by Win Blevins
“Stop! Now! Stop!” It was Tarim’s voice, yelling in English.
She watched Long Hair’s eyes, the color of dirty ice. His dagger danced into the space between their faces. It oozed as the blood oozed down his face. It weaved back and forth like the head of a snake, bewitching. Her mind reached for the name of her goddess-protectress but could not find it.
For a moment the world stood outside of Time. As she watched the tip, the dagger struck, somehow swiftly and slowly at once.
The left side of her face burst into agony. The pain bubbled and boiled and spewed. She threw her hands to her face to hold her left eye in its socket.
Flashes of redness. The pain and heat, like falling into a volcano. The rushing darkness. I will be blind.
CHAPTER THREE
1
Porter Rockwell raised his Arkansas toothpick to eye level and regarded the blade, the cleanness of the shiny edge. With a finger he checked the stickiness of the blood.
Tarim trembled, watching him hulk over the unconscious woman’s body. Her face will be ruined. No man will want her.
Rockwell examined his coat and shirt. Bloody. Will he kill her for the sake of his clothes?
Tarim found it too much to bear. He knew who the barbarian was, the bodyguard of the king of the Mormons in Salt Lake City, a killer. To strike at an enraged killer, giving away more than twelve inches and a hundred pounds, that would accomplish nothing. Especially not in a crowd of white men who would side with him, and the sheriff at hand.
A thousand dollars in go-o-old. We slapped the earth.
Tarim stepped forward with his face under control. “Sir,” he said, “Rockwell, the whore belongs to me.” He gyrated his arms. Playing from weakness nearly drove him mad. I must have the whore.
A thousand dollars coming back at the highest price a Chinese whore ever got, no two bits, four bits, six bits, lookee, feelee, doee. Accumulating at a hundred dollars a week. He figured that he would get his entire investment back five times over each year.
Not now. Tarim’s heart pounded. He felt gold coins slipping from his fingers.
“The whore is mine,” he repeated. Though his knees quaked, he forced himself to sound reasonable. He stepped forward between the barbarian and the whore, took off his American frock coat, and covered her nakedness with it. He looked at the crowd defiantly. His hand itched for a dagger, but he knew better.
Then he saw the eyes of the white men. Mad, he thought. They stare at her yoni and hardly see her terrible wound. In their eyes Asians are not people.
He dared look at Porter Rockwell. The barbarian shifted his stare from his blade to Tarim. He yearned to strike before the big man even sensed danger. He quivered.
“Give me a rag,” said Rockwell.
Tarim gestured to the barkeep, and out came the one used to wipe tables.
Rockwell held the dagger up and wiped the blood off. He took pains, getting the blood out of the corners of the guard and off the handle. He let the silence grow.
“I will pay for your clothes,” Tarim put in. “She did not hurt you.”
“Another rag.”
Tarim scurried and brought one. Rockwell wiped the blood off his face, mustache, beard, and neck carelessly, like it didn’t matter.
“All right, heathen,” he said, “the whore is yours. Property, property, almighty property.” He grinned madly at the crowd, then fixed Tarim with a terrible glare. “You tell her that if I ever see her again, anywhere, I’ll kill her. Got it? Simple. I’ll kill her.” He gave the watchers a look of grotesque companionship. “And ship the body back to you, of course—she’s your property.”
The watchers chuckled on cue.
He sheathed the dagger. “You tell her that, heathen.”
2
When Sun Moon swam up from the darkness and her consciousness awoke to the world again, the first thing she saw was Tarim, peering at her intently. Though his face changed after she opened her eyes, she was too woozy to see his spirit. He held a teacup to her lips. Gratefully, she sipped. Then she realized it was not the Tibetan tea she grew up on and loved, salted and buttered, but one of those perfumed Chinese brews she disliked.
