The Celestials

by Karen Shepard

  In the bottom left corner of the slate, she wrote the word husband. In the bottom right, she wrote child.

  A final cry from the crowd reached her ears, and then the world outside fell silent. At the top of the slate, she wrote mother and then drew the lines of an even triangle between the words. Without a child, she would never be at the head of her own humble crowd. Without a child, they would offend geometry; they would be a one-legged creature unable to stand or walk. The fierceness of her desire unnerved her. Dampness seeped through her dress under her arms. She wiped the slate clean with the side of her fist. It was not that she could not imagine losing this child. It was that she could imagine it too well. If she lost this one, something, finally, would break. She would become a stranger to herself. She understood this with a clarity that was equal parts dread and anticipation.

  Two blocks away, Sampson was issuing more orders, this time to William P. Hurd, local photographer, who was setting up his glass-plate camera and heavy tripod on the factory’s south lawn, making ready for a photograph for which Sampson had generated plans shortly after the Chinese had embarked from California. He stood in the evening sun, checking and rechecking the contents of his portable darkroom—chemicals, trays, and plates piled in the back of a covered wagon led by his astonishingly aged chestnut mare.

  Once the Celestials had disappeared into the factory, the accompanying crowd had, save but one or two lingerers, dispersed, and these last few took no note of the man poking around in the back of his wagon. They did not attend to his positioning of his stereo camera—two plate cameras situated on a single mount—or to his worried checking of the falling afternoon sun. Yet the lingerers were rewarded for their loitering when Sampson ushered the seventy-five Celestials out the back door of the factory and spread them across the south wall of his formidable brick building.

  The boys were baffled. They had not even had time to change out of their travel clothes or wash their faces. The tea water had been put on but not poured, and more than one of the boys fretted as he was arranged among his fellow travelers that the cooks had forgotten to remove the kettle and the water was, at that moment, boiling away.

  The photographer had placed his camera too close, and the group had to wait as he retreated in order to accommodate the size of the gathering. Sampson muttered that he had paid Hurd to be ready, not to watch him make ready, and Hurd, burdened with tripod and camera, promised to be as quick as possible.

  “What are they saying?” the youngest of the boys asked Charlie.

  “They are fighting,” Charlie answered. “It is not about us,” he added, and the boy seemed reassured.

  The low light meant that the exposure time was long. Sampson paced behind the camera, and Hurd agonized that the man’s tread was making the camera tremble in minute but disastrous ways.

  The photograph would be, as most of Hurd’s work was, lacking, and the many magazines looking for images of the Chinese in the months following their arrival would not choose this one, a fact that bothered not only Hurd but Sampson as well. What was the point of having gone to this expense to show the world what he was up to if the world would not look? But the world is looking, Julia would remind her husband, fanning the illustrated newspapers before him. Just not at your photo, she told him. Exactly, he replied, closing the discussion.

  But the Chinese boys, stiff and tired from their journey, hot against the American bricks in their dusty clothing, would remember the photograph more than they would remember anything else from that day. For most of them, it was the first time they had sat for a photograph. There was confusion and wariness about their new employer’s reasoning. Was there to be a display on the factory walls?

  Alfred, one of the few loiterers peering through gaps in the factory’s fence, thought he knew just what Sampson was doing. The man was saying, as clear as if he had written a letter, “Take note, Crispins. See here what I have done to you and yours.” A few weeks after the photograph, the caricaturists would agree. Punchinello would publish the cartoon “Yan-ki vs. Yan-kee,” in which the Chinese swarm across a shoemaker’s dinner table, taking his bread and cake, pulling a patty from his daughter’s hand, stealing his pet dog.

  As the years would pass, Ida would remember this day for Charlie’s hands. Alfred would remember it as a symbol of all he was still yet to lose. Lucy as the first day in months she’d had an hour to herself. Charlie would remember it as yet another beginning, and Sampson would remember the weight of those pistols beneath his belt. And Julia, anxious blue-eyed Julia, would remember it as the day she lost her fourteenth child. And as the beginning of the small, hidden path to the fifteenth, the one who lived. And no matter where her mind traveled, it would always end in the same place: the smell of wet earth, the heft of something larger, the cousin sensation to the one she sometimes experienced in church. As if God’s hand had reached down to lay itself across her brow. As if He were telling her to close her eyes, because He had for her a wonderful surprise.

