How Much of These Hills Is Gold

by C Pam Zhang

  The first day on the road: Horse. Road. Faster. Tree. Sun. Day. Water. Walk. Stand. Faster. Faster.

  The second night: Corn. Dirt. Down. Hand. Foot. Night. Moon. Bed.

  The third day: Stand. Rest. March. Sorry. Work. Work. No.

  The third night, when we got to the place we were meant to build a railroad: Man. Woman. Baby. Born.

  * * *

  —

  I was off my watch on that third night when your ma came and found me alone. How she did it I never figured; when I asked later, she just laughed and said a woman needed her secrets. I don’t know how she slipped past the hired man who stood guard. I guess she has—had—her ways. Her smiling ways. I didn’t think on it that night, though I’ve thought about it many times since.

  We’d settled to wait for the wagons on a pretty piece of land not far from the coast. We smelled salt when the wind blew, and in the distance were cypress trees bent at unlikely angles. The two hundred slept, locked in for the night, in an old stone building up on the ridge. Rusted bell tower above and a stream out front. Half a mile beyond that were grassy hills where the hired men set up their own camp. And out in the other direction was a little lake, pretty if you ignored the bugs and marshy grass. That lake I claimed for my own.

  Your ma came up to me as I stood looking into the lake. I was hoping for a glint in the water.

  “Teach?” your ma said, startling me so that I nearly fell in. She didn’t say Sorry like I’d taught them. She smiled, wickedly.

  Your ma was eager to learn. Not like those among the two hundred who looked at me sullenly, who saw me as the enemy. Those sorts hated me more’n they hated the hired men, who whipped their ankles with green branches. I expect they took me for a traitor, saw my eyes and my face like theirs and hated me the worse for it. Those sorts whispered about me. Of course, I had no idea what they said. So I had to punish them for any words. All words. Otherwise my discipline would’ve fallen apart completely.

  Which meant the two hundred watched me as carefully as the hired men watched me, and I worked to make my face a mask. No one could learn how much I didn’t know.

  “You,” your ma said. She pointed to me. Then she cupped her hands over her stomach. Over and over she did this. I shook my head. She made a kind of frustrated growl and grabbed my hand.

  I’d thought her lovely and mild. She was kind to the old people. Laughed easily. Had a high, clear voice like some little songbird. But the hand that grabbed mine could do more than hammer railroad ties. I remembered what the hired men said to each other when they traded watch: Don’t turn your back. They’re savages.

  Your ma’s hand was strong, but her waist, when she made me touch it, was softer than anything since I lost my rabbit-skin hat from Billy. She made me trace around her waist, then drew me close till the sides of our bodies touched. She traced that touching line. Cupped her hands again over her stomach. Pointed at me.

  I still didn’t understand.

  Your ma put a hand on my chest and a hand on her own breast. She trailed down my chest, my belly. Stopped at my pants. I’m sure she could see my blush.

  “Word?” she said, pushing at her breast. “Word?” she said again, two fingers lightly tracing my pants.

  I taught her man. I taught her woman. As she cupped her stomach, I taught her baby. When again she pointed to me, I understood her original question.

  “I was born back there,” I told her. There was still blood in my cheeks. I was half-dizzy with it as I pointed toward my hills. Your ma’s face lit up.

  It wasn’t till after she’d left me alone that I cooled down, and realized I’d pointed in the wrong direction. Toward the ocean. She thought we came from the same place. And I didn’t have the words to explain otherwise.

  * * *

  —

  I know you think me a liar, Lucy girl. But don’t you ever think me stupid. Don’t think I missed how you looked at me those nights I came back drunk. The sheer arrogance of you, looking at me like you knew better. Looking at me like you were disappointed.

  That look so like your ma’s.

  Your ma was like you in a whole lot of ways. She believed that dressing right and talking right could set the world right around her. She studied me and the hired men. Asked us the words for shirt and dress, asked what women wore in this land. Always looking to better herself, your ma.

