Passage West

by Rishi Reddi

  Ram was quiet.

  “You know those men well?” RamChandra asked.

  “We worked together at the lumber mill. Please—tell Jodh Singh on my behalf that I wish him well.”

  “Pandit-ji.” Amarjeet’s voice came from the darkness. “If someone wants to join, what should we do first?”

  “What?” Jivan turned to his nephew, but the boy refused to meet his eye.

  “I want to join Ghadar,” Amarjeet said to RamChandra.

  RamChandra’s glance darted between nephew and uncle.

  “I do not give you permission,” Jivan said. His voice sounded like gravel.

  Amarjeet shrank, his eyes wide with humiliation.

  “His father might be quite pleased that he went in service of his people,” RamChandra said. “For the cause of our freedom.”

  “What do you know of his father, pandit-ji?” Jivan felt the weight of RamChandra’s gaze. “Over the past ten years I have tried to form a settlement of our people here, with homes, maybe families. You are needlessly sending these men to their deaths. Freedom will not be bought in the manner you think,” he said, sharply.

  “Needless deaths?” RamChandra raised his eyebrows. “How shall we gain our freedom then? By remaining loyal servants of the British army?”

  “India is not yet ready to throw off the British. By fighting in the European war, we can prove ourselves worthy of self-rule within the empire.”

  “Dominion status! Like Canada? Like Australia? White settler countries?”

  “Like South Africa!” Jivan countered.

  “I did not know you felt this way, bhai-ji,” RamChandra said.

  Jivan refused to be belittled. “You did not ask. I did not tell you.” The air was still.

  “It’s growing late,” Karak murmured. “Time for rest,” he said, rising.

  THE ARGUMENT STILL BURDENED JIVAN at breakfast the next morning. The household had risen early. Kishen Kaur had made a large and delicious breakfast in honor of their guest, and all of them ate together quietly. Jivan wished he had been more politic the evening before; now he wanted to rid himself of the man. “Pandit-ji,” he said, “it is no trouble for me to take you to the depot.”

  RamChandra blinked. He took another bite and chewed slowly, as if he did not know how to respond. “Yes, that will be quite good,” he finally said. That was how Jivan knew that he had not planned to leave that morning at all.

  “Ram, come with us,” Jivan said. It was not a request. He could feel Amarjeet’s glare, but he was determined that he would not ask the boy.

  Jivan need not have worried. RamChandra was a sophisticated man. He did not approach Amarjeet again. On the ride into town, he filled the time with questions about how the Valley towns had been formed, how Jivan had come to settle on the farm. He asked Ram about the development of the Canal Colonies in western Punjab.

  At the depot, the men waited on the platform in the farthest corner. Few locals could see them. “Khair nal jao,” Jivan said, determined to maintain propriety. RamChandra nodded. The man expressed no gratitude and Jivan felt his resentment rise.

  In the wagon on the way home, Jivan’s mood sat heavy upon both Ram and himself. “Tell me,” Jivan finally said. “Did you give him any money?” RamChandra had walked among the men himself, holding a wooden collection box. In the throng, Jivan could not see who had donated.

  “No, bhai-ji.”

  “Why not?” He did not meet Ram’s eye.

  “I send all my money home. My uncle is in need of all of it.”

  The answer mollified him, but at the farm, he asked Karak too.

  “I gave,” Karak said.

  “How much?”

  “Forty dollars.”

  Silence. Forty dollars could have bought a new buggy or a harness for the mules, which was sorely needed. Jivan was shocked. Even more, it bothered him that Karak did not defer to him by hiding the truth.

  “You are angry about Amarjeet,” Karak said. “But a boy wants adventure. I was no different. Perhaps you were not either.”

  “What do you know of me, Karak?” Jivan said, feeling betrayed.

  EVERY EVENING Amarjeet read to the family a stream of news stories happening in other places: from the Los Angeles Times, or the Fredonia News, or the Ghadar—filling the darkness with his clear English, or with Punjabi, translating between them for Kishen and Ram—tales of a world gone mad. Jivan could feel the boy’s resentment. He read without looking at him, as if every word were an accusation against his uncle.

  By September’s end he read to them of the French and British fighting the Germans at the River Aisne, trenches that stretched for miles. The thousands of dead.

