Down to a Soundless Sea (24 page)

There were singular occasions when Sing Fat might have made good his escape from the mud and privation, but he had no idea where to escape to. He couldn’t truthfully say he really knew where he was to begin with, much less where to find refuge if he chose to make a bid for freedom. He prudently decided it would be best to wait until he had acquired enough
useful information to effect his emancipation without consequence. The last thing he needed was to have the mine police hunting him down through the wilderness like a stolen horse.

In the meantime, Sing Fat made the acquaintance of a fellow coolie, a cagey old man from his own province of Bao-ding. This astute, elderly fellow, who remembered Sing Fat’s family by reputation, instructed the young man in a covert skill that happily made employment in the placer fields more profitable than the mine owners might have wished.

The old man showed Sing Fat how to glean small amounts of gold from the mine tailings. If one were patient and unobtrusive it was possible to harvest a modest income from the discarded waste of the placer mining process. If he came across a healthy nugget now and then so much the better.

The magic involved the furtive reprocessing of supposedly dead tailings to reveal the minutest traces of residual gold. The technique was similar to panning for gold except that the method involved the use of clear whale oil and a Mason jar. The fine, dried tailings were spooned carefully into the jar of whale oil, which allowed the lighter soil to remain suspended while the heavier gold particles sank to the bottom of the jar.

It was a painstaking skill to pick out the flecks of gold with a thin reed tipped in pine tar. When the process was finished, the oil was filtered through cloth for reuse. Since there was little else to do in one’s spare time, gleaning gold became something of a recreational enterprise. At the close of his eighth year working the mines, Sing Fat had accumulated approximately $3,300 worth of gold dust.

Sing Fat’s nest egg was always secured within a wallet belt that he had fashioned from waxed canvas. This belt he carried about his waist, securely bound under his smock with stout leather thongs. It would have required considerable effort for a
thief to remove it even with the aid of a sharp knife. The same venerable gentleman had also advised Sing Fat to learn as much of the roundeyes’ strange language as possible. He admitted that much of their barbarian tongue was unpronounceable, and therefore useless, but what the roundeyes were pleased to call pidgin English would suffice for most transactions. Indeed, it was all a poor Chinese coolie was really expected to speak under the circumstances.

The old man confided that true mastery of the barbarians’ language would draw only suspicion and scorn from both sides of the gate. It was best to remain obsequious and invisible in a land of strange morals and unpredictable dangers.

He reminded Sing Fat that in his present situation—lost, bound, and alone in a land of spiritually unbalanced roundeyes—it was no particular crime for those barbarians to rob or even murder a Chinese. It happened all the time without intervention from the authorities.

Sing Fat and his gold would not long prosper if he drew attention to himself. Wisdom dictated caution. The shrewd man adopted a faceless and nameless demeanor if longevity was to be one of his goals.

After what seemed an eternity of backbreaking exertion, Sing Fat had acquired enough basic information to conclude that it was time to take his modest earnings and disappear. The inherent dangers implied in an escape were of little consequence to a man in search of the freedom to choose the pattern and place of his labors. Life without choices equaled bondage, and Sing Fat had sufficiently explored the depths of servitude.

Over the years since his arrival in the gold fields, Sing Fat had made subtle queries among his fellow workers. He discovered that there were substantial Chinese enclaves not only in
San Francisco, but also in Santa Cruz, Watsonville, Salinas, and Monterey. It might be possible to find refuge and employment in such places. If one possessed a little capital, the prospect of securing an honorable place within those communities would prove all the easier. Sing Fat decided to vanish at the first practical opportunity.

His chance came sooner than he expected. One hot August morning a hundred laborers, including Sing Fat, were piled onto ore wagons and hauled down toward Sacramento and the American River cargo landings to work as stevedores, off-loading heavy mining equipment from three riverboats.

During the dangerous transfer of loads from boat to dock, a cargo sling snapped free of its shackle and swept Sing Fat and twenty Chinese coolies off the riverboat and into the river. Sing Fat could hear their shrieks of distress even underwater as he struggled to regain the surface against the weight of his wet clothes and his belted treasure.

