by Win Blevins
Reeshaw and I took turns trying to shine. He’d do a fiddle tune, usually one of his Frenchy paddlin’ songs, and I’d back him up. Then we’d switch and I’d take the lead. I went strictly for tunes everybody knew, “Dinah Had a Wooden Leg,” “Irish Washer Woman,” “Tulsy Waltz,” “Fort Smith Rag,” and all like that. It was hard to watch Annabelle waltzing with another man during “Tulsy.” But heckahoy, I druther play with sounds in my mind than bounce around on my legs. Which has been fateful for me.
When I started on one ballad, “The Little Log Cabin in the Lane,” Reeshaw slid over and got Root. They spun slow, they allemanded, they do-si-doed, they promenaded, they dipped, and they rose through the night air, lit handsome by the fire. Reeshaw’s fine, long, thick, black hair shone in the flames, and Root looked statuesque. He danced like he was proud to show her off, and she danced like she was proud to be led by such a man. It made me feel better about the upshot of marriage than ever I had, up to then.
I headed straight into another ballad, thinking I’d enjoy watching them again. Reeshaw had other ideas, though. He bounded over and offered a hand to Sun Moon.
She drew back—actually, drew back without moving, in that way she had.
His hand rose and banged back to level again, inviting, demanding. He smiled like a sun.
She hesitated.
Reeshaw picked her up by the waist, held her high in his big hands, and set on her the dance ground.
She followed his lead.
Root clapped her hands. I think everybody was watching, on the sly or straight on.
Reeshaw just swept her along, not allowing any mistakes. Sun Moon moved her tiny feet, and after a bit I saw that she was right in rhythm, and nimble.
Then I beheld the looks on the faces of the others. Our folks—Harold, Muley, Carlson—were embarrassed. Sun Moon didn’t really figure in their world. They generally acted like she wasn’t around. Reeshaw putting her in the center threw them off.
The newcomers, though, they were tickled. Kept trying not to grin at each other, at the same time avoiding Root’s eyes. Then I caught on. Back in Californy, if a white man danced with a Chinee woman, it meant only one thing, whoop-dee-doo in a back room right quick. They’d likely done it themselves.
That made me mad. When I finished the tune, I nodded Reeshaw toward his fiddle, set down the banjo, and took both of Sun Moon’s hands. Reeshaw sashayed into a slow waltz. I was a not-bad dancer, and I think Sun Moon and I got through it with our dignity in place. It wasn’t until we were through that I noticed everyone had stopped dancing and was just watching us. So I kept her hands and waited for the next tune.
Imagine my surprise when it came from the banjo. One of the Missouri-bound fellas was pickin’, a lanky youth with a homely face that was all nose and Adam’s apple. His fingers just naturally set feet to flying, and right quick every grown-up in the place was whirling and twirling. I jumped around with Sun Moon, and we bumped each other hard only once. She laughed, which was a pleasure to see.
That picker was good to hear, a real music man.
At the tune’s end he says, “Here’s a Spanyard song I heerd in Californy.” After that he had a Basque song, a German song, even a Danish song. By that time he’d wore us out, and everyone was setting on the ground. He sang the fine old song “John Anderson, My Jo.” It was too beautiful to do anything but listen anyway. At the end he said softly, “Irish.”
Said Sun Moon into the silence, “How about Chinese?”
Well, heckahoy It got quiet enough to hear the earth breathe. Chinese? Outrageous! I could see the looks around the fire. Give one of those yellow skins an inch and they’ll act like damn fools.
The picker was not flabbergasted. He did look hard at Sun Moon first. “B’lieve I got one,” he says soft-like.
It was the same tune he’d just picked, only the words were changed.
“John Chinaman, my jo, John
You’re coming precious fast.
Each ship that sails from Shanghai brings
An increase on the last.
And when you’ll stop invading us
I’m blest, now, if I know.
You’ll outnumber us poor Yankees,
John Chinaman, my jo.”
