On Gold Mountain

by Lisa See

  His clothes were western. Ever since he had observed the Victorian opulence on his first trip upriver, he had sensed that his place was in there among those white men and women in their finery, and not down in the dark, cramped quarters of the “China Hold,” with his countrymen and their fears. Today he wore a three-piece suit and a starched white shirt with a wing-tip collar. A tie pin, with a stone looking much like a diamond, punctured the knot of the western-style white tie that bulged just a bit between neck and vest.

  Fong See left the photographer’s studio and walked along Sacramento’s Front Street toward the intersection of Third and I streets, where Chinatown nestled on the south shore of what had once been called Sutter Lake but was now called China Slough. Front Street bustled with merchants, peddlers, and con men—all those people who catered to weary and susceptible travelers as they stepped off the train. Dust whipped up under the hooves of horses and the wheels of wagons that came to this intersection to pick up or unload goods—barrels of syrup and whiskey, bales of hay and cotton, crates of peaches and plums, burlap bags of wheat and barley. On streetcorners, young boys called out news headlines—the more gruesome the better. Saloons and hotels offered varied entertainments—operas, plays, and balls. It all presented a lively scene, but Fong See knew that the annual floods here were as bad as those in his home village, if not worse, for they not only destroyed buildings and ruined businesses but also brought cholera.

  He reached I Street and turned right, keeping to the south side of the street. An odd combination of smells rose up to meet him as he neared Chinatown between Second and Fourth streets. The air carried the familiar and sweetly pleasing scents of ginger, opium, and incense, mingled with the foul odors that drifted from nearby dairies and slaughterhouses. The air wasn’t the only unpleasant aspect of this place. The water in the China Slough was also foul. From the south, laundries emptied their filthy water and other refuse into the lake. On the north bank, the railroad company dumped its oily debris into the water. The lake was so polluted that on more than one occasion it had caught fire.

  As much as he longed for acceptance in the world outside the confines of I and Third streets, Fong See always felt a wave of relief as he entered this familiar enclave. At this corner stood a wall that had become the center of Chinese life in the city. The five thousand Chinese who lived in Sacramento County came here to peruse the personal messages affixed to the wall: “I am looking for my son, Quan Lee. If you see him, please ask him to contact his father through the Hop Sing Tong.” “Do not work for Farmer Smith. He does not pay his wages and the food is not fit to eat.” Tongs hung notices, written in gaudy calligraphy, of upcoming meetings. Old men, sitting on upturned fruit crates, read the news to those who were illiterate.

  Farther down the street stood a pawnshop where sojourners returning to China might trade their belongings—their matted bedding, a pair of blankets, a sheet, a wooden pillow—for a few dollars. If a traveler returned to the Gold Mountain, he could redeem his belongings. If not, they would be sold to another unfortunate beginning his life of bitter loneliness.

  Chinatown. It was familiar yet unique. It offered Fong See and his fellow sojourners pleasures and diversions unlike anything they had seen in their home villages or in the big city of Canton. In gambling dens, men could of course play the usual fantan, but it was not uncommon to see two merchants dressed as wealthy mandarins, carrying miniature bamboo cages containing beetles or grasshoppers, step down into an underground arena where the insects would battle, and spectators would wager on the outcome.

  There were also opium dens. In the Big City of San Francisco, the dens had long been a tourist attraction for the picturesque tableaux that they presented. Recently, white men and women of means and social standing could be seen in these places, lounging on carved wooden pallets, drawing in smoke from the pipe’s stem, and letting their minds drift away in release. In Sacramento, this white incursion into the dens had caused considerable scandal. Although Fong See scorned opium, there was no escaping its aroma on Chinatown’s streets.

  Fong See walked past shops that had scrolls on either side of their doorways affirming the good wishes of the owners: “Ten thousand customers constantly arriving.” “Profit coming in like rushing waters.” “Customers coming like clouds.” But for most of his countrymen there had been no customers, no rushing waters, no clouds. They lived in poverty, away from their families and ancestors, too poor to save enough money for the return passage, too heartbroken to walk into their home villages old men with empty pockets.

