Chasing Down the Moon

by Carla Baku

  At first Rose was confused, thinking that the Huntingtons and Bai Lum were hiding more runaways at the hotel. But Lucy’s face told her a different story. “Salyer’s?” she said. “But Mattie works here. She’s never mentioned anything like that going on.”

  “Clarence Salyer is keeping four women as prostitutes at the hotel, and I’ve heard that two of them are young, one maybe as young as Shu-Li. Kept against their will, right in the city limits.”

  “Can’t you tell the sheriff?”

  “The girls sign a contract, offering themselves as prostitutes. Not that they can read what’s put in front of them, but Salyer can fall back on a legally binding document.” Lucy chucked the reins and they began to move again. “Whether it’s legal or not isn’t really the question, is it? Legal or illegal, it’s reprehensible.”

  Rose looked back at Salyer’s, its ornate Victorian construction bulking over the street, flawlessly whitewashed, every window clean and reflecting the bright sky back into the day. “So, you’re hiding a girl from San Francisco when there are girls right here who need help.” She shook her head, incredulous. “That doesn’t make sense. Why? Why not hide these girls?”

  Lucy drove on, looking for all the world like an elderly lady with few earthly concerns. “One of the reasons our enterprise has worked as well as it has, is precisely because the girls come from somewhere else. No one thinks about a runaway girl landing in such a small, remote town.” She held up a hand peremptorily when Rose started to object. “Now listen. Being small and remote is also the very reason it would be a serious risk to get one of Salyer’s girls away. First of all, and you know this all too well, in a small town there are a great many people ready to mind everyone else’s business. Second, we know virtually nothing about them—whether they are in good enough health to run, whether they have the stamina to hide and end up in completely unfamiliar circumstances. These are questions we don’t have to ask about the girls who come to us from out of the area; the friends who get them to us ensure that the girls we help are ready.”

  “How could any of them not be ready?” Rose nearly shouted. “I would think they’d do anything, go anywhere to get away from…from a life like that.”

  “It’s hard to comprehend because you and I have never lived with circumstances so dire. For some of these women, though, it’s a matter of ‘better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.’ They’re in a country they don’t know, have no family or friends to help, and many of them speak very little English. It isn’t entirely illogical that in such a state one might come to believe that, bad as life is, it can always become worse.”

  They rode the last two blocks without speaking, although Rose’s silence was a deep, angry frustration. She picked and picked at this information about Salyer’s. How many people knew? How could anyone ignore it?

  When they stopped in front of the Kendalls’, Lucy put her hand on Rose’s arm. “Listen for a minute, before you charge off,” she said. “It’s a terrible thing to find out. Terrible. It isn’t something Reverend Huntington and I take lightly. On the contrary—there have been several nights when we’ve hashed out the possibilities until almost sunrise. Do you believe that?”

  “Yes,” Rose said. The anger diffused a little, leaving tears in its wake. She looked into Lucy’s beautiful calm face, and the kindness there was unmistakable. “It’s just so awful.”

  “Yes it is. It is awful beyond comprehension. So we do what we can to beat back the dark with a little love. A little hope. We help a girl here and there, and when we can find a way to help all of them, we will, yes?”

  Rose nodded and, not having a handkerchief handy, blotted her eyes on her sleeve.

  “Good.” She patted Rose briskly on the back. “Now take your aunt’s groceries in, have a glass of water, and be sure Hazel knows not to mention Shu-Li to anyone else.”

  “Simple as that?” Rose said. “Step back into the day like everything is normal as can be.”

  “That’s all you need to do for now.”

  Rose jumped down from the carriage, already thinking about getting Mattie alone later to find out what she knew about the nasty secret at Salyer’s Hotel. She gathered the can of lard and the other things she’d bought. The string of firecrackers was already tucked deep in her coat pocket, a small secret explosion.

  “Mother of Christ.”

  Mattie stood straight up from a squat, dropping the bloody sheet as if it was on fire. Ya Zhen stopped churning the laundry. The sheet lay on top of the mound, the stain spread like a map, a dark continent ringed by browning archipelagos. Part of a footprint was clearly visible at one edge. Li Lau had lost a great deal of blood after the birth, it seemed.

