“It will be even hotter down south, won’t it?” she said to Poppy at last, the first words either had spoken in a half hour, at least. The boatmen were carrying on a conversation as they maneuvered their poles along the river bottom, but she wasn’t trying to listen.
Poppy had another section of the paper flipped open in her hands, and she glanced at Addie over the top of it. “That’s a reasonable guess. It probably works pretty much like it does everywhere.”
Addie closed her eyes and felt the heat through the darkness. It pressed against her eyelids, and she opened them again. “Like the difference between Ohio and—oh, I don’t know—Alabama. Just think how they toil away in the sun down there, cutting cotton and, and, sugarcane, and all that.”
“Dear, I don’t believe they have sugarcane in Alabama.”
“No. My brain’s all scrambled.” Addie touched two fingers to her forehead. Her hands were greasy with sweat. They were warm, but her forehead felt cool, almost cold to the touch.
Poppy watched her for a moment. “You’re brooding. I can see it on your face. You’ve got a nervous set to the jaw. And that line between your eyes”—she smoothed a finger down her nose—“I do believe that is worry. Either that, or guilt.”
“You can see all that, can you?”
“Sure. The shadows from your parasol throw your face into chiaroscuro.”
The boat jerked, scuffing the rocks on the bottom of the riverbed. The water was shallow here, which made it difficult; the men might have to get out to tug the boat along from the shore until they bumped and scraped their way into deeper water.
“I don’t want to go back,” Addie said, “in case that’s what you were thinking. I’m just impatient to be farther along. I’m eager to get on to new places.”
Poppy looked out at the dusty stillness on the near shore. A haze hung over the cracked and splintered walls of the riverbanks. “It’s supposed to be wet, anyway,” she said after a moment. “That’s something, at least. A missionary I knew who was down south for several years said it’s nearly suffocating in Chungking, how much water’s in the air.”
“I’ll take damp air over dry. Only imagine what it will be like to take the wash from the line and not find it painted over in yellow dust.”
Poppy lifted her chin to the sky and smiled before going back to reading her paper.
Addie couldn’t read. She folded up her section of the paper and handed it to Poppy, who took it without looking up again. Then she stood and crossed to the edge of the boat. The water was only a few feet below the edge of the craft, and she squatted down and reached out her arm. It looked dirty, stirred up by the boatmen’s poles, and she pulled back her hand without touching it.
The boatmen had a number of techniques for getting their craft down a shallow river, but none of them was fast. And Addie was eager to get more distance between herself and Lu-cho Fu. She knew she was still close enough that she could be back in the town in a few days if she wanted, and Owen would forgive her because she’d returned to him before any real damage was done.
Standing up, she shaded her eyes with one hand as she peered at the shore. Several houses were gathered in a knot ahead, at a bend in the river. Plots of farmland reached out around the village, and she spotted a few figures squatting in the fields. Then, from behind a line of scrubby trees, she saw a line of men striding toward the river.
It was some time before the boat arrived at the village. The men were waiting. One held a long rifle and the rest stood with their hands at their backs.
The man with the gun shouted for them to stop, and the boatmen stood up, leaving behind the work of digging the poles into the river bottom to scuttle them along.
“They’ll be wanting some money now,” Poppy said. She stood from her chair and came up beside Addie, whose heart was beating fast. Poppy took her hand. “Don’t get upset, and don’t show any fear.”
Addie’s mind went quickly to that first time, years before, when she and Owen had been stopped. She remembered how she’d put her hand to her pregnant belly without thinking how it would look. And she remembered, too, how her whole body had started shaking as soon as the men let them pass on.
They came to a slow stop now before the men onshore. There were seven of them gathered in a sort of triangle, the man holding the rifle making the point at the center. He stepped forward to address the boat’s captain. “What are you doing with these foreign devils?”
