A Superior Man Page 19

  Peter ran down the aisle, shouting with glee. When he skipped back, Sam flung out his arms, growled like a wild animal, and chased him. The boy ducked under a seat. Sam pretended not to see and let him escape. Peter came running, leapt up, and grabbed my neck. I laughed and recalled crossing the river this morning. But such a good mood could not last long.

  Sam vaulted over the seats, his long legs swinging. “We built this,” he crowed.

  A bell clanged and the train started to move.

  Peaks of distant mountains floated by, as did tall trees. This was my first time sitting inside, not crouched among a gang on the splintered planks of an open deck. From the window came the steady clank of pistons beating louder and faster than anything I had ever heard. As it gained speed, the train moved so smoothly that I was able to stand up and walk without losing my balance. I sat down, caught Sam’s mocking gaze, and felt like a country bumpkin.

  “Not your first time?” I asked.

  Sam shook his head.

  “You and your brother both worked on the railway?” I asked.

  He looked away, even when I offered the bottle that Lam had filled with boiled water. I sat back and decided to enjoy myself. Few China men had ridden in such comfort over this road.

  I had felt strangely content at hearing the brat’s whoops of laughter. Happy times were hard to find. We sojourners never unravelled the mysteries of good luck, not even after debates around teahouse meals and late campfires. The rich were born into it while we poor fools had no choice but to chase it. At home, the family altar was central, even during the worst of times because only the ancestors had powers and direct reason to help us. Now my luck had fled and dropped me back to where I had started: a fifteen-year-old leaving home without a cent. Maybe the ancestors were angry that I had not paid them sufficient respect all these years. Twelve years had passed, an entire cycle of animal emblems.

  We sojourners also discussed the proverb: “First, Luck; second, Destiny; third, Feng Shui; fourth, Virtues; fifth, Education.” Of these, we humans could affect only the last three. That was why Mother wanted her sons to be schooled. Some men believed that the port of Victoria possessed good feng shui: hills enclosed its deep harbour on three sides in the classic Dragon Protects Pearl. Other men said that feng shui didn’t work in Canada; foreign spirits ruled the land and waters. But everyone agreed that people with poor luck and weak fates could improve their lives by piling up virtue. That was why I needed to take Peter to Mary. But our own proverbs reminded us that personal goodwill had long been limited by larger forces.

  Even the good-hearted get kicked by thunder.

  Kind deeds see no rewards.

  Have some luck, then go on back.

  I reached down, fingered my stocking, and cursed those so-called lawmen: May all their sons be born without shit-holes. Police were corrupt no matter where we went. I should have leapt at the constable and his gun. I should have rolled out the door and ran, even without my boots. If they shot me dead in the back, my ghost would haunt them forever. The ache in my chest was a heavy iron beam. Nothing could be done to lighten or remove it.

  Soon the train slowed. Trees and buildings that had vanished earlier in a blurred rush now gradually regained their shapes and lines. We passed a burial site with boxes and wooden figures, and then boarding halls, cottages for railway bigwigs, and false-front stores. Doors and fences raced by like hunted animals, leaving me behind. No matter how hard I might work here, there was no catching up, no regaining my loss.

  The hillside forest hovered like an anxious parent behind the station. A bell clanged to clear the tracks. A crowd of men pushed and hollered on the platform that was oddly busy when compared to the peace and quiet of North Bend.

  A redbeard boarding with a broom spotted me and rushed over. His shirt sleeves puffed over his elbows, held there by metallic arm bands. “Get off!” he shouted.

  I showed him my ticket but he jabbered at Sam, who leapt up to cradle the sleeping boy.

  “Go! The other way!” He pointed back at the station. “Those men, they didn’t get jobs to clear the landslide. They’re heading to Lytton to make trouble. If they see you, you’re dead.”

  Our tickets were wasted. The clerk resumed his sweeping, head down.

  Sam stopped. “Want to save money?” He caught my eye. “Give me a few drops of water.”

  He tapped red dust from a pouch into his palm. “We paint your face and make you one of us.”