Everybody was ashamed to look at each other or at Sun Moon. She had that glazed look on her face that came sometimes, like she didn’t want to know what was going on, she refused to credit what was right there. I felt for her.
There were other verses, but the picker didn’t go on. His heart didn’t seem that mean. Instead he flabbergasted everyone by saying, “They’s a lot of songs about the Chinese in Californy, Ma’am. Some of ’em are meant funny, mostly poking fun at queues, so maybe not funny to your ears. Some of ’em are meant harsh, ’cause Chinamen takes white men’s jobs. There’s one I know as is sympathetic, ‘John Chinaman’s Appeal.’”
We were all still struck silent, and in the silence he launched into the old tune “Umbrella Courtship,” with new words.
“American, now mind my song,
If you would but hear me sing,
And I will tell you of the wrong
That happened unto Gee Sing.
In fifty-two I left my home—
I bid farewell to Hong Kong—
I started with Cup Gee to roam
To the land where they use the long tom.”
Then came a chorus that was silly but fun and not meant to hurt.
“O ching hi ku tong me ching ching
O ching hi ku tong chi do,
Cup Gee hi ku tong mo ching ching,
Then what could Gee or I do?”
It went on to tell the story of how Gee Sing came to San Francisco. Starving, he ate a dog and got arrested and fined. He went to the gold-fields and got chased off. Went to another mining camp and the Know Nothings wouldn’t let him stay. Went to Weaverville and got driven off by other Chinamen. Went to Yreka, set up a laundry, and went broke. Finally went home:
“Oh, now, my friends, I’m going away
From this infernal place, Sir;
The balance of my days I’ll stay
With the celestial race, Sir.
I’ll go to raising rice and tea;
I’ll be a heathen ever,
For Christians all have treated me
As men should be used never.”
At this awkward moment the dance broke up. People acted sheepish and wandered off to their wagons to sleep. The only one made any gesture toward Sun Moon was Root, who walked right up and gave her a hug. Being of another race herself, probably, Root understood. Reeshaw gave Sun Moon a touch on the shoulder, too. Sun Moon stood stiffish, not knowing how to react to this Frenchy affection.
Then I noticed Annabelle walking quiet into the bushes. With the picker. My heart twisted on itself. I let my breath out, and it eased some. Guess I’d known all along how Annabelle was.
I sat on a rock and moped. After a while I decided to turn my mind to something useful. Never mind what I felt about the picker right now. What must Sun Moon’s feelings be? He had meant both kind and unkind, seemed like, songs on both sides. Even his notion of kind, of course, wasn’t much kind—yeah, it’s not fair, but the best thing to do is get your carcass off this continent and go back to your own.
Part of the strangeness, naturally, was that Sun Moon wasn’t Chinese. She hated the Chinese, or at least some Chinese, and she had way more reason than anyone here for that hatred. Yet all her time in America she’d been treated like one of the race she hated. I wondered how that made her feel about hate.
Life was getting me used to strange, that’s for sure. It’s kept doing that in the decades since. O strange, O wondrous, O enchantment! O Flabbergastonia!
Well, since thinking is not living, I got up and went over to her. She looked up into my face, her eyes big as moons, excuse the expression. “I’m sorry,” I said.
She nodded. Sorry wasn’t an idea she spent a lot of time on. She held my look for a moment, and I guess th
at was her way of showing acceptance. “Drum dry now,” she said.
Peculiar. I was worrying about her, and she had a thought for me.
Yep, the drum. I owe you that. Guess I owe us that.
The hide felt good and tight. I pushed at it with my fingers, then a flat hand. It was springy. I walked away from the fire so I could see into the darkness, Moon behind me. I didn’t know where I wanted to sit to beat the drum. Above camp I could see a rock jutting up like a thumb, short, thick, and stubby. That looked right to me.
The moon lent me plenty of light to pick my way up there among the sagebrushes and other scrub—it was full, perfectly round, no nibbled part at the lower left showing it hadn’t quite arrived, nor no nibbled part on the upper right showing it had just passed full. It was full.
