Chang and Eng

by Darin Strauss

  That night was warm for January, and as black as the crows in the Wilkes County coal mine. The crowd, a ball of light that spread as it approached, was fast separating into individual torch-bearing men. The throng numbered about twenty fellows strong; one or two men were armed with guns, a few others with pitchforks, shovels, axes. The rest carried just their torches, spitting and swearing and wiping their foreheads on filthy shirtsleeves. Most of them concealed portions of their faces with kerchiefs. They came to a stop before the parson’s porch and stood in his front yard.

  The crowd was close before us in firelight and shadow. Chang moved his arm from my shoulder and used both his hands to lift his gun. Doing this, he had to pivot toward me, and so we stood toe-to-toe; he pointed his weapon at the crowd. I felt myself sweating from my armpits. My mouth was dry.

  “Slow down, people,” Chang yelled, though nobody was moving. The thick wooden butt of his gun was an inch off my cheek.

  “Parson, you liked to stand down,” said a man in front of the throng with a straw hat. “Our beef’s with the Chinamen.” I recognized this man’s half-covered face. He had been among the first to wave and say hello when we’d arrived in town.

  “I ain’t sure this marriage is right, either, John,” blinking Hodge muttered as he scratched his head. “But one thing I know is wrong is violence.” He pointed at this man: “Violence!”

  Another man, bigger, a thug with bushy black eyebrows, walked forward out of the thick of the group. He closed one eye and lifted his gun, pointing it directly at Chang. The tip of his weapon was about three feet from my brother’s. “It ain’t natural,” he said calmly.

  Using both of my hands, I directed my shotgun toward this man’s head. He didn’t move. Black flies buzzed between us, on their way to the horses that fed on grass in the neighboring stable. The knuckles of my left hand touched the knuckles of Chang’s; the barrels of our guns came to a point. Chang, this masked man, and I stood there, our weapons forming the letter Y in the air.

  How have you ended up here, Eng? I asked myself.

  You followed your brother, I said to myself,

  “We will die,” I heard myself say to the crowd, “before we give up the right to marry—” In my voice shook desperation and splintered courage.

  The thug did not move his gun from my brother’s direction.

  “—and at least some of you will die before we do,” I said, “I can promise you that.” What was I doing? I had no grudge against these men. I imagined pulling the trigger—nothing won, all lost, everything finished. I had never focused so hard on something as I did on that man’s gun.

  Do not back down, I told myself. This is what you want, too. A chance at happiness.

  “We’ll burn your house, Parson,” a voice wheezed from the crowd, “don’t think we won’t.”

  A rock came flying and broke the Parson’s front window. “God will strangle you dead.”

  Hodge shook his head. “I know these Chinamen are good men of their kind, upstanding Christian men.” He held his hands in front of him, palms out, fingers spread; his voice wavered.

  Chang and I continued to aim our weapons at the man before us. I could feel the smallest tremor in my brother’s hand. “Steady,” I told him. “Yes, I know,” he said. I felt my internal organs pushing their way up toward my throat.

  In the periphery of my eye line I noticed a carriage coming toward us, down the dirt road adjacent to Hodge’s yard. It was Sarah and Adelaide. I tried not to look, not to draw attention to their imminent arrival.

  Someone from the throng implored, “Parson, move.” And I gripped the gun more tightly in my hands.

  A second rock was thrown, and struck me in the chest; it knocked us down, onto our sides. Both our guns went off as they fell from our hands. My breast was throbbing; the rock had taken my breath. I was left wheezing. The bullets whistled off into the distance.

  The thug charged up on the porch. In two steps he reached us, aiming his gun at me.

  As the man started to squeeze the trigger, Chang and I brought two of our knees to our chests in one shared motion until they abutted one another. And then we kicked him in his gut, the heels of our feet striking as one.

