A Superior Man Read online

  “One Leg must love the rainy cold of Gold Mountain. Or, he has an ugly wife.”

  “Shut your mouth. He’s a good customer.”

  One Leg stood by a chair, hanging wet clothes on a line strung between rundown cabins. Crutches leaned against a chair. He shouted good morning and waved us on to do the rituals.

  We clambered around stumps and boulders to a large graveyard. Someone had cut the wild grass and replaced the markers. Mounds and craters with different heights of weeds and overgrowth told of burials done over time. It looked like a redbeard graveyard, wide and flat, laid out in straight lines, a sturdy fence around it. One hand had brushed all the names on uniform markers.

  Fools had died here. Fellow fools buried them. Newcomer fools tended to them. But no one would be left here to dig up the bones and send them to China. Had the brushwork man used an oily ink? If not, all his careful efforts were wasted; the sun and rain would triumph.

  One Leg and No Brain approached. The crutches were homemade, sapling trunks with flaking skin, bound with wire. No Brain had only one arm; his shirt sleeve was pinned to his chest.

  Sam hadn’t mentioned this flaw; he must have wanted to knock me off-balance, to leave me speechless. After introducing me, he asked, “Where’s Fist?”

  “That bastard?” One Leg frowned. “Who knows?”

  “That bastard? Who knows?” No Brain echoed him but grinned. “He sleeps.”

  He had been in the garden, doing the watering with one arm. He must have had lots of practice.

  When I honeyed my tongue and asked who had tended the graveyard, Sam stomped off to do the rituals, as if finally assured of my nice manners.

  “Very dirty work.” One Leg’s crutches gave him heft and height, so he was almost my size. “Only I can read and write. We had no paper or pencil, only ink and brush. Fist stood at the graves while No Brain brought the markers to me. You could hardly read the names that had been written on lumps of rock. Insects crawled out. I gave a jump! I thought they were ghosts. I copied each word onto new wood and then No Brain took it back to Fist. He planted it in the exact same spot as before.”

  “Did you count how many?” I sounded earnest.

  “What, you are collecting taxes?”

  “No, but—”

  “What’s your surname?”

  I knew that he would snort at my reply.

  “Tiny name! We, we are Chan, so thirty of us came together, in one gang. We looked out for each other.”

  “How many survived?” Lucky for me, he enjoyed the sound and volume of his words.

  “First man left after two months. Mosquitoes bit him and nobody else. They sucked him dry.” He chuckled. “When he got nicked by a razor, no blood flowed, as if he were already salted fish. After the first cold, five men went south, sailed for home. That was three years ago.”

  “I’ve been here four years,” I told him.

  “All railway work?”

  I changed topics. “Today, we brought excellent goods.”

  “Time to start!” Sam beckoned One Leg and No Brain to join him.

  Thankful to escape, I led the boy toward the cabin. Its chimney was a rolled sheet of tin, matted with orange-brown rust. At the wood-chopping site, I found stumps with flattened tops and laid blankets over them. When I unpacked tea leaves, two grades of rice, several kinds of dried beans, and pork sausage, it drew flies right away.

  I made sure the scoops and scales stood out prominently, hoping for quick sales that would let us leave. Rail hands who were lucky enough to have quit the work with their bodies intact were less lucky on meeting their maimed comrades. Then they were obliged to listen and grunt kindly to all tales of missing limbs and gory injuries, even if some cockhead was spitting out stories laden with extra vinegar and salt.

  One Leg wanted to stay here in Gold Mountain. To go home with only one eye, one arm, or one leg was to bend over and offer your naked rear end to everyone for a hefty kick. If you couldn’t work, you were a pot with a burned-out bottom, a hand lacking a thumb, an army without a general. Not only would your wife be forced to tend to you, as was her rightful duty, but she would also continue to hire workers to grow and sell the crops. Your friends and kin would turn away, seeing that you had fallen from the favour of gods and ancestors. Those powerful beings had, after all, let their shielding gaze wander away from you. And if you were bad luck, then everyone was safer to avoid you.

