by Paul Yee
“Funny,” I said. “Mary came to Victoria and dumped a child on me. Your woman took the child away from you, even before birth. Yet the two are the same kind of children.”
“Not so,” Sam declared. “Mine has more Native blood.”
“That’s good?” Of course I was doubtful.
“Of course.”
“Bullshit.”
8
THE TRIALS OF WORKERS ON THE RAILWAY (1881)
To walk into jail was to die. In China, a scruffy convict shuffling through the streets with head locked into a heavy cangue was a walking corpse. If he survived harsh guards, cruel torture, and filthy cells, then angry brushstrokes at the clan hall would cross him off the family tree. If he managed to get released from prison, the guards sliced off one ear so that his record followed him forever for all to see. Death was no escape. If he died in jail, the body was burned among other corpses, the mixed ashes and bone bits dumped far away. Never buried by your family, without a spot on the ancestral altar, your soul was damned to wander homeless forever.
The four-storey stone walls of New Westminster’s penitentiary held 120 prisoners in small cells. The fifteen sullen Chinese inmates mumbled welcomes and urged me to stick with them in case fights erupted against the redbeards. They warned me who among the China men were rivals. They told me about the two old-timers who liked to poke their cocks up each other’s ass, saying that I shouldn’t be surprised if they approached me. All that I needed to say was a polite no. Otherwise everyone left me alone. I wasn’t the only rail hand there. Two coolies had been convicted of pilfering a Company warehouse, but they kept to themselves. No doubt they thought, Close to a judge, get power; Close to a cook, get food.
Me, I didn’t turn into a killer. My cellmate Big Town was a righteous man. He admitted to killing a man, a gambler with a small surname who had cheated him of his savings. He had proof of the gambler’s crime as well as witnesses, but getting justice in a town of lazy merchants was beyond his reach. He did the deed, he said, knowing that he couldn’t stomach his own indifference. The fact that the victim’s ghost never bothered him here meant that Big Town had taken the high road. He claimed that his family in China knew all the gory details and backed him fully for upholding clan honour.
When I complained about cold shoulders from the old-timers, Big Town chuckled. “You coolies came in throngs that filled the steerage deck while we sailed alone, just a handful of China men on the ship. Back then, most people went to South Ocean, to Singapore and Malaya, just a few hundred miles to go. But Gold Mountain was 6,000 miles away, across the world’s largest ocean. We timid children prayed to every god and spirit we knew. You coolies arrive with a written contract for job and wages; we came with nothing but rumours of gold. Your bosses feed and house you; we scavenged for firewood and slept on rocks. We learned English and Chinook one word at a time while redbeards laughed. You coolies run to your bookman who calls in a translator.”
I shot back, “We’re all safer now that more China men live here.”
Big Town talked late into the nights and confirmed that America was the best place to be. “My cousin and I trekked from town to town there, walking barefoot to save boot leather, doing odd jobs. Skies were sunny and dry, not rainy like here. Nights were warm; we slept outside. My cousin got a job cooking for a redbeard. That man knew farmers and businessmen who needed workers, so my cousin put China men into work gangs and hired them out. He got rich, erected a two-storey building, and installed a telegraph in his office. He sends home $200 a year.”
I smirked. “Yet you came here?”
“Don’t laugh. Every success is followed by fourteen failures. Such is the way of the world.”
When my prison term ended, a guard marched me to the gatehouse for my clothes. The dust and smells revealed they had not been washed or aired since I traded them three months earlier for a brown and yellow uniform. Good thing mice and moths had stayed away; if not, I would have returned to work half-naked. That trek was the start of my darkest time in Gold Mountain.
The escort cuffed my hands to a chain at his waist. On our way to the docks, we passed Chinatown, where compatriots frowned at me.
“I sold liquor and sent money home.” I raised my fists and jangled the chain. “I served my time! They shouldn’t tie me up! Tell him to unlock me.”
People kept their heads down.
