A Superior Man (11 page)

I took on extra duties but it was safe work: writing and reading letters for men willing to pay a few pennies. It was easy work, full of basic four-word phrases:
your latest letter received, hard labour long days
, or
best efforts press forward
.

Not everyone used me. Men guarded their lives from workmates who gloated over the bad luck of others, who dwelled upon people's misery to lighten their own hardships. They read scandal into simple matters. A father urging sons to tend to their mother was said to have raised useless scoundrels. A son telling his old bean to eat well and wear warm clothes was said to be atoning for past cruelty. Someone advising his brother to replace the roof and repair the dikes was seen to be managing from afar a family damned by inbred madness.

There was one line that all my customers praised:
Received your keen advice, etched it on my bones, carved it on my heart
. They wanted this in their letters, even when the home folk had sent them no guidance. They were even willing to pay extra for the sentiment.

One day Poy and I plodded back to the tunnel mouth and found the two crews milling there. A man from Old Fire's gang lay
moaning on the ground, dirty blood caked on his face and clothes. Ceiling rock had crushed two workers. Redbeards brought out the second man slung in a tattered blanket while another carried heavy pickaxes. They lay the body before the bookman and crew boss and pulled back the cloth.

I saw the torn shirt and flesh of someone's chest. Where a man's head had been was now a red, pinkish mash of bone, brain, and rubble. I vomited and regretted wasting my meal. When the bookman nodded, the men hauled away the corpse. We backed off, bumping into one another, and averted our faces.

High Hat was impressed. “The redbeards move it so quickly.”

“Only to get us back to work,” said Number Two, his second-in-command. “Otherwise we get paid for standing here and doing nothing.”

“Time to move!” Bookman shouted. “Back to work!”

The wily agents in China had never mentioned danger. All they said was that we would be building a road. How hard could that be? We thought that meant outside work. I should have known then that a dollar a day was a dream wage. Yes, it sailed far above a coolie's pay in China. But the tunnel was dark and ghostly, all honed edges and rigid corners. Their silent master, the mountain, loomed over us, solid and menacing, all male
yang
power. It came alive when sudden light threw bobbing shadows against the walls. We wretches drilled tips of iron into the core, sapping its gleaming strength. Of course the mountain gods despised us. We were as doomed as piglets caught gulping golden coins.

That evening, workmates asked what had caused me to throw up. I refused to say.

“Hok, come.” High Hat pulled me away. “I want to see Old Fire. If he needs a grave-stick, then you can earn some money.”

“The last man we lost,” said Old Fire, “it was the blaster's fault. That bastard ducked into a new corner to dodge flying rock. He said he never saw our fellow walk by. We wanted to kill him; we chased him into the river and pelted him with stones. The shit-hole prick almost got nailed, shivering from the cold.”

“Was today an accident?” High Hat asked.

Old Fire shrugged and offered a brown jug of rice wine. I accepted, politeness be damned.

“Redbeards take the body and we don't see it again,” he said.

High Hat asked for details, but we heard, “Don't know, don't care. Three men got fragrant so far. Who can handle so many?”

“Do the rites and let their spirits protect you.”

“The mountain is stronger. Better to light incense and kneel before rocks.”

“You don't care if they throw grass on the body, leave it for animals, or heave it into the river?”

“Back home, bodies float down the water, bloated and blackened. No one buries them. They're lucky to get fished out.”

“No one knows them. Here, the bookman knows every name.”

“Go find a runaway monk,” Old Fire said. “Get him to chant sutras.”

I reported this to Poy, who looked up from washing clothes. “This makes you happy?”

“We need to get to America.”

“We have debts. I want to do right.” He wrung out grey water. “Otherwise my life won't get better.”

“Our luck will change in America,” I said. “Don't let Shorty frighten you.”

“Forget luck. It's about right and wrong.”

After Pig Boy's funeral, Poy and I grew wary of one another. He didn't hand me the Iron Hit liniment to rub into his bruised shoulder, and I stopped inviting him to toss garments into my wash bucket. If we worked outside, sometimes I partnered with Old North, and Poy went with Old South.

“You owe me,” I insisted. “I saved your life on Centipede Mountain.”

“You owe
me
. I saved your life in Hong Kong.” He snatched his wet garments and walked away.

Damn him, a wet hen in a soup pot, kicking at the lid.

I needed to remind him about riches south of the border. What if the bumpkin thought America was the same as what we saw here in Canada?

We had glimpsed America's bounty long ago, when a bandit raid netted us fancy goods from abroad. A sojourner had shipped strange products, puzzles to me until I reached Hong Kong and Canada. A lightweight box on thin metal wheels served as a baby carriage. Two wooden rollers and a handle squeezed dirt from clothes. An iron barrel turned out to be a pot-belly stove. We threw away tinned food until someone took an axe and split open a shiny can.

