All the Pomp of Earthly Majesty

by Michael G. Williams

  “I already am.” Mammon still smiled, his voice rumbling.

  “If that were true, mister, you wouldn’t need me.” Etta’s tone was as confident as it was frank. “But why not go one better? Why not wait until he’s already gotten all of them? Let that guy do the legwork, and then ride off with the carriage once it’s loaded up?”

  Mammon shook his head once. “The more keys they gather, the more powerful they will become. I can’t risk letting this get out of hand.”

  Etta tilted her head to one side for a moment, not exactly a nod so much as a show that she was willing to consider his concerns. “Alright. Then take them out as soon as possible and steal what they currently have while I’m at it. That’s what I’d do. That’s what you ought to do, too. If I see a man holding a new rifle, better than mine, I don’t just shoot it out of his hand. I take it for myself. You think the same way. I know that because there’s no other way you could be you.”

  Mammon clucked his tongue at her. “Well, aren’t we the perceptive thief?”

  “Mastermind.” Etta Place, the most famous forgotten outlaw in American history, puffed her cigar, then blew a perfect smoke ring at him. “You may be the boss, but I know the business.”

  It was neither the first nor the last time Mammon felt the thrill of wondering if he’d taken on more than he could handle by recruiting her to be his anti-Norton. “And you remain willing to injure or kill in order to achieve the mission?” Mammon quirked his eyebrows at her. “Your time out of the limelight has not eroded your resolve?”

  Etta’s face shifted, her expression wavering between thoughtful and sad. She drew a breath to answer and very nearly whispered when she spoke. “No, it has not.”

  Tenderloin, San Francisco, Tonight

  The Tong Wars?” Madge didn’t sound angry so much as wary. She took a breath and steadied herself. “As the descendant of people who emigrated from China to Chinatown, believe me, I’m all for including Chinatown as a source for the keys to the city. I like the way that recognizes how important we’ve always been to the life of the rest of the city. I…” Madge let herself laugh once. “I’m actually…relieved? That sounds weird to say.”

  Iria smiled. “That makes two of us. I was worried it would seem like I was…” They waved a hand at Madge and at the wall covered in clippings and portraits and posters and photographs of people of every color and creed. “Exoticizing the Other? And that’s not my goal. I want an edged weapon for an athame, and a hatchet from the Tong Wars would be one of the most emblematic possible from all of San Francisco’s history.”

  Madge nodded, relaxing a little but not yet relaxed. “Okay. Plenty of rituals need a sacred blade. Still. A witch’s dozen decades or more of Chinatown to choose from and you went with the most stereotyped and hyperbolized era of my people’s past. And I kind of want to talk about that first. I trust you, Iria, in addition to loving you, but this is…I think it’s a complicated part of history to go shopping in.”

  “Chinatown is integral to the story of San Francisco.” Iria nodded, hands up. “And the Tong Wars are essential to the story of Chinatown.”

  Madge studied Iria, their face, their tone, everything about how they held themselves. Madge knew she could trust Iria to mean her no harm. But she also could feel her brain boil with the memories of a hundred thousand times others did mean her harm, from small slights to open harassment. Madge tried not to crack open the vault of painful memories: the countless times someone spoke more loudly because they assumed she wouldn’t understand English and, stupidly, they thought that would help; the times she was fetishized; the times she was reviled; and of course the times someone told her she should “go back where she came from.” Madge thought of the time she had responded to that exact sentiment with Sorry, asshole, but they tore down Letterman Army Hospital years ago, but she had only done so in her head because Madge was well aware saying it aloud could—no, would—immediately put her in serious physical danger.

