Heart of the West (66 page)

He sucked at the foul air. The gauzy film began to melt away from his eyes. He saw red spongy wet pieces of something splattered all over the rock and earth around him, and in the next instant he realized he was looking at what was left of a man. Collins... Please God, let it be Collins.

Someone bent over him. He blinked and brought into focus the ratlike features of Casey O'Brian, their shaft boss.

"My brother?" Drew gasped, choking on the smoke.

The gaffer said something, but Drew couldn't hear. He made himself look over to the place where he'd last seen Jere, and he was still there. Not smeared in bloody bits and pieces all over the drift. He was hurt, though, for Drew could see his brother's legs thrashing. But he was still living, thank God. Still living...

A hand touched his forehead. He watched O'Brian's mouth move, although he still couldn't hear anything.

"Fucking mine," Drew croaked. He reached up with his good arm and grabbed the shirt of the man who should have warned them about the sleeper, jerking O'Brian's face down to his until he was sure the gaffer could see his eyes. "We'll be wanting a full day's pay for this, you bloody bastard."

CHAPTER 28

Sam Woo's widow teetered as she lifted the heavy yoke onto her shoulders. The baskets of laundry swung wildly on their chains off the ends of the pine pole, causing it to bite deep into her shoulders.

She set off down the road in the teeth of the wind, her eyes narrowed against the snow flurries that stung her face The short quilted jacket and cotton pants she wore were the same birch-bark white as the snow and the sky. White, the color of mourning, the color she would wear for the next three years.

She carried her two-month-old son, Samuel, in a sling of woven straw that hung over her chest from a strap around her neck. She struggled over the ridges of mud and snow. Once, she slipped and the yoke became unbalanced, slipping off her shoulders and nearly driving her to her knees.

She made her slow, clumsy way among the shacks where all the Chinese lived, a town within the town of Rainbow Springs. She smelled roast pork as she passed the chop suey house and heard the clatter of gaming tiles from the mah-jongg room. She saw steam wafting from a crack in the window of the tea shop. Its signboard, painted in gilt and vermilion, banged loudly in the wind. She passed the herbalist's shop and nodded respectfully to Peter Ling, the golden needle man, who stood in the window. He was the latest to ask her to marry him.

Although she was a widow, and thus bad joss, Erlan had received many proposals in the four months since Sam Woo's death. And not all her suitors were bachelors. Many had wives back in China. But the immigration laws prevented wives and loved ones from joining the men, and so they looked for concubines to bring them comfort in their exile.

She stopped before the black lacquered doors of the joss house. She set down her yoke in the shelter of the eaves, although the laundry was already well protected from the elements by scraps of oilskin tarpaulin. She shook the snow off her pant legs, straightened her straw hat, then slipped inside the temple.

The rush of cold air made the wicks flicker in the round blue silk lanterns and fluttered the red scrolls that hung on the walls. With her head respectfully lowered, she approached the altar with its five deities carved of wood and dressed in vermilion silk robes and gilt headdresses. Sacrificial bowls of rice and burning incense lay at the feet of the gods.

Samuel whimpered, thrusting his tiny feet against her chest, and she patted his head to soothe him. She bowed to the gods and lit a stick of incense.

"Please," she prayed. "Please ease the torment of my
anjing juren.
Teach him the wisdom of virtuous patience and bring him peace."

The deities stared back at her with blank, unseeing eyes. But then, why would Chinese gods interfere in the life of a fon-kwei? She should go into the temple of his Jesus god and pray there. But the thought of entering that white-painted building with its pointed roof frightened her. Who knew what demons resided in such a place?

A soothsayer had set up his table inside the temple doors. As she passed him on her way out, he shook his box of sticks at her, trying to entice her to have her fortune told. But she already knew her destiny: she was going home.

Erlan struggled against the snow and the wind for another block and then stopped again. A set of wind-bells hung next to the door of this house and they jangled wildly, filling the air with a joyful sound. Which was appropriate, Erlan thought, since this was a joy girl's house.

Before Erlan could knock, the door was flung open. Ah Toy opened her mouth and struck her cheeks with her palms in mock surprise. "Aiya! What a pleasure this is to have visitors just when I was feeling so lonely!"

Ah Toy frequently watched Samuel for Erlan while she made her deliveries, especially when the weather was bad. But to ask anything of consequence from a friend who could not refuse was uncivilized, so the joy girl was saving her from embarrassment by pretending it was Erlan who was doing her a favor.

