by Paul Yee
Yet I saw things differently. Running away was akin to not paying your bill after eating a meal or buying some goods. Our rice store had seen such customers. We hated them.
June 26
Big Uncle regained his wine last night. Yesterday Watermelon and Mouse trekked to the other camp. They reported that the liquor merchant was there, on his last visit. He is going north, where many new crews recently arrived.
June 27
After dinner tonight, Wong Brother whispered to me that he was leaving tomorrow. He asked me to grab some extra food for him when I went for my lunch food.
I bit my lip, trying to be brave, and yet it was Wong Brother who was more courageous.
June 28
Good news! Wong Brother changed his plans!
At breakfast, Bookman announced the crew was moving. He told us to fold the tents and pack. Money God went to count the tools.
“You are a lucky bunch,” said Bookman. “You will ride the fire car on the iron road. Not every worker gets such a chance.”
Big Uncle frowned. “Why must we go?” he demanded.
“Company orders.” Bookman strutted around and spoke as if addressing little children. “North of Yale, the iron road goes into the mountains, through solid rock. You, you had it easy here, working with trees! The Company needs to lay more iron so the fire car can deliver supplies farther up the line.”
“And Slant Mouth Bing and Big Lump?” pressed Big Uncle.
“You want to bring them along?” asked Bookman.
No-one had an answer for that. Later, as we took down the canvas, I asked Wong Brother if he still wanted to run off.
“I want to see the fire car.” He grinned.
Me too!
Later, at Yale, British Columbia
On the boat, I suddenly waved and yelled, “Seto Uncle! Seto Uncle!”
But it must have been someone of the Tait band. I felt proud that I could look back in my journal and find the right name for the local people. Wong Brother gave me a funny look. For a moment, I thought he might shout “Rock Brain!”
On the shore, brown-skinned women and children picked bright-coloured berries. Huge baskets hung on their backs. Their laughter reminded me of home, of children playing rock-toss on the street. Mountains pressed in like stern soldiers. We docked at where I had stopped chasing Ba. Fattened cows waited for a boat. We looked hungrily at them.
Workers came aboard and greeted us. On travel days, they told us, we received only half-day wages.
“The bosses made us move,” growled Gambler, “so they owe us full wages!”
“But they paid for the transport,” said Big Uncle. That sounded fair to me, but Gambler, Little Uncle and Wong Brother cornered Bookman. They demanded full pay, claiming they were ready to do a full day’s work right there. Bookman called them idiots. They threatened to throw him into the river. Bookman advised them to talk to Boss Chan. I avoided Wong Brother after that.
Bookman went ashore at Yale while we stayed on the boat. The mosquitoes had followed us from the forest. I kept scratching, even though I knew better.
Yale’s mountains plunged from great heights into the river. High up, huge trees sprang from raw rock. The town’s wooden shacks were hardly as sturdy as those in the big port where we had landed. But Yale was a hundred times busier, jammed with people, horses and wagons.
A steamer unloaded more workers. Several hundred men went down the gangplank. They were fresh from China: no Western shoes yet.
Bookman returned and grinned sourly. “Your lucky day,” he spat out. “Fire car isn’t ready yet. Boss says to set you loose, let you see the town.”
Freedom! Away from Bookman and the forest! See a new place! Best of all, I had the coins earned from letter-writing to jingle in my hand!
I hurried to the Chinese stores and asked if anyone had heard of Ba. Gambling occurred at the stores, and I knew that if Ba was working nearby, then for sure he would come here to try his luck. I desperately needed to know if he had been winning or not. But the stores were crowded with customers, and the clerks only pretended to listen before waving me away. At one store, I hid among the customers and did not buy a thing. Being in the store whisked me home with familiar smells: salt fish, flattened ducks, pickled greens, incense, and, best of all, high-quality rice.
