Chasing Down the Moon

by Carla Baku

  “Eye for an eye.” It was the other man on the platform. Small and slender, he spoke in a quiet, almost conversational tone. “Isn’t that right?” He nodded at the fat man, who released Bai Lum’s hair. He grabbed the noose and slipped it over Bai Lum’s head.

  “You like that?” the fat man said. “Break my nose? We’ll see now, won’t we.” He slapped Bai Lum in the back of the head. The crowd jostled, some pressing forward, others stepping back.

  “For God’s sake, stop,” Rose pleaded. “You know this is wrong.”

  Elsie Dampler pushed through the spectators, her husband trailing behind her. She pointed at Rose. “Decent folks in town know what you’ve been doing down here, Rose Allen.”

  “Decent?” Rose laughed. “You haven’t the least idea what decent is.”

  “You’re a whore,” Elsie yelled, her large face florid under the hazy glare of the gas lamps. “A whore to a Chinese heathen.”

  “Look around you, Elsie. Is this decent?” She craned her head, trying to catch the eyes of those nearest her. “Why can’t you look at me?” she said. “How will you live with yourselves if you kill an innocent man?” She was shouting now. “Look at me! This is a lynch mob acting on the false testimony of a disturbed boy.” Garland twisted her arm. The small bones in her wrist ground together and she screamed, unable to help herself.

  “Shut up, whore.” His breath was foul with liquor and some darker decay. “Didn’t I tell you not to speak ill of my son?”

  Then a horse was galloping through the street, a carriage rattling behind it, bearing down on them. People scattered as Buster was reigned up short.

  Reverend Huntington was out of the carriage and striding toward them, his face thunderous. His white hair bushed out around his head as if electrified. He mounted the gallows in three large strides. The fat man took several steps backward and fell off the back of the platform, and a few of those watching laughed out loud. But as Reverend Huntington lifted the noose off Bai Lum, the small man put his hand on the butt of the revolver. Charles reached into his coat and drew a clasp knife.

  “I’d like to know what the blazes you think you’re about, sir,” said the man with the gun. He had not pulled his pistol, but his finger was against the trigger.

  “You’ve got an innocent man here,” said Charles. He cut the bindings at Bai Lum’s wrists. Rose could see raw, livid marks in his skin.

  The man drew his gun. “Shoot him,” Garland Tupper bellowed.

  Charles looked the gunman full in the face. “You’ll hang this man over my dead body.” With a single fluid motion, he cut the noose off its tether and flung it into the street.

  “Shoot him, Clayton, you cowardly son of a bitch. Shoot them both.” Garland shoved Rose aside and someone caught her in mid-fall. Tupper bolted for the scaffold steps.

  There was a sudden loud crack and several in the crowd cried out or ducked, arms over their heads. Rose flinched, feeling everything inside her go cold. But Bai Lum and Reverend Huntington were still standing. Garland Tupper howled, holding the back of his neck. A thin trickle of blood oozed between his fingers.

  “I knew your mother, Mr. Tupper.” It was Lucy. She stood up in the carriage, which lent her some height, holding a blacksnake whip. “She was a dear woman, but she neglected something in your upbringing.”

  Tupper gaped at her, then turned toward the steps again. Rose watched the little woman swing the whip in a whistling arc behind her. In a movement Rose hardly saw, Lucy cracked the whip again, this time splitting the air over Tupper’s head.

  “If you don’t leave now, I will strike you again,” she told him. “I believe I can take your eye out, if necessary.”

  Clayton looked from Lucy to Charles, then down at Garland. He dropped his hands to his sides. “That’s enough, Tupper. Salyer didn’t pay me to get mixed in with ministers and…and—” He gestured toward Lucy, who had her arm cocked for another pass. He moved to climb down. “Spineless cud,” Tupper said. He was still blocking the steps.

  Clayton leveled the pistol at Tupper’s face. “Not at all, sir. One must simply have the intellect necessary to recognize the difference between advantage and disadvantage. Now get out of my way.”

  “Do as he says, Tupper.” A deputy sauntered over, looking only half interested. “You boys have made your point.”

  Tupper stepped back, breathing hard and touching the weeping red welt on the back of his neck. “This is the Chinaman that killed Kendall,” he yelled. “My boy saw him, damn it.”