  Chapter Three

  In 459 AD, five Buddhist priests arrived on the west coast of a country they called Fusang, planting as evidence of their presence seedlings of a particular species of cypress that some Californians still claim as indigenous.

  On a chilly September morning in 1781, Los Angeles was founded with one Chinese inhabitant. Four years later, three Chinese sailors were stranded in Baltimore when the captain of their ship took off to wed his long-suffering fiancée. The sailors successfully petitioned Congress for the cost of their upkeep and lived for almost a year in the care of an American merchant in the China trade before returning home to report on the loneliness and isolation of American life.

  From 1820 to 1830, three Chinese arrived in the United States. By 1850, their number was increased by forty. By the same year, North Adams had become the fourth-largest textile mill town in Massachusetts. It was a seven-mile ride through town.

  In the 1860s, in some California industries, more than three-quarters of the workers were Chinese, and even the African American delegates at the first Colored National Labor Union convention in Washington, DC, in December of 1869 passed a resolution in favor of excluding the Chinese.

  In early 1870, Charles Sumner, senator from Massachusetts, moved to amend a bill and allow the Chinese to be granted citizenship and voting rights. The legislation was defeated by a large majority.

  The United States Census of 1870 would list 63,199 Chinese in America, 62,831 in the West and 368 in the East, which suggests that the seventy-five boys spending their first night behind the closed fence and doors of Sampson’s shoe factory were nearly one-quarter of the Chinese east of the Mississippi. By 1875, there would be 201 Celestials in Sampson’s employ, making North Adams home to the largest population of Chinese nationals outside of New York City in the eastern United States. By 1882, Congress would pass the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first exclusion act based on race to be passed in America. “He doesn’t stand a Chinaman’s chance” would become a commonplace saying.

  But on the evening of the thirteenth of June, amid the unfamiliar smells of shoe production, Charlie was faced with quelling the anxieties of seventy-four boys still reeling from the news that they were strikebreakers. He appealed to their pragmatism and to their notions of duty—they had, he reminded them, signed a contract. He appealed to their lifelong training as good sons in the Confucian ways, and this was the most successful, since in the absence of a father, even a foreman who spoke the language of the white barbarians would suffice as the recipient of whatever filial piety the boys had to offer, and he convinced them to busy themselves with their choice of bunks and the arrangement of their personal belongings.

  He himself chose the first-level bunk closest to the door, as when dining in public he’d select the table and chair closest to the wall for an unobstructed view of what might be coming his way, and, crossing his legs at the ankles, closed his eyes for what seemed like the first time in days, unexpectedly summoning a vision of Third Brother flying a kite
on the hill behind their childhood home.

  Before George Chase left for San Francisco, Sampson had extended to him three-quarters of an hour of instructions. Chase was to seek the counsel of a shoemaker of the name Battles, a man who already employed Chinamen in his factory. If he could not get men experienced in making shoes, he was to engage those who had a natural turn for mechanism.

  Chase said, “I am going haphazard, and don’t know whether I shall accomplish anything or not.” To which Sampson replied, “Your time is paid, your expenses are paid, so go.”

  But upon his arrival in San Francisco, Chase, perhaps too filled with the surrogate power granted him by his employer, did not seek out Mr. Battles and attempted to secure the labor himself. He was thus forced to wire to Sampson: There are not Chinese to be had. Sampson wired back: Don’t question my instructions; follow them, and Chase, confounded as to how his employer managed to know the things he did, swallowed his pride and sent his carte de visite to Mr. Battles, who introduced him to the house of Kwong, Chong, Wing & Co., which kept an intelligence office, sometimes known as an emigrant agency. Charlie Sing was a member of this house, and it was he with whom Chase initially met, a meeting about which Chase would have both fond and uncomfortable memories for years to come.

