A Superior Man

by Paul Yee

  A SUPERIOR MAN

  A SUPERIOR MAN

  Copyright © 2015 by Paul Yee

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any part by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may use brief excerpts in a review, or in the case of photocopying in Canada, a license from Access Copyright.

  ARSENAL PULP PRESS

  Suite 202–211 East Georgia St.

  Vancouver, BC V6A 1Z6

  Canada

  arsenalpulp.com

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council for its publishing program, and the Government of Canada (through the Canada Book Fund) and the Government of British Columbia (through the Book Publishing Tax Credit Program) for its publishing activities.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to persons either living or deceased is purely coincidental.

  Cover photograph: Chinese work gang on the C.P.R.,

  Glacier Park, BC, 1889 © McCord Museum

  Design by Gerilee McBride

  Edited by Susan Safyan

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication:

  Yee, Paul, author

  A superior man / Paul Yee.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-55152-591-4 (epub)

  1. Chinese—British Columbia—History—19th century—Fiction. 2. Railroad construction workers—British Columbia—History—19th century—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS8597.E3S86 2015C813’.54C2015-903342-X

  C2015-903343-8

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to the Nlaka’pamux First Nations people, on whose lands most of this story occurs, and to the memory of Yee Fook, a railway labourer who worked near Lytton, 1883.

  CONTENTS

  Notes on Word Use

  1 When Running, Know Head from Tail (Fall 1885)

  2 A Superior Man Moves Swiftly (1885)

  3 A Fear of Corpses on the Railway (Spring 1881)

  4 Better to Trust Your Own? (1885)

  5 A Dream of Riches on the Railway (1881)

  6 A Father Never Sleeps (1885)

  7 The Road Ahead Always Slopes Up (1885)

  8 The Trials of Workers on the Railway (1881)

  9 Is It the Mountain or Railway that Kills? (1881)

  10 On the Road, Gentlemen Are Rare (1885)

  11 Boats Can Cross the Deepest Rivers (1885)

  12 The Poor Fare Better at Home than on the Road (1885)

  13 Fire Can Warm You or Leave You in the Cold (1885)

  14 Promises Ought Not to Be Dodged (1885)

  15 A Superior Man Merits a Second Chance (1885)

  16 Three Hands Are Better than Two (1885)

  17 An Unused Road Is Not Smooth (1885)

  18 No Light Inside an Inverted Bucket (1885)

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  NOTES ON WORD USE

  I. In this book, the term “coolie” refers to workers who did heavy labour for low wages, such as the Chinese who helped build railways in North America.

  In the nineteenth century, “coolie” also referred to indentured workers brought from India to Caribbean and Central American countries to replace slaves who had done work such as cutting sugar cane. Unfortunately, in some of those countries today, the term “coolie” is used to insult and demean people of South Asian descent.

  The use of “coolie” in this book does reflect the racial and class-based disdain directed at Chinese and South Asian workers in the nineteenth century. But here, no offense is directed at people of South Asian descent. Instead, this story tries to educate readers about that class of labour and give those workers an honourable place in history and literature.

  Word meanings change over time. In India today, “coolie” is a labour category for workers who are registered, licensed, and given uniforms to do the work of moving heavy luggage at railway stations.

  II. As this book purports to be a translation of a memoir written in Chinese about Canada in the 1880s, many colloquial Chinese terms and phrases appear in English. The narrator came from the Pearl River region of south China and spoke Toisanese, a rural dialect. Therefore, for some Chinese words, especially in spoken dialogue, I have tried to provide a Toisanese transliteration.

  However, this principle could not be consistently applied. For example, the city of Guangzhou (formerly Canton) is already well-known in English by its pinyin spelling for Mandarin pronunciation. As well, other Chinese terms (e.g., fan-tan, feng shui, mah-jongg) are now found in English dictionaries. We follow those standard spellings, even though they reflect different Chinese dialects. Fan-tan, for example, is based on Cantonese, while feng shui is based on Mandarin.

