by Win Blevins
No, not my river music, not at all, but what a heavenly music. I yearned to live longer in the world of that dance, and I…
Before long, a phrase or two in, it occurred to me that someone might think me rude for taking Lu Pu-wai’s song. I kept whistling, but in the uncertainty I nearly lost the lilt of the melody.
That was when I heard the zither. Lu Pu-wai was joining back in, not an accompanist but a dance partner. I whistled a phrase purely, she ornamented it. She danced forward to the next phrase, and I repeated the first as an obbligato, meaning it as lingering, haunting. Two voices rising into the air, spinning, playing, whirling, being.
I never knew how long the performance lasted. After a while I heard the zither hinting at farewell. I answered with longing. From a greater distance the zither said farewell, and I said the same in return, with quiet, with peace, with acceptance.
When we finished, I stood and bowed to Lu Pu-wai. After a hesitation, she bowed to me. In that moment I felt complete.
Tommy Kirk led a big round of applause now, and called for another round of champagne. Burton clapped enthusiastically—a rare treat, that duet, in his opinion. And he judged the wine excellent. He knew Kirk had paid dearly to have it freighted from San Francisco.
Kirk rose in the manner of proposing a toast, and said, “I am grateful to you all for honoring me with your presence here. As a way of saying thank you, I can tell you that I have consulted the oracle. The luck of every one of you is sure to be good at the gambling tables tonight. Therefore, let us toast, Good joss!”
Glancing around, Burton concluded that everyone took Tommy’s meaning, that he had put in the word with his dealers. I wager the Americans will take good advantage, and that Asie and Sun Moon have done all the capering with money they want, at least for a while.
For himself, Burton wouldn’t mind taking in a bit at gaming. If it could be only one part of an evening of gaiety. And decadence? he asked himself. And debauchery?
“To the tables!” Kirk cried.
The company made a hubbub, almost a small roar, and headed for the main rooms.
“Captain Burton,” called Tommy Kirk quietly. Burton turned back. “I have a special treat for you.” Burton’s lady of the evening, Polly, must have known, for she was holding the door to the kitchen open for them.
The three walked briskly through the kitchen, which was hot, crowded, steamy, and thick with food smells. Burton noticed that he was a little squiffed on the wine. They exited into a half-lit room at the back. It took Burton a moment to recognize the ambience of the opium den. The dim red light, the sofas, daybeds, and lounging chairs, the blue alcohol lamps placed here and there, the table offering the paraphernalia of the smoker.
“I have created a special refuge here,” Tommy said. “A few white people have discovered the dreamy delights of opium, and I believe more will do so. Even women.” Burton could not make out Kirk’s attitude in his voice, or his shadowed eyes.
A rustle from the corner. A dark figure floating toward the daybed, reclining. Kirk’s mistress. Lu Pu-wai. By God!
“I thought perhaps as a connoisseur you would enjoy being first to indulge here. Perhaps you will also mention its delights to others in the white community.”
Kirk extended his arm, taking in everything in the room. “Everyone and everything in this room is for your pleasure tonight, and yours alone. Whatever pleasures you fancy, whatever you dream of, I beg you to indulge yourself.”
Kirk bowed slightly and backed out of the room, closing the door behind him.
Burton looked first at the opium and accoutrements. Then at the mischievous eyes of Polly. Lu Pu-wai glided toward him seductively.
By God!
Sun Moon and I were thrilled, excited by the wine, the dinner, and hearing the zither. Out in the big rooms, though, it was a different kind of excitement. It was a ruckus. Some people celebrate, miners ruckus.
Since drinks were on the house, everyone was liquored up. Elbow room was little enough that elbows were constantly getting thrown. Activities ran to gambling, where everybody was giving Tommy back the cost of the drinks. Other activities were about evenly divided between dancing, arguing, and shoving, with the odd fight for spice.
The piano was clinking up front by the bar, and I wondered who Tommy had hired to play. In the back, where most of the gambling tables were, a hurdy-gurdy was going strong. I saw that Tommy had added a second spot for dancing back there.