  Charlie impressed him. His English was broken but clear, and he was already a Christian with a firm handshake. He was unusually tall, a fact that Chase hoped would not too much displease the short-statured Sampson, and his stare seemed to suggest both attention and a respect for privacy. Yet Chase was disconcerted. There was something blank about the man. Not a neutral blankness as one often saw in women of a certain kind, but something more fraught. Chase felt as if he were looking at a vast, uncultivated field, beneath which you might find resistant roots and formidable rocks.

  Charlie would need to see Mr. Chase’s letters of credit. The house was particular about where they sent their men. They meant to be sure that their men were going to get their pay and be treated as they should.

  It did not escape Chase’s notice that the sentiment of the Celestial’s demand resembled nothing more than one of Mr. Sampson’s.

  Unbeknownst to Chase, two days were spent investigating the matter with the house’s sources in the East before Charlie gave Mr. Chase any encouragement, but when he said he would furnish the men, he did so at once. The men could have been ready within twenty-four hours, but Chase did not want to hurry the thing up. Two or three times a day, he would go to the emigrant agency and watch the progress of events, passing judgment as he did on both Charlie and the men Charlie hired. A good many were drawn in by a notice on the door, in which the facts of the case were stated (save that hiring on meant hiring on as a strikebreaker), and when a man applied, Charlie took his name, and when a large number had been registered he selected out enough of the best to make the desired quota. Chase noted the reach of Charlie’s hand in the situation and wondered at how long it would take this man to cross swords with the one waiting for him across the country.

  It was a Thursday night when the bargain was closed. The contract read as follows:

  San Francisco, Cal., May 26, 1870.

  This contract, entered into by Ah Young and Ah Yan of San Francisco and Charles [sic] T. Sampson of North Adams, Mass., witnessed: That said Ah Young and Ah Yan, partners in business, agree to furnish C.T. Sampson with 75 steady, active, and intelligent Chinamen, such as are quick to learn a trade (1 foreman, 2 cooks, and 72 workmen), on the following terms and conditions: They receive $1 commission for procuring each man. Wages of foreman, $60 per month for overseeing 74 men; if more men are added, to receive 50 cents on each man per month. Workmen and cooks to receive $23 per month for first year, $26 per month for second and third years, and for all time they stay after three years they receive $28 per month. Pay roll to be made up first of each month, and the amount paid over the 10th of the month for the month preceding, in United States gold coin or its equivalent. House wood and water furnished free to men. Two cooks to be employed for less than 90 men. Time, 11 hours per day from the 20th of March to the 20th of September, and 10 1-2 hours per day from the 20th of September to the 20th of March. Lost time to be deducted except when employer stops work for his own benefit, in which case men are to receive full pay. If stoppage of work occurs by accident for one or two days at a time the men are to receive 30 cents per day for board during the stoppage. Railroad passage over to be furnished free, and if men work satisfactorily for three years or more they are to have a free passage back. Should the men be discharged by inability of employer to give them work they are to have free passage back, and wages paid to time of stopping work. The employer is to receive $25 from the first six months’ wages of each man as a security to him against a man’s leaving before his time expires, the amount to be taken out of his monthly wages, viz., $2 the first month, $3 the second month, and $5 each of the next four months. Pay of men to commence when they begin work.

  Witness, W.W. Battles. Ah Young.

  Witness, Charles Sing. Ah Yan.

  C.T. Sampson,

  By George W. Chase.

  The following Wednesday the men were on their way, each carrying between fifty and sixty of the maximum baggage allowance of one hundred pounds to a man. They had been placed in the charge of Charlie, and the first time Chase saw them all together was at the train station, where the new foreman introduced them informally, bowing his head gently in the direction of each of the seventy-four.

  Charlie woke, as is customary for most insomniacs, between two and three in the morning, when the function of the liver shifts. If he had been in his home village, his mother might have prepared a bitter tea of root stems and tree bark to regulate the movement of the blood and the qi of the liver, but what he needed was not available, so he rose, slipped on his cloth shoes, and felt his way along the walls for a route into the factory’s courtyard.

