Chasing Down the Moon

by Carla Baku

  “Do it,” she said. “Hurry.”

  As Rose threaded her way into the street, a single voice rose from inside the house, a thin arching crescendo that ended in a howl. The crowd fell silent for a moment, then a wave of voices pushed out into the damp night like some terrible dark birth.

  Byron Tupper lingered on the edge of the crowd, moving back and back as people arrived to gawk and mill in front of Captain Kendall’s house. The man’s name passed from person to person as the town emptied itself into the cold evening. Somewhere he had lost his hat; the tips of his ears felt numb. He had hurled the gun into the bay and doubled back through a warren of alleys, staying away from street lamps. When the story came his direction —the Chinese had shot a white man, finally went and killed a white man— he couldn’t make sense of what he heard. He stood frowning, trying to piece it together. Then it dawned on him, and he was flooded with cool relief: he hadn’t shot anyone after all. He had been so certain, the way the man fell in the street. But he got things confused sometimes, he knew that. He shook his head and allowed himself a small smile. He was probably lucky not to have been shot himself, getting so close to the fight as he had. Someone inside the Kendall house all of a sudden pitched a fit, let out a bawl that sounded like a snared animal. A surge of sound and movement rattled through those in the street and Byron took several instinctive steps backward. In the center of this storm, there was no eye of peace. All choices were dropping away.

  Bai Lum held open the door of the mercantile when Rose got back. He closed and bolted it behind her. Before she could say anything, he wrapped his arms around her.

  “It’s awful.” She spoke into the crook of his neck and her lips were warmed by his skin. For a solitary moment, she breathed in the smell of him and let herself be held, feeling the hard joint of his shoulder under her cheek. He took hold of her at arm’s length.

  “Tell me.”

  “David Kendall was shot, and a boy…I’m almost sure David’s dead. Oh God, the way Mrs. Kendall screamed.” She pulled the scarf off her head and balled it between her fists. “It’s bad, Bai Lum. There was blood everywhere, all over the steps, and they’re blaming the Chinese.

  “The tongs?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” She took one of his hands in both of hers. “We have to go somewhere safe. My aunt’s house is close.”

  “Shu-Li and Ya Zhen are sleeping, they’ve slept through everything.” He went to the window and looked into the street. “We can’t take them out again. Not into this.” The sound of voices was closer, and now they could hear running along the sidewalks.

  “We can’t stay here.” Outside, another loud report, a rifle from the sound, and the shatter of breaking glass on the next block. Rose felt dumb fear seeping into her limbs. “Please. You know I’m right.”

  He posted himself at the door again, now holding a makeshift cudgel, the broken end of a shovel handle. “Go get them.”

  She flew up the stairs and into the room where the girls slept. They lay back to back, curled into commas, making a butterfly shape under the blankets. The crowd below was loud, perhaps closer, perhaps not. Rose couldn’t tell at first which girl was which. She shook a shoulder, and it was Ya Zhen.

  She came awake immediately. “What’s wrong?” The commotion outside hit a pinnacle and she scrambled to her feet. “They’re here,” she said, stumbling two steps backward.

  “No,” Rose said. “It’s not about you, Ya Zhen. No one knows you’re here.” Shu-Li sat up looking dazed, her hair bushed wildly around her face and shoulders. “But there’s trouble. I don’t have time to explain right now.” She grabbed the dress Ya Zhen had worn over in the back of the wagon. “Put this on, and the bonnet. We’ll put the apron and this scarf on Shu-Li. Hurry.”

  Shu-Li pulled the apron over her clothes without question. Ya Zhen did the same, once more yanking the bonnet low over her face. Let us help, Rose thought, a prayer sent out into the universe like a small stone dropped down a well, one more time. She swaddled Shu-Li’s upper body in David Kendall’s wool scarf, and then they were rushing downstairs.

  Bai Lum hurried from his post at the front door and guided them into the dark storeroom. He had pulled on a padded coat, the shovel handle tucked most of the way up his sleeve. “We must leave by the back,” he said. “There are already people coming into the street.” He bent close to Shu-Li and Ya Zhen. “Stay close to me.” He slid the back door open on its track a few inches and peered out, then opened it just enough to slip into the dark alley. Shu-Li followed, and Rose motioned for Ya Zhen to go. As she did, she reached back and took Rose’s hand, bringing Rose with her.

