Chasing Down the Moon

by Carla Baku

  As the crowd near the wharf swelled and their progress slowed, Rose felt as though she might start screaming. The relative quiet was unnerving, just the sound of feet on the road, the creak of wheels, a half -dozen seagulls circling overhead, an occasional cough. To her left, people began to whisper and point at a Chinese woman, one of the merchants’ wives who had lived her life in Eureka hidden from public view. Two young men carried her between them in an ornate chair. Her bound feet were nothing but buds at the hem of her trousers, clad in tiny pointed slippers. She hid her face behind her hands and wept quietly.

  Rose craned her neck, trying to see around people, trying to catch a glimpse of Bai Lum in the mass of moving bodies. Moments of their night together kept passing through her mind, luminous soap bubbles of memory—the faintly earthy smell of his hair, the angularity of his cheekbones in the candlelight, the smooth skin on his shoulders. Waking in the dark, knowing he was there with her.

  Then she saw him. “This way,” she said to the others, gesturing to her right.

  “Show me,” said Reverend Huntington. He craned to see where she pointed.

  He stood among dozens of men grouped near the edge of the wharf, taller than most of those around him. At his back, the wind was strong enough to ruffle the harbor with whitecaps and throw a fine salt spray into the air. Two skiffs were tethered to the pier; their slender masts rocked in the swell. Reverend Huntington waved his arms over his head, and when Bai Lum spotted him he lifted his hand in a return wave, relief evident on his face even at a distance.

  “Look, Shu-Li,” said Lucy. “There’s your brother.” She and Hazel pointed him out. Shu-Li stood on her toes, holding onto Rose’s arm, then burst into loud sobs when she saw him wave.

  Ya Zhen once more soothed the younger girl. “É qĭng, mèi mei,” she said. “Don’t cry anymore.” She thought of Hong Tai, running after her the day the men took her in the ox-cart. She kissed Shu-Li on the cheek. “You’ll be safe now.” Shu-Li nodded and wiped her eyes.

  Everything had come to a motionless bottleneck. The committee of appointed leaders, backed by their vigilante enforcers, clapped their hands, whistled and called for attention. Sheriff Brown addressed the crowd.

  “Listen up now, all of you.” Before he could say more, the wind flipped the hat off his head and sent it skittering down the street. Two young boys ran after it and one stopped its flight by leaping on it, driving it partway into the mud. A ripple of uneasy laughter passed through the bystanders. An elderly Chinese man smiled at the boys, but the faces around him were grim, somber as a funeral cortege. The boy returned the sheriff’s hat and swaggered over to the sidewalk to stand by his father. The sheriff, holding the muddy hat in one hand, continued.

  “So far,” he said, “this thing has gone pretty well. Just a little longer and you folks can be on your way.” Rose was astounded at his choice of words. As if there was a choice. As if they were going on an excursion by their own free will. She kept her eyes on Bai Lum’s face, storing every moment to hold in her heart until she saw him again. Wait for me, she thought. Wait. She needed to get to him.

  Sheriff Brown continued. “What we’re going to do here is divide everyone into groups and get you out to the ships on skiffs.” A flow of voices passed through the crowd, dispersing and interpreting this new information. The sheriff lifted his hands and waited until he had everyone’s attention again. “I know that slows the process down some, and I’m sorry for that. But with this chop,” he said, gesturing at the bay, “we can’t risk bringing the big boats to the pier.” He moved as if to put his hat back on, noticed the mud and instead ran the fingers of one hand through his thinning hair.

  “It’s important that we continue to keep order.” He turned somewhat to look more fully at the white onlookers. “I’m real proud of the upstanding way you folks have conducted yourself in light of how grieved we all are over—” Here he paused, perhaps not wanting to invoke David Kendall’s name and stir up trouble he didn’t need. “Over the recent events.” He glanced at his boots as if deciding whether he’d said enough, and looked again at the crowd massed together in the street. “Let’s go ahead and get started, then.” He nodded to his left where a group of men stood by, and pointed his hands toward the pier like two revolvers. The men jumped into action.

