by Paul Yee
The blankets were thin against the chill so I drew the boy close. He turned this way and that. I wanted to slap him to settle down. I slept poorly and awoke when it was still dark. The boy was gone. I sprang to my feet. The worm had crawled to Sam and slipped under his blanket. Those two shared a similar stink, I told myself.
“Come!” I forced the boy to trot along. He kept squatting and pressing his hands to the steel rail, his gaze fixed on its mirror-like finish.
Big and small bridges carried the railway across the creeks that fed into the Fraser. Clear water streamed glistening down the mountains but turned muddy in the swift wide river. On the iron road side of the waterway, only the upper reaches of hills held green trees, ones that had escaped woodsmen and forest fires. Below the tree line, broken earth and charred stumps drained into long dry gullies. The mountain slopes were steep; workers had let logs roll from high up down to the water, crushing and ripping at everything in their way like maddened bulls. During the Guest Wars, the wild lands and bamboo groves had burned along with human bodies. Our fields lay trampled as blowing dust and ashes blinded us. Those lands, too, had not been restored.
The river narrowed as the two shores reached for each other. In the middle sat a rocky island, a small mountain of trees braced against the water. Sam spoke to the boy before turning to ask me, “Know what that is?”
No.
“It’s the home of the bear that swims under the water.”
“Bears can swim?”
“It planted this great rock to stop war canoes from going upriver. But nothing stops the fish!”
The grey plank buildings of one village perched on the hillside. Below, its people leapt like mountain goats over the rocky bank of the river and crouched with long-handled nets on platforms above the swollen current. They watched the water closely with spears at the ready. On snatching a fish from the water, they heaved it into a stone pit where it was clubbed to death and then butchered. The Native tools were hand-made and bound by rough twine. I pushed the brat forward to see; he would need that gear in his future.
Sam backed his pack onto a boulder to relieve the weight and hailed a woman hanging strips of orange flesh onto a rack. Her white teeth gleamed when she turned around. The boy ran to join them, and she patted his back and ruffled his hair. But when I approached, she resumed her work and Sam walked away.
I hurried after him, annoyed to be shunned. “That woman, does she recognize the boy? Does she know his mother?”
He shook his head.
“Did you ask her?”
“There are four days to talk!”
He spoke with people fishing, children picking berries, porters old and young bent under laden packs. When I asked if these were friends or strangers, he claimed they were both. I expected him to be asking after Mary, but he never had news for me. I stopped listening to his conversations and trying to catch familiar phrases. There was no need to learn new words now unless they were fresh ways to say farewell and good riddance to this joyless place.
The brat begged Sam for stories and games but ran to me when he needed to shit. The mix-blood was the boy’s friend, but I was the servant who fetched water and took him into the bushes. The little master needed a slave to light his incense, sweep his floor, fatten his dog, and make sure the tea was hot. I tried once to walk away, but the boy screamed for me to stay. That pleased me, to be joined by someone who also feared the forest.
“Mary could be hiding from us,” I grumbled to Sam. “What if she isn’t in Lytton? What if she lied to me?”
“People will know where she is.”
“My ship ticket got extended by ten days. If I’m not in Victoria by then, I lose it.”
At mid-morning, I reached a site before Sam and the brat. Boarding halls that had housed a hundred redbeards yawned with missing doors and shattered windows. Chirping birds flitted in and out. They must have built nests in the rafters. Under its own little roof was a large outdoor oven, domed like an egg but cracked. The rubbish heaps held rusty tins, chipped crockery, broken chairs, and livestock bones, dried and white as paper. I thought of China men with their sweaty faces and white-dusted clothes, but all that remained of their camps were tent pegs poking like snouts from the ground and trenches of wildflowers and tall grasses that marked the latrines. They had been set far from the boarding halls due to redbeard complaints.
I quickened my pace. I hadn’t thought of the iron road when I was deciding to take the boy to Mary. Who would have guessed that that cursed path would help me reach an important destination? Those wretched days were best forgotten.