  He read about Britain’s army recruiters desperately traveling to the same Punjabi villages that they had visited in June. They assured the villagers that dastars could be worn in service and promised regular wages. They reminded the Punjabis to show their loyalty to Government, of how much the British had done for them.

  He read that the Komagata Maru had been diverted from Calcutta’s port and forced to anchor off the town of Budge Budge. British officers searched passengers and ship for copies of the Ghadar newspaper, for arms, for other seditious items, but found none. They demanded the Indians board a train to Punjab, but most refused. Passengers tried to deliver the ship’s holy book to the local gurdwara. Officers forced them back with guns. Passengers tried to chant the sacred rehras while seated near the dock. Police beat them with lathis. Passengers tried to escape the beating, escape the gunshots, escape the bloodshed. Many succeeded but some failed. Bystanders died too, Indian and English. By twilight, twenty-six bodies lay at odd angles on the dock and shoreline, their blood mixing with waters that would run, eventually, into the sacred Ganga.

  In the desert darkness, Amarjeet identified those who were killed. “Ishar Singh. Arjan Singh. Ratan Singh . . .” He read slowly, shaping his tongue around all twenty names, allowing each their dignity. Last, he mentioned Mastan Singh, from their own village.

  When he heard the final name, Jivan leaned forward in his chair. The ground beneath him seemed to rumble and move. He stood, placed his whiskey glass on the table, and escaped the circle of lamplight, leaving the others to wonder after him.

  Jivan woke early in a moonless morning. The household was still asleep. His mind went to the scene from the previous night. Mastan Singh had shared his boyhood with Jivan, had been his older brother’s playmate, had saved Jivan when he had fallen into a well at the age of six. Jivan was tempted to say that the dead man was in the wrong. Hadn’t the British built the railways, dug the irrigation canals, gifted land, brought civility? He was tempted to proclaim that Government should eradicate the disloyal wherever they found them, for the supreme cause of political stability. But he could not. He opened the safe that stood in his bedroom and gathered his cavalry medals.

  They were firm, solid in his palm. He had been awarded the first in Shandong Province for taking an injury to his leg while saving a comrade. He earned the second for discovering guerrillas who lay in wait by the roadside. The third and fourth were for taking charge of his unit in Shanghai when the commanding Risaldar had been struck down.

  Jivan tucked the medals into the front pocket of his dungarees and saddled the mare. In his mind, he heard RamChandra’s nasal voice. He rode north toward the Chocolate Mountains, headed northwest at Niland, and arrived at the Salton Sea by late morning. In his gut, he felt the truth of Ghadar’s global color line. Anglos had not arrived first to the Imperial Valley. The Kumeyaay had been here thousands of years before, but still, they did not matter. He thought of his commanding officers, little things they had said, a telling expression on a familiar face. He’d thought they had respected him, but now he was not sure. He knew he was an uneducated man; he knew math enough to live but he did not know letters well. Perhaps that explained it. When he reached the edge of the water, the sun was high.

  Jivan held the medals and felt himself transported. Not to Shandong
Province, but to the creature he was before—before the graying California farmer, before the cavalry officer, before the young bridegroom, before the newly enlisted lad—to the scrappy boy on a dirt path, fetching water for his mother’s cooking.

  He shuddered. He dismounted and stood by the briny water. He breathed in and filled his lungs. The sky was large, overpowering. Who belongs in what place on this earth? The British did not belong in India; the thought came to him clearly. Perhaps he did not belong in the Imperial Valley either. Years ago, he had witnessed the river filling the basin to form this inland sea, so large that a man could stand on the edge and see a liquid horizon, imagine a tide. Tears filled his eyes, but he did not know for whom, or for what. He felt light. He felt correct. One by one, he grasped the medals, rubbed the inscriptions with his thumb, and flung each into the water.

  9

  October 1914

  RAM SAT WITH THE OTHER MEN NEAR THE BACK PORCH. THE DAY’S WORK was finished, but light lingered in the sky. Leela ran behind the house to her father. “Pita-ji! Pita-ji!” she shouted. “Man has come!” Her voice seemed worried.

  “Which man, Leela?” Jivan asked.

  “Agent man.”