Addie was standing shoulder to shoulder with Poppy, and she felt her friend tense at the phrase. It was a term they generally only heard used secondhand. Their Chinese congregants had told them how some of the ignorant people in the town—or more often, in the villages—spoke of them this way. But those people told stories to scare each other, too. They claimed that foreigners stole Chinese babies out of their homes to make a meal of them. They said the foreigners poisoned wells, killing off entire villages with ghoulish glee. These were the terrors of peasants who had never encountered a foreigner before and didn’t know how to fit them into their world. It was fear that made them speak in such a way.
This was different. The man with the gun had called them foreign devils without either lowering or raising his voice. It was as if Addie and Poppy weren’t there, as if they weren’t human; he spoke the way someone might address a stranger he met who was standing with a horse, speaking without fear that the horse might understand.
The boat’s captain glanced over his shoulder at Addie and Poppy. “The two foreigners are going home,” he said. “We’re transporting them to T’ien-chin so they can take the ship back to America.”
Addie was not sure she’d heard correctly. She wanted to ask Poppy whether she had got it right but didn’t want to turn and whisper to her for fear that it would look like they were plotting an insurrection. The man with the gun glanced at them and she saw that his eyes were cold and incurious. She was used to being stared at, appraised. Normally, there would come the moment when she was expected to perform, to speak either in her own tongue or in theirs, and either action would surprise them. This man seemed as if he were incapable of surprise.
“How much have they paid you?”
The captain told him the amount.
“You’ll take so little to help these pests?”
“Brother,” the captain said, holding up his hands in a gesture that suggested he was only tired and ready to get on his way, “I’m helping to rid the empire of cockroaches. What’s wrong with making a little money along the way?”
The man’s eyes were spaced far apart, and this gave him the impression of a snake. “If they lose only their wealth,” he said, still speaking to the boat captain but looking at them, “it’s too little. They run over the empire like dogs, and they tear it apart as dogs will do when they get hold of something good. They deserve no better than dogs.” He stared a moment longer before turning away. Then he said to the man next to him, “Take what money they have and send them away. They aren’t worth getting our hands dirty.”
Three of the men from shore hopped onto the boat. They came up to Addie and Poppy and stood blinking in their faces. Addie’s breath came fast, and she thought she might faint. She waited for one of them to speak. Instead, the one in the middle pivoted and spat into Poppy’s face.
Addie gasped. She was afraid that her friend would confront the men, but Poppy’s face was tight and pale, the skin pulled over her cheeks like a wind-filled sail. The globule of spit had landed on her jaw and stuck there. She didn’t move to wipe it away.
The man glared at Addie through narrowed eyes. He had a long knife, she saw now, and he turned it in the sun, catching the light. Then in one quick motion he used the flat side of the blade to knock the hat off Poppy’s head. None of them turned to see where it fell, and in the next moment the man had lifted the knife to her neck and he held it there while the other two began rummaging through the bags pushed against the outside wall of the tiny cabin.
Addie had stopped breathing. She couldn’t
look at Poppy; she couldn’t bear to see the knife positioned at her throat. Her heart was racing so quickly she thought it would break through her chest. Then she heard the men calling to their friends onshore to let them know what they’d found, and she knew they were looking through their luggage. She clutched herself in a sort of embrace, her hands grasping her own arms. She would not show she was afraid if she could help it. Beneath her skirt, she felt the sweat slicking the backs of her shaking knees. She had a pouch of money hidden beneath the layers of fabric, and she wondered if the men would search her for it.
But after a few minutes, they handed off all they had taken and the man with the knife lowered the blade from Poppy’s neck and put it back in his sleeve. He hopped back onto the shore and joined the rest. “You can go,” the man with the gun said to the captain. “But if we meet you bringing these devils back up the river, we won’t be as kind as we were today. Not to them, and not to you, either.”
