A Superior Man

by Paul Yee

  I ran to him. “We can leave?”

  “China men stole our packs, if you believe him. All my goods are lost!”

  “He stole them!”

  “I told him that. He said, ‘We’d rather eat shit than rice.’”

  “He stole our money.”

  Grey Feather brought out Peter, whose grubby fingers rubbed at his eyes. His other hand gripped the hat from Sam’s grandmother. The constable glanced at me and spat onto my leg. I ignored him, but Sam shouted and shoved him hard. Grey Feather regained his balance and cocked his gun in one quick move. Sam’s fist sprang up, but Grey Feather brushed it aside and thrust his face forward to mutter into Sam’s. They glared at each other, and then the constable chuckled as if pleased with himself, and ambled off.

  I checked the boy for injuries. His gaze was unsteady and faraway.

  “Ask your lawman,” I yelled to Sam. “What did he do?”

  He spoke to the brat instead, who shook his head at each question. They trudged away.

  “What about my money?” I shouted. We couldn’t leave without a fight.

  “Want to die?”

  May as well, I thought. At home, my grandparents would retreat to dark corners to curse me aloud without being heard. To go abroad was a brave act that lifted everyone’s hopes, even those of the ancestors. To return empty-handed was to topple all those lavish dreams. A return needed to be a celebration of promises fulfilled, not a keening circle for hapless futures.

  A redbeard merchant cranked an awning over a dust-spattered window. The wooden frame of a new building was pungent from fresh-cut lumber. Two dogs wagged their tails outside a shack that smelled of baking bread, probably where yesterday’s bandits had gotten their food.

  By the roadside, I dropped to one knee and pretended to be tying my boot laces. I mumbled thanks to the gods for our quick release from jail. If I had known they were listening so intently last night, I would have pleaded for the return of my money instead.

  Freedom was nothing without cash. Money made you a dragon; without it you were a worm.

  I would offer to do a week of steady labour for Tobacco Beard; I’d scrub clean his jail or pound down his dirt floor if that obliged him to return my savings. I wanted to stay and devise a way to regain my cash before the scoundrels spent it all. But Sam had rushed ahead with the boy, eager to leave town, keen to forget all this shame. Dark clouds pulled the sky down; we trekked under a bed’s low-hanging and smelly underside, where no man could walk upright.

  Across the river, long-ago crews had cleared away earlier landslides that had churned and slid over the railway. Ragged borders of broken trees and grey rubble marked the former reach of debris along the mountain. In the river stood a newborn island, a square beast with a rocky spine of horns. Blackened trees with withered branches spread spindly fingers from under the water.

  “Down there is a crazy woman,” Sam said. “She digs out a fishing station from under the rocks.” He clapped my back. “Old friend, which way now?”

  Friend? What bullshit was he talking? I pulled away.

  “This road takes me north to Lytton,” he said. “Go south, and it takes you to Yale.”

  “I go north.”

  “You have no money.”

  “Kinsmen in North Bend will help me.” The words flew out before I could think. To turn back now would drain more blood and muscle from me. The boy must go to Mary. It was absurd to head home with no money but with an extra mouth to feed instead. That redbeard cowhand on the sternwheeler had acted so quickly, so naturally to save Peter’s life. Why in hell couldn’t it be as simple for me?

  On the other bank, the path of the iron road led to a redbeard settlement, small and tight with stores and houses. Native people crouched at the rocky shoreline, nets and spears at the ready. To me, the two banks seemed spread apart, letting the water broaden and slow down.

  “You can’t cross the river,” Sam said. “Want to die?”

  “Look at those two.”

  Two Native men were launching a battered old boat from the other side. I pulled the boy down a trail buttressed with planks and rock slabs. Keels and hulls of rafts and barges lay half-submerged, skeletons spat up by powerful river gods. Years ago, oxen pulled railway supplies along the wagon road until the loads got floated across the water at a slow-flowing spot. The squeal of straining cables against pulleys had seemed unending.

  By the time we reached the beach, the two men had crossed and were pushing ashore a small dugout. Sharp rocks scoured its bottom. The men grabbed spears and nets and ran toward a fishing post. I almost called out.