Halfway I noticed Sun Moon was still a few steps behind. “I need to do this alone,” I said. I’m not any Bon Poh pah woh. She nodded and turned back. I knew she could hear the drum in camp, and would listen, but I still wanted to make the music by myself.
I chuckled. I thought, Two bits somebody will complain at me tomorrow morning for making devil drum all night, keeping decent folk awake with heathen stuff. I won the bet, because that’s what happened. It was Muley complained.
At first I felt awkward and self-conscious. Plenty quick that sloughed off, though. Didn’t matter what I did with the drum, ’cept whatever I felt like. I tried things out. Boom-boom-bOOm-BOOM, each one getting louder, then repeating the four. Tappety-tappety-tappety-tappety real fast, almost like a rattle. TUM-tuh-tuh, TUM-tuh-tuh, TUM-tuh-tuh, a three-beat rhythm. For a while I put down the beater Sun Moon gave me and tried it with my hands. Turned out, though, I wanted the beater—wanted to send those sounds right out across the desert in all four directions, right down to the center of the Earth, right up to the sky.
I tried some more rhythms. I shifted beat in the middle of things, went back, circled around, crossed in a new rhythm taking turns with my bare hand and the beater, came home to the first rhythm, stronger. Fooling around with rhythms was fun. More than fun.
I looked up at the moon and held my eyes there. Maybe, I thought, I can send my beat all the way to the moon. I’ve always liked to imagine the music we make never stops. It goes from here to there in the sky, and further, and further, fast but still using up time. I imagine the sounds pushing the air, invisible as wind, and singing when it arrives at the moon and the stars. Where does the music ever stop? Nowhere. Wind pushes wherever there’s a sky, and that goes on forever. Maybe the moon is magic, and if I could go up there, I’d hear all the music ever made, whispering round and round the moon, moon, moon.
So I sent my rhythms to the sky. I thought of my heartbeat and sent that. I thought of the heartbeats of everyone in camp and sent them. I thought of all the heartbeats of all the people in the world, about one every second, and I heard them all in my imagination, one big life, beating, beating, beating. I sent them all to the full moon. After a while all the heartbeats of all the animals joined in, hurling the head of my stick onto that vibrating skin. For a while I imagined the whole earth was beating, beating, beating, sending the thump of its life to the moon.
I did that for a long time, and a long time, and a long, long time.
It wasn’t until later that I thought it was kind of like the music I heard in the river. No voices of women, children, and angels this time, though, nor of trumpets, flutes, and violins. No cries of birds, nor sounds of the spirits of sky, wind, flowing waters. Just a beat. A simple thump. Thump, thump, thump, thump, to all eternity. Somehow felt like everything was in that one sound.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
From the journal of Captain Richard Burton:
The Humboldt River is a humbug river is a Humboldt River is a humbug river.
Traveling along the Humboldt in summer is the blastedest blastedest blastedest blastedest…
One walks, naturally. Muley’s mules, his nest egg, must not lose flesh or fat. Therefore people must. Muley and Carlson drive. Sun Moon, Asie, Harold Jackson, and I walk—walk all day for three days, until Muley hears our complaints about the heat. Then we walk all night and try to sleep during the day. We switch back to walking during the day, back to night, and spend the rest of the trip quarreling about which is worse.
Is it hot? My thermometer spends its days in the vicinity of 100-110 Fahrenheit. Fahrenheit, however, has lost its meaning. Instead of looking at the thermometer, I contemplate all the words for hot I can think of. Fiery, roasting, frying, white-hot, red-hot, scorching, boiling, piping hot… I set these words to a martial drum in my head and the beat of my boots against the ground: right foot burning, left foot blistering, right searing, left scalding, right steaming, left simmering, right torrid, left sweltering. Then I realize I should have left out the words that imply water, for water there is none. Therefore, add right foot dry, left foot parched, right arid, left…
One cannot count the Humbug River as water. It is horse piss spiced with alkali and salt. It is the muddiest, filthiest, meanest stream in all creation. I walk along it in fantasy, dreaming of pure, clear, sweet water that may be found in the Sierra Nevada, promised somewhere ahead. Though I have spent much of my life in hot places, this time I swear repeatedly that never again will I endure foul water and wretched heat. I can not swear fancifully, however, for my brain is baked. (If fortune attends me, I shall find haven from my wanderlust in the arms of Isabel. Through her nurturing, I shall tame my demons. Through her love, I shall conquer my cravings.)
