by Carla Baku
The skiff tilted precariously as one after another climbed aboard. Rose took Bai Lum’s hand. The rowers began to pull them out into the bay toward the City of Chester, the same ship that had brought her here almost five years ago. He lifted her fingers to his lips and kissed them. They moved a little faster when the oarsmen found their rhythm. The prow lifted and slapped the water unevenly as they got farther and farther from shore. The small boat was filled with Chinese faces, some dark, some light, old, young, all men but for Ya Zhen and Shu-Li. Here are the women in my family, thought Rose. Everyone in the skiff looked back at the crowd on the pier, the diminishing line of buildings, and the high ridges of ancient forest, trees that put down roots when Christ wore swaddling.
All but Ya Zhen.
Ya Zhen sat next to Shu-Li, eyes forward, staring at the City of Chester. Her red robe, torn along the neckline, was so brilliant it was hard to look at without squinting. Her black hair streamed back on the wind as if she was the masthead on the bowsprit of a grand schooner.
Rose leaned into Bai Lum and watched the city shrink as the oars sliced water, creaking in their locks, the intermittent grunt of effort from the men rowing, the liquid thud of whitecaps striking the hull and breaking on the rocks near shore.
Then she saw them. “Look,” she told Bai Lum, and waved wildly. Shu-Li saw too, and lifted her hand. Charles and Lucy, Hazel and Mattie had broken through the masses of people who had crowded the shoreline to watch what they pretended was justice being served. These four stood right down at the edge of the bay, Charles up to his pant cuffs in water, his wild white hair blowing around his head.
“I love you,” Rose called. “Don’t worry.”
“They can’t hear you,” said Bai Lum, lifting his hand in a steady salute.
She knew they couldn’t hear. But that was fine. “Eureka,” she whispered.
I have found it.
AFTER
March 15, 1885
Dearest Father,
When I was a little girl, you used to tease me to be careful and ‘beware the Ides of March.’ Remember? There have been some troubles here, as you will see in the newspaper clippings I enclose. This letter brings with it much news of change, but know that underneath it all I am well and truly happy.
I am no longer in Eureka, but living in a small town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. It is called Grass Valley, though we have not seen much grass yet, as the snow has been slow in melting. Since leaving you and Paw Paw I thought I missed the snow, but now I remember why we loved spring so well.
I have other news too, hard to tell, so I’ll do it quickly and not keep you in suspense. When I write that ‘we’ are watching for the grass, I mean my husband and me. I am sorry to tell you so bluntly, but you know how I am when I make up my mind. You needn’t worry, Papa. He is a fine man, a widower. We left Eureka during the troubles, along with two friends—young women whom I now count as dear friends. We are making a go of life in the mountains. When our supplies arrived from Eureka, we opened a small store and business is thriving. Though the rush for gold is not what it was in the days of the ‘49ers’ there are still plenty seeking their fortunes and needing to pay for life’s necessities.
Papa, when I came west, you said you wished you could come with me. What would you think of a new adventure? We are already making plans to build a house, and will need it done before November. Perhaps you could add your hand in the finish work. We’ll also be in need of a cradle.
I must close for now, as the days are short and I’m too tired to write more. Please, Papa, come and see us.
Always,
Your Rose
Chapter 11
Contemplation in the night watches
and at the sun’s zenith,
my mind like a barren tree
arrives at the heart of Tao.
Beneath a still sea
fly fish and dragons, unbounded.
A limitless sky
filled only with moonlight.
—Zhou Xuanjin, 12th century
Late May, 1885
She fishes nearly every day. The trout are large here, and hungry. They love stone flies with their long, delicate wings. She slides one onto her hook and casts the line in a lazy curve over the still water under a granite outcrop. Minuscule ripples vibrate out from the dying beat of the fly’s wings. The sun makes her feel loose-jointed and sleepy.
All around the valley spring flowers have come up in broad bands of color, visible for miles. The new house is surrounded by brilliant orange poppies and spears of purple lupine. Rose and Shu-Li are forever cutting blooms and bringing them inside, filling tin cans and mason jars. Ya Zhen tells them to go outside and fill their eyes instead and they only laugh.
She pulls in her line, casts it again. She leaves early and hikes high into the hills to reach this spot. Two or three times she convinced Shu-Li to join her, but after they spotted a black bear wallow along the river, a wide swath of grass matted down and festooned with piles of scat, Shu-Li refused to return. Working in the store with Bai Lum is Shu-Li’s preference, or helping Rose with the new garden. Ya Zhen doesn’t worry about the bears, but she keeps her eyes open.
Finally a hit. Her rod bows and she works the fish patiently in. It’s a golden trout, sides smooth and brilliant as melted ore, rosy at the edges. It is the work of a moment to get the hook free. The bait is gone, but she is done for the day and the maturing stone flies are everywhere.
