4
I reached San Francisco only a few hours before the Majestic docked. Didn't have time to get a , shave, or have my dirty clothes laundered. I'd just have to wear my last clean shirt for the trip back. Besides, why should I care what the two women thought of me? And I had been filthier than this at times and far more unshaven. As far as they knew, I was just some uncouth cowboy hired as a driver and body guard, and after spending time on a ship with unwashed coolies and vulgar sailors, why would they expect any different from me?
I had no trouble securing the horses and wagon; I just presented the receipt and the man at the livery was amenable.
"There it is," he said, motioning with a swing of his arm. The wagon was close to the type gypsies use called a "Vardo" wagon, and similar to what traveling merchants employed except it had two windows – one on each side. It served almost as a rolling house. It protected the passengers from the sun and rain but I felt it should have a gaudy sign in big lettering on the side or be painted in reds and golds. But it was a plain-looking wagon.
"I loaded it with what I was told. There's a sack of rice, salt, two barrels of water, one strapped on each side. There are the two mattress rolls and blankets and the short table and the mats. I asked that Chinaman why he needed all that stuff but he wasn't the talkative type. Just kinda ignored me but he paid me enough to make up for any hurt feelings I may've had." The man grinned.
"Strange, isn't it," I said, "how money can soothe any hurt." He just laughed but it was true. Many a time my father resolved issues with an injured miner or ranch hand by throwing money at it. When I was a boy, I thought it was ignoring the fact a man had been injured or, as happened on occasion, killed. But the person harmed always came around with their hand out and I realized that money was what they wanted more than anything else. Seems a man's life does have a price.
But money was helpful in other ways too. And as I became older, and I like to think wiser, I found that being a Cartwright – being a wealthy Cartwright – could buy all the attention from just about every barmaid in Virginia City. Sometimes, I'm ashamed to confess, I had exploited it. But since everyone received what they wanted, I guess it did no harm.
So, tying my horse onto the back, I drove the wagon to town and bought canned beans, coffee, sugar, flour, lard, a tin of crackers and dried beef paying with Fang Zhen's money. Then I bought myself a fresh bottle of whiskey. Any initial reluctance in using Fang's money had been overcome by my annoyance. But I was most annoyed at myself for accepting this errand. Once I loaded the goods, I drove to the docks. I hesitated leaving the wagon alone as seedy people were always about looking for someone to pick-pocket or a drunk to roll, but I needed to walk the distance to the ship to wait for the Lotus and her maid to come down the gangway. I hoped they would be easy to spot. The ship had come from China so I anticipated a stream of Chinese making their way down.
I took a few more slugs of my whiskey and then sauntered down – in a black mood. I waited as the Majestic was already in dock, the moorings almost completed. When the ship had been made secure, the gangplank lowered and people hurried off, all of them, from what I could tell, male Chinese laborers, most without any bundles of possessions. They headed to where a man stood on the seat of a buckboard, calling out in Chinese. There were other buckboards as well, the drivers sitting hunched-over, waiting for their load of human cargo. I could tell the man yelling was from the railroad company, noticed its name mentioned in his sing-song speech. They had come to gather those men who had traveled from their homeland for jobs.
Eventually, no one else debarked and I was about to search out the captain when two women, Chinese by dress came to the opening. One was squat, dressed in cotton Chinese pajamas similar to Hop Sing's, a soiled padded jacket for warmth, and had short, cropped gray hair. She carried two large sacks. The other woman was small and slim and wore some type of headgear that surrounded her in a veil; it put me in mind of a beekeeper. She wore swaths of embroidered silk wraps and minced down the gangway. It was obvious she had bound feet as she seemed to waver on occasion, threatening to lose her balance.
The gray-haired woman was shouting out in broken English to a sailor who had a trunk on his shoulders. Another one followed him, also carrying a trunk.
"You carry goddamn trunk faster!" she shouted to the men, raising a fist. "I kick arse you drop!"
I thought one of the men was going to toss his burden in the water and then shove her in as well, but instead he only glowered. I wouldn't believe a sailor would accept being berated, but they were probably ordered to help the two women. Once they reached the boards of the wharf, both men dropped their trunks on their ends by kneeling and letting them slide off.
"You carry more!" she shouted. "You carry!" She jabbed one finger at the trunk and then at them.
I was closer by then and approached the group. The other, smaller woman was almost to the wharf, still awkwardly walking with small, careful steps.
"You carry your own goddamn trunk the rest of the way yourself, ya squallin' bitch!"
"You carry goddamn trunk" she continued to yell, waving one arm in the air.
The sailor moved threateningly toward her and I stepped up. "Here," I said. "Thanks for your help." I handed him a silver piece and gave the other sailor one as well. After all, it was Fang Zhen's money, not mine. "I'll take it from here."
He whistled between his teeth in appreciation of the silver dollar. "Thanks, mister. You want my advice? Kick that Chink loudmouth off the wharf. She's been like this the whole stinkin' trip, demandin' this, demandin' that, and iffen the cap'n wouldn't have minded, I'da fed 'er to the sharks long afore this."
"I think that's good advice, but unfortunately, I can't follow it."
"It's your ears she'll be annoyin'," he said, flipping the coin in his hand. The two sailors headed off to the waterfront section of the city. They would more than likely have a better time getting soused and sleeping with some disease-ridden whore than I was going to have with the two women.
"Who you?" the gray-haired woman loudly asked me. "You take trunks! You carry goddamn trunks."
I took a deep breath. "I'm Adam Cartwright. Fang Zhen sent me. These are my instructions," I said, pulling out the paper. The other woman had finally met up with us. I tried to see through the multi-layered gauze of her veil but couldn't. Even the sea breeze, despite moving the veil, didn't blow it up from her face. I held out the welcome letter from Fang Zhen to his newly-arrived 'niece'. "And this is for you, Miss. You are Wu Lien, correct?"
