by C Pam Zhang
There was a reason I put you to bed that night. Rememory can hurt. I’ve got my leg to show it, and your ma—well, you can’t see the mark on her, but she has one all the same. She got it in the fire. We all have stories we can’t tell. And this story about the fire is the one your ma buried deepest.
The thing is, the fire was her idea.
* * *
—
From the beginning your ma and I shared a sense of fairness. I taught liar the first week when a girl among the two hundred tried to sneak double rations. It was your ma who caught that girl by the hair and marched her to me.
Your ma nodded as I laid out punishment: two meals less for that girl the next day. Your ma deemed it fair.
You remember, Lucy girl, the way your ma listened when you and Sam fought? How she weighed every word before judging? How she believed in honest work? Well, the night she planned the fire, she weighed the cost of the two hundred’s passage against the dead man buried by the stream. She weighed promises told at a distant harbor against the truth of the gold man’s dealings. In the end she judged it fair that the two hundred should escape their railroad contract. It was built on deception, after all.
She talked so well. She was so smart. And maybe I let her boss me, on account of how I feared letting her down.
Her plan was simple. To escape, we had to get rid of the hired men.
To get rid of the hired men, we would set a fire.
I don’t scare easy, Lucy girl. And I don’t pretend to be blameless. I’ve hit many a man when my blood boils. But the way your ma talked was different. Chilly. A life for a life, she said, adding the old woman who’d died on the ship to the shot man. She has—had—a passion for sums, your ma. Tallied up grievances as if they were coins, and paid them back without a second thought. That’s why she was the one to handle our gold, those months before the storm. That’s why, the night of the storm—
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Justice was the word your ma had me teach her that night she planned the fire.
* * *
—
Soft as your ma’d made me by then, I couldn’t sleep after we decided on our plan. The hired men’s lives were a weight on me no matter how I lay. I left your ma sleeping—her face placid as the lake—and went for a walk. I nodded to the shorter hired man on watch as I passed—the younger one, who hadn’t shot the dead man.
He lifted his pipe in greeting, then kept it lifted. Offered it to me.
Who knows why these people do what they do, Lucy girl? I’ve turned that moment in my head time and again and still I can’t figure. Was he acting on some wager from his partner? Was he tired of tobacco and looking to get rid of it? Was he like the dumb animal who comes to the edge of the snare and stiffens, suddenly wary, instinct pricking its hairs? Was he the jackal who, cornered, lowers its ears slyly and cries like a human baby? Was he lonely? Was he foolish? Was he kind? What moves in the heads of these people each time they look at us and size us up, what makes them decide on one day to call us chink and the next day to let us pass, and some days to offer charity? I don’t rightly know, Lucy girl. Never figured it out.
On that night I took the pipe, not wanting to rouse the hired man’s suspicions. He seemed restless. Eager for talk. Said something about the moon being pretty, which it was, and the wildfires dying down, which they were. He said something about a kid sister back at home that made my gut clench so that I was almost ready to wake your ma, take my promise back, tell her the whole truth about me and accept whatever judgment she passed, till the hired man said:
“Where do you come from? Same as them?”
I was half-mad that night, sloshing with pent truths. For some reason I told him. “I’m from this very territory. Not so far from here.”
And that man laughed.
I put his pipe in my mouth. I sucked down his tobacco. Fires still burned on the horizon beyond the glow of the bowl. Animals were fleeing, and they might never return. I sucked and glowed and thought about saying what was funny was how he and thousands of others came only last year to ravage this land and now they claimed it, when it was my land and Billy’s land and the Indians’ land and the tigers’ and the buffalos’ land burning—and then your ma’s word lit in my mind. Justice. I bid the man good night.
* * *
—
Only your ma and myself acted out her plan. The two hundred were stuck in the building, and your ma said we didn’t need to tell them anyhow. Said it’d be hard on their conscience. Said we should let them sleep easy. Said—with an impatient toss of her head—that anyhow she knew this would be better for them. Said they’d thank her.
She asked me the word for it. Not lie, or liar. The kinder word. I taught her secret.
We slipped out holding hands. Nodded to the man standing watch. We went out, to the hills that huddled around the hired men’s camp. There we filled our arms and wove dry plants into a track, which we laid down for the fire to follow. We surrounded the hired men’s camp with scrub, with grass knotted tight enough to burn long, with thistle heads crackling menace. The high grass hid our intent as we built a circle, a fence, a prison of combustible stuff that would raise flames higher than walls. All it would take was a spark.
And as we did this deadly work? We lay on our bellies. We whispered softly. From a distance, if the hired men bothered to look, they’d see only the grasses swaying above us, as they do to mark the passage of lovers.
When it came time for my watch, I took my place by the building. The two hired men returned to their camp. They started dinner. Hidden from them, at the start of a long track of tinder, your ma struck a piece of flint.
* * *
—
This story’s hard to tell, Lucy girl. Even for me. Got no flesh and rightly I shouldn’t hurt, but rememory hurts me.
