Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [35]
“Doctor. Right now. You.” Ah-Fat enunciated the words one by one.
It took a few moments for the foreman to realize Ah-Fat was speaking English, albeit of a rudimentary kind.
“You’re wasting your breath, Ah-Fat,” a voice shouted from the crowd, “just cut him down. Our lives are cheap. Two and a half of ours for one of his. Fair’s fair.”
The foreman suddenly bent down and swiftly pulled something out of his boot, and put it against Ah-Fat’s middle. It felt blunt and rather heavy, not like a sharp weapon. Ah-Fat suddenly realized it was a pistol. They had no idea the foreman carried a gun. Ah-Fat dropped his axe with a thud. The atmosphere became as brittle as if it were a sheet of glass of which everyone held a corner in his hand, and dared not make a false move in case it shattered.
The foreman muttered something. Then, pushing Ah-Fat in front of him, he walked him slowly away. The ranks of men parted like water to let them through and came together again behind them. Harsh breathing could be heard but no one said a word.
It was only when the pair had gone some way off that the men found the ashen-faced record-keeper standing among some low bushes. The crotch of his trousers was wet, and urine still dripped from the bottom of one trouser leg.
“He—he said he’d go with Ah-Fat and, and get a doctor.” The record-keeper’s lips trembled so much he could hardly get the words out.
Half an hour later, the medicine man from the Redskin tribe rode up, bringing herbals to stop the bleeding and inflammation.
Ah-Fat tugged at the record-keeper’s sleeve: “Tell him to bring me the stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“The bottle of Yellow Water.”
The record-keeper looked astonished. “You mean—you’re going up?” “Tell him I don’t want a boat ticket, I want a bank draft.”
The record-keeper went over and relayed the message. This time the record-keeper spoke fluently and at length while the foreman’s answer was brief. In fact, it was a single word, which everyone understood without the need of a translation.
“Yes.”
Ah-Fat tied the Yellow Water bottle to his waist, looped the tin tube over his shoulder and then set off. As he walked past the men, he heard sighs but no one tried to stop him.
“If someone’s got to die, better for it to be someone without a wife and kids,” one man said.
As he climbed the slope, Ah-Fat copied the way Red Hair had gone up—one leg long, the other short, one in a fixed position, the other testing the ground ahead. The difference was that Ah-Fat was younger so his steps were lighter and faster. The half-moon of the cliff face had suffered repeated injuries that day and the newly exposed rock had the terrifying whiteness of a woman’s naked breast. Ah-Fat’s black shadow fluttered moth-like back and forth across the crevices between the rocks. When he reached the entrance to the hole, he turned around and waved—perhaps in greeting, perhaps in farewell.
A short while later, Ah-Fat emerged from the hole. Forgetting the measured steps he had taken on his ascent, he came down fast. There was no testing of the ground this time. Ah-Fat’s legs seemed to have left his body in their frantic flight. But he was not fast enough to outpace the gunpowder in the tin tube. He had not run more than a few steps when the cliff face collapsed.
“That’s done it,” said the foreman quietly. He did not sound as satisfied as one might have expected. Three and a half lives for one tunnel. Even when he made the usual calculations, he was still not sure the formula made sense.
Besides, he had actually started to like this shy yet rough Chinese kid.
In the middle of that night, the whole camp was woken up by frantic barking. The cook got up for a piss and shouted at Ginger, then tossed