  You see, your ma had come seeking fortune. All the two hundred had. Back home your ma’s own ba was dead, her ma’s hands ruined gutting fish. She was promised to marry an old fisherman, till she boarded the ship.

  Golden mountain, she told me the same night she told about the mother, the fisherman, the man at the harbor who promised this place over the ocean would make them rich. We were lying out that night in the grass beside my lake. I laughed fit to die when I heard: some poor teacher had blundered the word for hills.

  Lucy girl, I regretted that laughter all my life.

  I couldn’t tell your ma why I laughed, of course. Couldn’t tell her why it was so funny, the idea of the two hundred getting rich. She still thought I could make it happen for them. That it was my ship, my man at the harbor making promises, my railroad we’d build when the wagons arrived.

  So I said something stupid. I said I laughed on account of how she pronounced gold: thick as syrup, half-swallowed. Your ma flushed and left me alone that night.

  Later on I caught her practicing the word. Gold gold gold gold gold.

  Your ma spoke prettier than me by the end. Looked prettier too. People thought me hard, and her soft. We made a good team. Had a balance, same as you and Sam. But believe me, Lucy girl, when I say that your ma was even more fixed on making a fortune.

  * * *

  —

  Your ma got the two hundred to trust me. She had a quality that made people listen, never mind that she was young, and a woman. She was—well, Sam might call it bossy. Like you, Lucy girl. She was smart so she figured she knew best. Most of the time she did, and convinced everyone else of it.

  I started taking meals with the two hundred at your ma’s insistence, listening to them chatter in their own language in the corners. I pretended not to hear. So long as they didn’t speak it to my face, I let it pass.

  Plenty of time for chatter, anyhow. The wagons of railroad supplies were late in coming. Couldn’t get through on account of the horizon being lit up by the worst fires these hills have seen.

  Turns out that when you dig up streams and clog rivers, when you cut trees and their roots no longer hold the soil back, that soil goes dry. Crumbles like left-out bread. Like the whole land’s gone stale. The plants die, the grass bakes—and when the dry season comes, a spark can set it all aflame.

  The hired men swore and paced. They polished their guns like they meant to rub through the metal. But there was nothing to be done. At least we were by the coast, with damp in the air. The fire didn’t seem like to reach us. We waited.

  Animals started to show up one day. They darted over the stream, past the walls of the stone building, heading to the coast. Rabbits skinny with terror, mice and squirrels and possums. Flocks of birds blocking out the shrunken red sun. Once a young buck leapt clear over me with antlers ablaze. There was quiet for a while, then the slower creatures came: snakes, lizards. For a day and a night no one could step in the grass for fear of being bitten. Even the hired men abandoned their own camp and slept in the building.

  And last, but unseen, the tiger.

  I woke up one day to paw prints around the marshy edge of the lake. Too big for wolf. Hard to tell with the sky so red, but I swore I saw a flash of orange in the reeds.

  Your ma came up to me yawning. Her hair was mussed, but she was never lovelier than in the morning, smelling of sleep and the people we were at night. I rarely saw her that way. Made idle by the fire, she’d started to fuss with her hair. She’d braid it and pin it and curl it, asking
endless questions about how ladies here wore it. Same with her clothes. Your ma took thread from her trunk and stitched and hemmed that robe of hers into different shapes. She got other women to join her too. I didn’t have the heart to say those dresses would have no place once the wagons arrived, when they’d be sweating all day over railroad ties.

  Your ma wanted to make me friendly with the rest of the two hundred. She poked fun at my quiet, teased me for being so solitary. Some people are born solitary, no less happy for it—I was, and I suspect you were, too, Lucy girl, but your ma didn’t understand. She pestered about my family till I told her they were dead. She made me talk dresses to the women, dragged me to join the circles of men gambling with straws. She bossed me.