The town contained more Nlaka’pamux, Sto:lo, Tait, and Chinese than Red Beards. The people with the golden-brown skin guided long teams of oxen pulling supply wagons. Chinese tended vegetable fields, just like at home. At a door, a beggar held out a tin can. It was Stir-the-Pot! The last time I had seen him, he was standing near Ba, waiting to leave the ship. I called his name and asked what had happened. He held up his right hand and winced in pain. He had no fingers.
“We were sawing a tree,” was all he said. “I was careless.”
He told me that Ba gambled all the time and still had not regained our wages. Then he looked me in the eyes and said, “If your father had won, for sure he would give me enough to buy a ticket home.”
I gave him all my coins and ran to the boat. I ran before I could change my mind and ask him for my money back.
There, I hardly recognized my workmates. Some had visited a barber and had their foreheads shaved and beards removed. Others wore new clothes, after taking hot baths at a laundry. The wise ones bought incense to repel mosquitoes. Wong Brother bought roasted peanuts, and insisted that I take some. I teased him half-heartedly for foolish spending. Then I mentioned my bad news, that Ba and I were still in debt. Wong Brother told me to cheer up.
“You are doing all that you can!” he said, tapping me lightly on the cheek.
I had always wanted an older brother. If I did have one, then he should be exactly like Wong Brother.
June 29
The iron road is not what I expected. Two squarish poles of gleaming steel are laid side by side, as wide as the fire car. The train’s wheels perch atop the steel and roll along the tracks, which stretch out as far as the eye can see, around mountains and through tunnels. Very clever! No steel is wasted where the fire car does not touch the ground. The rest of the road is made from wooden ties and gravel. Fire-car wheels are thick iron. A car is so heavy that thirty men could not lift it. Instead, cars are pulled by a coal-burning barrel on even bigger wheels.
We scrambled on. The brave ones sat at the edge and dangled their feet. Others sat in the middle, looking nervously for a handhold.
The ride was smooth but noisy as wheels squealed and the lead car pounded like a blacksmith’s shop. Smoke spurted from its chimney. We were barely comfortable with the quick rolling when we suddenly plunged into darkness. The men gasped. The fire car thundered on. The smoke from the lead car choked us. Bookman shouted “Stay calm!”
Then we emerged into fresh air. Tunnels have been dug into these towering mountains. The passages grew longer and longer. I cringed, thinking the weight of the rock above would crush the tunnels. But long worms burrow deep into the earth and always emerge on the surface.
I gasped at the rocky cliffs. The river cut through mountains that rose in vertical walls on both sides of the water. The iron road was being pressed onto the mountain, like a long shelf on a wall. On one side of the track was steep rock. On the other side, rock and gravel sloped to the rushing river. But around the noise and bustle of road-building, Nlaka’pamux people continued to gather berries from thick bushes.
June 30, near Dutchman’s Bar, British Columbia
We saw right away that our new Crew Boss does not like us.
From our camp, we walked closer to the mountain, to a gaping dark hole. Chinese hurried out, followed by Nlaka’pamux men and Red Beards. They dropped tin lanterns onto a pile. Then they ran down the line, away from the tunnel. Of course we followed, and crouched behind sturdy trees.
We heard a bang, a sharp thud. Then another one and another. The workers were counting aloud and calling to each other.
“Seven? Was that seven?”
“Couldn’t hear.
I’m deaf from all this noise.”
Smoke billowed from the tunnel. We took lanterns in, dropping them here and there to mark a path through the dark. We used shovels, baskets and carrying-poles to clear the rubble. When a rock was too big for a basket, we roped it up and slung it between two men. Boulders that were too heavy to move got stuffed with black powder to be exploded again.
The Red Beards drilled holes into the mountain and filled them with blasting powder. Along with the constant cursing and coughing, the work was very noisy. A man held a drill rod in the rock while another man stood back and swung his hammer at the drill. With each hit, the rod was rotated a bit before the next hammer blow. From time to time, the pairs of men switched positions.