The captain nodded and then called orders to the boatmen to push off again. Poppy sank onto her chair as the boat inched toward the middle of the river, but Addie remained standing. She turned and saw that the men onshore had relaxed their formation. They looked now like any group of villagers standing and talking together. When she turned back around, she saw that the color was returning to Poppy’s face. Addie retrieved the hat from where it had gotten caught in a coil of rope and fitted it onto her friend’s head. Then she squatted in front of her and grasped her hands.
Several minutes passed, and still Poppy didn’t say anything. Addie’s knees began to hurt, but she stayed there crouching. At last, some time after they had gone around another bend in the river, Poppy suddenly said in a strange, bright tone, “What in the world was that about, do you think?” When Addie didn’t respond, she asked the question again, this time of the captain, and in Chinese. “Why did you tell them we were leaving China?” She was almost smiling now and her eyes were shining.
The captain glanced back at them from his position at the front of the boat. “These men don’t like foreigners. They have a strong hatred for all of you, and for those of us who associate with you. Chinese Christians, in particular, they hate very much.”
“But why did you tell them we weren’t staying?”
He shrugged. “You’re still alive, aren’t you?”
Poppy glanced at Addie crouched before her and laughed. “I guess they wanted to have some fun. And did they give me a scare!”
“You’re all right?” Addie asked, looking up into her face. The sun had gone behind a scrim of clouds, but the day was still bright; it seemed as if the light were coming from every direction.
“A little shaken, that’s all.”
Addie nodded. Then all at once a great coughing wail came out of her and she was crying harder than she ever had before. She was still squatting before Poppy, and she lowered her face into her friend’s lap, letting the tears spread out over the cloth. She felt Poppy’s hands on her head, smoothing, comforting. “There,” Poppy said after a while, “we’re moving along much better now.”
Addie didn’t need to look to know that they had gotten past the shallows. She felt the lift, the slide into deeper water; the river was on their side now, carrying them away from danger.
It was not until early September that they arrived in Chungking. They came upon the city slowly; for an entire morning and afternoon, the guides were telling them that they had arrived, when all that surrounded them were the same mountains with various houses and terraced fields sprinkled over them—nothing resembling a city. And then suddenly they reached a crest and were looking across at the city walls. Behind them were many hundreds of buildings all crowded together on the steep hills, the density of the houses shading the area brown and gray. Stone streets could be seen running throughout. Boats crowded the various docks dotting the riverside below, and a pall of smoke hovered over the scene, indicating that it was indeed a city, the largest in the southwest of China. Even from a distance it was clear it was a Chinese city, more Chinese than T’ien-chin or Peking or Shanghai, no part of it clearly carved out for Americans and Europeans—no great block buildings in the Continental style, no wide avenues lined with trees.
Although it was autumn, the weather was sweltering and wet, as if the city had been built upon a boiling pot. The water was high in the two rivers, rolling and restless, and the boats that navigated the current looked as if they might capsize at any moment. It was a far cry from the shallow riverbeds of Shansi, where the walls were so dry that birds built their nests within the deep cracks, and small dusty whirlwinds went skipping from bank to bank.
They came down a path that broadened and then narrowed again very suddenly just where the stone pavement began. Then they were passing through the city gates. Inside, they followed the wall, which was a street from which steep staircases ascended. The staircases were in fact other streets, and the houses on either side crowded in close. Addie glimpsed the movement of people crossing from one door to another, the glint of water thrown from a pail out onto the pavement.
The guides took them as far as they could go, and then all at once they stopped, and Mr. Yü, the man who had been with them since Shanghai, told Addie and Poppy to dismount. “The mission house is up that way,” he said, pointing up a long staircase. This street was quiet and empty, no one standing in the doorways looking out. “We can get some pangpang chün to carry the luggage.”
“Pangpang chün?” Addie repeated, and turned to Poppy, who shrugged: she didn’t know, either, what this meant.
