Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [144]
Sundance lay listening quietly and gradually a thread of sound came to her ears, a humming noise. She knew it was the Great Earth sighing. The Earth had been asleep for too long and needed to turn over. When that happened, the grass would green, the flowers would open, the brown bear and the elk would come out of the forests and the blue jay would no longer need to skulk amid the dark branches.
But today she was not listening for the Earth’s sounds.
She was about to stand up again, disappointed, when her ear caught another tiny sound, a sort of hushing noise, which brought with it a hint of warmth as it brushed her eardrum.
The sound of her father’s paddle in the water.
Sundance leapt to her feet in excitement, hitched up her skirts and ran towards the riverbend. Once she reached him, they would race each other home, he in the canoe, she along the riverbank.
The blue jay suddenly flew up out of the pine tree and circled low around her head. Sundance flicked one end of her belt at the bird and retreated a little, then came back to follow close behind. Sundance’s heart gave a thud. Her father had said that the day her grandmother died, a blue jay kept circling round his head.
Sundance picked up a stone and tossed it at the jay, hitting her wing. She gave a loud squawk and flew away lopsidedly. Sundance began to run fast, but the wind was a nuisance, entangling her legs in her skirt and blowing her hair in her eyes. But she knew every tree root and every stone along the way. Even without eyes, Sundance could have found the exact place where her father would round the bend in the river.
Sundance stopped and picked a withered reed to tie back her hair. In the distance, she saw the hazy shape of her father’s canoe, floating slowly towards her like a mallard duck. She cupped her hands over her mouth and shouted:
“Dad!”
The redwoods caught the sound, and sent it back in mighty echoes all around her.
She could see the canoe more clearly now. It seemed heavier than usual; the neck of the carved mallard’s head sunk low in the water, so that only the bright red beak was visible.
Sundance jumped onto a rock, and could see at a glance that there were a number of large sacks in the canoe—goods which her dad had bartered for in the city. Rice, charcoal, perhaps green vegetables, even candy. There might even be two small black hats with upturned brims.
Sundance’s gaze was caught by something else in the boat, and her brow furrowed in astonishment.
Among the sacks, dressed in a strange blue cotton gown, sprawled a body.
He was hot, so hot. From the soles of his feet to the hair on his head, his entire body was stuck to a burning hot sheet of iron and the fat was melting off him, just like the lard oozed from the pig when his mother cooked it at New Year.
Water, water…
Kam Shan opened his eyes, to see a red light in front of him—a firepit. Beside it floated something large and round. Gradually his eyes focused and he saw it was the face of a girl. High cheekbones, deep-set eye sockets, thick lips. A stranger. He could not think of anyone he knew who looked like that. The thought made his head ache. He groaned with a voice as reedy as the whine of a mosquito: “Porridge … is there any porridge?”
The girl stared at him uncomprehendingly. Kam Shan saw she was wearing a deerskin cloak, fringed at the neck and hem. A Redskin. She was a Redskin, though she looked a little like a Chinese. No wonder she could not understand what he said.
Oh God, he had fallen into the hands of Redskins!
He had heard stories of Redskins—how they scalped people, dug out their hearts, made necklaces of human teeth. His own experience of them in the market did not support these claims, but the beads of sweat on him instantly chilled and his hair