Before they grow wings the stone flies live in the shallows at the edge of the river. Each nymph builds a home, a tiny tubular shell spackled together with bits of sand and small river detritus, even flecks of gold dust now and then. Ya Zhen thinks that her family is like that, too, building something around themselves here. She is learning to work wood with Rose’s father, whom they all call Bà ba. All over the house there are little cupboards built into the walls with stars and moons, birds and trees carved in. He is letting Ya Zhen help him make a bed for the baby, and as they think and plan he tells her to let the wood give up its secrets. She is learning to listen with her hands.
On the first of May, Bà ba presented Ya Zhen and Shu-Li each with a small chest. A hummingbird is carved in Shu-Li’s, its long beak hidden in the drooping bell of a columbine blossom. The top of Ya Zhen’s box is inlaid with a tiger, its stripes alternating between maple and red fir, sanded and oiled to a glassy finish. Below is a hidden drawer that slides open if she presses a particular spot underneath. Her ebony chopsticks are in the upper part of the box; she keeps only one thing in the secret place. By the time she goes to bed tonight that little drawer will be empty.
She pulls her knife from its sheath and guts the fish. She lays it with the other three in the basket Bai Lum gave her—Rose calls it a creel, but Ya Zhen has given up trying to fit such a gnarled word to her tongue. She and Bai Lum have long ago stopped translating for Shu-Li, who almost sounds now as if she had been born in California.
Shadows have shifted to the easterly sides of the firs and madrones. If she leaves now she will get back in time to help Rose in the garden before it gets dark. They have been digging and planting and watering for weeks. The plan is to have fresh vegetables to sell to the miners at the end of summer, with enough left over to see the family through all winter.
Bai Lum does the heavy work after he closes the store. One afternoon he caught Rose carting stones out of the way and they had words about it. He lets her do all the talking until, more often than not, she talks her way around to his way of thinking. Then he smiles and tells her he agrees. There are nights when Ya Zhen finds sleep elusive and she hears Bai Lum and Rose in their bed, Rose’s soft sounds like a night bird.
Part way down the last of the rocky trail out of the woods, Ya Zhen steps forward and nearly puts her foot on something stretched across the red dirt. Rattlesnake. Some instinct causes her to lengthen her stride and step over it before she even registers what it is. She stumbles slightly, backing away a few feet and breathing hard. The snake,
a young and slender animal, is taking advantage of the late afternoon light. It doesn’t bother to curl up or shake its tail. Rather, it slides into the long grass on the side of the path and she loses sight of it immediately, as if it hadn’t been there at all.
She hurries a little now, though her heart is already slowing. The only thing in the secret drawer of her polished box is a twist of paper holding a small pile of sunflower seeds. They have traveled with her for a long time, from her first home to here, and she has no idea if they will grow. But she intends to plant them this evening on the south side of the house. If they take, she’ll save the seeds and plant again next spring.
As she cuts across the meadow behind their home, she imagines it—a vast field of yellow blooms lighting up the hillside, recreating itself year upon year.
Epilogue
SIX YEARS AFTER THE EXPULSION
A CHINESE INVASION—This morning the steamer “Los Angeles” arrived bringing 25 cabin passengers & 15 in the steerage, one of whom was a live Chinaman. Shortly after the steamer landed ‘John’ came ashore & wandered into a blacksmith shop on the corner of 4th & D streets, where he was soon surrounded by a curious crowd of people who let the almond-eyed ‘Celestial’ know that no Chinamen were allowed in Eureka. The poor fellow was frightened but made his questioners understand that he came here by mistake & that he would return by the steamer. Mr. Albert Backman who was a passenger on the steamer says that the crew & passengers had no end of fun with the Chinaman, who was told they would hang him if he landed in Eureka. ‘John’ will not stay long in Humboldt. The climate will not agree with his health.
—Daily Humboldt Standard
Thursday, September 17, 1891
A NOTE TO THE READER
Thank you for reading Chasing Down the Moon.
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Until next time: make peace, share love, read books
Also by Carla Baku:
AFTER THE PRETTY POX
Book One: The Attic
(Writing as August Ansel)
A searing act of bioterrorism. A catastrophic plague.
Most of the human race is dead, and for two years Arie McInnes has been alone, riding out the aftermath of the Pretty Pox, waiting for her own inevitable end.
Hidden in the attic of her ruined home, Arie survives by wit and skill, ritual and habit. Convinced that humans are a dangerous fluke, a problematic species best allowed to expire, she chooses solitude…even in matters of life and death.
Arie’s precarious world is upended when her youngest brother – a man she’s never met – appears out of nowhere with a badly injured woman. Their presence in the attic draws the attention of a dark watcher in the woods, and Arie is forced to choose between the narrow beliefs that have sustained her and the stubborn instinct to love and protect.
In Book One of this captivating new post-apocalyptic series, After the Pretty Pox casts an unwavering eye on what it means to be human in a world where nature has the upper hand, and the only rules left to live by –for good or ill– are the ones written on the heart.
Coming soon:
SHADOW ROAD
After the Pretty Pox: Book Two
In this first sequel to After the Pretty Pox, Arie and her close-knit band travel on foot, finding their way to Arie’s childhood home in the mountains. Battling the hardships of this exposed life, Arie, Handy, Renna, Curran, and good Talus will come face-to-face with other survivors of The Pink. How radically has the world has changed, out on the Shadow Road?
