Dead Man's Gold and Other Stories (4 page)

IN 1975, CITIZENS
hardly noticed when bulldozers demolished the Immigration Building, known to the old-timer Chinese as Pig Pen. Its barred windows and high walls occupied downtown land adjacent to a seaside park, the harbor and railway lines. Over the years, thousands of Chinese immigrants had landed and undergone humiliating inspections there, until the gateway for newcomers shifted to the airport.

One foggy evening, shortly after the fall of Pig Pen, a cyclist raced along the nearby seawall, dodging puddles left by heavy rains. He leaned into a curve and inadvertently churned up a spray of water that drenched two Chinese pedestrians. He wheeled around to apologize, but to his surprise, nobody was there. He rode for a distance in both directions but didn't spot a soul. They couldn't have clambered up the muddy cliffs because of their formal dress — she in a long dress, he in a dark suit and polished shoes.

On another day, a retired businessman took a late afternoon stroll after a fierce windstorm. A loosened shoelace stopped him at a park bench, where he watched two young Chinese stroll by arm in arm — she in an evening gown and he in a formal tuxedo. The businessman preferred solitary walks, so he let them swing around the bend before following. On reaching the same corner, he saw a huge tree blocking the way. It had crashed down during the storm. On one side of the path rose a steep cliff; on the other was deep water. But the young couple had vanished.

Months later, the businessman's granddaughter went to the federal archives in the nations capital to research the family's history. She spent weeks searching through boxes of records from the Department of Immigration. One afternoon, she flipped open a thick file marked “Yung, Gim-lan — Attempted Illegal Entry.” Little did she know that this folder, yellowed and flaking after fifty years, contained the clues to her grandfather's sighting that afternoon.

* * *

Choi Jee-yun was the only daughter of a wealthy merchant in Hong Kong. Although he had wanted a son, in 1912 China it was considered progressive to treat girls equal to boys. It was also viewed as modern to adopt Western ideas, so when she grew older, he let her ride an imported bicycle at home and attend a missionary school for girls. Jee-yun treasured going to classes, for her girl cousins were not allowed to attend school and never left the family compound.

Jee-yun scored high marks and the teachers encouraged her to advance to college for more education. Her father worried about the male students in those classes, but his reputation as a forward-thinking businessman was at stake, so he let her enroll. Secretly, he instructed a servant to watch her every move.

The servant brought back disturbing news. A young man named Yen Wah-lung was regularly walking Jee-yun home. When she stayed late at school, Wah-lung also remained behind. The two studied the same subjects, did homework together and attended concerts with other friends.

Jee-yun's father withdrew his daughter from school, claiming a private tutor at home would benefit her more. He advised her not to attend concerts at night because the streets had become lawless and dangerous. The household servants were ordered not to admit male visitors and to inspect all packages addressed to her.

Of course Jee-yun and Wah-lung knew of her fathers opposition. Wah-lung's father operated a candle stall in the old market and possessed limited education, while Jee-yun's father befriended international bankers to expand his business empire. A cousin agreed to carry secret messages between the young lovers, and after months of painful separation, they decided to flee to the New World. Wah-lung would leave first, find a job and lay the foundations for a life together.

“I will set up an apartment for us,” he promised in his last letter before leaving. “It will have tall windows to let in sunlight, and all the furnishings will be of the highest quality. As soon as you join me, I will put on a new suit and you will slip into a long elegant gown and we will attend a symphony concert together.”

When Jee-yun s father heard of Wah-lung s departure, he smiled to himself. Meanwhile, Jee-yun purchased stacks of books and piled them high on her desk and shelves to give the impression that she was trying to forget about her young man by immersing herself in her studies.

When Wah-lung's boat sailed into the New World harbor, the mountains and water reminded him of home and left him longing for Jee-yun. He marveled at wide roads filled with gleaming automobiles and at green lawns surrounding lofty houses. His sweetheart would be very happy here, he thought. But he also noticed the Chinese lived in the poorer section of town and labored at low-paying jobs.

The only work he could find was clerking in a downtown store selling silks and curios from China and Japan. To save money, he walked an hour to work instead of riding the streetcar. When he shopped for food, he selected limp greens being sold at half price. The room he found for himself was dim and tiny. When people invited him to a teahouse or game-hall, he always said no. And he resisted the temptation to buy newspapers, even though Chinatown published five papers, which citizens devoured for news of local and worldwide events.