  III. To refer to First Nations or Aboriginal persons, my fictional memoirist likely wrote Chinese words that sounded like the term “Indian,” common in the English language at that time. Those Chinese words would have sounded like “Yin Chin,” a term that doesn’t appear in the Chinese language today. For this book, I used “Native” to avoid offending modern-day readers. However, because I wanted to make the book sound authentic to its nineteenth-century setting, I did not draw on contemporary terms such as First Nations or Aboriginal.

  1

  WHEN RUNNING, KNOW HEAD FROM TAIL (FALL 1885)

  Victoria, British Columbia

  Three in the morning, and it was time again to squeeze through the walking corpses.

  Before the hordes of jobless railway men jammed into town, I had kept peace with a free hand. No one doubted my clout. Boss Long let me do as I pleased in the game hall. Taller than most men, I never feared a fight. Boss Long and his crony merchants craved every penny held by the coolies but shuddered to think of them smashing store windows, shouting with glee, and looting the stock. The size of the rabble meant that no one, not even squads of redbeard police and soldiers, could stop a riot. Last week, my turtle-head boss had ordered me to go easy on his shit-don’t-stink customers and forgive their little sins.

  Today, I shrugged when someone pounded the plaster wall into shards.

  I looked away when men spat out green slime and rubbed it underfoot.

  I walked off when louts pissed on the wall and not into the pails of the wet room.

  The stink slid under the decent smells. The incense for the house gods was fragrant while pompous big-shots blew out spicy cigar smoke. Men oozing whisky and Ningbo liniment puffed sweet tobacco in gurgling water pipes. In a hall with no windows, these smells thickened through the night. Eager guests entered the storefront door, guarded by the ever-watchful Pock Face, before strolling past my post. During police raids, they dropped their swagger, scooted out the back, or dived through trapdoors into mud.

  Shouting gamblers raised their clasped hands and pleaded for the dice and fan-tan coins to favour them. They had no shame, showing their panic to everyone. But these cockheads posed no threat. No, the risky ones had pinched faces and gaunt hands poking from threadbare clothes. They shut their eyes and muttered to gods and ancestors as the crowd jostled them. Their last bets each night played to the volcanos in their guts.

  Jeers rang from the boss’s fan-tan table. I peered through the haze. Oil lamps dangled over tables and swayed from the sudden smack of winners. The players noticed a man riding a lucky streak and tossed their bets onto the cloth to mimic his.

  “Three!”

  Winners pounded the table and jangled the fan-tan coins.

  Boss Long scowled and paid out. He swept the coins under the lid and then heaved his belly onto the table.

  “You played me clean.” He displayed an empty cigar box, its cover
showing a shapely woman with bare, creamy shoulders. “This table is closed.”

  He had slipped money into his pockets when the men were distracted.

  “Screw!” The winning player blocked the way and lifted his jaw. “You never quit when the cash is creeping up your shit-hole.”

  His crooked nose was part of a stranger’s face. A rail hand, for sure.

  “You lose, you leave.” Boss Long shrugged. “Same rule for me.”

  “Show me your pockets.”

  I thrust the tea basket at his back. “Honoured guest, have a drink!”

  He turned just enough to let Boss Long grab his rice-sack stomach and sprint. The door at the foot of the stairs slammed. A bar thumped into place. If the shit spread, he could toss a rope out the window that, from the street, looked like layers of nailed boards, and then shimmy to the ground.

  The winner yanked in vain at the door. Players shouted for Boss Long to show his ugly face.

  “Better leave now.” I held up two cups for the winner. “Cookhouse closes soon.”

  Everyone knew the custom. At closing time, each night’s big winner took his fellow gamblers to dine, to share his windfall and assure Heaven that he was humble and big-hearted and therefore deserved future favour. The size of his win let him choose good-luck foods: fish, oysters, and black-hair seaweed. These dishes were costly and sparsely served, so hangers-on snatched them and filled their mouths with rice. Then they slept, pigs at peace, dreaming of hosting the next such feast.

