Thousand Pieces of Gold

by Ruthanne Lum McCunn

  A film of perspiration covered Polly’s body and she felt alternate waves of fire and ice. It was just another game, she told herself. One with only a small pot. But the tense silence, the piercing concentration on heated faces swollen ugly with anticipation insisted otherwise.

  She looked at the single bag of gold in front of Hong King, then raised her eyes to look at him. Once again his fingers were entwined in the hairs from his mole, but they were tugging, not stroking. Was that one poke all he had left?

  “Pass,” Charlie said.

  Hong King’s hand dropped to the table. With the edge of his nails, he lined up his cards. “Pass,” he agreed.

  Sighs of relief and disappointment rippled through the crowd like shudders. Charlie reached for the deck, slid off the last cards for the hand: four of diamonds for Hong King, two of spades for himself, making two pair.

  A burst of last minute betting ruptured the quiet.

  “Two more on Charlie.”

  “Are you crazy? He’s only got two pairs. The Chinaman’s got a straight.”

  “You’re guessing. Charlie’s got two pair I can see.”

  “No guess. The Chinaman’s got a two in the hole I tell you.”

  As Charlie threw a poke into the center of the table, talk vanished. But when Hong King pushed his last poke across the table, Polly heard a renewed stirring.

  Her eyes darted from one player to the other. If Charlie’s pair could win the game, why was Hong King pushing his last poke across the table into the pot? Could he possibly have a straight? Then why was Charlie tossing in three buckskin bags, matching Hong King’s bet and raising him two? Was he testing, checking to see if Hong King was bluffing?

  Nails pierced Polly’s flesh, twisting her wrist. “I told you to bring me today’s take.”

  Though his voice was even, cool almost, Polly could feel Hong King’s anger seething beneath the surface. And all at once she understood. Hong King really did have a straight. A straight that could win back what he had lost. A straight he would forfeit if he did not match Charlie bet for bet.

  A path opened for her and she fetched the strongbox from behind the bar. Hong King unlocked it and pried open the lid. With a fury he could no longer conceal, he weighed the contents, hurled them into the pot.

  “You covered and raised one,” he said, the words spewing out in a sour, frustrated hiss.

  Two pokes thudded down, scattering loose dust. “I see you, and raise you one,” Charlie said.

  Hong King scraped back his chair and a ripple ran through the crowd. Was he throwing in his hand? Slowly, deliberately, he loosened three side buttons, withdrew a piece of paper from an inner pocket, and spread it on the table. The paper crackled in the quiet. “I bet lease for saloon.”

  Charlie leaned back in his chair. “I already have a saloon.”

  Hong King’s lips tightened. His tongue darted out, licking dryly. “I give you paper cover half my take for next six months.”

  “I’d be a fool to risk gold for paper, and you know it,” Charlie said quietly.

  Again Hong King’s lips tightened.

  “I have nothing else,” he said at last.

  Charlie nodded casually toward Polly. “Stake the girl.”

  Polly bit her lips, choking off a cry, but Hong King’s eyes gleamed bright as the dust he was fighting to win.

  “How much you stake me for her?”

  Charlie hesitated. “Everything on the table.”

  The men around them gasped, but Polly, burning with the same anger and shame she had felt on the auction block, barely heard them.

  “Final bet?” Hong King asked.

  Charlie pushed all the gold into the center of the table. “Yes.”

  Hong King’s lips twitched into a broad, toothless grin. “Agreed.”

  Swiftly he flipped his final card: two of hearts, a straight; then stood, knocking over his chair in his eagerness to scoop up his winnings.

  Without a word, Charlie turned over his hidden card: two of clubs, a full house. He had won.

  EIGHTEEN

  For Polly, Charlie’s cabin with its glowing stove and two chairs pulled close, the dresser made of packing crates, and the bed they shared had always been a refuge. Now, as Charlie lit a lamp and the room flared into light, she saw it as simply another shack.