  His baby finger stirred the mix. The dye was Sophie’s, he explained, a gift to the boy.

  He dabbed a mountain on his cheeks and drew two streaks across his forehead. The lines were like those on the boy’s face. I thought of blood flowing from a gash to the skull.

  “Blow on it,” he said. “Dry it faster.”

  I shoved my pigtail under Sam’s big hat as he rubbed red onto my forehead and cheeks. His fingers were warm against my face.

  “It’s easy to wash off, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Good thing your skin is dark,” he said. “At last, you and the boy look alike.”

  He wiped his fingers in his armpits and laid the boy over my lap. He sat and gripped the water bottle, heavy enough to break a man’s nose.

  Six redbeards came aboard, yelling and stomping, louts in stained pants and loose vests. It was their first time on a car too: they bunched at the door, tugging their beards and peering at the ceiling like porters waiting at a mansion’s entrance. They pursed their lips and cheeks, seeking a spittoon. Two men removed their caps and held them tightly.

  The pistons clanked and the train started to move.

  “Look busy,” Sam said.

  I backed into the corner. Along the tracks were rocks with sharp edges. My hands, though wrapped around Peter, itched for a weapon.

  “Talk to me,” Sam said. “Be my best friend and tell me everything in the world.”

  “What place was that?”

  “Keefers, where the China men got hired.”

  One redbeard used a penknife to cut furrows of white stuffing from a chair and then blew them away. Another fellow combed his beard, as if about to meet a pretty woman. Their chum sprawled sideways on a seat and whistled a tuneless air. His trousers rode up and left pale skinny legs dangling in the aisle. A fourth man scraped clean the mud-caked soles of his boot on the steps of the entrance.

  I prayed that Lytton’s China men were ready to fight. Yee Fook and another man had been murdered near Lytton. That year, anger in the railway camps ran so high that the trial was moved to Victoria. Three redbeards had been tried in court, Chinese witnesses were called to testify, but no one was found guilty.

  Why hadn’t the Company put guards on this train? It should have foreseen trouble when so many men were jobless and fretful.

  The boot scraper nudged Pen Knife to stop. Then Pen Knife strolled toward us.

  “Don’t get up.” Sam spoke calmly in Chinese, loud enough for the redbeard to hear. “Sit still and guard your child.”

  Pen Knife sat and thrust his legs at us. I met his gaze and looked beyond him. To show weakness would egg him on. My hands trembled.

  “Yang Hok, you are a big-talking turd of shit,” Sam said loudly, “and you hate my kind. But Heaven forces us to walk together. Tell me, is your father well?”

  “He breathes righteous air.” I matched his polite tone.

  “He’ll be happy you don’t bring home a mix-blood child.”

  “Few people can please their parents.” I shrugged.

  “But you are a superior one. What about your friends who left their children here? Didn’t they want to be superior men?”

  “They were stupid pigs. Only fools come to Gold Mountain.”

  “And you?”

  “I wanted to go to America.”

  Sam paused and took a breath before saying, “I want to go away too. I plan to go to China.”

  “Don’t,” I warned him. “A man brought home a mix-blood son and put him in school—”

&
nbsp; “I heard you before,” he snapped.

  Pen Knife grinned.

  “Why do people in China hate us?” Sam demanded. “Don’t they care for their own bone and flesh?”

  “You have your country and we have ours.”

  Pen Knife lit a cigar and blew its smoke at us. The wind from the window hurled it back in his face.

  “We don’t sail to China and dump our children there,” said Sam. “You China men are the same as redbeards. You think you are smarter than us.”

  “We are smarter,” I said. “That’s why you want to go to China.”

  “I need to see my father’s family.”

  “Strangers there get blamed for thefts and deaths.”

  “Ba promised to take us there.”

  “Don’t be stupid. He just wanted to make you children laugh.”

  “He said we would feast from orchards of orange and banana trees. We would eat almond cakes and dragon’s whiskers candy. We would climb Pine Mountain to the five-storey pagoda. He said our family owned land and ponds and never needed to worry.”

