A Superior Man (6 page)

He yanked the boy away and set him on his feet. I shoved the man aside and took the brat's hand. As we headed off, the man leapt from behind and threw me to the ground. We sprawled onto the rocky sand, hands clawing at each other's neck, bucking to get on top. The children squealed in delight. I rammed my fist into his face. He slammed his elbow into my gut. He was bigger and stronger than most China men. We grappled and twisted, panting with effort. He smelled of sweat and fish.

I was still trying to flatten him when the dry-goods merchant shouted, “Sam, this man buy clothes for boy! Sam, this man buy clothes for boy!”

We rolled away, cursing each other, as the children danced off. I grabbed the boy and checked my clothes for rips and tears. He brought nothing but trouble.

New voices arose farther down the river, where Chinese rail hands and Native men shoved and shouted, fighting over something. With faces painted red and yellow, the Native men and their beast-skin clothes were fearsome. They towered over my people, brandishing stone-head clubs that took both arms to wield. They could
have saved their strength; sledgehammers weren't needed to smash sparrow eggs. My attacker ran to join them. Clearly the fool enjoyed fights. The China men backed off.

I dragged the boy away from the water. At the Chinese camp overlooking the beach, rail hands had emerged from makeshift tents.

One barefoot fellow muttered, “Hungry dogs fight for vomit.”

“Whose vomit?” I asked.

Bare Feet opened his mouth, but a sudden wracking cough bent him over.

“Another stupid thing ‘ran off,'” said a second man.

“The Natives, they don't care about us,” I pointed out.

“Their river is holy. They keep it clean.”

He pointed. A beam from a collapsed dock had snagged a corpse by a shirt sleeve. It floated face down, its pigtail sliding on the water surface like an eel. The feet were bloated and dark. Wide pant legs flattened out like oars.

“Last week, some stupid thing filled his pockets with stones, tied a rock to his neck, and walked into the river. Two brothers carried him onto land and buried him. Four days later, one of the brothers ‘got fragrant,' even though he had been eating well and laughing. Now, another stupid thing ran off. Of course, no one will touch the body.”

“They need to pay someone,” I said.

“It's fish season. Any Native who touches something dirty can't go near the river.”

“Three gone in one week means angry ghosts all around,” said Bare Feet. “You don't know who sleeps beside you, a man or a piece of wood.”

“Me, I like salted fish,” I said.

“Don't call them that, you pig head,” he said. “Those who run off, they have clout. Back home, my landlord passed away smoking opium in town. The grannies said, ‘Dirty things will follow him to the village.' ‘Hold the funeral outside the gates,' said the elders. But the landlord's people pushed their way in and brawled at the funeral. Everyone lost face. Then, three women gave birth and each baby died before a full month.”

In my village, the pigs and chickens sickened and died, one year. The
feng-shui
man blamed a family after one of its members threw out corpse-washing water by the bridge. After a long quarrel, that family hired a priest to cleanse the village. Only then had the livestock flourished.

At the river, the China men tried to leave, but the Natives blocked the way. As the shouting and shoving resumed, two old women hurried up, grumbling and shaking their walking-sticks.

I recalled my friend Poy and said, “A superior man doesn't fear the dead.”

“That's why they're so few,” Bare Feet sneered.

I marched the boy to the beach. The tallest China man wore a mashed brown hat.

“Let me handle that.” I pointed to the river. “How much will you pay?”

Mashed Hat backed away, his eyes darting and wary. The Native men stared at Peter as though he was a three-legged chicken. They chatted and gestured among themselves. The boy tugged at me to go but I stood firm, unafraid to fight again.

“Your lucky day!” Someone clapped Mashed Hat on the shoulder.
“This one isn't scared to touch corpses.”

The man called Sam spoke fluent Chinese.

He wasn't Native, he was
jaap jung
, mix-blood. He seemed to know Mashed Hat, or at least how to get him to take action on the matter.

“Get the big wheelbarrow. Let him bury that thing. Look at the sky, it darkens. But you need money to pay.”

“How much?” Mashed Hat asked me.

“A dollar.”

“No one has money.”

“Something must be paid. You know that.” I tightened my grip on the brat's hand. To slap him in front of his people would only bring me grief.

“Anyone with money has left already,” said Mashed Hat.

“My shovel goes deep,” I said. “I put heavy rocks on top.”

“A dollar, it's too much.”

“Animals won't dig up anything. The one who ran off, for sure he'll approve.” I was certain of winning.