  Rusty tin cans floated in the dugout, which was carved from a single log, painted red and white, its sides glittering from rows of inlaid animal teeth. Shiny patches of pitch had hardened in spots. I reached to test their strength but bailed water instead. The brat ran his fingers over the pretty patterns. Did he know any secrets to crossing this dark foaming river? Surely now was the season for a gentler current. In China, water levels fell during the annual diversion for summer crops.

  “You won’t get across.” Sam squatted on a nearby log. “Not in that wreck. You lack strength.”

  “At game halls, I threw out men twice my size.”

  “You don’t know boats.” He pulled his hat over his eyes.

  “Two young men just crossed over.”

  “They know the river, you don’t.”

  I looked to the brat, hoping his boyish charm would win over Sam. My son paid me no attention.

  I put him in the boat and rolled up my pants. He waved at Sam as I tugged at the boat, which was reluctant as a water buffalo. I removed the boy and looked for small round logs on which to slide the boat along. The beach was too rocky to let them roll, but I needed Sam to see that I wasn’t all stupid.

  With a shout, Sam came running. He threw his weight low into the stern, and the boat moved a few inches. When I pushed too, the boat gained momentum and grated over the rocks. I prayed that no new holes were added. I splashed into the river, shrieked from the cold, and pulled at the bow. Sam lifted the boy in, shoved the boat again, and jumped aboard.

  We shot downstream.

  “Paddle the other side!” he shouted.

  I glanced back. The boy bailed with a tin.

  The boat tilted. I jammed my paddle into rocks.

  “Stand up!” Sam yelled.

  In the river’s middle, the current gained strength. Water surged aboard. Every stroke felt useless. The opposite bank was far away.

  “Dig deep!” he shouted.

  The boat was turning; its bow faced downriver. The river swept us along like a twig. Rocks rushed at us. My oar lashed from side to side.

  “Paddle out! Push the rocks!”

  The bow dipped and water crashed into me. I flung water off my face in order to see.

  The boat shot upward like an arrow.

  I shut my eyes and braced for death.

  “Don’t stop!”

  I shoved the paddle through the water.

  We slammed into land, bow first, no graceful docking along one hull like yesterday’s finish. As soon as we dragged the boat ashore, I leapt up and roared. The headstones on the ancestral altar at home were jumping for joy. My lungs and chest felt huge. This was a mighty river, but I was a dogged mule, plodding on steadily. This time Earth had defeated Water. I could rely on the favour of Heaven. I could saunter across any railway trestle, no matter how tall, no matter how strong the wind. When I lifted Peter onto the beach, he clapped his hands and cheered.

  Sam bent over to catch his breath. “Almost died,” he gasped.

  “We have big lives.”

  “My customers don’t die,” he said. “Never thought to see you risk your life for the boy.”

  He got it wrong. It was for my sake that the boy’s life had been put at risk.

  We flipped over the boat, draining it to thank the owners, whoever they were.

  We hurried toward a campfire, shivering from the cold and wet
. A middle-aged woman emerged from a tent, hustled the boy to the fire, and fetched towels and clothes. Red paint was dabbed onto her face. She wore only Native clothes: leggings and a smock of animal skin hung stiffly off her as her moccasins glided over the rocks.

  She scolded Sam and returned to the tent.

  He wrung out his pants over the hot rocks, causing steam to rise. “Sophie is the crazy lady who moves rocks.”

  “Who’s crazy?” A third Chinese voice startled me. An old man brought more clothes, some new with creases, others well-washed and patched.

  Sam pointed to the hill of rubble. “You think she can move all this?”

  “No harm trying, is there?” The man’s leathery face, burnished from sun and wind, was much darker than Grandfather’s.

  “You crawl into her bed?” Sam flapped his shirt over the fire.

  “If I wanted women, would I stay in Gold Mountain?”

  “She tells people that when she awakes in the mornings, the boulders have shrunk in size,” Sam said. “Or they have split apart, so she can move the smaller pieces. I said to her, ‘If the spirits help you, then why don’t they change the rocks into birds that fly off on their own?’”

