Heart of the West (39 page)

By peeking beneath her veil she could make out her groom's lower half. She had expected to see the white shoes with thick paper soles and the silk chang-fu of a Chinese. Instead she saw striped barbarian trousers and shiny boots with pointed toes. She dipped gracefully in obeisance before him, her head bowed, her back straight, her right knee nearly grazing the road, both hands lightly touching her left hip.

Merciful Kwan Yin,
she prayed, ashamed of her pride, yet unable to help it,
let him at least be young and pleasant to look upon.

He removed her veil. A bride's face ought never to be revealed to her groom until after they were wed, but Erlan was beyond all shock at this breach of tradition. She did not keep her head down as was proper. Slowly she raised her gaze to his face... Oh, the faithless, cruel gods. He was old, and as ugly as a bamboo rat.

The merchant Sam Woo peered at her through spectacles as thick as Shanghai noodles. The years had creped his eyes and dug deep wrinkles around his mouth. He had grown a thin beard in a vain attempt to disguise his insignificant chin. She couldn't tell if his forehead was also insignificant, as it was covered with a barbarian's bucket-shaped hat.

Yield, Erlan.
She must yield. She must banish all feelings from her heart until it was as empty as a hollow gourd.

Two white demonesses flanked the merchant Woo. One was small and as slender as a wraith, with hair the pale yellow of a newly risen moon. The other also had hair of a most remarkable color, deep red like the juice of the betel nut. No, more vibrant than that. Like the hottest coals reflected in the polished sides of a bronze brazier.

A group of curious onlookers had gathered on the street to watch the stage's arrival. Erlan saw other Chinese, in coarse cotton knee-length jackets, baggy blue
schmo,
and the broad-brimmed peaked straw hats of peasants. The fon-kwei were everywhere too, in their mattress-ticking shirts and coarse canvas trousers. Several of them were pointing at her. Erlan wondered what she had done to be the recipient of such a contemptuous gesture.

And then her gaze was caught and held by one man. Even among the big foreign devils, he was a giant. Like all the other devils, he rudely stared straight at her. He was not handsome. Although he was young, the strong bones of his face—what she could see of it beneath the pelt of hair on his cheeks and chin—stood out as hard and blunt as an old ax. There was a fierceness about him that was rather frightening. But then he smiled, and although he showed his teeth, she rather liked his smile. It was gentle and sweet, like the music of a pi-pa, and it made her feel warm inside.

The leash tightened hard around her neck, cutting off her breath. Without thought, she lifted her hand and clawed at the leather, trying to tug it free.

The giant white demon started toward her, and his face was such a mask of snarling fury that she stumbled back in fright. "He's leashed her!" the giant bellowed. "The bleeding bastard's leashed her like a dog!"

The master stepped in front of her. The giant demon punched him in the belly. The master went sprawling onto his hands and knees in the dusty, dung-littered street.

He scrambled instantly back to his feet, his hand flashing into the sleeve of his chang-fu where he had hidden a small hatchet, the weapon of his trade.
"Ta ma!"
he cursed through gritted teeth. But he didn't dare strike back at the fon-kwei, so like the cowardly snake that he was, he lashed out at her instead.

His hard palm smacked against Erlan's cheek, making a sound like the crack of a whip. She would have fallen if the giant demon hadn't gripped her shoulders from behind, steadying her. Tears of pain blurred Erlan's eyes. She blinked and saw to her astonishment that the fire-haired woman had suddenly appeared in front of the master. She was pointing a small pistol at his face.

"You do anything else besides breathe, Chinaman," she said in a voice like hot smoke, "and you'll be doing it without a nose."

Her husband-to-be meantime was hopping from foot to foot and wringing his hands. "Holy God, Mrs. Yorke! Mr. Scully, please! What are you doing?"

A foreign devil who was as fat as a rice merchant swaggered up to them, his belly leading the way. "Now, Hannah girl," he said, "why don't you put that gun of yours back in your pocket and let these Chinks here look to their own affairs." He turned, and the seven-pointed star he wore on his chest flashed in the sun. The star was such an evil omen that Erlan quickly averted her face. The gods knew she certainly didn't need any more bad joss.