“No one takes a day to dig a grave.”

“These people will harass you until you do something.
Pock-face lady looks in a mirror; the more she looks, the madder she gets
. It's time to put an end to this.”

“Bury him,” said another rail hand. “I'll go ask men in the stores to donate.”

The crowd dispersed. I looked Sam up and down and said, “Who's your father?”

He squatted to talk to the brat, and patted his head before stomping off without answering.

Another win for me.

My friends and I often asked mix-bloods that question. We looked past the man facing us and inquired instead about his father, that man's name and village, and when he had come to Canada. All mouth and no heart, we pretended to have known his father, or kinsmen from his home village, or stories they had told. But both sides knew full well that most such fathers were long gone with little left behind.

Mashed Hat's men brought a cart rolling on a wheel squeaky enough to waken centuries of the dead. With a scarf around my nose, I waded into the water, using a rope and rake to snare the corpse. I held my breath against the stench. Even wet, the man weighed no more than a head of lettuce.

I loaded the cart and called for the boy. He didn't move, as if he was deaf. Chinese children knew better than to dawdle, knowing that a tight slap or hard knuckle waited close by. I looped a rope around my waist, tied the other end to the boy's wrist, and yanked him toward the graveyard.

I thought about telling this burial tale at home, in the market. People would cringe and slip away, of course, ever fearful of killing airs. But they also respected sojourners, who were hearts and lungs for families crushed by debts or crippled by bad luck. People knew full well that life abroad was bruised and swollen with the anguish of their men. Those lives were wrapped in far too much shame to ever be discussed, aloud or in whispers. It was much easier to listen to an account of a no-name stranger and picture his tragic end.

The China men at the camp scurried away, seeing ghosts ahead and thieves behind, so scared that they never thanked me
for diverting the anger of the Native people. I should have let the Natives beat them soundly. Maybe the China men wanted that: bloody deaths instead of ones by starvation.

Victoria was home to mix-blood men and women like Sam. They looked more sullen than their mothers' people, whose men eked a life from fishing and chopping wood, whose women went door to door, selling berries and handmade baskets. Redbeard children hurled mud balls and rocks at them, and then ran to hide behind their parents.

The mix-bloods who lived among us had swaggered about with their noses high in the air. Some had Chinese faces but they never asked about China. I kicked them out of the game hall because they never had much money. Wong Jun hired one to tend his horses, but the fellow kept staring at the ground, as though fearful of seeing his own face among the men of Chinatown. He lasted two weeks at the job and left without asking for his wages.

Redbeards loudly disdained the Chinese as being one and the same as Native people. We China men never let that pass. They didn't weave cotton or silk but wore animal skins. They didn't grow rice or wheat to make noodles or bread. They ate instead whatever grew wild. Without earthenware, they served food on mats. Without writing, they didn't make books. Mind you, our esteemed homeland produced plenty of fancy cloths and dishware but couldn't stop the redbeards from trouncing us at war. We weren't even strong enough to piss at them.

3
3

A F
EAR OF
C
ORPSES ON THE
R
AILWAY
(S
PRING
1881)
A F
EAR OF
C
ORPSES ON THE
R
AILWAY
(S
PRING
1881)

Fire in my stomach woke me. I lay among the snoring men and prayed for the pain to go away. I wasn't a coward, but the forest's rustling and crackling never stopped, not even during daylight. Creatures darted through the bushes and yelped after quick battles. Birds swooped in on silent wings. Strange voices wailed under the moon. Trees grew higher and fatter than those of China while tatters of white fluff hung from them like mourning banners. We heard stories of giant bears, as tall as two or three humans and as wide as temple doors, slashing open men's bodies from neck to cock with one swing of the paw.

I took a candle and went out, blanket on my shoulders, boots loose on my feet. The cool damp night hinted at more rain. At the latrine, I set my light on a log. It was still too dark to see my hands, but I squatted and held my pants off the mud. When hot liquid gushed out, I cursed Head Cook. He told us the drinking water was boiled, yet we crewmen always suffered loose stomachs.

Something hurtled through a crash of branches. A jagged howling pierced the air, rose and fell without stop. I covered my ears, but
it sounded as though a woman was wailing, bent over a coffin and rubbing her hair against the wood. Her bawling lamented a coming life of anguish. It begged Heaven for strength and pity. It hung in the night until my candle suddenly went out. I lost my breath and then tried to run, but my body refused to move. The dark was so deep that I had to touch my eyes to see if they were open or closed. I forced myself to breathe and waited for death.

