“There’s one guy out south of town said he wanted to think it over, pray on it, he told me,” Burgoyne said. “I’m going out there this afternoon. He’s my last chance.”
“I’d like to go with you,” Holman said.
The Reverend Mr. Partridge talked to Holman and Burgoyne in a small room with a rag rug and a sign on the wall stating that God was Love. He made them sit in rocking chairs while he paced up and down and explained that his conscience would not let him perform the ceremony without civil permission. He was a kindly, pink-faced man with a clipped gray mustache and a gray coat. Burgoyne looked defeated. Holman spoke up.
“Would you get in trouble if you did it anyway?”
“Yes. With my conscience. I’ve explained that.”
“I mean with American law.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I want to understand something,” Holman said. “Can I ask you some questions?”
“Please do.” Mr. Partridge went on guard.
“All right.” Holman leaned forward. “If you did speak the words, would that make them really married?”
“In the eyes of God, yes.”
“Suppose they were going to live together anyway. How would that be, in the eyes of God?”
Mr. Partridge paced with tightening lips and thought about that. Then he stopped, hands clasped behind him and bouncing slightly on his toes.
“It would be breaking the Seventh Commandment,” he said. “But to enter into a vowed marriage knowing that it cannot endure and be fruitful is to make a false personal pledge before God, and that is a greater sin.” He pursed his lips. “Now that I think of it, I am not at all sure such a marriage would be valid in the eyes of God, Who knows all the secrets of men’s hearts.”
His posture and manner irritated Holman. “Suppose Frenchy and the girl believed in their hearts, as deep as even God can see, that they would stay married till they died,” he said. “Would it be a greater sin then? If you did say the words?”
“Yes, and I would share it!” His voice was sharp. “Because I would know! And your friend knows too, because I’ve explained to him.”
Burgoyne stirred. “Nothing you told me makes any difference,” he said. “I’m going to retire and live in China like lots of other sailors do. I want to be married to my woman is all.”
“I see it’s no use explaining.”
“Can I pin just one thing down, Mr. Partridge?” Holman said. “What is it really makes you married, God or American law? What if they disagree?”
Mr. Partridge was trying very hard to continue looking kindly. “If you are honestly interested, I will be glad to instruct you,” he said. “But you would have to start with simple things.” He tried another smile. “We must all learn to walk before we run, mustn’t we?”
Holman hid his anger. “Please tell me the answer like you would if I was ready to understand,” he said. “If I don’t, I don’t. We’ll shove off. But please let me try.”
“All right.” Mr. Partridge paced again, throwing out short sentences. “Marriage is not an indulgence. It is a sacred privilege. Yes, and responsibility. There is something called moral fitness and readiness for marriage. Marriage and the rearing of lawful children. Part of it is a sober regard for the opinions of one’s fellow countrymen. That, and a willingness to obey the laws they make to govern themselves.” He stopped and rocked on his toes. “Is that clear to you?”
“Just like crystal!” Holman stood up and tugged Burgoyne to his feet. “So Congress outranks God,” he told Mr. Partridge. “Thanks for the dope.”
“Here now, let’s not have any mockery or blasphemy under this roof!”
Holman laughed into the red, angry face. “If I was you, Partridge, I’d get out of the God business and go run for Congress,” he said. “Come on, Frenchy.”
The Reverend Mr. Partridge slammed his door very emphatically at their heels.
They stopped in the bar of the small hotel outside the south gate and ordered whisky. They were alone in the place.
“He just rubbed me the wrong way,” Holman said. “One of them fat, pink, kindly important bastards that run the world and heaven and hell to boot. He reminds me of somebody. Bronson?” He drained his glass and beckoned the bar boy. “Who ever gave them bastards charge of the world?”
“God did, I guess,” Burgoyne said. “Jake, I was just thinking howcome I first joined the navy. It was to get away from a little old gal back in Carolina that claimed I knocked her up. Maybe I did, but there was twenty other boys had their crack at it too. She was a real whore, and they was going to make me marry her.”