  Mattie looked from the sheet to Ya Zhen. Her mouth moved as if to speak, but not so much as a whisper crossed her lips. “Wasser jetzt?” Ivo yelled hoarsely from the kitchen, making both women startle.

  “Not yet,” Mattie shouted back. “In a minute.” She plucked the sheet up, grimacing, and pushed it back underneath the rest of the pile. She hurried over to the wash tub and dipped her fingertips in and out of the steaming wash water with a little hiss of pain, and wiped them on the bottom hem of her apron. Her eyes searched Ya Zhen’s face. “Is that yours?” she whispered.

  Ya Zhen shook her head. “Another girl.”

  Mattie stared. “Is she…is she all right?”

  She made no reply, only looked at Mattie’s distressed face. Mattie let out a shaky breath and nodded. “We’ll need cold water. Lots”

  Together, they carried the bathtub off the porch and laid it next to the back wall of the hotel, out of sight. Mattie had Ivo bring out the hot rinse water for the second washtub, and while Ya Zhen used a long paddle to lift the scalding laundry from the soapy tub into the rinse, Mattie dropped the fouled sheet into the bathtub and covered it with cold water. They fetched more water from the kitchen pump. When they came back to the soaking sheet, an opaque veil of red drifted from the fabric. Mattie pursed her lips and reached in, grasping the sheet at two corners and dunking it repeatedly, until the water was completely clouded with blood. When they tilted the tub, it soaked into the bare ground, leaving the dirt faintly stained.

  “What is going on out here?” Cora Slayer yelled from the porch. “Is this wash being done or not?”

  “Stay here a minute,” Mattie murmured. “We’re here, missus,” she called, stepping out from behind the corner of the building. Then she lowered her voice, in a confidential way. “Just taking care of some stains. Of a certain nature, if you take my meaning, Mrs. Salyer. A monthly nature, you might say, from your girls upstairs.”

  “My girls? I don’t…oh shut up,” Cora snapped. “I don’t need to hear about any of that. Get this damned eyesore finished out here. Do you think we have all day to get the laundry done?” She stomped back into the hotel and slammed the door behind her.

  Mattie came back to find Ya Zhen bending over the bathtub, working the sheet hard, scrubbing the fabric together, rinsing, scrubbing again. Mattie took the sheet from her. “That’s enough now,” she said. “It looks a sight better than it did. Not as shocking, anyway. We’ll give it some more clean water and let it soak while we do up the rest.”

  They finished washing and rinsing everything. They ran the wet clothes and wet table linens and wet sheets through the tightened rollers of the mangle. They made three trips and carried everything up to a section of roof on the second story of the hotel that was flat and hidden from view of the street, and they hung everything out on the lines strung there.

  “Ya Zhen,” Mattie said, not looking directly at her. She held a chemise, probably Cora Salyer’s, to the line and plucked clothespins from the big patch pocket of her apron. “What happened to her? The girl.”

  Ya Zhen had no idea how to answer. The baby happened, but the hotel and the men happened. Clarence Salyer happened, and whatever had come before that. It was Li Lau’s life, and it was her own life. “A bad thing,” she said finally.

  M
attie waited, and Ya Zhen told everything. She told how she was taken away from her home, about the weeping of her little brother Hong Tai, about the long voyage and the girls standing in a line like sheep for sale. She told Mattie about the men who came to the hotel at night, so many she had stopped counting. She told her about Li Lau crying out in the night, and about Old Mol giving the girl whiskey. Finally, she told Mattie about the tiny baby, alive in her hands until he wasn’t, and about putting him into the fire. She said it all while she worked, even after Mattie stopped working and stared. She told her story with the voice of one carrying bad news from a great distance, and she kept working because the sun was shining, and on the roof an intermittent breeze flapped the clean wash, making a useful sound, the towels and shirts and clothespins felt real and substantial against her palms, and in the distance the ocean was a blue expanse under a limitless sky.

