Gold Mountain Blues

by Ling Zhang

  The stone-breakers had to break the stones small enough to fit into the baskets. Some of the stones could be broken up just using a sledgehammer but the bigger ones had to be split with a rock drill first, and then each piece had to be broken into smaller pieces. Red Hair and Ah-Fat worked as a team then: the boy held the drill and the older man swung the sledgehammer. The constant jarring soon made the skin between Ah-Fat’s thumb and forefinger crack and bleed. He had to rip the lining of his cotton jacket into pieces and make a bandage. The blood leaked through and formed a hard scab. He soaked his bandage in water every evening when they got back to camp, then dried it over the bonfire, ready for work again the next day. The cracks would begin to heal overnight, only to split again the next day. Gradually the cracks got bigger and would not heal over. Rock dust got in and they began to look like dirty black gullies.

  Red Hair told Ah-Fat to go and buy a pair of deerskin gloves with good thick lining of animal pelt inside them, from the Redskins. When Ah-Fat heard they cost three dollars a pair, he refused. Red Hair sighed: “That’s two whole days’ wages if you don’t spend a cent on food or drink, or shell out on a woman,” he said. “Those thieving motherfuckers have hiked the price sky-high.”

  Ah-Fat said nothing but he suddenly realized that he was not capable of being a carpenter, a bricklayer or a grinder. Back home, all he could do was farm work (and he had never done more than muddle along at that). If he worked himself to the bone all day breaking and carrying stones, the most he could earn was one dollar and seventy-five cents a day. But as soon as work started on the railroad, prices shot up and all his wages went on daily necessities. At this rate, how long would it take him to save up enough to buy fields and property? His mother might not last that long.

  The break that Ah-Fat was hoping for came just five days later.

  The group had set up camp in a new spot, but after two whole days, there was still a blank next to their names in the record-keeper’s work log. Several attempts to blast the rocks had failed, so none of the follow-up work could proceed.

  The proper name for the explosive they used was nitroglycerine, but no one ever called it that. They just called it Yellow Water. When put into bottles, it looked about as harmless and innocent as lemonade, pretty even. No one could have imagined it capable of razing mountaintops. It was hotheaded stuff too, and had to be handled with the greatest care. If, by some mishap, a drop escaped and landed on hard rock, and it happened to be a hot day, the whole lot would go up in smoke in the blink of an eye.

  The tunnel to be built was through a cliff face, and could only be reached by crawling across loose scree. The first man to go up was handpicked by the foreman because he had the most blasting experience. As he crossed the last bit of scree, he trod upon an overhanging rock, lost his footing and fell. There was a deafening, muffled roar—not of detonated explosives but of cascading rock which rolled with him down the mountain. Man and Yellow Water bottle alike hit the surface of the water, floated for a moment, then disappeared from sight.

  The second navvy got up the steep slope without incident, but near the entrance to the tunnel twisted his ankle on a loose stone. All that could be seen was his blue cotton jacket fluttering in mid-air like a sparrow hawk with a broken wing, and then the whole cliff face shook. When the dust cleared, the men’s mouths opened and shut ludicrously, but no sound came out. They had been deafened by the blast.

  The yeung fan foreman kicked angrily at a pile of loose stones by his foot. There was no need for an interpreter; the navvies knew he was swearing. But there were no more takers, no third man ready to give up his life on the mountainside.

  Not that day.

  Not the day after, either.

  On the third day, the men awoke to find they had an extra egg with their breakfast. They gathered together afterwards, to find the foreman smoking gloomily. He sat on a low rock and the men formed a circle around him. The foreman smoked on and on, lighting the next cigarette from the butt of the one before. The pile of half-finished cigarette ends grew around him. The men were surprised to see that their young foreman’s hair was thinning on top—and he suddenly seemed vulnerable to them. This foreman was their boss, but there were still others above him. He had to answer to the foremen’s foreman. Progress had been nil the first day, nil the second day. If there was still no progress today, then he would have to figure out a way to complete four days’ work by end of day tomorrow. The men gradually began to feel that they did not want to be in his shoes.