  “Yeah, and we got a dozen witnesses brighter than your boy, each one pointing the finger at some other Chinaman they suspect.” The deputy folded his arms over his chest and spat between his spread feet. “Sheriff already filled up the two open cells he had at the jail. Probably got twenty Mongolians packed in there, back to back like sardines. All for the one murder, you follow me?” He stuck out his chin and stared Tupper down. “Move on.”

  Tupper lowered his head and bulled his way through the thinning group of spectators. They were moving off already, dispersing into the general melee.

  Rose pushed her way to the base of the steps just as Clayton came down. His gun had disappeared, probably into the back waistband of his trousers, and he was smiling. Smiling as if leaving some bland amusement, a livestock display at the county fair, perhaps. A harrowing rage filled her, so primitive she felt she could tear his out his throat with her teeth. She crossed her shaking arms over her bosom and held herself back, stared at the ground. He passed so near she could see the raised insignia on the buttons of his coat sleeve. Then he was gone and Reverend Huntington followed Bai Lum off the gallows. Rose approached him; in his eyes was his love for her, and a warning. If she touched him out here in front of these people, it would be incendiary.

  She stopped where she was. “Everyone is safe,” she said, hoping it was true. “Mattie is with Shu-Li and Ya Zhen.”

  “Come on,” said Charles. “We have to get off the street.”

  They hurried to the carriage —where Lucy still stood with the whip in her hand— and they climbed up. Bai Lum and Charles sat in the front, Rose and Lucy behind them. When Rose sat down, Lucy embraced her.

  “Are you hurt, sweetheart? Let me see your hand.” She lifted Rose’s left arm and pulled back the sleeve. Her wrist was mottled purple and beginning to swell. Lucy frowned. “Wiggle your fingers.”

  Charles took the reins and got them moving.

  “I’ll be fine,” Rose assured her. In fact, she could now feel her pulse beating in sick waves that shot from her fingertips to her shoulder. As the carriage raced along the street, Rose looked hard at Lucy. “Mrs. Huntington, where did you learn to handle a whip?”

  “Wiggle,” Lucy insisted.

  Rose did, clenching her teeth.

  “She learned that trick from an older brother,” said Charles. “When she was no bigger than a minute, her brother Grady made her a little whip of her own and taught her to make it snap.”

  Lucy still cradled Rose’s wrist. “It probably isn’t broken,” she said. “We’ll bind it just as soon as we can.”

  As they pulled onto the east end of 4th Street, Rose stared at the confusion of people and belongings piling up outside the buildings, and the people, Chinese and white, milling everywhere in the foggy night. She felt terribly hollowed out, as if some vast, black space had opened inside her. She thought about Mattie’s parting words when she, Rose, had bolted from the store.

  “Mattie said they’re forcing an evacuation.” It seemed her voice came from somewhere outside the carriage, stifled and distant. “Is it true?”

  Charles stopped in front of the store. “Let’s get inside,” he said.

  The door was open, the frame splintered around it. A bag of flour was split open across the threshold. They stepped around gluey piles that had congealed on the damp boards. Inside, Lucy stumbled over something. Even in the dark, Rose could see the entire store was ransacked.

  Bai Lum ran for the stairs, calling for
Shu-Li and Ya Zhen.

  Rose felt rooted in place, afraid to follow, afraid to see no one else here. When she took a step toward the purple curtain, she banged her shin and fell to one knee, bracing herself with her sprained wrist and crying out.

  “Wait right there,” Lucy said. “Charles, I need your matches.” She lit the gas lamps while the reverend wrestled the door closed. The bolt had torn loose when the vandals broke in, so he laid a heavy set of shelves on its side and wedged it across the entrance.

  “Bai-Lum!” Rose shouted. “Are they here?”

  His voice floated from the top of the stairs. “We’re coming.”

  “Thank God,” Rose said, and sighed with relief. Lucy and Charles stood looking around at the wreckage. Shelves were overturned and goods strewn in all directions. Glass was everywhere. Part of a bloody handprint marked the counter, and there was a spatter of blood across the floor. She felt a small, savage satisfaction that at least one of the thieves had been hurt. For there was no doubt thievery had been a large part of what had happened here; it appeared that, for every bit of stock still on the floor, at least three times that amount had vanished. A movement caught Rose’s eye and she looked up at the kites, still attached to the ceiling, but mutilated. The beautiful carp hung in long, red streamers.