  Truly, that idiot father had been crazy to tell such stories. Chinese people guarded the homeland, now more than ever before. There was no worse time for an outsider to enter China. Our borders were long ones, and outsiders had pierced them again. Long ago, horsemen who shot arrows from galloping horses crashed through the Great Wall and turned the north into a wasteland. Now, gunboats sailed up to Guangzhou and fired cannons to crumble its walls. But trouble brewed inside the borders too: the Guest Wars were fought between China man and China man.

  “Did your father sever ties?” I demanded. “Some men leave and never go back. Families disown them.”

  “Ba sent money home. Mother argued with him, said we needed the money too.”

  “You can’t just stroll into a house and declare yourself family. They’ll kick you out.”

  “I am Lew Bing Sam of the twenty-eighth generation. My father Lew Dat Kong was the twenty-seventh generation, youngest brother to Dat Joe and Dat Chen. My grandfather Suey Chaw was twenty-sixth generation, second eldest among five brothers. My great-grandfather Yuan Lay was twenty-fifth generation, he was the only son. His father Ho Fai was twenty-fourth generation; he was eldest of four brothers. His father Yun Tong was twenty-third generation, he was eldest of five brothers—”

  I stopped him. Not even I, a full-blooded China man, knew my ancestors so well. “How many generations can you recite?”

  “All of them. When Ba was dying he said, ‘You must go to China. You have land and houses there. I did not forget you or Huey. I am a good father.’”

  “His family in China will fight you.”

  “My father had no trueborn sons there, only adopted ones. Huey and I were his rightful heirs because we came from his body.”

  “You are a cup of water against a cart of firewood. You won’t win.”

  “Can you help me find them?”

  “Perhaps. Where’s the village?”

  He paused and shook his head. “Once you leave for China, I’ll never see you again.”

  “Then we go together.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to be there when you recite the family tree. I want to see the look on those peoples’ faces. The villagers will talk about that moment forever, for generations to come. At first they will slam the gate on you. But when you stand outside and start chanting those names, the door will fly open. They will pull you into their courtyard, slide their hands all over your face, and dance circles around you. The story will live forever in your village. It will be engraved in stone for the entire county to see!”

  Pen Knife propped his boots on the seat beside Sam. Mud and worse was smeared on the soles. His green-eyed gaze moved between us. He seemed to smile to himself, knowing that we were outnumbered.

  I wanted to grab his beard and slam his head into the window. I would shove his neck onto the edges of glass. Blood would spurt, for sure.

  His buddy the boot scraper rescued him by shouting across the car and raising a bottle of whisky.

  12

  THE POOR FARE BETTER AT HOME THAN ON THE ROAD (1885)

  At Lytton, the canyon suddenly became a dusty plain, ringed by dry hills dotted with bunchgrass. A wind hurled grit into our faces, forcing us to squint and turn our heads. The sky was a faint, scorched blue. On the slopes, lanky trees strayed from each other, as if each had a different plan to seek out water. The sun dried the sweat on my brow. I swallowed hard but my throat was knotted with worry. If people here were as hard as the ground underfoot, then it would be easier to float a boulder than to get a cash loan.

  Of course I knew better than to travel without money. In Gold Mountain, if bad weather, broken wheels, or splintered axles didn’t hold you back, then redbeard mischief would. You reached a distant town to find kinsmen gone and nowhere safe to stay. Old stores had closed and new crooks watched from doors. The redbeard roadhouse was open but dangerous. You had to buy food, shelter, and even directions to the nearest latrine.

  Tomorrow, my path led either north or south, to seek Mary or to head home. North meant cheating at the game tables tonight, to raise some cash. South meant going home with empty hands and no rousing story for Grandfather. Fingers got scorched at the stove or over the fire; it didn’t matter which.

  “Does it get drier?” I pointed north.

  Sam nodded.

  “Cache Creek too? Shouldn’t it get colder?”

  Another nod.

  Damn my fellow China men. Hundreds of them had passed through Victoria, but no one ever mentioned this barren landscape. They only exclaimed about cold stinging winters, or the merging of the two rivers. They said farms were few, but I had taken that to mean the land wasn’t broken yet, the forests not felled.