  The moon was new and lent nothing but the palest light to the dirt courtyard. The night birds were not those with which Charlie was familiar. He had dressed for bed in a cotton tunic and drawstring pants, and he held his sleeve over his nose, trying to rebalance himself by way of a scent of home long since washed from the weave.

  The courtyard was a hollow square of fifty feet, a giant’s version of the courtyards of his native village. He sank to his knees and bent in the manner of prayer to press his nose against the earth, but his attempt to discover the familiar missed its mark, as the dirt yielded none of the rich humidity or smell of that saturated earth of home. Here, the land was grit and sand more than earth, and on his knees he could not see how something like this could support any kind of life.

  He made his way to the Marshall Street entrance—two huge arched wooden doors, split across the middle like the doors of horse stalls he had seen in California. They were adorned only by two forged iron circular pulls and the fresh-cut two-by-four that nested solidly in the newly mounted brackets. The shavings from installation drilling still graced the dirt at the base like a dusting of snow, and he bent to finger them before sweeping them into the dirt with his foot.

  As a boy, he and his brothers had played warlords, each designating a corner of their courtyard as his fiefdom, and battling with fists and wooden swords in the middle. Warlords commanded the most power, the most land and men, wives, and concubines. Their larders were filled, their kangs always heated. What boy would not have aspired to that life? Only the weak. Or the scholarly, Third Brother had suggested, drawing characters in the dirt. Same thing, Charlie had said, swiping his wooden sword across the back of his brother’s knees, bringing him to the ground.

  But then Charlie had had occasion to enter an actual warlord’s house. His father had been unable to pay for a pig the warlord insisted had been killed by someone in the Sing household. It was an unlikelihood, but Charlie had been indentured out for several weeks in exchange, and upon entering the courtyard of the warlord’s house had watched a houseboy rake the packed dirt into uneven rows, seen the concubines bundle
d into one corner of the garden, their babies at their feet, the wives, jealous and unhappy, in mismatched rosewood chairs, and had understood the warlord’s power to be as much bluster as truth.

  He had understood something similar about Sampson when his new employer boarded the train at Eagle Bridge. Erect, compact, and nervous, Sampson had introduced himself too loudly to the two cars of Chinamen and offered his hand only to Charlie. Charlie had noted the pistols, as had fourteen-year-old Long Ley Hin to Charlie’s right. “Six?” the boy had asked incredulously. Charlie had said quietly, “Say nothing. They must be important to him.”

  Sampson had expressed gratitude for Charlie’s role in securing the boys and hope for a long and prosperous relationship for them all. He sounded as if he were making a toast, and Charlie had added, “Yes. To luck,” to which Sampson had replied, “Luck has nothing to do with anything. It’s best you learn that now, and learn it well.” As he spoke, he placed his hand on Charlie’s shoulder and gave it a light shake, and Charlie had noted his easy, proprietary nature, as if everything in the world were to be handled and assessed like fruit in a seller’s basket.

  And so Charlie stood with his back to the entrance door, reminding himself never to forget that the world he now surveyed was that man’s creation.

  To his right were the packing room and offices, fifteen feet high, with white hard-finished walls. He made his way to the offices, Sampson’s and Chase’s, Charlie guessed, testing the locked knob of the first. Both locks yielded easily to the thin hair stick that had once belonged to his mother and that Charlie had had occasion to use several times before in this role. The offices were each handsomely furnished, especially the more private of the two. Chase’s, Charlie guessed correctly again. But the Chinaman was more interested in the other office, Sampson’s, with its wide views of both the street and the side yard. It had its own exterior entrance. He took in the lack of a reading lamp for either chair and the impractically small size of the bookshelf. The only adornment on the wall was a surveyor’s map framed in bird’s-eye maple by, Charlie correctly assumed, Sampson’s wife. The overhead light was gas. There was a small woodstove in the far corner, a tidy stack of well-cut logs next to it, and despite the sparse and insistent practicality of the room, it was abundantly clear that this was where his new employer spent the most time and enjoyed the most happiness.