  “Hurry,” Rose said. “We have to get to him now.” She pushed forward, holding Shu-Li’s hand, pulling her along.

  Reverend Huntington put an arm around Ya Zhen’s shoulders and followed. “Wait right here,” he called back to Lucy just before he disappeared into the crowd.

  “I have to come!” Mattie said.

  He nodded and gestured for her to hurry.

  Lucy and Hazel worked their way onto the sidewalk, pushing through a throng of onlookers. The wind riffled through clothing and blew hair back from faces that were charged with curiosity and feral gratification.

  When they finally reached a spot where they could see Bai Lum, Hazel shook her head. “I don’t know how Rose will bear it.”

  “We’ll see she gets to the city,” Lucy said. “We’ll find him, and the girls will be with him.”

  Hazel blew her nose. “From your lips to God’s ear,” she said. “In the meantime, you and I will be a poor substitute, I’m afraid.”

  From their vantage point they could see Charles, so tall in the crush of people, following in Rose’s wake. The first skiff was already loaded with people and cargo, riding low, water almost to the gunwales. Two oarsmen heaved the craft into the oncoming wind, pointed toward the two steamships sitting at anchor a hundred yards out in the bay.

  Rose was within a few feet of Bai Lum, Charles directly behind her, when Hazel pointed into the crowd near them. “What is that idiot doing?’

  Lucy squinted. Someone else was on the same trajectory, bulling through, shoving people out of his way. “No,” Lucy moaned, “not again.”

  They had almost reached Bai Lum when Garland Tupper appeared from nowhere.

  Before Rose could turn around, Shu-Li screamed. Tupper had Ya Zhen by the throat, shaking her back and forth and shouting into her face.

  “What’d you do to my boy?” he bawled, but in his drunken rage Rose could hardly understand him. His face was the color of a boiled beet and spittle flew from his lips into Ya Zhen’s face. He looked as though he might sink his bared teeth into her cheek. Ya Zhen’s hair whipped around her as Tupper pulled her from side to side.

  “Ya Zhen!” Rose bolted toward them, aware on some level that the crowd had pulled back, staring. Shu-Li kept screaming, trying to back away as Reverend Huntington lurched forward. Rose reached them a split-second before Charles did. Still howling, no real words now, Garland threw Ya Zhen aside. She hit the ground face-first and did not move, the crimson gown belled out on the ground. Mattie fell to her knees beside her.

  Tupper pulled his arm around and backhanded Rose. She took the blow on her cheek and ear. There was no pain as she fell against the shifting crowd, just a stunning force that seemed to drive sound out of the day. Large black moths floated into her field of vision and she blinked them away. Even as someone pulled her to her feet, Garland swung around, a line of drool depending from his baying mouth, and punched Reverend Huntington. Rose’s sense of hearing came back in pulsing waves that lit her face with pain, and she could detect, in rapid beats, the hectoring voices of the sheriff and other men trying to push into the center of the people, and wagons all around them.

  Charles staggered, blood pouring from the side of his face.

  That was when Bai Lum reached them.

  Tupper saw him coming. He pulled back to throw another punch but in his stupefied state produced only a predictable looping roundhouse. Bai Lum drove into him, Garland’s blow glancing off his shoulder. He threw Garland into the muddy road and clubbed him in the temple with one hand, took hold of his throat with the other, forcing his thumb deep into the cleft under Tupper’s jaw. The drunken man bucked beneath Bai Lum, digging in with his heels and writhing
, clawing for Bai Lum’s throat but unable to get a hold. Bai Lum hooked one hand into the man’s greasy hair. Teeth bared, he pounded the back of Tupper’s head into the ground.

  “Stop!” Rose screamed. “Stop it, Bai Lum.” She reached for him, feeling the vibrations under her feet of Garland’s head striking the dirt.

  Reverend Huntington stepped in front of Rose and put Bai Lum into a headlock, yanking him backward. Bai Lum turned on Charles, his lips still lifted in a half-snarl, but then he saw. Saw that it was Charles, saw a weeping, terrified Shu-Li kneeling with Mattie next to Ya Zhen’s prone form. And then Rose, he saw Rose, a trail of blood trickling from a cut beneath her eye, her ear and jaw swelling, reaching for him.