  Madge wasn’t an immigrant. Neither were her parents, nor her grandparents. She had to go back four generations to find someone born elsewhere, and she had been the daughter of a man born in the United States who went to China one time in his whole life just long enough to get married and father a child before returning. The last of Madge’s Chinatown relatives left for the suburbs in the 1960s. Madge found Chinatown as alien a place as any gawking tourist. She hadn’t even wandered around Chinatown for fun in years. She too often found the other side of the coin when she did: unassimilated Chinese, or those with one foot firmly in each culture, faces askance when they spoke to her in Cantonese and she failed to understand them. Madge felt keenly that she didn’t belong in Chinatown, even though others in the city felt she didn’t belong out of it. And the Tong Wars were the one thing most people could say about Chinatown, if they could say anything at all. Say “Chinese immigrant” to the average person and they would either picture someone doing laundry or a street tough in a gang. Chinese immigrants formed a tight community in part to celebrate who they were with people who understood that part of themselves and in part because the larger culture wanted to keep them out.

  But Iria was not a stranger and never hurt Madge on purpose. And Madge had taken Iria as a pupil before she had taken them as a partner.

  And Iria had not played the “if you’re offended” non-apology pre-apology card, and that was important. It meant Iria had not tried to back Madge into a particular reaction. They were simply letting her react as she saw fit.

  “Okay. I can see what you mean.” Madge leaned back, opening up her shoulders and relaxing her body language. “Explain it to me, though. Talk me through it. Convince me.”

  Iria cleared their throat and dove in, no hesitation and no protest. “Chinatown—the place and the people there—have always found themselves caught between Scylla and Charybdis: vital to the function of the city and shamed for being here at all. I…” Iria paused. “I feel weird explaining this to you. You know your own experience better than I ever will. I really don’t want to be the white person who thinks they have some right to explain racism to a person of color.”

  Madge smirked just a touch, but there was kindness there. “Student, your teacher just gave you an order. Convince me.”

  Iria blushed and ducked their head. “Okay. Chinese immigrants spent the entire nineteenth century being targeted by racist violence, accused of crimes they didn’t commit, and at the same time constantly exploited by whites who wanted their laundry done, their goods delivered, and…less savory services rendered.” Iria tried to display a little embarrassment. Madge wasn’t sure she bought it. Iria was not one for decorum. But, Iria was delivering a sales pitch. Madge scored them a point for that. “Then come the Chinese Exclusion Act and the riots here and in L.A., and the rise of ‘paper sons’ and ‘paper daughters.’”

  “And elsewhere in the state.” Norton turned from the window where he had been standing, gazing out at the city, to join the conversation whether invited or not. He wore a grim expression, and his eyes still beheld something far away. “The riot here lasted two days. Four persons were murdered. They said rebuilding Chinatown would cost over one hundred thousand dollars.” Norton blinked away glistening tears as they began to gather in the corners of his eyes. He drew himself up a little straighter and stamped the floor with his cane. “Not that I was a part of that madness, that hate. Not even remotely.” Norton’s mouth puckered sourly, like he wished he could spit out the memory itself. “The so-called ‘Workingmen’s Party of California.’ Pah. Foul language, fictions about a ‘yellow menace,’ and all in service of nothing but their own selfish interests. They would rile up the crowds. They would get the hardheaded brutes all puffed up at the sandlots and send them screaming up the hill into Chinatown. They called themselves a political party, but they were a mob.” Norton lifted his shoulders and adjusted his coat, his volume rising and his tone shifting to anger. “They wanted to keep the Chinese in camps. They wanted to exploit them, to le
t them die in sickness, all so they could tell themselves they were special somehow.” Norton’s voice rose another notch, and Madge was struck by the raw anger there. “But I stood up to them! Oh yes. Quite literally! I stood on a bench in the middle of their high and mighty meeting. I told them all I was their Emperor, and their ‘party’ was not allowed, and to go back to their homes and think on their Christian duties to their fellow men. I wouldn’t see them go tearing back into Chinatown, smashing windows, setting fires, terrorizing people whose only crime was the desire for a safe and honest life. No, I would not allow that, not even if I had to lie across the roadway myself to stop it.”

  “Were you a Christian? I thought you were Jewish.” Madge blinked a few times.