  Our train ride from Keefers had been brief so the landscape changed in the blink of an eye. Leafy thick woods gave way to grim wide desert. In rainy Gold Mountain, I never thought of drought. In China, rains involved ceaseless beseeching from feeble farmers to uncaring gods. One summer, the nights brought no cooling relief. Grandfather watched the horizon all day, waiting for clouds. The fields bloomed bright green at first but water levels failed the budding plants. Mid-season, when the rice didn’t flower, fretful men joined their women at the temples and children were warned against making mischief or ominous talk. As fields yellowed far ahead of time, Grandmother bemoaned her lifeless vegetables. The pond dried up, leaving shellfish to broil and shrivel in the sun. That year, no one planted a fall crop or celebrated the mid-autumn.

  Mary and her family must have led a tough life. No doubt that had caused her to bring Peter to me. How many children did she say she was raising? There could be more than three if her husband had offspring of his own. Taking Peter to her wouldn’t be helpful unless there were cash gifts. The great pig of my plan had died and now its shit was leaking out.

  The railway station with its bustling goings-on stood outside the town, so Lytton was quiet. Its hush, of course, concealed whatever foul planning against China men was underway. Two men on horses drove a sizeable herd of cattle. They could easily whip these heavy beasts to stampede through Chinatown and tear away anything not anchored. The old wagon road broke free from its narrow mountain thrust and opened wide, so the landscape left few hiding places. Hot winds fanned the anger of redbeards, curling it like old paint on the buildings. A blacksmith pounded at his forge and then hot metal hissed in cold water. How easy it was for the redbeards to arm themselves.

  Carpenters nailed shingles onto a roof. Plenty of hammers were on hand. Picket fences surrounded cottages, where flowers drooped by the doors. Who knew how many pairs of narrowed eyes watched us? Buggies and horse-drawn wagons clattered by, spreading dust that pricked my throat. A gaggle of Native women in bright dresses ran laughing from a church, books clutched at their chests. Their people wouldn’t help us. Had we ever helped them? We shunned them, avoiding them like street beggars, claiming we didn’t understand what they said or want
ed. Hotel porters heaved trunks and suitcases onto a stagecoach as the yeasty smell of beer drifted out from behind them. Someone banged on a piano. No doubt the thugs from the train had found comrades-in-arms and were raising ham-fisted toasts to each other. I picked up a sturdy pole from the ground, and the boy did the same.

  “We should have fought that Boston Bar lawman,” I said to Sam. “Instead, we ran like chicks.”

  “You would have done what?”

  “Yanked his intestines, twisted his stomach. Thrust a broomstick down his throat.”

  “Wouldn’t he shout for help?”

  “Rip out his tongue.”

  “Wouldn’t his helper have come?”

  “Slit his throat.”

  Sam shook his head. “Nothing but talk.”

  And him? Knives bristled over his body yet not one was sharp.

  Sam said that the train ran north to Ashcroft, forty miles away. From there, Cache Creek was seven miles further. There wasn’t enough money for train passage.

  “You said it was closer,” I said.

  “You heard wrong.”

  “Liar!” My fist sprang up.

  Sam pulled Peter to his side, saying, “I only said we would pass Lytton on the way to Cache Creek.”

  As they walked off, I roundly cursed Sam and myself. I had been stupid, played for an idiot by these people.

  In Lytton’s Chinatown, Sam tried to leave us, to go see his woman across the river. He promised to bring a new guide next morning. “Remember,” he said, “you need money to pay him.”

  No amount of coaxing could get Peter to release Sam’s hand. It was good that the boy knew who he looked like and leaned toward his own kind. Sam ought to see this and stop insisting that Peter go to China. Indeed, tomorrow would be much better with a new guide. If Peter howled and held onto Sam when we met Mary, then she would see me as a fool who could not control his own son or win his respect. She had taken such trouble to unite us. No doubt she too needed a tale of an upright China man in order to impress her family and friends.