  Forgoing the transitory pleasures of opium and gambling, Fong See saved his money. Each month he went to the bank and cabled money to his mother and wife in the home village. He also treated himself—sometimes buying a western-style hat, tie, jacket, or shoes. In just these few short years he had already transformed himself from a brave little peasant boy, who worked for his mother on the streets of Canton, into a young man who eschewed the dress of the poor whites for the elegance of the wealthy ones he had seen on the riverboat. He was training himself not to be a peasant—not just through his clothes and job, but in his mind. He was always thinking, observing, trying to create for himself a context so that he could become a part of the larger world.

  In early April of 1877, Luscinda Pruett lay dying. Her mind wandered over her life in Oregon, her children, her husband, and God, whom she knew she’d be meeting soon. She’d had fever for weeks, and now the pneumonia had grabbed hold of her body and wouldn’t let go. Not that it wasn’t peaceful lying here, as Mrs. Peterson sponged her forehead with cool cloths and the Reverend Peterson gave a discourse on the second commission of Christ to his Apostles. Or was he reading from the tenth chapter of First Corinthians? Maybe that wasn’t it at all. She knew she’d heard him give these sermons before, at their Sunday meetings. No matter. The Petersons lived a few farms over. Reverend Peterson had made quite a name for himself in these parts—working all day on his farm, then rewarding himself by riding on horseback throughout the county to preach the Word to small congregations and gatherings in the valley. When he wasn’t preaching, he was ministering to the sick and dying. Why, nearly every week he had a burial to attend to in this county alone.

  Luscinda tried to focus her mind to track the course of her illness. She had five sons—Irvin, Loren, Charles, Rodelwin, and little John. The last had been born their first season out here. They had all survived, and all were strapping. A year ago, in 1876, the same year that the Lord had decided in His wisdom to let Custer die at the Little Big Horn, He had finally blessed the Pruetts with the birth of a daughter, Letticie.

  This sixth pregnancy and birth had been particularly hard on Luscinda. She was forty-one and sometimes so tired her bones ached and her mind ached until she couldn’t stand it anymore. Her days were full of chores punctuated by breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the eight people in her household. She baked all her own bread, pies, and cakes. In summer she put up all her own preserves and vegetables to see the family through the winter. Sometimes she wished that she could stop scrubbing and washing and cleaning and scalding, that she could put off milking the cows and feeding the chickens and minding the kitchen garden.

  Luscinda had been taken ill at the end of February. At first she worked through it, because a farm didn’t wait for people to be well and strong. A farm went on, no matter what. Finally she’d gone to bed, and even in her delirium she’d been aware of the consternation around her when a neighbor’s demented son fell in a tub of boiling soap and died. She remembered another boy who’d fallen into the chaparral and cut himself so badly that he’d bled to death as his parents watched. Women died of consumption or in childbirth or of cancer. Men were run over by plows or trampled by horses, or accidentally shot themselves with the guns they always carried. It wasn’t that life was necessarily harder here. Even back in Pennsylvania, Luscinda had borne babies and worked the farm. But she’d been younger then, stronger maybe, and not so worn-out lonely.

  March had be
en corn-planting season. John had plowed; the boys had planted. Letticie had played near Luscinda’s bedside. As she lay there, she’d thought about their time in the valley. Central Point marked the actual center of the valley; from their farm the Pruetts could see in every direction across vast fields to the surrounding pine-covered mountains. In the foothills, homesteaders who had come to this land twenty years before the Pruetts had planted orchards. In summer, under blazing heat, the fruit ripened and brought in plentiful crops. Sometimes John traded a pig or a few sides of bacon for so many lugs of peaches, which she, in turn, peeled by evening and put up by sundown the next day.

  From her kitchen window, if the fog that plagued the Big Sticky lifted, Luscinda could see Table Rock and McLoughlin Peak. Somewhere up there in the mountains lay Crater Lake. She had hoped that one day the boys would be able to manage the farm while she and John traveled the eighty miles for a vacation. Now she thought that that possibility was about as likely as their soil turning into fertile loam overnight.

