by Paul Yee
Last night, people rushed for sleeping spots inside the steamer. Not everyone found room. I slept outside, on the deck, shivering with a shirt wrapped around my head. Wong Brother asked why I had no blanket. I did not say. Later, he shared his blanket with me.
The Company sent tea and bread. The tea was already cool.
Two crews left the boat, to work near this town. Then the Company man learned two men had sneaked off the boat. Right away, he fired the guard.
An elderly man boarded the steamer. He had dark skin, golden brown in colour. His face looked somewhat Chinese, and his hair hung black and straight. He wore Western clothes. The sailors pointed to the stairs and gestured for him to go down to our deck. The man shook his head. The sailors shouted at him. The man paid them no attention. Then they picked him up and slung him down to us like a sack of rice. The man was not happy and shouted angrily at the sailors in a language I did not understand.
A Chinese man had come aboard by himself. “Is that man Chinese?” I asked, pointing at the older man.
No. I was told that the Red Beards called that man Yeen-Cheen. His people lived throughout Canada, and had been here long before the Red Beards. The land along this part of the river belonged to a band called Sto:lo.
When I told the Chinese man I wanted to go to Yale, he said Yale stood on the land of the Tait people. That old man looked like a Tait man, he added. And the boat would stop first at Fort Hope, also on Tait territory. Farther north was the land of the Nlaka’pamux people, site of the dangerous rock work being done for the railway. The Chinese man spoke loudly, proud that he knew so much. I quickly wrote down the sounds of the names and the locations of their lands. Not only did that local man look a bit Chinese, but he also reminded me of how we say, I am a Toi-San person, or I am a Jung-San person.
As we went upriver, the mountains moved in. Silently, they grew larger and larger. The green and black on them brightened and then fell dull as clouds moved in and out. When I looked behind, the mountains had closed like a giant door.
Along the river, gold miners shovelled river dirt into boxes. The Chinese waved at us when we called out. Sto:lo people fished with spears and nets. I wanted to yell for the boat to slow down. Then I worried that Ba had failed to reach Yale.
Fort Hope had a few buildings and several steamboats at its shore. The mountain behind loomed as a forbidding obstacle. When I saw Wong Brother trudge down the gangplank with his crew, I panicked and ran to the Company man and told my story again.
He announced that the men who reached Yale yesterday had already been sent to work sites. “Better join a crew here,” he grunted. “You’re wasting Company time.”
I stood on land but felt as if I were clinging to a one-board raft in the churning river. I saw gangs of workers come off the boat and get prodded onto another one. They shouted for friends to hurry. Company men screamed at porters who were loading and unloading crates and vats. I dodged wheelbarrows and men staggering under heavy bales. They cursed me to move aside. One steamer kept tooting its whistle. No-one stood alone, and that scared me.
I swallowed my alarm and ran to Wong Brother. There was no one else to turn to. But he was with the gambler who had kicked me away from his lantern. “Who’s this?” he demanded.
When I gave my name, the gambler declared that all Wongs despised all Lees. He told me to go join another group.
“Your village battled the Lees,” Wong Brother retorted. “My village had no trouble with them.”
Good thing the Company man had followed me, dragging along a fellow Chinese dressed in Western clothing. This was the man who would keep the book on my hours and wages, I was told. But these two were sworn enemies. The Company man ordered Bookman to add me to his roster. Bookman spat to one side and said he didn’t have his book with him. He looked sullen. I think the Company man pulled him out of a game with friends. The two men argued about who should be giving out orders, and finally Bookman stomped away.
For once, I wished Ba was near. He may not think much of me, but he always stands up for our family name.
Chapter 3
May 1882
May 4, Fraser Valley, west of Fort Hope
My hands cannot hold a pen. Too bad I lacked this excuse when I suffered Teacher Chen’s classroom tyranny. If he sees this, he will exclaim, “What is Rock Head doing? Writing with his left hand?”
At every joint of my fingers, blisters puff out. When I try to make a fist, my hand becomes a claw.
But I must write. It is all I can do to stop my fears, for I regret coming here. Animals howl through the night as I await huge jaws and fangs. When it rains, our tents leak. The nights are cold and my new blanket is thin. Gold Mountain crushes me, for I am too tired to sleep and then too tired to work.
Each day we tramp through the forest, axes on our shoulders. The site is far and there is no trail. Path markers, chopped into trees, guide us over rocks and fallen trees and through swamps and tangled underbrush. We never know where our feet will land, on living things or dead. My feet are safe in the leather boots that Bookman urged me to buy, but now I owe the Company more money than ever before.
Our job is to open a wide path through dense forest. It is madness. The trees are so tall that their tops cannot be seen. Their branches are heavy with needles; overhead they reach out and interlock like fingers. They stand straight as pillars at a temple but press close together, smothering us in darkness that lingers all day. The trees grow so big that six or seven men with arms linked cannot circle their trunks. Bookman shouts at us, “Your trees must fall AWAY from the iron road!”