THE CHARACTERS
(First-name alphabetical order)
Bai Lum: Proprietor of the Chinese mercantile in Eureka.
Billy Kellogg: Troublemaking friend of Byron Tupper
Byron Tupper: Teenage son of Garland Tupper.
Clarence and Cora Salyer: Married couple, hoteliers in Eureka. Clarence also runs a brothel where four Chinese women are held as indentured prostitutes.
Daniel and Annabella Briggs: Well-to-do next-door neighbors of the Kendalls.
David and Prudence Kendall*: Known around town as ‘Captain Kendall’ David is an admired businessman and Eureka city councilman. Prudence is his wife, and they have an adult daughter, Phoebe, whom they dote on.
Elsie and Charlie Dampler: Elsie is a self-important busybody; Charlie is her obedient husband.
Francis Jane Beebe: Close friend of Elsie Dampler, and former classmate of Byron Tupper.
Garland Tupper: Bullying and brutal father of Byron Tupper.
Hazel Cleary: Rose Allen’s paternal aunt. An Irish immigrant, she is housekeeper to the Kendalls. Mentor and landlady to Matilda Gillen.
Hong Tai: Ya Zhen’s six-year-old brother.
Ivo: German cook at the Salyer’s Hotel.
Jacob Weimer: Deacon at the Congregational Church and friend of the Huntingtons.
Joe and Mary Reilly: Joe is proprietor of a livery; wife Mary is a member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.
Li-Lau: Naïve young prostitute at the Salyer’s Hotel.
Louis Baldschmidt*: Twelve-year-old painter’s apprentice on the newly-constructed Carson Mansion.
Matilda ‘Mattie’ Gillen: Lives with Hazel Cleary and Rose Allen. She emigrated from Ireland to escape family problems; employed as a girl-of-all-work at Salyer’s Hotel.
Molly ‘Old Mol’ Blevins: Manages the everyday “back business” for Clarence Salyer.
Reverend Charles and Lucretia ‘Lucy’ Huntington*: Elderly pastor of the Congregational Church, and his wife.
Robert Allen: Widowed father of Rose Allen. A wainwright and master craftsman in Paw Paw, Illinois.
Rose Allen: Raised by her father in Illinois, she moved to the coast to escape the stifling life expected of her in the Midwest. Lives with her aunt Hazel Cleary and works as a housemaid and part-time children’s tutor.
Shu-Li: Young girl living with Bai Lum.
Thomas Walsh*: Mayor of Eureka.
Tom Brown*: Local sheriff
Wei Lum, Chen Ma, Dong-Li Ha: A few of the men who make up the hard-working population of Eureka’s Chinatown.
William Carson*: A wealthy timber magnate who has kept many men working during hard times by employing them to build his extraordinary Victorian mansion.
Wu Lin and Wu Song: Sisters indentured to Clarence Salyer many years ago.
Ya Zhen: A teenage girl from the mountains of Hunan China, where she lived with her parents and her little brother. Now an indentured prostitute at Salyer’s Hotel.
*Indicates actual historical persons. To learn more about them, see “A Note to the Reader.”
Acknowledgments
A great deal of research went into Chasing Down the Moon. The Humboldt County Historical Society (thanks to Jim Garrison) and the Humboldt County Library provided invaluable blocks of information. Thanks also to Professor Gordon Chang at Stanford for resource suggestions.
Tara Mayberry of TeaBerry Creative designed the book’s beautiful cover.
This novel has had several incarnations, and I’m grateful to a great many people who offered encouragement and suggestions along the way. Molly Antopol, Elizabeth Tallent, Adam Johnson, and David Haynes saw the earliest drafts at both Stanford and Warren Wilson College, and offered fierce, cheerful, incisive guidance. Several chapters were scrutinized by creative writing classmates in workshop; thanks for helping make my words stronger. Libbie Hawker, thank you for that shove off the fence!
Nancy, Lynette, Geoff, and Jude, the book would have been the poorer without your meticulous attention and gracious input as beta readers. Any remaining errors are wholly mine.
Andy, Jeff, Ben, Luke, and Meredith: you’re funny, kind, talented, hardworking, creative, loving, and wicked smart—being your mom/stepmom is the best thing.
For many years, my husband Brian and my best friend Christina Gillen have been an unrelentingly optimistic fan club of two, reading early drafts with enthusiasm and letting me talk (a lot) about the difficulties and pleasures of writing—thank you doesn’t begin to cover how much I love and appreciate them. Mister, you are my childhood sweetheart, best pal, and knight-in-shining-armor. I am so lucky.
A special note of gratitude to Tobias Wolff. He listened, and he pointed me in the right direction at exactly the right time.
About the Author
Carla Baku holds a BA in English/Creative Writing from Stanford and an MFA in fiction from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her award-winning fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction have been featured in numerous literary magazines, including Narrative, Calyx, and PMS. She writes in beautiful Northern California, where she lives with her husband Brian.