by Dani Hoots
It was surprising how much things changed between the 1850s and the present day. San Francisco itself had changed so much, between the gold rush, the age of industrialism, both world wars, and the eventual suburban sprawl of the city. I watched it all happen, hidden away in the darkness, as I hunt for the qi to keep myself barely alive. I have found places to hide during the time that the sun shines, even as buildings change and people have become increasingly stricter with security. There are still areas I could find, though, where people never dare venture.
There is a saying from my native country that solemnly says, ‘wū lòu piān féng lián yè yǔ’, meaning ‘when the roof is leaking, there will be continuous nights of rain’. I think that saying holds true for most of my life, and I have an extensive experience of life to back this up. Every part of my life seemed to fall apart. One thing after another, nothing went right at any time. And, it was all my fault.
I could blame someone else instead of myself, I knew. I could blame some evil creature or some demon for the things I did, to make myself feel better about it all, having lost everything in my life. But I knew that it wasn’t true. No, it all started with one single bad decision I had made in the past and now I suffered the consequences for the remainder of eternity for it. I had created this evil inside of me and I would have to live with that fact for the rest of my unnaturally extended life.
It all started over a hundred fifty years ago, when I had decided to take my family and move to America. Back then, America was thriving. It was a beautiful country with so many possibilities, or at least, that was what was promised to anyone emigrating there. My own home country, China, had just suffered through the Opium Wars and a lot of us had decided to move to the new country of America, in order to survive and make money for our families. I was living in the providence of Fujian, just off the sea, which had very little fertile land by tail-end of the Opium Wars. Most of its physical terrain was made up of mostly water and mountain terrain, making it very hard to survive, especially when the taxes of our homeland began to increase substantially after the war. A lot of men left their families at home and sent money over for them, so that they could save up and return one day, if not bring their whole families over there once they had enough money to securely move themselves to America.
Although times were hard in Fujian, and in the rest of China, I didn’t want to leave my homeland. My family had been farming lotus seeds and roots for a very long time, and I felt I would be disgracing them if I left it all behind in pursuit of carving out a new existence in a new land. I did have some cousins who were planning to take over the farm in my absence, but the guilt still ate me up inside as my older brother Ming and I sailed across the ocean with my wife Meilin and two children Li and Ruoxi. My brother had no remorse about leaving behind the rest of our family in China, including our cousins and an elderly uncle. I promised them that I would send over some of the money I would be making, hinting to my brother that he should do the same. He ignored that hint and never promised anything along those lines.
The journey over was a tough one. We had to raise the money to pay for the boat passage and then we were on that boat for what seemed to be a very long time. Not many of the passengers talked to each other, as they were scared out of their wits by the whole notion of sailing on a ship over the world’s largest body of water. More important, none of us knew what was in store for us when we arrived in America, we just hoped the rumors of plenty of higher wage jobs being available was true, making this entire daunting sea voyage worth every agonizing minute.
Out of everyone on the boat, Ming seemed to be the one that was the least worried about what awaited him on shore. It was as if he didn’t have a care in the world, just wanting desperately to get to America so he could get more money from foolishly gambling away what little he had. He was selfish like that, but lazy as well. Back on our farm, he always seemed to do a lot less work than any of the other farm hands, and yet inexplicably took the same amount of money as I for much less work. He had no sense of honor or, it seemed, to want to work hard, honest labor for his earnings.
Once we arrived to America, we were met with prejudice and what almost felt like disgrace. The white men would look down at us and the jobs offered had lower salaries than those attained by the white men. White women wouldn’t even make eye contact with us. At first this was hurtful, but after a while, my family and I didn’t care at all for their approval. We were still earning more than we would in Fujian and there was a large community of Chinese immigrants like ourselves that we could belong to.
My brother and I got hired in the growing gold mining industry of California. We shared a small apartment within the Chinese district of San Francisco. My brother decided that he was going to live with my family, since he didn’t want to pay for a place of his own. He argued that family should stick together, but I knew the real reason. He didn’t want use his own money, he didn’t care about family. It was a little cramped at times with even just the five of us, but we made due. He squandered most of his money, gambling, and drinking, choosing to depend on me to provide him both food and sleeping quarters with my own meagerly wages. Meilin wanted him to leave us since he was taking away our share of the money. We spent quite a few nights arguing about this matter intensely, but in the end he never left. I was too afraid to kick him out, out of fear of what his drunkenness would cause him to do. But, a day came, where all of that would change.
Ming and I were working in the mine one day; the dark lighting and dust-filled air made us choke and cough spastically during work and after work. I had noticed that some people are affected more than others. Those who were American didn’t seem to have as bad of a reaction, although that could have been because they weren’t sent in the same areas that we were. We were treated like animals at times, but it was something I suffered every day so that I might be able to provide for my family. There was no other way. Sometimes, I felt like the only one struggling to responsibly manage my funds, to try and make that distant dream a possibility. Although I knew my dreams to be something I probably would never achieve, it didn’t mean I couldn’t let them lighten my spirits time-to-time. I just had to try and keep working and believe that someday those dreams could come true.