* * *
—
We meant to trade two lives for two. The fire had its own idea. That fire reared up like it wasn’t fire but something living: an enormous beast lofted into the sky, orange flames striped black with smoke. A thing born of the hills, born of the rage that the land should feel. Certainly not a tame thing. You ever corner an animal, Lucy girl? Even a mouse will turn and bite at the last, when it believes itself dying. Amidst the crackle and the smoke—Lucy girl, I swear those hills birthed a tiger.
I saw the fire follow its track downhill. I saw the black forms of the hired men run. Not fast enough. The flames found the dry circle we’d laid, and swallowed the hired men’s camp.
I whooped then. Saw your ma racing from her hiding spot, heading for our lake.
The fire, finished with the camp, went toward the stream as planned. We meant for it to die in the water. A quiet death.
But a fickle wind blew up, stronger than either of us had figured. It stoked the flames higher. I saw the beast raise one long, flaming limb—and step over the stream.
The fire split in two. One part roared forward, toward me and the building that held the two hundred. The other part lunged to the side, licking the grasses, pursuing your ma.
* * *
—
Like your ma I believe in fairness. But more’n than, I believe in family. Ting wo, Lucy girl. Your family comes first. You stick by them. You don’t betray your family.
* * *
—
I’m not a cruel man, Lucy girl. There were three horses tied up by the building and I left two. I unlocked the door and screamed at the two hundred to run. I gave them as much a chance as I could give them, and then I rode after your ma.
It turned out that building wasn’t stone through and through. Whoever built it built lazy, and inside those stones hid a center of straw and dung. A secret heart that dried out over many years in the sun. That caught the fire and fed it.
Half a mile away, holding your ma waist-deep in our lake, I saw the building go up in flame.
It blazed so big and hungry I felt the blast of heat from that distance. It caught any stray people who’d started to run. Your ma was unconscious from breathing smoke; I’d dragged her onto the back of the horse and crashed right into the water. She didn’t see it, or breathe the awful smoke of cooking flesh. But I did. I watched, knowing she’d want me to witness the two hundred as they died.
I never did take to meat again after that, though your ma liked it plenty.
* * *
—
A question that’s followed me for years, Lucy girl, is this: can you love a person and hate them all at once? I think so. I think so. When your ma first woke in the ashfall, she smiled at me. No—grinned. The wicked grin of a girl who’d pulled off her prank. She was bold as anything. So certain we’d done right. So certain she knew best.
Then she coughed, and when she sat up—she saw what stretched behind. Our lake of fire, reflecting the sky. The spooked and lathered horse I’d saved. The flames still flicking along the ridge where the building was charred black rubble.
Your ma cried as an animal cries, rocking back and forth in the shallows. She tipped her head back and howled. Night came and still she scratched me if I approached, and bared her teeth. The cracking, hissing sounds from her smoke-torn throat—they weren’t words.
You’ve heard me tell stories of transformation, Lucy girl. Men into wolves. Women into seals and swans. Well, your ma transformed that night, though her face and body looked the same.
Twice she ran to the far edge of the lake and looked out at the ruins of the two hundred. Her whole body quivered, pointed toward them. Away from me. I could see in her the wildness. I could see her desire to run. I left the horse where it was. Let her leave if she wanted.
And then, in the smeared gray dawn, I felt her burrow into my side. Her fingers sharp enough to rip my belly, my guts. I wouldn’t have stopped her. All she tore was my shirt, my pants. Her howls didn’t stop so much as turn into moans, grunts. At last she curled against me and asked me, over and over, in a scratchy, smoke-ruined voice, not to leave her alone.
The weeks that passed while we waited for the fire to die, for your ma’s throat to heal—they went this way: Sometimes I’d catch your ma staring at me with hate. Other times, love. I was the only person left to her. I suppose I had to carry both. She raged and beat my chest, but lay quiet to let me rub poultices on her throat.
Her throat never did heal proper. Just like your nose, Lucy girl. That voice of your ma’s, that scratch and rustle of it—that was something made.
* * *
—
I’ve told you before that I met a tiger, and came away with this bad leg. You never believed me. I saw the judgment in your eyes. Sometimes that made me furious—my own daughter practically calling me a liar—and other times I was pleased. Didn’t I tell you, Lucy girl? That you should always ask why a person is telling you their story?
The truth, now: here’s how I met the tiger.
This was some weeks on and us two still the only two in a blackened world. No animal or man had set foot over the burnt hills—and no wagons of railroad supplies. If the gold man had heard of the fire, likely he thought us perished with the rest.
When the ground cooled enough, your ma wanted to look.
First we went to the hired men’s camp. Your ma kicked through, ignoring their charred bones and the remains of their guns. We panned the ashes for their gold and their silver. Lumpen things that were once coins. She spat on the campsite as we left.
And then we took what we’d found to the remains of the building on the ridge.
“Word,” your ma said as she used her hand to cover a piece of bone.
I taught her bury, and she taught me how. Silver. Running water. Something to remind of home. She’d brought cloth from her trunk—a small miracle that its contents smelled of perfume and not smoke. Your ma bundled bone into scraps of cloth. Laid the silver on top.
