A Superior Man

by Paul Yee

  I clapped him on the back and rubbed my palm there. “I just finished carving Poy’s grave-stick,” I said. “His name is imbedded in your back. His ghost will follow you forever.”

  I paid California, Old South, and Number Two to help me move the body. I bought water from the river for Poy’s hands and feet. My tears wet the cloth for cleaning his face. Then we carried him to a site with a view of the river.

  Upon our return, Poy’s clothes were tossed into the cleansing fire. I watched the flames die down, and then left the camp late that night. I thought Company thugs would chase and seize me, but nothing happened. Maybe Poy’s ghost was watching, maybe not.

  Shorty had been right all along. I deserved to die. If I had had the courage to join Onion’s Native caravan, then those two men would still be alive.

  10

  ON THE ROAD, GENTLEMEN ARE RARE (1885)

  The darkness within the Big Tunnel began to lift as a nib of light grew bigger in the distance. Our footsteps sped up and sounded lighter. Near the entrance we heard banging sounds, the thud of iron on rock, the ringing of steel on tempered metal.

  The damn railway was finished, wasn’t it?

  Canada was linked from ocean to ocean now, wasn’t it?

  Weren’t all China men heading home to safety and peace?

  Loud cursing and the thrum of saw blades grew louder and then clearer. The boy darted ahead to the curved road and we stopped.

  The railway vanished under soil and rock jumbled higher than a house. Leafy treetops that were once aloft in the sky lay under loose earth. Boulders had split open, showing jagged eggshell edges. Threads of white roots wormed through dark soil and layers of yellow clay. Shiny crystals in the newly exposed rock caught the light and glittered.

  Yes, redbeards might bleed from the land’s unyielding edges, but you would never hear them cry surrender. They sauntered away, hands in their pants pockets, hats tipped back on their heads, whistling cheery tunes. Why shouldn’t they? China men were already on hand to do the dirty work and restore redbeard order. The King of Hell invited guests, and these fools rushed forward.

  China men clambered over the wreckage, chopping at mops of hairy roots and sawing at tree trunks. They heaved rocks to the ground and drilled holes for blasting powder. Teams of horses dragged laden skids to the railway, to a flat-deck car piled with debris.

  That Sam was right. If all China men left Gold Mountain and went home, then the redbeards would be forced to do all the dirty work. They would have to pay more for everything and stop strolling around like pigeons afraid to dirty their feet.

  I asked Sam, “Turn back?” and pulled the boy toward the tunnel. No one could scramble over the treacherous debris while towing a lively child and carrying a heavy pack. At the start of this trek, Sam had said Lytton was four days away by foot. A delay now would render my ticket worthless.

  He paced back and forth, his face dark. He must have had many customers ahead, awaiting his bottles. I suspected only small bunches of China men were left, mangy weeds like Fist and his uncles, and they couldn’t afford to buy much liquor.

  By the black remnants of a campfire was a kettle. Sam kicked it over the edge of the clearing.

  “Stinking bastard!” someone shouted. “What’s that for?”

  “These jobs, they belong to Native people.” Sam stood with feet apart, hands at waist, elbows out.

  The China men peered at him, stung into silence. Such insults were not often issued in our own language. They yelled muddled slurs.

  “Lazy worms. You slink off at the first word of fishing.”

  “After payday, no one can find you.”

  “Last to join the work, first to leave.”

  “We aren’t slaves.” Sam raised his chin. “We have freedom. We have families.”

  They told him to eat chicken shit and limp off with his rotted corpse.

  “Did you know?” He turned to me. “These shit-hole fiends mock the China men who leave for home. These men say, ‘We don’t know the word death.’ But they keep feasting off our lands.”

  “Go fetch the kettle,” I said. “If they beat you, I won’t help you.”

  “I look after myself.”

  “If they hear about the liquor, they’ll kill you for it.”

  After a moment, he stalked off.

  “Who was that turtle head?” One worker ran up. “Screw his mother!”

