God of Luck

by Ruthann Lum McCunn

  “There’s the rent I have to pay to the comandante in charge of North Island. Then the boatmen who row me across the strait want their share. And the devil who rules this dunghill demands as much for this stall space as I give the comandante for a store!

  “Between them all, I barely scrape by. I ask you, what fool except myself, a former pig who’s experienced your misery, would have abandoned a thriving business on the mainland to bring you and your brothers on North Island these small comforts?”

  “Don’t you mean what fool would buy from you except a captive?” a wiry new arrival asks tartly.

  Many grumble agreement.

  Chufat, oozing understanding, says, “I was an angry pig, too. Stick around and I’ll tell you how this piggy got away.”

  Diggers who’ve heard his story leave as soon as they’ve made their purchases. Most—clutching their packets of incense, dried fruit, twists of tobacco, bottles of balm, or tins of opium—shamble off silently. Some grouse that Chufat likes the sound of his own voice as much as he does his profits, that he’s a blowhard, a cheat.

  I’m no less skeptical of Chufat, and my back and legs ache for bed. Nevertheless, I always stay. Later, I break Chufat’s story into sections that I examine as closely as if I were Bo See studying our silkworms tray by tray, looking for anything that might be amiss or improved.

  CHUFAT WAS ONE of seventy-five pigs purchased by a broker for a sugarcane plantation in a fertile river valley between this rainless coast’s dark, forbidding cliffs and the distant cloud-topped mountains.

  The pigs, on their arrival at the plantation, assembled in front of a hook-nosed white man who informed them—through an aloof, smooth-tongued interpreter— that he, their patron, had bought their labor for eight years and they’d be locked in at night to make sure they didn’t steal what was now his.

  “You’ll be paid in scrip which you can spend in the plantation store. This store is well stocked with everything you Chinese enjoy, even opium. But I give you fair warning. The days you fail to complete your assigned tasks will be counted as sick days. All sick days will be added to your length of service.

  “If you have any ideas about running, I advise you to forget them. The overseers take roll call each morning, and I keep a detailed description of each worker. Should you be foolish enough to attempt escape despite my counsel, I will post your description in handbills and newspaper advertisements along with the offer of a generous reward for your return.

  “There are skilled man-catchers who earn their livings from tracking down runaway Chinese. These man-catchers will chase you down, and when they bring you in, which I assure you they will, you’ll be severely punished. Naturally, your length of service will also have to be extended to cover my expenses in getting you back and the days you’re missing.”

  Even as the patron was talking, a devil big as an ox and black as soy sauce hauled in a scrawny runaway by his queue. The runaway, bruised purple from head to toe, was whipped by a black-skinned devil-driver until his back resembled pulverized meat. Then, for the next thirty days, the runaway was forced to cut cane while heavily chained.

  THE MAN WHO purchased my contract in Callao was likewise a broker. We diggers are also paid in scrip. The devils that drive us are black, too.

  Chufat says that for hundreds of years, black-skinned men, women, and children were stolen from Africa and carried across the seas chained in devil-ships, but the Africans who were enslaved in Peru have all been freed. Certainly our drivers act like bitter wives who, on becoming mothers-in-law, avenge their past abuse on their daughters-in-law. Every one of the devils is quick to slice open a digger’s flesh with their whips, and they leap to carry out the cruelest orders of our devil-king.

  This creature—white and treacherous as the shit-covered rocks encircling the three islands—rules all, and he has a standing order for the drivers to shackle any digger who breaks a tool, even by accident.

  Of course, a digger in shackles has to hold up his chains with one hand while walking, otherwise the metal will gall his ankles. Like the rest of us, though, he has to carry his basket or push his wheelbarrow, heaped high with guano, to the depot for loading onto ships.

  The distance, depending on where we’re digging, can be as great as a quarter mile. Still the digger in chains must deliver the usual five tons—that’s at least one-hundred loads, two-hundred treks back and forth—before he can stop for the day. If he fails, a devil will drive him with repeated lashings to the devil-king.