Tarim spoke brutally. “You acted the fool. The man you kicked was Porter Rockwell, a famous killer, the cruel right hand …”
She stopped listening. She knew a man with foul spirit when she saw one. I kicked him in the nose. I brought blood. A grim joy pumped in her veins. I regret only the quaking fear I felt for my own flesh.
“You are lucky,” Tarim went on. “Rockwell’s nose was not broken, so he was content to cut your face and disfigure you. The doctor doesn’t know about the sight in your eye yet.”
You talk about me like I was a prize yak.
“Rockwell announced that if ever he sees you again, he will kill you.”
Tarim let the words sit. She studied his face. She had found that she could read people’s emotions in their faces easily, and sometimes that told her whether they were telling the truth or lying. Tarim was telling the truth.
“Simple as that—if he just sees you. You mustn’t even go out on the street!”
Ah! You want to keep your investment of precious gold close to home, in the closet. Right now your investment is ill. And unattractive.
He looked at her speculatively. “I wonder, disfigured, what use you will be to me.”
She felt a burst of elation and a twist of agony. Am I so ugly now that the white men won’t want me for a whore?
Tarim half smiled and left her.
Am I so ugly the white men won’t want me for a whore?
Her eye screamed at her. It raged in its socket. If she opened her eye, the light would stab her and kill her.
She rolled over. She thrashed. She rolled over and thrashed and rolled over and thrashed.
“Here,” said Tarim. “The doctor says to give you this for the pain.”
She held out her hands into the darkness. They received a cup. She sipped, and recognized the taste of laudanum. She drank.
She felt a hand on her shoulder. Not Tarim’s hand, a gentle touch.
“Who are you?”
“The doctor,” said a man’s voice, soft but firm.
She let the hand stay. It felt good.
“While you slept, I sewed the edges of your skin together.”
“My eye,” she said.
“Can’t tell about that yet. May heal, may not.”
“Will I be blind?”
She could feel the hesitation. “Three possibilities. One, it will hurt like hell for a couple of days and heal completely. Two, it will heal and you will be blind, or see nothing but light and shadows. Three, it will get infected and you will die.”
The word die stabbed her in the heart. Mahakala, protector of women, help me live.
“I’ll do my best for you,” the voice said.
She touched the hand with hers. The oddity of her own gesture thrilled her, and she took her hand away.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Drink this,” he said.
She drank, and swam back into the world of the opiate.
“Open your eyes,” the voice said.
She opened the good eye.
“Both of them.”
She quailed. Then she forced it open. The lid felt rusty.
Light. A picture.
A hand covered her good eye.
“You see me,” the voice said.
“Yes.” And it was no longer just a voice. A man of middle age with a face that showed the bones beneath and a gray mustache. His eyes were deep with the sadness of living in the world, and with compassion.
“You see me clearly.”
“Yes.”
“The danger to your eye is past,” he said. “But there’s a new danger. Your face wound is infected.”
He touched her hand, and she did not take it away. “I’m sorry. I’ll do my best for you. Drink this.”
The infection brought her respite. Most of the time she sl
ept. She asked Tarim to leave the door flap to her room open so the southern sun would shaft through onto her legs. Sometimes she meditated. Lying flat on her back was not an ideal position, so she sat up when she could. Either way, her spine was straight, so energy could flow freely. With the return of her meditative practice, she felt her spirit a little stronger. She did not know about her face, or her body, and she barely cared. She could feel that her face was very swollen. If she sat up a few minutes, it got hot, and throbbed. The doctor admitted she might die. Often she fell into the waywardness of despair.
I have lost myself. That was what had happened. Her abductors didn’t do that to her, or the men who took her like a carcass to Canton, or those who penned her up in the hold of the ship coming across the great ocean, or Ah Wan, or Jehu. I did it to myself. For the spirit is free. Only the human being it inhabits can sully the spirit.
After her abduction she failed to meditate every day, to find her own center, the hub of the wheel, and spend time there. I did it to myself.
Odd, how the white men did me a favor. Even your enemy is your teacher.