  I turned around and found the brat gone. I ran through garden plots, piles of rubbish, and log cabins with fallen roofs. The buildings had not been shingled, only covered by tree branches and long grass. In the cabin that was occupied, faint opium smoke greeted me. Of course: One Leg and No Brain needed help with their pain. I let my eyes adjust to the dark. The cavern had beds, crates, and tools cringing by its walls, its centre as open and empty as a recently harvested field. At the far end, firewood was crackling in a stove by a window.

  The brat sat at a big table with wooden legs like smooth sanded balls or the thighs of a giant lady. The table was split down its centre by a crack, but the two halves had been pulled together by struts, nails, and wire looped tightly around the edge. The boy hummed and stacked low walls of domino tiles, peering at the red and black dots painted on the wood.

  I yanked him away. He whined. Gleaming metal caught my eye. A rifle sat on a shelf.

  A stern voice in a slow deliberate tone cut through the dark. “At last someone scolds the stupid thing.”

  I waited, but the man in the shadows did not come forward.

  “Doesn’t your boy know not to touch?” he demanded. “He’s filthy and our tiles must stay clean.”

  “You know what they say.” I tried to laugh it off. “At game halls, fathers know no sons.”

  “Haven’t you any shame, being a coolie to that mix-blood?”

  I tilted my head toward the graveyard. “Don’t you pay respects?”

  “Don’t know any names there.”

  “You keep it neat and tidy.”

  “One Leg dreams up chores each day.”

  “Shouldn’t you help him? He was hanging clothes.”

  “He insists. I don’t argue.”

  I snapped, “Don’t know how to write the word ‘diligent,’ do you?”

  Outside, I flapped a cloth to menace the insects again. The men strolled toward us, slowly, for the sake of One Leg, whose crutches poked for solid ground. Behind me, Fist came to the door.

  He was small, with the furtive look of an opium addict, keen only on his latest stupor. Now I saw why he kept to the shadows. He had survived smallpox so nicks and gouges covered his face and hands. A ruthless blotch by his nose twisted his face sideways. His baggy pants and loose shirt made him a child in grown-up’s clothes. Skimpy whiskers dripped from a sunken chin, but his eyes were widely set, a good sign. All his limbs and fingers were intact, yet beside him, One Leg and No Brain looked clean and neat, with buttoned shirts, and handsome, with dark eyebrows and wide chins. This could not be a happy place.

  “One Leg cooked rice porridge,” called Sam. “He invites us!”

  “We have customers ahead,” I pointed out.

  Sam was busy touting his goods to No Brain. When One Leg went inside, I recalled the domino tiles. If he saw the brat’s little walls, we might get scolded again.

  He was balancing on one foot to shove wood into the stove.

  “Let me help set the table.” I pushed aside the tiles.

  He tossed me a cigar box.

  “Not afraid, living so far from town?” I asked. “Remember Yee Fook?”

  “Yee Fook needed a gun.”

  Two years ago, redbeards sought revenge over a perceived slight and raided a railway camp late one night, setting fire to it. Workers poured out of cabins but got pummeled with poles and heavy tools. Yee Fook was one of two deaths. Every China man in Gold Mountain knew his name, one that would be taken home and sighed over.

  No Brain grabbed pots, clutched cloths in his armpit, and ran outside again
.

  One Leg stirred the food, tasted it, and slammed the pot lid. “Watch that Sam doesn’t cheat your wages. Once the trains start running, the price of goods will drop. He’ll lose money, starve to death.”

  “Stand aside!” No Brain lugged in a laden pot. Sam followed with bulging loads in the carrying cloths.

  When I went to fetch the last goods, Fist leaned against the door jamb, smoking a lumpy roll of tobacco.

  “Good thing you know how to write the word diligent,” he said.

  One Leg ladled the porridge into bowls and put out bits of flavouring: dried fish and pickles, sausages and salted egg, ginger and green onions.

  “Let’s all eat.” He waved for us to start.

  “Let’s all eat.” We echoed him but waited for the eldest to begin.

  Only Fist failed to repeat the invitation. Yet, as the youngest one present, he was the one most expected to do so. Nor did he pick up his metal spoon.

