Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [147]
“Can I live with you for a bit? I can, I can work.…” said Kam Shan, not looking at the man. He was addressing the woman as he spoke. She had a soft heart; he could see that in her eyes.
The woman did not answer, just stared at the man. The man did not answer either but sat there absorbed in pulling at a callus on his palm. There was a sudden stillness at the end of the room as Sundance’s hand paused in mid-air. Kam Shan’s heart thudded so loudly he thought the whole room must have heard it.
“What can you do?” the man asked, finally looking up.
Kam Shan was stumped once more. What could he do? He could not fish, hunt, plait reeds or smoke meat. He could not do anything that the Redskin men did, or anything that the women did either. The truth was that away from his father, he could not even feed himself.
Suddenly he saw some big sacks piled against the wall. They contained the things the man had brought back from town yesterday. In the Vancouver and New Westminster farmers’ markets, he had seen Redskins bartering their produce for other things they needed. Kam Shan’s eyes lit up.
“Charcoal! I can make charcoal!” he exclaimed.
That was another lie. He had watched Mak Dau make charcoal back in Spur-On Village. But it was enough. Redskins were stupid: they had entire forests but they were willing to barter their excellent smoked fish for charcoal.
The woman did not wait for the man to reply. She jumped to her feet and yelled in the direction of the shadows at the end of the room: “Sundance, when the weather clears up, take him to the forest to cut wood.”
An odd sort of rain fell at that time of year. It did not slant down or fall in drops, or even drizzle. Still, when you were outdoors, you only had to hold out your palm for it to fill with water. As the rain fell, the earth became saturated; the trees in the forest plumped out, and the walls and mud floors grew moss. Finally one day the sun came out and, bursting with energy after its long sleep, slurped up the moisture in the air and underfoot. When the people came outside, they found everything thick with greenery.
With the coming of spring, the missionaries got busy. (The Redskins called them God’s men and God’s women because though many were taught English, they could not get their tongues around the words “priests” and “lady missionaries.”) With winter ended, God’s men started classes again and all children under fourteen had to go to school. The Chief ’s children set the example, and the other children followed it. God’s women were not idle either: they gathered the women of the village together and taught them spinning and knitting. “The men have ways of earning their living, and women need ways too. So when you don’t have a man, you can feed yourselves.”
The Redskin women did not understand. How could a woman not have a man? If you lost one, you got another. If a woman had to provide her own food, then what on earth was a man for? The Redskin women thought that God’s women were pretty daft. No wonder they could never get a man. But although they looked down on God’s women, they were entranced by their knitting. They had never before seen such colours and styles, felt such woolly softness and warmth. So God’s women were never short of students.
Sundance did not need to go to school with her younger siblings or to knitting classes with her mother. She was too old for the school and too young for the knitting, so she was free to please herself.
Today she sat on the great rock in front of their door, sharpening hatchets.
She had two of them, one short and one long, both used for cutting wood. The long one was for cutting down branches, the short one for clearing low undergrowth. For