The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu

by Tom Lin

  When the dead men had at last been unearthed from the rockslide they were wrapped each of them in thin shawls and buried in the next fill: five thousand tons of rock and sand and gravel used to bridge the most beautiful ravine Ming had ever seen. And twenty men entombed inside.

  At the top of the Truckee Range pass Ming stopped and squinted down at the blue-hued landscape below him. The stagecoach and the others were some yards behind. In the distance lay the shimmering expanse of Pyramid Lake. He measured the space between the moon and the horizon. Four fingers. An hour left of moonlight. In his ears the wind boomed deep and endless. With a start he realized that the mountains now in view beyond the lake were none other than the Sierra Nevadas. Rimmed with silver moonlight they cut jagged and self-similar silhouettes against the horizon. A strange sort of relief enveloped Ming. Beyond the Sierras lay California, and beyond that the deep salt sea. He smiled in spite of himself and let out a breath he had not realized he was holding. Old ground, hallowed ground. He would be there soon.

  The trail leading down from the pass was steep but short. Ming could barely fit a single finger on top of the horizon when they spilled out onto the low basin, stagecoach and all. Fifteen minutes left of moonlight. Less, now that they were on lower ground. Unencumbered by switchbacks and inclines they moved faster, though the ground here was damp and saline and the stagecoach began to cut deeper and deeper ruts into the softening ground. As they traveled closer to Pyramid Lake they encountered the littered remnants of a vast war. Arrows buried up to the fletches. Rawhide packs half-swallowed by the shifting mud.

  Ming spurred his horse and rode ahead, scouting the path. He crossed a field of bones or what seemed like bones and slowed his horse to a walk. These were the relics of some ancient massacre, shreds of cloth scattered over the cracking earth and rifles no doubt fallen from hands gone suddenly limp. With cautious steps Ming’s horse picked a path through the landscape. The bodies of the dead had long since melted away, leaving only the skulls of a slaughtered thousand strewn over a hundred acres like the detritus of a cosmic game of knucklebones. The wind and the rain and roving scavengers had scattered the bones wildly, disintegrating what would once have been recognizable human shapes into a chaos of ribs and teeth. Ming halted his horse and dismounted. The others were far behind. He would wait for them.

  In the fading moonlight a silvery thing caught his eye and he crouched to inspect it. From the ground rose a slender femur, half-buried in the dirt, a thighbone dislodged from its scoured pelvis some twenty yards distant. He pulled the bone from the ground and dusted off the clumps of sod clinging to its distal half. It was light, much lighter than the bones of the great fish they had come across earlier, which time had rendered into stone. He flipped the femur end over end and caught it.

  The others were still a long ways off. He began to pace wide circles around his horse, swinging the femur in long looping arcs, absentmindedly, reenacting what old violences were brought to bear on this forgotten field. Ghosts of a thousand dead Philistines. After a little while he grew tired of carrying the bone and stooping low to the ground he braced one end against a small stone and drove the heel of his boot into the shaft, cracking it in half. Dust dribbled out of the broken bone, false marrow. He threw the half he still held in his hand as hard as he could and it sailed into the distance spinning end over splintered end.

  Ming mounted the saddle again and turned his horse to face east, toward the others. They were nearly there. The moon tucked itself behind the Sierras and in the half-light Ming could hardly make out their faces.

  “Something wrong ahead?” the ringmaster called out.

  The question caught Ming by surprise. It was the first voice he’d heard in some time, or perhaps he’d just forgotten how ragged the ringmaster’s speech had become. Ming shook his head, a movement that was barely discernible in the new blackness, and said there was nothing amiss.

  “Carry on, then,” the ringmaster said, and waved his cane, its gold bands flashing in what dim light still hung in the air.

  Ming turned his horse back around and set off again. The waters of Pyramid Lake glittered blackly against the gray-dim landscape. They were very nearly there.