  What happened next is immortalized in a drawing by a North Carolinian artist named John Ray, Jr., who was commissioned to illustrate the pamphlet accompanying our last tour. In the sketch by Ray Jr.—who may have been there, a kerchief over his face—the thug sails backward and his gun discharges harmlessly into the air. The thug is shown to be about five feet off the ground, his arms splayed. The force of two kicks hitting simultaneously was portrayed with accuracy. I did not come out well in the portrait, caught as I was in the blur of the instant, but Chang, sitting somewhat higher than I, can be seen smiling. What the picture could not capture was the next moment, when the man crashed into the rearmost pillar of Hodge’s porch and landed with a thud. He was unconscious by the time he’d touched down.

  With a unified yell, the throng rushed forward, bloodlust in their eyes. A few dragged their torches as they went, scalding the ground beneath them. The rest held their flames in front of them, set to burn the parson’s house to the ground and kill us. Their shadows were giants.

  The thunder of a gunshot stopped the mob in its tracks. Adelaide was standing on her father’s rig and pointing a rifle in the air. She was girdled by gunsmoke. Sarah, my own Sarah, was there, too—holding the reins and keeping the bucking horses from running.

  “Don’t you’all realize I can tell who you are?” Adelaide was crying. “Did my father put you up to this?” There she was, standing there, a tall young woman with a broad chest with large hips, a fighter. Her hair was very tidy. “I recognize you—Jed! And Steven Thomas!” She pointed her gun at a different man with each name she called. “David Cooper,” she shouted. “Tyler Brody! I see you through that little muffler. Did your mama knit you that?”

  “Let’s get to our weapons,” I whispered to my brother, and, crawling, we managed to seize Chang’s rifle while the crowd was focused on our brides. As Chang and I got to our feet, my brother leveled his gun toward the crowd. I held my hands before me in squeezed fists.

  “You rascals!” Sarah yelled. I hadn’t thought she’d had this passion in her. She turned slowly toward the men. “You rascals!” she screamed, shaking the reins in anger.

  The crowd stood still. The one named John, calm as the weather that night, said: “These Chinamen, these quare Chinamen, can’t have you girls.” At this point John turned and saw my brother, and the gun leveled at his head, and the cur jumped back.

  “Go home,” said the Parson. “Just everybody go home.”

  Nobody reacted.

  Be brave! I told myself. Be brave! I caught this man John’s eye. A heartbeat, and then he looked away.

  The men grumbled as they limped back from where they had come. I turned toward Sarah, but she was still looking ahead into space. It was time for our marriage to begin.

  The next morning marked our wedding day, a gladsome sunny afternoon in Wilkesboro. Our ceremony was held in the sizable living room of the Yateses’ boardinghouse, and as any wedding is still a wedding, Wilkesboro had put on its white shirt. It seemed there were more in Wilkesboro who were willing to celebrate a high-profile union than to try to prevent it by force. And so, a crowd of townsfolk was clustered around the house, decorated for the affair. Those not invited, especially the women, decided to throng in front of the first-floor windows, pushing and wrangling, peeking with their noses against the glass, hoping to be granted admission. A few strange men paced in the yard, grumbling. Sheriff Bishton stood by the front door ready for trouble.

  The townswomen who actually were our brides’ guests entered through the front door wearing flowers and holding their trains. Unwelcome newspapermen milled about, in ill-fitting coats, white ties, uniforms and broadcloths, and white gloves. Chang and I had invited no one.

  I was hopeful that, despite the fracas of the previous night, it would be an ex
cellent event; the Yateses had spread roses along the living room couch, straightened the painting of daisies on the living room wall, and placed a silver candelabra atop the makeshift dais at the far end of the hardwood floor in front of the two rows of wooden chairs—and all of these ornaments beamed in the sunlight. Strings of popcorn decorated the ceiling and swung from the rafters like fancy spiderwebs.

  Chang and I, in our trousers but still not yet wearing our coats or waistcoats, stood at the top of the carpeted staircase hiding behind the edge of the wall; I spied the scene downstairs. “What’s happening?” my brother asked, his hand squeezing my shoulder.

  Rising from the swarm of velvet and satin, of hats, hair, bare necks, and arms, there was discreet but lively conversation that echoed under the low ceiling. The level of anticipation was higher than what was appropriate for a wedding. Some members of the Yates family tried to look as if they were not thinking of the implications of united bridegrooms.