  “We got work!” A man atop the debris waved his hat. “Our eyebrows got long while waiting, but the jobs finally came. There’s work for weeks!”

  “Can we reach the iron road ahead?” I asked.

  The man beside him spoke. “Go to the river.”

  “Are there boats?”

  “Go look yourself,” said the man. “Don’t you have eyes?”

  “You’re the blind one,” I said. “When redbeards see this, all you dogs will fight for drippings of shit.”

  “It’s the same work as before.”

  “Jobs were plentiful back then. Not now.”

  A sawyer atop the rubble knotted a rope at his waist and tossed the other end to workmates. He thrust a sturdy triangle of wood, its smooth sides planed at a mill, into the notched break of a fallen tree. He leaned back and slammed his sledgehammer into the wedge. The tree split with a loud crack and one end rolled off, sending rocks and boulders sliding and teetering. For a moment, the sawyer clawed at empty air, but his friends yanked him to safety.

  Had such ropes been common along the line? Was it only my crew that had failed to use them and suffered the bloody results?

  The first worker brought over a dandy who was dressed for town in a grey suit and blue tie. Only the top button of his jacket was fastened, revealing a checkered waistcoat.

  “Boss Soon, here’s the cockhead,” said the worker.

  I expected the Chinese headman to scream at me for interrupting the work.

  “Need a job?” he asked.

  I snorted. “The King of Hell marries off his daughter: nobody wants her!”

  “Ah, you’ve worked. Where?”

  “They never told us. Can we get to Lytton?” The boy grabbed my hand when the headman eyed him. “The boy’s mother is there.”

  “Good for you. Usually she never finds the father.”

  “The trueborn mother is best.”

  He nodded. “My brothers and sisters were raised by a stepmother.”

  I looked him up and down. “You always dress this fancy?”

  “Company sends a bigwig to inspect us.”

  “You speak English?”

  He nodded. “Can’t you work a few days? I need strong men. These ragged beggars can barely stand up.”

  “Give Sam a job. Then he won’t make trouble.”

  “Tell that stir-shit-stick to go die.”

  He wished me luck finding the boy’s mother and sent a worker to fetch the kettle. As we headed down a narrow path to the shore, I asked where they had come from.

  The town of Kee-fah-see was where Sam planned to make the third stop of our trip. These men would have been Sam’s customers, but now the Company fed them. No wonder Sam saw fire and berated them.

  The kettle lay at his feet, at the foot of the path.

  “You’re lucky they didn’t stomp your bones,” I said to Sam.

  “Boss Soon kneels to shine the redbeards’ boots. He doesn’t know shame.”

  “You sound like a China man.”

  “They should all go home.”

  “When they’re ready, they will.”

  Two Native men in a dugout thrust paddles through the water, ferrying three passengers. Around us, a steep slope of small stones rose straight from the river. We squatted and leaned back to let our packs anchor us. Sam muttered about wrapping his goods in blankets against water damage. I kept a tight grip on Peter, who wanted to play in the water.

  If he could find gold, then I’d let him jump in the water all day.

  In China, cheery tradesmen sauntered through the countryside, tools
and kits on their backs, come to mend pots or bowls, to repair bricks and mortar. Some of them flagged rides from boatmen, others trudged over the mounded dikes. Women and children flocked like flies to the men’s news and gossip. They voiced loud opinions while working. If there were no jobs, they sipped tea and ambled to the next village. They smiled freely, but Grandmother sighed for them, for how they lacked a wife, a home, and a waiting meal each night.

  “Better to be alone.” Grandfather puffed on his tobacco. “Sleep in peace, work in peace.”

  As a boy, I had thought that travel meant moving at your own pace, going wherever you wanted, and evading tiresome talk. I reckoned that explained Father’s fondness for rolling up his bundle and leaving on another sojourn.

  “Does the boat go to Lytton?” I asked Sam.

  “Are you stupid? The current is too strong. The boat crosses the river but doesn’t go north. We walk to Boston Bar on the wagon road and then come back to this side.”

  “You prayed too late to the mountain,” I said. “When did that landslide happen?”