  44

  These are the small hours of the day, and in these hours men and beasts alike lose their way. Dusk and dawn, the liminal twins, each one interchangeable with the other. The passing of time perceptible only in the faint redness to the west, or the rising glow to the east. Under cloudcover there is no telling whatsoever; the minutes spool out irregular and unremarkable. All wait for the hour to reveal itself, for the sky to roll over black, or else bleach to colorless day. And in these small hours of the day time forgets itself.

  In the predawn gloom they reached the shores of Pyramid Lake. Ming dismounted and walked to the water’s edge and dipped a finger into the water to taste it—warm and only faintly saline, drinkable for men and horses alike. He filled his canteen, corked it, wiped his hands dry on his trousers. The stagecoach pulled to a halt and figures moved around it, their features indistinct and ambiguous in the meager light. Sunrise was not more than half an hour away.

  The ringmaster was walking toward Ming, his cane jabbing into the soft mud with every step. He was coughing low and continuously and what breaths intervened were thick and wet. No doubt the prophet would be proven right again. The ringmaster’s death was nigh. An especially violent bout of coughing brought him to a fetal stoop and bent his head low, his eyes bulging and bloody mucus dribbling out of his mouth. Notah tried to sling the ringmaster’s arm over his shoulders and help him up but the ringmaster waved him off. After a short while he caught his breath and straightened up before continuing to walk toward the lakeshore.

  Hazel and the boy were seated on one of the stagecoach running boards. The sky was beginning to brighten and in the new light Ming could just about make out Hazel’s features. Her face was oddly placid and she stared straight through Ming, watching the lake sparkle. Hunter looked somber. His eyes were half-closed and in his hands he was turning over something small and pale. A fragment of vertebra.

  The ringmaster stumbled a final few steps, let go his cane, and collapsed to his knees at the water’s edge. Ming walked over to where he knelt.

  “No help,” the ringmaster insisted.

  “I know. I ain’t offerin you no help.”

  The ringmaster looked up and smiled wryly, his teeth smeared with blood. “What are you offering?” he said, before being undone by another volley of coughs. He wiped his mouth with his bare forearm, leaving a long streak of blood along his skin.

  “Last rites,” Ming said.

  “Don’t take me for a fool,” the ringmaster rattled. “You’re a good man, Mr. Tsu, but you’re no God-fearing Christian.” He pounded his chest and spat another thick wad of blood and mucus. Pinkish-white ropes twisted where they hung from the corners of his mouth. He wiped his face again. Another streak of blood upon his arm. Thin waves came up from the lake and lapped the mud before him clean. His voice disintegrating, the ringmaster ordered Ming to corral the others.

  Ming beckoned to them and soon they were all beside the kneeling man, standing with their hands shoved deep in their pockets. The ringmaster sat back on his heels, eyes closed, mouth slightly open. His breathing made a hollow, gurgling noise.

  “They’re here,” Ming said quietly.

  The ringmaster opened his eyes and tilted his head back. With difficulty he focused his gaze on the assembled faces. “Proteus,” he said. “Change.”

  The pagan was still in the ringmaster’s form and in the gathering dawn his skin shone pale and sickly. He frowned and ground his teeth and flickered through a multitude of forms, none of them his own. Only his eyes remained the same. At last a series of racking coughs broke his endless changing. He was the ringmaster’s double to the end.

  “Change,” the ringmaster whispered again.

  “I can’t,” Proteus said in the ringmaster’s voice.

  The ringmaster c
losed his eyes and lowered his head. “You’ll die if you don’t,” he murmured.

  The pagan shook his head. “No, sir,” he said, “I won’t.”

  “It’s your grave,” the ringmaster said. “Suit yourself.” With great effort he leaned back and straightened his legs so that he was lying with his feet pointing west, toward the water. Without opening his eyes he spoke again. “Prophet.” The old man bent low to the ringmaster’s side and laid an ancient hand on his chest. The ringmaster interlaced his fingers and put his hands on his belly, where they rose and fell in time with his labored breathing. “Sunrise is coming, old man,” the ringmaster said, his brow beading with sweat, and it was as though he were lifting each word up out of an abyssal plain.

  “It is,” the old man replied.