  At last one of the ladies of the crowd, in a red dress with massive puffed shoulders, said, “It really is strange, though!” and all the guests began expressing their wonder openly.

  Then Thom, a shopworn Negro, maybe forty-five, who was our wedding present from Mrs. Yates, came up behind us and said: “Masters, it’s time to finish getting your dressings put on.” He had an eye patch and shoulders so tired from years of exertion that he could not lift his bowed arms as high as his head. Still, the slave placed a hand on my right arm, and his other on Chang’s left. We had met him only that day.

  Making our way back to our dressing room, I caught sight of Chang’s betrothed across the hallway, through the crack between her not fully closed door and its doorjamb. Adelaide was looking out the window, biting her pointer finger, and wearing her white dress and long veil and a wreath of dogwood blossoms. Someone inside her room closed the door.

  Chang was hunched a bit and grimacing like someone was stepping on his head. “I hope I been a good brother to you,” he said.

  I laughed slightly, told him to relax.

  “I think you been pretty friendly to me, considering,” he said.

  “Let us get ready.”

  It was not easy to dress because Chang kept trying to pace the floor. We were to wear identical black tuxedos, keeping the three buttons at the center of our shirts unfastened, along with the top two buttons of our black silk waistcoats, to make room for the bare ligament.

  “The ring—you have?” Chang asked me, frantic, waving his hands.

  “Yes,” I said. “And you have not lost the other one, I presume.”

  He winnowed through his pockets, then screwed up his face in despair.

  The slave Thom cleared his throat. “The second ring is just right there on the dresser, master,” he said with a placid smile. The ring was where Thom said it was, next to our ever-present checkers board.

  “Anybody else acted foolish as this, ever?” my brother asked me. I stopped in my tracks, planting my feet firmly; I had had my fill of walking to and fro. Chang halted with a snap.

  “All right,” I said. “You were stupid to misplace the ring. But there it is on the counter. Relax yourself, brother. You are my best man—come, let’s put on the waistcoat.” I said, “Thom, help us.”

  “But the shirt!” Chang cried.

  “You have a shirt on, Chang,” I said.

  For a long moment, Chang stared down at his own chest without saying anything. Then he said, “Well, this one wrinkled!”

  Thom stood scratching his head. The slave was looking at our ligament despite himself.

  “Your shirt is fine,” I said. “Let’s finish dressing.”

  There was a knock at the door and Mr. Yates entered, his curly hair standing out on both sides of his head. He looked at us for a long time, squinted, then forced a smile. “It’s time, boys.”

  “There they are!” “Which is which?” “Why, my soul, those old girls look more scared than happy,” were some of the whispers from the crowd.

  Chang and I stood before young Parson Hodge. The guests sat at our backs, and we waited for Mr. and Mrs. Yates to bring Adelaide and Sarah to us.

  I could not take my eyes off my bride as she walked the aisle. I saw nothing and no one else; I didn’t care what people whispered; her face was long, longer even than Adelaide’s, but that’s what made her so beautiful, I thought. There was grace in the swoop of nose shooting out of her white veil in such a maidenly way toward her long pale neck. The longer the face, the better, I thought, and I pitied my brother for marrying his woman who had only a longish nose.

  It was some while before the girls and their parents could figure out the logistics of what they were to do. Mrs. Yates was breathing heavily and waddling her immense body one slow step at a time. And when the girls’ parents reached us, Mr. Yates took me by the wrong arm—as if he thought he could walk between Chang and me—and Mrs. Yates forgot she was to step aside so Adelaide could stand by Chang.

  The crowd shifted in its seats, arousing a rustle of skirts.

  At last things were set right, with each bride taking her husbandto-be’s outward hand in her opposite palm. The girls’ eyes betrayed the same questions that were living inside me: What am I doing? What do I expect will happen next? I had recently turned thirty-two years old.

  It is puzzling, I told myself, but bringing more people into our connection will make attachment easier to bear.

  Chang had been right, I told myself. And you owe him for that.

  I wanted to tell him how thankful I was to him at that moment.

