by Carla Baku
As Lucy Huntington finished washing the supper dishes, she realized she could hear voices out in the street. Someone began to pound the front door. The plate she was drying slipped from her fingers and shattered on the floor, splinters in all directions. Parishioners often arrived at odd hours, but this thudding was relentless, and now she heard men shouting. It is because of the girl, she thought, because we have hidden the girl.
She picked her way through the shards of china and hurried into the front hallway. Through the sidelights, she could see people on the porch and a crowd in the street. She stood still with the tea towel in her hand, not wanting to answer. Charles came to the door of his study holding a page of the sermon he was working on. The lamp behind him lit his hair in a wiry silver penumbra.
“It sounds like half the town is out there,” he said. Now there were shouts for the reverend to open up, to come out.
“Have they found out, do you think? What should we tell them?”
“I can’t imagine this many people would care,” he said. “Let’s see what this is about.”
Lucy touched his sleeve as he passed her, wanting to hold him from whatever black message stood behind all those voices. But she smoothed the front of her dress and pressed forward to stand next to her husband. When he opened, several men crowded the doorway and tried to tell the news all at once.
“Dave Kendall is dead—shot down in the street,” yelled one, “but he lived a little bit, until we got him home.”
“It’s the Chinese. We’re gonna hang them all.” A wave of male voices erupted through the open door. Lucy could see a shifting throng of people moving beyond the edge of the yard, heading toward town. Several of their neighbors came outside and fell in with the crowd.
“You men listen to me,” Charles shouted from the porch. “Stop here and think about what you’re doing.” He lifted his hands over his head, trying to draw their attention. A few glanced up, but most ignored him. Then she spotted Jacob Weimer, a deacon in the church, and Charles’s close confidant. He shouldered his way onto the porch and shouted to be heard above the hundreds of men moving around them.
“Charles, you have to come with us,” Jacob said. “They’re going to Centennial Hall. Someone has to try and stop this.” His normally boyish face was haggard. “The mayor just came from Captain Kendall’s. He’s trying to get to Centennial Hall ahead of them.”
Cold filled the entryway and Lucy hugged herself. Charles was already taking his coat from the rack. She wanted to put herself in front of the door, find some compelling way to keep him, but the expression on his face made clear his intention to go.
He shrugged into his coat. “I have to try.” His eyes were steady on hers. “Don’t open the door,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll be fine, but—” He tugged one of her earlobes, an old gesture between them.
When he was gone, she returned to the kitchen and swept the pieces of dropped plate. The house seemed cavernous and the sounds of the broken china too loud. Outside, whoever carried the bell was relentless, all of them shouting bloody murder. She tipped shards into the dustbin and her mind vaulted in every direction—her husband, Ya Zhen and Shu-Li, Mattie and Rose. Standing in the doorway had chilled her and she sat near the stove, which still radiated a little heat from cooking supper. She wrapped her hands in her apron and thought about Prudence Kendall, whose husband had gone out tonight, too, and come home mortally wounded.
She tried to pray but found she could not adequately articulate her concerns. How does one begin to ask for relief from death, even on behalf of another? Lucy’s parents had died from cholera within a day of each other when Lucy was eleven years old. She learned at a young age that death interjects itself and refuses all entreaties to the contrary, no matter how earnest. Instead of praying, she simply held Prudence Kendall in her mind, in the same sacred space that she was holding Charles.
There were still voices in the street and then a gunshot. Lucy shivered and leaned a little closer to the stove, then caught sight of her reflection in the kitchen windows—a feeble old woman hunched into a chair. She stood so fast the chair fell over backward and hit the floor. “Enough of this,” she said into the empty room. “Enough.”
She strode to the kindling box and broke several pieces over her knee, then stoked the stove again for tea. No, she thought, let’s have some coffee. When the pot was on, she went upstairs for a sweater and her small fowling rifle.