We kept on working through the hot summer day, the heat eating away at my skin and mind. Others were suffering right along with us, as well, but the reward was well worth it in the end. As I promised, I had been sending spare money to our extended family back in China. Although it seemed circumstances kept getting rougher for them in Fujian, they kept on working as well. I told them to come to America eventually and that I could get them a job at the mining company, but they wouldn’t budge. As I worked away, I could see why they wouldn’t want this, even though it brought more food to the plate. It was demeaning work, but neither I nor my brother cared. So day after day, we found ourselves with a pick, shaving away the exterior rock, so we could all someday find the miraculous gold we were all searching for.
“Ming, Hui,” our supervisor Charlie came over, his face covered in dirt, and his hands, even when we weren’t in the mines, never seemed to be clean. “I have a job for you two boys.”
“What is it, sir?” I asked with a brief sigh. Even though I hated our supervisor, I always called him sir. It was the honorable thing to do, even if he treated us horribly.
He flashed a toothless grin. “I need you two to go down as far as the tunnel goes and start digging there. Take this light with you, you two will need it. Report back here if you find anything.”
I glanced down the dark tunnel. Men had been talking about how poorly made the tunnel was and how it could collapse at any time without warning. Some even said it should be condemned. “But sir...” I began.
“Are you disobeying my orders?” Charlie rolled up his sleeves. “No one disobeys my orders.”
“No, no sir, I was just gonna ask if we can have another light,” I explained. Ming did nothing to help the situation but stand there and w
ait to see how it would end. He never seemed to help in situations like this.
Charlie narrowed his eyes. “One light per group. Now go before I decide to send you somewhere else. Somewhere worse.”
I nodded and hurried off with the lamp. Ming followed me as we made our way deeper into the mine, leading the two of us into a very dank part of the cave.
“I can’t believe you didn’t help me back there, we shouldn’t be coming down here, no one should be,” I mumbled to Ming.
“He was going to send us either way, just except that. They spit on us here.”
“But if something happened, Meilin, Ruoxi and Li would be left alone,” I worried. My heart was filled with fear every moment I was down dreading the possibility of death. The only thing that kept me going was knowing it was the only way to support our family. I just wished there was a way I could leave this job behind and make money another way, but in order to do that, I would have needed a larger sum to start out with.
“Oh, they would be fine. I would take care of them, you know that.”
“If something happened to me down here, it would hurt you as well.”
He shook his head. “No, we both know that I am the stronger brother. Nothing bad could ever happen to me,” he laughed. I just glared at him, trying not to think about it all. He would likely spend all the money and probably leave none for my wife and children. No, I could never let anything happen to myself and leave him in charge.
We made it to the end of the corridor and my fear was confirmed. The area seemed unstable. I quickly put down the lamp and started work at the difficult task ahead, hoping that the day would go by quickly. I didn’t want to be here any longer, even though we had just started this tedious job weeks ago. I doubted that there was gold down here, Charlie just wanted to mess with us. He hadn’t liked us or any of the Chinese men from day one and would send a couple of the men from our group on dangerous tasks daily.
Lunch time came and my brother and I took a small break, where we worked to eat the meal Meilin had made us. She made the best steam buns on the entire planet and I was very excited to see that was what she had packed for us. It made my day a little bit better.
Ming sat down against the wall. Some pebbles rolled off the wall all because Ming showed no care when leaning back on it. I gulped as I looked up at the ceiling, which thankfully still seemed to be holding together. Meaning, no risk yet of us being caved in here.
“Hui, do you think there is anything back here or do you think our boss is just a jerk?” Ming asked as he chewed off a piece of his steam bun.
I shrugged. “We don’t know that for a fact, there could be something back here. We just have to keep working diligently in order to find it.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t like it when he uses us as bait. This area isn’t structurally sound and it is why he only sent the two of us. He doesn’t ever send any of the American workers this far in.”
“That’ because he is a racist and doesn’t care about anyone except himself. It would be easier if we were able to make enough money to leave this place. Then I could start up my own business.”
Ming raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Like what kind of business?”
“Don’t laugh at me, but I really want to paint. It had always been a dream of mine to paint when we were children, but I never had the money to do so. I used to watch our neighbor paint sometimes, until he shooed me away.”
Ming laughed. “You are crazy to think such a thing. Unless we find a bunch of gold back here, there is no way that could happen. We are stuck in this life for the rest of our years alive, however many that might be. There is no denying that, Hui.”