  The four of them huddled together behind the building, listening. Bai Lum nodded at Rose.

  “Here we go,” she said. “Only three streets over. Stay close.”

  They crept to the end of the alley and paused again. People were everywhere on the next block, packed into the street, on the sidewalks, huddled in front yards. Everyone talked, shouted. Women wept into handkerchiefs. One woman, dry-eyed and stone-faced, stood on the periphery with a little boy who idly knocked a twig back-and-forth against a fence. Someone’s dog began to bay, a deep monotonous howl immediately answered by other dogs in the neighborhood. Even with the numbers of people milling about, attention was so fractured and chaotic Rose felt as if her little group was invisible. It seemed to her that, if they were lucky, the pandemonium would work to their advantage.

  “Which way?” said Bai Lum, close and almost conversational. Ya Zhen seemed preternaturally calm, but Shu-Li looked terrible. Even under the bundle of scarf, Rose could see that her lips were white, as though she might pass out. Rose put an arm around her shoulders. “We can do this,” she said. “We’ll be fine.” They stepped from the alley, staying back in the shadows as much as they were able.

  Before they had taken three steps, someone stepped out of nowhere and grabbed Ya Zhen.

  People hovered everywhere. The metallic odor of blood and something darker, more foul, was strong in the dining room. At the Kendall’s house, the men had gone off, except the doctor, and Prudence Kendall didn’t know what he could still be doing. Already it seemed the intention was to separate her from David as quickly as possible, never mind that there was no way they could get farther apart. She would stay with him for now, as long as she could, fill her eyes with the physicality of him. She refused to be led away, be comforted out of his presence. Women twittered and hushed in all the corners of the house, and Prudence waited. She kept herself straight and held back the weight of anguish pressing up.

  She stroked her thumb over the long bones of his hand, over the prominent knob at his wrist, smoothing the few dark hairs there. There was dirt on his cuff and some under his nails. She thought about the paste on his coat sleeve. He was always clean about his person. He would hate this.

  Doctor Gross had rushed in with everyone when they carried David off the street. Neighbors urged Prudence to move away while the doctor looked at the wound, standing around her in a protective bunch, but she had pushed them away and stayed with him. The doctor had taken a cursory look at the wound and then taken off his own jacket, spread it over David. His somber face told Prudence everything. Her husband had been able to speak a few words, something about the streetlights, a gargled whisper that made no sense to her. In the space between words, his face went blank. Here, and then not here. Now Prudence held his hand under the doctor’s jacket, which was pulled over his wound and his face.

  Mrs. Cleary came into the dining room from the kitchen. The smell of coffee wafted in and Prudence had the sense for a moment that it was early morning, that she was patting David’s hand to wake him. It had been her small ritual to bring him a cup of coffee before he rose. He would lean against the oak headboard and sip his coffee, she would sit facing him, and they would start the day this way in quiet conversation.

  “Pru, dear heart,” Hazel said. She put her hand on Prudence’s shoulder and spoke quietly near her ear. “Won’t y
ou come with me for a bit of rest? We’ll take care of Captain Kendall for a little while. Phoebe needs you, too.”

  Prudence could hear her daughter crying, had been hearing her for some time she realized, but it seemed somehow disconnected from everything else.

  “Where is she?”

  “Doctor Gross has her upstairs. He’ll give her something to calm her, poor little thing, and Will should be here soon. Someone went to fetch him.” She patted Prudence’s shoulder. “Come up, dear, and lie down awhile. The doctor will give you something, too.”

  Prudence looked at Hazel Cleary’s soft, wrinkled face, at the white hair wound in a heavy braid, and she wanted to abandon herself to the old woman’s ministrations. She imagined she might collapse and allow herself to be taken up and rocked like a child. But she looked down at David’s hand resting in hers and shook her head.

  “Not now,” she said. She cleared her throat. “I need a basin and some wash rags, Mrs. Cleary—can you get them for me?”