She nodded. I didn't know if she understood me or only recognized her name. But she took the letter from me and examined the seal. But she didn't yet read it, just tucked it up a sleeve.
"I have the wagon. If you'll follow me…" I dropped to one knee and hoisted a trunk onto my back. I headed for the wagon. I considered that getting both trunks to the wagon would be problematic but if anyone tried to steal the trunk still on the wharf, well, they couldn't run very fast with it.
I walked on and noticed the women weren't following. I could hear them speaking, one loud voice, the other soft – like a spring breeze flowing past your ears.
I dropped the trunk by the wagon and turned to see that I had been wrong - the women were walking to the wagon but were slow due to the small steps Wu Lien took. And she constantly struggled to maintain her balance on the uneven ground which was surfaced with tossed shells of dead oysters. It made the whole area stink.
I was tired, impatient, so I stalked back to the women and swept up Wu Lien in my arms. She gave a sound of surprise, clutching me, and the other woman shouted, "What you do, you goddamn? What you do?" But I didn't reply, just easily carried Wu Lien who was the size of a child. But then all the Chinese women I had seen were small. The men too, but I had never been this close, never held a woman like Wu Lien in my arms. She smelled like an exotic flower and I felt my pulse step up. And when I placed her on the ground, I saw that she wore impossibly small slippers. Her feet were smaller than my hand.
And then the other woman who had strode beside me, shouting and cursing the whole time, comforted Wu Lien, and for the first time, she spoke in hushed tones as if I could possibly understand their conversation. But I was through with them and fetched the other trunk, finally settling everything – and the two of them – inside the wagon. After climbing onto the seat, I snapped the reins and we were finally on our way. I just hoped it would be without incident. It wouldn't.
~ 0 ~
I should have bought myself a whole crate of whiskey. The maid was Ju. It seemed she had only one level of speaking and that was loud. And everything was "goddamn." I believe she picked it up on the ship from the sailors, but I wondered why she hadn't pick up any other salty language. It seemed she had learned English – or so she said when I asked- while working for an English dignitary as a young woman. When the Englishman and his family left China during the revolution, she found board and keep with the Wu family, helping to raise their only daughter.
"In China, daughter worthless. Only value to honorable parents be xīn niáng jià gé."
"What is xin…?" I thought I already knew and found I did.
"What man pay to marry daughter. Man have most money, most likely buy daughter."
"Lovely tradition," I said sarcastically but I knew that it was the just the power of money. And Fang Zhen had the most of any Chinese man in the area.
When it came time for the first meal of our journey, Ju had nothing good to say – in Chinese or English.
In one trunk were linens, dishes and cooking utensils – pans, knives and spatulas of some type and Ju wanted to cook chicken for dinner. I told her that the food in the wagon was all there was. She spat on the ground and sneered at me.
"Trash! Goddamn trash! Not fit for pig! You find food! You get cabbage, onion, garlic, noodles! Fish sauce! Need cook goddamn dinner! You get! Now!" She frowned at me, her fists on her wide hips, a cleaver clenched in one hand like a weapon. She looked like a bulldog.
I faced her down. "There's no place to find cabbage or anything else you want. But I tell you what…I'll go see if maybe I can get a rabbit or a squirrel. Think you can cook one of those?" I waited, my hands on my hips.
"I not know goddamn squirrel. You get goddamn rabbit!"
"Gladly. Anything to get away." I pulled my rifle from its scabbard. My saddle was on the ground alongside my bedroll, my bottle of whiskey waiting beside it. The wagon had come already equipped with thin rolled mattresses, blankets and a small table and chairs for the women. Two lanterns were also inside and I told Ju to light a lantern before dark as I didn't know how long it would take to find a "goddamn rabbit" and it may be dark when I returned.
As I walked away, I looked back and the Lotus, who hadn't yet come out of the wagon. She sat, her legs tucked under her, in the open doorway, the veil still covering her face, dropping to her shoulders. She dipped her head slightly in acknowledgement and I tipped my hat. Can't say I wasn't curious. And I secretly hoped that under that veil, Wu Lien was as ugly as a pig. Would serve Fang Zhen right.
I came back to camp empty-handed except for some wild onion, dandelions, and cattails. About a quarter mile away was a small pool that was part of a stream coming down the side of a nearby mountain. The water swirled around inside the pool and then moved on but it had clumps of dandelions about it. Some wild onions grew not too far away and I pulled a few cattails as the root was tasty.
When I walked into the clearing, I could see a lantern hanging from a tree, the fire was going and a pot was hanging over it. I smelled rice.
"What you goddamn got?" Ju asked.
"I have some greens you can cook and eat – some wild onion, root bulbs and even these," I said showing her the cattail brush, "can be eaten. I'll show you." And before she could speak, I said, "And if you say 'goddamn' one more time, I'll gag you the rest of the trip. Do you understand?"
I loomed over her and Ju squinted her eyes, her jaw jutting out as she faced me. Then she smiled and in a voice so smooth and unctuous that she could have oiled the wagon wheels, she replied, "Of course. I not say word again. It make sailors jump, do what I say. But won't say to you again. Ju promise." She beamed which only made me more suspicious. I wondered if there was a Chinese saying about catching more flies with honey than vinegar. Nevertheless, I knew not to take her sudden about-face as sincere.
"I'll show you what parts are to be used but they need washing first, especially the ends of these." I held out the cattails.
"Ju thanks Mistah Adam Cartwright for help," she said, smiling and bowing.
And then I trusted her even less.