"It is our pleasure to come," Erlan responded, following the ritual of politeness. "But are you certain you aren't busy this afternoon, Elder Sister?"

"Not at all, not at all," Ah Toy said, bowing Erlan inside. "That Ah Foock—he wanted to come today, but I told him to stay away. He makes me work too hard for my three dollars. He has testicles the size of a gnat's and a withered old root that no amount of flogging can stiffen."

Ah Toy helped to lift the yoke off Erlan's shoulders. Erlan removed Samuel from his sling, and both women fussed over him for a moment before she put him down in a white wicker bassinet that stood near the parlor stove. The bassinet looked strange among the Oriental lacquer and brocade furnishings.

Ah Toy pulled a red-lacquered chair away from a red lacquered table and gestured for Erlan to sit. "I was so anxious for you to visit this worthless self that I already poured the tea. Stupid me, I hope it isn't cold."

Erlan took a sip of the tea and assured her it was just perfect.

She enjoyed coming to Ah Toy's house, for it was as richly furnished as a tomb. Bronzes and porcelains and carvings of jade, ivory vases, cloisonne boxes, and scroll paintings. And the smells: sandalwood and incense, and occasionally a sickly sweet hint of opium smoke.

Ah Toy had much status in the Chinese community because one of the gentlemen she entertained was One-Eyed Jack, who many said was the richest man in Rainbow Springs. In China such a wealthy, powerful man was often the local warlord and a man to be feared. A man who was feared was a man who was respected, and all who served him were respected as well.

Ah Toy was not a first-rate beauty, but she had a delicate face that was always wreathed with smiles. Today she was dressed like a Mandarin princess in a robe of midnight blue embroidered with peonies, and she wore abalone shell combs in her hair.

She was laughing now as she leaned over the bassinet to dangle a string of jade worry beads before Samuel's face. "So you have brought this worthless little flea to spend the afternoon with me, have you?" she exclaimed loudly, in the exaggerated tone of voice used for compliments. Samuel gurgled as he tried to grasp the beads. "What an ugly little worm you are!"

Erlan smiled. The Chinese always called a boy baby disparaging names, for the same reason that they put thin gold hoops in his ears and tied ribbons of the female color blue in his hair— to fool the jealous gods into thinking he was a girl so they wouldn't steal him for their spirit world.

Erlan spent a few more minutes drinking tea and chatting with Ah Toy, and then she pushed back her chair and stood up, wincing as pain shot through her feet. They were already raw, although the day was not yet half over.

"Ching! Ching!"
Ah Toy exclaimed. "Please eat before you go." She gestured at the stove where a pot of congee sat steaming. The smell of the sweetened rice was tempting, but Erlan politely declined.

Outside, the snow was coming down harder now and the temperature had fallen. An icy glaze covered everything, making the footing even more treacherous. She groaned as she lifted the yoke. It was so heavy it often left weals and bruises on her shoulders after a long day. All of her body hurt after hours bent over the washtub and ironing board. But it was her heart that ached the most. She had never thought she would miss the merchant Woo so much. She missed his gentle ways and his many kindnesses and even his odd eccentricities—like his desire to make himself over into a one hundred percent American. A Yankee Doodle dandy.

Oh, she had wailed loudly at his coffin for three days and three nights, as was proper. And though she'd had no money to spend on his funeral, she had done what she could to show him honor, burning red paper money to provide for his journey in the afterlife, and sweet incense sticks to propitiate the gods. And then, two months later, fortune had given them a son. A son who would live to feed his father's spirit in the shadow world.

But the one thousand one hundred and sixty dollars American that she had kept in the shoebox beneath her bed was gone. Blown out into the prairie, or stolen by those sons of turtles, may their ancestors be cursed ten thousand times. Now she must begin all over again to earn the money for her passage home, and she must do it in this place where the Chinese people were despised and tormented. This empty land with room enough for everyone but them.

Opening a laundry was one of the few businesses allowed to Chinese, and it required little capital. One needed only soap, tubs, a washboard, an iron, and an ironing board. But last year the town council had passed an ordinance that all laundries had to pay a licensing fee of fifteen dollars a quarter. They called it the Chinese tax, because few whites were in the laundry business. At two dollars the dozen, Erlan had to boil and iron ninety shirts just to pay the tax. She understood now whence came that American expression: a Chinaman's chance.

She lay awake at night doing sums in her head to determine how long it would take her to make enough profit to buy passage home for herself and her son. At least she no longer had to repay Sam Woo her bride-price. She would repay her debt to him in another way, by taking his bones with her to be buried in the soil of China where they belonged.