I sighed. Although it hurt for him to laugh, I knew he was right, there was no way I would be able to become both a painter and be able to support my family. I had to be there for them through everything, and I wasn’t keen on missing the best years of their life in any way
We got back to work, knocking rock away from the side wall. It was amazing how such repetitive work began to eat away at my mind. I wanted to do so much more with my life, but I could not. I was sure I was cursed to live out my life in this place, a place I deemed worse than anywhere else imaginable
As for my brother, he didn’t seem to mind this menial work as he robotically chipped away the rock. He just did the work he was supposed to and didn’t seem to want to complain or do anything else for that matter. It was surprising since he was so lazy when we farmed back home. Maybe it was because here he could get caught not just by me, but by our supervisor who would hurt those who didn’t work.
I couldn’t believe he didn’t have dreams like I did of owning a shop or exploring some other avenue of work besides mining. In Fujian, we had both been farmers, and this work wasn’t much different from that other than the fact that mining didn’t involve getting rained on, or the disappointing experience of a bad harvest. All we had to do was literally strike gold, smuggle it out of the mine, and we would be set for life.
The hours ticked away, and it was almost time to head out for the day. I wiped the extraneous sweat off of my forehead. I couldn’t wait to get out of these stuffy mines and get some fresh air, some sunlight to remedy the depressing darkness of the mine. I just hoped that tonight would be cooler than the last. San Francisco had been having a heat streak, although it still wasn’t as bad as the summers we had experienced in China.
“Well brother,” Ming knocked the pick into the rock once more. “I don’t think we will find anything today.”
He hit it once more and the ground around us began to shake. An earthquake. My heart quickened, fear filling my senses. There was nowhere for us to take cover, so the only thing we could do was try to outrun it. I started for my brother, and we hurried down the tunnel. But, it was too late. The rock from the walls began to crumble and large rocks fell and blocked our path. We were trapped.
Both Ming and I were coughing, trying to clear our lungs of all the dust that had gotten trapped in them throughout the day. Gladly, our lamp had survived everything and we had light for at least a few more hours. We would have to dig our way out now, the rock having blocked our only means of escape.
“Are you alright, brother?” Ming asked as he patted my back, while I coughed some more.
I nodded. “I’m alright, we just need to figure out a way out of here.”
“The tunnel was the only way out. I don’t know how much of it collapsed, hopefully it was only this one section. We should start working it away.”
“We have to get out of here, Meilin will be worried,” I said as I began to move away the rock. “It doesn’t seem to go that far, I think we can move all this rock within an hour before the light goes out. We will just have to work as a team.”
Ming nodded, and we started digging through the rock. I had been right about it not going that far, as we began to see the other side of the tunnel within the next hour of digging.
Surprisingly, Ming worked diligently. I presumed it was because he wanted to get out and make it down to the closest bar for a drink. It seemed he would spend almost every night there, drinking and spending money on gambling. It was embarrassing to call him my brother sometimes, as those who saw him drunk in the streets late at night generally disapproved of his behavior. Sometimes I had wished I didn’t have a brother, then I would never have to worry about him any longer and I could spend more money on my family.
As we kept moving the rocks away, I noticed something strange. There, lodged within the brown and grey rock was something glittery.
“What is that?” I asked as I moved away the dirt. It was a large chunk of gold, the size of an apple. I gasped. I couldn’t believe what I was holding. It was a giant chunk of gold, more gold than I had seen in my entire time working there combined.
“That is gold, my dear brother!” Ming smacked his hand against my back. “Enough gold for you and I to not need to work here any longer, for a while at least. That could last a family for a long while, if not the rest of their lives. S
plit into two, we would be able to not have to work for a bit, at least.”
It could support one family for the rest of their lives, but once it was split into two, we’d both have to return to work. Those words repeated themselves in my mind as I stared at the large piece of gold. I could stop being a miner with this gold, if I could sneak it out of the mine without my brother’s notice. Then I could open up my own shop, like I had wanted to. Then all would be good with the world. But in order to do that, I needed everything that the gold provided. He had already seen it, and I wouldn’t be able to take everything for it. I would have to split it.
My insides began to feel warm the more I thought about it. Ming, I knew, would waste away his share very fast, even though it would be a large amount. He was not as responsible as I was, and a very extreme part of me did not want to see him squander it so fast. Even worse. I would have to work again, and I wouldn’t be able to follow my dreams to escape the doldrums of the mines. I would give anything to escape this place, all I wanted to be was happy with my family, a family that deserved everything in the world, not a brother who wasted away much needed resources.
I glanced at my brother, a dark thought slowly made its way through my mind. No one was around at this moment, and an accident was bound to happen. All that needed to happen was for a rock to hit him in the head. No one would notice, there was a ceiling collapse in the cave. No one would expect me to have done it. Better yet, with this strategy, Charlie wouldn’t make sure there was any gold on me when I left. I could easily sneak it out of the mine. Then, this gold would be all mine. And I could live happily, ever after, with my family.
