Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [81]
Ah-Fat looked blank. Then he suddenly realized. This man was his old camp foreman. His first thought was, how the hell had a railroad turned that roughneck into such a respectable-looking man? Unfortunately his English was not up to phrasing the question. What he actually asked, after the thought had rolled around in his head a few times, was something quite different.
“Mr. Henderson! What … what are you doing here?”
The yeung fan released him and laughed: “What’s all this ‘Mister’ talk! Call me Rick. You saved my life and I’ve done something with it since then. I’ve opened a guesthouse here with a friend, so employees of the Pacific Railroad Company and their families have a place to stay.”
Ah-Fat looked at the immaculately knotted tie at Rick’s shirt collar and suddenly thought of Red Hair and Ah-Lam. Red Hair had been number twenty-eight and Ah-Lam, number thirty. Their numbers had spent many years squeezed together on the record-keeper’s work log, just like they had squeezed together onto sleeping mats in the tents. Red Hair in front, Ah-Lam behind, and Ah-Fat in the middle. They were packed in so tight that the only way to sleep was to curl up one behind the other like prawns. Half-suffocated by Red Hair’s farts, and with Ah-Lam’s snores rattling against his neck, Ah-Fat sometimes woke up in the night itching to throttle one with each hand. But he was squeezed in so tight he could not even sit up. Then one day Red Hair’s space was empty and Ah-Fat’s arms and legs finally had space to move. Later still, Ah-Lam’s space was empty too. That was when he learned that he much preferred to be squeezed. If he should fall, there was someone to catch him. Being squeezed meant being supported.
Ah-Fat sighed. “That railroad.…” he said. “It made so many men rich, and took the lives of so many others.” Ah-Fat might speak with a heavy accent, but Rick heard the cutting edge in those words and embarrassment showed in his face. After a pause, he echoed Ah-Fat: “That railroad, huh! Last year I took the train to Montreal, and the ghosts flew around outside the train window as we went along. Actually, I was unemployed for a couple of years after it was completed. I was stuck in a small town by the rail track without work. It was only when I met an old acquaintance from the Pacific Railroad Company that this opportunity came up.
“What about you, number twenty-nine?” Rick asked, and then exclaimed: “You know, after all this time, I still don’t know your name. You Chinese have such strange names!”
“Even if I tell you, you won’t be able to say it. Forget it!” But Rick gripped his arm and insisted: “No, come on, let me hear you say it. Who says I can’t learn it? After all, I can blow up mountains!”
Ah-Fat enunciated the sounds one by one, and Rick repeated them after him as best he could, until Ah-Fat could not help laughing. “Please! Spare me!” he said. “Just say it in the English way and call me Frank. As you can see, I run this laundry, been running it for the past few years. I started in Victoria and moved here just a couple of months ago. Everyone says business is booming here, but there are laundries everywhere and business is going from bad to worse.”
Rick looked around him. He thought to himself for a moment and then said: “I’ve got a few dozen rooms in my guesthouse. I can send all the bedding and tablecloths to you to wash. I’ve got a few other friends with guesthouses too, and I can send them along to you, but you’ll have to smarten this place up, and hire some more boys to help you. And whatever you do, don’t scorch the cloth next time.”
Ah-Fat pulled out a thread from inside the shirt and darned the hole. It did not take him long and he gave the shirt back to Rick. The mend was flawless. Ah-Fat smiled. “You caught us out today. Usually I would have mended it before you saw it and you would never have known. It would just have been between me and the Lord above.”
Rick shook his head in wonder. “God must have just woken up the day he created you, Frank. He made you devilishly skilful. They’re