  “She has never fallen on these rocks.” The China man lit a roll of tobacco from the fire. “Isn’t that strange?”

  “She has fallen many times!” said Sam. “But she knows not to complain aloud.”

  The woman smiled and beckoned Sam to follow her. He scowled and refused. She went alone to the great spill of rock, hands outstretched, an opera actor in a wide ornate robe making an entrance. When small birds darted from a crevice, chirping in alarm, visions of seared seasoned meat arose in my mind. We hadn’t eaten since yesterday.

  Sam draped our wet clothes by the fire and went to fetch firewood. My son followed.

  “You think Sophie is crazy?” asked the China man, whose surname was Lam.

  “Back home,” I said, “there are worse.”

  A madwoman had lived alone in our hills, while we children both chased and feared her. She tried desperately to hide, but her unclean smells betrayed her every time. Her family wrapped food in leaves and cloth and left it high in the crooks of trees. She shouted curses at everyone before fleeing on bony, grimy legs. Summer days she left her upper body bare, but her long tangled hair hid everything. People said that nests of mice and birds flourished on her head. Her distressed children, left unmarried by their mother’s madness, prayed for wolves to attack her. Indeed, those with serpent hearts had whispered that the food was meant to lure the animal killers closer to their target.

  When the kettle lid clattered, Lam fished out metal mugs for all of us and dropped in tea leaves.

  I gave silent thanks. Sam’s rudeness could have gotten us dispatched without a sip of clean water.

  Sophie was chanting and swaying to the rocks just as Sam had moved in rhythmic circles at the mouth of Big Tunnel. Then she squatted and lifted a boulder. She held it at her belly, bending back to counter its weight. She strode by and smiled, heading to a wall of rocks so like the beach in depth and colour that it couldn’t be seen. I thought she too might vanish.

  “I’ll help her after drinking tea,” I said.

  “We have food then.”

  The tea came, very hot. I looked for the brat, who needed to drink and get warm.

  “How does she move the large rocks?” I asked.

  “People help her. They’ve gone fishing now, that’s all.”

  He dumped flour, lard, and water into a container, tossing in pinches of white powder. His fingers squeezed the dough. Today, bread was welcome. Lam’s toes were scarred by corns and calluses, but all ten were present, even if some of the nails were black and thickened.

  Lam sensed my eyes on him. “I was heading south last autumn when heavy rain started,” he said. “I got shelter here.”

  “She was alone?”

  “I make tea and you ask such questions?”

  I shrugged.

  He grinned. “I rested for several weeks. I helped her with the rocks. Then she went to her family so I went to New Westminster.”

  “You dig for gold?”

  “Twenty-two years.”

  “When do you go home?” I wanted to howl at the loss of my cash roll.

  “Maybe I’ll stay.”

  “Redbeards will kick you out.”

  “I’ll hide in the woods.”

  He put the pan of dough over the fire. Lam was unlike the miners who passed through Victoria, bitter with failure. They mocked the townspeople as cockroaches who had never seen snow drifts as high as trees. Those miners had faced down bears and travelled alone through forests. They’d lost noses and fingers to frostbite. One miner warned me, “We couldn’t bury the men who ‘got nailed’ during winter because the ground was frozen, hard as rock. Good thing the bodies froze too and didn’t stink. But stiffs of wood staying in our world until springtime meant that plenty of dirty things wandered about. When my hands felt icy, I didn’t know if it was the weather or a bloodless visitor.”

  Sam and the brat dragged back a sturdy bough that had lost its leaves long ago. The boy broke off smaller branches. Sam swung an axe at the trunk and shouted as if Lam was deaf.

  “Her family says she’s insane. They don’t pay her any regard.”

  “She makes tea,” Lam said. “She moves rocks. We sit when we’re tired. She smokes to regain her strength. Same as me.”

  “Does her family worry, Sophie being alone?” I mentioned yesterday’s bandits.

  “Hers is a warrior family,” said Sam. “She can use a gun. Her father and husband were killed when their people warred with the redbeards.”

  “Who won the war?” I asked.