“That’s how the sons of bitches work,” Holman said. “It was a judge put me in the navy. It was that, or else reform school.”
“What’d they have you for?”
“Beating up—say! Now I know who Partridge reminds me of!”
Holman sketched out the story. A boy had brought a bottle of whisky to a class wiener roast and some of them got drunk and insulted girls and fought. Holman had been expelled for it. He had gone to the principal’s office and begged for another chance.
“School was the first thing I ever had to lose,” he told Burgoyne. “That principal—Partridge reminds me of him. The kids called him Garbage Tin.”
Garbage Tin had plainly enjoyed making him grovel. It was a nasty, squirmish thing. Then Garbage Tin had promised to cancel the expulsion if Holman would sign a paper saying how sorry he was that he had brought the whisky to the party. He had not brought it, but he couldn’t rat on the boy who had, and he finally signed the paper for the sake of getting back in school. The next day he found that he was still expelled. Garbage Tin said he had only promised to reconsider his decision, and he had done that, and it was still the same decision. Holman did not have anything left to lose. He had gone at Garbage Tin like a wildcat and driven him under a desk.
“Didn’t you have any kin to stand up for you?”
“Only my mother,” Holman said. “She didn’t count for much in that town. She did housework by the hour and took in washing.”
“That’s nigger-woman work in Carolina.”
“The kid that brought the whisky was Bill Mason. He was the judge’s son.”
“They had to save his face so he could be a judge someday,” Burgoyne said. “Well, that’s how the sons of bitches work, all right. Well, I guess you don’t have to love ’em for it.”
“They expect you to,” Holman said. “They think they’re the most loving and lovable bastards alive.”
The two men drank in moody silence. Holman was thinking.
“Frenchy, why not have a Chinese priest marry you?” he said. “They got all kinds of gods.”
“I never thought.” Burgoyne tugged his mustache. “I wonder …”
“There’s one they call Kwan Yin. I like her statues,” Holman said. “I tell you, let’s ask Po-han about it when he comes home.”
“Let’s do that!”
They bought bottled beer on the way. The day was cold and early dark. They met Po-han in the street, just coming home. The women were all in Maily’s room putting up wallpaper. The men helped finish the job by lamplight, while the children laughed and played with scraps of paper. The paper was a silvery gray with a wide-spaced pattern of green leaves and red berries and they all thought it looked very good. Then Po-han’s women went home, taking the children and their lamps.
“Sit down, Po-han. Have a beer,” Burgoyne said.
“I’m all smeared,” Maily said. “Excuse me while I wash my hands and change clothes.” She had on a plain blue coolie outfit.
“No. Sit here beside me, on the chest.”
Burgoyne shifted to make room and pulled her down beside him. The room seemed dim and shadowy with Maily’s one little lamp. They all sat at the table and drank beer and Burgoyne asked Po-han about getting married in a Chinese temple. The talk seemed to embarrass Po-han. He said Chinese did not get married in temples. He did not think Burgoyne and Maily could
be married the Chinese way.
“He’s right, Frenchy,” Maily said. “It just isn’t meant to be.”
“Well, how do Chinese people get married?” Holman asked.
With Maily’s help, Po-han tried to explain. Burgoyne had his head in his hands and did not seem to be listening. Neither gods nor law had much to do with a Chinese marriage, Holman gathered. You worried about stars and lucky days and there were special presents and ceremonies between the families, and the ancestors on both sides came into it too. Po-han seemed to think you could not be married unless you had a family to do the special things.
“What I want to know is what does it?” Holman said. “What’s the precise second you change from being single to being married?”
“It doesn’t happen in any precise second,” Maily said.
“Then there’d have to be a time when you was a quarter-married or half-married, and that don’t make sense,” Holman objected. “I mean, what’s the point of no return? Like when you hold up your hand and swear, when you join the navy.”
