God of Luck

by Ruthann Lum McCunn

  Burning inside now as fiercely as out, I stared at the deck to spare myself and my fellow captives the worst of our shame—dropped my pants. As I stepped out of them, then my sandals, onto scorching planks, I saw the men in front of me doing likewise. I also saw the doctor’s form-fitting trousers and leather shoes hurry past the first row of bare legs and feet while Red circled each captive.

  Every one of these men jumped, some with shocked gasps, many with furious belches and hisses. Fearful of what the devil was doing, I clenched my teeth against the moment he’d reach me.

  The silver dollars mashed against the roof of my mouth, my tongue, and my gorge rose in protest at their weight, their unpleasant metallic taste. But there was nowhere else to hide them. The sailors were ransacking our clothes and bundles, sending silver dollars and strings of coppers flying, along with chopsticks, tobacco, pipes, tongue scrapers, preserved fruit. One of these devils, an oaf with eagles and stars painted on his forearms, was even sneaking coins into his own pockets.

  Each time any of them came upon an opium pipe, tin of opium, earscoop, knife, or razor, they’d throw it aside. Occasionally Red, growling like a cur who’d snatched another dog’s bone, would toss a razor, metal pick, or knife into the growing pile of confiscated items, too. The men he was circling, though, were naked. So where had Red found these items?

  Suddenly meaty fingers were probing my armpits, tearing at my hair, poking into places where only Bo See’s hands belong. Shaken to the core, I would have lost my dollars had it not been for my tightly clenched jaws.

  Then the fingers were pinching my nostrils, twisting them, and my mouth burst open, spewing coins.

  AS THE SAILORS gathered up the contraband and carried it away under Red’s watchful eye, the swineherd snapped his umbrella shut and ordered us to dress.

  “Maintain silence. Bundle up your belongings. Squat when you’re done. Laggards will be placed in irons.”

  Everything was muddled, smeared with pitch, and in the scramble that followed, some hands turned as sticky with greed as tar. Many wrangled fiercely though silently over items, especially coins, but I made no effort to stop those who snatched what was mine. The doctor had dismissed—in addition to the morose graybeard, the skeletal addict beside me, and a fellow with badly ulcerated feet—three who coughed, and had I feigned Ba’s deep gurgling instead of attempting to hide my coins, I might have been making my first steps home. Sick with regret, it was all I could do to pick up a pair of tattered pants and sandals nobody else had claimed, pull them on, squat.

  Looping a tagged cord around each of our necks, the swineherd instructed, “On board, you will be known by the number on your tag. This number matches the one painted on your berth.”

  The characters on mine looked like seven-hundred-and-seventy-nine. But they couldn’t be. The devil-ship, although huge, had neither the length nor the breadth of Strongworm, so how could it house more than twice the people in our village?

  I peered again at the faded ink on my bamboo tag.

  “No!”

  Startled at hearing Small Eyes bellow, I looked up. He was nowhere in sight, and the swineherd was disappearing down the ladder while the devils who’d been posted at the ship’s sides were closing in on us with their muskets raised.

  At the advancing bayonets, captives—obviously as bewildered as myself—fell back on their heels, their bums. A few rose uncertainly. Moments later, prompted by the bayonets’ sharp pricks, we were all on our feet, tumbling down the ladder, staggering over piles of tangled ropes, hurtling through a hatchway and down another ladder into a stinking, thundering darkness.

  Rough hands shoved me forward. My sandaled feet sank into something sodden yet prickly; my nostrils tingled as if I were walking into a cloud of dust. The captives ahead were coughing and sneezing. Soon I was, too.

  Shielding my nose with both hands, my elbows scraped wood. Were we in a walled passage? No, a narrow walkway between double-tiers of men, all shouting.

  In the agitated jumble, I made out:

  “Is the mandarin back?”

  “Did he bring braves?”

  A mandarin? Here? Small Eyes had sounded more anguished than bold. Was that why the swineherd had run, why the devils had abruptly driven us below?

