The Sand Pebbles

by Richard McKenna

  The gearwheel guns began firing back and making splashes in the water. They were trying to pot the Wu ships as they crossed the gaps between the treaty power ships. On the San Pablo everyone was certain that as soon as a gearwheel shell hit one of the treaty ships it would be legal to shoot back. Then the cruisers would take the whole top off Pagoda Hill. After a while the British admiral told the Wu ships they would have to get out in the open river. They went back downriver instead. As soon as they were clear of the concessions, small-arms fire whipped the water white around them. Crosley watched through the long glass.

  “Jee-zuzz! We just think we been shot at!” he said that night at the mess table.

  At the mess tables they repeated the same things that were in the newspapers. Things were hopeful. Wu had stopped fighting in the north. All the northern warlords were coming south to gang up on the gearwheel. People were calling them “The Allies.” Northern Chinese ate noodles made of wheat flour. That was supposed to make them more noble and tough than the sneaky rice eaters from south of the Yangtze. Big Chew fed the Sand Pebbles rice every day of their lives, and they could still believe a thing like that.

  “Once up in Chefoo I kicked a rickshaw coolie and he knocked me on my ass,” Harris said. “He did! Course I was drunk.”

  “That’s them noodle eaters for you!” Restorff said proudly.

  Often over by Wuchang there was the rattle of small arms and the sight of little men running. One by one the buildings outside the gray walls were being burnt in attacks. They said many thousands of civilians were trapped inside the walls and starving because the defending soldiers had all the food. Missionaries were trying to arrange a truce and get them out.

  The Wu flag looked lonely and gallant above the city, ringed round by the many gearwheel flags outside. All night every night the guns on Pagoda Hill flashed like the lightning of a distant, grumbling storm. All night the low red glare of fire rose somewhere above the walls. And every morning the five-barred flag still floated above the highest hill inside the city. It was the first thing the Sand Pebbles looked for when they came on deck in the mornings.

  Bordelles’ section relieved Franks’ section. Landing force headquarters was the YMCA. They had one day of lectures and drills on street fighting. The next day Holman and Tullio were part of a detail sent to one of the power plants. The Fleet sailors in the detail were happy about it. They said it was better than patrols in the bundocks, where you got spit on and hit with rocks and could not do anything about it. Inside the concessions proper it was home soil, just like the grounds of a consulate.

  The power plant was a brick-walled compound with tall stacks and brick buildings inside. Riley, the CPO in charge, took the new men on a tour of the guard posts. After the tour he talked to them in the squadroom where they had their cots.

  “Gearwheel agitators are trying to pull our coolies out on strike,” he said. “Our job is to keep our coolies inside and the gearwheel outside.” He was a stumpy, grizzled torpedoman, and he talked from the side of his mouth. He was very earnest about it. “Our coolies ain’t prisoners,” he said. “They just got to pretend they’re prisoners. If they don’t, the gearwheel will call ’em running dogs and take it out on their families.” He paused, looking at each man in turn for emphasis. “They even got to pretend with each other,” he went on. “Because some of ’em might be white rats.”

  “What could one do if he really wanted out?” Holman asked.

  “He’d be pretending,” Riley said. “Everything’s a lie, sailor. That’s how it is in China now.”

  Holman stood corporal of the guard and made the rounds once an hour when his watch was on. Off duty, he sat in the squadroom and drank coffee. Some of the Fleet sailors were old shipmates. One was a tall, black-browed coppersmith named Roach. The Fleet sailors were not very hopeful about Plan Red. They were almost as disgusted with the businessmen as with the missionaries. All they wanted was to get back to salt water.

  “This stuff’s for the marines!” Roach growled.

  The Fleet sailors had their sights set on the really big fight that would come someday with the Japanese. Holman had almost forgotten how they felt in the Fleet. He had become a river rat, as the Fleet sailors called the Yangtze Patrol men. On the river the Japs were allies.

  The third afternoon Tullio called Holman to the main gate.

  “She wants to talk to somebody,” Tullio said. “She won’t go away.”

