Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [42]
Ah-Fat dozed fitfully on the back of the foreman’s horse. His wound was long and deep—it stretched from his left temple to the right side of his mouth. He was capable of walking but the foreman insisted that he ride pillion on his horse—at least as far as the major road.
“You nearly took my life, but you nearly lost your life to save me, so that makes things even and we’re quits,” said the foreman and asked the record-keeper to translate.
“What’s his name?” Ah-Fat asked the record-keeper. He could only speak through one side of his mouth and his words came out faint and fuzzy.
“Rick Henderson.”
When they parted, the foreman took a walking stick out of his baggage and gave it to Ah-Fat. It had been made by a Redskin and was of hardwood, with a grinning eagle carved at the top. The foreman patted Ah-Fat’s shoulder. “Maybe we’ll meet again, kid.” Ah-Fat got down, holding the walking stick, and felt the weakness in his legs.
I hope I never set eyes on you again, was what he thought to himself. But he did not say it. Instead he said: “Maybe, Rick, maybe.”
Ah-Fat began to walk but he had not gone far when he heard the clopping of hooves behind him. The foreman was back again.
“Nitroglycerine is kept under lock and key. How did you get hold of it?” he asked.
Ah-Fat laughed. His lips were thickly swollen and the laugh twisted his features into a savage grin.
“That was horse piss. Your horse.”
As Ah-Fat made his way through the almost uninhabited forests towards the city, carrying on his back one long cloth bag and a smaller round one, he had no idea that the last spike had been driven into the railroad sleepers in a little town called Craigellachie. At long last, the Pacific Railroad had joined up with the Central and Eastern Railroads, creating a great artery snaking across the chest of the country. Lavish celebratory banquets were taking place, to the popping of champagne corks, and gentlemen in black tuxedos shouted and laughed in between clinking wineglasses. Newspapers and magazines flew off the printing presses, carrying photographs and news reports on their front pages.
But not a single photograph or news report made mention of the
Chinese navvies who built the railroad.
That was something else Ah-Fat did not know.
Ah-Sing got up early in the morning and, before opening up the store, shouted to the boy to come and hang up the lanterns. They had been hung up last New Year and then been put away in the attic in the intervening months. They were dusty and the boy took off his apron and gave them a rub, revealing gold lettering underneath: “Years of Plenty” on one, and “Everlasting Peace” on the other. He was too short to hang them on the nails on the wall even when he stood on a stool, so he fetched a bamboo cane and lifted them up onto the nails. A tenuous air of good cheer filtered grudgingly through the door and windows and into the street outside.
The boy shook out his apron and the air filled with clouds of grey dust.
“Uncle Ah-Sing, how much New Year stuff do you want me to get today?”
The boy was referring to gift boxes of snacks such as sesame and green bean cakes and lotus crisp, with a festive red paper cover stuck on top. Ah-Sing bought these in from the cake shop. He did not stock them or make them himself.
Ah-Sing counted up on his fingers. “Five boxes,” he said. “Just five, each kind.”
The boy was startled. “Five?” he queried. “Will that be enough for the New Year festival?” “If we sell ’em all, then you can go and light incense before your mother’s picture!” said his boss. “Haven’t you seen the railroad navvies are back and the streets are full of them? They haven’t even got rice to eat. How can they afford cakes?”
Ah-Sing watched the boy clopping off down the street, two large baskets slung from the ends of his carrying pole. Then he went back inside and opened the shop, laying the goods out on display. He looked up at the sky. A thick cloud pressed down so low, it was almost as if he could put up his hand and tweak one corner. Leaden skies like