  As hope flickered, a stick rapped wood, punctuating, “Get into a berth. Never mind numbers for now. Any of these upper berths will do.”

  I was still unable to see much more than shadows, but from the scuffing and grunting on either side, I knew men were hoisting themselves up. Reaching out, I fumbled at a board level with my chest.

  A knee, perhaps a heel, swiped my chin, and I jerked back, kicking metal. Liquid splashed my pants, soaked through to my calf, and the sharp odor of piss penetrated the general stink, setting off a string of curses.

  The stick smashed my shoulder blades, knocking me flat against the board in a burst of pain.

  “Up!”

  Gripping the wood as though it were my tormentor’s throat, I lifted myself, slamming my crown into the ceiling. My head ringing, I ducked, canted over the board, and scrambled into the berth, arousing more curses from those I pinched and kicked while wriggling into place.

  THE BERTHS HAD no partitions, and my nose itched from the coiled queue of a lad whose back curved into my chest. My bum pressed into the softness of a fatty whose sour breath added to the curdled soup of odors from bilge, waste, unwashed men.

  Water slapped the hull, making it even harder for me to distinguish individual words from the clamor. Hoping to confirm we were about to be rescued, I strained to catch snippets of talk in the two dialects I understood, to string these snippets into some sort of order.

  The devil-ship had been loading captives for a month. The stick wielder who’d driven us into our berths was a “corporal.” Corporals, one for every fifty of us, were captives too, chosen by the swineherd for their muscle, their willingness to enforce order for the devils who did not come below if they could avoid it.

  A few days ago, a couple of dozen armed devils stormed down the ladder into the two walkways separating the three tiers of berths. The swineherd, hard on their heels, hissed into the shocked silence, “Move one muscle, say one word, make one sound, and you’re dead.”

  In the unnatural quiet, the men in the berths became aware of an argument above decks. They recognized Red’s voice, the twitchy interpreter’s, but not the one speaking the formal Saang Wah of the gentry.

  “I insist you show me the passenger list.”

  “The captain’s ashore. I can’t release it without his authority.”

  “I have here a petition from the relatives of seven kidnapped men, and I will not leave this vessel until I’ve examined your passenger list for their names.”

  Back and forth they went. Finally, Red submitted to the stranger’s demand. And when the stranger declared a match for three names, Red sent Twitchy to fetch them.

  In the between-decks, the devils had their swords, the muzzles of their muskets, the points of their bayonets inches from the men in their berths. So although the lucky three had heard the stranger say their numbers, they did not dare leave until the swineherd gave them permission.

  After they followed Twitchy above, there was knocking on the deck, probably the lucky three kowtowing, then their heartfelt thanks, an urgent plea on behalf of those still below because they, too, had been decoyed or kidnapped.

  The stranger demanded a response from Red to the charge.

  “The rest are willing passengers,” Red protested through Twitchy. “I have their contracts to prove it.”

  The pleader among the lucky three countered that the contracts were bogus, that the men, like themselves, had either been tricked or forced into signing. He begged the stranger to go into the between-decks and question the captives.

  Red blustered, Twitchy translated, “Mistakes happen. Keep your advance as compensation.”

  There was the clatter and roll of coins, the soft tread of cloth soles crossing planks
. Those in the berths nearest the ladder, staring into the light, saw a mandarin in rich robes appear in the hatchway, recoil, thrust a large silk hankerchief to his nose. But the mandarin was looking into the dark. So he couldn’t have seen them. He couldn’t have known why no one left the between-decks after he called for those who were unwilling emigrants to go to him.

  In any case, he was unlikely to have brought a force capable of subduing so many armed devils. That must be why the pleader did not then press him. Now the mandarin was back with soldiers to fight the devils and a fleet of junks that would carry us all to safety.

  “Carry us to other devil-ships you mean.”

  “That’s what happened to us.”

  “Believe me, unless your family is one of wealth and influence, you don’t stand a chance in hell of returning home. Not now. Not ever.”

  Listening to the men wrangle, the flicker of hope in my chest flared bright, then waned: If we were just going to be delivered to another devil-ship, what difference did it make whether the mandarin had returned?

