Later, after Hua Xiong left, the family ate the New Year’s Eve dinner in silence.
“A phoenix among men indeed,” his father finally said after the meal. He laughed long and hard. Chang Sheng stayed up the whole night with him, drinking the last of their plum wine.
The father wrote a long petition to the magistrate’s court, detailing Hua Xiong’s treachery.
“It is a sad thing that the bureaucrats must be involved,” he said to Chang Sheng, “but sometimes we have no choice.”
The soldiers showed up at their house a week later. They broke down the door and hauled Chang Sheng and his mother into the yard and proceeded to overturn every piece of furniture in the house and break every plate, cup, bowl, and dish.
“What is the charge against me?”
“Crafty peasant,” the captain said as his soldiers locked the cangue around the neck and arms of Chang Sheng’s father, “you are plotting to raise a band of bandits to join the ?Yellow Turbans. Now confess the names of your coconspirators.”
Four soldiers had to hold Chang Sheng back, eventually wrestling him to the ground and sitting on him, as he struggled and cursed the soldiers.
“I think your son also has a rebellious spine,” the captain said. “I think we’ll bring him in too.”
“Chang Sheng, stop fighting. This is not the time. I’ll go see the magistrate. This will be cleared up.”
His father did not come back the next day, or the day after that. Runners from the town came to the village to tell the family that he had been thrown into jail by the magistrate, pending his trial for treasonous rebellion. Horrified, mother and son made the trip into town to appeal to the magistrate at the yamen.
The magistrate refused to see them, or to let them see Chang Sheng’s father.
“Crafty peasants, out, out!” ?The magistrate threw the scholar’s rock that he used as a paperweight at Chang Sheng, missing him by a foot. Swinging their bamboo poles, the guards drove Chang Sheng and his mother out of the halls of the yamen.
Spring came but mother and son let the fields go fallow. Hua Xiong’s henchmen came to cart away anything of value left in the house that hadn’t been broken by the soldiers. His mother held him back as Chang Sheng clenched his teeth and ground them together until he felt the saltiness of blood on his tongue. His face grew redder and redder so that Hua Xiong’s servants were frightened and left before they could take everything.
He took his ax and machete and spent the days in the mountains. He cleared out entire hillsides with his swinging blade. Crack! Boys playing in the mountains ran back to their mothers and spoke of how they had seen a great eagle swooping among the trees, breaking down the branches with its iron beak. Zang! Girls doing the washing by the river ran back to the village and told one another how they had heard an angry tiger crashing through the woods, tearing down saplings with its great paws.
The bundles of firewood and kindling were exchanged for sorghum meal and pickled vegetables from the neighbors. The son waited while the mother swallowed the food in silence, flavoring it with her tears. He seemed to survive on sorghum mead and plum wine alone. With each drink, his face grew darker and redder. The blood hue of sorghum and plum would not fade from his face.
THE MEAL
“Chila, chila!” Ah Yan called out, interrupting Logan’s story.
“It’s time for dinner,” Logan said to Lily. He set down his bowl of watermelon seeds. “Will you join us? Ah Yan is making Mala Wife’s Tofu and Duke of Wei’s Meat, his best dishes.”
Lily didn’t want Logan to stop. She wanted Hua Xiong to get what he deserved. She wished she could see Chang Sheng angry in the forest, flying and dancing like an eagle or a tiger. But the Chinamen were bustling about, arranging empty crates and benches around the garden in a circle, talking loudly and laughing amongst themselves. The smell emanating from the open kitchen door made Lily’s stomach growl. She had been so absorbed in Logan’s tale that she didn’t even know she was hungry.
“I promise we’ll finish the story some other time.”
The miners were in high spirits. Logan had told her that the spot that they had been working on turned out to be a rich deposit, yielding gold by the panful. Ah Yan had checked on her leg as soon as he came back with the other Chinamen and pronounced himself satisfied with her healing process so long as she kept up with plenty of good food and exercise to keep up her strength.
“I have a good story for you,” Ah Yan said.
During the day the Chinese miners were visited by the sheriff, Davey Gaskins. The territorial legislature had passed a Foreign Miner’s Tax a few years earlier at the rate of five dollars per person per month, and he was there to collect it. The tax was meant to drive out the Chinamen, who were pouring into the territory like so many locusts. But the towns had a lot of trouble collecting it. Gaskins hated the monthly rounds to the Chinese mining camps. They made him feel like he was losing his mind.
First of all, the camps were so far apart that he could never hit all of them in a single day. And somehow they always knew when he was coming to collect the tax. There he would be, standing in a middle of a camp with enough picks, pans, and shovels strewn about for twenty or thirty men at least, and only five or six Chinamen would greet him, insisting that the extra tools were there because they worked so hard that the tools “wore out quickie quickie.”
And even worse, they seemed to constantly move about.
“Howdy, Sheriff,” Ah Yan greeted him that afternoon. “Good to see you again.”
“What’s your name again?” Gaskins could never tell the Chinamen apart.
“I’m Loh Yip,” Ah Yan said. “You came for our taxes on Monday, remember?”
Gaskins was sure that he had not come to this camp on Monday. He was on the other side of the town, collecting the taxes from three claims that were each supposedly just being worked on by five men.
“I was over near Pioneerville on Monday.”
“Sure, so were we. We just moved here yesterday.”
Ah Yan showed the sheriff the tax receipts. Sure enough, there was the name “Loh Yip” and four others, followed by Gaskin’s own signature.
“Sorry I didn’t recognize you,” Gaskins said. He felt for sure that he was being tricked, but he had no proof. There were the receipts, written out in his own hand.
“No problem,” Ah Yan said, giving him a huge grin. “All Chinamen look alike. Easy mistake to make.”
Lily laughed along with the miners as Ah Yan finished his story. She couldn’t believe how silly Sheriff Gaskins was. How could he not recognize Ah Yan? It was absurd.
As they worked to set up the makeshift table and chairs in the vegetable garden, the Chinamen talked and joked with one another loudly and easily. Lily found it amusing to try to pick out the English words in their conversation. She was getting used to their accent, which she thought was like their music, brassy, percussive, and punctuated by a rhythm like the beating of a joyous heart.
I have to tell Dad about this later, she thought. He always told me that the Irish accent of his uncles and aunts reminded him of his favorite drinking songs.
Lily hadn’t been able to go out to see the miners during the day while they were working. Her mother was adamant about keeping her inside the house after her “accident” yesterday.
“I just tripped, that’s all. I promise to be more careful.”
Her mother just told her to write out more verses in her copybook.
Lily knew that her mother suspected that there was more to the accident than she was telling. She had been dying to tell her dad about everything that happened to her yesterday, but her mother became so alarmed at the sight and smell of her bandaged leg that she insisted Lily wash off all the “Chinamen’s poison” immediately. After that it was simply impossible to tell them the truth.