Sarah Canary Page 4

  ‘Steilacoom is a pile of dung on a pile of dung,’ said Tom. He slid his other boot forward.

  ‘Good point,’ said Chin. ‘We think it will be Tacoma. We Chinese.’

  ‘You tell me,’ said Tom, ‘how it is that you Chinese make a dollar a day in a job where a white man makes a dollar seventy-five and you always got more money than anyone else.’

  ‘Frugal,’ said Chin. ‘It’s a frugal culture.’

  ‘Your women, is it true they have little tiny feet they can hardly walk on? That you fix them when they’re little children so that their feet never grow again? You like them that way?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Chin. ‘Yes, I do. A woman’s foot is a work of art. She creates it. It shows what she is. It’s a manifestation of her inner character.’

  ‘It’s sick,’ said Tom.

  ‘I can see how you might think so. Is it true that you Indians take many wives?’

  ‘Is it true that you Chinese do?’

  ‘Lucky men. Prosperous men.’

  ‘Well, we don’t,’ said Tom. ‘You’re thinking of the Puyallups.’

  ‘Still, you must have known many beautiful women.’

  ‘I must have. It would be hard to die without that, wouldn’t it, Chinaman?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Chin. His throat constricted suddenly. How many beautiful women had he known? Lily-footed women. Women whose feet curled like petals. Or even big-foot, flatfooted women? Once while they were mining, his uncle had told him there were only two Chinese women in all of eastern Washington. Chin had never set eyes on either of them. He was a young man and all the beautiful women were an ocean away. Or in San Francisco. The Temple of United Justice smuggled beautiful, shameless women into San Francisco in bulk and sold them on Dupont Street.

  Tom was standing up. He was probably a whole head taller than Chin. He shook his pants out, smoothed them down with his hands. Very big hands. ‘Did you ever hear of the beautiful Ah Toy?’ Chin asked him. His voice came out rather high. He coughed to lower it, which made his head ache again. ‘When she lived in San Francisco the white miners stood in line and poured gold dust onto her scales just to look at her.’

  ‘No, I never heard of her,’ Tom said. ‘But right here in Steilacoom we have a woman named Soldier Sal. You wouldn’t want to just look. You could die for her, if you felt like dying.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Chin.

  Tom stepped to the window and wrapped his hand around one of the bars. Chin thought how cold it must be, the metal on his bare hand. But Tom didn’t seem to mind. His shoulder-length, unbraided hair was a blacker shadow in the black room. ‘Are you ready?’ Tom said.

  Ready for what? ‘No,’ Chin answered.

  ‘I don’t have much time left. You don’t have much time left. I’m ready to see what you promised to show me.’

  ‘You have to trust me,’ said Chin. ‘You will see it. I will show you. But I can’t show it to you now.’

  ‘Can’t be a dead Chinaman,’ said Tom. ‘I’ve already seen one of those.’

  ‘I wasn’t planning for it to be.’

  ‘But you’re lying to me,’ Tom told him. ‘You’ve got nothing to show me. You Chinese are no smarter than we are. And don’t think that I’m so dumb. Just because I haven’t killed you yet.’ Tom swung just perceptibly left to right and back, hanging on to the bar.

  ‘I never thought that was dumb.’ Chin was sweating again. His head beat. He was a small man on the inside of a pounding drum.

  ‘Listen.’ Tom’s voice came alive suddenly. ‘Listen.’ He turned his face to Chin. His eyes and his mouth were open. ‘The birds are back. The birds have come back.’

  Chin heard an owl outside the window. ‘Who,’ it asked. ‘Who?’

  ‘Me,’ said Tom. ‘Of course, me. My owl.’

  So Chin knew for the first time, knew with certainty, that he would not be dying that night after all. ‘Who?’ the owl repeated. Not me, thought Chin. He wrapped himself in his blanket. ‘Tomorrow night,’ he said to Tom sleepily, ‘I will look at the moon for you. Every night I will do that.’

  ‘But don’t say my name. Even though it’s not my Indian name,’ Tom answered. ‘Don’t ever say Tom after I’m dead.’ And then Chin let his head hurt until Tom’s glistening face and the window and the cot began to move past him, chasing each other around and around the room. He had the discursive half-dreams of early sleep. The demonic dreams of full sleep. He was just about to begin the prophetic dreams of morning when he woke up.