In the morning, Long Life brayed over the tents. “Hok, was that you weeping and praying like a little girl to the Ghost Subjugator?”

“Someone had a foul dream,” I said. “Wasn't me.”

The crewmen called me a maiden with dainty feet. It was my shit luck that Long Life had the bed spot next to mine. Poy slept on my other side but he kept quiet.

“Hok went to the latrine,” Long Life said, “but got scared. He soiled his pants!”

“Screw you, it's mud.”

When Pig Boy died that afternoon, I knew that last night's howling had foretold his death.

I had pegged him for an early end. He came here alone, so family and friends were avoiding him, for good reason. His eyes twitched. He talked to himself. If someone called, he stopped and squatted, as if he needed to think, no matter if he was walking or working.

We were at war with giant trees that fought back. Our work chopped down too many of them, draining and sapping the ground of its male
yang
forces. The day before Pig Boy's passing, a saw ripped through Four Square's hand when tree bark snagged his sleeve and his partner daydreamed. Blood spurted out. Poy fell last week from a springboard jammed high in a tree where he chopped
at the narrower trunk. The pain in his shoulder still made him groan. And when Salty Wet pushed a giant log, the wedges sank into the ground and the tree rolled onto his ankle.

We itched to wager money on who would die first. Only time stood between one of us and death. Twenty-eight coolies tramped into the forest each day, so the odds, plus the size of the pot, were good. Then some cockhead whispered, “What if the man's ghost claims a share of the prize? What if his ghost climbs onto the winner's back for eternity?”

We dropped our axes and saws and turned to the safety of dice and dominoes.

Pig Boy died on a grey afternoon, dank and dim as any day in our outdoor prison. The forest hid the sky and screened the light. Treetops were unseen until they landed and we gathered at their feet like gloating hunters. Steady rain fell. A roof of leaves shielded us, but the damp caused axes and saws to stick. The chuk, chuk, chuk of blades chipped off thin wedges. Long saws grated through trees, bleeding them of sawdust that coated the ground in bright yellow. When the whistle announced a break, we heard whining insects and distant blasting.

On our first day, we got two orders. First, every tree must fall away from the railway path. Crew Boss looked at a map and thrust out his arms. He yelled at Bookman, who dragged a pair of men to each tree caught in the boss's sightline. We cut notches to mark the way our cuts should topple. Once a tree fell, we sawed off just enough of its trunk to make way for the path. The rest of the tower stayed as it had fallen. We stood in awe of tree trunks wider than we were tall.

The second order?

“Shout when a tree falls and look up when you hear the warning.”

Too bad the noisy forest muffled human voices. Our shouts drowned under the din of axes and saws. No tree fell cleanly. It toppled neighbours and, like a barber's blade, sheared off branches blocking its way.

On Pig Boy's last day, Monkey and Long Life's tree tilted into a neighbour and stayed standing.

“Those two trees are old lovers,” Four Square chuckled. “Let them be.”

Monkey and Long Life cursed the giant's great weight and chopped at the second one.

Poy and I looked at each other. Those louts deserved to be slowed down. Monkey was keeping count of who cut down the most trees. His own name, of course, was always at the top of the list. Long Life labelled Poy and me as “big girls” for being last to fell our first tree, despite having strong arms. But our tower had been fatter than anyone else's. Seven or eight men with arms linked couldn't have circled its base.

Monkey's trapped tree gave way with a sharp crack and slid as if greased. No one got warned.

Pig Boy was crushed under the trunk, face down, flattened over a pointed stump. Sawdust soaked up the blood. When Crew Boss and Bookman said he was dead, his workmate ran to wash his hands. He had touched Pig Boy, checking for life.

Big trouble had arrived: we didn't have women to death wail or experts to conduct a funeral. This was the second year of the railway, yet no one had rules for dealing with the killing airs.

Crew Boss and Bookman pestered High Hat, back and forth in English and Chinese. Crew Boss relied on Bookman, a China man handy with languages. He in turn begged help from High Hat, Elder of the brotherhood. Pig Boy was a member, and High Hat spoke for all the crew, even though only a third were brothers.

I could hardly hold my glee; the brothers were going to lose face. They had long taunted us non-members as failures at saving money.

“Look at us, we pool cash to buy candles and laundry soap.”

“Follow us, we go to town together to get a discount from the barber.”

“We each take a turn to wash the group's laundry so that the others can rest.”