"You too there, Cousin Jack," the fat man said, his gaze settling on the giant behind her. "Didn't I just hear the shift whistle blow? You wouldn't want to be losing a day's pay."

Erlan suddenly became aware that the giant demon was still holding her. His hands were heavy and warm on her shoulders. She did not find his touch distasteful, although it was strange. She leaned her head back against his chest, and he surrounded her with his heat like a powerful but friendly dragon who had made a lair out of his body and was protecting her against the world.

"I don't give a bloody damn about the bloody whistle," he said in the bell-toned English she was used to, although his voice was still edged with dragonlike rage. "That yellow bastard's been dragging a woman about on a leash, and there ought to be a law in this bleeding town to say him nay."

The fat man rubbed his chin with a hand that was like the paw of a bear. "If there is a law agin it, I ain't never heard of it."

The fire woman wagged her little gun beneath the fat man's two chins. "Marshal Dobbs, you are about as useful as a three-legged mule. Why don't you go on back to swattin' flies and scratchin' your ass, and leave Mrs. McQueen and me to sort out this mess?" She looked back over her shoulder at the merchant Woo. "I'm sorry, Sam, but you're not marrying this girl till we're satisfied she's willing."

"Holy God."

The fat man gave his belt a hitch. "Now, Hannah girl—"

"Quit Hannah-girling me before I shoot a hole in that tin badge of yours." She turned to Erlan, and her face softened. "Come along, honey..."

The master chopped the edge of his hand through the air.
"Tsao ni,
Lo Mo," he spat. "The Chink girl, she stay."

The woman with moon-colored hair stepped forward then, putting herself between Erlan and the master. "Move aside, please, sir," she said to the master in a voice that was like the wind blowing over snow. She stared at him for a long, still moment, and to Erlan's shock, the
bock tow doy
was the one who backed away.

The giant's hands still lay heavy and warm on Erlan's shoulders. She felt strange inside herself, as if there were a bird trapped in her chest, beating its wings against the cage of her ribs, beating to be free.

Gently he turned her around. His fingers were gentle as he slit through the tight leather leash with a small knife, and his voice was gentle as he spoke. "You go off with Mrs. Yorke. I trust her to take care of you. But you be remembering this, little one: there's no one here can be making you do a thing you don't want to do."

Erlan said nothing, yet she couldn't look away from his eyes. They were like no eyes she'd ever seen, their color the dark gray of a rain-drenched sky. And there was that strange mixture of fierceness and gentleness in them. She felt a ridiculous need to reach up and touch him, to see if he was real. She'd actually started to do so when she realized what she was doing and made herself stop.

She jerked her gaze away from his and allowed herself to be led away by the two demonesses. It took all of her will not to turn her head for one last look at him.

She swayed on her tiny golden lilies as she maneuvered around the foul messes that littered the way before her. Aiya, this place stank worse than a night-soil collector's cart. Everyone in the Flowery Kingdom had heard of Mei-Kwok, the beautiful land of America, where gold was supposed to lie in the streets as thick as buffalo dung in a rice paddy. But horse dung was all that lay in these streets, and some fool must have mistaken it for gold.

A steaming, fly-ridden pile of it lay directly in her path. She lifted her chang-fu and took little mincing steps on her highly arched, carved wooden shoes.

"Oh, Lord!" the fire woman exclaimed. "Will you look at her poor feet? She's had that done to her—what those heathens do to their poor girls' feet."

Erlan felt hot color flood her cheeks as the demonesses stopped to look down in horror at her golden lilies.

It was true that her feet were not all they should have been. But the fire woman especially should not be pointing her finger, Erlan thought indignantly, not with feet of her own as big as sampans. Erlan couldn't help it that her mother had done her a disservice when it came to the creation of her golden lilies by not allowing the foot binder to make the final cut. Erlan's feet weren't two dainty arcs barely three inches long, but a whole five inches. When she grew old enough to understand these things, she had worried that her inadequate golden lilies would diminish her value as a bride. For no matter how rich or beautiful she was, no man would marry a girl with big feet.

She thought of Eldest Sister, whose feet were so perfectly tiny she could not even walk without a slave girl's shoulder to lean on. How she had teased Erlan, calling her a horse-footed girl. But how would she have moved over this raw land on dainty arcs only three inches long?