Maily had to confer with Po-han in Chinese. The idea was new to both of them. Po-han’s broad, honest face wrestled with the thought the way it did with a new engineering idea. You could leave any part of it out and you would still be married, Po-han said. What you left out just made it less lucky for both families, and you needed all the luck you could get when you were married. He finally got the idea through to Holman. It was like grafting between fruit trees. They cut the girl off from her own family and grafted her onto her husband’s family. But you could not graft one loose twig to another loose twig. Po-han was delighted with Holman’s final comprehension.
“So mus’ have olo mama, olo papa, too much all fashion people belong he.” Po-han grasped in widely with his arms.
It saddened Holman. “Well, I guess you really are whipped, Frenchy,” he said soberly.
Burgoyne raised his head. “No, I ain’t whipped,” he said. “I been studying out what it means while you was arguing. Marrying is mixing two lives together, like creeks joining up.”
Holman did not expect that kind of talk from Frenchy Burgoyne.
“Can you mix people’s lives like running water?” he asked.
“You run between high banks, Jake. Maily and me don’t. The time’s come for us.”
He had a light in his gaunt face and his voice and manner were strangely solemn. They were all a bit afraid of him. He pulled the concealing handkerchief from Maily’s left hand and folded both her hands between his own large, hairy hands on the table top. He looked down at her.
“We’re mixing our lives together, Maily. We’ll never be able to unmix them again, and we’ll never want to.” His voice was strong but tender, and he was smiling down at her. “I take you for what you are and all that you are and mix you with all of me and I don’t hold back nothing. Nothing! When you’re cold and hungry and afraid, so am I. When you’re happy, so am I. I’m going to stay with you all I can and take the very best care of you I can and love you every minute until I die.” He took a deep, slow breath. “Now you say it.”
“I will always love and honor and serve you, Frenchy, and stay as near to you as I can, and do everything I can for you, and live for you, and I won’t have any life except our life together….” Tears welled out of her eyes but she smiled steadily up without blinking. “I will just love you, Frenchy, all of me there is just loving you forever.”
Burgoyne bent his head. They kissed. Holman looked at Po-han. Po-han looked awe-struck.
“Now we’re married,” Burgoyne said. “You guys want to each put one hand on top of ours? For luck?”
Holman and Po-han stood up and did so. “I hope you have luck,” Holman said. “I hope it goes smooth and easy for you.”
He looked at Po-han and they both went out silently into the courtyard and closed the door behind them. They looked at each other again in the darkness. They both knew something terribly important had just happened in there.
“I burn joss stick,” Po-han said.
“Yes,” Holman said. “I wish I knew something to do.”
He walked back to the ship alone in the cold, quiet night. The last time along those streets Burgoyne had been with him. He felt sad and alone and it was a feeling he knew well but seldom as strongly as he felt it now. He crossed the bund and saw the ship bulking darkly out on the dark water. Light glowed warm at its windows and he knew it was warm and dry inside the ship. The men on duty were there. He did not want to go back to the ship. But he was barred from the Red Candle and there was no place else for him to go.
20
The Sand Pebbles considered that Burgoyne was just shacked up. He went to request mast and asked that Maily be named as his next-of-kin in his service record. When a man died, his next-of-kin got his personal effects and back pay and also a death gratuity equal to six months’ pay. Both Bordelles and Lt. Collins told Burgoyne that he was not officially married and it was impossible.
“Can I just call her a friend, then?” Burgoyne asked.
“As long as you have any blood kin, you can’t have a friend,” Bordelles said.
Burgoyne’s next-of-kin was an uncle. “He’s a hell-shoutin’ Baptist preacher and he thinks I’m dirt,” Burgoyne told Holman. “I hope I never see him again.”
