The Brick People

by Alejandro Morales

  “I’m convinced, Rosendo. But you know I want you to move into the office. It will be the foreman’s quarters.”

  Rosendo welcomed the change and opportunity to be at the center of the evolving directional mandala.

  On that grey morning of changes, Joseph had an appointment at a Pasadena bank to finalize the purchase of two stiff-mud brick-making machines. The parts had been delivered and in the afternoon the mechanics would assemble the apparatus. Joseph planned to observe the arming of the technological beasts. Rosendo would also be present to learn their operation. On schedule was a trip to the property on California Street which Joseph had bought to build several homes for his family. The houses would be constructed with Simons brick, of course.

  “Rosendo, I want you to hand-pick the best brick, the best material for my house. Start on that today. I’ll see you in the afternoon with the mechanics.”

  Joseph grabbed the reins, mounted the horse and galloped out from the center of his company, following the north-south axis to the outside world. Rosendo marched through the yard, watching the men to make sure that the production was maintained at approximately fifty thousand bricks per day.

  With the installation of the new machines, the digging in the clay pit became more intensified and in six months the Mexicans had gouged out of the earth twice as much clay as Joseph and Rosendo had estimated for that period of time. An immense red hole began to form, a wound located in an unnoticeable place on the earth’s precious skin. Rosendo hired more Mexicans who fell into the pit as laborers who dug, molded, and created the material that built small to large pyramids.

  Joseph, satisfied with the progress of his company, valued the Mexican worker and, in his opinion, endeavored in every way possible to keep his peons happy. Above all, he did not want outside labor voices heard inside the brickyard. There were labor movements in the country that inspired unmeetable demands and lethal strikes. If his workers demanded fewer hours and more money, the company’s economic progress would be greatly retarded. In different parts of the world social movements threatened to destroy established world powers. Brown men nibbled away at portions of the British and Spanish colonies. In the United States, unionism became stronger and urged labor to fight for fair pay and improved working conditions. Unions and radical socialists compared the situation of exploited workers in Latin America, Africa and Asia to laborers in the United States and urged the people to guard against unjust treatment. Joseph, aware of what could happen if extreme idealists infiltrated his workers, did whatever was necessary to keep their spirits high, without damaging the company’s profits.

  In the afternoon, Joseph chose to ride alongside Rosendo as he made his rounds through the directional mandala of the brickyard. As they neared the ridge of the pit, several workers ran excitedly toward them.

  “¡Don Rosendo! ¡Difuntos! We have discovered thousands of cadavers!”

  Rosendo heard the cries with a puzzled expression which soon turned to a serious look.

  “I won’t enter the hole anymore! It’s sacred ground!”

  “I’m afraid the dead saw me!”

  “We might awaken them!”

  Joseph steadied the horse and waited for an explanation from Rosendo who searched beyond the men toward the pit.

  “The men have found a burial ground. Probably Indian,” Rosendo said as he moved away from the screaming men. Abruptly he turned the horse.

  “¡Cálmense! If you’re afraid, go to work in the drying racks! Cowards! The dead won’t harm you; they only scare you!” he shouted.

  Rosendo daggered the workers’ pride. He had questioned their machismo. They were not cowards, but they had been frightened, shocked into running like children away from what under normal circumstances would be considered simply a corpse in the natural process of decomposition. They had been taught to respect the dead and not violate their right to peaceful rest. Four men followed Rosendo as he advanced to the pit. One remained behind and walked slowly away to the center of the yard. Joseph recognized the contorted expression of terror on the man’s face as he left.

  By the time the group arrived, the work had stopped at the pit. The men, in a red field of clay, circled and stared down into several deep cavities in the earth. Silence dominated the area. A slight breeze passed from the north to the south as Rosendo and Joseph dismounted and moved into the nearest circle. Both men studied the grave and noticed a strange logic to its whole. In the center was a clothed and preserved body. Contrary to what the observers expected, the body had not decayed. Around the mummified remains, almost in a perfect arrangement, parts of other bodies reached out from the clay wall to touch the body at the center. Joseph saw a hand, an arm, a foot, a leg, and buttocks extending to the center. None of the cadavers was dismembered, but they were contorted in an exaggerated way to emphasize a specific part of the human body.