  Norton took a second to come out of that moment from the past he described to them. He shuddered once and blinked his eyes before he favored her with his attention. “I gave consideration to many faiths,” Norton murmured, casting his eyes away again. “But the disposition of my beliefs is not the point. They claimed to be Christian and yet behaved as barbarians. The wicked words the rabble-rousers spewed revealed hearts filled with naught but hate. Oh, it was the same over and over again. Had the so-called ‘Workingmen’ of their seething ranks worked half as hard to bring about their own success in life—to secure their own futures, to improve their own stations, to earn what they enjoyed—as they did to prevent good and honest lives for people with black or red or yellow skin…Well, such hatemongers might have been rich indeed.” Norton stamped the floor with his cane again as he spoke, and again, and even a third time. There was a hammered response from some annoyed downstairs neighbor.

  “And what did they say when you told them to go home?” Madge spoke softly, hoping to calm him down. They did not need to get thrown out of their room.

  Norton fumbled his response: he fluttered his fingers and cleared his throat. After a moment, he turned back to the window.

  “They laughed at him,” Iria spoke low as well, “and threw him out of their meeting.”

  At the window, Norton was as still as a statue.

  “Of course the Tongs cropped up in those conditions.” Iria went back to their pitch session. “Marginalized, denied access to opportunity anywhere else, facing a very real and constant threat of violence, they did what many people have done, in many places, many times: they created opportunities of their own. They found ways to survive and to thrive despite the hatred against them. And then there’s the Chinese experience of the twentieth century! The federal government making false promises, one after another. Discrimination still rampant. Opportunity still scarce. Chinese-American citizens treated like outsiders at every turn and—”

  Madge cut Iria off. “So, with all that history to choose from, why the Tong Wars?”

  Iria leapt to make their point. “It’s the perfect intersection of everything. It’s the time when the internal pressures of Chinatown and its people’s competing efforts and interests run up against the wall of mainstream culture starting to scrutinize them again after decades of fervently insisting on turning away. And if we send him to the right time, he’ll bring us back the perfect emblem of the tensions at work. I’m not sending him to the Tong Wars like they’re an amusement park ride, or like it’s a chance to gawk at them. I’m sending him there because the Tong Wars represent a critical turning point in the city’s approach to one of its largest constituent populations, and because an axe from a hatchet man is going to contain all of San Francisco’s component energies and elements at once: ambition, relish, danger, the tragedy of missed chances, the power of hindsight, the immigrant experience, the assimilation experience, the fear and wonder of being caught between two worlds.” Iria licked their lips. “The blade of that hatchet will have been honed against countless competing motivations and opposing circumstances. It will be as sharp as the cruelty of those who took advantage of the people living and working there, and as solid as those people’s own determination to survive.”

  Madge drew three deep breaths.

  Outside, the night continued to unwind pretty much as normal. But in here, in this tiny shoebox of a single-room occupancy, the energies hung thick and powerful in the air.

  “Alright.” Madge’s voice caught for a second. “Alright. I’m convinced.”

  San Francisco’s Pioneer Hall, 1906

  He’s got it! Pull!”

  Mammon and Etta spied from one of the crisscrossing walkways on the third floor as Officer Biggy of the San Francisco Police gaped and an earlier iteration of Mammon lightly sighed at the empty space where Emperor Norton stood a moment before.

  “And that’s how they get him in and out of time?” Etta made notes on a small pad of paper with the stub of a pencil. It had no eraser. She needed none. Had Mammon watched the pencil nib move, he would have seen Etta wrote in code. It was one of her own making. Mammon didn’t watch Etta, though. He was too entranced by watching himself from a floor above, a small smile on his lips.

  The earlier Mammon’s confrontation with Biggy played out to its frustrating conclusion, and Biggy ran down the stairs to escape the building.

  “Come,” the now-Mammon said to Etta as they crouched in their hiding place. He drew up his sleeve to glance simultaneously at the faces of several watches he wore on his wrist and forearm. Mammon wore even more watches now than he did in the earlier version of himself they had just watched depart. Etta wondered just how mad for time a demon could be. “We only have a few moments.”