  Garland moaned and tried to lift his head, but lapsed back, unconscious.

  Before Bai Lum could take a step toward Rose, the sheriff and several other men broke through the crowd. Tom Brown looked around at all of them, his eyes wide.

  “What in the name of Christ?” He looked at Charles, whose lower face and shirt were covered with blood. “Reverend?”

  “The drink,” Charles said. He cleared his throat and spat a gobbet of blood and mucous into the dirt. “I believe the drink has finally sent Mr. Tupper around the bend. He attacked these good people, Tom. First the young women,” he gestured at Ya Zhen and Shu-Li, “and then Rose Allen. Bai Lum here was simply trying to protect his sisters.”

  Then Lucy and Hazel pushed their way through. “Charles.” Lucy stumbled over to her husband, beginning to cry.

  He put his arms around her. “Don’t worry, old girl. It looks much worse than it is.” He stroked the back of her head with an unsteady hand.

  The sheriff looked at Rose, then back at Charles and Lucy. “Why the hell are you all mixed up in this? You ought to be on the walk over there, out of harm’s way.”

  “We were acting as chaperones, Sheriff. Trying to reunite these girls with their brother.” He looked over at Ya Zhen, who still had not moved. Mattie was trying to turn Ya Zhen onto her back. Shu-Li crouched next to her, inconsolable.

  “Apparently it’s a very good thing we were here, too,” said Hazel. “Rose, let’s see to the girls.”

  It took every bit of strength Rose had to turn her back on her husband, but she forced herself to look away, went and knelt by Ya Zhen’s still form. When she bent over, the pain in the side of her face made her momentarily woozy. Hazel motioned for Shu-Li to go to Bai Lum. Rose didn’t watch her go, but she could hear Bai Lum soothing her.

  “Ya Zhen?” Rose said quietly. She and Mattie turned her over as gently as they could, and Hazel brushed the hair from her face. There were marks on her throat, but she was breathing and didn’t seem seriously injured. “Ya Zhen,” Rose said again, and patted her cheek.

  Her eyes opened, closed again, then opened and cleared. She winced and sat up. Hazel got behind to help lift her to a sitting position. The sun reflected off the slightly curved edge of a large knife in her hand.

  Rose folded her hand over Ya Zhen’s and, without missing a beat, Mattie covered the blade with the hem of her skirt.

  Hazel shifted her weight to be sure she blocked the sheriff’s line of sight. “Put it away,” she said quietly, “or you will never make it to the boat. Never in life.”

  Rose did not take her eyes from Ya Zhen’s. She felt the girl’s hand tighten on the handle, shaking minutely. Without breaking eye contact, Ya Zhen slipped the knife under her tunic, then held up her hand, the five fingers spread. Hazel let out a long, shaky breath.

  “Can you stand?” Mattie asked.

  Ya Zhen got her feet under her, swaying slightly, with Mattie and Rose supporting her on both sides. They walked over to where the sheriff stood with Charles and Lucy, Bai Lum and Shu-Li.

  “She’s going to be all right,” Hazel said. “Thank heavens.”

  “The Reverend says Tupper tried to kill the girl, unprovoked,” Tom Brown said. “Is that the way you saw it, Miss Allen?”

  “Absolutely. He was screaming and incoherent.”

  “Hazel and I saw him, too,” said Lucy. “From clear over there, pushing to get at them.”

  Garland Tupper lay sprawled, now snoring loudly. The sheriff gestured at two of his men. “Get him out of here. Drop him in a cell for now and we’ll sort his hash later.”

  Each of the men hooked an elbow under Tupper’s armpits and dragged him away, yelling at the crowd of Chinese onlookers to get out of their way. The heels of Garland’s big cork-soled boots left an uneven trail in the mud, like the path of two snakes. The people closed behind him, obliterating all sign of his passage.

  The sheriff turned to Bai Lum and looked at Shu-Li, still huddled next to him. “You almost got hung last night,” he said. There was unvarnished disgust on his face. “Trouble seems to follow you, Chinaman. Maybe I should have let them take care of you when I had the chance.”

