Thousand Pieces of Gold Page 13

  “It’s nothing,” he said, playing with his beard, the tender flesh around his scar. “I just want to say something and I don’t know how to begin.”

  Polly massaged his back. Beneath her fingers she felt him seething, like a pot of boiling water.

  “You know you can say anything, I will not mind.” He refilled his pipe, stopped, let the tobacco spill unheeded, took a deep breath, and blurted. “I haven’t forgotten I asked you to marry me the day I was shot.”

  “I know you say that to protect me,” Polly said, carefully keeping her fingers kneading in an even rhythm. “But you are well now, so there’s no need.”

  “You don’t understand,” Charlie countered, face flushed, hands fidgeting with bits of spilled tobacco. “I love you, Polly. I want to marry you.”

  He was serious. But why? After all these years. She put her hands over his, stilling his twitching fingers. “We fine like we are.”

  “What about children? If we don’t marry, we can’t have children.”

  She laughed. “I’m thirty-eight. In China, I be a grandmother.”

  Charlie laughed with her. “So here you’ll be a mother!”

  Polly walked over to the washstand and straightened the towels. “No.”

  “Why not? Plenty of women have children in their thirties, forties even. Look at old Mrs. B. Her last child, what’s his name, the fourteenth one, you know the one I mean, you helped birth him. Why, when he was born, she must have been close to fifty!”

  So it was children he wanted. Why? Because he had come so close to death? For all their talk, their professed frankness with each other, this was the one subject they had never discussed.

  Stalling for time, she emptied the wash basin into the slop bucket. As she poured in fresh water from the pitcher for rinsing, images crowded in on Polly. The special smell of a baby. The warmth of a child’s arms wrapped around her legs, her neck. The trust in their eyes. The emptiness in her arms when she returned a child to its mother.

  She swilled, emptied, and polished the basin dry. “No, Charlie. Not me.”

  “You mean you can’t?”

  For a moment Polly was tempted to let him believe that. But she had not lied to him before. Not even when she was Hong King’s slave. She would not begin now. “I mean I will not have children because I do not want children.”

  “I can’t believe that. You love children. You take care of them when they’re sick, play with them when they’re well. Every time I turn around you seem to have a baby in your arms or pulling at your skirts.”

  “Other people’s children. Not mine.” She swallowed hard, her throat a raw lump of pain. “I decide long ago.”

  Charlie’s voice softened. “I can understand why you didn’t want children when you were Hong King’s slave. Or even these last years. But if we marry, it’ll be different.”

  Polly stared unseeing out of the window. “I know what people call men with Indian wives. Squaw men. They do not live in town and not with the Indians. They belong nowhere. Their children too. Strangers to their father’s people and their mother’s.”

  “You’re not Indian, Pol.”

  “It’s the same.”

  “No, not at all. The white people in Warrens have never treated Chinamen badly. Doesn’t everyone call A Sam Mayor of Warrens? And in the eighties, during the height of the troubles, when the League was trying to run Chinamen out of Idaho, Warrens stayed peaceful.”

  They were the same arguments, almost the same words A Sam had used when Li Dick had warned of trouble. But even as Charlie spoke, she felt the same unease, the same pull of the tightrope and wash of loneliness that had come over her during the Fourth of July dance.

  She felt his hands on her shoulders, turning her around. “And if there were trouble, don’t you know I’d protect you and the children?”

  Her fingers reached up to smooth out the deep furrow between his eyes. “I know you try. Just like my father try. But he not save me from the bandits.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The stiff pose captured on the pasteboard by the studio photographer could not hide the obvious pride and joy radiating from the happy parents: John Long holding Edward, the first born, already a year old, and Bertha holding Mary, the new baby.

  Polly pointed to Mary’s lacy dress and bonnet peeping from beneath layers of finely crocheted shawls. “That’s the same dress I made for Edward,” she told Li Dick proudly.

  His cabin was so small that, seated across from each other, their knees almost touched. Nevertheless, he set down his long-stemmed Chinese pipe and leaned closer, his tongue clicking the appropriate noises of admiration Polly demanded.