The light was so dim that I could not see how many men were at the rock face, some high on ladders, others kneeling. The ground was strewn with rubble: one slip and you could twist your ankle. In the tight space, the dust floated and thickened. If the man swung his hammer and missed the drill, then he would shatter his partner’s arm. The bone would explode into a million little splinters and never be healed. Spellbound, I watched. It was hard to imagine men working so hard at so ungiving a job. To throw men and axes against giant trees was nothing compared to throwing men and puny little drills against a mountain! It was hard to tear myself away, yet when I left, I breathed a sigh of relief. What a coward I am!
Crew Boss chewed tobacco and spat out, usually at our feet. Our first crew boss never watched us. He came by once or twice a day and that was all. Bookman snooped around to see who was lazy.
Watermelon staggered out of the tunnel, coughing from the dust. He ran to drink water. Crew Boss ripped the scooper from his hand, shoved him to the ground and overturned the pail. He cuffed him around the head. Watermelon was dazed and bleeding. We came running. Bookman shouted at Watermelon, “You stupid fool! That water is for the Red Beards. Your water is over there.”
The tunnel mouth is a narrow jumble of rock, tools and machines. Red Beards loiter there, waiting for us to remove the rock so that they can re-enter to drill and blast. We work in two lines. The one leaving the tunnel is by the mountainside, away from the drop to the river below.
A man came out of the tunnel and fell. He may have tripped over the foot of a Red Beard. He sprawled across the path and rubble spilled from his baskets. He cursed loudly. Buck Tooth was going the other way, with empty baskets. He avoided the spill but fell backwards and tumbled down to the river. We threw down a long rope to help him climb back up.
An accident is not a good sign on a first day.
Chapter 5
July 1882
July 1
Canada’s birthday is a rest day. It is fifteen years old. How strange to mark a country’s birth, as if it were a person. I guess it is the same as Teacher Chen teaching us that Emperor Qin unified China two thousand years ago. That makes China one hundred and thirty times older than Canada! Teacher Chen also says that before Emperor Qin, China had another two thousand years of history. That total is too big to imagine. Would that make eighty levels of grandfathers?
Red Beards yelled and sang drunkenly last night. Someone played a stringed instrument; it sounded like a cat yowling in pain. The Red Beards barged through our camp, stomping their feet, chanting jauntily and waving torches. They crashed into our clotheslines and tore them down. We cursed them and stood ready to fight if they should try to set our tents on fire. But they ran off.
A braggart from the other Chinese crew came to chat. When we mentioned doing forest clearing, he smirked and called it women’s work. Rock work was much harder, he declared. When he heard that all Chinese workers got the same pay, he insisted rock workers deserved twice as much.
Big Uncle told him how the forest had claimed many lives. The fellow sneered. “They must have been stupid,” he said.
Big Uncle almost hit him.
Later, more men from that crew visited. They told us to ignore Ah-Bee, the braggart from earlier. “He thinks he is smarter than everyone else.”
Broken Bowl, Lucky and Fur Melon had been here two months. They also disliked their crew boss. The Company pressed for work to speed up, they said, to open more tunnels. This one was Tunnel #12. Other crews were working on it too, digging toward us from the other side. I thought of two boats sailing toward each other during a moonless night. What if the two crews missed each other?
Big Uncle said he was surprised that simple hand tools were being used to drill through the massive mountain. “It will take forever,” he exclaimed. “Don’t the Red Beards have machines?”
Lucky said there was much talk about using machines to advance the work, but nothing ever arrived. Instead, he said the Red Beards count on humans. We are flesh and bone, so they do not need an expert to figure out how to get us to work.
We asked, “Is there gold in the river here?”
No, said Broken Bowl, it flows too fast. He was right. Two days ago, we had left the fire car when the iron road ended. We trekked by the river, on a path crowded with wagons, cattle, horses and oxen. Dust choked us. To cross the river, we boarded a raft. Long ropes at both ends let workers on the other shore pull us across.
“Don’t go into the river,” Broken Bowl said. “The current can drag you off; no one will know you’re gone.”