  “Today we have guests.” One Leg looked at Fist. “Can’t we be grateful for this?”

  “Very sweet.” I took several sips. “What broth is this?”

  Fist refused to reply. We ate in silence for a while until One Leg pointed to the antlers drying by the stove. “Fist shot a deer.”

  I had mistaken them for tree branches because they lay in the shadow. “You three ate a deer?” I asked. “How did you carry it?”

  “Butchered it in the woods and took pieces to town to sell.”

  “Some days we sit there until dark,” said No Brain. “Nothing comes near, not even a squirrel.”

  “Look at him,” said One Leg. “Won’t talk, won’t eat, won’t do a thing, all to show his contempt.”

  I ate as fast as the hot porridge allowed, but Fist turned to me. “Uncle, can you ask at the Lytton temple for us?”

  “Get Sam to do it,” I said.

  “He’s not our kind.” Fist pointed to a tatty print of Ghost Subjugator, ripped from an almanac and pinned to the wall. “He doesn’t even know what that is.”

  Sam took a moment before speaking in a drawl. “I’ve been in temples. I can toss the charms.”

  “Ask His Holiness if One Leg should go home, yes or no,” said Fist. “Ask if I should stay here or not.”

  One Leg slurped his food and muttered, “Pay him no heed.”

  “I won’t come back this way,” I said. “My ship to China leaves in six days.”

  “All China men go home, except this ox head,” Fist said. “Tell him to be reasonable.”

  “The older the ginger, the hotter its bite,” I said, resenting the sting of One Leg’s tongue from earlier.

  “You’re no different from One Leg,” said Fist, “leaving your boy here for the same reason he stays: fear of people laughing at you.”

  “Mares need a stud, sons must be true-blood,” I retorted.

  Fist slammed the table and then ran outside.

  Sam fetched more porridge as the brat chewed with false vigour, mocking my itch to leave. When Sam emptied the plate of sausages into Peter’s bowl, the boy grinned at him.

  “Go to Fist,” One Leg said to me. “Tell him to go home. He can say our injuries will kill us soon.”

  “He won’t listen. He hates me,” I said.

  “He hates proverbs. Tell him not to buy extra ship tickets.”

  “Why doesn’t he just go?” I threw down my spoon. My bowl was empty, and I didn’t want any more.

  “He promised his father to tend his uncle, No Brain, who won’t leave without me.”

  “His father waits at home?”

  “He died here. But people in China know about the vow.”

  “Go talk to Fist,” Sam said. “Aren’t you a superior man?”

  I cursed them all.

  The sun had broken through the grey clouds, and the faces of tree stumps were bright yellow basins, adding light to a gloomy day. They floated above the broken ground. I skirted them, suddenly fearful that they were a part of the graveyard. Across the river, cloud shadows hung like giant blankets over the cliffs, broken by airy shafts of white light. The distance reassured me. We needed to get back to the road, to find Mary. My family was waiting. Grandfather wouldn’t live forever.

  By the graveyard, Fist had lit another roll of tobacco.

  “Didn’t learn much from the railway, did you?” I asked.

  He exhaled smoke and looked away.

  “Trust the mountain, but mountains slide,” I said, forgetting One Leg’s warning.

  “What did the old man say?”

  “That you should leave him and No Brain here. That you should not waste money.”

  The afternoon light caught bright and dark shades of green stirring among the trees. Just as I wondered if a deer might be watching us, a sudden movement crashed through the bushes behind us. We turned but saw nothing.

  Fist needed to be an animal with sharp claws and fearsome growl. He needed to sprint through the forest like a hunted deer. Canada was a dense forest, with stiff branches and prickly bramble blocking your every step. The longer he stayed, the more this place would drain him, until he cracked and fell apart like that overlong wooden trough.

  He shook his head. “That cockhead One Leg thinks I can make a life here.”

  “He should kill himself. Then No Brain can go with you.”

  “Tell him!”

  “Those two are fragrant already.”