A scratch at the open door flap. The doctor. Though she had mostly been half-conscious through his ministrations, now she looked forward to the kindness of his voice and touch.
“I’m glad to see you awake,” he said. “You’re getting stronger, Polly.”
“Not call me Polly.”
“What do you want me to call you?”
“Sun Moon.” Her voice scratched, unaccustomed to speech.
“Sun Moon,” repeated the doctor, chuckling.
Yes, she knew. Funny to white men. Daytime star and nighttime star. “Sun Moon,” she repeated.
“Sun Moon,” the doctor said formally, “I’m Harville Park. Call me Dr. Harville. I hear that your English is fairly good. If you don’t understand what I’m saying, stop me.”
“Understand.”
He touched her eyebrow very lightly. “The cut goes from here, through the upper lid, into the eye, and down the cheek.” He touched her just below the cheekbone. “I believe the infection is on the retreat.” He forced a smile. “You’ll have a piratical scar.”
“Piratical?”
“Like a robber.” He made a mean face.
If you only knew. Her mind stampeded with pictures of her abductors.
He held up a mirror. “Do you want to see yourself?”
“No.” For the rest of this incarnation I will not think of myself as I was, Dechen Tsering, of Zorgai Convent of the holy land of the Pöba, born Nima Lhamo, named by my parents Sun Goddess. Nor will I see myself as a whore scarred by rapists. I will become a holy warrior, a unity of violence and peace, life and death, Sun and Moon.
The doctor looked at her inquiringly.
Why are you not telling me what’s important? She asked him directly. “I will live?”
“Yes,” he said. “I expect so.”
“Be strong?”
“Yes.”
Her heart spun with fear. So. Tarim will make me whore soon. She swallowed hard. “Be whore then.”
“I guess so,” he said.
She declared softly, “I never be whore. I never be whore.”
He looked at her a long moment, then nodded. “I will help you if I can.”
Speaking made the cut hurt, and made her face puff until she thought it would burst. Talking was painful. But she wanted to talk to this healer.
“I will tell Tarim your life is in danger. I can protect you for a while.”
She looked beyond him at the weak sun low in the sky. The winter was going to be long, but maybe she would survive it. “You help me?”
“What do you want, Polly? … Sun Moon?”
“Incense,” she said.
Dr. Harville’s face quirked. “Incense?”
She nodded.
“All right. The Indians use cedar and sage. I’ll get you some.”
Then I can conduct my puja.
“Anything else?”
“Speak English good,” she said. “Read English.” Because it’s a long road home.
When the doctor was gone, she felt gingerly of her face. Around the cut her flesh warm and tender—she imagined it red. The cut felt rough, jagged, wildly sore. I am wounded.
Tarim stood in the doorway, head and eyes immobile, face as petrified as his spirit.
Dr. Harville preempted his speech. “She’s not ready. She can keep walking a little, best outside. During the warm part of the day. I’ll go with her.” Dr. Harville actually rose to confront Tarim now. “But she’s not ready to do any work of any kind, and won’t be for weeks.”
Tarim cocked his head sideways around the doctor and pointed at her. “One month sick, one year more work,” he said, waving his hand like a blade.
Sun Moon didn’t care what he said. I won’t be here one year, much less five or six.
Tarim stalked away.
“Thank you,” she said. Often she thought she could get up and work. She wanted to. But even a short walk with Dr. Harville tired her out.
As they walked, and any time they were together, she was learning to speak English better and better. Sometimes he also read to her, and helped her puzzle out the sounds of the English alphabet one by one and put them into the strange words.
“You are a good student,” he said. “You work hard.”
She nodded. I am becoming a good student of the ways of the warrior-goddess. What would you think if you knew my reason for learning to read? She looked at him. No, she wouldn’t tell him. There was little he could do for her. Unnecessary risk.
Finally Dr. Harville let her help Tarim in the store, finding items for customers, counting their coins, or weighing their dust in payment. She stayed on her feet as long as she could—she was determined to learn about Tarim, his household, his businesses, his customers, both white and yellow. Even red. I need to learn everything.