  “Ah,” Jivan nodded. He had been carving a doll for her third birthday, and now he put the wood block aside and rose immediately to greet the visitor. Karak retrieved a glass. Amarjeet fetched another chair. But when Jivan returned with the guest, Ram saw that it was only Clive Edgar, Eggenberger’s land man, whom he had met the morning he had almost left Fredonia.

  “John,” the agent said, nodding at Jivan, extending his hand.

  “We were expecting you, Clive, my friend,” Karak said, standing, holding an empty glass in his right hand and a bottle in his left.

  “’Bout to drink it up?” Clive said. He was even larger than Ram remembered, grinning aggressively, cheeks and neck splotched with sunburned pink.

  “I’ll get the books,” said Jivan, heading inside.

  Clive nodded at Amarjeet. “Amjee,” he said, hesitating with the name. No one bothered to correct him. Clive’s enormous hand grasped Karak’s. He did not glance at Ram. “Thought you might be laying off for a while, Karak, after your performance last week.” Ram knew Karak would sometimes see Clive in Mexicali, where he visited the bars and Chinatown south of the boundary. He sometimes asked Ram to come with him, but Ram would always say no.

  “That was five nights past,” Karak said, smiling, drawing himself up, his chest expanding. “Here is a new night.”

  Ram wondered what had happened then. What was this relationship Karak had with the Anglo?

  Clive chuckled, removing his hat as the light grew faint. “A man can always expect a good time with you boys.”

  Jivan walked back with the ledger. With only his eyes, Karak indicated to Clive that the evening was not to be spoken about. Jivan opened the book to the correct page and laid it on the table. Karak poured whiskey into Clive’s glass. Clive opened his satchel, found his own ledger, copied numbers from the book that Jivan had laid out. “These look really good, John.” He whistled in admiration. “You boys did good.”

  “Season was good,” Jivan said. “Everywhere cantaloupe numbers up in Valley.”

  “But yours are better than the others.”

  “Could be,” Jivan said lightly. His lips peeled back into a smile, reluctantly given.

  “But now you goin’ into cotton?”

  “Not me,” Jivan said. “Them.” He lifted his chin toward Ram and Karak.

  Clive’s eyes met Ram’s for the first time. Ram quickly turned to Karak; he had been understanding most of the English conversation but hesitated to speak.

  “Why you going into cotton, Karak? It’s loco.”

  “Why not?” Karak said.

  “Nobody knows how it’ll do. Why not just stick with cantaloupe, squash, tomatoes, peas? Cantaloupe’s bringing in a haul.”

  “Cantaloupe will be having a glut again,” Karak said. “I feel that. With the war in Europe, cotton market will be high.”

  Clive leaned back in his chair. “I’d just stick with something that’s bringing a profit.”

  “For two years, Wilsie Ranch making money only with cotton. Why not me? Jake Smiley at the gin is quoting ten cents a pound.”

  “Don’t matter to me, Karak. Mr. E says that between what you and Tom Moriyama brought in this year, he’s the richest man in the Valley without doing a lick of work himself.”

  Karak’s eyes flashed. “Is it so?” His lips curled into a smile, generous, vindictive. He leaned forward to refill Clive’s glass. Ram wondered if Clive knew that Karak was offended.

  “But not Roubillard?” Karak asked.

  “Not Roubillard.” Ram had heard about this man from Louisiana, who was leasing a third portion of Eggenberger land, bordering the fields on which he and Karak would grow their cotton.

  Karak gulped his whiskey. “How is digging on the Highline?” he said.

  “Land Office says they won’t finish that section of the canal for two more springs, at the earliest.”

  “Still that long,” Karak said.

  Through the night air, against the chirping crickets, they heard the jingle of bridles. Amarjeet rose and peered around to the front. “It’s Harry and Mr. Moriyama,” he announced, smiling. The boy liked company, Ram thought.

  Two figures appeared around the corner of the house. Ram’s gut clenched. He had never talked to the Japanese lumberjacks in Hambelton. He had not liked the humming efficiency of their work gangs, their arrogant aloofness, how they deferred to the Anglos while ignoring the other workers.

  The boy grinned at Amarjeet. The father approached Clive first, extending his hand.