But skimping on newspapers and teahouse gossip proved costly. Wah-lung came home one day to discover the government had slammed the door on his beloved Jee-yun's entry. Chinese migrants had kept arriving despite a head tax, and now the government decided to keep the nation white by banning their immigration altogether.

Right away, he sent a telegram to Hong Kong, advising Jee-yun to stay calm and promising a new plan to reunite them. She wrote back saying she trusted him with all her heart.

A year later, he used all his savings to buy the birth certificate of a Chinese born in North America. He sent it to Jee-yun, who told her father she was going on a shopping trip to Japan. She journeyed across the Pacific as Yung Gim-lan, a citizen of the New World who had been sent to her father's village at an early age and was now returning to her country of birth.

But when Jee-yun's ship docked, she was escorted into Pig Pen and told that her documents would be examined there. Guards marched her to a room containing only a table, with four chairs behind it and one in front. Iron bars guarded the windows.

Three officials and an interpreter trooped in and motioned her to sit. Jee-yun trembled and submitted the false papers, but they ignored her documents and stared rudely across the table. Her gaze faltered.

“How far is your village from the nearest town?” one man barked out. The interpreter translated.

She quickly made up an answer. “Three miles.”

The next official asked, “Who occupies the house east of yours? What is the surname and how many are they?”

Jee-yun swiftly invented a name and number.

Before she could take a breath, the third man asked, “How many stairs lead to the ancestral hall? Are they stone or wood?”

All day the officials shot questions at her and carefully recorded her answers.

“What are the market days in town?”

“How many steps is it from your front door to the village entrance?”

“In what directions are there hills? How many hills can be seen from the village entrance?”

“How many tombs are on the hill where your grandfather is buried?”

Her throat dried, but the men refused to provide water. She grew faint, but her captors kept the window shut.

When Jee-yun was finally taken to her cell, she could hardly breathe. The officials had posed several hundred questions and she had fabricated answers to all of them. Their scheme was clear. In a few days, they would repeat their questions. It would be impossible for her to recall all her false replies. Then they would know she wasn't Yung Gim-lan and had no right to enter.

She realized she had fallen into a well-crafted trap. From the barred window, she saw a forest park by the ocean. Her cell contained no chairs or desk, and certainly no paper or pen. But to soothe her nerves, she composed a poem in her head, and then cut the words into the wall with her jade pendant.

Walls of stone and steel rise to surround me,
Windows frame a forest green, ringed by sea.
But I will ride the ocean waves crashing high,
And carry deep desires to meet the sky.

Each day she wrote lines of poetry. It helped the hours creep along. When the officials dragged her back to the interrogation room, she tried to recall her answers but soon confessed she wasn't Yung Gim-lan.

“Who sent you this birth certificate?” demanded her jailers.

She refused to reply. They waited to see who might visit her but Wah-lung suspected a trap and dared not approach. Each day he trudged home from work by himself, hoping a miracle would bring her to his room.

Jee-yun carved more poems onto the wall, but their tone grew grimmer and the images darker.

Why does a heart beat when no one can hear?
How many sorrows can a solitary heart bear?
The wisdom of the past slips with autumn leaves,
Sweep them away, and scatter the seeds.

When she saw horse-drawn carriages trot gaily along the seawall, tears poured from her eyes. When children ran by with colorful kites aloft in the sky, she gripped the iron bars until her hands ached.

The officials grew worried. Some days she refused to eat. Often she spat in their faces; other times she lay on her cot and wouldn't budge.

As she grew thinner and weaker, the officials summoned a Chinatown doctor. Jee-yun shook her head and wouldn't let him touch her. He coaxed her with kind words to try to learn her real identity, but she turned away and wouldn't meet his eyes. When the doctor noticed her wall poems, he copied them down in his notepad. Later, he showed them to the editor of one of Chinatown's newspapers, who praised them and quickly published them.

Soon all Chinatown was marveling at the talented poet imprisoned in Pig Pen. When Wah-lung read the poems, he detected the growing despair and realized he had to act soon. But Pig Pen was tightly guarded.

One warm night, he waited in the shadows of a nearby alley. When the truck came to haul away kitchen waste, he jumped onto the vehicles back and crouched among the greasy barrels. He held his breath until the sentries at Pig Pen's gate waved the truck through. Then he hopped off and slipped into the building. Approaching footsteps sent him running into a dark corner. But he didn't realize the truck's garbage smells were clinging to him, and the guards easily sniffed him out. He tried to run, but the guards cuffed his hands and ankles and called the police.