Right away we saw his big novelty. All the women serving tables, drinking and dancing with customers, and enticing men to the upstairs rooms were Chinese. They weren’t just crib girls either. These were decked-out courtesans—Tommy had spent a small fortune dressing them, some in the Chinese style of slinky silks, some in the latest Paris fashions via San Francisco. They looked jimmy-joomy.
At a glance, though, you could see that Tommy had only half thought through part of it. The girls didn’t know the miners’ dances. Since mining men just flung their partners around by main force, though, it didn’t make much difference.
(I may as well say here that this new tactic of Tommy’s didn’t work out. The white courtesans refused to work at a place that hired Celestials, and so did the brown women. While white men might go with a China Polly for a few minutes, or even a night, they wouldn’t put up with a saloon and gambling hall with nothing else. So the Chinese women had to go back to Chinatown, which goes to show.)
Most of us dinner guests stampeded for the tables, eager to take advantage of Tommy arranging things—Sam, his friends from the newspaper, the saloon men, and the rich drunk. Sun Moon, me, and Gentleman Dan stood there for a moment, twiddling our thumbs. “I want to talk with you,” Dan said. “An idea about how to invest your money.”
Every time I thought about that gold, half a year’s wages put away free and clear, I got a little glow. One thing a man should get from a great adventuring is coin of the realm. “OK,” says I, feeling uncertain. Then it came to me. “But first I wanna dance!”
I took Sun Moon gently by both hands and looked at her with the question in my face. She cried, “Dance!” We pulled each other toward the dance floor. Daniel headed for the piano, and called back, “By God, I’ll give you some good tunes to dance to.”
We faced each other just as Daniel gave us the introduction to a waltz. It was a Frenchy tune, the one Reeshaw played on the fiddle, which he called the “Red River Waltz,” which I bet the Cajun folks of Louisiana called by some other name, but by the luck of our celebratin’ evening, it was one of the few we both knew a little.
The miners didn’t care for any waltz, so they left the dance floor to us.
I took her in my arms and she smiled wonderfully at me. In the last week or so, when she’d got healthy, Sun Moon just glowed at me sometimes, and it made me giddy. It wasn’t glow enough to get her to listen to me about us going to Tibet together, but I loved it.
We launched out in that three-beat rhythm, circling the dance floor. We glided. We added an accent—up on beat three, vigorously back into the downbeat. I began to turn us slowly, and she followed right with me. Soon we were whirling as we circled, floating, soaring, waltzing. I fell in love with dancing at that moment.
I also loved Sun Moon. I looked into her eyes and saw love there, too, but I didn’t know whether it was for me, for the moment, for the dance, or for all the hope she’d found the last week.
In loving to dance, Sun Moon was thoroughly Tibetan. On visits to her family she liked to do the guozhuang, which celebrated the harvest, the xianzi, and even to tap dance. This business of men and women dancing as couples was new to her, but tonight she was willing to cast off, to sail beyond the ways of her life and her people, to enter into a world of abandon.
She liked the waltz, which was graceful, elegant, and rhythmic at once. She liked moving in rhythm with another person, so that as a pair they became more than two individuals, a new being, one dancing creature. She liked being the center of attention of all the watching min
ers. She liked, for the moment, being touched by the father of her child.
She looked into Asie’s eyes, she felt the growth in her belly, and she pictured herself and her child in front of her convent, looking out over the mountains and breathing deep into the exhilarating alpine air. She spun, she lifted, she sailed, she dreamed.
The voice roared loud as gunshots. “Sign says everybody invited,” it boomed over the din. “I reckon that includes me.”
Sun Moon stopped on the rising third beat of the waltz, as though poised on the edge of a cliff. The music stopped. She saw clearly. She fell to her death, floating like a scarf.
Porter Rockwell.
Suddenly she knew that she had been waiting for that voice every moment, as one waits always, skin prickled, for the cold breath of death.