  Clive rose to shake it. “Howdy, Tom,” Clive said.

  “Haruo say Mr. Clive come from town.” Tomoya’s eyes went to the boy, who had already seated himself near Amarjeet. “Good to say hello to you all.” He grinned. “I hope to see you do this.” He indicated the bottle sitting on the table. The men laughed.

  Jivan rose and offered Tomoya his seat.

  “Meet my countryman, Ram,” Jivan said.

  Tomoya extended his hand, and Ram hurried to offer his own; he could not disappoint Jivan. The father shook Ram’s hand with the smallest of bows. His broad face was weather-beaten, sun-lined, but he carried himself like a younger man. Ram did not like the touch of his skin, but for Jivan’s sake, he tried to hide his feelings. Perhaps Tomoya sensed them anyway, because he did not look at Ram again.

  Karak handed the Japanese man a full glass. Tomoya took a sip.

  “We are talking the Highline Canal,” Jivan said. “How many years do you say?”

  “At least three,” said Tomoya.

  Karak shook his head.

  “Not enough people working,” Tomoya insisted.

  “With only Indians and Mexican labor, we’ll be lucky if we get it in three,” Clive said. “Mañana this, mañana that. Not like you boys. You bring it in, I’ll say that much.” Clive took a sip. “You too, Tom.”

  Ram saw Jivan take in a breath, glance at Karak. But Karak seemed unperturbed.

  “How is your mother, Clive?” Karak asked.

  “Pretty good, thanks for asking.” A smile spread over his face. Ram saw that he was a young man. He hadn’t realized this before, not with the height, the ringing voice, the roughness. “I guess you boys should know—I’m getting married.” The smile spread into a broad grin.

  “Hey, hey!” Karak said, clapping him on the back.

  “Congratulations,” Tomoya said.

  “Becoming a responsible member.” Jivan raised his glass.

  Ram felt a pressing need to say something—“You must give us some sweet.” He put the English words together slowly.

  Clive looked at him.

  “That custom is not followed here,” Jivan said lightly, in Punjabi. “They don’t share sweet foods when giving good news.”

  “No, no, that is a Punjabi custom,” Karak said in English,
grinning. “Us Hindus—you know, Clive.” He turned to Ram. “Here in America, we drink to the bride.” He poured more whiskey, ignoring Ram’s refusal, and the men raised their glasses again. “Wish you many good years together!” Karak said. The men drank.

  “Good whiskey, Karak,” Tomoya said.

  “Last week I brought it from Mexicali.”

  “We wish Clive more good fortune,” Tomoya said. The others laughed. Karak poured another round.

  “Who is the lucky lady?” Karak asked.

  “Jim Riley’s youngest girl. We’re getting hitched in January. Don’t know what she sees in me.”

  “Respectable too! One of the first families!” Karak slapped him on the back.

  “Look,” Clive said. “The whole family loves me. Her father gave me this.”

  He reached into his satchel and pulled out a .45 Colt revolver and laid it on the table. Lamplight gleamed off the mother-of-pearl inlaid in the grip.

  Karak whistled. “You are knowing how to shoot it?” he joked, picking up the gun.

  Clive chuckled. “See here?” He pointed to the muzzle, where the initials appeared, finely engraved—C.S.E.

  “You fool them, Clive!” Karak said. “How you convince that good girl from a good family to marry you? And convince her father too?”

  “More important—how you hide your other women?” Tomoya asked.

  “What about all those bastards of yours?” Karak said. “You hiding all those from her too?”

  Clive laughed, slapping his knee. The whiskey had colored his cheeks. Amarjeet and the Japanese boy laughed too, mouths open, shoulders bouncing.

  Tomoya asked his son a question in Japanese. “Charm,” the boy responded in English. “The word is ‘charm.’”

  “Ah!” Tomoya said. “Mr. Clive have charm we don’t know. You see!”

  “Drink to that!” Karak said. “All Clive’s charms that we don’t know.”

  Kishen emerged from the house, her chunni draped around her face, holding a bowl of popped corn and another filled with biscuits. Clive rose, tipping his hat. Years in the future, when he was gone, Ram would remember his earnestness, this respect paid to Jivan’s wife when he could have ignored her.