This raw land... Erlan looked down the road toward the hat-shaped hill. Beyond it the land stretched wide and lonely, riffled with wind-blown grass, to huge mountains standing ragged against an immense sky. The enormity and emptiness of this place frightened her. She felt weightless of a sudden. Only her tiny feet keeping her from soaring like a kite, up and up and up into that endless sky.

"You will hate him at first."

These words, coming from the moon woman, startled her. Erlan forgot all modesty and turned her head to stare, and she was struck anew at the woman's fairness. Her skin was as white as cherry blossoms, her hair so pale in places it seemed transparent, like sunlight. Her gaze was focused on the vast land, as Erlan's had been. And as she spoke it seemed her voice came from the vastness. As if she had taken the vastness deep inside her to nurse it like a wound.

"I always think of Montana as a
he,
for this is every bit a man's place, and you will hate him in the way that only a woman can hate a man. You will hate the wind and the dirt and the miserable cold winters, hate his harsh strength and his lawless, violent ways. And then one day you will realize that you have come to love him fiercely in the midst of all your hate. Love him in a way that only a woman can love a man..."

She came to herself, shaking her head. "Oh, what am I doing?" Her gaze, friendly now and concerned, touched Erlan's face. "Here I've gone all maudlin and philosophical, and you aren't understanding a word I'm saying." She motioned to the door of a large rambling building with a broad veranda, indicating that Erlan was to follow the fire woman inside. "We'll go on into the Yorke House for now and see what is to be done."

As Erlan mounted the hotel steps, its signboard creaked in the wind. The pine floor oozed resin in sticky lumps, and the unpainted walls were pocked by knotholes. The fire woman went behind a tall desk and retrieved a key. Erlan followed the two demonesses down a hall and into a small room crowded with a plain iron bed, a pine chest of drawers, and a washstand.

A slice of sunlight from the single window fell across the bare floor. Erlan unconsciously went to stand in it. She threaded her hands through the sleeves of her chang-fu and waited.

The two demonesses spoke together in rapid English. It made her head ache to try to understand them, so she ceased listening, merely letting the words flow over her like the tide on sand. Erlan had never felt more alone than she did in that one moment, standing in that barren room with oaths and whip-cracks and the smell of dung coming in the open window, and the image of a merciless and empty sky haunting her mind.

They were discussing what was to be done with her, as if they had a say in the matter. She would marry the merchant Woo—that was her fate. It had been her fate since the day her father had sold her for one hundred taels of silver. Perhaps it had been her fate since the night her mother had come as a concubine to the House of Po and stirred her father's old bone to produce Erlan, his last child and another disappointing, worthless daughter.

The fire woman reminded Erlan of her mother. Not in her looks, of course, but in her being, which was overwhelmingly yin—dark and female and of the earth. Her wispy voice floated like smoke through the air, and she shaped her words with her hands, her movements languid and fluid. With her burnished hair and the bright yellow dress she wore, she looked like a sleek golden carp swimming in a garden pond.

By contrast, the moon woman's dress was a dark burgundy silk, the color of a New Year's banner. And her face was closed and cool. But although she was as pretty and delicate as the flowers painted on a silk fan, there was much yang in her. Erlan thought she carried in her heart a warrior's finely tempered sword.

Just then the moon woman rubbed a palm over her belly and Erlan saw that it was swelling slightly with expectant happiness. Yet she wore no gold bracelets to show she had a husband.

They must be daughters of joy, then, Erlan thought. This ramshackle place was a house of leisure, and the fire woman was probably the Old Mother.

Erlan parted her lips to speak. But she had been silent for so long that her voice broke, croaking like a frog's. "A thousand pardons, Lo Mo—"

The fire woman spun around, a hand to her breast. "Land, you startled me!" She laughed, making a sound as melodious as ju jade bells. "How rude you must think us, talking over your head like that. We just didn't expect you would speak English, being fresh off the boat like you are."

Erlan's gaze fell in shame to the hem of her chang-fu. She had not meant for her silence to cause the foreign women such loss of face. "This stupid girl understands only some," she said. "Speaks even less."