  He shrugged.

  I thought that the railway people in Yale should have known. Word would have gone down to the station through the telegraph.

  “That boat will waste our time,” I complained.

  “Not so,” he retorted, “we cross over, sooner or later.” He caught my frown and hooted. “You didn’t know, did you? Another bridge further north takes the railway over the river to the east side, just like the wagon road crossed over at Alexandra Bridge.”

  Heavy footsteps crunched beside us, and then two redbeards called and waved at the boat. One cradled a rifle while the other held a skittering dog on a leash. The animal flattened itself and looked up with keen eyes. The two men stuffed their stockings into their boots, laced them together, and slung them over their shoulders. Rolling up their pants, they showed legs as white as paper.

  Being so careful, they had to be husbands with tiger wives. Peter eyed the dog and moved closer.

  When the dugout arrived, three China men waded ashore. One fellow called to another but aimed his words at me. “Don’t we have enough workers?”

  “That’s so, we’ve got plenty of hands.”

  “Stinking bastards.” I spoke loudly to Sam for them to hear. “Boss Soon just asked me to work for him. I refused him.”

  The redbeards pushed forward and offered the boatmen more money, so they were taken aboard first, leaving us to wait.

  But Sam and the two boatmen took time trading news and jokes, chuckling now and then. The redbeards fidgeted and cleared their throats. Finally they nudged the boatman to put aside his cigar and get going.

  The other shore lacked a useful beach. We climbed to the wagon road, clutching at plants and rocks, hoping they were firmly anchored. Across the water, the jumbled wreckage of the landslide stretched for over a mile. Heaven punishes, the earth destroys. A god had thrust a giant pitchfork into the cliff and yanked with supernatural strength to gouge the mountain. Over the railway and river below, rubble had swirled out as though from a spinning dancer.

  Didn’t the railway bigwigs expect more landslides? High steep mountains all along the canyon had been shaken, like clutches of fortune sticks jiggled by temple worshippers until one stick dropped from the holder. Did the Company call upon Jesus men in lofty churches to pray for protection over the iron road? Perhaps people all along the line went to church to send up massed songs seeking favour. Maybe there were eerie secrets to building an iron road that we China men never saw.

  At the edge of the slide, two thick lines of gleaming silver thrust out, hems along a grand grey curtain. Redbeards had conquered cliffs and forests with the railway, lashing it like a belt over the seething ground. Even when angry gods let loose landslides, the Company pressed on.

  “You like the railway?” said Sam.

  “Never thought it could be built.”

  “Didn’t redbeards use black powder to blast China’s forts and win the war?”

  “We fight back,” I said. “Your people should do the same.

  “We use guns now. Soon we drive train engines too.”

  “Redbeards won’t allow that.” I backed my pack onto some rock, groaned at the weight, and demanded, “Where’s that Hell’s Gate? Haven’t passed it, have we?”

  “Soon, soon.”

  After a while, we saw men coming toward us, kicking at pebbles on the ground, like surly children. We had been climbing steadily on the wagon road. In some places the path was carved out of the mountain, packed hard and flattened by wheels and animal hooves. We looked up to our side and saw trees growing straight up against a steep slope. In other spots, to cross deep gullies, the road was a wooden trail that bumped over layers of logs, trees crisscrossing each other in neat rows forty or fifty feet deep.

  I frowned. The approaching men held the high ground. They could run at us, gain momentum, and shove us over the side.

  One man with a walking pole dragged his right leg, thickly wrapped at the ankle. The fellows were spread out, looking in different directions, not talking, as though peeved with each other. They were China men in dirt-stiff clothes with bundles on their backs. Their dark faces were sulking and bitter as they passed around loaves of bread, tearing off chunks with hands and teeth.

  They ignored Sam’s greeting and his raised hand. He walked on with the boy, who turned to peer at them.

  China men usually made minimal gestures of respect to Native people, aware that they were everywhere, armed and seething near boiling point, a huge mound of dry kindling about to be ignited. We took care not to offend them. Their poverty and suffering was everywhere, but what could we do? Redbeards, not China men, ruled here.