In the courtyard, Wah-lung looked helplessly up at the rows of stony barred windows and shouted at the top of his lungs, “Jee-yun, are you there? It's me, Wah-lung. I came to see you! Jee-yun, are you there?”

Jee-yun ran to the window only to see him thrown aboard a paddy wagon. She slid to the floor weeping and choking.

From then on, she wrote no more poems. When she gazed at the distant seawall where young couples strolled freely, the pain cut so deeply that she moaned.

In court, an exhausted Wah-lung appeared before a stern-looking judge. The young man hadn't slept, hadn't eaten and was crushed by his failure to free Jee-yun. When he was pronounced guilty, the judge ordered him deported to China immediately.

“No!” cried Wah-lung. “Let me stay in prison here. My beloved is locked in Pig Pen.”

But the judge ignored his plea, because a steamer ticket cost less than a term in prison.

In Pig Pen, Jee-yun wept into her cot until her
eyes
were swollen and red. Finally, she begged to be sent home. Weary officials issued a deportation order and put her on a freighter bound for Hong Kong.

Imagine the joy when Jee-yun and Wah-lung found each other aboard the ship. They embraced and vowed never to be parted. As the ship left the harbor, they clung to each other and watched Pig Pen and the park's great seawall glide by.

But before they got far, a violent storm battered the ship. The cargo of steel beams in the hold shifted and the boat overturned. There were no survivors.

No one in Jee-yun or Wah-lung's family even suspected they had died. Their bodies were lost to flesh-eating fish and corrosive saltwater. The only evidence of their love had been etched into the walls of Pig Pen, and it was there that their two souls returned until the building was torn down.

If you spot Jee-yun and Wah-lung on the seawall one evening, don't be afraid of the young lovers. They are neither angry nor vengeful, for they are content to be in one another's company, and the view of ocean, trees and mountains remains magnificent.

THE RESIDENTS
of Chinatown didn't know much about Little Lo, but they all agreed he should never have come to North America. These were not cruel comments, for people genuinely worried about simpletons trying to survive in a harsh new country. Litte Lo had no steady job. Instead, he loitered at the game-halls sweeping floors and washing teacups, emptying spittoons and scrubbing brown-stained toilets. No one asked him to do the work, so no one paid him.

But everyone told tales about him.

“I saw him squatting at the back door with a bowl of rice heaped with meat and vegetables. A stray dog ambled by, and Little Lo fed it with his own chopsticks. No wonder he's so thin.”

“He was strolling along Main Street with his fly wide open. Passersby were pointing and chuckling, but he paid no attention. When someone finally told him, he bowed at everyone, grinning like some grand entertainer.”

“You know he's awkward, right? One day he tripped and fell and thumped down two long flights of stairs. Any normal human would have broken a bone or bruised himself. Instead, he started giggling. The man is crazy!

Nobody knew Little Lo's exact age because his head was cleanly shaved (to avoid fleas, people muttered). Nor did anyone know his home village because he rarely spoke. Little Lo had no friends, no home other than the gambling tables he slept under, and no known relatives. It was rumored his family in China had sent him abroad to eliminate an embarrassing problem. Others claimed he had been a smart young man until white boys rammed his head against a telephone pole during a robbery.

One day, Old Poon the vegetable peddler won the biggest jackpot ever at fan-tan. He had bet all his savings against the highest odds, and when his number lucked in, he jumped to his feet and bellowed with joy. As the dealer grimly paid out the winnings, Old Poon yelled to the kitchen, “Cook a feast for everyone here! And everyone working tonight gets a big tip!”

But when the old-timer came to Little Lo, his eyes
narrowed and he threw an arm over the young man's shoulders.

“I've been worrying about you,” he said. “Listen, this is no life, hanging around a gambling parlor. Tell you what. This win lets me return to China, so I'll give you my horse and wagon, and you can take my route. Try and make a living as a peddler.”

“A.. .a h-h-horse of my own?” cried Litte Lo. Old Poon nodded.

“A...b-b-business for m-m-me to run?”

“Yes.”

Little Lo nodded eagerly, but onlookers shook their heads.

“That idiot can't run a business,” they muttered. “The horse will sicken and starve because the fool can't even care for himself.”