I needed to break free for America, which Big Town had said was close by. I vowed to get there, sooner or later. But if I died first, then I wanted my ghost to stay and plague the railway so that crewmen would flee the worksite and go home sooner.
The shit-hole prick escort shamed me every way he could. A second chain bound me close to him. When I made water, he stood by me and did the same. We glanced at each other’s cocks; no doubt each of us thought his birdie was bigger. When I needed to squat, he chained me to a tree, my back tight against the trunk so that the shit rolled or streamed onto my feet. If I winced at the foul smells clinging to me, then so did he. Along the iron road, we dodged horse-drawn wagons and covered our ears against pealing hammers. We hurried across logs and planks over gaping ravines. When China men pointed at me, the escort jerked me off-balance or let the chain between us tighten.
Gold miners headed south. Those ragged parties were lone men fiercely armed and groups huddled for safety, bent under packs and rusty tools. I could lug their goods and vanish into their dusty midst, going wherever they went. But I needed pocket money; tightwads like them didn’t welcome freeloaders.
On the second night, I awoke in a dark roadhouse. To my surprise, the escort was gone. We had slept chained together the first night. Maybe the stink of my shit was too much to bear. Maybe he had gone for a squat himself. Maybe he went outside to drink and shoot the breeze with his new friends from dinner. Or he had stationed himself at the door, waiting for me to escape so that he could shoot me in the back. I groped for my boots.
I stopped. No money meant hunger and fruitless begging from strangers.
I pulled on a boot and paused over my cuffed hands. Someone needed to smash the iron without asking questions. Surely a China man would help me, unless he wanted to collect the reward.
The woods churned with wild animals. No one could outrun bears and cougars. If I went out that door, I didn’t even know which way to turn. I could trip and drown in the latrine.
Voices and heavy footsteps approached. I lay down quickly, my heart pounding.
I kicked and cursed myself. I wanted to scream aloud, pound with both fists the taut boxes that my lungs had become. The shit-pit prison had softened me into a lump of overripe fruit. We inmates needed only to obey the guards, and then each day was as neat and orderly as a mah-jongg layout: Sweep and mop the office floors, even though they were clean, muck out the horse stables, weed the vegetable fields, claw at tree roots, and clear the land to plant more crops. We even built high wooden fences to better imprison ourselves. The guards checked them with care, banging the butts of their rifles on them. We tore down buildings from long ago. At first I feared the armed guards might shoot us for sport. Then it became clear that their jobs depended on herding large numbers of inmates.
A prison sentence stopped a man from earning a living so that his loved ones would starve and suffer. But my faraway family farmed and fed itself without knowing my fate. More China men should break the laws here, I mused, in order to get some peace and quiet in jail. For the first time in my life, I tasted a rich man’s day, not fretting about the next day’s work.
Heavy rains began the night I returned to the railway camp. By morning, the worksite was a long pool of mud and water. The crew had been relocated, so now we worked outside with no ceiling over us. Men rejoiced that death could not crush or bury us from above. Our job was to dig out the foot of the mountain. We pushed forward and down, drilling holes and removing debris to carve a path that led to a tunnel.
Rain soaked us and filled the cut. We carried the rubble up wooden planks that climbed along on
e side of the great pit. The water left the wood slick and slippery, but the bosses shouted insults when we trudged too slowly. Everyone slipped and fell. Poy warned me to drop everything and grab the boards in order to soften the landing on rocks below, where legs and backs got broken. The crew had haggled with the bosses to gain room between each coolie so that one man falling backward would not cause more injuries. Some men claimed they got a better grip walking barefoot, but the bosses stopped them because the men had to sit and remove their shoes, tie their laces to drape them around their necks, and then stop again at the other end to don their footwear. The bosses said this wasted time.
When we stopped to wring out our rain-soaked clothes, to wipe water from our eyes that blurred our sight, the Company brought in wide farmers’ hats of stiff straw, varnished to be waterproof, but their prices were steep. We could have made these ourselves had the materials been on hand. Rain pooled atop the canvas tents and dripped inside. In the mornings, our wet clothes and shoes were still damp from the cool nights. But we kept our blankets folded, off the ground and under oilcloth, because sleeping in the damp led to sure death if warmth leaked from body and soul.