  There was movement in the shadows at the rear of the store, and Rose felt her heart give a lurch. Mattie and Shu-Li, their faces gaunt with tension, followed Bai Lum into the faintly lit storefront.

  “Wait,” said Rose. “Where’s Ya Zhen?”

  Byron sat on the rickety back steps of Salyer’s, drinking from a half-full bottle he had found in the hotel kitchen, stashed behind a mason jar of pickled cherry peppers.

  After Pearl slapped him, he had worked his way over to Chinatown, checking behind the livery and Kennedy’s tavern, hoping he might run into Billy Kellogg somewhere. He regretted throwing the gun away. That was stupid. He had panicked like a little boy, only to hear a few minutes later that it was the Chinese who shot that man Kendall. He was stupid about everything! He was stupid about Pearl, who hated him, and he was stupid about the gun, which he needed.

  Billy could lay hands on a gun, though, and then they’d get into the Chinaman’s store and take care of that man-killer. He’d take care of Pearl, too. She didn’t want him, but he’d take her. He’d give her over to Billy, or to his to father, maybe. His father had been right about her. A whore. When he was six or seven years old, he’d seen Garland throw a pullet into the circle of a dogfight, just for fun. Byron figured it would be something like that if his father got his hands on the girl out in the street. Let him have her.

  When he got to 4th Street, there were people everywhere, moving in and out of shops. Some windows had been broken and glass was scattered across the boards of the sidewalk. A group of men, maybe seven or eight of them, swarmed across a tall platform, hammering planks. It looked like something made for electioneering, until one man mounted the platform with a heavy rope in hand. The coil of the noose made Byron’s heart skitter in his chest. He drew forward, feeling as if he was walking in a dream, and touched the side of the scaffold. The boards were so newly cut they oozed pitch and Byron’s hand came away sticky.

  Then an amazing thing happened. Three men came swaggering down 4th Street with that goddamn raping killer Chinaman, him trussed up between them by the wrists. Byron took one look and was wide awake. He charged them. Before the captors knew what was happening, Byron drew back and punched the bastard in the face. He got in a second swipe, right in the mouth, before fat Randy Fickes had shoved him away.

  “Get off, Tupper,” Fickes said, his voice thick and nasal. Byron could see that his nose was mashed-looking and pushed off to one side, just the way his own was. He thought Garland must be out distributing beatings. “This one belongs to me,” Fickes said.

  “Like hell,” Byron said. “He’s the shooter. Mongolian whore master shot Mr. Kendall dead.” He panted and rubbed the knuckles of his right hand. “You look a little like me now. How does that feel?” The Chinaman’s mouth was bleeding good, and his eye puffing.

  “I did nothing.” The Chinaman tried to wipe the blood off his mouth, but Fickes yanked his hands away by the rope lead.

  “You’re a damn liar,” Byron said. He looked around at the three captors. “He’s the one, he did it.”

  The smallish man with the pistol stuck in his pants was looking at Byron steadily. “Are you sure about that?”

  Byron nodded solemnly. “I seen it happen.”

  “Well then,” the small man said, smiling and gesturing one hand toward the gallows. “Our arrival appears serendipitous.”

  Things happened fast after that. Fickes and the small man hauled the Chinaman up the stairs, and it was only a minute before a little crowd had gathered. Then a bigger one. Byron stood, looking up at the prisoner with the rope hanging next to him, and a surge of happiness beat through him. When a hand landed on his shoulder he looked around with a big grin on his face, thinking it was Billy, but there was his father, grinning right back. He tried to step away, but Garland held his shoulder with a vise grip.

  “What’s all this?” Garland said. He swayed slightly and Byron could smell the drink on him.

  “He shot a white man,” Byron said. He wanted to shrug out from under his father’s arm, but couldn’t do it without twisting himself around.

  Garland stared at Byron, then swiveled his head to look at the scaffold. “Him? The store keeper?” He looked at Byron again, shuffling one foot to keep his balance. “The hell you say.”

  Byron straightened conspicuously. “I was there. I seen the man fall.”

  Garland’s brow furrowed. “I seen him fall, too. Didn’t see you.”

  Byron remembered then, watching for his father at the opium room. Somehow he had forgotten that moment, Garland easing out into the fog in a swirl of smoke. He forgot firing the gun, the man falling in the street. His tongue felt swollen to the roof of his mouth.