  Hazel looked from Prudence to Mr. Kendall’s body, and it took several seconds before she understood what was wanted. “Prudence, you can’t mean to do this yourself.” She drew up a chair and looked hard into Prudence’s eyes. “Mr. Kendall has a terrible injury. Let the other women do this for you.”

  “I need some soap, too.” Prudence stood and laid David’s hand beside him on the table. “Not the soap in the kitchen. The good lavender soap from upstairs. Please.”

  Hazel sat for a moment, pinching the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. Then she got to her feet again. “I’ll get everything for you, darling, right away.” She paused. “May I help you, Pru?”

  Prudence shook her head.

  “I’ll go upstairs to see about Phoebe, then, and if you need anything else, you’ll call me, won’t you, if you need anything at all. I’ll be right here.”

  “Yes, there is something, Mrs. Cleary,” Prudence said. She made her request, and in the space of two minutes all the other women —perhaps a dozen or more— were herded out of the house. The doctor went too, leaving his jacket behind.

  It happened in seconds. All day she had feared this moment, had imagined and dreaded being accosted, yet at the moment the boy caught her by the arm, Ya Zhen felt only a short, resistant surprise. Here he was again, Byron, staring. Something bad had happened to his face; his nose was smashed to one side, blacking both eyes, and along one cheekbone was a terrible, crusted gash. But he smiled rapturously.

  “You’re here,” he said, pulling her into him. He buried his face against her neck. His breath was humid on her skin and he began to weep. “Thank God, I thought you were dead, I thought he killed you.” He whispered on and on, a rush of words into her hair.

  Revulsion surged through her. She pushed against his chest and wrenched backward, stumbling out of his embrace.

  “Pearl, it’s me.” Before she had a chance to get beyond his reach, he clutched her sleeve again. “You’re safe now. I can marry you.” Tears welled in his eyes, but he looked euphoric. He laughed and tried to pull her toward him again.

  She slapped him, hit him so hard she felt the concussion fly up her arm and into her shoulder. His head rocked back. Tall and muscular as he was, he staggered and nearly lost his feet. A thin line of blood trickled from the cut on his cheek, and his hair was in his eyes. She leaned forward into his face, panting, feeling a wild urge to reach out and tear handfuls of hair from his head.

  “No,” she said through clenched teeth, a guttural rasp that seemed to rise straight up from the ground under her feet. “Don’t touch me again.”

  Before Byron could stand straight, Bai Lum stepped between them. He put one arm out behind him and pressed Ya Zhen backward toward the alley, where Shu-Li had already retreated. In his other hand, held almost behind his back, he held some sort of weapon.

  Rose was already at Byron’s shoulder, speaking his name in a low voice. Ya Zhen drew close to Shu-Li. All the feeling had run out of her limbs except the palm of her right hand, which tingled wildly from the shock of the slap. Shu-Li put her arm around Ya Zhen’s waist and pulled her against the side of the building. They stood so close that Ya Zhen couldn’t tell which of them was shaking. She could no longer see the throng around the corner, but she could hear them, men’s voices mostly, roiling into the amorphous night sky in a furious, unarticulated bellow.

  Byron flipped the hair out of his eyes and lifted his fingers to his bleeding face. The smear of blood looked black in the dim light and he stared at it.

  “Byron?” Rose put her hand on the boy’s arm. “It’s not safe out here.” He looked up from his bloody fingers. “Byron,” she said again, “you’re hurt. You should go home.”

  He did not respond, but turned his head and peered toward the alley. Ya Zhen flattened herself against the wall, although she could tell by his expression he didn't see her clearly. Then he looked at Bai Lum, seemed to notice him for the first time. Shu-Li’s fingers tightened, and Ya Zhen’s whole body went rigid at the expression that hardened on the boy’s face.

  He shook Rose’s hand off his arm and fell back a step, wiping a hand across his mouth.

  “Was it you?” he said to Bai Lum.

  “Byron,” Rose said.

  He took another backward step, almost in the middle of the street now, not taking his eyes off Bai Lum. “It was you, wasn’t it. You were with her last night. You shot the man.” He nodded to himself. “You did it.”