We non-brothers awoke late on rest days and each man scrubbed his own clothes, if at all. Those giddy housewives wanted to turn copper into gold, so like the women fussing at home, they should have known all about killing airs.

There, villagers shooed children and livestock away from the tainted house. They slammed doors shut while someone raced to get coffin, corpse handlers, and funeral master. They hung a big lantern at the village entrance and lit it at night, telling strangers to stay away. The dark side of death had to be addressed by rules, and quickly too.

Could that be done here? Key to the rituals was the dead man's kinsfolk, but they were far away. Family was vital; those people couldn't be replaced by cheerful men who went around calling each other “brother.” Dubbing dog meat “mutton” didn't improve its taste.

The brotherhood had formed as soon as we were shoved into gangs. That day, boatloads of coolies reached Yale. Sweaty redbeards
unloaded crates from scows and steamers. Cows clattered down a gangplank so sodden that they squealed and slid into the water. Horses reared up, shaking shaggy manes, as handlers tugged at them. My crew got its marching orders, but men rushed off to bid farewell to fellow travellers and visit Chinese stores and Native vendors. The contract promised meals, but no one trusted the document. When Bookman found us, only the brotherhood men were there, all from around the river port of Sim Hoi. It took Bookman an angry hour to round up the stragglers, after which we marched for half a day under a hot sun before being allowed to sit and rest.

Each morning the brothers were first to want to trek into the forest. Extra sleep didn't concern them. They shouldered axes and saws and toted cloth-wrapped bowls of food. They obeyed all orders, no matter how stupid. In return, Bookman gave them the posts of Head Cook and Second Cook. The brothers got not only better food but also hot water for soaking their feet. When we complained, Head Cook claimed the brotherhood was paying for the heated water. I sided with the losers who had touted Old Skinny for cook. We had pitied his weakness for opium.

At last Crew Boss stomped away from the corpse, leaving behind the two Chinese headmen. Anxious workers squatted on the rank, soggy floor of the clearing. A knot slid up and down High Hat's scrawny throat.

“We all know that such matters must follow the proper order. If not, our friend and brother will not pass smoothly on his way. With what little we have here, we must do our best to soothe and settle him. After all, everyone wants our friend to watch over and protect us while we are far from home.”

The dark and clammy
yin
side of the forest smothered us. Our eyes were swarmed by clouds of mosquitoes that no smoky fire could evict. Prickly bushes clawed at our legs while soft mud swallowed our boots. We yearned for a bright, solid worksite open to the healing wind and sun. At the nearby lake, we held our breath and tiptoed around lean-tos made from tree-fibre mats. Woven cords hung from tent pole to tent pole. We never saw any Native people. Any coolie who was sent to the lake to fill our drinking pails pleaded for an escort, fearing water spirits and Native people, human or other-worldly.

“Four men are needed,” High Hat said, “to break that tree and free our brother. Then they will carry him home to camp. There are no corpse handlers to hire here, so our brotherhood will pay for four helpers. The payment confirms the business nature of the handling, and will protect those men from any killing airs. They will dig a grave, wash the body, carry it to the site, and complete the burial. Who will help?”

“Shouldn't the Company pay?” asked Little Touch.

“The agent said bodies would be sent home,” said Four Square, “so that family members would see that their men hadn't been sold as piglets.”

“We can discuss that later.” High Hat lowered his voice. “Our brother should not hear us argue here.”

No one volunteered. We didn't have rock for brains. Pig Boy had just died. His soul hovered nearby. He could hardly be happy, cut from life so suddenly, having just ended a stomach-rolling ocean trip of thirty days. His family in China was waiting for money. This death wasn't timely at all.

The brothers shrank back from tending their own, yet were too proud to walk away. No man wanted a sullen corpse to suck away his
yang
, his vital essence, and leave him open to illness and death. What did those cheeky fellows say now about the need to help each other while far from home? How were they going to show the barbaric redbeards that China men always rose above hardships in refined and superior ways?

The silence dragged on.

“High Hat, we don't see you raising your hand,” Four Square pointed out.

“The longer that tree sits on our friend,” he said, “the greater the danger to us.”

“I wouldn't touch that dirty thing even if you gave me a pound of gold,” said Salty-Wet.

“Hok and Poy,” said Shorty, “you two bastards should help. Atone for all the people you killed. Regain the honour you lost.”

“I told you,” I said. “We never killed anyone.”

“Who believes a bandit?”