  Then Garland smiled. “Guess this is one that won’t make the boat, tomorrow, eh?” He let go of Byron and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Do for him, boys!”

  That was his chance. Byron ducked off into the crowd. He worked his way around to the back of the scaffold just in time to see the teacher come tearing around the corner, tripping and hollering. If the Chinaman and Miss Allen were here, where was Pearl?

  That was when he decided to make a last trip to Salyer’s. Now, while people were occupied.

  The hotel was dark. He crept around back and let himself in the rear entrance, watching for the old woman; he’d slapped her a good one earlier, and if she saw him here now there’d be hell to pay. But the hotel seemed deserted. There was no light in the small hallway and he had to feel his way along. Pearl’s room was empty. He worked his way to the next room. Inside, he nearly gagged on the smell. He could see the outline of the body on the bed, head cocked back and dark hair spread all around her, bedclothes dragging the floor. His knees buckled and he stumbled sideways. She was dead.

  He staggered out of the room and leaned against the wall. The floor seemed to tilt under his feet. He remembered the screaming in here this afternoon, remembered waiting in the alley with the gun. The man fell, but they said a Chinaman did it. He had seen Pearl —she had hit him— but here she was, dead in this bloody room. He wondered if the opium had done this to him. The door was still ajar and the smell was like Cooper’s slaughterhouse. Byron fell on hands and knees and vomited, then crawled away from the mess.

  He pulled himself up the wall and felt his way to a side door. A narrow stairwell, black as the bottom of a well, took him to a hallway near the kitchen. He poked his head into the dining room; no lamps had been lit, and most of the chairs were set upside-down with their legs in the air. There had been no supper served. Two stoves hulked in the kitchen, their iron skins barely warm to the touch. He rummaged in the cupboards and after a minute found whiskey. He took a long pull on the bottle, then another. He was abou
t to go out into the lobby when he heard someone come in the front door. If he was caught rifling the kitchen, they might take him for killing Pearl. Or for shooting the man in the street. Put him on the gallows next to the Chinaman. He hurried back upstairs the way he had come, clutching the bottle with one hand and feeling along the wall with the other, trying not to thump his boots on the risers. Then he was into the back wing and out the door, not bothering to shut it behind him. The salty tang of the bay filled his nose, and halfway down he sat on the splintered steps. He took a deep lungful, then rinsed his mouth with a bit of whiskey—just a little, so as not to waste it. He spit over the banister to get rid of the taste of vomit and the smell of Pearl’s blood, and took another long swallow from the bottle. Something pressed at the small of his back and when he reached around, he remembered the storybook, stuck in his belt for hours. He left it there. He didn’t need to look at it to remember the story. Another long draft of whiskey and the bottle was close to empty.

  “Mrs. Duck was having a party.” He pulled his coat tighter around him and rested against the banister. “She wandered far down the lane, collecting bayberries to make her special bayberry candles.”

  Ya Zhen wondered if she was still visible. She felt that she might have turned into a fog woman, left her body somewhere behind her. Mattie had told them the news, that all Chinese were to be sent away. When the words fell from Mattie’s mouth, Ya Zhen felt as if the boundaries of her spirit had pressed right through her skin. Rose had run out the door, and while Mattie stood calling after her, Ya Zhen slipped into the storage room, rolled back the freight door as Bai Lum had earlier, and rolled it shut behind her. She had a knife from his kitchen hidden in her sleeve, its haft gripped firmly in one hand and the slender, curved blade resting against her arm.

  The fine, cold mist of fog filling the street washed over her and she walked through the front door of Salyer’s Hotel as if born out of the wet night. She had never used the front door before, had never been in the lobby. No lamps burned, but the tall front windows lent enough light to see. She glanced around at the upholstered furniture and potted palms. No one was at the desk. She thought she heard a small noise back in the kitchen, but she didn’t care. She walked up the center of the wide, carpeted stairs, making no effort at stealth. She was wet as a fish, her hair clinging to her back. At the top of the stairs, she turned right and went through the door into the back wing. The first room on the left belonged to Wu Song and Wu Lin. It was dark and silent, the door ajar. The narrow hallway was empty, and at the far end the rear entrance stood wide open. The passage was freezing and smelled of vomit. She could hear the ruckus from Chinatown now, voices mostly, but it had an altogether different tenor than the earlier menacing noise of the street mob. Almost celebratory.