Hell’s Gate?” I demanded.

  “Further north, at least seven tunnels to pass. You afraid of the dark?”

  I stalked ahead without answering.


  The slopes of Canada’s forests and mountains climbed like pillars at a temple, like the walls of a city. In China, the landscape stretched the other way, flat and level. Our patchwork of fields flooded annually to extend the muddy rivers that slid wide and turgid under creaking barges and ferries. What little wild and useless land there was, was found on the graveyard hills, where only drunks and madmen lost their way. In Gold Mountain, a single misstep in the woods led an honest man astray for days.

  At home, sunsets shot shimmering orange light from the horizon all the way to my feet at the dockside. Here, the Fraser River burst through its narrow channel like an enraged dragon, spewing steam and spray. The only thing its froth reflected was the broad sky, sometimes bright, sometimes dark. The land and water seethed with potent currents.

  A smooth edge caught my eye. Something planned and man-made sliced down through the bushes and white stumps toward us. At first I thought of coffins on display, but this was too narrow, too shallow. It was a wooden trough, carrying mountain water downhill over crates and sawhorses to a large boarding hall. As long as two city blocks, the trough’s sections were bevelled for a tight fit. Bands of leather sealed looser joints. The brat jogged beside it, running his hand alongside as if it were a massive horse. Where one section had toppled, water sloshed onto a soggy marsh.

  Nearby, sheds with toppled roofs and walls lay open to the sky. A saw blade, cracked and rusted, as tall as the boy, stood among blackened boilers and charred pallets.

  Farther on, a man watered raised rows of greens from a big tin can that hung from his shoulder pole. He plodded along without looking up, deaf to my footsteps. His garden was no graveyard, but I wondered who would be stupid enough to grow crops in the frosty autumn.

  “Three men live here,” Sam told me. “The old one, One Leg, is crippled and refuses to go home. Falling rocks softened the skull of his friend No Brain, and left him strange. He follows One Leg all over. The youngster, Fist, of course, wants to go home.”