  She rewrapped the photograph carefully in paper and slipped it back into her pocket. “It’s been two years since Bertha and John moved to their farm in Grangeville, but I still find myself walking halfway across Warrens Meadow to the Little Giant Mine for a visit before I remember.”

  “Seems to me there are other things you’ve forgotten too.”

  “Don’t start that again.”

  Li Dick relit his pipe. The smell of tobacco mingled with the fragrance of the herbs and roots hanging from the ceiling. “I can’t seem to get through to you. The new law from Washington requires all Chinese laborers to register or face deportation.” His right hand sliced the air between them. “There are no exceptions.”

  “If I register and admit I was smuggled in, I’ll be deported. If I don’t register and I’m found out, I’ll be deported. But if I don’t register and I’m not found out, I’ll live like I’ve lived for the last twenty-one years.”

  “You think because we’re high up in the mountains the government won’t come after you? When they wanted the Sheepeater Indians they sent troops up here to chase them down. They can do the same to us.”

  She thought of the naked, unreasoned anger of the government troops unleashed against the Sheepeaters who had sought refuge in the high-timbered mountains near Warrens, the willingness of the townspeople to join the battle. “That was different. The Sheepeaters had murdered two white men.”

  “Only a few committed the murders. The troops went after them all. The whole tribe. And got them. Just like they can get you.”

  Polly forced a little laugh. “You’re as vinegar-faced as a hired mourner.”

  “And you’re behaving like a fool hen.” He shook his pipe at her. “If you’re so safe in Warrens, why did Bemis have to build your boarding house for you? Why do you have to keep it in his name?” He set his pipe down.

  “Look, you and Bemis have lived together almost eighteen years. You’re husband and wife by common law. A five-minute ceremony, a piece of paper, and you’re safe from deportation forever.”

  “Leave Charlie out of it,” Polly said, twisting the heavy gold buttons Charlie had made her.

  Fists pounded against the door, shaking the bundles of herbs, showering Polly and Li Dick with bits of dried leaves and dust.

  “Li Dick, open up! It’s me, Bemis!”

  Li Dick unbolted the door. Charlie and Talkington, crouching low to avoid damaging the herbs, squeezed through the narrow opening. Snow blew in from small drifts piled up against the cabin, and Li Dick quickly slammed the door behind them. The bottles, jars, and tins crowding the shelves that lined his cabin shook and rattled.

  “There’s a Chinaman, a stranger come in to winter, who’s in a jackpot. He’s been accused of stealing a pair of boots from a white man,” Charlie said.

  Li Dick nodded. “I already went up to jail to see him. Mr. Skinner said the men who brought A Foo in threatened to hang him if he did not return the boots, but A Foo insists he did not take them.”

  Polly slid off the packing crate. “I take him some supper.”

  “He’s not in the jail. I just checked,” Talkington said. “Some men Skinner had never seen before came and took him away. They told Skinner they just wanted to scare the truth out of the Chinaman, but they haven’t come back. I’m afraid they’ve gone and done something stu
pid.”

  Polly pulled on coat and gloves. “We go look for them.”

  “No, you go back to your place or mine,” Charlie said. “Li Dick, Talkington, and I will take care of this.”

  “Sometimes men will listen to a woman, not other men.” She traced the scar on Charlie’s cheek. “I don’t want you to risk another shooting,” she added softly.

  Li Dick gathered lanterns, a knife. “They’ll be gone by now.”

  “The men weren’t on horseback. I figure they didn’t intend to take the Chinaman far,” Talkington said.

  He opened the door. “Skinner says he saw them headed for the river.”

  Their lanterns held high, they walked in the direction Talkington suggested. Snow, like a fresh lime coating, covered the garbage strewn mud paths that twisted through the huddle of windowless shacks, purging the air of familiar odors, smothering the usual cacophony of night sounds.

  It was like a ghost village, Polly thought, goosebumps rising beneath her warm flannel dress and wool coat. A ghost village hoping to escape notice, hence wrath.