The only official acknowledgment he could get of Maily’s existence was a safe-conduct pass. These were primarily for the ship’s coolies, to protect them from forced labor for warlord soldiers, but long ago a form had also been worked out for shack women. It was known that Lt. Collins did not approve of shacks, because in an emergency it was much easier to get the men aboard if they were all in the Red Candle, but he abided by the old custom. Red Dog made up the paper. Yen-ta put the Chinese writing down the left side and Red Dog typed the English crowded over on the right. The English text read:
The bearer, Maily Burgoyne, is employed in the household of Francis Marion Burgoyne, WT 1/c, United States Navy, serving in U.S.S. San Pablo. Any unwarranted interference with bearer, when busied upon her lawful occasions, will be considered the indirect harassment and annoyance of a United States Citizen within the meaning of the treaties governing relations between the United States of America and the Republic of China and will be dealt with accordingly.
All the passes had a colored U.S. flag on gummed paper pasted at the top and Lt. Collins’ signature with the ship’s seal over it at the bottom. They were mainly looksee pidgin, meant to impress ignorant warlord soldiers. Red Dog made a special addition to Maily’s pass. At the bottom he typed in: “This woman is married to the favorite nephew of Calvin Coolidge, Supreme Warlord of the United States of America. For every finger that touches her, one thousand heads must roll. Tremble and Obey!” He signed underneath in great, leaping letters, “Red Dog Shanahan,” and sealed red wax over a twist of red ribbon. With a pair of scissors he delicately forked the ends of the ribbon.
“There! That’s my wedding present to you and Maily,” he told Burgoyne.
Maily laughed when she saw it. “Our marriage certificate,” she told Burgoyne. She could not have a wedding ring, because she had no finger for it. She was very happy in those first days and she would lean up against Burgoyne and look at him in a way no woman had ever looked at Jake Holman.
Holman made all his liberties in Po-han’s courtyard, because he was barred from the Red Candle. He would bring candy for the children and they learned to climb over him and search his pockets for it. He became acquainted with the three tenant families across the courtyard and the children from that side would search him for candy too. All the children called him Uncajehk, for Uncle Jake. Little Su-li remained his favorite, and she knew it. She was a princess, when Uncajehk came visiting.
With Po-han’s help Holman worked out a wedding present. They had the dry pond under the single tree cleaned out and Holman contracted with one of the tenants, a water coolie, to keep it filled. Then he bought the two most expensive goldfish he could find in Changsha, graceful black
ones with long, lacy fins, and put them in the pool. It was only about four feet across and two feet deep, with a border of rough, natural rocks. Maily was delighted with the fish.
The tree in the courtyard began to leaf out in delicate yellow-green. When it was not raining, they would put a table and chairs under it and drink beer there. They did not get drunk and yet, to Holman, there was a drunken, happy feeling about just being there. The goldfish learned to come when Maily trilled at them. She would kneel, dimpling the water with a piece of rice cake, and the fish would nibble at it. She was very pretty kneeling by the rough rocks and when the fish curved their bodies gracefully in sunlight they were purplish-red on the curves.
Holman bought cheaper, golden goldfish, one for each child, and the children clustered around the pool to watch them. One time Su-li fell in and Mei-yu and Po-han’s mother chattered and fussed. They always had a smile and a bow for Jake Holman, however, and he was happy there. He considered the pool was really his present to the whole courtyard, because he was so happy with them. It was something very new in his life. The tree kept leafing out and the flower buds on it were swelling.
“Pretty soon it’ll be time to start the summer cruising,” Burgoyne said one evening. “Jake, I wish I didn’t have to go.”
Unexpectedly, in March, Changsha got a new warlord. There was some shooting in the hills south of town, to save face, but General Chao was outgunned and he knew it, so he took a bribe and pulled out peacefully. That was called fighting with silver bullets, and most warlord battles were fought that way. Everyone knew that Chinese soldiers couldn’t really fight. At the mess table they talked about the last time a rival warlord had challenged General Chao, two years earlier. His men had trenches on the sand flats across the river and they wanted to cross over to Changsha. For weeks they potshot at Chao’s positions on the big sandbar while the Sand Pebbles guarded the big treaty houses, which were also on the big sandbar. Then one day the attacking soldiers just got up and walked across the sand into Chao’s machine guns. They went down in heaps and windrows and in a few minutes the challenging warlord no longer had an army.
The Sand Pebbles Page 28