  The digger will then be offered a choice: He can be chained overnight onto a pinnacle of rock where he’ll be battered by the surf and risk tumbling into the sea; or he can be shackled to a skiff with a hole in the bottom, so he has to bail nonstop or drown.

  In truth, these are not punishments but tortures which pleasure the devil-king, and more than one digger has been pushed beyond endurance into madness.

  CHUFAT LIKES TO boast, “The conditions I endured on the plantation were equally harsh. And under my patron’s system of accounting, no pig was ever released from labor unless he became too old or weak or crippled to be useful. Still, I recognized I was lucky.”

  Those hearing him for the first time gasp. The tone of those providing translations into other dialects betrays their shock. I vow yet again to make Chufat’s luck mine.

  On every side diggers demand:

  “Explain yourself.”

  “How were you lucky?”

  “Because I didn’t have these.” Chufat flashes his gold teeth.

  There’s a puzzled buzz, irritated growls.

  “Hah?”

  “Stop talking foolishness.”

  “Just because we’re pigs, don’t take us for idiots.”

  No one leaves, though, and Chufat elaborates, “Gold teeth would have made me a marked man, and I had nothing, no birthmark or scar, not one distinguishing feature that would let man-catchers identify me.”

  Again there’s a buzz, this time from knowing laughter, hands slapping backs, thighs, and Chufat raises his voice, “That’s not all. I was lucky because my patron’s house servants were native indios and mixed-blood cholos—like the men who work here as loaders and the boatmen who bring supplies from Pisco.”

  PISCO—A CLUSTER of small, sun-scorched houses and tall palms on an otherwise barren, rocky coast—is some twelve miles away by Chufat’s estimate, directly opposite the strip of shale where we diggers drag ourselves at day’s end to wash.

  This is the island’s one beach, and it is guarded by only two soldiers. Yet even the boldest among us won’t step beyond the ankle-deep water in which we’re permitted. Not for fear of the waves, which are fierce, but on those occasions a digger has inadvertently overreached while rinsing a jacket, both soldiers, barking like the sea lions swarming over the rocks, have raised their muskets and shot the digger in his legs, ensuring he was caught and suffered prolonged punishments before he died.

  Nestled in the rocks, glistening pools of water beckon. But sea lions bask on these rocks, and their bared teeth, long as my fingers, are terrifying. Besides, after fourteen, sixteen hours’ labor, few diggers have the energy for raising their voices above the noisy surf to talk let alone climbing rocks baked red-hot by the relentless sun.

  Indeed, the legs of many diggers fold under them on arrival at the beach, some before. The rest totter as clumsily as the islands’ white-breasted, black-winged birds, the ones I think of as little buffalo because their cries are muted like a buffalo’s moan.

  Rolling our pants high as they’ll go, we make do with dousing ourselves in spray from the waves pummeling the shore. The water, wonderfully cool, turns the guano caked to my skin soapy. But the salt leaves a sticky film, and no matter how hard I scrub my face, arms, legs, and chest with the rag from around my neck, I can’t feel clean.

  What I do feel is dismay at the numerous arms and backs that are crisscrossed with fresh wounds, old scars, the angry purple and red sores mottling skin. How long can I keep mine unbroken, sealed
from infection?

  In my exhaustion at day’s end, I sometimes lose my balance as receding waves scoop out the shells and stones beneath my feet, and were it not for the thick calluses on my soles, my skin would be punctured as I slip and slide. If I ever fail to break my fall, my legs, back, and arms will surely be pierced; beyond the reach of cooling water, my skin will be seared by the shale’s white heat.

  More than once, while struggling to regain my balance, yelps have leaped unbidden from my lips. Whenever a buffalo bird peeps, the entire flock responds, twisting their necks and heads from side to side until they locate the source, then waddling and hobbling over as fast as they can, their wings sticking out like short, stiff arms. But at my bleats, diggers near me avert their heads the way I do when others cry or tumble. Whatever strength a digger has is saved for helping brothers, cousins, close friends, lovers. Mine are too far away to hear me, and since we’re paid in scrip, I have no means to send them a letter.

  In truth, it isn’t only that which keeps me from writing but shame. My capture has surely added to my family’s burdens. How can I heap more worries on them by revealing my sufferings?