  She was a girl activist, in green blouse and skirt and canvas shoes, standing saucily alert under the brick archway. She had bobbed hair and a cute, perky face and clear black eyes that stared right back at Holman.

  “I have a message for Wang Chung-fu,” she said. “His wife is very ill. She wants him to come to her.”

  “Why don’t you smuggle it in with the coal or chow, like you do the other stuff?” Holman asked her.

  “Wang might not believe it then. This is true.”

  Holman grinned. “I’ll have somebody tell him.”

  “I want to tell him myself. I don’t trust you to tell him.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Wait here.”

  The red-faced civilian engineer on duty said they had tried before to get at Chung-fu. He was shift boss on the boilers and a leader among the coolies.

  “Tell the wee bitch to bugger off,” the engineer said. “Nip her one on the rump. That’s the way to rout ’em, lad.”

  Holman went back to the gate. “I’m sorry. They won’t tell him,” he told the girl.

  “Will you tell him, then? I think I trust you.”

  “Not against orders,” Holman said. “I’m sorry.”

  She left. An hour later Tullio called again. The girl was back and Miss Eckert, in the same brown dress, was with her. Electricity ran all over Holman.

  “Hello!” he said. “I thought you’d be in Shanghai by now.”

  She smiled. “We have to wait our turn. There’s a long list.”

  “I’m glad. I mean, only in a way …” He was confused.

  “We may not go at all,” she said. “But the reason I’m here is to verify this girl’s story. We have a physician’s statement.”

  She held out a paper. Holman would not take it.

  “I believed her the first time,” he said. “It’s just orders.”

  “Whose orders?”

  “Just orders. You can’t do anything about orders.”

  “Somebody gives them,” the Chinese girl said.

  “I can do something about them,” Miss Eckert said, rather sharply. “This is a clear humanitarian case.”

  “Well …” Holman looked at Tullio.

  “Go tell him.” Tullio grinned. “I won’t rat on you, Jake.”

  “No. I don’t want you boys to get in trouble,” Miss Eckert said. “I’m free to make the trouble. Let me speak to your officer.”

  Holman sent Tullio for Riley. Miss Eckert said she would just work her way up the line until she found an officer able to countermand the order. If he would not, she and the others would write about him to the newspapers in America. Riley came and listened grimly to Miss Eckert’s request.

  “Why don’t you people stop making us trouble?” he asked. “I can’t let no propaganda come in here. I got orders.”

  “At least read the doctor’s statement.”

  She thrust it at him. He pushed it away.

  “Lady, right now in China wives ain’t near as important as electricity,” he said heavily. “Give it up, why don’t you? You ain’t being loyal to your own people.”

  “I’m loyal to human needs!” She had color high in her cheeks. She was not a bit afraid of Riley. “May I have your name, sir?” she asked.

  Riley scowled. “Never you mind my name, lady. You just bring me a written order from the O-in-C at the Navy Y. Go work on him.”

  “I will!” Miss Eckert said. “Good-bye, Mr. Holman.”

  The Chinese girl smiled at Holman and Tullio, as the two girls turned away. Riley looked suspicious.r />
  “You know that fleabag, Holman?”

  “We brought her up from Hunan.”

  “Should’ve left her there to rot!” Riley growled.

  After supper the duty engineer caught a coolie slacking a plug to start a slow oil leak in the dynamo. Riley called Holman in. The coolie was a skinny, shrinking young fellow, very scared.

  “Pick a couple of your men and work him over out in the coalshed,” Riley ordered. “Don’t kill him. Just make him wish you would.”

  “Not me,” Holman said. “Get somebody else, Chief.”

  “And why the hell not you?” Riley shot out his jaw. “Them’s orders!”

  “Give ’em to me in writing. Sign your name under ’em.”

  Riley looked at Holman thoughtfully. His anger changed to contempt.

  “Weak stomach, hey?” he said. “All right. Send Roach in.”

  They were making quite a bit of noise back in the coalshed. Holman went to a small office down the hall, where two Chinese clerks slept, and told them about Wang Chung-fu’s wife. They poured him a cup of tea and did not say much. When the midnight shift went on, Chung-fu was missing. Roaring with rage, Riley broke out the whole guard. He doubled the interior guard for the rest of the night.