  Their boots crunched through the thin crust of ice above the first snow of the season. Loose snow rippled like sea sand.

  “We can cover more ground if we fan out,” Li Dick suggested.

  “It’s safer if we stick together,” Charlie said.

  Polly plucked Charlie’s sleeve. “Li Dick is right.”

  Reluctantly, Charlie agreed and they spread out, leaving the town behind them.

  Closer to the river, the snow was slick with treacherous ice patches. Wind whipped Polly’s skirts, twisting them around her legs, and each step became a battle for balance. The sky, pitch black, threatened a second storm, but she needed support more than she needed light. She set down her lantern.

  With one arm, she gripped the ice-sheathed trunk ahead and stepped carefully toward it. The next tree was too far to reach with her hands, but she could grab a branch. Her gloved hands crushed the tiny, glittering icicles shrouding the branch, and she edged forward without falling. Slowly, laboriously, with wind-carried spray stinging her face with fine hard crystals of ice, she worked her way from one tree to the next, leaving the pale glow of her lantern farther and farther behind.

  A quarter moon, struggling from behind black clouds, cast gloomy shadows through thickly intertwined branches. From below came the sounds of water smashing against rocks, pulling fallen branches, debris. Closer, she heard a faint rustling. Almost a sigh, it might be the wind or a small wood animal. But the moaning. Was that the wind? Or a human, a man in pain?

  She stopped. Not far from her, Charlie’s, Li Dick’s, and Talkington’s lanterns bobbed, their twinkling lights reassuring her of help nearby. But in her own immediate area, there were only shadows.

  A snowshoe hare skimmed across the snow, its white winter coat startling in the darkness. A wolf howled, the sound wild and drawn out. Owls hooted. The moon disappeared and the black sky released its snow, dusting the pine branches. She would have to start back before the light powdering became a blinding whirl.

  Head bent against the wind, she turned and worked her way cautiously up the ice slick slope toward the barely visible glow of her lantern. A broken branch dangled dangerously. She pushed it aside.

  It swayed stiffly. Not a broken branch, but a broken man wrapped in a new shroud of feathery white flakes.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The dream, when it came, was always the same. The tightrope stretched taut. Herself edging forward. Tired. Anxious to reach the end.

  She could not see the place she was struggling to reach. But she could feel its contentment, a sense of repletion. And then, without warning, a branch snapped, knocking her off balance. She fell. The bark peeled off the branch, and she found herself staring into eyes, red and bulging, in a face swollen black, the tongue, distended, choking off a silent scream.

  “No,” Polly shouted. “No.”

  Charlie shook her. “Wake up, Pol.”

  A match scratched against flint and Polly became aware of a sudden glare beyond the darkness of eyelids squeezed shut. Hands straightened her twisted nightgown, stroking, soothing, forcing the dream to recede until she finally dared open her eyes.

  There were their two chairs pulled up to the stove. Charlie’s fiddle. The tablecloth she had embroidered. Her plaid dress, gold buttons gleaming, hanging on a nail. Charlie’s corduroy pants and flannel shirt tossed on a chair. His boots. Pipe.

  Charlie picked up the quilt from the floor where Polly had kicked it, tucking it around her. “Pol, the hanging was terrible, but it’s been eight months.”

  “The men who hang A Foo are still out there.”

  “They were outsiders Skinner had never seen before.”

  “Now snow is gone, they can come back. Why you think Chinatown is almost empty?”

  “For the same reason white men are leaving Warrens. There’s no gold and times are bad.”

  “Maybe. But Li Dick say, and you know it’s true, bad times are when trouble always begin.”

  Charlie smoothed the hair from Polly’s forehead. “Let’s close down the saloon and boarding house and take a trip.”

  “What?”

  “There’s a place I want to show you.”

  “Where?”

  He smiled. “Not far, just a day’s ride. But I can’t tell you about it, you have to see it for yourself.”

  His eyes shone with excitement, like a young man’s. A young man with a secret.

  “Okay,” she agreed. “We go.”