  THE LAST COCOON reeled, my sisters-in-law, nieces, and I bring out our embroidery frames, silks, and needles for our winter work.

  This is the season for visiting. But we still have no word from Ah Lung, and villagers, afraid our bad luck will infect them, avoid us the way they would a family in mourning.

  I am not afraid that Ah Lung is dead. If he were, my heart would know it. But he must be suffering, otherwise he’d write. Aching with worry, I ask, “Husband, where are you? Are you suffering because there are no free Chinese near? I know from your sister that your contract cannot be broken. Given the means, though, could a free Chinese buy your freedom? Is there one who would?”

  BOATMEN FROM PISCO deliver barrels of water and food daily. These supplies are for everybody on the island: five-hundred diggers, fifty drivers, one-hundred loaders, and the devil-king. But the drivers won’t carry barrels from the beach to the storage sheds any more than the devil-king, and there are too many ships waiting for guano to spare loaders for the chore. So when the Pisco boat is forty, fifty feet from the island, devil-drivers choose a half-dozen of the strongest diggers and order them to the beach.

  The distance between beach and sheds is a half-mile. Many trips are required. And since carrying the barrels does not excuse a digger from meeting his daily quota of guano, I’m impatient when, raising my hands over my eyes to shield them from the glare, I see the boat bobbing on kingfisher-blue swells like a seabird at rest.

  At the same time, I realize the boat is where the swells begin heaving in ever steeper slopes, becoming the waves that crash against the rocks, this scrap of beach, and from maneuvering our family’s skiff in rough water, I know any boat attempting to rush in would swamp.

  The boatmen from Pisco never hurry. Alternately resting and riding the rollers, they edge closer, then dart through the breakers in a final spurt that always lands them safely on the beach.

  I believe Chufat was similarly masterful in handling his escape from the plantation.

  PASSING THE DEVIL-patron’s house while walking back and forth from the sleeping sheds to the cane fields or the sugar mill, Chufat had noted the open cooking shed at the end of a breezeway, the side yard where the servants hung their own freshly washed clothes to dry. One by one and with months in between so as to avoid notice, Chufat stole a small, sharp knife, pair of white pants, shabby hat, patched shirt, and well worn hemp sandals, hid each item in his bedding.

  He picked up Spanish words by eavesdropping on the servants, listening closely to the devil-patron and the devil-drivers, matching the interpreter’s translations to what they’d said. When protected by the din of the sugar mill, Chufat practiced saying the Spanish words out loud. Locked in for the night, he kept to himself. Discreetly studying the sleeping shed’s cane walls, he silently reviewed his expanding vocabulary, arranged and rearranged the words into sentences:

  Un plan, a plan.

  Necesito, I need.

  Tengo, I have.

  Necesito un plan.

  Tengo un plan.

  BACK IN THE close quarters of the devil-ship’s between-decks, talk was such a constant that I came to understand words from other dialects without making the smallest effort. Then, too, if I was slow rising from all fours at the cookhouse and a devil, pricking my neck with the point of his bayonet, snapped, “Hurry,” the meaning was clear. When Red barked, “Joe,” and a sailor whose skin gleamed like the finest black lacquer appeared, that had to be his name.

  Yet I didn’t pick up any English beyond commands and names. While under the watchful eyes of the captain and Red, the crew didn’t, so far as I could determine, ever break the rule forbidding them to converse amongst themselves when on duty. And, with the exception of Joe, sailors sent below as guards protected themselves from the awful reek by tying cloths over their noses and mouths. To maintain order, they relied entirely on their bayonets’ sharp blades to speak for them.

  There were times I could have sworn that Joe and Ah Ming were talking to each other. But whenever I cocked an ear for confirmation or shifted a little to see, Ah Ming would be making a remark to someone else; Joe would be nowhere near.

  I could have questioned Ah Ming directly. Just as I could have asked him to teach me more English. Much as he might have scoffed, which I dreaded, he’d have obliged. He might even have taken me into his confidence. But I did not then understand what could be gained by knowing the language of our captors.