  Truth is, the faces of the two hundred didn’t warm me. Their language and gossip were strange, as was the easy way they called each other fat and picked loose threads from each other’s sleeves. What did it matter that we looked alike? I came from the hills, and the two hundred spooked at the sound of jackals. They were soft people who’d believed a pack of lies, and I didn’t need them. I sat down with the men just to please your ma, and, given how often I won, I suspect the men let me play just to please her too. I suspected your ma’d had a sweetheart among the two hundred before they reached shore. There was a certain man who argued with her constantly, and another who always tried to give her extra food. She didn’t say and I didn’t ask; all that mattered was that she’d brought her trunk to my lake and slept there most nights.

  All that mattered, Lucy girl, was that there was a time when your ma had eyes only for me.

  I forgot plenty of things in my life: Billy’s face, the color of poppies, how to sleep gentle so that I didn’t wake up with fists clenched and an ache already started in my shoulders, the word for the smell of earth after rain, the taste of clean water. And there’s other things I’m forgetting in death: how it felt to swing my fist and feel the knuckles crack, how mud squelched between my toes, how it was to have fingers and toes and hunger. I expect there’ll come a day when I forget everything of myself, after you and Sam bury me—not just my body but what little of me is in your blood and speech. But. Even if there comes a day when I’m no more than a wind roaming these hills, then I expect that wind will still remember one thing and whisper it to every blade of grass: the way I felt when your ma looked only at me. So bright a lesser man might fear it.

  In any case your ma stood that morning looking at the paw print. I put an arm around her, figuring she was scared. Tiger, I taught her, and started to describe the beast.

  She threw my arm off and laughed. “Don’t you know?” she said, mocking. Then she bent and put her hand in the tiger’s print. Her eyes dared me. You might not believe this, Lucy girl, but she kissed that mud.

  “Luck,” she said. “Home.” With her finger she drew a word in the mud. As she did she sang a tune I’d learn was the tiger song. Lao hu, lao hu.

  Your ma shone with pure mischief. Fearless. She hadn’t broken my rule about speaking her language, but she’d stalked the edge of that rule as the tiger stalked the lake. She’d written it, sung it. She laughed at me as I tried to figure out what to do about her.

  Fire behind her, the sky hot with the world’s burning, her muddy mouth and snarled hair, the print of a beast come so close it could have taken us in the night—all this and she laughed. Wilder than all this put together.

  Something moved in my chest. As a child I’d awoken in the night to a shake in my bones. Billy said it was a tiger’s roar: from far off, they can’t be heard, only felt. My chest roared that morning beside the lake. What had stalked me since the day the ship arrived, what I’d feared some nights as I held your ma close, that day pounced. Sank claws into my heart. After weeks of rules, I spoke my first words of your ma’s language.

  I’d listened to the two hundred. Their cusses came easiest. But I’d heard lovers too.

  Qin ai de, I said to your ma. It was a guess. I didn’t know its proper meaning till I saw it in her eyes.

  * * *

  —

  Softness took me over as rot took over the oaks one year when I was a boy. What looked a harmless fuzz weakened the trees from within. Years later, they split and died.

  I’d grown up solitary, needing only shade, a stream, and from time to time a chat with one of the old men. My growing had made me strong enough to survive.

  But your ma—she stroked my brow, made me lay my head in her lap as she cleaned out my earwax. She studied my eyes, a lighter brown than the rest of the two hundred, and declared the color contained liquid. Concluded I was water, and not wood as she’d once thought.

  I let myself speak more of your ma’s words. Pet names, cusses. Giving them as little gifts to her. But only I was allowed to speak them—I still frowned on her using her own language. And I was still stern with the two hundred. They weren’t permitted to speak freely, or to go outside unaccompanied, save for an hour at dusk and dawn.

  The rules were to protect them too. I saw the hired men getting more restless as the fires kept us trapped. Their hands itching at their guns.

  And then one evening I came back from my lake, hand in hand with your ma. We’d found a grove of oaks much like my boyhood grove, the branches making a green room in the center. Your ma danced around me singing the last word of the tiger song: Lai. Lai. Lai. Calling as she’d called me to come beneath the trees.