  Polly took a last bite of the trout Charlie had caught earlier. She had coated it in yellow cornmeal and fried it crisp, serving it sizzling hot with the dandelion greens she had found while Charlie fished. The fresh, tender meat contrasted perfectly with the crunchy casing, and she glowed with the satisfaction that comes at the end of a meal enjoyed. Careful not to disturb Charlie, napping in the shade of a mahogany bush, she gathered the tin plates, forks, and pans and headed for the river to wash.

  How deceptive the river was. At first, near Warrens, it had been only a faint rustle. Then, gradually, as they descended the gorge, the rustling had become a rushing roar. Now, at the water’s edge, she could see arcs of broken rainbows curving across falls, foam beads glittering like fiery opals, awesome in their colorful beauty. But it was the sound the water made as it crashed against the huge rocks rising dark and treacherous from the Salmon’s depths that amazed Polly the most.

  A few yards away, a creek, a mere silver streak winding through stands of firs and pines, broadened into shallows, then suddenly narrowed, gushing into the deep, boiling eddies of the Salmon. Across the river, a second, larger creek did the same. And the sound of all the tumbling, boiling water was mesmerizing, washing away any thought of the troubled world beyond the canyon walls.

  Impulsively Polly bent and took off her shoes and stockings. The ice cold water lapped against her toes as she strolled along the sand bar, adding her own footprints to the peppered impressions and trailing quill lines of porcupines and, farther on, the tracks of bobcats, minks, otters, and deer.

  At the end of the bar, she turned and went back, scuffing up the hot sand, feeling it slide off her feet. She dipped the dishes and pan into the river. A beaver stuck its sleek, dripping face up from the water and eyed Polly inquisitively. Playfully, she splattered it with water. For a moment, it did not move, staring, defiant. Then it dove out of sight. Chuckling, she finished the washing, laid the dishes, pan and forks beside the dying embers of the cooking fire, and dragged her saddle near Charlie.

  It was hard to believe that this canyon, so wild and secluded, was only eighteen miles from Warrens, but she could fully understand why the Mallicks, the Nez Perce family across the river, had chosen it to farm. The land, a wilderness of cheat grass, vicious nettles, sumac, and prickly blackberry thickets, was free for the taking; the soil rich, the growing season ample.

  She stretched out, her head pillowed in the satin smoothness of her saddle. Above her, in a pocket
of the canyon wall, mountain sheep searched for grass, their slate-colored hides barely discernible against the rock. Closer, on a rocky outcrop streaked with bands of grass and trees, she found the big head and horns of a ram feeding, and near it, two brown spots, one larger than another, a ewe and her lamb. They saw her, but did not run, continuing to eat, confident of their safety. All around them dragonflies flashed. Smaller insects hummed. A squirrel scampered up a nearby trunk rich with yellow and green lichen. The sun felt warm, the peace palpable.

  “You see why I couldn’t tell you about this canyon, why I had to show you?” Charlie said.

  Polly, suffused with a sense of contentment she had never known before, rolled over. “Let’s stay a few more days.”

  Charlie propped himself up on his elbow. “Pol, when I asked you to marry me before, you said there was no reason to. But now, with the new law, there is every reason. Let’s get married and come here and start a new life together.”

  Polly catapulted to her knees, showering Charlie with sand. “You don’t mind leaving Warrens?”

  “It’s only a day’s ride. I can rent out the saloon, you can rent out your boarding house, and we can always go into town if life gets too dull.”

  She laughed. “Dull? Too much work on a farm to be dull!”

  “Then you agree?”

  She pictured the photograph of Bertha’s family, only it was she and Charlie with their own babies, children who would know only the joy and peace the canyon offered. After all, hadn’t her father and his fathers before him lived in the same village for generations? But her mother, like the other women, had come from another village and, if she had not been sold, there would have come a day when she would have had to leave her family to go to a husband’s home and village. And Jim, Li Dick, A Sam, the hundreds of Chinese men in the hold of the ship, in Warrens, and all the other towns and camps, hadn’t they left their fathers’ villages like Charlie had left his?