  “Everyone.” Smoke curled out of Lam’s mouth. “They talked peace.”

  When I stood to go help Sophie, Sam stopped me. “Our clothes are half-dry. If we walk, they’ll dry off.”

  I asked Lam, “You ever tell her about the old man who moved mountains?”

  “Many times. She liked that story.”

  “Tell the boy,” I said. “He’s the right age for such nonsense.”

  “Long ago there lived an Old Man whose house faced two great mountains. They blocked the way to town, and his family members were always forced to climb over them or around them. One day the Old Man called his sons and grandsons together and they started digging at the mountains to remove them. A Wise One passed by and said, ‘Old Man, you will die soon. How can you bring down these two mountains?’

  “The Old Man replied, ‘After my passing, my sons will keep digging. When they die, their sons will keep digging. With each generation, my family grows larger, but the mountains grow smaller!’ The Wise One tried to think of a clever reply but, in the end, walked away with head down.”

  Later, I followed Sophie back to the campfire. We had moved only a dozen stones, going slowly. I had walked barefoot, letting my soles grip the rocks. Sometimes I walked ahead of Sophie; other times, I trailed her. Sometimes the ground was cold to my feet; other times I landed on Sophie’s rocks, warm from her steps. She worked in silence, didn’t even look at me.

  Sam shook his trousers over the fire. Sophie drew lines of red paint on the brat’s face. On seeing himself in a scrap of mirror, he shouted with delight and raced off to play.

  When Lam gave me hot bread, I asked about the Yang fellow who lived in North Bend.

  “That man went back home.”

  “No Cache Creek for you,” exclaimed Sam.

  When I cursed him, Lam glanced up so I explained about Peter.

  “Don’t do that,” he said in a stern voice. “Take him to China.”

  “That’s what I said,” said Sam. “This fool won’t listen.”

  “In China, he will learn to read and write,” Lam said. “Let him use his brain, instead of chasing fish in the river.”

  “His mother is a good woman.” Why was Lam praising China if he was going to stay here? And who would pay for the boy’s tuitio
n?

  “He’s your bone and flesh,” said Lam. “He could grow up and look exactly like you.”

  “In China, people won’t let him forget anything, not even a tiny mole.”

  Sophie nudged the miner for a translation and then she spoke right away.

  “She says if you want to leave the boy here, then give him to her,” Lam said.

  “The trueborn mother is best,” I said. “We know where to find Mary.”

  “Doesn’t matter if it’s Mary or Sophie, he’ll be raised the same,” Lam said, shaking his head, “learning only to hunt and fish.”

  “He’ll feed his family, same as us.”

  “What, you hunt and fish?”

  “I can grow two crops of rice in a year.”

  Sophie pulled out money and offered it to me.

  “She says to take the boy to his mother,” said Lam. “She says go ride the train. The boy is tired, can’t you see?”

  I wanted to grab the money but forced my hands behind my back.

  “She says it’s your pay for moving the rocks.”

  I shook my head but he urged me to take it. Sam was muttering to Sophie, who nodded and spoke to Lam.

  “She wants you to promise to ride the train,” he said. “Sam told her that China men pinch pennies wherever they can.”

  “I was robbed! Every cent counts.”

  “She helps the boy, not you.”

  As we approached the buildings of North Bend, I said to Sam, “Can’t we trek to the next train station?”

  “Twelve miles away.”

  “The day is still early.”

  “You promised Sophie to take the boy on the train.” Then he grinned. “From here, the walk is a day and a half to Lytton. What about your ship ticket?”

  The station master doffed his cap, smiling to see customers, and chatted in English with Sam. We climbed the wooden steps into the passenger car and stopped in our tracks.

  This was no wagon; it was a fancy hotel rolling on iron wheels. A row of oil lamps, each wrapped in sparkling glass and capped by frosted shades, hung from the ceiling. Brass fixtures held windows open at all heights. Above them, polished panels of wood curved to the roof where more light entered through the small windows there. Cushioned with thick red cloth, the chair backs dipped both ways to let passengers face either the car’s front or rear. I pressed the seat padding and found it soft and springy.