  Charlie wrapped his arms around Polly. His belt buckle dug into her, and she felt a wave of disgust as his body quivered with the same drunken exhilaration she had detected in Hong King after a big win. But she did not move. Even if he were not her new master, she could not stop him. He was too big. Too strong.

  “Hey, you’re supposed to be happy,” he said, taking Polly’s face in both his hands and kissing her full on the lips.

  She flinched.

  “Okay, so I don’t rate a hallelujah chorus, but what about a simple thank-you?” he said.

  A thank-you? For what? For humiliating her? For forcing her to break her promise that when she left Hong King it would be as a free woman. Or for teaching her that a slave had no right to make promises, especially to herself.

  He took the pins out of Polly’s bun. Her hair rippled down her back, a sheet of black silk.

  “Tonight I ruined a man for you.”

  “Not for me. For the game. Because you gambler.”

  “It was the only way to free you.”

  “That what you believe. Just like Jim believe I better off if I not know Hong King not sell me. Maybe Jim right. Or maybe you right. But this my life. Not Jim life. Not yours. Mine.”

  Charlie strode over to the dresser and poured himself a drink, downing it in a single swallow. “All right. What would you have done?”

  “I shoot him,” she said, knowing even as she heard the words out loud that she could never have done it, knowing that was not the point, the reason for her anger.

  “There are more ways to kill a man than with a gun,” Charlie said, setting his glass down. “Hong King’s lost so much face, he’ll have to leave camp. For you, for us, he’s the same as a dead man.”

  Polly slumped onto the bed. Again he had not understood, had not seen beyond her words. “You could have lost,” she said tiredly.

  “I didn’t.”

  “And when you play again?”

  Charlie lifted Polly off the bed and hugged her to him. She felt the worn flannel of his shirt against her face, soft as a caress.

  “I would never stake you,” he said, his voice surprised and hurt.

  She kept her back taut. “I your slave. You can do anything.”

  He stood back, holding her at arm’s length. “I didn’t win you from Hong King so you could be my slave. You’re free.”

  She looked down at his arms.

  He dropped his hold, but the marks from his grip remained, deep red purple like the bruises from Jim when he had shaken her, demanding she face a reality neither one of them was able to confront. Rubbing the tender new bruises, she thought regretfully of the rich promise her first days with Jim had held, a promise unrealized in part because of circumstances, but more because, for all their talk, they had kept too much hidden from each other, from themselves. Was she to suffer the same loss again? And for the same reason?

  In front of her, she could see Charlie, shoulders slumped, his head tossing back as he downed yet another drink. And in the mirror above the dresser, she could see his hands clasping bottle and glass. But she could not see his face, for he had lowered the mirror long ago to a height appropriate for her. Suddenly, all around her, Polly noticed similar instances of Charlie’s thoughtful concern, the curtains nailed up to shield her from prying eyes, the second chair made smaller, the shelves and hooks lowered, and she found herself wondering if he had indeed forced the final bet to win her freedom and not the game.

  Tonight, and the night before, she had been hurt by his apparent betrayals, angry because he could not understand her. But did she understand him? From the day she had ridden into Warrens, he had protected her, and she had accepted his hel
p without question, as though it were her due. Now, for the first time, she asked herself why he had come to her rescue in the saloon. Had he interceded out of some strange sense of Western chilvary? Or pity? Or because he was Jim’s friend. And after Jim’s death, had he continued to protect her out of loyalty to Jim, or because he had come to care for her, or simply to keep her in his bed?

  She did not even know how or why he and Jim had become friends. Like a frog at the bottom of a well, she had seen nothing beyond the small circle of blue sky that meant freedom, concentrating all her thoughts, all her energies toward piling up the gold she needed to reach it, never once considering it might be gained another way. And now she could lose that freedom which Charlie had put within her grasp, and with it, Charlie.

  Searching for words that would clear away the misunderstandings, she began haltingly. “Charlie, sometimes I angry with you and you with me. But I know anger is only because you and I not understand, not believe the same way. Please, try understand this.” She paused, waiting for acknowledgment.