We all raced to be first to chop down a giant. At first we laughed like children. Then we realized these trees had stood for hundreds of years. Pock Face and Mouse succeeded late in the day. Their tree crashed and filled the sky with crackling and hissing. Other trees sheared limbs and branches off the falling tower. Birds flew up to scold us. Buck Tooth and Little Uncle were next, but their tree failed to hit the ground. It struck its neighbour and both trees stayed standing, one against the other, like old friends.
At day’s end, we heard yelling and a loud crash. Buck Tooth and Little Uncle cut another tree and aimed it against the first one. When the second tree fell, it toppled the first one.
For now, we are camped by the river. When we clear away enough trees at the site, the camp will be moved there in order to save us time and strength.
We are seven men in a tent. The other tents have six, except for the cooking tent where Bookman, Cook and Helper sleep.
No-one wanted an extra person in their tent.
“Not enough room here,” Gambler snarled. “Go to the cooking tent.”
There, Bookman kicked me out.
Finally Wong Brother pulled me in. But his friends want me to change tents each night so that the entire crew shares the overcrowding.
May 5
Nights belong to the animals, who bark like dogs but shriller. There is no escaping them. One animal opens its mouth, a second one answers, and then twenty are yelping and howling. Finally they stop. Then, just as I fall asleep, one animal growls and the howling starts all over. How can anyone work without a good rest?
My arms and shoulders are sore. My back and feet ache. My eyes itch from the sweat. To lie down, turn over or get up is painful, and sleeping on rocks worsens the pain.
May 6
When one man’s axe got stuck in a tree, he pulled and yanked at it, cursing all the while. Then he braced one foot against the tree and heaved. The axe-head popped out, the man fell back, and the iron slammed into his forehead. His partner screamed, thinking he was dead. But by the time Bookman arrived, the man was sitting up. His new name is Big Lump, like the one on his head.
May 7
After six days, we get rest. Bookman should have told us earlier, to let us look forward to this. But he has no heart and does not want people to smile.
Men washed their clothes in the river and laid them out to dry. They heated water and washed th
emselves. Me? I slept in the tent all morning, even though the sun was out. I dreamed of home and bowls of soft white rice, fragrant and steaming.
Watermelon asked me to write a letter. Bookman charges 7 cash, so of course I can offer a better price.
On the first day, Toothpick went into the woods to squat. He got lost and no one heard him calling. At midday, someone finally noticed. Bookman sent us off in pairs to look for him. “Make sure you can find your way back!” he called out.
Wong Brother muttered, “How are we supposed to do that?”
When Toothpick was found, Bookman shouted, “Fool, stay closer!”
“He cannot,” someone quipped. “He makes the worst stink in the world!”
“Even his mother runs away!” said a tent-mate.
Then Gambler stepped on a frog. When it leapt up, so did he, screaming like a woman and landing on the man behind him. Someone shouted out, “Pity the frog!”
Next, I must write to Ba. I will say I chased him up the river until discovering that his crew had already been dispatched. Like a good (and stupid) son, I will ask him to forgive my foolishness. The Company will eventually forward the letter to him, and then I suppose I must join his crew once he tells me where they are.
May 8
Somehow Pock Face’s axe-head loosened and flew off the handle. It hurtled through the air and got lost. Axe-heads are expensive, so we hunted high and low. We finally found it deep in a tree and then told him to work on one tree at a time.
Now we cut up fallen trees and drag sections away. Today’s tree was four feet round. One of us stands on top, the other stays on the ground, and together we push and pull at a long saw. Keeping balanced on the curved top is tricky; both Wong Brother and I have fallen off. We are also delayed when the saw gets stuck. We squirt oil into the crack, and pound in wedges.
When Crew Boss sauntered by and spoke, Bookman translated: “Be careful near the end. Get ready to run when the cut-off end drops.”
Wong Brother snapped, “Does he think we’re stupid?”
May 9
Slant Mouth Bing bragged about felling a tree six feet across. He held one hand above his head to show the trunk’s height — on its side! It was 476 years old, he said, born in the Ming dynasty! He had counted the rings in the stump.
Cook exclaimed, “Can you count that high?” and everyone laughed.
May 10
My tree had 305 rings; it was from Ming times too. Slant Mouth Bing’s partner Pretty Boy hurt his hand. His fingers got crushed when the men tried to free a trapped saw blade.
May 11
Wong Brother hobbles around on a makeshift crutch. We were moving the cut end of a log when it dropped onto his foot. His big toe turned black, the toenail cracked and bled, but he kept on working.
May 13
Money God was rushing back to camp when he slipped on a wet log and fell. Then he screamed and flung away the thorny vines he had grabbed. Pinpricks of blood covered his palms like stars in the night sky. Big Uncle said, “Red in your hands is good luck,” and gave him the nickname Money God. He worries the thorns were poisonous.
May 14
Rest day. The men playing paper dominoes hooted and chortled in their tent. Rain kept them inside, and left our tents stinking from wet and unwashed bodies.
Then we had visitors. Two gold miners, Seto and Soo, were heading upriver. We all crowded into Big Uncle’s tent as Cook brought hot tea. Everyone had questions. Was there gold to be found now? Had they met other railway workers? How far was the nearest town? Were any Red Beard Ghosts nearby? Where was the iron road? And the fire cars?