  Jeb Chambers was bending over him. ‘Chinaman,’ he said. ‘There’s someone here who wants to talk to you. You come with me now.’

  Chin rose in some confusion. He wiped his eyes, and the back of his hand scraped against a lump on the side of his head. In one painful stab he remembered everything. He turned to look for Tom, who was seated again, the way he had been when Chin first saw him, back against the wall, feet on the floor. The green, pasty light of pre-sunrise illuminated the cell.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Tom. His voice was even. His face was drawn and taut. ‘I hope you slept well.’

  ‘I’m surprised you slept at all,’ Jeb said. Perhaps there was admiration in his voice. ‘You Chinese don’t care about dying, do you? You think you’re just coming back, only as a cow or something.’

  Chin did not answer. He could not imagine where Jeb had gotten this information or why anyone would think the prospect of returning as a cow could resign one to one’s own death, more than going to heaven would.

  The cell door was unlocked and Jeb pushed it open. Chin followed him through and it swung shut heavily, metal hitting metal. The shutting rang like a gong, revealing the ceremonial nature of Chin’s temporary release. Jeb locked the door behind them.

  A very clean man sat in Jeb’s chair in the little anteroom and scraped the undersides of his fingernails with a tiny blade. His head was a globe on the globe of his body. His hair was thin and his skin was pale. ‘Thank you, Jeb,’ he said. ‘Well’ – he directed these words to Chin – ‘you look like you had quite a night.’ A smile, and his teeth were all white except for one dead incisor on the left side. ‘I’m Hank Webber,’ he said. ‘And your name is?’

  ‘Chin Ah Kin.’

  ‘Now, does that mean I call you Chin or Kin? I can never remember. Calling you kin would be a good joke, wouldn’t it? Do I call you Kin?’

  ‘Call me Chin,’ Chin told him.

  ‘All right, Mr Chin. I’m going to come right to the point. We want you to do something for us. And you’ll get something in return. But before I get too specific, I want to remind you that your bargaining position is not good. We found you in the graveyard last night with a helpless, witless white woman. Now, I don’t know what your intentions were. I just know an unsavory picture when I see one. There are places where they wouldn’t even have bothered bringing you in to jail. I’m sure you know this is true. Do you know this is true?’

  ‘I know this,’ said Chin.

  ‘You’re a hell of a lucky man even to be alive this morning.’

  ‘I am lucky.’

  ‘You’re even luckier than you know. Because I’m prepared to let you walk right out of this jail today a free man. I have the authority to do that. And all I want is a favor from you first.’

  Chin stood silently. Hank Webber had a mole much like his uncle’s, only Webber’s was closer to his ear and had hair growing out of it. Chin imagined that he was dealing with a forceful man who had powerful friends, and Chin expected to do whatever was asked of him. But he didn’t expect to be happy about it. Hank waited for Chin to ask what the favor was. Chin remained in that innocent, blissful state of not-knowing for as long as he could.

  ‘All we want,’ Hank said (he was whispering now; Chin had to lean forward from the waist, bowing, to hear him), ‘is for you to put the rope around Tom Mays’s neck. You should be pleased to do it. We’re only hanging him because he killed a Chinaman.’

  Chin said nothing. He stood upright again, moving his face awa
y from Hank Webber’s mouth.

  Jeb cleared his throat. ‘Cook over’t the asylum,’ he added. He was whispering, too. ‘Popular man. Always smiling. Always had a piece of candy, a little story for the children. One of Tom’s own, little Indian girl, turned Tom in, stood witness against him. She saw the whole thing. There’s really no doubt about his guilt. Not that he ever denied it.’

  Chin said nothing.

  Jeb lowered his voice even further. ‘The Indians aren’t happy,’ he confessed. ‘We figure they can understand this better – you kill a Chinaman, a Chinaman kills you. Simple and fair. They don’t see why we should care.’ He looked at Hank and shook his head. ‘Hell, why am I explaining? We don’t want Indian trouble, Mr Chin. You don’t live here. You just do this one thing and then you go back where you came from. Or you stand trial yourself. Like Hank told you, your bargaining position, it ain’t strong.’

  ‘I just put the rope around his neck?’ Chin asked.

  ‘And string him,’ said Jeb.

  ‘You want me to kill him.’