Six tunnels were underway in this area, said Fur Melon, so plenty of workers lived nearby. Chinese merchants had set up stores, but if any worker shopped at a non-Company store, then his daily pay was cut to 80 cents. Nobody liked this, but Old Uncle had a joke.
Two travellers meet on the road to Hong Kong. When night comes, they stop at an inn. While waiting for rooms, they look in their bags and take out rice dumplings to eat. The innkeeper serves meals too, so he declares, “You cannot eat your own food here.”
The two travellers glance at one another. Then each man hands his dumpling to the other, and both calmly continue eating.
It felt wonderful to laugh again.
July 2
Every seventh day is for rest. I forgot during the move. Two rest days in a row are a luxury. I wanted to find a stream for fishing, and cool off a bit from the heat. But Bookman handed me two shirts. He had bought them in Yale, and wanted them starched to stay new. “Go to the wash house,” he said.
Was there one here? Bookman told me to find the shack with clothes drying outside.
“I don’t speak Red Beard language,” I protested. Nor was I his servant.
“You fool,” he said. “The wash house man is Chinese.”
Fung was surprised to see me. “Chinese people wash their own clothes,” he explained. “Only Red Beards bring their dirty clothes. They think washing clothes is women’s work.”
True, I thought. At home, Ma or the women servants did that chore.
“Earlier, I worked on the iron road,” Fung added. “But I earn more here. Better yet, I wake up and never worry about dying on the job.”
Then a delicious smell hit me. Pork, steamed with black beans! Fung invited me to stay, and I accepted greedily. His helper brought soup, greens and bowls of rice. I had not tasted pork since leaving the ship! Afterwards, I thanked my host and vowed to bring him a fresh fish.
July 3
No work for us today. Will this mean no pay?
Bookman laughed when someone asked him that same question. “You think the Company pays you for sitting around?” chortled Bookman. “You are dreaming!”
But we were ready to work, so we should get paid. No pay is bad news, but Bookman did not have to make us feel stupid for asking. How are we supposed to know the rules if no one tells them to us? I do not like this job, but I do not like being idle either!
This morning, the Red Beard bosses huddled with our bookmen. While we checked our baskets for damage, Bookman came and said, “No work today. No blasters.”
On Canada’s birthday, the Red Beards had gone to Yale, to a grand celebration. They still had not returned. We hoped they were on their way and wondered why they did not care
about their pay. Did they not have debts, like us? Bookman told us that last year there were so many mosquitoes that the Red Beards all quit and stayed in Yale until the muddy swamps dried up. Finally, Toothpick lost his patience, jumped to his feet and offered to go drill the rock. Money God offered to join him, saying that drilling did not look difficult to do. But Bookman reminded us that we were not paid to do that work.
I guess we should celebrate. Three days of rest. It is like the New Year!
July 4
New Red Beard workers went into the tunnel. We were waiting outside when we heard a boom. But the Red Beards had not come out. The crew bosses eyed one other and paced about anxiously but did not go in. After a while, two men staggered out, one supporting the other. Their faces and hands were covered with black soot.
Bookman told us the powder exploded before it should have. A Red Beard got badly burned, and his hands were shattered. Bookman warned us, if we ever saw the Red Beards using blasting powder while we were inside, then we should run out as fast as we could.
Old Uncle shook his head. “Those men don’t know what they’re doing.”
“Everyone has to learn,” replied Bookman.
July 5
More Red Beards arrived and a new boss pushed us to make up the lost time. Under his orders, our first job after an explosion is to clear the rubble that blocks his workers from reaching the rock face. Then his men could drill as we cleared the remaining debris. Bookman assured us the Red Beards would only drill and never use black powder when we were around.
We were nervous and moved faster, but then Crew Boss accused us of taking lighter loads. He and Bookman argued loudly. Crew Boss wanted us to empty our baskets into the river, but Bookman ordered the debris be used to fill a gully down the line.