  Joseph turned away, yet curiosity made him join another circle of men staring at the human remains. He moved to another and then another. To his surprise, most of the mummified bodies, clothed in Chinese garments with hair and beards arranged in the Chinese tradition, looked up through Asiatic eyes. Ten holes had been filled with corpses. Joseph understood about the land being a sacred burial ground for the Indians, but why hundreds, perhaps thousands of Chinese were buried there was beyond his comprehension.

  “Massacre, massacre,” Rosendo repeated, with a disgusted, angry tone.

  The many accounts of the massacre had rendered the infamous occurrence a blurry memory in the community’s conscience. Most people believed that the Chinese were apt to spin tales against the Anglo Americans and that the story of the massacre was a legend brought from China. Few people were convinced that the massacre had taken place. But Joseph and Rosendo peered down at hundreds of Chinese bodies with bullet holes, stab wounds and crushed craniums. Bodies, piled four and five deep, comprised the proof that a horrendous massacre had occurred in the recent past.

  Joseph and Rosendo ordered the men to continue digging and to place the remains in a pyramid at the center of the main pit. Some of the workers simply refused and left. The majority, motivated by pity, morbid curiosity or the desire to give some kind of acceptable ritual burial, stayed to exhume the victims so that their souls would sleep in harmony with God. While the pyramid of flesh grew, the bodies began to dance in Joseph’s mind.

  The blood had flowed from a feud between two Chinese fraternal organizations. The battle had resulted from a forbidden love affair between two young people whose parents belonged to rival Tongs. The Nun Yong Tong accused members of the Hing Chow Tong of stealing one of their women. The father refused to allow his daughter to wed, under any circumstances, a man from the Hing Chow Tong. It so happened that Chang, the young man deeply in love with Kim, arranged a meeting with his beloved in the garden of Antonio Francisco Coronel’s residence on the Calle de los Negros. On the day of the meeting Kim was followed to the garden by members of her Tong. There the lovers were surprised. Fearing for her life, Kim ran away with Chang to the main residence of his Tong.

  Against the Chinese tradition of complete obedience, Chang took his lover and ran away to hide somewhere in the city of Los Angeles. That evening, sporadic shooting broke out between the Tongs, both clans convinced that the other had caused a serious affront to the honor of their family. As more members of the Tongs gathered throughout the night, the gunfire became more constant. The residents of the Calle de los Negros called for the police.

  In the early morning hours Officer George Bilderraine arrived as the Chinese waited on the street. Seemingly unafraid, Bilderraine positioned himself in the center of the street between the two feuding Tongs and called for a ceasefire. As he pronounced the last word of his order, shots rang out and one Chinese fell. Bilderraine followed the gunman into an adobe building which was on the Coronel property at the corner of Arcadia and Los Angeles streets. Approximately one-half hour later, shots sounded from within the Coronel compound, and soon after Bilderraine walked out to the
street and fell fatally wounded. Worried about Bilderraine, the Chinese screamed and cried for help. At that moment, a passing businessman went to Bilderraine’s side. As he tried to move the wounded man to a safe place, he was killed along with three bystanders: a Chinese man and woman and a Mexican child who had been observing from a buckboard tied in front of the hardware store. When the child’s father and mother emerged from the store and discovered their son, more cursing and screaming began, accompanied by indiscriminate shooting into the crowd of Chinese. The father was restrained by friends and was taken away with his wife and dead son.

  As the morning progressed, more Chinese appeared with guns and more townspeople, Mexican and Anglo, reached for their arms. The word of the killings spread to the outskirts of the city. Crowds, mostly men, gathered at different points around the central plaza and on streets leading to the Calle de los Negros. On Los Angeles Street, another mob, composed of the lowest elements of the population who wanted only to murder, fight, loot and rape, prepared to advance toward the entrance to the Calle de los Negros. By late afternoon, whiskey and wine circulated abundantly and freely; now nothing could hold back the monstrous specter of violence and bloodshed.