Only 7 miles of iron had been laid, said Seto. The entire road will be 400 miles long in this province.
Big Lump exclaimed, “It will take a lifetime to build!”
“By then your head will be the size of a house!” said Pretty Boy.
As for the fire cars, they said, “Go see the trains for yourself! Go to Yale!”
Soo was surprised to hear that none of our crew had run off to try gold mining. He said he could always spot newcomers: they wore new shoes.
Toothpick found it strange that workers came from so far away to build the iron road.
“Not enough people here,” replied Soo. “That is precisely why they are building a railway. It will bring in tens of thousands of people from the other side of Canada.”
Later, Bookman warned us that Company agents watched for deserters in all towns. He had crept to the tent and secretly listened to us! What a snake!
May 15
A falling tree hit Little Uncle and left his right arm useless. Bookman blamed him for being careless but Little Uncle denied it was his fault. The tree had been cut so that it would fall away from him, but it suddenly moved on its own.
May 17
Six Sto:lo men walked through and watched us work. I had to re-read my earlier page to get the right name. One man carried a long gun, while two others carried nets for fishing. Another had a shiny axe hanging from his belt. Between them and us, we had no words to speak to one another. Bookman greeted them, but not in Chinese, and walked them to our camp.
Later, Cook said he cooked rice for the visitors and served them strong tea.
May 18
I almost died today. Even now I want to fall on my knees and thank the heavens and the ancestors for keeping me alive. I never imagined the breath of life tasted so sweet. Wong Brother and I had felled a tree, but it failed to drop. Instead, it got caught, high up, by the sturdy branches of a neighbour. We pushed and shoved but couldn’t budge our tree. All we could do was chop at the neighbour, to bring it down too. As we hacked away, the neighbour twisted suddenly and our first tree shot down like a massive boulder. Its leaves and branches flicked my arm as I tried to back away. From the ground, I thought the tree looked skinny and light, but it would have flattened my life if I had been caught under it. Wong Brother called me stupid for not moving faster. But it happened too quickly. I wanted to shout out that just as easily the tree could have fallen in his direction. But I would never call him stupid.
A boat brought supplies, mostly firewood. Cook cannot burn the trees we cut down because they are wet and do not burn well. Helper collects dry branches and asks us to bring back dry timber we find. Cook fears running out of firewood, and will not make hot breakfasts.
We looked longingly at the steamer, bobbing on the river. No doubt all the workers shared one thought: it would be heavenly to leave this wretched place.
May 20
I worked eighteen days so I earned $18. But for each working day, the Company deducts lodging at 9 cents, meals at 12 cents, Bookman’s fee at 1 cent, and ship ticket repayment at 20 cents. My blanket and boots cost $6.50, so my total expenses came to $14.48. All I earned was $3.52.
I felt sick and had to sit down. I earned only one-fifth of what I had expected. It was hard to believe, and I checked all the numbers. I went through them three times and found no mistakes.
The few men who already owned boots had more money in their accounts. They were the most cheerful. I tried to see the bright side of things. So far, Ba’s gambler friend can only get $3.52 from me, and only if Ba doesn’t repay the debt beforehand.
What if Ba fails to win back my wages? Then I am someone’s slave!
I want to earn real wages, cash that I can spend on whatever I want. I work hard but get treated as a child: nothing is mine and everyone orders me around. I should do as Ba does: gamble with my money and lose it and deepen our family troubles. Let’s see how he feels about it then!
May 21
I feel a little better about money because I wrote letters for Big Lump and Pock Face today. Pock Face told his wife to speed up the matchmaking so that their eldest daughter can get married by the year’s end. I hope he has lots of money to spend on an extravagant banquet.
May 23
Two days of rain left us cold and miserable. When Gambler got his food tonight, he yelled at Cook. “Do you eat this? For three weeks
we’ve eaten the same trash! I feed my dog better than this!”
I have never seen such low-grade food either. Because the rice was boiled, dried and flattened in China, then re-soaked in hot water, there are many grains that stay hard. The men are always spitting them out.
Gambler was in a foul mood after getting his thumb badly squashed. He might have attacked Cook if Cook had not waved his cleaver at him.
I make sure to watch my hands carefully so nothing will slow me down at work. I don’t want my fingers crushed in a tree.
May 24
Bookman told us this morning it was the Queen of Canada’s birthday. We did not have to work but we decided to go earn money. Good thing all the men think alike.
May 25
A saw blade cut Pretty Boy’s hand, and blood gushed out. We tied cords around his wrist, and he raised his hand high, but blood kept spurting. Later, he rolled his hand into his shirt and kept on working. When Big Uncle told him to drink beef soup to restore his blood, we all laughed. Might as well tell him to eat roast duck.
May 27
Limp Leg has been coughing ever since the rain soaked him. Cook gave him strong tea while Crew Boss fed him spoonfuls of red liquid. Nothing helped. His tent-mates complain they cannot sleep.
Limp Leg reminds me of Grandfather. They have the same sad smile. When Grandfather disciplined me at home, I hated him. Until he gave me a candy next day. He never said a word, just smiled to tell me that he hated doing Ba’s job.
