The Celestials

by Karen Shepard

  Sampson looked up from the spread of papers on his desk, and Chase had the distinct sense that the man did not at first recognize to whom the face he encountered belonged.

  Although there had been much to celebrate in the years since the Celestials’ arrival, there had also been some difficulties and it was not yet clear which way the scales would tip. Gilbert and Sullivan had collaborated for the first time; the first typewriters had been mass produced; and in North Adams, G. W. Nottingham had collected the births for 1872 and discovered some three hundred, bringing the local population to upward of fourteen thousand. The North Adams Gas Light Company was building another gasholder, with a capacity of thirty-three thousand cubic feet, and the strawberry festival at the Methodist church had netted thirty dollars. Sampson had added two more stories to his factory’s rear and had refurbished his already handsome offices. He had contracted two additional groups of Chinese workers, the first of forty-eight and the second of twenty-two, and their assimilation was proceeding without unhappiness and with a yearly savings of forty thousand dollars. Some of them had taken Sampson’s name. Copies of their portraits all went into a second handsome leather album with brass hinges that sat with the first on a shelf in Sampson’s Wilson House study.

  But in August of the previous year, one Celestial had died of consumption, and in February of the current one, another had succumbed to typhoid fever after two months of illness, and not all of the boys agreed with Charlie’s decision to inter the latest unlucky soul in lot 507 of the Hillside Cemetery, which he had purchased upon his own decision at a cost of thirty dollars, and several of them had voiced their opinions forcefully. None of them had been much reassured or swayed by his explanation that it was best, when in America, to do as the Americans did. Surely, one of the cooks pointed out, the foreman had not forgotten that none of them were, in fact, American?

  And although Grant’s reelection had been handily won, the Republican Party had split, resulting in the defection of many liberal Republicans to Grant’s opponent, New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, who died before the electoral college could cast its votes. His party’s platform opened with “First, we recognize the equality of all men.”

  By 1872, the number of Crispin lodges had fallen to a mere fifty-two. And when the sixth Grand Lodge met in Philadelphia the following year, the few delegates who managed to be present attended, as Brother Frank Foster put it, “the funeral of the K.O.S.C.”

  Jimmy O’Brien had just sold out the Tweed Ring in New York City. The Chicago fire had left ninety-eight thousand people homeless, two hundred fifty dead, and more than seventeen thousand buildings destroyed, and Catherine O’Leary would spend years trying to refute the rumor that it was her cow that kicked over the lantern that began the blaze. The Chinese joss house in Weaverville, California, that had brought young Charlie such comfort when he had been a resident in that forsaken place had burned down yet again, but this time there seemed no one interested enough to oversee its rebuilding, so it would remain a ruin for decades until the local historical society would raise the funds to resurrect it as a museum, of interest to only the most comprehensive of tourists.

  And despite acceptance of the Celestials by most of the villagers, including their attendance of a grand and festive celebration of the Chinese New Year for two consecutive years, there had also been some scattered violence, mostly in response to Sampson’s April 1871 decision to replace his white overseer in the bottoming room with Charlie Sing. Sampson had refused to acknowledge the violence, insisting that Mr. Sing was the better man for the job and that anyone who said otherwise could not call himself a Christian, but Charlie had made certain to include some of the more outspoken objectors on his Thanksgiving turkey list both that year and the following one, and had suggested to Sampson that he abstain from his desire to begin hiring white men to mix in with the Chinese workers on the bottoming floor. Sampson had held off, but only until midsummer of the present year, when, he said, he could resist no longer. The expected grumblings about his decision came not from the white laborers but from the Chinese themselves. They already had so little, they protested to Charlie. He was their foreman. It was their interests for which he was meant to care. Did he think it fair that the already small place they could call their own was to be invaded even further?

  By March of 1873, the cooperative shoe factory was advertised for rent and would never again appear in the city directory, and Charlie steeled himself for the display of further resentments against his kind.

  And so, by the day Mrs. Sampson was to return from her long stay away, the mood in the town and factory was not a stable one. Things were going to happen, though nobody could guess what. Even Lucy Robinson, in the scar tissue of her healed wounds, could feel a change in weather coming.

  Eleven days previous, Ida had delivered the mail to the Chinese boys at the start of their lesson. She handed Charlie the letter postmarked from Michigan and said too evenly, “More news from the Midwest,” then watched his reaction with care.

  She had told no one that the foreman had received three letters from Michigan in Julia Sampson’s absence, but letters passed through many hands and by that point, only a year into the postman’s tenure, everyone knew that this postman’s indiscretion would keep him from rising any higher than the position he currently held.

  Charlie avoided her eyes with a small bow and slid the letter into his work tunic’s inner pocket, where it kept company with Julia’s previous missives, the corners of all four envelopes poking occasionally at his chest. It did not escape Ida’s notice that he was already moving toward the door before the final hymn had been sung, and when Alfred met her at the factory’s gate to walk her home, she made small fun of him, her voice filled with mockery and impatience and nothing like good nature.