  Into my mind came the picture of our captors marching us through the cobbled streets between the quay and the pigpen with no attempt to hide the fact that we were shackled. Of course, prisoners were routinely paraded. But on this devil-ship alone there were almost eight hundred captives. Since there were other devil-ships in the harbor, the number of shackled men marched through the streets must be in the thousands. Even a fool would have to wonder why there were so many criminals, why they were all being loaded onto foreign vessels. As for officials, they must be deliberately refusing to see, refusing to act except when their hands were forced. No wonder Young Master’s father had managed to save him but Moongirl had lamented.

  I groaned. The timbers against my head vibrated. From above came the prolonged rattle of chains, voices raised in unison. The rhythm was obviously that of a work song. Amidst the chanting I detected the grunts of men lifting a heavy weight, guessed the sailors were raising anchor, groaned again.

  Around me, talk faded into moans, open weeping. Suddenly, the hull creaked, shuddered into motion. With nothing to hold onto, I’d have been thrown out of the berth were it not for the lip of wood at my feet.

  Abruptly the ship lurched. The lad’s head crashed into my nose. His elbows and knees jabbed. Mine scraped wood, sank into the fatty. There were cries, thuds, smelly clouds of straw and dirt churning up, coughing, sticks striking wood.

  “Back in your berths!”

  “That means you!”

  “And you!”

  “Now!”

  Again the ship swung, pitching us into each other, the walkway. My cries, however, were not so much because of the ship’s crazed lunges as for Bo See.

  AS THE YOUNGEST daughter-in-law in our family, Bo See was expected to rise earlier than the rest of the household to fetch the day’s water from the village well, then prepare Ba’s orange-rind brew, Ma’s tea, and a basin of hot water for their morning wash. But I always rose with Bo See, and while she split kindling and started a fire in the kitchen stove, I’d set off at a trot to fill our waterbuckets.

  Of course I was laughed at for doing women’s work. I didn’t care: My help allowed Bo See and I to linger in bed together until the square of sky in the window was tinged a faint pink. Now Bo See was alone in our bed, rising in the dark, stepping out of the house before cockcrow.

  The street would be lively with other women on the same errand. At the clackety-clack of Bo See’s wooden clogs, their chatter would fall away. They wouldn’t shut Bo See out completely. At least they never had. They just wouldn’t include her in talk beyond an exchange of greetings, the kind of polite conversation that passes between strangers rather than close neighbors, friends.

  Long ago, Bo See had confided with a rueful smile that she’d been similarly treated in her home village. “Not always. But after people realized from the bride price my parents demanded that our family’s success in raising silkworms came from me rather than luck. Even my close friends shut me out.”

  Exceptional skills were bound to arouse jealousy. Where Bo See’s family had insisted she keep her skills secret, though, Ma had said, “The way of Heaven is fairness. We can’t harm others by refusing to share what you know.”

  So Bo See had searched the dark corners and rafters of every wormhouse in Strongworm for insects that might lay eggs on the family’s worms or suck their blood. She’d instructed wives not to cook with ginger or beans and cautioned those in charge of the wormhouses to sniff each person who entered to make sure there was nothing odorous on their persons. She’d demonstrated how she slapped the dust from the hems of her pants before entering a wormhouse, how she further purified herself with sprinkles of water from a basin placed just inside the door for that purpose. She’d explained that in catering to the silkworms’ sensitivity, it wasn’t enough to entice them onto fresh paper with mulberry instead of flicking them with a brush or feather; it was important to speak softly, to be mindful of their feelings. “Silkworms can sense the least agitation, so you must be calm inside and out.”

  Still no family met with success like ours, and people blamed Bo See for hiding something important.

  “No one is hiding anything,” Ma protested over and over. “It’s the calm Bo See has brought to our wormhouse that makes our success exceed yours.”

  “Calm?”

  “Bo See?”

  “We’re not blind, you know.”

  “Or without memory.”