“You can’t go out there, Bai Lum. Please. Didn’t you hear those people?” Rose couldn’t believe what he suggested.
“That boy knows where we are. We need a way out. Huntington could take us somewhere to wait until this passes.”
“Where can he take us tonight? We can’t keep running from hiding place to hiding place.” She didn’t say what she was thinking, that this was not going to pass. A man was dead and it would not pass. It seemed as if something inside was beginning to unravel and her hands shook. She pressed the heels of her palms together to steady herself.
They had not lit a lamp and Bai Lum was a shadow, weaving between tables and shelves with the makeshift club at hand. Ya Zhen had taken Shu-Li back upstairs. “Those girls can’t take much more of this.”
“I know. You stay here with them. I can go faster alone.” He crossed the room and stood close enough that she could see the outlines of his face. “I’ll bring help.”
“You know where the Congregational Church is? The Huntingtons live in the house behind.”
“I know where it is.”
“Stay in the alley,” she said. “You can take it all the way over there and cut across into their side yard.”
“Yes.” He cracked open the mercantile door. The street seemed oddly quiet now. “Take this.” He pressed the shovel handle into her hand.
“No,” she said. “You could meet trouble—”
He held her hands firmly against the weapon. “Keep it here, in case the boy returns.”
“Hurry.”
He touched his lips to her forehead and went out, disappearing around the side of the building.
She listened at the door. The only sound was a dog barking somewhere nearby. “Hurry,” she said again.
Centennial Hall stood open and hundreds of men were shoulder-to-shoulder, trying to get in. The shouts outside were overmatched by the roar inside. Charles Huntington and Jacob Weimer stopped on the far side of the lawn, looking at the mass of men.
“This is bedlam,” Jacob shouted. “We’ll never get inside.”
“I have to,” said Huntington. “Look at them.” These were men who worked crosscut saws and rigged massive redwood logs to steam donkeys to be hauled out of the deep woods. Work was slow in the winter, the woods boggy and mucked. The saloon trade was as profitable as lumber in the down time, and a great number of this crowd had arrived from the bars that ran up and down the waterfront. Every face, clean-cut or unshaven, bore a dark expression that looked akin to rapture.
“I want you to wait for me,” said Charles.
“You can’t go in there alone.” Jacob grasped his elbow. “I have an idea,” he said. “Back here.” He pulled Charles off to one side and around the corner of the building.
“They’ll be at the back doors, too, Jacob.”
“Not the back. I know another way.”
They moved along the far side of the building, feet squelching in the mud of a flowerbed. It was quieter on this side, but Charles could feel the vibration of the crowd inside rising through the soles of his shoes.
“It’s right there.” Jacob pointed to a narrow staircase, tucked behind an alcove.
“Where does it come out?”
“On the third floor, the storage room. Once we’re in, we can take the back stairs through the kitchen.”
The storage room was long and narrow, not much more than a crawlspace; the two men picked their way in the dark around brooms and pails and a stack of old newspapers. Jacob led him to the door on the far side and then they were hurrying through the back
of the building, into the massive kitchen. The voices out in the main hall were a single bellow that made the room pulsate. When Jacob stopped short, Charles grasped his shoulder.
“It’s enough, Jacob. Go home.”
Jacob’s face hardened and he shook his head. He opened the door that let out into the alcove behind the stage.
The noise was incredible, something Charles could feel pressing toward the front of the room. A wasted, coppery smell hung over the crowd, and a smell of damp clothes and mud so heavy he seemed to taste it in the back of his throat. He moved onto the stage where Mayor Walsh stood with a half-dozen other men. They had their heads close together, conferring. The sheriff was there too, gesturing emphatically and shaking his head in the negative.
Mayor Walsh stepped to the lectern and looked around the vast room. Charles noticed mud on his fine calfskin boots. For a moment, the noise in the hall seemed to grow, then the men began to quiet each other. There was a shout of “Hear him!” and the mayor had their attention.