  “You just finished telling this town how proud you are,” said Charles. “I don’t think you want to finish up here with innocent blood on your hands.”

  The sheriff said nothing.

  “Do you, Tom?”

  Tom Brown snorted and looked away. “We’ve wasted enough time here,” he shouted. “Get these people on the boats.” He made a curt gesture to Ya Zhen. “Get over here with your so-called brother. You three are on the skiff. Now.”

  “Come on,” Mattie told Ya Zhen. “You’re almost on your way.” She kept her arm snugged around Ya Zhen’s shoulders and helped her over to where Shu-Li and Bai Lum stood.

  Bai Lum’s eyes locked on Rose’s and he held her that way, just as he had last night, moving slowly above her in their bed. She let him hold her with his eyes until her beating heart warmed every desperate, desolate place inside her.

  “We’re going to say goodbye to our friends first,” Charles Huntington told the sheriff. “Won’t take a moment.” He and Lucy stepped squarely between Bai Lum and Rose, and grasped Bai Lum’s hand. “You have a place to go in the city?”

  “Yes, I’ll find a place.”

  “I don’t have to tell you that it will be very dangerous for Shu-Li to be back there.”

  “Nothing will happen, I promise you.”

  “My friend,” Charles said. “You’ll be missed here. I will miss you.”

  “Thank you, Huntington.”

  Reverend Huntington embraced each of the girls in turn. “Be very careful. Until we meet again.”

  “Telegraph when you’re settled,” Lucy told Bai Lum. “We’ll set things as right as we can.” She turned to Rose, who seemed rooted in place. “Rose,” she said softly. “Are you ready to say goodbye?”

  All around Rose, people shuffled, readjusted the loads they carried, waiting only to complete this outrage, perhaps to find a place to stretch out and sleep after spending the night disassembling their lives. The woman with bound feet stood nearby, leaning heavily on one of the young men who had carried her. Two chickens penned together in a slatted crate erupted in short, gabbling contention, and somewhere in the crowd lining the road, a little boy cried Catch it! Catch it!

  Rose looked at Hazel, and everything she wanted was plain on her face.

  “Oh, child,” Hazel sighed.

  “I have to, Aunt.”

  Hazel wrapped her niece in a bear hug. “As if I could keep you.”

  “I’m scared for Mattie,” she whispered.

  “So am I. But I won’t turn loose of her, you know that.” She gave Rose another squeeze. “Come on then.”

  It seemed to last forever, that walk of a few yards. Finally, finally she stood right in front of him. He didn’t smile, but brushed his thumb across her unmarked cheek, just as he had the night before.

  “Enough,” the sheriff barked. “You people get back so we can finish this.”

  “This is her husband, Tom,” Hazel said. “She’s going with him.”

  Tom Brown stared at Bai Lum and Rose, arms crossed over his chest, nostrils flaring like a dog with its wind up.

  “For heave
n’s sake,” Hazel said. “Isn’t that what you’re about here? Getting rid of folks? What’s one more?”

  Sheriff Tom Brown turned to the man next to him. “Get them on those double-damned boats. After that, the whole mess of them is San Francisco’s trouble.” He shoved his way into the crowd, shouting at them to line up and get ready to board.

  Hazel took Bai Lum’s hands. “You take good care of these ladies,” she told him. “God bless you all. Rose, I’ll write your father.”

  “I will too, as soon as we get there,” Rose said. She opened her arms to Mattie, who stood nearby looking worried and miserable. They held each other.

  “I’ll try, Rose. Every day,” Mattie said. “Honest I will.”

  “I know,” said Rose. “I love you.”

  The men tasked with loading the skiffs now walked alongside, physically prodding them toward the pier. Hazel took Mattie’s hand and pulled her from their queue. Rose linked her arm through Ya Zhen’s and shuffled along behind Bai Lum and Shu-Li, who clutched the hem of his jacket like a small child.

  And just that quickly, they were leaving. She blew a kiss to Hazel and Mattie then turned for a last look at the Huntingtons, but could no longer see them through the press of people behind her.