  Ida had, over the last three years, taken much note of Charlie and his ways with his charges and the townsfolk. He had proved to be all that she had thought he might and more. He was calm and deliberate, a careful worker and a thoughtful speaker. He reminded her of her father, though she would not share that with him for years.

  Charlie walked, as he did almost every evening now, to Natural Bridge, the latest letter humming against his chest. He had not argued with Julia when she had told him in late December that the trip was a necessity and that it would be, of course, unwise for him to contact her while she was away, but his center had felt as it had when he was a boy making his careful way across the bridge that spanned his hometown river. The woven rope bridge had given and swayed beneath his cupped feet, sending his heart into the air and down again. When her first letter had ended with the news that she would be extending her trip indefinitely by going to Michigan, he had sunk to the snow-covered ground, not rising until his pants were soaked through.

  None of her letters had offered anything resembling full explanations for her behavior, and he had found it difficult not to think of her trip as flight. He had tried as their intimacy had developed to keep his dignity and reserve, but sometimes during their moments together he had not been able to keep the force from his embrace, and he had felt her brace herself as if against a strong wind.

  Her letters were long, and he read them so often that he had committed them to memory. If, as a child, she had complained of cold, her mother would say, “But it doesn’t make you any warmer to complain of it.” She had loved for her father to carry her “pickaback.” Charlie had not an inkling of the word’s meaning, but loved it nevertheless. Raisins and peppermints had been her favorites, though she was happy to settle for sticks of striped barley candy or something called the “Salem Gibraltar,” which she would have to explain more fully when she saw him next. Her family’s farm had been in a valley where, in winter, the sun set at four and the snow sometimes drifted so that they could not see their nearest neighbor for weeks, but she and her sisters had had an unused shed as their castle, music had been made by rain on the roof, and abandoned plows had been transformed into litters carried by servants dressed
in satin. Her favorite tales had included Jack the Giant Killer, Aladdin, and Red Riding Hood. Her sister had several of them still, and one of the many pleasures of her stay had been the surprise of rediscovery.

  By the time Charlie reached the mouth of the path to the small gorge, it was growing dark. His impatience prevented him from climbing the full way to the bridge, and he settled behind the large boulders. It was unlikely anyone would be coming this way at this hour, but in that event, he wanted to be out of sight.

  The letter was disappointingly thin, but the sight of her small, tidy penmanship thrilled him and the slow speed at which he had to read bothered him not at all.

  My Celestial,

  The weather here is too unbearable for me to write much—the letter paper dampens almost immediately, the pen nib works not a whit—so just an inadequate note to assure you that I am thinking of you and I trust you are thinking of me. Although I miss so much of our village, there has been something quiet and lovely about my stay here. I never cared much for machinery, and so much of North Adams seems like one giant, buzzing factory. (Remember the view we had of all those smokestacks from the north hill?) I did, of course, out of necessity accustom myself to the noise so that it became like a silence to me, but now that I am here, where the factories have been replaced with the sounds of hog farms and chicken coops, it is hard not to feel that all that machinery is like some overgrown, spoilt child. I am sure I am not making myself clear. No matter. Suffice it to say that I would rather sit under the trees and hear the birds sing than have a whole handful of gold or silver. I have read in a fairy-tale book of people who could understand what the birds were saying. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

  My reasons for coming here in the first place and staying as long as I have seem to be drawing to an end and I imagine I will be home before too long. You will be nearly the first I arrange to see upon my arrival. Until then, I am Your Julia.

  Charlie read the letter several times in the failing light, following her words with his finger, still dirty from his day’s work. The mosquitoes took pity on him. The cicadas loudened, as if to make thought a blessed impossibility. He told himself that the silence the factory noise had become to her also included Sampson, and not himself. He believed her memory of the view from the north hill to be a fond one. He felt sure that her desire to listen to the birds was a wish that included his presence. He tried to disregard her continued refusal to explain why she had departed and could now return. He tried to ignore the pain that the “nearly” at the letter’s close caused him, its implications spread out like broad hands leaning heavily on his chest.

  Sampson buttoned his vest, repocketed his watch, and shrugged his jacket onto his shoulders. He wished, briefly, that he had a glass in which to check his figure, but satisfied himself with brisk tugs at his waistcoat and coat sleeves.

  His telegram to Julia the previous week had been concise and plainspoken. He had not wanted to upset his wife unduly, but neither had he wanted to evade the gravity of the situation. Thankful is passed. The services are held until your return. CS.

  The degree of his self-protection had kept him from acknowledging the largest of his own fears: that even this news would not be enough to bring his wife back and that without her he would not be able to surmount the monumental sadness incited by his sister’s death. If he had been capable of utter self-honesty and a different literary style, he would have written a letter, not a telegram, and in the letter he would have said, “Without you, I am a man alone at the bottom of a vast mountain, my face lifted to the sheer expanse above me. Without you, I am this man for time eternal.” But he wrote none of these thoughts, and it was only because Julia had known him for so long and so well that she was able to hold that telegram in her shaking fingers and know the sadness that the words contained.