A gust of bitter wind buffeted Erlan and sent her slipping along the troughs of snow. There had already been so many storms this winter that she had lost count. No sooner would the snow start to melt than it would freeze again, so that all was covered with a thick, crusty ice.

A snowball caught her flush on the neck, sending ice crystals shivering down inside the collar of her quilted jacket. She spun around so fast she nearly slipped again. A shadow flitted around the corner of one of the miners' shacks, and then she heard a child's mocking chant: "Chinaman, Chinaman, rode 'im out on a rail..."

She had left the Chinese part of town and was now in Dublin Patch. The smells were different here—sowbelly beans and coffee. But the shacks were the same, made from old shoring timbers and planks that had been thrown onto the trash piles near the mine.

She stopped now before one such shack and this time, too, the door opened wide before she could knock.

Drew Scully stood on the threshold, facing her. He stared at her a moment, then nodded and motioned for her to enter. His left arm was in a sling. But he had the strength in his right hand to lift the heavy yoke off her shoulders and set it carefully on the floor.

"How is he?" she whispered.

"Drunk."

"Already?"

"Already isn't the way of it, Mrs. Woo. He hasn't been sober since it happened. But then, you can't blame the man for not wanting to shout hallelujahs because he's been left stone blind." Drew rubbed a hand over his mouth as if he could wipe away the bitter taste of the words. "He wants the world dead, and himself first."

"Drew!" bellowed a voice from the back room, dark and bitter with rage. "You tell her to get herself lost, d'ye hear me, brother? I don't want to see her...
See
her." He laughed, a sound that was like a rag tearing. "Bloody, bloody hell."

"I told him you were coming," Drew said, keeping his voice low. "I thought it best. He's apt to get... violent when he's surprised. The physician finally took the bandages off for good and all a few weeks ago—" Something caught in his throat and he had to stop and swallow it down. "'Tesn't a pretty sight." He turned his face away, blinking hard. "Are you sure you'll be all right doing this alone, then?"

"It was your suggestion, Mr. Scully."

He sighed deeply. "Right. I'll be leaving, then. If he tries to murder you..."

"He won't," Erlan said. She was sure of that, though she was sure of nothing else. He was her
anjing juren
, her gentle giant, and he would never try to hurt her.

The one time she had seen Jere since the accident, he had been unconscious, the whole upper half of his head swathed in bandages. Afterward he had begged his brother to keep her away. Now she and Drew Scully had concocted this plan together. She only hoped it wasn't a mistake, for she couldn't bear to bring him any more pain after all he had already endured.

She waited until the door shut behind Drew. Then she called out a polite greeting to the man in the back room. But she didn't go to him right away. She had brought some herbal tea with her, made of jasmine, wild cherry bark, and wahoo root, and she set about brewing it on the shack's small cookstove. While she waited for the water to boil, she talked to him. She talked of Samuel, of how he could roll over now and how just last week he'd laughed out loud. She told him about the gift of a red jade necklace that One-Eyed Jack had given Ah Toy. She related a funny story about Pogey and Nash, who had gotten drunk at the Gandy Dancer last week and tried to rope a skunk.

He said nothing. But every time she paused for breath he made a rude noise, like the sucking sounds a horse made while trotting in mud.

She strained the tea and poured it into a big handleless cup, and then she could postpone the moment no longer.

With the shade pulled down over the window and no lamp lit, it was dark in the room. Jere sat in a willow rocking chair with his back to the door. His ragged hair hung down to his shoulders. A rank smell soured the air, and his blue chambray shirt was grease-marked, and stained with old sweat. As she approached him, she wished she had an opera mask to hide her face. Then she remembered: he couldn't see her.

Once he'd had a smile as broad as a moon bridge, but no longer. Once he'd had the strength of ten tigers. Now he sat in a chair all day and allowed his muscles to grow wasted and flabby. Once he had been brave, now he drowned his spirit in whiskey.

One of the bare pine floorboards squeaked beneath her feet, and he whipped his head around. And she saw his eyes.

Once his eyes had been beautiful, like rain-drenched skies. Now they were ugly weals of raw flesh.

She tried to make her lips and tongue work, to say something to him, but she couldn't. She imagined that she could see his heart working in his chest and his breath sucking in and out, and she knew the bitterness was like vinegar in his belly. She stared at his compressed lips because she couldn't bear to look at his ruined eyes.