  He did not speak, but she saw his hands on bottle and glass freeze, breaking the steady drinking. Taking heart, she continued, “All my life I belong someone. My father, the bandits, Hong King. And I promise myself when I free of Hong King, I belong no man, only myself.

  “You know I have gold I save to buy myself from Hong King. I want use that to build a house, start my own business. A boarding house like Mrs. Schultz.”

  Charlie poured another drink, gulped it. “You can’t.”

  “You worry I not know how to cook? I watch Mrs. Schultz and I learn plenty quick.”

  “It’s not that,” he mumbled.

  “Then what?” Polly demanded. “Because you think I not wife like Mrs. Schultz, not respectable, people say it bawdy house? You see, I show them they wrong.”

  Charlie turned to face her. “A Chinaman can’t own land,” he said, so softly she could barely hear him.

  “But you say America have land for everyone. That people from all over the world come for the land. Rich. Poor. All the same. Anyone can have land. You said.”

  “Any American. You’re from China.”

  She opened her mouth to shout denial, but the pain in Charlie’s face told Polly his words had cost him too dearly to be negated by mere anger, and she sank silent onto the bed. She must think carefully, make sense out of Charlie’s contradictions, her own confusion.

  She knew the Chinese in Warrens did not own the stores and laundries where they worked, but she had thought that was because they planned to return to China as soon as they made enough money. Weren’t the ones who came to Hong King’s saloon always complaining about the loneliness of lives without wives and children, the brutish manners of white men, unfair taxes, and harsh laws? And didn’t they always end their grumbling with talk of home, their eagerness to return to families left behind? But she had no family, no one to go home to.

  Of course. That was it. Charlie didn’t realize that she intended to remain in America. She would become an American and buy the land for her house. Land that would keep her free and independent always.

  She leaped up, ran to Charlie, and crooked her arm through his. “You not understand. I never go back to China. I become American.”

  He pulled away. His fists clenched and unclenched. He took his pipe out of his pocket, rotated it in his hands, studying it, then tossed it onto the bed, and reached for the bottle.

  Polly grabbed his arm. “What is it? What wrong?”

  “The only way a Chinaman can become an American is to be born here.”

  She laughed. A short, bitter laugh. Here or in China, slave or free, it was the same. She needed a protector. She rubbed her hands across Charlie’s back, unknotting the tight muscles. He turned. Mechanically she began unbuttoning his shirt.

  He took her hands in his, holding them still. “Polly, I meant what I said. You’re free. Let me be your China herder and build a house for you. You can do whatever you want to in it, invite anyone, refuse anyone. It’s yours, I promise you.” He smiled weakly. “You don’t even have to have me.”

  “I . . .”

  His fingers brushed her lips, gently silencing. “And yes, you can pay for it too.”

  She laughed, a joyous peal clear as ringing bells. Hearing it, Charlie’s smile grew stronger, deepening into laughter that became one with Polly’s. And suddenly, within the circle of their laughter, she felt finally, wonderfully free.

  NINETEEN

  Rockets whistled past the window, exploding in showers of lemon yellow sparks against the cloudless July sky. A string of firecrackers burst, then another, and a smell of burned powder drifted through the open window, mingling with the fragrance of baking and cooking. From the main street came the sounds of last minute hammering, the gathering of men, women, and children from outlying ranches and mines come to celebrate.

  In her tiny bedroom adjacent to the larger one in which her boarders bunked, Polly hurriedly stitched the final gold button onto her tight-fitting basque. Charlie had taught her to goldsmith, and she often hammered out trinkets for sale in Mr. Grostein’s store, but these buttons made out of five-dollar gold pieces were made for her by Charlie.

  In the fifteen years since he had won her freedom from Hong King, the barriers of misunderstanding which had been torn down that night had never again come between them, for they spoke openly of everything to each other. Neither had Charlie once wavered from the promise he had made, building her this boarding house beside his cabin and giving her the protection she needed while respecting her independence. And so, to Polly, these gold buttons which Charlie had made were special, tangible evidence of his love and understanding and she changed them from dress to dress.