  “You’re no Christian prophet,” the ringmaster managed, “but you’re a prophet all the same.” He opened his eyes, drying at their edges, and made to speak again but broke down into a long series of coughs. With his body too weak to sustain their violence any longer they came out anemic and thin in the young light of morning. He opened and closed his mouth a few times but no further sound emerged. He reached out a groping hand and found the prophet’s hand on his chest and tapped it in desperation.

  On the far shore of the lake a blade of light cut across the mountaintops and began to crawl toward them.

  “Last rites,” Ming said. “He wants you to give him his last rites.”

  The prophet mused over this a moment. Then with a solemn nod he rose to his feet. He passed his withered hands over the ringmaster’s form. “Return,” the prophet intoned.

  It seemed that suddenly everywhere at once the sky whitened through shades of purple and red to an empty and endless blue. Or perhaps it had always been happening and Ming noticed only now. The party stood blinking in the warming sun and regarded the ringmaster on the sand. His eyes had gone to glass and a drying thread of spittle glinted on his beard.

  Ming imagined the dead man waking up again, eleven years ago, in a boardinghouse room in Omaha with a thousand dollars in banknotes and a valise full of clothing. Perhaps he was already there. “Rest easy,” he said aloud in a voice strange and unfamiliar even to his own ears.

  The others looked at Ming, and Hazel asked what they should do with the ringmaster.

  Ming regarded the dead man by his feet. “Bury him, I spose,” he said at last.

  Together he and the stagehands worked to dig a pit in the soft mud. By the time they were finished and had clambered out of the pit the ringmaster’s body had already begun to stiffen. The sinews of his neck felt like bones under his skin. When Notah went to close his eyes the lids wouldn’t budge. The men rolled the ringmaster down into the pit and his body made a dull thud when it struck the bottom. His eyes stared up at the incandescent sky unblinking as the men tossed shovelfuls of damp sand down upon his body. And though it did not trouble Ming any the ringmaster’s dead gaze so unsettled Gomez that he threw aside his shovel and bade the others stop. He tore a strip of fabric from his sleeve and jumped down into the pit muttering Spanish curses all the while and tied the cloth in a blindfold around the ringmaster’s eyes. Ming lowered his shovel handle-first into the grave and pulled Gomez back up.

  “There,” said the Mexican, “now he’s ready.”

  They filled in the rest of the grave quickly and tamped the surface down with the backs of their shovels, smoothing the dirt out into a low mound. When they were done the stagehands began to repack the stagecoach. Ming placed a large oblong fragment of basalt down at the head of the grave and stepped back to look at it. The grave seemed far too small—too short, too narrow—to ever fit a body. The makeshift headstone he had laid was dwarfed by the landscape. He thought he might build a little cairn for the ringmaster and decided against it. Perhaps there had been a time in the past when he might have felt uneasy about leaving a man in an unmarked grave. Now no longer. Men mark graves that they may return to them. And who would return here, to this barren and forgotten beach, with a clutch of wildflowers in hand?

  There came the sound of shaking coughs from behind him. It was Proteus, leaning on a boulder, his body curled in pain. His hand was splayed on his chest. He was still in the ringmaster’s form. His skin was deathly pale. Ming walked over and stood next to him as the coughing subsided.

  “His time approaches,” announced the prophet.

  “For God’s sake,” Proteus growled, “won’t nobody shut the old man up?” He whipped his head up and fixed Ming with a hollow stare and his face was ugly with loathing. In a single violent surge the pagan leapt up and knocked Ming to the ground and the two men went spilling through the mud. “You killed him!” Proteus roared, staggering to his hands and knees. “And now you’re killing me too, you goddamn Chinaman.” Blood-flecked spittle flew from his mouth.

  Ming rolled over catlike and sprang to his feet and in a split second drew his gun and raked the hammer back but Proteus was upon him again, screaming that he would kill him, raining a volley of blows down on Ming’s head. His gun was dashed aside and covering his face with his arms Ming caught a glimpse of metal on earth and knew that Proteus had seen it too. The pagan lunged to one side, his hands clawing for the gun, and as he curled his fingers around it a flashing arc swooped down upon him followed by the sickening crack of iron on bone and Proteus’s body spasmed once and stretched out limp on the ground.

