Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [163]
Mum, if you give me a baby sister this time, please never let her end up like Cat Eyes, he said to himself.
He went into a café and had a bowl of porridge with pickled egg, a cup of tea and a bottle of wine. Soon the liquids were sloshing around inside him and he made trip after trip to the outhouse. When finally he got back into the cart and started the horse for home, his tongue felt like over-risen dough bunging up his mouth. He was relieved that Loong Am had not come with him. He did not feel like talking.
He fell asleep in the cart. But the horse knew the road perfectly well—it had done the trip many times before.
When he was about three miles from home, he was woken by a fierce gust of wind. The wind caught the pile of empty baskets at his feet and they rolled to the ground. He stopped to pick them up and saw a slight movement from an upside-down basket still in the cart. Thinking it was the wind, he reached out for the basket, which reared upwards. He sobered up instantly. He had loaded the baskets himself and there was nothing in any of them. But he knew that there were unmarked graves along this road, where railroad workers had been buried.
He raised the whip and cracked it in the air. It sounded like a thunderbolt in the quiet of the night sky and gave him a little courage. His voice shaking, he shouted: “Who’s there?”
Something stumbled under the basket. As it stood up, two green eyes flared in the moonlight. Cat Eyes. Kam Shan’s heart returned to his chest, and the hairs standing up on the back of his neck settled back into place.
“I saw your cart on the other side of the street. When they went off to dinner, I ran out and hid in it.”
“It’s no use coming with me. I don’t have the money to buy your freedom.”
“You don’t need to. You don’t live in Vancouver so they won’t find you.” Cat Eyes jumped down from the cart and flung herself to her knees before Kam Shan. “Mister, I saw you were a good man the minute you came in,” she implored him. “I can get medicine from a doctor to cure the pox. I’m young and strong and I can do any work anywhere—farm work, fishing, embroidery, weaving.… If you’ve got a wife, I can be your concubine and wait on you and your wife and kids day and night. If you’ve already got a concubine, I’ll be your servant, I swear.”
Kam Shan lifted one foot and pushed her away.
“You can’t come with me. If I let you, my dad would kick me out too. Forget it. I’ll take you back to town.”
Cat Eyes stood up, slowly pulled open her tunic and reached for the tie around her trousers. She pulled it free and the trousers slid down her sticklike legs. She stood on tiptoe, threw the tie over an overhanging branch and knotted it into a noose. Then she said hoarsely: “I’m absolutely not going back. You go. You’ve got your way, I’ve got mine. Forget me and I’ll forget you.”
Kam Shan pulled down the tie and flung it to the ground. “Better a live coward than a dead hero. Every cat and dog knows that, Cat Eyes. Are you stupider than a cat or a dog?”
Cat Eyes picked up the tie, made it fast around her trousers and got back in the cart. Kam Shan was silent but Cat Eyes knew that a tiny crack had opened up. She just had to keep her toe in the door and she could see the light.
For the rest of the journey, Kam Shan left Cat Eyes curled up like a sleeping cat in one of the empty baskets at the back of the cart. He did not say another word. But he kept going over things in his mind, addressing everything to his father. Ah-Fat had spent a few months back in Spur-On Village and his mother was pregnant again. His granny was much better and his dad would be booking passage and returning soon. Kam Shan dreamed up one reason after another to explain where Cat Eyes had come from. At first, each reason seemed to offer a broad and bright route but, as he pursued