The smell of a wood fire led to a cabin, its doors and windows intact, capped by a mishmash of shingles. Cockeyed timber enclosed a garden, beside which sat a man, chanting at the sing-song pace of bored schoolboys.
The garden was a cemetery, with rocks, fence pickets, and rough-hewn wood as markers.
“Good morning.” I made myself sound cheerful.
The man staggered over with a body-twisting limp, introduced himself as Moy, and pointed to my pack. “You walk with the mix-blood?”
The fur collar of his greatcoat glistened in the sun. Much too big for him, the garment was cinched at the waist and stuck out like boards. His forehead wasn’t shaved, and the unkempt growth was swept behind his ears toward the pigtail. He looked me up and down with his small eyes and said, “That cockhead Sam hires his own kind, often just a boy. Why do you work for him?”
“He pays.” It was easier to lie than to explain things.
“A China man can do better.”
I looked around, acting curious.
“I told him to limp off with his rotted corpse, never to come back,” he said. “He wants you to sell goods to me, no? You know what that shit-hole fiend told people? He said I should go home, said I had no right to stay here.”
His tangled hair suggested someone crazy-crazy. No normal person lived so close to graves, especially those of fellow workers who hadn’t been ready to die.
“You the caretaker?” I asked.
“Where are the visitors? Everyone rushes south, as if boiling water scalds their feet. No one stops, no one asks who is lying here.”
“What’s your book?” I dodged railway talk.
“Three Word Classic. I read to my old bean.”
I tilted my head. “In the house?”
He pointed to the graves. “In three years, I’ll dig up his bones and take them home.”
His look was so smug that I had to snub the boast.
“Don’t you fear the redbeards?” I asked. “If there’s trouble, you’re here alone.”
“To follow you stinking bastards across the ocean now means I will never come back for the old bean. What cockhead visits hell twice? Better to wait and make one trip.”
“You’ll pass up prospects in China.”
“Huh! The latrine is full when everyone shits at once.”
I reminded myself that he was a customer. “You must have been close to your old bean.”
“That stupid thing? He gambled away the land, the house, even the shit bucket. Our kinsmen refused to help unless he came here to work.”
“You were a steadfast son.”
“He wouldn’t come alone.”
When Sam arrived, Moy barked, “Jaap-jung doi, I told you to stay away.”
“Just showing my helper the route.”
Peter darted into the cabin and I gave chase. Mother and Grandmother always warned us children never to enter people’s homes. If we got invited, then we must stay in the courtyard and not visit any rooms. That way, no charge of theft could stick to us. Clearly, the brat had not heard this lesson. I pulled him out quickly but not before noticing a line of shoes and boots lined against one wall. They were black and brown, left and right, high-sided and low, with laces and without. Only one shoe from each pair remained, so no doubt the other had been lost or damaged beyond repair. With his limp, Moy could likely wear mismatched shoes without drawing further bad luck to himself.
We followed Moy as he hobbled to the graveyard clutching a metal bucket, scorched black from flames. Sam told me to light the incense. To him, corpses must have been all the same, no matter if the person had just died or had lain buried for a while. At home, the bones of the ancestors were revered while they watched over us like a woodblock print of the gods. The recently dead, on the other hand, were much feared because they raged with anger at being cut off from earthly pleasures. Someone who been near a fresh corpse would never be allowed near the ancestral tablets. Here, I raised the burning sticks and candles, bowed three times, and planted them in soil. Sam handed me the whisky, and I poured three shots onto the ground.
“Elder Uncles, Younger Uncles, kinsmen, and friends,” Sam called out, “all of you who sleep here in this earth, under this green grass. On behalf of the firms and people of Yale, on behalf of your co-workers, we come to pay respects. We lit fragrant incense; it is the smell of home. We poured whisky; it will warm you. We send money to ease your travels, no matter which way you go.”