“Better?” she asked me.
I said I reckoned the two hundred were in a better place. In a way, they were. I didn’t know what kind of life they could have had in this land.
Your ma shook her head. For the first time since I’d known her, she spoke with doubt. “Better if not us?”
I soothed her. I told her, over and over, it wasn’t her fault.
Her voice healed some, and some of her confidence came back, so that she would become a mother who could say right from wrong. But I tell you, Lucy girl, that day in the ashes she lost her convictions. I saw the guilt and the wondering eat at her worse than flames.
Which is why I waited for her to fall asleep before I returned to the building alone.
Night in those burnt hills was eerie. Darker than any night before or since. Nothing to reflect what little moon showed through the smoke: an unchanging dark. I stole into the burnt building. I found those bundles of bone. And I took back the silver.
We needed it more than the dead did, Lucy girl.
As I walked back I got the sense that something watched me. I walked quicker. Halted. It halted too. Seemed footsteps were matching mine. Soon I was running, the earth thudding under a weight greater than my own. I heard a roar behind me, louder than fire or wind. A sharpness reached from the dark and sliced my knee. I stumbled onward, bleeding, so scared I never once looked back.
* * *
—
This is my story, Lucy girl. My truth. And I’m telling you, the tiger that marked me and caused my limp—I didn’t see it. But I felt the truth of it in my bones. Your ma cleaned my wound and dressed it the next morning. I didn’t want to saddle her with more guilt—she was shaky those days—so I said I’d cut myself walking to the latrine in the dark. Just bad luck.
But was it? The cut, though shallow, went through the tendon, severed it so neatly that I never walked true again. The skin healed, but something essential had been nicked from me. Did chance make that clean cut? Or the claws of a canny predator, a beast that still guarded these hills after everything else was gone and dead? Was it punishment for the secret in my pocket, clanking silver? I never saw the tiger’s face, but does that make my story any less true?
* * *
—
Not much more to tell, Lucy girl. Morning’s coming.
I promised your ma we’d build a fortune all our own. I promised her there was still gold in these hills so long as we looked. Just over the horizon, I promised her. The next place will be better. And I promised her, on those nights she cried till she went stony, that if it didn’t work out I’d take her back. To that place beyond the ocean.
She didn’t talk near as much as she had before, on account of her throat paining her. Some nights as we traveled through the prospecting sites, I felt her rise from our bed. She stood beside the horse, looking out, pointed away, that wildness in her.
But she didn’t run. And she didn’t run. And her throat healed a bit, and soon you swelled in her belly. She started sleeping through the night. She smiled once in a while. When you were born, Lucy girl, you were like an anchor dropping on the ship your ma used to tell about: holding us down, holding us together. Holding us to this land. For that, I was always grateful.
* * *
—
Your ma after the fire was never quite the same girl who’d come off the ship bossing two hundred and kissing tigers’ prints. She grew wary—you saw, Lucy girl, how prospecting spooked her. How she was fearful of luck.
The new Ma had love and hate in her both. She sang you songs and sewed you dresses and rubbed my bad leg and teased. And she fought me over the gold, over the raising of you and Sam, over my dislike of rich men and my preference for Indian camps where I gambled and traded—over the right way to be, the right people to be. Once she’d mistaken me for a man with power, and ever after she was careful to track who had it, who to speak to, who to avoid. If I was a gambler, then she
was a clerk. That hating part of her never stopped measuring what was fair. Never stopped counting up my sins, my rare successes.
But she stayed with me. I figure it was on account of the two hundred, in the end. They’d made her doubt herself, and I was cowardly enough to use it. I’m not proud to say that sometimes I reminded your ma of what had happened to them, out of spite.
And then, the storm.
Sure, when we were robbed of our gold that night, your ma saw my worth drop lower than ever. Sure, we lost our supplies. But I figure it was the baby that decided her.
We’d wanted him so much. When you were born, when Sam was, you knit us—I figure we counted on the baby to do the same. And when he was born dead, that tiny blue body, when I cut the cord on him—something else was cut too. Your ma looked at him the way she’d looked at those bundles of bone in the ash. That same guilt. I saw her tallying the decisions we’d made over the years—the meat we didn’t have for so long, the jostling of the wagon, the coal dust down her lungs—and I saw her see the baby as judgment passed on our living.
Years ago in that burnt building, she meant to say those people would’ve been better off without us. Maybe she figured that you, and Sam, and that dead baby, would be better off without her.
She didn’t die, Lucy girl. I went out to bury your brother and came back to an empty house. Your ma was always strong. As to where she went, I never wanted to know. If questions rose up in me, why, I drank them down. I drowned them as the storm had drowned most other things.
When you get to be older, Lucy girl, you’ll learn that sometimes, knowing is worse than not knowing. I didn’t want to know about your ma. Not what she did, or with whom, or how she felt looking into some other man’s face. I didn’t want to know the precise spot on a map that could hurt me.