  The Chinese block was on Sanchez Street behind the Coronel adobe, where the Chinese had businesses and restaurants. The street, a gathering place for most of the Chinese in Los Angeles, was the safest cultural zone for them. As the night advanced, the Chinese gathered in the buildings on Sanchez Street as well as in the Coronel compound. In the early evening Sheriff James F. Burns came on the scene, deputized several citizens, and with a few city police surrounded the area where the Chinese were concentrated, especially the Coronel building where Sheriff Burns believed the leaders of the Chinese uprising were holding out. The sheriff moved to face the uneasy crowd.

  “All right, now hear me out! When morning comes, I’ll arrest those Chinese murderers and rioters.” The sheriff pointed to the Coronel building as he spoke.

  “I’m in charge here,” he continued. “Now I want you to disperse and go home. I’ve posted a guard. None of those Chinese are gonna get out. Now I’m gonna get some more help and when I get back I expect all of you good citizens to be gone. Marshal MacGowan will be in charge. He has orders to shoot anyone who tries to escape or anyone who tries to take those Chinks.”

  The sheriff looked at the marshal and made his way through the crowd, disappearing in the darkness beyond the torches. Marshal MacGowan positioned himself in front of the Coronel building and waited. The crowd broke up into smaller groups which grew larger by the minute and more unruly with each bottle of whiskey consumed. The mob began to yell insults and threats and throw bottles into where the Chinese were corralled. Many began to shoot toward the firmament. Several shots were fired into the Coronel building. The Chinese screamed for the mob to stop. The response was laughter. Marshal MacGowan ordered the rabble to disperse, but his voice was drowned out by laughter, screams and shots. The uncommon sounds in the night danced madly in the minds of the besieged Chinese. Suddenly fear transformed into panic and several Chinese made a wild attempt to escape. As they ran out into the street, two men were felled by gunfire and two others were caught by Marshal MacGowan, but the mob instantly overwhelmed him and took the two terrified men.

  “String ’em up!”

  “Hang the Chinks!”

  “Hang the yellow bastards!” the crazed, drunken throng shouted as they dragged the Chinese up Temple Street to the nearest corral where on the highest crossbeam both hapless men were lynched.

  While the bodies twisted and kicked against the effects of the noose, attempts were made to close in on the Chinese barricaded in the Coronel building. An enormous legion guided by the frenzy of irrationality, hatred and alcohol broke windows, shattered doors and hacked through the roof to shoot at the horror-stricken prey inside. The Chinese had no alternative but to run for their lives, now measured by the distance covered from the place where they hid to the place where they died. Immersed in chaotic fury, the mob did not discriminate between man, woman or child. Slanted eyes were condemned to death. The Chinese who fled to the streets were shot; others were hanged from the nearest makeshift gallows: a prairie wagon with conveniently high frames, sturdy high awning bars, and tall solid corral wood beams. As the night progressed, Chinese bodies were to be seen hanged or kicked and dragged through the streets of Los Angeles.

  Many Chinese ran to the homes of their employers for safety. Others hoped for refuge in the residence of city officials. Some Chinese found refuge; many were turned away, for the majority of the doors were never opened, not even to acknowledge them before their death. The madness of the night had no exceptions. The violence increased, spreading out from the plaza area. The mob intended to find and kill all the Chinese in town and began to search homes where Chinese were employed.

  Early that night the family of Don Roberto Londres had taken in as many Chinese as the house allowed. The incensed rabble axed through the door, smashed windows, looted, beat members of the Londres family and captured twenty-five Chinese. The males were brutally beaten and three younger women were separated to a bedroom and repeatedly raped. One of the murderers who reviewed the women with eyes and hands suddenly recognized a female face which he had seen at the beginning of the massacre. The woman stood next to a young man who protected her. The enraged vigilante confronted the couple.