One day I saw armed militia sneaking up Centipede Mountain. I ran to warn the bandits, keen to win their favour, but found only Poy
and two others. The rest had followed Shrimp Boy and Cudgel on a mission. We four wasted no time fleeing. The militia, rival bandits who had switched sides to become law-abiding mercenaries, waited overnight in the forest to surprise our gang and slaughter them. All their severed heads were thrust atop poles in the county capital. Poy wept at seeing our comrades' surprised faces. When the most corrupt magistrate in the region posted a reward for the four missing bandits, Poy and I raced to Hong Kong.

We found scant work, loading and unloading the ships. Then, angry co-workers put aside their hauling ropes and wheelbarrows to go on strike against a new government tax. After police arrested the strike leaders, 20,000 dockhands occupied the harbour and halted all shipping. Hong Kong was a big port; cargo had to be moved. But streets and alleys were barricaded to prevent headmen and their thugs from reaching the piers. Wet sewage was hurled at the comprador merchants sent to placate the workers. Armed British soldiers barged in but were driven back. We China men welcomed any effort to regain face from the redbeards who had shamed us in war.

Poy and I were too new to be trusted by the strikers, so we let merchants hire us to bypass the strikers under cover of night. Our sampan drifted slowly to a great ship. We unloaded goods on the far side of the freighter, out of sight. But as we tried to return to shore, word leaked out about our contraband cargo. Angry strikers shouted and hurled stones and bricks at us. Our boat capsized, along with all the cargo. Poy, a swimmer, had kept me afloat in the dark until we were rescued.

Next day in the tunnel, the man ahead of me screamed and fell back. The gods in the roof were still dancing. I landed on the shuddering ground as my laden baskets tipped over. The floor lamps were snuffed. Blind and bruised, we crawled over mounds of rubble until faint light glimmered ahead.

It was stir-shit-stick Shorty who had heard the creak above and warned us.

“Had I known it was you,” he sniffed, “I wouldn't have bothered. You deserve death.”

He followed me around, whining to anyone who came close, “The universe has no justice. Hok should rescue me; he owes me half a dozen lives!”

Most crewmen ignored him. No one worked at his lazy pace; everyone sought to stay out of trouble with the bosses. His only friend, Onion, had fallen alongside us in the roof collapse and lay in bed for days, bleating in faked pain.

When I passed him by the latrine, he grinned. “Take time off, Hok. You work too hard.”

Once, Bookman lost his temper and threatened to reduce Onion's wages to punish his tardiness.

“If you fine me,” he said, “I won't work.”

A coolie who didn't work didn't get paid. It also meant that the Company's long fingers couldn't claw back the ship's passage or any cash that had been advanced. Then, Bookman barred Onion from the cooking tent, trying to starve him into line. But Onion had his own money to buy food in town.

When Bookman got cornered and lost face, he said the contractors would confront Onion's family in China.

Onion chuckled. “You think they are rich enough to sway my people?”

Rumours of danger followed Onion. He had insulted a corrupt judge. He had seduced a general's mistress. He had caused officials to lose face after bragging about his windfalls from high-stake gambling sessions. Here in Canada, Onion laughed even when he lost money, no matter what the game, no matter what the stakes. If he hadn't been Shorty's friend, then he would have been mine.

In town, the general store was crowded with railway men gambling on a rest day. I asked about America.

“You need money.” The merchant slid close and lowered his voice. “The ones who reach America, they hire Native men to guide them through forests and mountains. They avoid the river and railway where the Company has eyes.”

“I'll be fragrant by the time I save money.”

“You take risks?”

“Want to report me to the Company?”

“Sell whisky at camp. All you need is a hiding place.”

The Company forbade liquor in the railway camps, so workers hiked miles to town to slake their thirst. Noisy saloons, open twenty-four hours a day, offered women as well as other delights. Chinese pedlars trekked through the camps selling bootleg but were driven off by crew bosses ordered by bigwigs to keep their men sober.

“And end up in jail? I'll get nailed there!”

“And the laws of China?”

He meant fight evil with evil. Our Emperor had issued bans against opium, but the redbeards unleashed cannons and dispatched warships to protect the shipments and maintain the trade. Lacking human decency, they sold the drug everywhere. Stricken wives and naked children of addicts wailed and starved in the streets. Fleshless corpses, all bone and skin, of addicts who couldn't buy another pipe piled up in front of opium shops as though those firms were also coffin makers. The Yen mansion and its famed rock-and-water gardens collapsed after the master died and his two sons, both addicts, lost the family business. Every stick of furniture, every rag of cloth, and every piece of art had been pawned by the time remaining family members fled.

So I bought my first case of whisky and tied it to my back. At work, I watched the redbeards until I saw one fellow sneaking a drink. I went to him with a phrase learned from my merchant supplier: “Wanna whisky? Two dollah.”