  Finally the foreman threw his cigarette away, stood up and pointing at the record-keeper said: “You tell ’em.”

  The men opened a crack in their ranks and the record-keeper walked into the centre. He stared at his toecaps and, stammering slightly, said: “He … he says anyone who’s successful in getting the explosives into the hole and detonating them, can, can apply to, to get his wife over to Gold Mountain. One ticket will be paid for.”

  There was a silence so absolute you could hear the wind rustling in the trees and the moths flapping their wings on the underside of the leaves. Ah-Fat’s fingertip gave a tiny quiver. He was not aware of it—but Red Hair was. Red Hair grabbed hold of his hand in a grip that was as sharp, savage and unrelenting as a crab’s pincers. Ah-Fat could hear the bones crack. “I’ve got a wife, you haven’t,” Red Hair whispered in his ear.

  To the record-keeper, Red Hair said: “You tell that kwai lo (white devil) that if he doesn’t keep his word, I’ll kill his mother.”

  The record-keeper relayed most, though not all, of the message. He was adept in sandpapering away the roughest edges of the words he had to translate. The frown lines on the foreman’s face gradually relaxed into something akin to a genial smile.

  Red Hair set off up the mountain carrying the bottle of Yellow Water and the tin tube with the gunpowder packed in it. Ah-Lam started after him: “Mind your step, Red Hair,” he called. Red Hair turned and smiled: “Don’t pull such an ugly face,” he said. “Just you wait till my wife’s here to serve you porridge with preserved eggs.” Ah-Fat tried to say something too, but the words stuck in his throat. His eyes smarted as he watched Red Hair proceed up the slope.

  Red Hair was walking very strangely, like a lame antelope, with one leg long and the other short. The short leg was clamped firmly to the ground while he stretched out the long one and made a circle. Ah-Fat realized he was testing the firmness of the terrain. Stepping slowly but surely, he made his way to the hole in the cliff face. His blue cotton jacket fluttered for moment at the entrance and then disappeared. Ah-Fat began counting to himself.

  One, two, three, four, five. He should have put the bottle of Yellow Water down by now.

  Six, seven, eight, nine, ten. He should have stuck the tin tube into the bottle.

  Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. He should have set the tube in position inside the hole in the mountain.

  Ah-Fat counted to fifty but still there was no sign of Red Hair. Some of the men began to panic. “Send the dog into the hole to look.” The words were hardly out of their mouths when there was a muffled thud, like a miserable fart, and something shot out of the hole in the cliff face. The explosives had not ignited properly.

  When the dust settled, Ah-Fat and Ah-Lam raced up the mountainside and brought Red Hair back. Half of Red Hair’s face had been burned black, and there was something else odd about it too—he had lost an ear. Blood gushed out of a hole the size of a copper coin on the side of his head. Ah-Fat tore off his jacket and pressed it to the wound. In a little while, the cotton cloth was soaked through. Red Hair’s body was as limp as a rag doll.

  “Get the foreman to ride for a doctor! Quick!” Ah-Fat yelled at the record-keeper. The foreman was the only one who had a horse, apart from the supply team.

  The record-keeper went and spoke to the foreman. His words were brief—just one sentence. The foreman launched into a long preamble. The men grew impatient. “What the hell’s up? This is a matter of life and death!” The record-
keeper came over and mumbled: “He says there’s no doctor for a hundred miles. Besides, it was arranged with the contractor that in case of illness or injury, you look after yourself, the company’s not responsible. It’s clearly laid down in the contract that.…”

  The record-keeper did not finish what he was saying. He swallowed it back because Ah-Fat got to his feet and walked over to him. Ah-Fat walked up close and the record-keeper could see the axe in the boy’s hand. This was the axe Ah-Fat used for felling saplings for their tent. The axe blade had been nicked in a few places but was still an excellent tool for chopping trees.

  “Down in the valley there’s a Redskin tribe with a medicine man,” said Ah-Fat. There was a gleam in his eyes which made the record-keeper tremble. The last time he had seen that kind of a look was one early spring. A brown bear had come down from the mountain after a winter of starvation—it had eyes like that.