Old Poon led the way to midtown, where Chinese farmers cultivated acres of land and peddlers slept in crude sheds by the stables. Each morning, they awoke to the impatient grunt of hogs, fresh dew on potent fertilizers and the cluck of anxious chickens. Then they hurried off to work. In the days before electric refrigerators, housewives throughout the city relied on door-to-door peddlers selling fish and eggs, vegetables and fruit. The lady of the house chose whatever was fresh, came at a good price or tickled her fancy that morning. She never had to put on her shoes to go shopping.

Old Poon took Little Lo for a ride to see the route. The wagon rumbled through quiet residential streets lined with green lawns, colorful flowerbeds and shady trees. The houses featured wide doors, generous porches and shiny windows.

Suddenly the hooting and yelling of children shattered the quiet afternoon. Little Lo looked down and saw a crowd of neighborhood youngsters dancing around them, loudly chanting a rhyme. He didn't need to understand the words to feel the sting of insults.

Old Poon drove on without flinching. “Are you afraid?” he asked.

Little Lo shuddered but bravely insisted, “Children will grow up.”

They stopped to give the horse some water, and Old Poon said, “Listen, this is a straightforward job, but you have to use your head.”

Little Lo giggled.

The older man continued, “Keep your eyes alert, or people will cheat you.”

His companion nodded, but Old Poon doubted his advice was sinking in. He rubbed the animal's nose and said, “Horses start their lives wild and cannot be ridden or driven by humans. But once trained, they are transformed into loyal helpers. If a beast can change, so can you.”

Little Lo stroked the horses muzzle and felt warmth spread through his entire body.

All Chinatown watched his first week. To everyone's surprise, he caused no accidents and earned enough to cover his costs. The cynics shrugged.

“That's because Old Poon's horse knows the route by heart and stops at all the correct corners without being told. The idiot can't last. He has no brains.”

But Little Lo seemed to have a knack for business. Each evening when the peddlers purchased fresh produce from farmers, they had to hope that their selection would sell the next day. Little Lo seemed to know when housewives wanted radishes for salads instead of cabbage for coleslaw, or when they were short of potatoes and needed great sack-fuls for mashing. More often than not, his wagon clattered back to the farm empty. The peddlers also discovered that Little Lo didn't carry pencil and paper. Instead, he kept accounts in his head and always knew which house owed him how much.

“Its lucky the fool finally found a calling,” they commented. “Otherwise, he would have starved to death in his old age.”

Then Little Lo ran into Tommy, a boy with hair the color of oranges. The peddler was carrying two heavy baskets to the door when a sudden force exploded beside him and sent him sprawling into the ground. His potatoes and onions rolled in all directions, and the ripe tomatoes were smashed and ruined. When he sat up, a boy was swinging from a rope in the trees that lined the path.

On his next visit, he tripped over a thin wire Tommy had tightened across the path. As Little Lo struggled to his feet, the neighborhood children sprang from hiding places in the bushes, laughing and hooting. He recognized the faces, for just yesterday he had handed them toffee wrapped in colored foil.

When he returned to his wagon, the horse rubbed its nose comfortingly against his chest.

One day, Tommy demanded to know the horses name.

“An-n-nimals d-d-on't have names,” Little Lo replied. He let the boy sit atop the wagon, banging his feet against the seat boards and shouting “Giddy-up!” while he jiggled the reins.

Then Tommy's mother ran out into the street shaking her fist at the peddler. Her face flushed red with anger as she pulled the boy off the wagon and shouted at him, “Do you know how dirty that wagon is? You could catch a disease and die!”

The boy retorted, “But, Mother, you buy his vegetables.”

“And I scrub them clean, rinse them four times and boil them thoroughly.”

After that, Tommy's pranks resumed. He scattered marbles on the walk to make Little Lo slip, he kicked a soccer ball into the peddlers face, and he planted wads of chewing gum on the doorstep where Little Lo stood to conduct his business.

Each night back at the farm, the weary peddlers boiled rice and ate together. After a long day on the road, they shared their stories.

“She asks for lettuce, so I run to the wagon and bring some. Then she insists on cabbage, and laughs that I cant tell the difference between the two!”

“She promised to pay today, but when I knocked, the house was an empty box. The entire family had packed and moved. She owed me for five weeks of vegetables!”

Little Lo swallowed his rice and didn't say much. He never complained about Tommy. Instead, he tended his horse. Old Poon hadn't taken the best care of it, but Little Lo fed it softened oats, spread ointment over insect bites and provided new shoes, and gradually the horse regained its strength. On hot summer days, it always stopped under shady trees, refusing to budge until Little Lo had sipped cold tea from his jug. On rainy days, it moved faster, as if trying to finish the route quickly. In the fall, when anxious housewives wanted their root cellars filled with beets, carrots and cabbage, the horse pulled extra loads without complaint.