  The lead fellow stopped me. “Where do you go?”

  “Town ahead.”

  “Don’t go. All stinking bastards.” His blackened teeth were chipped; dried blood stuck to the corner of his cracked lips.

  “Redbeards or China men?” I asked.

  “We are railway men. The Company ate us up and spat out our bones. What do you carry?”

  The men pressed in, reeking of stale urine and herbal oils. I tried to push my way through. “Is it better walking here, away from the railway?”

  “Lend us some food,” Black Teeth said. “The shit-hole pricks gave us stale bread. They kicked us out of town, even though the day is ending.”

  “No China men there?”

  “Not even a shadow of their ghosts.”

  Sam was heading back toward me, strolling without hurry. He should have grabbed a sturdy pole. I didn’t see Peter, so he must have been told to lay low and stay still. Hopefully the worm would listen. If these oafs around me had any brains, they would grab the boy. Bandits had won great riches holding sons for ransom.

  “These goods have been sold,” I said. “They are not mine to give away.”

  “Don’t give us anything,” Black Teeth said. “Just lend us a bit.”

  “Do good, receive good,” his men called out. “Don’t fear your good heart.”

  “What, lend pigs to hungry tigers?” I tried to get them to laugh.

  “Better to give a mouthful of food to a beggar than a bushel of grain to a rich man,” someone said.

  “Screw his mother!” The men were suddenly aroused. “Grab his goods!”

  They yanked apart my arms and dodged as I kicked at them.

  “Stop!” Sam shouted. “Or this one dies!”

  He held one railway man by the neck and pressed a shiny blade to his throat. It was the fellow who had hobbled with a walking stick.

  “Leave those goods,” Sam barked. “Walk away.”

  “Kill the cripple, go ahead,” Black Teeth said. “One less belly to feed.”

  “Kill me,” said the hostage. “I can die standing up or lying down. If my friends get to eat, then I’m content.”

  His friends shouted at him to shut his mouth.

  “He wants to die for you stinking bastards,” Sam yelled. “I’m happy
to help.”

  The men fumbled in their clothes, seeking weapons, wanting to rush over.

  “What are you?” I demanded. “Coffin makers praying for clients?”

  “Better a broken jade cup than a solid clay pot,” said the hostage.

  “Let him die.” Black Teeth clawed at the knots of my pack.

  “You so-called friends will leave him?” I demanded. “Old clothes have more fleas tending them.”

  One man stomped away. A moment later, the others followed him. Only Black Teeth was left.

  I grabbed a teapot-sized rock and smashed it into his cheek. There was a crunch of breaking bone and bright red blood spurted from his face.

  “Drink that, you bastard.”

  Rocks slammed into my back as Sam and I ran away. Good thing I had quit the railway long ago. It would have been easy to fall into that nest of snakes and scorpions or turn into spineless worms like One Leg or No Brain. I could have clung to that fool dream about hours and days being the only blockage to earning money and going home rich.

  The brat ran out from nearby bushes. Too bad he had been too far away to watch me do battle and draw blood.

  “You hit him too hard,” said Sam.

  “Damn your liquor bottles. I could have outrun them.”

  “I saved your life again.”

  “That man could have pulled a knife and stabbed you.”

  “End of my self-respect.”

  “End of your useless life.”

  How often did a bandit get robbed the same way as his former victims? As often as you saw a chicken pee. I almost shouted at those thugs, You think you’re tough? You ever hear of Centipede Mountain? That was my gang’s lair. You see me walking behind a mix-blood and reckon that I’m a broken stick of firewood? Think again! You don’t want to fight me! You want to die?

  The win over the bandits gave us energy, and we made good time until Sam suddenly stopped and muttered, “Screw those bastards, we passed Hell’s Gate.”

  The river had taken a curve and now mountains on both sides dipped to the river, their jagged slopes cutting into each other like interlaced fingers. They cut off any extended view of the rushing waters behind us.