  Outside, Etta could hear what sounded like the roar of a rushing river, its banks swollen with spring runoff. But the only river outside ran with fire, and it grew ever closer.

  Etta stood up and dashed surefooted down the staircase. She started to turn the corner to descend to the ground floor, but Mammon called to her to stop. “No, not that way. I need to send you after them.” Etta saw him reach into his mouth and withdraw a small silver spoon. Mammon wielded it like a knife and slashed at the air where Norton had been standing when he disappeared. Outside Etta heard what sounded like thunder. Lightning flashed in the huge windows on the building’s face. Etta was hit by a powerful smell of ozone and noticed Mammon flinch, shaking his hand as though he had burned it on a hot percolator. “There.” He stepped away from a wound in space before him. The gap through which Norton had been drawn had been cleanly cut and sealed back. Mammon’s reopening of it was not so tidy, its edges ragged, its seams ripped out. Mammon nodded at Etta. “You need to go through. Now. Tail them and find their hideout. Then call on me at my offices. And only then.”

  Red and orange and yellow lights danced across the room as flames roared up the front of the building across the street from them. Etta could smell gas.

  Far below, Etta heard a door to the building slam shut: Biggy’s successful escape from the flames. She nodded at Mammon and produced a cruel little smile. “That won’t take very long—they don’t look like difficult prey. Do I get a bonus if they don’t make it home alive?”

  “Do not eliminate them yet.” The demon’s features twisted in anger, his emotions almost an emanating force. The very suggestion—even as a jest—had infuriated him. “I need more information first.” Mammon’s usual half-smirk had run somewhere else for now. His features shifted, his forehead rippled and swelled, and something jutted up against the shoulders of Mammon’s green and gold jacket from the inside as his body twisted in reaction to his rage. “That may not make sense to you, but I know it deep in my core. Do not make the mistake of thinking I am merely another one of your criminal associates, human. I am a native of the world of omens and signs, and you are my slave. You will do as I say.” In the surrounding fuchsia glow of the room, as flames caressed the windows of Pioneer Hall itself, glass shattering below them, the air getting thin and scalding her lungs, Etta hesitated with an unpleasant shock of raw fear, the sort she had never felt in her whole headstrong life.

  Mammon held up his forearm again and tapped one of the watches with a finger glittering with shards of preci
ous gems: tourmaline and jasper and turquoise, flecks and chips caked over his previously perfect skin as though he had dipped his hands in glue and swept them back and forth across the bottom of a miner’s pack. “Time is money, after all.” Mammon’s voice was the thick, throaty gurgle-tinkle of molten gold washing across ice.

  Etta staggered through the gash in time and space, heaving for breath, as eager to escape Mammon’s fury as to escape the fire. She rested her face against the cool brick of an alley wall in the fog of a San Francisco night. Norton and two other voices chattered with excitement as they walked away, and under cover of that fog, lungs heaving in controlled bursts now that they were free of the fires of the past, Etta Place put herself back together and set off on the trail of her marks.

  Chinatown, San Francisco, 1912

  Donaldina Cameron leapt across the few feet from one rooftop to another, her thin frame stretched, landing with firm footing. The girl on her back said something, halfway between a whimper and a moan. She sounded afraid. Donaldina didn’t fault her for that. Her assistants also cleared the gap, and Donaldina spared a glance back to see if the hatchet men had made it onto the roof yet. There was no audible alarm, which told her they were hoping to get rid of the police without violence. That was good. Not wanting to be noticed also reduced the gangsters’ options for pursuing Donaldina and her compatriots. She turned to the one of her companions who also spoke Cantonese. “What did the child say? I couldn’t hear her. Is she distressed?”

  The stout woman with the ladder contraption slung over her shoulder chuckled. “She called you ‘grasshopper,’ ma’am. I think you impressed her with the jump.”