  Downstairs, the kitchen door slammed. She bit off the thread and dressed swiftly, her fingers managing the hooks, laces, and buttons with practiced ease. Then, giving waist and skirt one last tug, she grabbed her hat off the top of the bed and ran down the stairs into the combination sitting-dining room.

  Of the four rooms in the house, this was her favorite. The windows, filled with plants and flowers, sparkled behind white curtains trimmed with crocheted lace. The wood planks beneath the bright hooked rug were oiled smooth, and the room was made cozy with cross-stitched pillows and runners, and crocheted antimacassars, all of her own making. She walked past the round oak table covered with shiny white oilcloth and peered into the mirror beside the kitchen door to adjust the angle of her hat.

  The face she saw was not much different from the one that had gazed out at her that first night in the room behind Hong King’s saloon. The youthful freshness was gone. But the planes of skin beneath the high cheekbones were still firm and golden, and the eyes had lost their fear, the mouth its anxious quivering. Yet beneath the sparkling humor and warmth which now graced eyes and mouth was an intensity not immediately apparent, shadows of the past, the pull of unacknowledged tension.

  Hat straight, Polly turned, saw Charlie stooped over the stove, licking his fingers appreciatively. She rapped her knuckles on the doorjamb. “Food is for the dance later, no snitching. Also, I promise Frank and some other boys who dance through the night that they can come for breakfast.”

  Charlie, fiddle and bow in hand, strode into the room. “You have enough food for a dozen dances and breakfasts, and the other women will be bringing more,” he said, throwing himself onto a chair.

  Wrinkling his nose, he shook his fiddle at the dirt-caked shirts in Polly’s sewing basket beside the chair and said, “If you must take in laundry from miners, why on earth do you insist on doing the patching while they’re still dirty?”

  “Because when I get them clean and iron, I don’t have to muss them.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “More crazy than you changing your saloon, where no lady is allowed, into a ‘dance hall’ where everyone can come, just by hanging up a canvas curtain to cover the bar and turning the pictures to face the walls?” she retorted.

  Laughing, Ch
arlie opened the door. “Come on, I can hear the fellows tuning up.”

  “Hey Charlie, the parade’s starting without you,” called Three-Fingered Smith.

  Squinting against the glare of the afternoon sun, Polly could see a cluster of women in white already marching down the opposite end of the main street. “You better hurry,” she told Charlie.

  Nodding, he dashed across town, his boots scuffing up small puffs of dust. Polly, joining the crowd already gathered, sensed the same excitement she had once felt celebrating New Year. Of course, she was wearing white and navy blue instead of red, the breeze blew dust instead of snow, and there was no lucky New Year cake. But the festive air filled with the happy crackle of exploding fireworks, laughter, and talk was the same.

  The band marched past. There were five: Charlie and Rube Bessey on fiddles, Brown at the accordion, Jenkins on the banjo, and Peter Beemer playing the flute and conducting. Polly found her feet tapping time to the music.

  George Dyer, the blacksmith, clapped admiringly. “That Charlie sure can make his fiddle talk.”

  “Can’t wait for the dance tonight,” Benson agreed.

  Mary Dawson nudged Polly. “You don’t know how lucky you are your poor feet don’t allow you to dance. After each one of these all night marathons, I walk for a month like a horse with stringhalt.”

  Polly laughed. “That is because all the men want a chance to dance with a lady and ladies are so few.” She felt a tug on her skirt and looked down.

  It was Katy, Mary Dawson’s five-year-old. “I can’t see,” Katy complained.

  Polly lifted the girl. “You sit on your daddy’s shoulders,” she said, passing her up to her father.

  Katy bounced happily. “Look at the flags!” she shouted.

  Behind the huge star-spangled banner held aloft by freshly scrubbed prospectors and miners, dragon flags fluttered above two hundred Chinese marching to the crash of cymbals, gongs, and stringed instruments. Watching their proud, clean-shaven faces and handsome black queues swinging below their waists, Polly felt a rush of nostalgia for her village, the processions which ended at the temple where soul tablets marking generations gave an aura of permanence and security.