Every night, Little Lo scrubbed his horse with a brush and pulled burrs from its mane and tail. He inspected its teeth and checked its hooves and iron shoes.

“You treat his feet better than your own stinking shoes!” the other peddlers laughed.

As time passed, people in Chinatown heard how Little Lo was now making a living. He installed rubber tires on his wagon for better traction on rain-slicked roads. He helped the other peddlers with sick or injured horses. They heard he wore a raincoat and rubber boots on rainy days, and hummed opera tunes as he drove. People wondered when he might take a trip back to China to show his family the successes he had achieved. But nobody heard about his troubles with Tommy.

One summer Tommy developed a fascination with fire. He squatted by piles of burning branches, blowing on them to make the flames and smoke billow. He shot flaming arrows at a bull's-eye in the middle of the lawn, and charged wildly about without a shirt while brandishing a torch like an ancient warrior.

One day Little Lo saw Tommy dancing around a pile of twigs and branches that he had lit.

“Look at me!” he shouted. “I can walk on fire!”

At the door, his mother greeted Little Lo. He wondered if she ever worried about Tommy playing with fire, but she seemed pleased that he was playing outside and not dis­turbing her.

“What's nice today?” she asked.

“All n-n-nice,” he replied. He showed her cabbage and carrots, tomatoes and potatoes, green beans and peas.

“You have any spinach?” She always asked for whatever he didn't have.

“N-n-no, s-s-spinach all finished.”

“How about lettuce?”

“No, none t-t-today. Maybe t-t-tomorrow?”

Suddenly Little Lo heard a screeching as shrill as a whistle. He paused. It was his horse. Then came loud crashing and splintering.

He rushed off. His animal lay half on the road, half on the neighbor's lawn, surrounded by black smoke, its legs kicking. Flames licked at its back and sides. A bitter smell rose up. The wagon had tipped, spilling everything and oozing blood from flattened tomatoes. Little Lo smelled gasoline. Someone had poured it over the horse and lit a match.

He used his shirt to beat the flames, but couldn't get close because of the horses panicked kicking. The neighbors came running as the horse made half-weeping, half-bleating sounds. Little Lo ran around the flames and smoke, wailing and moaning. In the background, he heard Tommy whimpering, “It was an accident! I didn't mean to do it! Honest!”

Finally, several women hurried out with pails of water and doused the flames. But it was too late for the horse. It lay panting for breath. Wide strips of flesh were charred, and the glossy big eyes were dulled.

A man came out with a rifle.

“Quick, put it out of misery.”

Little Lo shook his head, but the man persisted. Little Lo had never held a gun before, let alone fired one. But somehow he stilled his shaking hands, aimed the barrel and pulled the trigger. The noise of the shot startled him, and the rifle flew from his grip.

The crowd pushed the stiffening horse onto the wagon and set the vehicle upright. Little Lo draped the straps over his shoulders and pulled it back home to the farm. He could not bear the thought of insects devouring the animal's flesh, so he assembled heavy logs and the other peddlers dragged the horse on top of it. Then he set the pyre on fire and let the flames reduce his old friend to ashes.

He went back to that street only once, with another peddler who spoke better English. They confronted Tommy's mother at the front door and demanded financial compensation. She snorted and slammed the door in their faces.

After that, Little Lo never returned again. No one on that street knew he died shortly afterwards, alone in the farm shed. A different man brought fresh vegetables around to sell, but he drove a truck fashioned from an old Model T Ford.

Soon after, Tommy's family moved away and put up a For Sale sign. But the property never sold. Prospective buyers being shown through the house saw a thin bald man leading a horse through the rooms, right through solid walls. Real-estate agents pretended not to notice, but they, too, saw the phantoms clearly and were horrified. The horse's hooves made no sound on the hardwood floors, but bits of mud and dung were always left behind.

Eventually, Tommy's parents stopped paying taxes on the property and let the city seize it. The house was torn down and the lot was reshaped into a park with a sandbox and swings for children.

But nobody plays there at night, not even on hot summer evenings when the park is lit and children run around sweaty and restless. And on Halloween, nobody ever goes trick-or-treating on that street, even though the houses set out pumpkins with deep orange faces lit by candles.