  Byron was most of the way to Billy Kellogg’s house when the fire truck pounded down G Street in the direction he had come from, horses at a gallop and the foot-powered bell clanging away. He felt mildly surprised that the town would bother. He and his father had no near neighbors and he doubted there were many who cared a fig whether Garland Tupper’s whole house went up in flames, and Garland right along with it. But he knew his father would make the most of the situation, allowing the usual crowd of laid-off loggers and miners in from the outlying hills to buy him a round of drinks at Kennedy’s, or one of the even seedier drinking holes near the waterfront. And as soon as he could lay hold of his son, Garland would thrash him, probably try to kill him.

  He figured he’d hide out awhile with Billy. He’d lain up at the Kellogg place before when Garland was in a black temper, out in the Kelloggs’ back shed. The ramshackle outbuilding warehoused a variety of broken tools and furniture and several flea-ridden hunting dogs. A gaping hole sagged in the far north side of the roof and it was damned hard to get warm at night when the damp came in off the water, which was probably why Byron had had to push one or another hound off his legs whenever he slept there. The Kellogg place was in worse repair than the Tupper house and was overrun with people as well—due, according to Billy, to his parent’s devotion to the Popish religion. There were seventeen Kellogg children of various ages, some grown with burgeoning families of their own, but all tending to remain around the home place. Even old Mrs. Kellogg lived there, who was Billy’s grandmother and mostly sat in a chair by the stove. She had a great many missing teeth and tended to stare a great deal at anyone who got close. Once Byron had opened the door to the privy and there was old Mrs. Kellogg, perched on the board seat and dozing over her own bare thighs.

  This afternoon none of the Kelloggs seemed to know where Billy was, although it was rare that anyone ever knew for sure unless he was in the same room when the question was asked. Byron wandered the place for a few minutes, decided Billy wasn’t there, and headed downtown.

  The sun was just west of noon and the day felt like deep spring rather than the rump end of winter. Byron circled through a warren of connecting alleys and unfenced yards, keeping his eye out for Billy. Behind the livery, Joe Reilly was nailing a couple of boards over his broken window. Three big nails were clamped between his lips and he struggled to hold a board in place while he hammered.

  “Need a hand, Mr. Reilly?”

  He looked around, squinting at Byron. He wore a tweed cap and faded brown vest and his dirty shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbow. “Yuh,” he grunted around his mouthful of nails. “Hold this here for me while I give it a blow, eh?”

  The man obviously had no idea Byron had taken part in the window’s breaking. Byron held the board in place and Reilly pounded the nails. The man’s hands were creased with dirt and he threw a powerful smell of horse and whiskey. “Too bad about your window,” Byron ventured.

  “Hoodlums,” Reilly grunted. “Miserable little bastards running loose what should be tied to their mama’s apron strings.”

  “Maybe you need a little extra help around here. I could give you a hand with whatever you need, and keep an eye out for trouble, too.”

  The man scratched one whiskered cheek. His back had a permanent stoop that forced him to look up at the world. “I might could use some help. Have to be a day at a time, though, muck out stalls and such. Are y’afraid of shit, boy?”

  “I’ve shoveled it.”

  “Ha! Out your mouth like as not, being a Tupper.” He hobbled off toward to the side door. “Well, Tupper, come in and show me what kind of help you are.”

  “How much?”

  “Money? More than you started with, which is nothing much, by the look of you. I see you put your back to it, I’ll give you two dollars for the afternoon.”

  Byron thought that sounded fine.

  “There you are, Rose. Thank goodness you’re back.” Prudence Kendall, arranging something in a pitcher, motioned Rose over. “Give me a hand with this, will you? I was telling Mrs. Cleary not three minutes ago that you had the finest way with arrangements. I never seem to be able to get things…I don’t know, balanced. I always end up with a bald spot somewhere.”

  “Ah,” said Rose, looking at the clumped mass of plant life in the pitcher and strewn across the table, “it’s, um—” There was a heap of woody stems from the backyard camellia bush, studded with a few scruffy pink blooms, many leathery leaves, and not much else.

  Prudence laughed. “I know, I know. Just fix it, if you can. There wasn’t a lot in the yard to work with. It’s not all my fault. It’s February!”