I was impressed. China men in Yale must have taught him the words. I fanned the sheets of spirit money, dipped them to the flame and slid them into the bucket. Grey smoke swirled with moths of black ash and rose into the air. When Sam went to unpack the goods, I looked for my clan name among the graves.
A red and black bird hopped from marker to marker. I didn’t chase it away; guardian spirits came in many forms.
In Victoria, every surname group bragged about having the greatest number of deaths, as if mass anguish was boast-worthy, as if buckets of human blood made a weighty claim against the iron road. Even when dead, railway workers were summoned into duty for clan honour.
“That mix-blood shouldn’t be the one doing this,” said Moy. “China men must protect our own rituals.”
I nodded. “Redbeard men and boys hurl rocks and blow brass horns to disrupt our parades. They toss our ritual food to their dogs and laugh when we warn them of bad luck.”
“When outsiders do the rituals, the power of the rites is lost,” said Moy. “When a man passes on, his honour should pass onto kin, not strangers.”
He pointed to his father’s grave. “We were drilling a tunnel. One day we went outside when the explosives were lit. They went ba-lum, ba-lum, ba-lum. We heard the all-clear whistle, wee, wee, wee! My father was first to go in. But then came one last ba-lum! Rocks shot out like cannonballs. One slab spun like a flying plate and cut off his head.”
He took my frown for pity. “When I tell this, people don’t believe me.”
“Maybe they heard it before.”
“Screw you.”
“Me, I heard the man was surnamed Chan, then Lee, and then Mah. Some say he was a bookman; others say he was a coolie. Some say the head rolled down the mountain into the river. Others say wild animals ran off with the head, leaving a trail of blood.”
“Screw you!” Moy limped off, his body jerking from side to side.
Sam had put rice, dark sausages, and stiff slabs of salt fish on a cloth over the ground. The brat squatted there, fingering this and that.
Moy stomped by. “Wet shit and stinking piss. Who wants your garbage?”
He slammed the cabin door. I pulled Peter away before he was accused of soiling the food.
Sam ran up and banged on the wood, offering discounts. When no reply came, he gave me a vicious shove.
“Stupid pig, can’t you talk to people?”
“He spoke rubbish.”
The cabin door creaked but nobody came out. Moy was watching.
“Who doesn’t tell lies?” asked Sam. “You want to carry a full load all the way to Lytton?” He pushed me again.
I shoved back. No mix-blood should bully me. No father should look weak in front of his son.
The boy’s gaze darted from me to Sam, his arms suddenly still. He should see that there was no fear in me. One day he too would need to fight for his honour.
Sam saw the door. “Many customers ahead!” he called. “Nothing will be left on my return trip. You’ll have to walk to town yourself.”
Moy didn’t come forth.
We resumed walking. Sam was angry, but that was his nature. Moy was my countryman, my workmate. If he told a lie, then I had a duty to call him out. I had worked on the railway; I knew its stories. I wasn’t like Sam, who only wanted to sell goods to Moy.
Distant clouds dropped a grey curtain to the horizon. The green and brown patches of mountain and forest curled into shapes of giant thrones, humans, and animals. I was a fool to have accepted Sam’s offer, mortgaging my body without stating for how long. My legs trembled and my back ached, making it a strain to look up from the canyon floor to the sky. The walls were steep, bristling with sharp edges. These mountains had killed my compatriots, so many of us that we were like children who scampered into danger while daydreaming. In China, forested mountains housed hermits who spouted reams of wisdom:
Get a mosquito to carry a mountain.
One mountain is high; another is higher.
One mountain can’t house two tigers.
Those proverbs failed in Canada like water slipping through cupped hands. The sages didn’t know how to use black explosives; they didn’t know that Fire could be alloyed with Metal to rip apart the mountain’s core; they hadn’t seen the horizon rearranged in a single day’s work.
The iron road had been laid atop the old wagon road built for the gold rush twenty years ago. That trail had teetered on skimpy ledges above the surging river until the coolies had widened them.