  In late March she’d taken a bad turn. John had sent Irvin over to the Petersons’ house for dried beef and a bottle of the Reverend’s homemade cough syrup, for which Irvin paid one dollar. Even with her fever she’d been pretty mad. “No point in wasting money on me,” she’d said. But John wouldn’t listen to “that nonsense,” as he called it.

  Luscinda often worried about money. They owed Magruder’s over in Central Point for syrup, starch, candles, matches, castor oil, and salt, and W. C. Leever’s Hardware for washtubs, chamber pots, watering cans, and washboards. The family tried to barter goods and services as much as possible, trading three cans of lard for three gallons of blackberries, or lard for dried fruit, or lard for envelopes, or equal trades of lard for butter. Sometimes the older boys, Irvin and Loren, did hauling for neighbors, and had once been paid the grand sum of seventy dollars for hauling freight for the Emaline Mining Company. This year the Pruetts’ oats had sold at fifty cents a bushel. When these good times came, they’d go into town and get the horses and themselves shod. If there was money left over, Luscinda might splurge—fifty cents at Magruder’s for coffee or tea, or for half a pound of tobacco for her husband, or maybe even a dollar for twelve yards of printed cotton and some hairpins.

  This last week, it had stormed. She had listened to the rain hit the roof and trickle down the windows, knowing in her heart that she might never hear it again, never live to see another spring. Of course, after five years living on the Sticky, she thought she’d seen all there was to see. All year long, John battled the soil using Reverend Peterson’s clod masher when he could, or just going out with the boys and tilling by hand, trying to make some sense of the land. They’d put in corn and squash, alfalfa and wheat. They raised a few cows and chickens, and always tried a few shoats come spring. Sheep were tricky, since eagles like to swoop down and disembowel the lambs, but they kept a few anyway.

  These last two days she’d been fighting the pneumonia hard. But the fight was so peaceful somehow, just lying here and listening to the voices around her, all the people she loved. Once she’d heard someone say, “We’ve been trying to catch that counterfeiter who’s been running around somewhere between here and Bear Creek.” But then she thought that couldn’t be what they were talking about, because then she heard someone say, “On the point of death …” Only it didn’t worry her, because Reverend Peterson and his wife were there with their soothing words about the Hereafter and Faith and Jesus and God. No, that wasn’t it at all, he was whispering in a soothing voice, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death …”

  Then it was very quiet and it seemed that all the neighbors had gone home. Now only John sat by her bedside, holding her hand. He had always been a good man—a good father and husband. She wanted him to say something, to say he loved her, but she knew that wasn’t his way, wasn’t their way.

  The time is here, she thought. What about my baby girl? Who will show her how to be a good woman? Who will love her like a mother? Who will teach her about duty, hard work, religion? Who will make sure she finds a proper husband? If only I could keep Letticie with me.

  The next morning a light dusting of snow lay on the surrounding mountains, and the ground was sticky from the rain of the previous evening. John Pruett paid six dollars for a coffin, two dollars to a man to dig the grave, and another couple of dollars to have his wife carried to her final resting place on McHenry’s land, down the road from the farm, about halfway to Central Point. In the late morning, all of the neighbors on both sides of the Sticky flat attended the funeral of Luscinda Pruett, who had lived not quite five years in Oregon. As Mrs. Peterson tried to calm baby Letticie, John thought of the words he would have chiseled on the gravestone:

  LUSCINDA J. PRUETT

  DIED

  APRIL 9, 1877

  AGED

  41 YEARS, 6 MONTHS

  Jesus loves the pure and holy

  “Sister Pruett died in full assurance of Faith,” Reverend Peterson began. Soon it was over and the neighbors went home. That night Martin Peterson wrote in his diary, “Morning cloudy, day sunny at times then cool and cloudy with a little sprinkle of rain. We with near all the neighbors on both sides of the Sticky flat attended Sister Pruett’s funeral this forenoon. I preached a short Discourse at the grave, according to her request which she made before she died. The family are very much afflicted over her leaving them.” For his final entry, he added, “W. W. Gage and Gilbert and others arrested the counterfeiter over on that side of the flat yesterday evening.”