  Rose started pulling the camellia branches apart, trying not to bruise the flowers. Most of them already sported brown spots from rough handling. “I’ll go out and find some more to put in here,” she told Prudence. She knew there was a little patch of narcissus in the side yard, and figured that the pussy willows down at the back fence had probably sprouted their fuzzy catkins. “Where do you want it when I’m done?”

  “The sideboard in the dining room, if you would. Phoebe’s coming for dinner tomorrow night.” Phoebe was the Kendalls’ daughter, who had been married for almost a year to a fresh-faced law clerk named Will, but she still took frequent evening meals without him at her parents’ house. Although Rose thought the world of Prudence and David Kendall, she disliked their daughter and had to work hard to maintain an air of pleasant neutrality when she was around. In Rose’s estimation, Phoebe still acted like an indulged child, and her parents seemed besotted by behaviors that Rose found nearly intolerable—simpering chatter about clothing, for instance, had always made Rose want to beat her own head against a wall.

  “I was afraid if I waited until tomorrow to cut the flowers,” Prudence was saying, “I’d be out doing it in the rain. She might sleep the night, too, so I asked Mrs. Cleary to spruce up her room.” It cost Rose some effort not to roll her eyes. Yes, she thought, this will put Hazel in a lovely temper. Since the wedding, her aunt had several times (in private) shaken her head with a tsk and told Rose and Mattie that she found Phoebe’s clinginess with her parents “a wee bit peculiar. She’s leaving that young husband to his own devices all the time.” Rose’s opinion was that Phoebe’s young husband must find his evenings alone delightfully restful.

  “I’ll leave you to work your magic, then,” Prudence said. “I’m going out for a while.” She touched Rose’s shoulder. “Thanks for the rescue.”

  After Mrs. Kendall left, Rose went out to the yard, large shears in hand, and hurriedly collected what she could to finish the arrangement. She usually enjoyed this particular task, but after being with Lucy and Bai Lum, it seemed pointlessly stupid to her, standing at a table fussing over a bunch of cut flowers that would probably be halfway to dead by dinnertime tomorrow. She shoved stems and branches into the pitcher, and in the end had a knobbed and twiggy mass interspersed ludicrously with delicate narcissus cuttings. It was good enough; she knew that as long as it was overly full, Prudence would be satisfied. She carried it to the dining room sideboard before running upstairs to find her aunt.
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  “Hazel, are you up here?” she called at the top of the stairs.

  “Right here,” Hazel answered. “Come give me a hand if you’re free.” She was putting fresh sheets on Phoebe’s old bed. “I’m forever changing the linens in here. As if she slept in the bed every night of the week,” Hazel grumbled, “when she has a home of her own, a bed of her own, and a man to sleep in the bed with her.” She gave the edge of the ground sheet an almighty tug, snapping out any trace of a wrinkle or crease. “So, what have you to say for yourself?”

  Rose tried to tread lightly when Hazel took a perturbed mood. “Say for myself?”

  “You’ve been off to the mercantile. Again. I hope you didn’t have trouble today.”

  “I went with Lucy Huntington. You know that.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “I got the things on your list.” Her voice sounded small and defensive, and that made her mad. As they pulled the comforter up, Rose jerked her side hard enough to pull it out of Hazel’s grasp. Hazel grabbed it back, her eyes snapping blue fire.

  Rose huffed exasperatedly. “Don’t be mad at me,” she said in a rough whisper. “I just had to make a centerpiece out of sticks and weeds.”

  Hazel glared, but then she pursed her lips, trying not to smile. “Let’s finish this before we brawl,” she said.

  Rose plumped a pillow, her face hot. “Aunt, something did happen this morning—no, now, don’t get in a huff again.”

  “Does it involve Elsie Dampler?” Hazel asked, in a please, not again tone of voice.

  “Remember yesterday I told you that Bai Lum has a sister?”

  “I do.”

  “Yes, well, she’s the reason Lucy asked me to come with her this morning to the mercantile.” Her heart sped up as she reasoned out just how much to tell. “The sister, Shu-Li is her name, she’s…she’s a secret.”