The crowd of miners fell back. Still raised on her toes, waiting for the downbeat that now would never come, she looked sideways. He stood just inside near the door, dressed in black. He seemed not a dark presence but a horrible black hole in the world.
He lifted his pistol with one long, straight arm, right at Sun Moon. Shorn of the dance, she stood motionless, frozen.
Lightning flashed from the muzzle.
In the same instant she felt Asie lurch violently. The roar smashed all music forever.
Sun Moon thumped hard on the floor on her back. Asie rolled them over and over each other into the crowd. The gun roared again.
Pain exploded in Sun Moon’s belly.
She felt for blood. She could not think of her own life, or of Asie’s, only the child.
Her hands came away dry.
I saw the miners had closed around us. They weren’t going to let Rockwell get another clear shot. They wouldn’t stand still for murder.
I shoved Sun Moon onto her knees, pushed her butt, and hollered, “Run! Run!”
We jammed through the crowd toward the back room. Some people made way, some even fell to the ground getting out of the way. Behind I heard a clamor, the sound of a big bunch of angry men. We’d have a little time.
Into the room where Tommy held the dinner. Through it, knocking tables and chairs aside. Into the kitchen. Down its narrow aisles into the back room, I didn’t know where in hell we were going.
We busted through the door and instantly I saw it was outfitted as an opium den. I shut the door behind us. On a kind of bed on the far side was what I wanted, Sir Richard. He was stretched out full, and now I saw he was stripped absolutely naked. Polly and Lu Pu-wai were propped at various angles, just as naked. The opium pipe stuck up from Sir Richard’s belly like a you know what.
“That shooting was Porter Rockwell!” I bellered at Sir Richard from a foot away.
Sir Richard opened his eyes at me. “Thank you,” he murmured. “Thank you very much,” and closed his eyes dreamily.
The door busted open with a bang. I knocked Sun Moon to the floor and flopped on top of her.
“I’ll help,” said the voice of Gentleman Dan. “Sir Richard is useless. Let’s go!”
PART FIVE
GOING HOME
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
We ran. I mean ran. Without you being scorched by flame spat out of a gun barrel, you have never run.
Full tilt we bolted out of the Heritage the back way, huffed along behind the other buildings, foot-and-arm-flapped downhill, gasped along a level street, rushed into the scrub brush, and busted gut up the rough terrain of the dark mountain, following Daniel.
We had no hell nor heaven idea where Porter Rockwell was behind us, but we knew damn well he would be coming. Coming and coming and coming.
We didn’t have time to wonder where Daniel was taking us. He led the way with a wonderful assurance, like a man whose poise embraced even fleeing headlong from destroying angels. I just had to accept that as Daniel. Also seemed like his lungs found more wind than mine. I could scarcely keep up, and Sun Moon was hanging on to my hand and heaving her chest up and down.
“Not much farther,” said Daniel evenly. He knew the way so well the blackness of the night didn’t even matter.
We followed him to a steep, jumbled, broken-up place. He pranced through the rocks nimbly. Turning around first to make sure we were right with him, he squatted, then duck-walked forward, and disappeared. This was his first surprise.
Sun Moon darted right in behind him. She must have had the cajoolies bad as me. But I grabbed a big breath, like it might be my last, and dived into the earth.
Light. Daniel already had a candle lit, which was his second surprise. “You’re safe for the moment,” he said, and led the way forward down a tunnel. We followed, but I didn’t like it. I have never been one for bowels, bowels of the earth or any other kind, nor for closed-in places, nor for dark places. The shaft was all in one.
Pretty quick we came to a junction where a drift forked off to the left. In the mouth of this drift Daniel reached, got two more candles, lit them, stuck them on small ledges, and revealed his tiptop surprise. A tank of at least five gallons caught water from a trickle and held it. A tick mattress stretched out on the rock floor, with blankets tucked neatly around it, and a pillow. Several tins of oysters stood on a ledge, next to a drinking cup and some eating utensils. Books flanked these.
Water, food, light, a bed, and … Well, it felt like a tomb. If you find yourself in a tomb, however, water, food, light, and a bed are a good start.