  He had lost so many of his siblings that he had spent his adult life always expecting to lose more. So this news, she understood, was being greeted not with surprise but with the more devastating sadness of the arrival of what one already believes to be one’s fate. She telegrammed back: I arrive 31st, 4:15. My heart breaks for you.

  Later, he would berate her for all she had not told him, in that telegram and in her letters from her months away, but even knowing all that she had omitted, he would reread that telegram and feel as cared for as he had when he first received it. Indeed, he was carrying it in his jacket pocket as he strode toward the depot, and he moved his fingers over it the way a child might a pocketful of marbles.

  It had, against all likelihood, been Ida who told Charlie about the time and date of Mrs. Sampson’s return, though she was not clear about why she had done such a thing. They were just beginning their private Thursday lesson, which had become over the last six months both her justification for extending her stay in North Adams and her favorite event of the week. With Julia gone, Charlie had found himself without a teacher. He was too tortured by her absence to care at all about filling it, but Fannie Burlingame took it upon herself to suggest to Ida that she offer her teaching services. Fannie herself had become very close to one of the other Celestials, and she felt that setting town tongues wagging any more than they already were was to be avoided when possible. The idea was to demonstrate how much these boys deserved to be accepted, not how much danger there was in doing so. But, Fannie had thought, if tongues were to wag, then better they wag about Ida Wilburn, an outsider, than about Julia Sampson.

  Ida enjoyed these lessons so much that after a few months of them, she invited Charlie to dinner at the Widow Allen’s. The dinner table had been excruciating, the widow chattering on, caught between thrill and alarm at having a Chinaman at her table. But Charlie had handled the hysteria as if tending to a panicked chicken, and then, after dinner, when the widow retired to the living room with her after-dinner sherry (purely medicinal), he offered to help Ida with the dishes. She stood at the dry sink regarding him. “Well,” she said. “Knock me over with a feather.”

  He looked at her blankly.

  She smiled and handed him a wet plate. “Just means I’m surprised, is all,” she said. “Which doesn’t happen very often,” she added.

  “Why not?” he asked, placing the well-dried plate in the rack and reaching for the next one.

  She shrugged. “I’m just usually the one with the most common sense in the room,” she said. “Hard to be surprised when you’re the practical one.”

  “That is sad,” he said simply.

  She stopped washing for a moment and looked at her hands beneath the dirty water in the basin. It was sad, she thought.

  “I am surprised all the time,” he said.

  She looked at him and thought, That’s sad too. They had given each other small smiles and finished the dishes listening to the sounds of evening birds.

  So when, at the start of the lesson that July day, Ida had, with some hurt, taken note of Charlie’s distracted mind, she had inquired after his health, and he had assured her that he was fine. The whole conversation might’ve ended there, had he not then looked at her, the expressions of decision making crisscrossing his countenance. He was expecting, he finally offered, news of a friend who had been away a long while.

  She knew of whom he spoke, and it should’ve made her nothing but grim, but instead of desolation or woe, she felt flattered and moved that he had taken her into his confidence. Her instinct was to give something in return, and so she offered what she felt he would most like. Fannie Burlingame had shared the information with her on their way to lessons: Mrs. Sampson would be arriving that afternoon on the 4:15 from Troy.

  His face, filled with gratitude and surprise, was an image that would never fade from the bank of her mind. Years later, dying, her children around her, she would conjure that face. She had made him happy, she would remember.

  If Sampson had not been so delayed, he might have seen Charlie making his own way to the depot. As it was, Charlie had the time to slip behind the station unobserved by anyone save Ida, who had followed him at h
er own safe distance. He stood in the copse of elms and birches on the hill, his dark-blue-clad figure dappled in shade. Ida stood a stone’s throw from the corner of Chestnut Street and took her concealment behind the farthest outbuilding of the freight station.

  Had she not been wearing the crimson scarf that Charlie had given her the previous Christmas—each Sunday school teacher had received one from him—Alfred probably would have missed her as he took the ridge shortcut to Tim Crawley’s place on the south end of town. As it was, he did not miss her, and so he too was crouching on the hill above the depot when the 4:15 made its shrill call, when it eased into the station, coming to a slow and gasping stop at the passenger platform. And all four attendees—Sampson, Charlie, Ida, and Alfred—had a clear view of Mrs. Julia Sampson descending the train’s two steps, an infant child in her arms.

  Chapter Nine

  The infant girl was a sensible and sober thing, making not a sound from depot to Wilson House. Her hair was of darkest black, and her eyes were the shape of almonds and the color of rosewood. She regarded her mother from her bassinet until her heavy eyelids grew heavier, rising and dipping in that sleepy way until they remained closed, her tiny chest rising and falling like a panting puppy’s. One arm was cocked to her turned head and the other stretched straight in the manner of a fencer poised to parry.

  On the other side of the closed bedroom door, Julia’s husband waited. It sounded as if he were moving furniture. Beyond her bedroom wall was the emptiness of her sister-in-law’s room. It would make a good nursery, Julia thought before she could stop herself.

  Years ago, she had read in Godey’s Lady’s Book that motherhood was the most striking and beautiful aspect of the female character. Only motherhood could provide the fulfillment of a woman’s physiological and moral destiny.