  Hank Webber put the small blade away and withdrew a clean white handkerchief from his breast pocket. He blew his nose carefully, first one nostril and then the other. He folded the material over twice and wiped the corners of his mouth with it. He put the damp cloth back in his pocket. ‘The law is killing him,’ he said. ‘He’s been tried and sentence has been passed. If you don’t do it, someone else will. It’s not as though you can save his life. We’re giving you a chance to save your own.’

  ‘To be or not to be,’ Jeb said. ‘It’s as simple as that.’

  Two years earlier a lynch mob, which included businessmen and bandits and men of the cloth and men from the ranchos and one member of the city council, had hanged every Chinese in Los Angeles that they could find. They had hanged doctors and cooks and children. When they ran out of rope, they sent their own children running home to beg for clothesline from their mothers. They hanged the Chinese from the gutter spouts and the awnings of Goler’s blacksmith and wagon shop, from balconies, in twos and threes, until they had hanged eighteen and there was no more room. The Oriental had carried the story and Chin had read it in a ragged copy brought from San Francisco almost six months later. He had seen nothing about it in the American papers. ‘I will do this,’ Chin said miserably.

  Jeb locked Chin back in the cell. Down the street he heard Mrs Taylor and Mrs Godfrey. They were coming toward the jail and they were singing, ‘God, I am your instrument.’

  ‘They want me to kill you,’ Chin told Tom. ‘They’ll kill me if I don’t.’

  ‘You want my permission,’ said Tom. ‘You’d like me to say it’s all right.’ In the pale beginnings of daylight, his straight hair was greasy and unclean. Last night at the window in the moonlight, he had seemed to have a certain potency, a large heart. The moon had been full for him. The birds had returned to say good-bye. Chin had sensed a malevolent majesty. This morning he only appeared to be dirty.

  Chin himself felt a movement on his scalp he supposed to be fleas. He reached into his hair in pursuit. ‘Just your understanding,’ he said to Tom. He had the tiny, husked body between his fingers, but as he pressed them together tighter, because he pressed them tighter, it slid away. ‘I want you to see that I did not choose this, but have been chosen. My fate is to cross paths with your fate. This is not a personal thing. I am not doing this because the man you killed was Chinese.’

  ‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ said Tom.

  The music reached a crescendo. One of the women had a beautiful voice, came down on each note from the note above it. The other could not sing at all. They threw open the door. ‘God is here,’ said Mrs Taylor. ‘God is here this morning with you, Tom.’

  Jeb brought Tom water and soap and a cloth. Tom knelt beside the bucket to clean his hands and his face. He had very little facial hair, no more than Chin himself. And the hair on his head was as black as Chin’s own. Around his face it was wet and locked together in clumps. ‘We’re ready for you now, Tom,’ Jeb told him. ‘We’re taking you out and you can talk to people if you like when we pass, but don’t touch anyone. And no stopping.’

  ‘Yea, though I pass through the valley of the Shadow of Death, I shall fear no evil,’ said Mrs Taylor.

  ‘You come last, Mr Chin. Stay to the back.’

  Tom rose and turned to look at Chin. Chin could not meet his eyes, bowed his head and watched Tom’s boots. They moved out of the cell in small, slow steps. Everyone was mindful now of the immensity of the undertaking before them. The law was about to kill a man. A man could be killed by another man in anger, for fun; the occasion could be a small one. But this required ritual and attention to detail. This required a procession. They moved slowly and with care, each one trying to mesh with the others, to be a proper part of the larger whole. Chin was the last out the cell door, which rang again with ceremonial finality, then the jail door, and into the streets of Steilacoom. They did not walk far. Ahead of them was a large tree with a rope, already knotted and looped. There were people all around; the Indians stood together, thirty black heads, thirty unsmiling faces to the left of the tree. Through the empty frame of the noose, Chin could see Mount Rainier.

  Tom stopped beneath the rope. ‘Now, boys, it’s all understood that we have nothing to do with this,’ Hank Webber said loudly. ‘The Chinaman is doing it all.’

  The sun swam upward in the East, a great red concentration. ‘Look there,’ said Tom to Chin. He pointed into the open fields. ‘That’s Scotch brush. The Sisters of Charity brought it here. They missed Scotland so much. Now look at the way it’s spread. It’ll own this land in another ten years.’ He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘But it’s beautiful when it blooms. You should be here in the spring just to see it.’ Sunlight filtered through the tree branches. Tom stuck one hand into a patch of sun and turned it slowly. He spread his fingers until all the shadows were gone. ‘You’ve been a lot of places, Chinaman,’ he said. ‘You’ve been a lot farther than I have. Is there anywhere more beautiful?’