Sun Moon and I sat down to catch our breath. I was keeping an eye on her, what with her fever and this hard running and all.
“How are you feeling?” Daniel asked.
“Terrified,” said Sun Moon. Her breath caught as it came out, and I could hear the tears behind it.
“You are completely safe here.” He must have decided we could use some easing of mind. “No one knows I have this place, no one at all. I like somewhere to be absolutely alone, to read, to think, just to be. This is it.”
Well, that was Daniel. Seemed precious.
He opened both arms to include the whole area. “This mine belongs to me. It looks abandoned, but I prefer to think of it as lying in wait. I bought it for nothing. When the mountain’s veins run this direction again, it will be worth something.”
I was seeing a lot new about my friend.
He studied our faces. “So tell me about the shootist,” he said.
“He wants to me kill me,” said Sun Moon.
“I gathered that.”
“By now he probably wants to kill us,” I added.
“He’s been after me for nearly a year,” she said.
“A year?”
“Porter Rockwell,” says I.
Daniel arched an eyebrow toward us. “If you’re going to have an assassin after you,” he says, “you may as well get the best.”
I kept quiet while Sun Moon told her story. I had no idea how much she’d want to tell Daniel, and felt pleased she offered so much of it.
Her style was simple and truthful. She told briefly how she was abducted from her homeland, taken to Canton, shipped to the United States and then to Hard Rock City. How she’d been sold to Tarim for purposes of prostitution.
Daniel gave her all his attention.
“The first night Tarim drug me. Then men gamble be first to take me.” Sun Moon made an effort to keep her voice soft and even. “As winner undress me, I wake up and kick, bloody his nose. It is Porter Rockwell. He cut me.” She touched the scar on her face with one finger. “Tarim beg I be spared as valuable property. Rockwell swears if he sees me again ever, ever, he kills me.”
She swallowed. “After months with Tarim I escape. Rockwell see me near the Great Salt Lake, try kill me once, then twice. The Mormons hold him in jail to keep him from kill me. They say I am escaped. Yet he travels a thousand miles to fulfill oath.”
I saw shivers run up and down her little body.
“I sorry be trouble to you,” she said.
Daniel answered evenly, “My fiancée was a prostitute. The one regret of my life is that I didn’t protect h
er.”
At that moment I saw into Daniel’s soul, and the word came up for me again. Flabbergastonia. A rich man who was a musician. Who fell in love with mulatto prostitute. Ran away to Virginia City. Bought up a mine on the sly, maybe more than one. Kept a cave to be private in. Put his neck on the line to help us. Flabbergastonia.
“I’d best go,” he said. My heart lurched a little—we were going to be left alone in this hole. “If I reappear soon at the Heritage, they may not realize I took you off. Everything you need is here. I will come back with intelligence and supplies in the morning.”
“We can’t stay here forever.”
“No. When I return, I’ll bring the means for us to flee Virginia City.”
Sun Moon and I looked at each other. Would it never end? Skeedaddling, skipping town, blowing the place, running like hell, all we’d been doing for months.
I looked at Daniel. “Thank you for ‘us.’” It was a comfort, but not enough.
“You’re welcome. I’ll get your things from the hotel.”
We looked at each other, each wondering about our gold.
“I’ll get everything we can carry,” said Daniel pointedly.
“What about Sir Richard?” asked Sun Moon.
“I don’t know,” said Daniel. “If I can find him. If he’s on his feet.”
Then he was gone into the shadows of the shaft.
For some reason I felt we’d seen the last of Sir Richard, and that hurt. I gushed out my breath.
Sun Moon touched my hand.
What came into my mind was foolish, but I said it. “I wanna go home to bed.”
She eyed me for a moment. “I don’t think we know where home is any longer,” she said. “Either of us.”
They listened to Daniel’s footfalls fade. When there was nothing but eerie silence, she supposed he’d slipped out into the night, into the kind of darkness she and Asie could not have. Daniel had the vast reaches of the stars. She and Asie were trapped in a dark hole.