Patches of black mold spread inside the canvas tents. My childhood cough returned. When we children had winnowed the rice at harvest, the dusty air caused me to cough and spit. Grandmother tied a wet scarf around my mouth and nose, but I flung it away. Only fussy old women had worn those.
The coughing bent me into a weakling, hacking and spilling my guts. Healthy crewmen refused to sit near the sick ones at mealtime and set up a separate tent for us. “Illness enters through the mouth,” they insisted. I argued that mine was a childhood habit, nothing contagious. But a man in my tent started to cough, and we both got evicted. In the sick tent, men simmered in silent resentment unless one fellow had medicine that he was willing to share. It was there that I heard my first railway ghost story, told by Monkey:
“One day, a washman hurried through a long tunnel, newly finished, with the tracks about to be laid. The washman hoped to get new customers at the other end. The flame in his lantern went out, and then he dropped the matches and couldn’t find them. No worry. He saw a prick of light in the distance. Then someone came from behind, marching through the rubble.
“The washman called hello in Chinook and heard a reply in Chinese, ‘Who’s there?’
“The washman said he had lost his matches. The other said, ‘Walk fast. Tunnels have ghosts.’
“‘I’ll fall,’ said the washman.
“‘I worked here,’ said the other. ‘Hold my shoulder and come along.’
“So they walked. The rail hand offered water from a gourd.”
“‘Your surname?’ asked the washman. ‘Where’s your home village?’
“He got no reply. The tunnel grew brighter. He saw a shovel blade propped by the man’s ear but couldn’t see the face.
“The rail hand knelt to tie his shoelaces. ‘You go on ahead,’ he said.
“The washman reached the tunnel mouth where a railway crew was packing up, getting ready to move to a new site. A worker ran to him.
“‘Is that your gourd?’ he asked. ‘My brother had one like that too.’
“‘No,’ said the washman. ‘It belongs to the man behind me.’
“But no one came out of the tunnel.
“‘Are you there? Are you alright?’ The washman shouted into the tunnel.
“Two redbeards pumped through on a handcar, a lantern on the frame. The washman asked if they had seen anyone in the tunnel. They shook their heads.
“The worker grabbed the gourd. ‘This is my brother’s! I recognize this crack. He sealed it with sticky tree sap.’
“‘Where is he now?’ asked the washman.
“‘Ran off. Rocks crushed him in this tunnel. He wore this gourd at his waist, but we never found it.’
“The washman fled, never to be seen again.”
“It wasn’t foul here, but now it is,” muttered one of the sick men. “If no ghosts lingered before, then now they’ve come for sure.”
“Monkey bought a charm to keep away the ghosts,” said someone.
“Where?” I asked. “I need one.”
“Get a dozen! Crooks sell them in all shapes, all colours, everywhere along the line. Their pockets burst from the booming trade.”
I told them a far scarier tale that Big Town had told me:
“Twenty years ago, two brothers Yan came to gold territory and staked a claim near a wide lake ringed by forests. On the other shore were docks and shops, including a China man’s store. Late one day, Younger Brother rowed a boat to the store for supplies. There he chatted with miners from the district. When he left, night had fallen, but there was a bright moon. The storekeeper urged him to stay the night, but he wanted to get home.
“The next morning, the storekeeper found Yan’s boat bobbing by the docks. The supplies that had been purchased the day before were still aboard, but the oars were gone. The storekeeper quickly rowed across the lake. Older Brother said his sibling had not come home. The two men thought Younger Brother had fallen into the lake and drowned.
“The following morning, Older Brother marched into the store, all his belongings on his back. ‘I’m leaving,’ he said.