  Chin looked at the peak of Mount Rainier. The distant ice glittered and beckoned. If you let go for an instant, your soul would fly to it. If you could walk inside that combination of light and ice, its beauty would blind you. Powerfully beautiful. Dangerously beautiful.

  ‘You lived in paradise,’ he told Tom.

  It was important that a man live somewhere. People were not meant to blow over the grass as Chin did, footless and rootless, like ghosts. It was important that a man die at home. Nothing was more important than this.

  ‘Hang him,’ Jeb told Chin. ‘Do it now.’

  ‘Embrace God,’ said Mrs Taylor. ‘Do it now.’

  Chin lifted the heavy rope with two hands. It slid without catching over Tom’s head, settled on his shoulders. ‘Maybe I’m going to show you what I promised you,’ Chin said to Tom. ‘Something never before seen in this world. Maybe you’ll see it soon.’

  Tom said nothing, looked neither up nor down, not left or right. His eyes were open and empty, as if he had already gone on, gone ahead without Chin’s help, was past seeing. His body was cooperative in a distracted, sleepy way. Chin pushed the knot into the hollow spot on Tom’s neck where it seemed to fit. He helped Tom mount a chair, which rocked slightly on the natural unevenness of the dirt around the roots of the tree. Hank Webber pulled the slack from the rope and anchored it. He gestured that he was ready.

  Chin removed the chair. He killed Tom as invisibly as he could, there with everyone watching. The law killed Tom, the natural law of gravity. Chin thought of the Chinese miners falling and then of the birds, which did not. He was sorry that Tom’s body did not go as gracefully into death as his spirit, but kicked and flailed and smelled, his feet seeking the ground again and again, until it finally stopped.

  ‘You’re a free man,’ Hank Webber told Chin. ‘My word is good on this. But let me give you a little advice. Go now. I don’t think you should stay around.’

  ‘I’m going,’ said
Chin. He caught the bundle of his belongings that the sheriff threw at him. Everything was tied up in his blanket now, white-man style. He kept his eyes on the ground so that he could pretend no one was looking at him. He watched the toes of his heavy boots alternately striding into view, now the right, now the left. He took big steps. The ground before him was wet and still retained the impressions of earlier shoes. Behind him he left his own tracks. His heels dug into the mud, making a trail of holes, each one looking like a small, open, angry mouth. Chin knew this. But he would not turn around to see.

  ii

  In 1873, Georg Cantor developed set theory, based on several practical suggestions for proofs made to him by God (the proofs have held); Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, master of the ghost story, died from an overdose of laudanum taken to ward off his nightly dreams of being buried alive; Cornell’s President White refused to allow Cornell to face Michigan on the football fields with the words, ‘I will not permit thirty men to travel four hundred miles to agitate a bag of wind.’ Is there a madman here? Which one is he?

  Sanity is a delicate concept, lunacy only slightly less so. Over the last few centuries, more and more of those phenomena once believed to belong to God have been assigned to the authority of the psychoanalyst instead. Some of the saints can be diagnosed in retrospect as epileptics. St Theresa was almost certainly an hysteric. St Ida of Lorraine seems to have suffered from perceptional insanity. She only thought that her body was amplified to monstrous proportions in her desire to be acceptable to God; we doubt this swelling actually took place, in spite of the testimony of the astonished and crowded nun who shared her bed. The prognosis for such cases in our own age is excellent; saintliness can often be completely cured.

  We owe these advances, at least in part, to experimental alienist physicians such as the doctor who worked at the Steilacoom Territorial Asylum in 1873. The same year Freud entered medical school in Vienna, Dr James Carr was duplicating the experiments of William Hammond, cutting the heads off coupling frogs to isolate the physical location of instinct in the frog’s body. Hammond claimed to have kept the headless male frog alive for up to ten days, and in all that time the male never released his purposeful grip on the female. The seat of instinct, Hammond concluded, was in the spine. Dr Carr had great difficulty getting his frogs to couple at all, and then they lost all interest in sex when they lost their minds. They were, perhaps, less instinctual to begin with, more cerebral, more effete, these western species of frog. He had experimented with Red-legged Frogs, identifiable by their short hind legs and warty skins; Tailed Frogs, smoother, olive green, and named for their tail-like copulatory organ; and the smaller Cascades Frogs. He had switched to East Coast varieties now.