  There was a hush around the stone building as we arrived.

  The hired men dragged a body around the corner. It was a man I’d gambled with, always clever at avoiding the short straw. Well, his luck had run out. It was that man, but his chest was a bloody hole.

  “He was trying to run,” the taller of the hired men said as he shucked his bloody gloves.

  But the bullet had entered from the front.

  Your ma flew at the hired men, her right hand flashing out. “He don’t run! You run!”

  The hired man was quick, and your ma’s hand whistled over his ear. She might as well have hit him. I saw the look on his face.

  So I grabbed your ma. Harder than I would’ve otherwise, on account of the hired men watching.

  Thing is, your ma spoke true: the hired men often wandered from their posts, sometimes with a woman from the two hundred trailing behind. Too often truth ain’t in what’s right, Lucy girl—sometimes it’s in who speaks it. Or writes it. The hired men had guns and I let them say what they said.

  “Tell them,” your ma said to me. “Your men. Tell them.”

  The taller one told me to control her, and went down to the stream to wash.

  Your ma cried against me as I led her back to our lake. Her tears were hot enough to melt me, and after months of tucking it deep, I started to tell her the truth.

  I told her they weren’t my men. I told her I owned no ship, no railroad. I told her the railroad jobs would be hard and hateful and wouldn’t make them rich. As a boy I’d stripped a baby bird of its pinfeathers till it was a raw pink thing, till I threw up in the grass. Speaking truth made me feel just as sick.

  As I spoke, your ma went stiff. She pushed me away. That strength in her arms—she could snap me like I was nothing.

  “Liar,” she said. I’d taught that word in the first week. “Liar.”

  * * *

  —

  I’d made myself detestable in your ma’s eyes. Took her two days to speak to me again, two days while she prepared to bury the dead man. Even then she only acknowledged me because I gave her two pieces of silver for his eyes and paid the hired men for the right to wash the body in the stream.

  And then I—

  No.

  No, no. Alright now, Lucy girl. I said I’d tell a true story, and there might be no time left. So here’s the truth. Sometimes you pay in coin. Sometimes you pay in dignity.

  Alone outside the building, the two hundred locked up inside and only the dead
man to watch, I got on my knees and put my lips to the hired men’s boots. Just as your ma’d kissed the tiger’s print. I begged them to let her do her burying. I begged them not to punish her for trying to hit them. Can you imagine, Lucy girl? Me?

  Later on, I kissed your ma’s feet too. Then her ankles, her thighs. I begged her to forgive me. She kept her spine straight and looked down her nose.

  “Hao de,” she said.

  Those words changed us. She’d broken my rule against speaking her language, and I couldn’t stop her. From then on she’d use more and more of her words, and I’d muddle through, piecing their meaning together, mimicking them. I’d always had an aptitude for birdcalls; this imitation was similar enough, and if I had an accent then it could be excused by my isolation. But from then on I would live in fear.

  “Don’t lie again,” your ma warned me.

  That was when I realized I could never tell her the rest of the truth. Elsewise she’d leave me. I tucked my story, my true story, deep, deep down in that last layer of me, where I was still a boy running free in these hills. I resolved never to tell her where I came from. I resolved that it wouldn’t be lying if I didn’t speak of it.

  Can you blame me, Lucy girl?

  It’s a funny thing, how easy it was to keep this lie. No one suspected me, because no man seeing my face believed I was born here. Haven’t you seen that for yourself, Lucy girl? Those jackals with their paper law. They didn’t care about the truth. They assumed their own truth.

  That night your ma made me answer question after question. About the railroads and the gold man. About how hard he worked his miners, and how much he paid, and where they lived, how big their houses, how well they ate. How many of them died. At the end of it, she made a plan.

  * * *

  —

  Do you recall, Lucy girl, that night you found your nugget, and brought it to your ma, and pestered her to remember?