  The next day British sailors relieved them. The American landing force was being withdrawn to the ships. Everyone blamed it on missionary dirty work in Washington. The American sailors lost face. One good thing came of it, however. Comyang started liberty. A small landing force went back ashore, to patrol the streets in squads of riflemen. Technically they were only shore patrol, to police the men on liberty.

  Holman made his first liberty with Burgoyne. They were both worried about Maily, who had still not reached Hankow, but they pretended that it was all right. The rickshaw coolies at the French jetty all wanted triple prices and they would not argue about it with the usual Chinese good humor. The coolies ashore were all in unions and asking enormous prices and being nasty to the treaty people.

  “Hell, let’s walk, Jake,” Burgoyne said. “What’s wrong with ’em, anyway? It don’t seem like China.”

  They walked a few blocks. Flags hung out along all the streets. Some corners had sandbagged gunposts. There were many Chinese police in blue. The tall, khaki-clad Sikhs, with their neat turbans and bearded grins, carried carbines. They all said, “Hi, Johnny,” to the two sailors, who said, “Hi, Johnny” in return. Sikhs and American sailors were friends and they called each other “Johnny.” Coolies and American sailors called each other “Joe.”

  “Hey, Joe! Wanchee rickshaw?”

  There were two of them and they would go to the Green Front for only double the right price. Holman and Burgoyne each took one.

  “This is kind of more like it,” Burgoyne said.

  Burgoyne’s coolie took the lead. They went a roundabout way, dodging through alleys. They kept looking around and jabbering at each other. They passed Lynch’s teashop. It was a dingy place with one dirty show window and a big U.S. flag above the sign. In the next block the pullers turned down another alley.

  Halfway down it, several men blocked them. Holman’s man stopped, shafts high, and tried to turn around. Coolies were running from that way, too. The rickshaw went over, Holman with it. They were beating the rickshaw coolies with bicycle chains, thunk, thunk, peeling their shaven scalps off. Burgoyne was yelling and kicking. Holman got to his feet. Both coolies were on hands and knees, trying to pull their heads beneath them like turtles. It was all very sudden and fast and without any noise except grunts and groans and foot shufflings and the sudden pops when they took pliers and wrenched out the valves of the rickshaw tires.

  “Knock it off, damn you!” Holman yelled.

  He began slapping and grabbing. A whistle shrilled and the strange coolies ran. Sikh cops came in both ends of the alley, trapping them in their turn. The Sikhs slapped them and kicked them and roped them together. They did not resist. The Sikhs led them off, seven men, ordinary ragged coolies. The two pullers had to go along, blood streaking their dumb faces, pulling their flat-tired rickshaws. A British police inspector lingered, writing in a small notebook.

  “Now you see ’em and now you don’t,” Burgoyne said, smoothing out his mustache. “I swear. That was right fast, Jake.”

  “No harm to you two lads, I take it?” the inspector said.

  “No,” Holman said. “What was it all about?”

  “They wouldn’t join the union. We give them all the protection we can.” The inspector shrugged. “You see how it is.”

  “What’ll you do with them guys you caught?”

  “Knock them about a bit and let them go. The jails are full.”

  “Come on, Jake,” Burgoyne said. “We’ll walk for sure, now.”

  They walked along Honan Road. Rickshaw coolies cursed them in English and Chinese. That was how it was. If you would not pay the fantastic new prices, then you were breaking rice bowls. You could not win. A fat white man up ahead was having it even worse. He was carrying a heavy suitcase and losing face with every step. He wore a straw hat and he was sweating through his white coat. His left arm stuck out stiffly, to balance the suitcase. Yapping coolies followed him. One ran in and kicked the suitcase and it spilled open. The coolies began snatching and throwing socks and drawers and paper. They were not stealing it, they were just throwing it around. The man went to his knees, trying to grab his gear and repack it. A laughing crowd formed. The man saw the sailors.

  “Mariners! Aid me! Aid me!” he called to them.