  The record-keeper went back and told the foreman what Ah-Fat had said. The foreman gave Ah-Fat a sidelong glance and launched into another long, incomprehensible speech. This the record-keeper did not translate. He knew the best he could do was take the rough edges off the man’s words, but there was no way he could blunt the knife blade. And now there were knife blades on both sides. He went back to Ah-Fat: “You do what you want. It’s none of my concern.”

  Ah-Fat shoved the record-keeper aside and went up to the foreman. Gently he raised the axe, until it almost rested against the foreman’s nose. It still bore the fresh resin smell from the branches he had cut that morning. The foreman started to retreat, but too late. The crowd of men seethed around the pair, squeezing them into the centre of a circle which grew smaller and smaller. It was getting hard to breathe. The foreman’s temples began to throb and his eyes looked like they were about to pop out of their sockets.

  “Doctor. Right now. You.” Ah-Fat enunciated the words one by one.

  It took a few moments for the foreman to realize Ah-Fat was speaking English, albeit of a rudimentary kind.

  “You’re wasting your breath, Ah-Fat,” a voice shouted from the crowd, “just cut him down. Our lives are cheap. Two and a half of ours for one of his. Fair’s fair.”

  The foreman suddenly bent down and swiftly pulled something out of his boot, and put it against Ah-Fat’s middle. It felt blunt and rather heavy, not like a sharp weapon. Ah-Fat suddenly realized it was a pistol. They had no idea the foreman carried a gun. Ah-Fat dropped his axe with a thud. The atmosphere became as brittle as if it were a sheet of glass of which everyone held a corner in his hand, and dared not make a false move in case it shattered.

  The foreman muttered something. Then, pushing Ah-Fat in front of him, he walked him slowly away. The ranks of men parted like water to let them through and came together again behind them. Harsh breathing could be heard but no one said a word.

  It was only when the pair had gone some way off that the men found the ashen-faced record-keeper standing among some low bushes. The crotch of his trousers was wet, and urine still dripped from the bottom of one trouser leg.

  “He—he said he’d go with Ah-Fat and, and get a doctor.” The record-keeper’s lips trembled so much he could hardly get the words out.

  Half an hour later, the medicine man from the Redskin tribe rode up, bringing herbals to stop the bleeding and inflammation.

  Ah-Fat tugged at the record-keeper’s sleeve: “Tell him to bring me the stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  “The bottle of Yellow Water.”

  The record-keeper looked astonished. “You mean—you’re going up?” “Tell him I don’t want a boat ticket, I want a bank draft.”

  The record-keeper went over and relayed the message. This time the record-keeper spoke fluently and at length while the foreman’s answer was brief. In fact, it was a single word, which everyone understood without the need of a translation.

  “Yes.”

  Ah-Fat tied the Yellow Water bottle to his waist, looped the tin tube over his shoulder and then set off. As he walked past the men, he heard sighs but no one tried to stop him.

  “If someone’s got to die, better for it to be someone without a wife and kids,” one man said.

  As he climbed the slope, Ah-Fat copied the way Red Hair had gone up—one leg long, the other short, one in a fixed position, the other testing the ground ahead. The difference was that Ah-Fat was younger so his steps were lighter and faster. The half-moon of the cliff face had suffered repeated injuries that day and the newly exposed rock had the terrifying whiteness of a woman’s naked breast. Ah-Fat’s black shadow fluttered moth-like back and forth across the crevices between the rocks. When he reached the entrance to the hole, he turned around and waved—perhaps in greeting, perhaps in farewell.

  A short while later, Ah-Fat emerged from the hole. Forgetting the measured steps he had taken on his ascent, he came down fast. There was no testing of the ground this time. Ah-Fat’s legs seemed to have left his body in their frantic flight. But he was not fast enough to outpace the gunpowder in the tin tube. He had not run more than a few steps when the cliff face collapsed.

  “That’s done it,” said the foreman quietly. He did not sound as satisfied as one might have expected. Three and a half lives for one tunnel. Even when he made the usual calculations, he was still not sure the formula made sense.

