Earlier that day, she had told the jury what she saw on that day by the Chinamen’s camp.
Mrs. O’Scannlain, who was in the front row of the courtroom, had smiled at her as she walked up to sit in the witness box next to the judge. It had made her feel very brave.
The faces of the men in the jury box were severe and expressionless, and she had been terrified. But then she told herself that it was just like telling a story, the way Logan told her his stories. The only thing was that it was all true so she didn’t even have to make any of it up.
Afterward, she couldn’t tell if they believed her. But Mrs. O’Scannlain and the others in the courtroom clapped after her testimony and that made her happy, even after the judge banged his gavel several times to get the crowd to settle down.
But now was not the time to tell Logan that. “Of course they will believe you,” she said to Logan. “You have all these people who saw what happened.”
“But except for you, they are all just worthless Chinamen.”
“Why do you say that?” Lily became angry. “I’d rather be a Chinaman than someone who’d believe Obee’s lies.”
Logan laughed, but he was quickly serious again. “I’m sorry, Lily. Even men who have lived as long as I have sometimes get cynical.”
They were silent for a while, each lost in their own thoughts.
Lily broke the silence after a while. “When you are freed, will you stay here instead of going back to China?”
“I’m going home.”
“Oh,” Lily said.
“Though I’d like to have my own house instead of always renting. Maybe your father will consider helping me build one?”
Lily looked at him, not understanding.
“This is home,” Logan said, smiling at her. “This is where I have finally found all the flavors of the world, all the sweetness and bitterness, all the whiskey and sorghum mead, all the excitement and agitation of a wilderness of untamed, beautiful men and women, all the peace and solitude of a barely settled land—in a word, the exhilarating lift to the spirit that is the taste of America.”
Lily wanted to shout for joy, but she didn’t want to get her hopes up, not just yet. Logan had yet to tell his story to the jury tomorrow.
But meanwhile, there was a still a night of storytelling ahead.
“Will you tell me another story?” Lily asked.
“Sure, but I think from now on I won’t tell you any more stories about my life as a Chinaman. I’ll tell you the story of how I became an American.”
When the band of weary and gaunt Chinamen showed up in Idaho City with their funny bamboo carrying poles over their shoulders . . .
EPILOGUE
The Chinese made up a large percentage of the population of Idaho Territory in the late 1800s.1 They formed a vibrant community of miners, cooks, laundry operators, and gardeners that integrated well with the white communities of the mining towns. Almost all the Chinese were men seeking to make their fortune in America.2
By the time many of them decided to settle in America and become Americans, anti-Chinese sentiment had swept the western half of the United States. Beginning with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, a series of national laws, state laws, and court decisions forbade these men from bringing their wives into America from China and stemmed the flow of any more Chinese, men or women, from entering America. Intermarriage between whites and Chinese was not permitted by law. As a result, the bachelor communities of Chinese in the Idaho mining towns gradually dwindled until all the Chinese had died before the repeal of the Exclusion Acts during World War II.
To this day, some of the mining towns of Idaho still celebrate Chinese New Year in memory of the presence of the Chinese among them.
* * *
1. The Chinese were 28.5 percent of the population of Idaho in 1870.
2. For more on the history of the Chinese in gold-rush Idaho, see Zhu, Liping. A Chinaman’s Chance: The Chinese on the Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1997.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE TRANS-PACIFIC TUNNEL
At the noodle shop, I wave the other waitress away, waiting for the American woman: skin pale and freckled as the moon; swelling breasts that fill the bodice of her dress; long chestnut curls spilling past her shoulders, held back with a flowery bandanna. Her eyes, green like fresh tea leaves, radiate a bold and fearless smile that is rarely seen among Asians. And I like the wrinkles around them, fitting for a woman in her thirties.
“Hai.” She finally stops at my table, her lips pursed impatiently. “Hoka no okyakusan ga imasu yo. Nani wo chuumon shimasu ka?” Her Japanese is quite good, the pronunciation maybe even better than mine—though she is not using the honorific. It is still rare to see Americans here in the Japanese half of Midpoint City, but things are changing now, in the thirty-sixth year of the Shōwa Era (she, being an American, would think of it as 1961).
“A large bowl of tonkotsu ramen,” I say, mostly in English. Then I realize how loud and rude I sound. Old Diggers like me always forget that not everyone is practically deaf. “Please,” I add, a whisper.
Her eyes widen as she finally recognizes me. I’ve cut my hair and put on a clean shirt, and that’s not how I looked the past few times I’ve come here. I haven’t paid much attention to my appearance in a decade. There hasn’t been any need to. Almost all my time is spent alone and at home. But the sight of her has quickened my pulse in a way I haven’t felt in years, and I wanted to make an effort.
“Always the same thing,” she says, and smiles.
I like hearing her English. It sounds more like her natural voice, not so high-pitched.
“You don’t really like the noodles,” she says, when she brings me my ramen. It isn’t a question.
I laugh, but I don’t deny it. The ramen in this place is terrible. If the owner were any good he wouldn’t have left Japan to set up shop here at Midpoint City, where the tourists stopping for a break on their way through the Trans-Pacific ?Tunnel don’t know any better. But I keep on coming, just to see her.
“You are not Japanese.”
“No,” I say. “I’m Formosan. Please call me Charlie.” Back when I coordinated work with the American crew during the construction of Midpoint City, they called me Charlie because they couldn’t pronounce my Hokkien name correctly. And I liked the way it sounded, so I kept using it.
“Okay, Charlie. I’m Betty.” She turns to leave.
“Wait,” I say. I do not know from where I get this sudden burst of courage. It is the boldest thing I’ve done in a long time. “Can I see you when you are free?”
She considers this, biting her lip. “Come back in two hours.”
? ? ?
From The Novice Traveler’s Guide to the Trans-Pacific Tunnel, published by the TPT Transit Authority, 1963:
Welcome, traveler! This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the completion of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel. ??We are excited to see that this is your first time through the Tunnel.