  He was some kind of foreigner, a fat, pink, very distressed man. Some Hankow Volunteers clattered up on horseback, yelling and waving sabers. Holman held Burgoyne back.

  “Let them Volunteers take care of it,” he said. “We ain’t on duty.”

  Inside the Green Front things were right. Sailors and girls sat at the tables and more sailors lined the bar. They were all talking and slopping drinks and rattling dice. It smelled cool and beery. Holman and Burgoyne squeezed in and a barboy brought them whisky. As soon as he could, Nobby Clarke came down.

  “Your woman ain’t checked in yet, Frenchy,” he said.

  They talked about Maily. An Elcano sailor up the bar, a bald-headed coxswain, was listening. He came down.

  “Hi, Frenchy. Heard you talking,” he said. “I started my pig down from Ichang on a junk ten days ago.”

  “Hi, Fischer. You mean she ain’t got here yet?” Fischer said no. “Well, you know, them junks ain’t never in a hurry,” Burgoyne said. “They’ll stop a week, two weeks, any place they take a notion.”

  He and Fischer reassured each other. Fischer had been trying to rent a room. Rents were much too high in the concessions, but he had been dickering for a room above a bicycle shop in the native city.

  “Ain’t it dangerous over there?” Burgoyne asked.

  “They ain’t bothered me none. Only thing is, you got to dodge our shore patrol to get over there.”

  The native city was out of bounds. The room was twelve Mex a week and that was damned high too, Fischer said. But the way the gearwheel had people feeling, old Tung Li was sticking his neck out in renting to a paleface at all.

  “We might take that room together,” Fischer suggested. “It could be for whosever woman gets here first.”

  “Yeah!” Burgoyne thumped down his glass. “That’s something a man can do, ain’t it?”

  “Maskee! Let’s go close the deal!”

  Burgoyne grinned, for the first time in days. He and Fischer went out, striding briskly. Nobby Clarke watched them go and shook his head.

  “Poor bastards. They’ll never see their pigs again,” he said. “Lucky if they don’t, you ask me.”

  “You figure it’ll get worse here?”

  “It’ll be hell, come low water and the cruisers have to go. I’m glad I got my woman and the kids down to Shanghai while I still could.”

  “They can send their women to Shanghai.”

  “Not a chance!” Nobby said. “No s
ailor’s got the kind of money that costs now.”

  Nobby had to go back and roll dice with some destroyer men. Holman had another drink. He kept wanting to think about Po-han. A civilian in a gray suit pushed in beside him and ordered a whisky sour. Holman saw only the arm and hand, cameo cuff links, long, well-kept fingers, an onyx signet ring, on the polished bar. Nobby bustled up.

  “Yes, sir!” he said. “Anything I can do, sir?”

  “I want you to set up drinks for the men of the San Pablo, as they come in,” the man said. “Can you do that?”

  The hand laid bills on the bar. Nobby scooped them up.

  “Yes, sir! Here’s one right beside you, sir,” he said. “What’ll it be, Jake?”

  “More White Horse.”

  “I’m Ed Graham.”

  Holman looked up. The man had a long, elderly horse face with a kindly expression. “I’m Jake Holman.” Graham had a warm, firm handshake. “How come the drinks?” Holman asked.

  “You brought some stuff up from Changsha for me, after the steamers stopped running,” Graham said. “I tried to give your captain a case of whisky and he wouldn’t take it. So I thought of this way.”

  Holman remembered those Graham cases on the quarterdeck. Heat from the engine room had fried a stinking oil out of them. It had stained the planking and made Farren very angry.

  “Guys’ll be obliged,” Holman said. “I remember them cases. What was in ’em?”

  “Women’s hair. Compressed and baled.”

  “What do you do with it? How’s it used?”

  “I send it to the States,” Graham said. “They use the best grades to make hair pieces for women who don’t have enough of their own. The poor stuff is used in making newspaper mats.”

  “You ought to pick up a lot of hair now, all these gearwheel gals bobbing their hair.”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Graham agreed. “But it’s made the market worse. Short hair is a badge of this so-called revolution. Women are afraid to cut their hair. They’re afraid of what will happen to them when the loyalists come back.”