  The next morning was clear, frosty, and a little hazy. The newest widower along the Sticky spent the day harrowing. Irvin sheared a few sheep. Loren mucked out the barn and fixed a fence. Charles and Rodelwin walked into Central Point to go to school, came home, and did their chores. Little John, who was just four, fed the chickens, gathered the eggs, and watched over his baby sister.

  By the late 1870s, Fong See officially ran his father’s Kwong Tsui Chang Company, which now stood at 609 K Street between Sixth and Seventh. When he moved out of Chinatown, he changed the name of the store to the Curiosity Bazaar. His neighbors were Mr. Luce, a marble cutter and tombstone maker, T. L. Acock, who made his living in real estate, and R. S. Davis, a dry-goods merchant.

  Instead of herbs, Fong See and his brothers manufactured underwear for brothels. Fong Lai and Fong Quong had tried to continue the herb business, but they had no experience. Their father had never taught them how to choose ingredients or brew tonics, or how to match herbs with a patient’s symptoms. Customers had quickly found other herbalists to treat them, and the Fongs had been left with an empty storefront.

  Although they knew next to nothing about herbology, they did know about clothing manufacturing from working in clothing factories themselves. Lai and Quong had worked first as apprentices at six dollars a month, then as journeymen at twenty dollars a month. Once they had learned enough, they felt ready to open their own factory. Although Fong Lai and Fong Quong had the experience, they worked for their younger brother, who acted as the front man and manager of the Curiosity Bazaar. It was not the Chinese way, in which age was revered, but the American way, in which the smartest and wiliest took charge. They were all members of the Gwing Yee Hong, the Guild of Bright-Colored Clothing, which served the needs of those who sewed shirts and ladies’ garments and undergarments.

  While his brothers and a few other men sewed in the back room, Fong See traveled up, down, and across the state, selling the factory’s merchandise to Chinese and white prostitutes. He didn’t go to San Francisco, where more than sixty women’s underwear factories kept up with the trade of both good and fallen women. Instead he went to mountain camps, railroad camps, farms along the delta, and as far south as Los Angeles. Everywhere a train stopped, there were bound to be men who wanted to satisfy their bodily desires and women who were willing to slake that lust.

  In Fong See’s father’s day, almost all the Chinese women in the state had been prostitutes. L
ater, when Fong See had first come to Sacramento, nine out of ten Chinese women were prostitutes. Now, as he traveled through cities and towns, he saw how they lived. They tended to reside in groups of two to six, and were kept by a man or sometimes by a madam. Only a few tried to make it on their own.

  Some were swathed in silk, satin, and lace, and lounged in beautiful houses, waiting for customers to come in and make their selection. These lucky women ate good-health meals to stimulate their desires—rice, pork, eggs, liver, and kidneys. Other, less fortunate women peered out from the barred windows of their cribs and wore the meager clothes of farm peasants. “Lookee two bits, feelee floor bits, doee six bits,” they would call out to white men in their broken English. No strong-sex meals for these women—just rice, a few slivers of vegetable, and doses of opium to assuage their loneliness. But even they made money for their owners. Seven customers a day for the lowest-grade prostitute could bring an owner $850 a year. No matter which kind they were—silk or cotton, healthy or diseased—all prostitutes needed Fong See’s stock.

  He carried with him lacy drawers split at the crotch like a baby’s pants in his home village—only these were made of fine China silk and edged in ribbon and lace. “No need to undress completely,” he would say as he laid out his wares. “You open your legs, the man goes in, he comes out, it’s all done. No need to take off all clothes. The man likes to see his prize wrapped like a present. White, lacy, beautiful, no matter how many men you have today. You buy extra pairs, your private parts always look clean and new.” For the lower-class prostitutes he brought ribbon-edged muslin underwear and camisoles.