  “You don’t need to enter the temple,” Fist wheedled. “Just come back and tell that shit-hole prick to go home. Tell him you asked and His Holiness said he must go.”

  “Lies are no good.” These cockheads were all liars. Fist claimed he was told to make a life here, yet One Leg said he told him to go home.

  “You can save them both,” Fist pleaded.

  “Fools came for the iron road,” I said, turning away. “The only bigger fools are those who don’t know how to go home.”

  Back at the cabin, Sam had loaded up our packs with new goods, making them heavier than before. I cursed on hearing the solid clink of bottles.

  “Good trading is ahead,” Sam explained with a rueful grin. “I had goods stored here.”

  “Well-hidden?” Of course liquor was involved.

  “A horse brings the stock. Otherwise the bottles are too heavy.”

  No wonder he had raged when we sold Moy nothing. Sam was a far smarter businessman than I had thought.

  One Leg limped out to say farewell. “Fist listen to you?”

  “Uncle, go home,” I said loudly. “It’s better for everyone, here and in China.”

  “I told him many times to go home.”

  “Fools came for the iron road,” I said again. “The only bigger fools are those who don’t know how to go home.”

  “Do you fight your kind everywhere?” Sam demanded. “That shit mouth of yours won’t sell anything.”

  “Stupid donkeys.”

  “Want to be a superior man?” He matched my pace step for step. “Then clear them out. Push your China men onto those big boats and send them home.”

  “You evict the China men but keep the redbeards?”

  “China men are weak.”

  “Then so are you.”

  “Native blood makes me strong.”

  I stomped ahead.

  He shouted, “You cockheads come with no money but kneel to the redbeards. They give you the shit jobs that even my people won’t take. China men have no honour.”

  I walked even faster.

  We China men had been plenty brave to cross the black ocean. We had rules for safety and politeness: “Enter a house, greet your hosts; enter a temple, worship ghosts.”

  China had lost its honour to foreign armies and navies, but we knew that life went on. “Family at ease, nation at peace.”

  Sojourners were not yam brains. We talked wisdom all the time: “Don’t beat a dog until you know its master.”

  Clearly, Sam’s father had not taught him much.

  As the path sloped upward, the load tugged at m
y shoulders. Sam had been right about the steep climb. At Big Tunnel, Sam called a halt, lowered his pack, and dusted himself off. Then he shut his eyes, raised his arms, palms to the sky, and started to chant. Turning slow circles, he tossed crushed dry leaves into the air. The brat watched with solemn eyes.

  As we unpacked lanterns, Sam said, “This mountain suffered greatly. Redbeards packed in black powder and blasted its head, chest, and arms into the river. Fish were blocked from going upstream. Native crewmen urged the Company to take action, but it refused. We cleared the rubble on our own. Finally the Company sent some China men to help.”

  Big Tunnel curved and cut off the entrance light. I hurried into its cool darkness to show my courage.

  “Baba!” Peter called. “Ung mai ngoi.”

  He called me father, asked me to wait! I spun around. “Sam, ask how he learned that!”

  “His mother, who else?”

  I spoke to the boy in Chinese. “Have you eaten rice?”

  Nothing.

  “Good morning.”

  “Eat sweets?”

  “Want to go back to China?”

  Nothing.

  “Doesn’t matter if he speaks Chinese or not.” Sam had strolled ahead. “You’re not taking him to China.”

  “He has Chinese blood. He should speak Chinese.”

  “He has Native blood too.”

  The boy pulled me to Sam and took his hand, so the three of us walked together, trying to hurry but not stumble. The darkness didn’t bother the boy, who hummed and skipped along. I breathed with relief: Peter would do well, no matter where he went. He would make his mother proud.

  “And you?” I asked. “Will you teach your child Chinese words?”

  “Won’t be there. The mother doesn’t want me. At first she said I was the father, but then she said no. Now she says the father is a Native man.”

  “You let her take claim?” I was astounded. “But it was your seed that made the child.”

  “Child is inside her.”

  “Will her family raise it?”

  “Of course.”

  “The mother fears you are poor,” I said. “Many women think that way.”

  “I can care for them, but she prefers her people.”