  “Lick your mother!” The winner pulled at the door again. “Show your face!”

  The crowd surged and goaded him.

  Didn’t the fools know they were too late? By now Boss Long had emptied his pockets.

  “Honoured guest, let me toast you.” I lifted two cups, tilted them, and let tea spill onto my head. One stream slipped by my ears and spine to my waist. The other passed my forehead and nose and ended on my chest. I flexed my shoulders and let my shirt absorb the liquid.

  The crowd laughed. One man raised a candle to let people see the tea was real.

  I lifted my pigtail to give him a better view and grinned. “I bathe to smell nice for Rainbow.”

  The winner fetched two cups too.

  “Dirty bastard, nothing can clean you!” He pitched tea into my eyes.

  I grabbed and slammed him into the wood, letting the doorknob punch his back and rupture something. I bent my knees and waited. He winced and pushed himself along the wall. His eyes narrowed but gleamed. He rose into a crouch, legs out for balance, hands and arms sliding into a fighting stance.

  He was stupid, showing that he knew gong fu. Before he could move, Pock Face seized him from behind. I grabbed the gambler’s feet, and we swung the cursing, kicking fellow through the hall and heaved him onto the road.

  Stray dogs barked.

  The crowd streamed out, eager for a fight. Only the first ones saw the gambler run at us and get his head bashed by Pock Face’s bat. He dropped to the ground, senseless. The witnesses fled, knowing it was time for order to resume. In a riot, any man could get maimed, easy as borrowing fire.

  “Go!” I lit a lamp to move people along. “Nothing to see.”

  Railway men spat at my feet. I noted their faces for future payback. Friends clapped my shoulder. The slowpoke was Old Iron, self-declared spokesman for the rail hands. He glared at me with his one eye. When Pock Face shouted the all-clear, I slid heavy planks over the plate-glass windows and locked the wood into place.

  Inside, the door to the stairs was closing.

  “Boss came down?” I asked.

  Pock Face was packing dominoes, clicking them like abacus beads. “Old Iron called you a traitor for beating the rail hands.”

  “The bloated beggars want this, want that.”

  “Old Iron said you look down on them.”

  “I get them to America.”

  “Not now.” Triumph lifted his voice. Even he was gloating. “Your boats carry ghosts. Old Iron told the boss to fire you. Otherwise, they boycott us.”

  “And Boss said?”

  “‘Limp off, rotted corpse.’”

  “Best!”

  Later, I went upstairs, treading softly to acknowledge the boss’s nod of support. I sipped whisky and let its heat embrace me. I swore to crumple Old Iron’s eye patch and thrash him soft and spongy. I was no traitor, not me—I didn’t even hold grudges. I was just doing my job. That cockhead Old Iron didn’t see the ground crumbling like sand under him. When San Francisco merchants sent funds to ship railway workers home, Council gave the first tickets to the stir-the-shit-sticks. You want to get home quickly? Then shout for more handouts and proclaim the end of the world. Too bad rail hands were turtles with their heads tucked in.

  Two months ago, sternwheelers had started landing the vermin here. The end of our stay in Canada thrilled the redbeards, gave them Christmas in July. When the first ship bound for China clanged its bells and lifted anchor, throngs of white men, women, and children cheered at the docks. They could only blow shiny whistles; the flags and marching bands that formed their usual parades weren’t present.

  The merchants of Chinatown, those kicked-in dogs and sons of concubines, crept home and murmured their secret charm: seven thousand, seven thousand … At any single moment, the Company listed that number of coolies on its payroll.

  The king-high eyes of merchants had foreseen that road building would take a decade. Too bad the bottom dropped out four years ahead of time. Last year, they put up seven brick buildings in Chinatown and forecast booming rents. This year they let them at beggar rates to rail hands who carried in planks and sawhorses to make beds. The vermin ate at Chinatown’s cookhouses and vowed to pay later. But when ships set sail for China, the men failed to board. They lacked passage money. Kicked out of their lodgings, they napped in back alleys and scuttled for shelter under the raised sidewalks. We laughed: Maid-servants had gotten fatter than their mistresses.