  “Yeah! I thought I was a nervous bride, but Bo See had me beat.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Even with her escort holding her up, Bo See was swaying like a reed in a big wind.”

  Our family explained that Bo See had been suffering from motion sickness, not nervousness. We pointed out that she’d performed every ritual perfectly despite her near faint. Surely that was proof of extraordinary self-control.

  Then people held Bo See at a distance for being unnatural.

  MY HUSBAND AND his brothers often complained that silkworms were greedy as the worst landlords, delicate and temperamental as gentry.

  Our sisters-in-law groused that silkworms were more trouble than babies. Not only did silkworms have to be fed constantly, but the mulberry had to be exactly right. If the leaves were too old or not yet mature or still wet with dew, the worms would sicken. If the knives used for shredding were dull, there’d be insufficient sap for nourishment. If the pieces weren’t fine enough or too long, the worms would not eat them.

  Certainly Ba had to carefully assess our mulberry every day. Whenever it looked like we might run short of mature leaves, he had to send Ah Lung and his brothers in all directions to find more. Ba also had to do whatever was necessary to pay for the leaves our worms required, whether it was hiring out my sisters-in-law to reel cocoons for the village landlords, pawning our winter quilts, borrowing against a future harvest, or telling Ma we’d have to make do with watery gruel instead of rice.

  During the nine-month silk season, seven generations of silkworms, each numbering in the thousands, had to be raised, and every hand capable of labor, even a child’s, had to help cultivate the mulberry, pick the leaves, shred them, feed the worms, clean their trays, place them on spinning racks, smother the chrysalids in their cocoons, reel the silk, begin again.

  I’d started working when I was five, as had my brother. Where he’d quit the wormhouse for play as soon as he’d completed his tasks, however, I’d lingered in the silkworms’ thrall.

  Newly hatched, they were shorter than my smallest fingernail, black as my hair and as fine. Yet they’d know to rear up, sway from side to side in search of mulberry. As I sprinkled finely chopped leaves over them, they’d seize the slivers in their tiny jaws, and so loud was their collective crunching and grinding that it would muffle the chop-chop-chop of the cleavers preparing more mulberry.

  Eating nonstop, the worms quickly doubled in size, swelled until they had to shed their skin or burst. But first they’d fall into a
n eerie quiet in which they slept with their little heads crooked skyward, gathering the strength necessary to make a new skin, wriggle out of the old.

  Each of their four new skins was lighter in color than the last, and the worms would, after thirty-two days, become a luminous white-amber, long and thick as my mother’s middle finger. Then they’d start spinning silk from their mouths, and through deft tilting and looping shroud themselves completely.

  This silk was the harvest for which everyone toiled, and it fetched far more on the market after the strands had been reeled from the cocoons, wound into skeins. Whether reeling silk or picking mulberry leaves, however, I’d be impatient to return to the worms themselves. And while my parents and brother celebrated the end of a season, I’d be eagerly anticipating the next.

  I still did. Indeed, during the three months our worm-house stood silent, my sisters-in-law liked to joke that I paced and fidgeted like an addict deprived of her opium. When at last it thrummed with life again, my husband’s brothers would ask him:

  “Does Bo See take care of your worm this tenderly?”

  “Is your worm neglected now that she has charge of thousands?”

  Despite their teasing and grousing, my brothers- and sisters-in-law always placed the well-being of the worms before their own, and they taught their children to do the same. Without exception, then, every member of the family old enough to work labored as diligently as I did to ensure our worms’ contentment. For they understood that the less satisfied our worms, the poorer their appetities and the quality of their cocoons, hence the family’s profit. Moreover, the moths that emerged and the eggs they laid would be inferior, affect- ing the family’s income through several generations of worms. Should our worms, weakened from eating too little, sicken and perish, so would the family.

  Fourth Brother-in-law, in doubling the family’s worry and leaving us short of his hands as well as Ah Lung’s, clearly had not followed his own teaching when catching a fastboat for Canton. Had I thought for a moment that my presence would contribute to my husband’s rescue, though, I would have jumped into a boat, too.