Walk, walk, walk, morning, noon, evening, midnight. Get across this desert. Walk, walk, walk, morning, noon, evening, midnight. Somehow, some way, get across.
Then there is the dust, which is also alkali. It is also manure gone to powder. It is also ash, volcanic ash. Immediately one learns to walk out in front of the wagons, to be in advance of the clouds of dust. Even so the stuff puffs up upon every plop of the foot.
The dust surrounds one. It swirls and envelops one. It wraps one, cloaks one, drapes one, hugs one. It invades one. It turns your skin gray-brown. It grays your hair. It dries your eyes until the lids scratch like sandpaper. It gets between your teeth. It coats your tongue. It follows your breath up your nose until the insides parch hard as baked earth. (What a blessing a dripping nose would be in this country!) When at last the cool of evening comes, and one takes a rest for a meal, your supper is gritty with dust.
The next morning one discovers the true insidiousness of this dust-manure-alkali-ash. It has worked its way into every fold of clothing and every crevice of the body. What moves, scratches. What doesn’t move, itches.
It is therefore necessary to bathe. The river is surprisingly cold. Its brisk blessings are apparent, however, when the legs move without grinding. Occasionally the river offers another blessing, a pond of hot water to bathe in. What a devil of a country, where the very boons of the land are hot springs, boiling and sulfurous.
Not long ago tens of thousands of people thronged across this trail to California, in fact 50,000 and more in the summers of 1849 and 1850, lusting for gold. Yet that was only a small part of the migration of living beings. Many travelers, says one of the diaries of that time, “never tie up their bedclothes in the daytime. It is astonishing to contemplate how many millions of living creatures must be emigrating to California in close contact and partnership” with these sojourners. I fear Muley and Carlson are adding greatly to this migration.
Yet I have not mentioned the worst part of traveling along the Humboldt. It is the boredom. Sandy plains rise toward sage-covered hills which rise toward bare-arsed mountains. A few miles further on, sandy plains rise toward sage-covered hills which rise toward bare-arsed mountains. A few miles further on, sandy plains rise toward sage-covered hills which rise toward bare-arsed mountains. And you have the benefit of knowing that tomorrow sandy plains will rise toward sage-covered hills which rise toward bare-arsed mountains. So tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creep in this petty pace from day to day.
At each rest I relieve the boredom by writing in this journal. One day Harold Jackson, who is crossing this desert for the first time, upbraided me: “My God, Burton, why do you write about this trip so you can remember it? All I hope is to get home alive as soon as possible so I can forget it!”
Desert at twilight. Sun Moon liked to look at the desert when the sun was nearly gone and the shadows long. Never could she love desert—love was the special place in her heart for the fertility of her native country. But she liked to look at the desert in the evening, to watch the colors changing in the shadows, to see the sun-glow on red rock, to drink in the big masses of dark and light, shade and sun.
This was one of her secrets. She took time after meditating to watch the desertscape.
Another was that she avoided the campfire. She would not have built a fire each evening, more heat after boiling all day, but it seemed a ritual with the whites to kill meat and cook it. She had never seen so much killing in all her life. Tibetan people avoided killing, left the slaughter of animals for food to foreigners. White people relished killing animals. It made her feel squeamish.
She looked to the west. A long valley stretched hazily into blue shadow in that direction, and a line smudged the horizon. One day, before long, that line would become the mountains of California. Beyond those mountains would be a ship to the Orient, but she had hopes in the meantime, hopes that the mountains would be like her native Kham, well watered, bursting with life, snowy peaks in the background, grasses and flowers underfoot.