Tarim’s tavern was a new business, she found out, but the store had operated for a year. “I am a trader,” he said from time to time. The white, black, red, and yellow customers peered at Sun Moon and whispered among themselves.
She learned to weigh things in the American scales. She learned to make change with the unfamiliar coins. She learned to take in gold dust, weigh it, and give credit. Once she dropped a few grains of gold dust between the scale and the jar. Tarim hissed while he swept it up.
She noticed then how carefully he swept the floor of the store and the tavern at night, checking the ordinary dust for flecks of yellow.
From the whispers she found out more. Tarim had arranged the grand opening of his tavern so that Sun Moon would be the main attraction, the deflowering of the virgin nun. She had spoiled his grand opening. She smiled grimly.
Sun Moon watched for chances to walk through the store in the dark, when Tarim was gone. He lived in the store, and kept a Tibetan mastiff on guard besides. But sometimes he disappeared for an hour or two after the tavern closed, and Sun Moon heard that he went to a woman. She made tentative friends with the big dog, named Sonam, which seemed mean and stupid. I will not be your second Tibetan lackey.
She began memorizing a list of what she would take when she escaped.
At the first opportunity she also stole a pocketknife from a kitchen drawer and kept it in her clothes every hour of every day, to be ready to fight. She reminded herself to steal a whetstone later, so she could keep it very sharp.
Openly, she roasted barley on the stove and ground it into fine powder. This would be the torma she would offer to Mahakala. To perform the ritual she had begged a small shipping box to use as an altar, a place to burn incense, a place for the food for the protector deity, an object for her prayers and chants.
As she made these preparations, she worried. Will my face repel the white men enough? Or not? It doesn’t matter. They will have to kill me before I whore for them.
One night when Tarim was gone, she lit half a dozen candles and placed them next to the full mirror in the store, the one cus
tomers used to look at their new clothes. She averted her eyes until the crucial moment. She drew herself up straight in front of the mirror. She laced her fingers over her eyes. She opened the fingers enough to peer through them, and naturally saw nothing but a face covered with fingers. She watched the candlelight flicker on her fingers and her black hair. Slowly, one by one, she lifted the fingers up, and still saw nothing. Abruptly, like pulling away from a hot stove, she jerked her hands away.
My face is gouged. From her forehead above the left eye, through the eyebrow, through both eyelids, onto the cheek ran the ugly ditch. It was still partly scabbed. The stitches had stretched the skin near the wound tight, and the wound itself was a pucker.
She sank to her knees and burst into tears. She flung her face down into her hands. Then, facedown, away from the mirror, ashamed, she snuffed out the candles one by one. She never knew how long she knelt there in the darkness, weeping. Finally the iron band gripped her throat and cut off the tears.
Other nights, alone or not, she laid plans. She knew that Tarim had poured laudanum into her tea that first day. Now she ate or drank nothing she didn’t prepare herself. She determined to become useful as a cook, a maid, and a clerk in the store. Maybe I can become so helpful Tarim will give up on making me a whore. But she didn’t think so. The virgin nun with the awful scar. It might have even more appeal.
By day she paid attention to the common talk, trying to figure out the way back to Gam Saan, San Francisco. Hard Rock City was a new mining town, miles off the old wagon road, the Oregon Trail, the way Jehu brought her. That was a hard way to San Francisco, northwest to Oregon and then south by ship. To the southwest, the direct way called the California Trail, stretched terrible deserts. But she heard about a roundabout route, a wagon road southeast to a big city called Salt Lake. There you could get a stagecoach. Better than a ship to Gam Saan, she thought. Cheaper. And safer—you can get off a stagecoach.
She could always hope, too, that the pursuers would look in the wrong direction, assume she had gone the way she came, toward Oregon. But if they looked in the right direction, that was fine. I have within me Mahakala, eater of men.