“Younger Brother had come to him in a dream the night before, he said, dripping wet with a greenish face. In the dream, he told him, ‘Four years ago, miner Chang found gold nearby. On his way home, robbers killed him while he slept. They tied rocks to his legs, rowed to the middle of the lake, and threw him in. Chang’s body has rotted, and now he needs a new body. Last night, he dragged me to the bottom of the lake. Older Brother, get out. Every few years, Chang’s angry spirit will pull down a new body.’
“The storekeeper thought Yan was scared of being alone and shrugged him off. It was easy to fall overboard and drown, especially when a man couldn’t swim.
“Four years later, the storekeeper had forgotten the Yan brothers. Then a miner went missing one night while rowing across the lake. The empty boat bobbed to shore, but the oars were missing. The storekeeper left town right away. He said the lake had no name, but he was sure that boatmen still vanished there.”
I had asked Big Town how many lakes needed to be crossed on the way to America.
He didn’t know.
Throat tonic was costly, two days’ wages. Onion had seized my liquor trade and found new customers. I offered to take bootleg to sell at other camps.
“People know to come here.” He dismissed me with a wave of his hand. “No need to beg for trade.”
Though not a brotherhood member, Onion gave Number Two shots of free whisky. To show respect, he claimed. As for Native buyers, their headmen hadn’t come to bother Onion. They had plenty of trouble of their own, as redbeard settlers moved onto their lands and claimed rights to their water and food.
Onion asked about bootleggers in prison. I hadn’t met any.
He laughed. “Only you were stupid enough to get caught!”
Shorty’s worsening pain from his injury caused him to smoke opium every day. He gladly admitted to ratting me out to the Company.
“Still won’t confess?” he railed. “You will rot in Hell. Even if I die, I won’t let you go.”
“I told you, you have the wrong man.”
In town, the merchant snorted when I asked for tips on making money. “If there were ways to get rich here, a hundred men would be doing them already. America? Men everywhere squat on the streets, jobless.”
“At least they’re warm and dry.”
“They brawl to death among their own. And fight the redbeards. Last year, redbeards hanged one China man and chased the rest out of Den-wah city.”
“Just one place.”
“They rioted in San Francisco Chinatown. The army took three days to restore order.”
In camp, I asked California about this.
“Redbeards in America hanged seventeen China men in one town,” he said.
“Why
do China men keep coming?”
“Better than home.”
But it wasn’t better here. Men fell, broke their bones, and worked through pain. The constant rain never let our feet get dry and warm. Head Cook still served the same slop of rice and fish bits. The price of goods in the Company store kept climbing. Any trip to the south would be a solo trip for me. Poy had let himself get swallowed by the work. He wore western shirt and trousers, all of the thickest materials and the highest prices. His boots, made of rubber to keep his feet dry, had ridged soles that he said gave him better grip on the wet planks. He ate with Number Two, who wanted helpers close by to take on any trouble.
On my return to camp, Poy’s first words to me had been, “You stink of shit.”
“You sent no letters,” I retorted, half in jest.
“What, pay to get words written, and then find someone who knows English and Chinese to deliver them? The prison guards demand bribes but no one knows how much, so I must give extra money to the go-between and pray he can be trusted. You think I’m stupid?”
In my absence, Poy had sent money to my family, so my debts had grown. I didn’t repay him right away, not after he harangued me in front of the crew: “You had peace but went out to bring home that liquor trouble. Why didn’t you just keep working? Then you’d have more money than me.”
I tried to do better. I avoided game halls. I shunned the whores in town and used my hand for release. Rags drying stiffly, starched with semen, waved like banners throughout the railway camps. I shaved my own head and nicked myself badly, drawing laughter and mosquitoes.
I thought about robbing a store. But plenty of men prowled for extra cash and informers lurked everywhere. I thought to follow a winner from a game hall one night, knock him down, and grab his money. Such robberies were common; men knew to travel in groups. I pawed at Native men sleeping off their drink by the roadsides, hoping to find valuables. I thought to pull down my pants and offer my shit-hole to men who fondled other men, but the Pacific Ocean didn’t stop gossip from reaching China.