  Our Chinese Council claimed the rail hands were no threat to city peace, even as they spread bedrolls and stoked campfires on the lawns of Beacon Hill Park.

  “Ignore them,” said our leaders, “they await ships for home.”

  Good thing the redbeards had complained; if not, no merchant would have dumped stocks of useless canvas tents on an empty city block. Those cloth walls now housed 1,000 men. Once sheltered, the vermin pressed their advantage and leaned on the merchants for free food.

  Council demanded donations, but local residents couldn’t be squeezed for cash they didn’t have. Merchants deducted “gifts” from payrolls, which caused even more honest folk to resent the rail hands. Council begged the swelling mass of coolies to see that the mess was far beyond local means; even grand firms with twenty-five years of history in Gold Mountain crumbled at the iron road’s end. On Cormorant Street, the Council president climbed onto a crate and used his oily mouth to praise the workers for battling cold and disease, sharp rock and black powder. I expected him to urge the gods to change the vermin into Immortals who could glide over the ocean on fans and palm leaves.

  Council never gave me food or clothes. In China, one blind beggar tapping along the street was easy to dismiss. Not so when fifteen of them walked in a line, droning like pious monks, each one clutching the pigtail of the man ahead. When they massed at a store, its owner made quick payment to get rid of them. A plague of vermin had landed on Gold Mountain, but we didn’t have enough hoes to smash them.

  Stubborn banging awoke me in the morning.

  “Open the door! Repay the money!”

  I yanked a pillow over my head. Boss Long’s flunky was still on the mainland. These blockheads would have to wait. Then I heard wood cracking and leapt from bed.

  Boss Long’s bedroom was also the office. The chamber-pot stink swirled with the sour of ancient leftovers. Today, the ratty long underwear was gone from walls and chairs. The boots, one black pair and one brown, each worn every other day, left a gap by the door. Papers and account books s
lid lopsided to the floor. I stumbled down the stairs, shouting for calm. The boss had bolted on four scabby legs to America on a rival’s boat.

  I raced to the back but stopped. Vermin were waiting outside to thrash me. Then they would brag to all of Chinatown that their mighty farts had hurled me to a back-door retreat.

  I went and unlocked the entrance. Smirking, I lifted the first plank from the window. “Boss isn’t here. He ran off.”

  They charged in. Across the street, shopkeepers and clerks peered from half-open doors, ready to slam them if my callers turned rowdy.

  I squinted at the expanse of morning light, a golden glow that beamed behind clouds. The tang of ocean salt and fresh-caught fish rose from the harbour. Fearless, screeching seagulls swept down on massive wings before folding their flaps. They strutted to the corner where the cookhouse chef, during better days, had left buckets of swill for the hog farmers. A heavy wagon clattered by, pulled by two brown horses trotting side by side, straw-yellow manes as bright as their tails.

  In the boss’s room, the coolies were hurling chairs and dishes. I shrugged at the thumping and shattering. The boss had nothing worth pawning.

  A shove sent me sprawling onto the road. “Where’s your cock-head boss?”

  “Don’t know.” Bony knuckles rapped my skull.

  “You wipe his shit-hole, of course you know.”

  They started to kick me. I covered my head but left my spine exposed. I wouldn’t surrender to puny vermin whose courage came from you-first-then-me-too numbers. I could battle three or four men at once but not a dozen. Fighting was crucial in this wretched life. Redbeards murdered us in America. We drowned in black waters at the border. Decent men such as me choked every day on the bile of our pride. If these fools killed me, then my ghost would stalk them all their luckless lives. They would never know a full night’s sleep, no matter how powerful a god they prayed to.

  When another horse and wagon approached, I started to uncoil, but suffered another ruthless kick in the gut. That heavy boot could have served a better purpose: pawned for passage home.