Wrapped up in dirty sheets, the bodies were cast over the side of the ship.
At last they made it to San Francisco, the Old Gold Mountain. Although sixty men boarded the ship, only fifty walked down the planks onto the quays. The men squinted in the bright sunlight at the rows of small houses running up and down the steep, rolling hills. The streets, they found, were not paved with gold, and some of the white men on the quays looked as hungry and dirty as they felt.
They were taken by a Chinaman who was dressed like the white men to a dank basement in Chinatown. He didn’t have a queue, and his hair was parted and slicked down with oil whose strange smell made the other Chinamen sneeze.
“Here are your employment contracts,” the white Chinaman said. He gave them pieces of paper filled with characters smaller than flies’ heads to sign.
“According to this,” said Lao Guan, “we still owe you interest for the price of the passage from China. But the families of these men have already sold everything they could in order to raise money to buy the tickets that got us here.”
“If you don’t like it,” said the white Chinaman, picking between his teeth with the long, manicured nail of his right pinkie, “you can try to find a way to go back on your own. What can I say? Shipping Chinamen is expensive.”
“But it would take us three years of work to pay back the amount you say we owe you here, even longer since you have now made us responsible for the debts of the men who died on the sea.”
“Then you should have taken care that they didn’t get sick.” ?The white Chinaman checked his pocket watch. “Hurry up and sign the contracts. I don’t have all day.”
The next day they were packed into wagons and taken inland. The camp in the mountains where they were finally dropped off was a city of tents. On one side of the camp the railroad stretched into the distance as far as they could see. On the other side was a mountain over which the Chinamen with spades and pickaxes swarmed like ants.
Night fell, and the Chinamen at the camp welcomed the new arrivals with a feast by the campfires.
“Eat, eat,” they told the new arrivals. “Eat as much as you like.” ?The Chinamen had trouble deciding which was sweeter: the food that went into their bellies, or the sound of those words in their ears.
They passed around bottles of a liquor that the old-timers said was called “whiskey.” It was strong and there was enough for everyone to get drunk. When they ran out of drink the old-timers asked the new group whether they wanted to visit the large tent at the edge of the camp with them. A red silk scarf and a pair of women’s shoes dangled from a pole outside the tent.
“You lucky bastards,” grumbled one of the older man, whose name was San Long. “I gave all my money to Annie on Monday. I’ll have to wait another week.”
“She’ll run a tab for you,” said one of the others. “Though you might have to be with Sally instead of her tonight.”
San Long cracked a huge smile and got up to join his companions.
“This must be heaven,” said Ah Yan, who was barely more than a boy. “Look how free they are with money! They must be making so much that they paid off their debt early and can save up a fortune for their families while having all this fun.”
Lao Guan shook his head and stroked his beard. He sat next to the dying embers of the fire and smoked his pipe, staring at the big tent with the silk scarf and the pair of women’s shoes. The light in that tent stayed lit until late into the night.
The work was hard. They had to carve a path through the mountain in front of them for the railroad. The mountain yielded to their pickaxes and chisels reluctantly, and only after repeated hammering that made the men’s shoulders and arms sore down to the bones. There was so much mountain to move that it was like trying to gouge through the steel doors of the Emperor’s palace with wooden spoons. All the while, the white foremen screamed at the Chinamen to move faster and set upon anyone who tried to sit down for a minute with whips and fists.
They were making so little progress day after day that the men were tired each morning before they had even begun their work. Their spirit sagged. One by one they laid down their tools. The mountain had defeated them. The white foremen jumped around, whipping at the Chinamen to get them to go back to work, but the Chinamen simply ducked away.
Lao Guan jumped onto a rock on the side of the mountain so that he was higher than everyone. “Tu-ne-mah!” he shouted, and spit at the mountain. “Tu-ne-mah!” He look at the white foremen and smiled at them.
The mountain pass was filled with the laughter of Chinamen. One by one they took up the chant. “Tu-ne-mah! Tu-ne-mah!” ?They smiled at the white foremen as they sang and gestured at them. The white foremen, not sure what was wanted, joined in the chanting. This seemed to make the Chinamen even happier. They picked up their tools and went back to hacking at the mountain with a fury and vengeance directed by the rhythm of their chant. They made more progress in that afternoon than they had all week.
“Goddamn these monkeys,” said the site overseer. “But they certainly can work when they want to. What is that song they are singing?”
“Who knows?” ?The foremen shook their heads. “We can’t ever make heads or tails of their pidgin. It sounds like a work song.”
“Tell them that we’ll name this pass Tunemah,” said the overseer. “Maybe these monkeys will work even harder when they know that their song will be forever remembered every time a train passes this place.”
The Chinamen continued their chant even after they were done with their work for the day. “Tu-ne-mah!” they shouted at the white foremen, their smiles as wide as they’d ever smiled. “Fuck your mother!”
? ? ?
At the end of the week the Chinamen were paid.
“This is not what I was promised,” said Lao Guan to the clerk. “This is not even as much as half of what my wages should be.”
“You are deducted for the food you eat and for your space in the tents. I’d show you the math if you could count that high.” ?The clerk gestured for Lao Guan to move away from the table. “Next!”
“Have they always done this?” Lao Guan asked San Long.
“Oh, yeah. It’s always been that way. The amount they charge for food and sleep has already gone up three times this year.”
“But this means you’ll never be able to pay back your debt and save up a fortune to take home with you.”
“What else can you do?” San Long shrugged. “There’s no place to buy food within fifty miles of here. We’ll never be able to pay back the debt we owe them, anyway, since they just raise the interest whenever it seems like someone is about to pay it all back. All we can do is to take the money that we do get and drink and gamble and spend it all on Annie and the other girls. When you are drunk and asleep, you won’t be thinking about it.”
“They are playing a trick on us, then,” said Lao Guan. “This is all a trap.”
“Hey,” said San Long, “it’s too late to cry about that now. This is what you get for believing those stories told about the Old Gold Mountain. Serves us right.”
? ? ?
Lao Guan went around and asked men to come and join him. He had a plan. They would run away into the mountains and go into hiding, and then make their way back to San Francisco.
“We’ll need to learn English and understand the ways of this land if we want to make our fortune. Staying here will only make us into slaves with nothing to call our own excepting mounting debts in the white men’s books.” Lao Guan looked at each man in the eyes, and he was so tall and imposing that the other men avoided looking back.
“But we’ll be breaking our contract and leaving our debts unpaid,” said Ah Yan. “We will be burdening our families and ancestors with shame. It is not Chinese to break one’s word.”