  Rose reached for him again. Each time Rose got close to Byron, Shu-Li flinched. “No, Byron,” Rose said, “It wasn’t—”

  “Shut up!” he screamed at her. “Do you know everything? Were you there? I didn’t see you there!” He closed his mouth and stood panting, his breath sending white feathers into the chilly night air. He was crying now and even in the faint light, Ya Zhen saw tears track through the smear of blood on his cheek.

  Around the corner, a man’s voice rose over the din. “Go to the hall. They’re meeting at Centennial Hall.” A bell began to clang and the voices rose. Byron glanced in that direction as if just noticing the noise, looked at Bai Lum, and disappeared around the corner and into the fog.

  It was strange to wash her husband’s body this way, the way she had washed her daughter when Phoebe was a child. Prudence pulled back the quilted throw, steeling herself against the sight of the bullet wound. At first she felt she might lose consciousness, not so much because of the blood or even the injury, like a ragged mouth. It was the sense of overwhelming intrusion—that her husband’s body, as familiar as her own, had been rendered foreign.

  She took several deep breaths, not taking her eyes off him, and found she could bear it. First she undressed him, struggling to wrench the bloodstained things out from under his body. She folded each piece of clothing and laid it on the chair beside her. Taking a chunk of the fragrant soap, she began to wash away the blood and clean the wound. She expected it would bleed, but it didn’t, and this kept surprising her. She swabbed directly into the torn flesh, wiped up purple fragments that looked to her like bits of a calf’s liver. She rinsed the rag repeatedly, and there was little in her mind but the knowledge that she must finish this, like leaping into deep water and holding her breath until she came up again. Outside she could hear shouting and someone ringing a bell, but it came from the other end of town. Three times she went to the kitchen, poured off the bloody water and refilled the basin.

  David was not an exceptionally large man, but he was strongly built. Prudence had to use force to roll him onto his side. In his back, the wound was small and looked almost harmless, a minor accident in the flesh. As she balanced him, his right arm fell behind, the knuckles banging against the mahogany table, so she bent the arm at the elbow and rested it on his waist. She wiped blood from table and quickly washed her husband’s back and buttocks, then eased him prone again. Sweat trickled between her breasts and her hair stuck to her forehead. Once the blood was completely washed away, Prudence tore a clean rag in half and laid a fol
ded square over the wound. The smell in the room was still organic, even under the fragrance of the soap, but not so declamatory. She remembered her bedroom smelling like this after Phoebe’s birth—things washed up but with a faint scent of blood recently spilled. She went for another basin of water.

  Coming back from the kitchen, she could hear Mrs. Cleary upstairs with Phoebe. Her voice was quiet and rhythmic, and Prudence realized she was reciting the rosary. She wondered if Phoebe had ever heard the rosary before. It seemed to be helping, that and the sedative; the girl’s sobbing had quieted. Perhaps she would fall asleep soon.

  Each time Prudence returned to the dining room, the remarkable stillness met her again. David lay just as she had left him, of course he did, but this absence of agency, the utter loss of volition stunned her. She could expect him to move no more than she could expect the chairs to rearrange themselves. Where can he be? she wondered. Where is it he’s gone to?

  She washed the rest of him, beginning with his face. Mud from the street was in his nose, clung to the surface of his eyes and tongue. When the basin was fouled, she freshened it. Every part of him came under her hand. A childhood scar on his shoulder, the shape of his toes, the way the hair on his belly trailed in a thin line to his pubis—all of him utterly particular and beloved. Although she used warm water, his flesh became cool and inert. Only his hair, which had stayed thick and silky into his middle years, felt the same, cool and soft in her fingers. Often, while they made love, she would comb her fingers into his hair and hold his head that way, looking into his face while he rocked above her. With closed eyes, he would whisper her name.

  Finally, there was nothing else she could do. She went to the linen closet and got the quilt her mother had made them as a wedding gift, a Baltimore Album quilt appliqued with birds and fruit and flowers. After David was covered to the chin, Prudence climbed onto the table and stretched out beside him. She turned on her side and rested her hand on his chest, the way she had slept every night for twenty-six years. His chest did not rise under her palm. She turned her face into his shoulder and fell into grief like off a precipice.