  “You’re the cause of it!”

  The scream echoed into the silence that dominated the Londres living room where the couple embraced.

  “You’re the Chinese whore the Tongs wanted! You’re the ones who caused the killin’ of my kinfolk!” The enraged man knocked Kim down, followed her to the floor, and struck her again before Chang tore him off his lover’s body.

  The mob dragged the young Chinese couple outside.

  “Strip them!”

  “Bring horses, eight horses!”

  “Kill the Chinese whore and her Chink prick!”

  They were clubbed to the earth. Their bodies glimmered from the perspiration of fear. On the ground they turned to find each other’s eyes and held their gaze while men kicked him, felt her and commented on the exposed genitalia. The lovers held their gaze until they were separated to create space for the horses to stand at the side of the four points of each body. The few cries of protest were immediately shouted down. Savage strangers tied ropes to the horses and secured them to the arms and legs of each body. They wrapped wire to prevent slippage of the ropes from the human limbs. Tightly, as a razor the wire pierced the skin; blood streamed from the lovers’ arms and legs onto the earth. The riders steadied the horses and waited for the crowd’s command which, imperceptible to the lovers, at one stroke violently smacked into the silence as an inhuman cry: “Pull!”

  The horses, controlled by the executioner who had given the signal with a red handkerchief, moved slowly away from the bodies. The rope became taut and pulled straight on the limbs. From Chang and Kim came not a tear from their bolted eyes, nor a cry from their clenched throats, but only a strange, painful smile from their lovers’ lips. The executioner halted the horses and the bodies dropped to the ground. The enchanted crowd continued insulting while more whiskey and wine circulated. After some consultation with the riders, the executioner gave the signal again and the horses moved apart faster and pulled harder. The loud popping of bones from sockets and muscles and tendons ripping made the observers grimace with pain. The mob demanded that the horses pull even harder but the bodies still held together.

  After twenty minutes, the executioner changed the direction of the horses so that those tied to the arms pulled toward the head and those connected to the legs pulled toward the arms. Twice, the bodies were assaulted but to no avail. The broken persons remained whole. The mob demanded more horses, and two more for each body were attached to the thighs, which totaled six beasts for each body. While the horses were being positioned, the lovers shook and quivered on the ground as if cold. On the third try, the horses burs
t apart to be stopped by each whole of blood, flesh and bone. The mob became impatient and threatened the executioner who whipped the horses apart, stretching the human bodies to the limit, but still Chang and Kim remained one. At a signal, the bodies dropped again. The heads bobbed; the lower jaw on one moved as if trying to speak; the woman’s tongue extended from her mouth as if mocking the executioner.

  The two riders dismounted and each went to a body, drew out a knife and cut deep incisions inside the thighs next to the genitalia. The same bone-deep incisions were made at the armpits. The riders, skilled at dismembering cattle, were swift and expert with the knife. They mounted, the executioner gave the order and the horses broke into a gallop. At the point when the maximum tension was reached, an otherworldly scream came from the mob. At that instant the horses carried off four different thighs and three separate arms. One horse had ripped off only the hand of the woman. In the middle of the street lay two human trunks: an arm and the head on one, and only the head on the other. The executioner returned, cut the ropes, left the human members by the side of the torsos and disappeared. No one came close to the bodies. For hours into the early morning, the mob, slowly sobering, filed by the remains.

  The killing continued after Sheriff Burns returned with help. He organized a law-and-order group and attempted to dissuade bands of looters, rapists and murderers. In each case, only after the criminals had done their evil deed did they disband. When morning broke, the streets were abandoned except for the hundreds of dead Chinese. After consultation with two judges and other political leaders, Sheriff Burns ordered the collection of the cadavers at the plaza in the Calle de los Negros. By noon, the dead were gathered and piled onto wagons. Tarps were placed over the carnage. Sheriff Burns then indicated to the drivers that the bodies should be transported outside of Los Angeles to a burial site in Pasadena. The sheriff promised that justice would take its course.