  Besides, he had actually started to like this shy yet rough Chinese kid.

  In the middle of that night, the whole camp was woken up by frantic barking. The cook got up for a piss and shouted at Ginger, then tossed a bit of leftover rice cake in the dog’s direction. Ginger ignored it, sunk his teeth into the cook’s trouser leg and would not let go. The cook grabbed a stick and shoved him off but the dog still howled mournfully. The cook walked over to see what was out there and came across a black bundle on the ground, seven or eight paces from the tent.

  He gave it a kick and the thing moaned—it was a man.

  The cook lit a lantern and by its light saw a lump of blackened flesh. The flesh moved, revealing two rows of pink gums.

  “The bank … the bank draft,” Ah-Fat mumbled.

  When the railroad reached the town of Emory the cook’s worst fears came true.

  It was almost unheard of for the Fraser River to freeze over, but that winter it was covered with a thick layer of ice. The boats of the supply teams could not get through, the camp was cut off and the rice rapidly ran out. Work on the railroad halted and several hundred navvies were trapped in their camps.

  Preparing the rice each day became a time-consuming business. First a few spoonfuls of rice grain were boiled to a thin porridge. The wok with the porridge in it was put outside the tent to freeze solid, then three or four times the quantity of water was added. The porridge was boiled up and then put out to freeze again. This was repeated three times until the few spoons of rice grain had turned into a wok-ful of porridge, enough for a big bowl each. The trouble was this food would not stay put in their bellies. At first they felt full enough to burst, but as soon as they had walked a couple of paces, they farted and then felt ravenously hungry again.

  The potatoes had long since been eaten up. The first two days after supplies dried up, there were a couple of slivers of salt fish to add to the rice, then there was just half a spoonful of salt. By the fourth day, that was finished too, and all that was left was one meal a day of watery rice gruel. Eventually, the cook washed out the wok, giving each man a little of the rice water. Then he threw down the ladle and said: “You’ll have to look after yourselves from now on.”

  They all knew this was the last mouthful of food but no one said anything. For the starving, even a sigh is a waste of effort. They did not measure their energy in pounds and ounces any more, but in tenths of an ounce. They scrimped and saved every tiny scrap of energy they possessed for the time when the overland supply team would arrive. On the overland route, it would take the pack horses at least three days to arrive from the nearest small town. And that was their speed in summertime. When there
was snow and ice on the trail, it might take four days, or five, or forever.

  Ah-Fat still kept the one-hundred-dollar bank draft in the pocket of his under-jacket. He had not had a chance to send it to his mother. When he first got it, he was afraid that if he slept too soundly, someone might pull his jacket off him while he slept. So he took the jacket off, folded it very small and used it as a pillow under his head. With the constant folding and refolding, the bank draft gradually lost its crispness, and the edges became tattered with moisture. As Ah-Fat pillowed his head on the bank draft, he dreamed over and over again that this small piece of paper turned itself into mu after mu of land, expanses of glossy black earth that would grow anything planted.

  But gradually Ah-Fat’s dreams changed. He stopped dreaming about land. Now his dreams were full of banquets, with tables laid out from one end of the village to the other. When he woke up, every detail of every dish was still clear in his memory, its colour, its form, its taste, even what dish it was served in and the patterns on it. Then he stopped dreaming. He could not be bothered to keep his eye on the bank draft and just left it by his pillow. He knew perfectly well that the piece of paper which had nearly cost him his life was worthless if he starved to death. It was not even big enough to wipe his arse with.

  After drinking the last of the rice water, Ah-Fat fell into a doze, but soon after he was woken by pangs of hunger, gnawing away at his belly like tiny flesh-eating creatures. He could actually hear the rustling as they scrabbled around inside his belly. If someone cut him open right then, he was sure that they would find his belly riddled with tiny holes. His whole body felt as rigid as if it was bound in a straitjacket, and every fibre of his being seemed to have shrunk several inches. He knew he was suffering the effects of the bitter cold.