“Men, we understand there’s been trouble tonight. Very serious trouble. Captain Kendall was an exemplary citizen of this city.”
“What are you doing about it, Walsh?” someone shouted. A rumble of assent.
“We want to handle this properly,” Walsh said. “It’s important that none of you go off half-cocked.”
“We’re not going to swallow this. Eye for an eye!” The men cheered. “We’re going to get them all,” a voice cried, “massacre every damn one of them killing bastards.”
It was what they had expected, Charles knew, why the city fathers had hurried away from their suppers and down to the hall, why they now stood in the shadowed recesses of the stage, awaiting a cue, someone to tell them what part they had to play here.
A tall man in the back wearing cork boots stepped onto a bench and issued a long piercing whistle; voices fell and heads swiveled toward him.
“Listen here,” he said, his voice almost conversational. “Are you murderers? You want blood on your hands? We’ve seen that here, before,” he said, shaking his head, “and you all ought to know that ain’t right.” Charles watched several in the crowd drop their heads, but the undercurrent of voices kept on. “We don’t have to have that on our conscience,” the man said. “But—” He held up an index finger. “But that don’t mean we have to keep them heathens in our midst. I say we put them out. Out in the woods, like animals. See if they can get along with the Diggers living out there. No shelter, not here.”
This got a vast roar of approval and they took it up as a chant—no shelter, not here, no shelter.
Charles stepped to the front of the stage. There were men in this multitude that he had known for years, men that he saw from his pulpit every Sunday. Neighbors and shopkeepers stood cheek and jowl with men who spent most of their time in the saloons and bawdy houses on 2nd Street. The desire for revenge looked the same on every face. He didn’t try to shout them down or quiet them. He just stood, looking from person to person. The chant died out.
“Gentlemen,” he said. He was used to making his voice carry, and he made sure they heard him in the very back of the room. “I ask you to listen to me for just a minute here.” When he had their attention he continued.
“There’s a thing to be done tonight, that’s sure. It’s going to be up to all of us to determine what that thing will be. Now, I know you don’t want to hear this, but what I’m about to say is the truth, and sometimes the truth is a hard thing to swallow.” He paused, let another grumble run through them. “The truth is that this thing that’s happened, this terrible death of one of our esteemed fellows, was an accident.” Their voices began to cycle up again, and the gas lamps on the walls flickered from the energy that moved through the room.
“Yes!” Charles roared. The deep baritone of his voice bounced back at him from the rear wall of the hall in a tight echo, and the men stood still, apparently dumbfounded to hear such a voice come from a white-haired man. “A terrible, unthinkable accident,” he continued. “But the rank and file in our Chinatown are as innocent of David Kendall’s death as I am. He looked across the mass of faces, shaking his head, and lowered his voice just enough to be heard. “If this is a matter of character,” he said, “I suggest we show what kind of character we have.”
Sheriff Brown stepped forward then. “The reverend is right about this situation,” he said. “I’m just as mad as you are, but I’m standing here telling you that I don’t know who shot Dave Kendall.” Charles could see that the man’s hands shook the tiniest bit, but his voice was solid. “No one set out to commit murder here tonight. I haven’t got a single person to pin this on, and I’m not going to have you men tearing up this town.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I’m sworn to uphold the law, and I mean to do so. If any of you start something that violates the laws of this county, you’ll be reckoning with me, and with my deputies.”
Elias Kent, who kept the books at one of the small sawmills, spoke up from near the front. “Something’s got to be done here, Sheriff. Do you mean to tell us otherwise?”
Mayor Walsh addressed him. “Absolutely not, Mr. Kent. Never think it, boys. Justice will be served. But we’ve got to make this decision with our heads set right. Now, look here, you know these men behind me.” The group, dressed in fine coats and clean collars stood like a church choir toward the back of the stage. Walsh motioned them forward. “We have a citizen’s committee to help us decide our course. What we suggest is this: we feel, and we believe you’ll all agree with us, that enough is enough.” Charles flinched inwardly, thinking this would just rile the crowd again. But someone shouted, “You’re not running for office here, Tom,” and heads craned around to see who the comedian was.