  Hazel dropped the shovel and pulled Proteus off Ming. His head was still ringing and with a tremor he took Hazel’s hand and got to his feet. The others stood watching on. Ming caught his breath and dusted himself off. With the pointed toe of her boot Hazel rolled Proteus onto his back. Blood dribbled from a deep gash in the back of his neck and his face, the face of the ringmaster, seemed peaceful.

  “He didn’t change back,” Hunter said in their minds, his voice clear and cold.

  Notah picked up the shovel Hazel had dropped and slung it over his shoulder. He looked with disdain at Proteus’s body awhile, his face unreadable. At last he turned to Hazel and nodded. “About time,” he said.

  The horses moved about uneasily, perhaps smelling death in the air.

  Gomez walked to the stagecoach and sat on a running board. “I ain’t burying the same man twice,” he announced. “Let’s get going.” He snapped his fingers at Notah. “Put that shovel away, man.”

  Notah joined him at the stagecoach and tossed the shovel to Gomez, who caught it and tied it to the running board.

  Ming stood over Proteus’s body with Hazel and the boy watching him.

  “Are you coming with us, sir?” asked the boy.

  “Aye,” Ming said.

  Hazel licked her thumb and wiped away something on Ming’s forehead. She held out her hand to show him. Blood.

  “His or mine?” Ming asked, and reached up to touch his forehead. It felt tender. When he drew his hand back there was a bright spot of blood on it.

  “Looks like it was yours,” Hazel said. She wiped her thumb clean on her shirt. “You’re still bleedin.”

  “It’ll close up soon enough,” Ming said, but his head ached something fierce. “Go join the others,” he told Hazel and the boy. He went down the short beach and knelt by the water, small waves swirling up around him. He leaned forward and cupped a bit of water in his hand and splashed it onto his face, wincing when he touched the cut. Blood ran down his face and off his chin and the droplets twisted and stretched in the clear water like jellyfish. He wiped his face dry with his sleeves and stood up, patches of wet covering his knees.

  The prophet was already on his pinto. Gomez sat at the front of the stagecoach, the driving whip coiled in one hand, a mess of reins in the other. Hazel and the boy sat inside.

  “Ready?” asked Notah, leaning in the shade of the coach, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “Aye,” Ming said.

  Notah pulled himself onto the stagecoach and swung lightly onto the seat beside Gomez.

  Ming mounted his horse, turned to face west. “T
o Reno,” he said.

  45

  The trail took them around the southern horn of the lake, up against the mountains to the west. The air was heavy and hot. And beyond those mountains the Sierras. They were moving much faster now. Gomez and Notah had untied the great iron cage that once held Proteus and left it where it fell, half-mired in mud from its own enormous mass. Gomez reckoned it must have weighed four or five hundred pounds. The lightened stagecoach clattered over the hardpack trail fast enough to keep pace with Ming’s horse. By evening they had attained the last great pass on the trail to Reno, up and over the Virginia Range separating the lake from the vast undulating valley that cut straight through to Reno.

  In the cool evening they made camp by the western shores of the lake and built a hot and smoky fire of cut sagebrush and fragments of driftwood. Swarms of mosquitoes flowed and pulsed around them, whining in their ears. They drew themselves incrementally closer to the fire until they were nearly sitting in it and still the mosquitoes lingered. Hazel reached into the fire and pulled a handful of embers from it. She sat cross-legged, waving the embers about her face and through her hair before balancing them on the points of her knees. The mosquitoes left her alone.

  “Tomorrow,” Ming began, and stopped. He hadn’t spoken since the morning and was surprised by the sound of his own voice. The others looked at him expectantly. He cleared his throat and tried again. Tomorrow they would cross these mountains, he said, gesturing to the shadowy bulk of the range beside them, and then follow the valley south to Reno. They could be there before nightfall if they got an early enough start.

  “And then?” Hazel said.

  “And then we’ll part ways,” Ming said, not meeting her eyes. “I got some affairs to settle, and after that I better get out of Reno fast as I can.”