  Now that I do, I wonder whether Ah Ming really was suffering the agonies of cholera when Joe hauled him, groaning, above or if the two were enacting a plan plotted in secret; for later that same day, the cooks issued hard biscuits and plain water in place of rice, then the hatch grating slammed shut and its bolts rasped, signifying the ship was headed into a port. So Ah Ming, once out of our hearing, might well have turned silent, and Joe, instead of carrying him to the sickroom, might have pretended he was already dead, thrown him overboard with weights deliberately knotted to fall away. Ah Ming could then have swum to another vessel or to shore and returned home.

  IF THERE IS a digger on this dunghill who knows Spanish, I have not come across him. Nor does the devil-king employ either servants or an interpreter. Every unfortunate here is his servant, and he has no need for an interpreter since experienced diggers easily cover the essentials for new arrivals and the devil-drivers work us with their whips rather than their tongues.

  During our daily meal break, the drivers flock together and chatter like raucous magpies, providing ample opportunities for eavesdropping. But by the time they call the break, we’ve been digging, shoveling, and delivering guano to the depot for six hours straight. Long after every digger has dropped his tools, I feel the repeated stabs of pickaxes from the soles of my feet to my skull, the muscles in my arms and legs twitch, sweat still streams from my every pore, and I am incapable of anything beyond falling on my meager ration of tepid tea and rancid goat meat in a mess of rice and beans.

  As for the loaders, the closest I get to them is at the depot, a large area near the edge of a cliff that is enclosed by a wall of stout cane.

  PLUMES OF GUANO dust leap above the depot’s wall like flames. As I approach, I stop a moment, take the rag from my neck and wrap it around my head so it covers my nose and mouth. Before stepping through the break in the wall that serves as the depot’s entrance, I narrow my eyes.

  Instantly, I’m shrouded in a yellow fog. Dark shadows loom. Lithe black snakes hiss warnings, strike flesh. Howls are frequent as bird cries, the rumble of wheelbarrows, the pounding surf.

  Feeling as if I’ve crossed the Yellow River into Hell, I bawl out my number to the burly shadow responsible for keeping tally of our loads, “Cuatro!”

  Back home, we always avoided the number four since sei has the same sound as death. On this dunghill, the number is doubly cursed because it belonged to a d
igger now dead. True, every digger bears a dead man’s number, and cuatro doesn’t sound remotely like sei. Still a shiver chills my spine each time I give my number, and I offer up a quick prayer for mercy.

  Mercy. The driver tallying loads could, on seeing a digger stagger through the entrance, show mercy by making two or even three checkmarks next to the digger’s number instead of one. Who would see him perform this kindness? How would the devil-king find out and fault him? Yet no digger, to my knowledge, has enjoyed any such benevolence from a driver. Certainly I have not.

  Like every digger though, I’ve had to swallow the injustice of a driver declaring my load short, I’ve suffered the misery of making it up. So when the burly shadow raises an arm in acceptance and waves me on, I’m relieved.

  Lurching forward, my gut tightens. Already I’m wheezing and grunting for breath under my cloth muzzle, blundering because I instinctively keep sealing my eyes against the hurtful dust, and before I can pitch out my load, I must descend a steep slope.

  The ground here, covered with drifts of loose guano, is treacherous: One leg can sink as far as the ankle or calf, the other up to the knee. Fighting to keep a heavy wheelbarrow from becoming a runaway, my muscles strain and cramp; my arms threaten to yank out of their sockets. Doubled over from a basket of guano on my back, I stumble more frequently, bumping into other diggers.

  More than once, I’ve come close to being buried in a headlong tumble. Even when I feel my limbs, all atremble, cannot be trusted, however, I don’t ditch my load sooner than I should. To be a lucky runaway like Chufat, I must remain unmarked, and devil-drivers, despite the blinding dust, manage to catch miscreants with their whips.

  SHIPS COMING FOR guano anchor on the depot side of the island where there is little wind. While the sea around the anchorage is undisturbed by a single ripple, surf dashes against the dunghill’s rocks in sheets fifty feet high, sometimes more, and at the cliff ’s edge, where we’re supposed to dump our guano, the noise is deafening.