Then the railway broke from the wagon road to cross a high trestle over a dried-out waterfall. The legs of the crossing were a sturdy cage of logs, splayed at its feet, braced by tiers of cross-tied beams. The ground far below was rubble, cast-off lumber, and white rocks the size and shape of human skulls.
As Sam and the boy ambled across, I paused in front of the old stream. Tree roots poked from soil and the moss-covered bones of the serpent. Further up the cliff hung twisted vines, remnants of an early Native route. I looked at it from all angles. It must have taken long planning and great daring to sling that trail over the high rocks. For a moment, the land didn’t seem so new and untouched.
The two rails of the iron road merged at a single point at the bridge’s end. I was halfway across.
Already?
My knees buckled. Out floated my hands. My legs folded, crouched. I reached for the rail but stopped, half kneeling. My load shifted, about to drop, like a ship’s anchor. I was a statue in a crumbling temple.
“Squatting to shit?” Sam called. “Hurry!”
I clamped my lips. My mouth was dry as paper. My lungs heaved. I gripped my armpits.
Sam’s arms were triangles at his waist. Wind gusted past my ears.
“Watch my goods,” he yelled.
I tugged at the knots of my pack without looking down.
Sam ran at me, his steps rumbling through the wood and up my backbone.
I almost tipped over. “Don’t come near…”
He grabbed my hand. I pulled it back.
He glared at me. “Turn your body. Walk sideways.”
I didn’t move. This coward couldn’t be me. This was someone else.
“Look this way,” he said. “Raise your head.”
I whimpered.
“See the river?” His voice was a granny coaxing a reluctant child. “It’s pretty, very pretty. Look far away.”
His hand drifted in front of me.
I grabbed it.
His other hand shot out for balance.
“I take a step,” he said, “and then you take a step.”
We went sideways, tiny paces, one foot at a time. I was a toddler learning to walk.
Once off the trestle, I squatted. My hands clawed at the ground. Hard, sharp gravel never felt so comforting.
“Good thing you stood still,” said Sam. “Other people, stronger than you, fell.”
I looked away.
“That load on your back,”
he said, “it threw you off, didn’t it?”
I nodded.
“Leave the load and take the boy back.”
I burst out, “All I need do is look ahead … as you said.”
“I need my goods,” Sam declared, “not you.”
“You can’t move two loads.”
“Someone will come. I’ll hire him.”
“No one passed us.”
I marched on.
“Come back,” he yelled. “Thief!”
That stinking bastard Sam was no bigwig merchant with money and men at his beck and call. I walked fast, head down, eyes on the steady thrust of my boots. He was a mix-blood; did he ever glance at a mirror? No doubt his father had run off long ago, not wanting this son, not leaving him with family or means.
My family had farmed in our village for three hundred years. All China knew my renowned ancestor, Yang Jun, the Upright. Two thousand years ago, he refused a bribe of gold. The briber pressed him to accept, claiming the secret between them was safe. Yang Jun replied, “Heaven knows, Earth knows, you know, and I know. How can you say that no one knows?” Temples and grand halls throughout China were named after his “Four Wisdoms.”
Yes, that bridge spooked me. The iron road was death: the passing of compatriots, the loss of friends, the mourning of men not ready to die. My own death had been close.
I should never have come back here. The iron road had defeated me before. And here I was, fighting a mix-blood who was superior to me.
5
A DREAM OF RICHES ON THE RAILWAY (1881)
Our first runaway was the cockhead least expected to show any backbone: Old Skinny, the opium addict. He waited for the full moon, then grabbed his blanket and clothes, and strolled off.
“Had I known that the bastard was leaving,” Little Touch said about his friend, “I would have followed him.”
In town, he had overheard the addict ask about the border but doubted the fool had the gall to go.
I kicked myself. I should have been first to leave. If I had been nicer to that cunning bastard, then he might have asked me along. He could have used my help. But he was a frail old man, and I didn’t want to carry him on my back. America was about freedom. I wasn’t his slave.