  Mrs. Yates stepped before us and tried to say something but couldn’t speak. She began to cry, and then laughed, sending waves through her chins. Meanwhile, rumpled young Parson Hodge, his shiny wet blond-gray hair parted down the middle of his head, began to lean on the makeshift dais between him and us (actually an end table, covered by a red sheet, atop a dining room table). He moved the silver candelabra to one side so he could see the two couples.

  Mr. Yates leaned toward Sarah cautiously, whispered something, and, making a sign to his wife, took two steps back. With a bit of difficulty, Mrs. Yates followed him.

  Can this be happening? I thought, and I turned to my bride, toward her face in profile, and from the scarcely perceptible quiver in her lips and eyelashes I knew she felt my eyes on her. Sarah didn’t return my glance; her veil, caught on her little pink ear, trembled.

  I beamed at my brother, who was blinking, and at his bride. Adelaide held back a sigh in her throat. Her little hands were shaking in their long white gloves. She caught me smiling at her and looked older than her thirty-one years.

  I was filled with joy and dread. I was not some famous Siamese oddity now; I was a bridegroom marrying sisters from Wilkesboro, North Carolina.

  “Let us stand,” Hodge said, and the crowd did. He prayed for us, for peace, and the house seemed to breathe with his voice. He prayed for understanding from an unreasonable world. The speech impressed me. How did I believe I could go through life alone? I thought. I smiled at my wife and touched her gloved hand with my finger. These girls came to our aid with guns at night, I thought to myself.

  Hodge invoked God, North Carolina, and the United States, then turned to us with the Book: “Eternal Jesus, that joinest them together that were separate,” he read in a gentle but piping voice. “Who hast ordained this union of holy wedlock that cannot be set asunder, Thou didst bless Abraham and Sarah and their many descendants, according to Thy Holy Covenant, leading them in the path of all good works.”

  “Amen” came rolling from behind us.

  I looked at my wife. She was nearly smiling, and staring dimly at nothing. A vein on the side of her face was pitter-pattering. Chang and the two girls had stopped listening to the preacher. With eyes glazed over, each had missed the meaning of the words of the service—a fact I found vexing.

  Not that I wasn’t swept up in things. On that day, at that moment, there was taking place a complete severance from my old life, and a differe
nt, normal life was beginning for me. I lifted my hand from my brother’s shoulder and patted him lightly on the back. He didn’t notice; he’d shifted toward his wife, stretching our band as far as it would go.

  But this new life I’d envisioned was not yet, and I could not even picture it clearly to myself.

  Suddenly I realized the talking had stopped. I had lost track of what Hodge was saying; there was a moment of hesitation, of whispering and smiles. My brother was holding out my ring, and apparently I was supposed to give Chang his.

  Chang handed me the trinket that I was to put on my bride’s finger, and I returned the favor. We both tried to rotate toward our brides, but ended up in a ridiculous back-and-forth tug that staggered us. That hadn’t happened once in the thirty years since we’d learned to walk. The crowd murmured.

  After Chang put his ring on Adelaide’s finger, we shifted in my bride Sarah’s direction. I heard groans urging me to get on with it as I turned toward the smile of happiness on Sarah’s radiant face. That smile was reflected in everyone who was looking at her. A geyser of emotion exploded from the mud of my insides.

  “Put it on!” she whispered, showing her strong American teeth, her eyes open wide. “Put it on!” Meanwhile Chang’s panicky hand was tapping my shoulder with all five fingers.

  I was struck by what I took to be the jubilance in my bride’s long face, and her feeling infected me. I took her delicate gloved hand and slipped the ring around her finger. Sighs and teary chuckles from the crowd feathered my ears. The spark in my bride seemed to have kindled the whole gathering.

  And I had never before seen Sarah look as she did. The glow on her cheeks was bewitching. I wanted to speak to her but didn’t know if the ceremony was over.

  “You may kiss the brides.” Hodge was smiling grandly, too. “And, girls, you lean in and kiss your men.”

  On tipped toes Sarah bent toward me. I kissed her smiling lips with timid care, and the side of my brother’s head pushed against mine as he weathered his bride’s forceful kiss.