Walsh nodded grimly. “We believe that the best thing for Eureka is the orderly removal of Chinese persons from our midst. All of them.”
“Now you’re making sense,” someone shouted.
“It so happens there are two steamers in harbor tonight,” Walsh said. “We propose that the Chinese be compelled to pack themselves up, lock, stock, and barrel, and be taken by sea to San Francisco.” He waited and let the idea sink in.
Charles felt a weight in the pit of his stomach. “Mayor, with all due respect,” he said, “this is not fair treatment.” Walsh turned toward him, clearly nettled at the interruption, but Charles pressed on. “These people pay their rent, they mind their own business and you have no more right to drive them from their homes than you have to drive me from mine.”
Someone under the windows began to chant, “No shelter, not here,” and the crowd took it up again. The mayor stepped between Charles and the crowd and spoke in his ear.
“You’ve done your best here, pastor. That’s enough now.” The look on his face told Charles that there would be no persuading him otherwise; the decision was made. Charles took a step backward and Jacob grasped his arm.
“That’s it, Reverend. We’ve got to get out of here.”
Charles took a last look at the crowd and turned away, feeling the mass of men like a monolith behind him. He and Jacob ducked back through the storage room the way they had come in.
They hurried through the deserted streets, hands thrust deep into their pockets. As they walked, Charles explained to Jacob what had happened at the parsonage that afternoon, how he and Lucy and Rose had smuggled Ya Zhen away from Salyer’s.
“We thought we were putting her in a relatively safe place today,” Charles said. He shook his head. “Now it seems we set the child right on top of a powder keg.”
“It’s going to be bad.”
“Yes.”
“Those men are barely under control. They’ll shed blood.”
“More than likely,” Charles said. “Let’s get back to the house and decide what’s best to do next.” They hurried toward the rectory, and the gritty cadence of their shoes on the damp road fell into the silence between them. Over their shoulders, they could hear the voices at Centennial Hall, movi
ng back out into the night.
Bai Lum slipped from the back alley into the Huntingtons’ side yard. A dog started barking at the house next door, running along the fence and sticking its snout through broken boards, but there were dogs barking all over town, reacting to shouts and intermittent gunfire. There were occasional whoops that sounded like young men celebrating, which worried Bai Lum more than the gunshots.
Skirting around the carriage house and a half-dozen bare fruit trees, Bai Lum could now see Lucy Huntington in the house. She sat at the table with a silver tea service spread out before her, using a rag to rub furiously at a gleaming sugar bowl. A small caliber rifle rested across her lap. He didn’t want to startle her, but every minute that he was away from Rose seemed like throwing the door open to worse trouble. He was nauseated with worry, and it pressed him to take a chance. He took the back porch steps carefully, easing up the sides of the risers. He lifted a closed fist, hesitated and knocked softly, two gentle raps.
“Who is it?” She was already right behind the door, and sounded perfectly calm. She heard me come up those steps, he thought, and knew I was here even before I knocked.
“It’s Bai Lum,” he said. We need help.” The door opened immediately and Lucy pulled him inside. It was warm in the room and her hands felt hot and strong on his arm.
“Are you hurt, any of you?” She looked out into the yard. “Where are the girls?”
“They’re together at my store, with Rose. They were safe when I left them, but it’s dangerous for them to stay where they are. A boy saw us, saw Ya Zhen. Knew her.”
“Oh Lord.” She began to pace the kitchen. “My husband has gone off to try to talk sense to those men,” she said. “We’ll have to take the carriage to your place. We could bring the girls back here for the night.” She moved a few steps toward the door, where the rifle rested against the wall, then back to Bai Lum. “But this isn’t the ideal place for them, either.”