Before they had time to wonder, several men appeared, carrying thick bamboo poles on their shoulders. The poles were five or six feet long and polished from use, with loops of dirty rope on either end. Mr. Yü nodded at the nearest mule, which had a trunk on its back and side-hanging bags, and two of the men began unloading it. They each secured a bag to one end of a pole, and one side of the heavy trunk to the other. Then they squatted with the trunk between, lay the poles over their shoulders, and with a grunt, lifted the entire heavy burden. As they began climbing the stairs, Mr. Yü turned to Addie and Poppy and grinned. “You understand how they get their name?” He held his hands up in front of his chest and drew the fingers apart, an imaginary pole stretching between them. “Pangpang,” he said. “It means ‘stick.’ This is our name for these men: pangpang chün.”
“Pole soldiers,” Addie said. “That’s what they call them.” It sounded like a toy that Henry would play with. She blinked and swallowed. She hadn’t meant to conjure up her son. But she had, and just like that, both her children were there with her. There was Henry running up and throwing his arms around her waist; she could almost smell the sour scent of his hair when it was damp with sweat, fresh from some game he was playing with Freddie or the neighbor boys. She could never figure out their games, even when they explained them to her, gasping for breath, bright-eyed after running all over the streets of Lu-cho Fu.
Thinking of her boys, she felt suddenly ill. “Can we go now?” she asked.
“Of course,” Mr. Yü said. He glanced up, and Addie followed his gaze. The men who had gone up before them were turning into a doorway, angling over the threshold with the trunk and bags. “The other guides and I will stay here and watch over your belongings.”
Poppy began climbing the stairs, with Addie following. When they reached the doorway, a slender white man in a long Chinese coat came out and greeted them. “You must be our new friends from up north.” He looked from one to the other, peering at them from over a pair of spectacles that sat precariously low on his nose, looking as if they might fall off. “Evan Wickford. I’m one of the missionaries here. The oldest and the dullest.” He gave a short, stuttering laugh at his joke. He appeared to be forty-five or fifty years old, and he had the air, common to older bachelors, of a stage performer after the show.
Poppy shook his hand and introduced herself. Then she took a step up to make room for Addie. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Wickford,” Addie said. “I’m
Mrs. Baker.”
She had chosen this name because it belonged to an old childhood friend, and she knew she would remember it. Poppy had wondered why she didn’t use her maiden name, but they had both agreed she would do better as a widow than she would as a maid, and Addie couldn’t imagine calling herself Mrs. Schepp. That was her mother’s name, and she was certain that using it would make her feel like a fraud.
“Well, Mrs. Baker, you can’t imagine how happy we are to have you here.” Mr. Wickford dropped her hand and glanced up at Poppy, who was towering over them both; the addition of the extra step made her into a giant. Mr. Wickford seemed momentarily alarmed by the view. “I expect you’re tired,” he said quickly, and turned to lead them in over the threshold. The double doors were propped open with stone blocks, and as they passed through, two of the pangpang chün stood aside to let them by before leaving to go down for another load. “Where did you come from today?”
“I believe the place was called Yinglung,” Poppy said. “But we left before the sun came up. I guess you could say we were anxious to finish our journey.”
“Yes, I can only imagine.” He stopped in the middle of a very small courtyard. It was perhaps ten feet square, with room enough only for a wedge of sky to let in the light. “We were so cheered, Mrs. McBride, to receive word of your coming. Cheered, elated—we all were—only hoping for greater numbers.” He looked from one of them to the other with a nervous smile. “You understand that missionaries of the fairer sex are quite valuable to our purpose here, Mrs. Baker. The more, the better, and we were quite relieved and happy to learn that Mrs. Mc-Bride would be joining us, and only wished she weren’t coming alone. Therefore, I’ll leave you to picture how even more delighted we were when, not one month after that first notice, our prayers were answered in receiving your letter”—he nodded at Poppy—“with the happy news that there would be another addition to our ranks.” And finishing his speech, he turned to Addie and gave a small bow.
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