Many of the laborers could not swim and were drowned almost immediately. Sing Fat, who had been taught to swim by an uncle when he was a child, managed to rise to the surface just under the loading docks. When he came up gasping for air, he found he was holding on to one of the pilings and was therefore hidden from general view. He clung fast there against the current, waiting to regain his breath.

It suddenly occurred to Sing Fat that if he didn’t show himself prematurely and made no noise, his masters would naturally assume that he had been lost with the other nameless victims and swept downstream. Confident that liberation was close at hand, Sing Fat clung tenaciously to the hidden pilings for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening until it was safe to extricate himself. Luckily the water was not deathly cold, thanks to the August heat, and though uncomfortable
after many hours of immersion, he did not fear for his safety. When it was dark enough to escape notice, Sing Fat allowed himself to drift downstream with the current until he found a secluded place to haul himself free of the river. There he rested in hiding among the reeds for the remainder of the night.

The next morning, after discarding those elements of his attire that specifically identified him as a mine coolie, Sing Fat made his way west on foot as best he could. Sacramento hosted its fair share of Chinese laborers, as well as other minorities, and the fringes of the city supported a tattered network of shacks and shanties that passed for dwellings. Like the rings of a tree, every consecutive layer represented a different minority. The Chinese enclave was relegated to the farthest location, and all except household domestics were exiled to this outside ring. Thus they had the farthest to travel to and from their labors.

Sing Fat eventually came upon that outermost ring, and there he at last found invisibility and safety among hundreds of his own countrymen. He sought out and followed a relatively prosperous-looking laundryman named Lee Me Fong. This particular gentleman proved very amenable and truly sympathetic.

He happily exchanged clean clothes, sturdy sandals, two blankets, and twenty dollars in Yankee currency for a modest amount of gold dust. To show his good faith, the laundryman even drew a map of the roads leading toward San Francisco and Salinas. Lee Me Fong was proud to acknowledge close relatives in both locations and presented Sing Fat with a card bearing only one character: “mulberry.” The laundryman begged Sing Fat to tender his deepest respects should he happen upon any of his illustrious relatives.

After a generous meal, and the purchase of rations for the road, all farewell formalities were acknowledged. Sing Fat then departed on his journey into a wilderness inhabited, he was certain, by ogres and demons prepared to beguile and destroy the unwary foreign traveler.

Upon studying his handmade map, Sing Fat decided that San Francisco was too big and too close to the arena of his last employment. He thought it prudent to travel farther south to Santa Cruz, Salinas, or Monterey, where the chances of being detained by labor authorities would be minimal.

This could not have been an easy choice. The distance in miles was beyond the scope of his understanding for the present, but he began to appreciate the general concept after three weeks on the road found him only halfway to his destination. By then he had repaired his sandals at least a dozen times. When conditions allowed he walked barefoot to save wear on the over-worn leather.

For a man whose cultural predilections leaned heavily in favor of demons and devils, the journey south proved frightening. Sleeping rough in the wild, where any creature alone drew the attention of strange beasts, was akin to a journey into hell. Sing Fat would occasionally be offered some small assistance by a passing Filipino field-worker in a wagon or a poor Mexican sharecropper.

From such as these, Sing Fat might purchase a few rations or a night in the shelter of a barn, but he was careful never to reveal any sign of his wealth. He would always proffer a few coins in exchange for his needs, but these he would pour from a worn leather pouch to show that these few coins were all he possessed.

He shunned all contact with roundeyes for fear that some white man would guess his secret and have him taken up to be
returned to the mines. The probability of such an occurrence was extremely slight, if not totally improbable, but Sing Fat did not know this and so kept his distance from all barbarians on principle.

At night, while he took shelter in a grove of scrub oaks or a culvert, the sounds of the creatures of the night haunted his fertile imagination to such a degree that sleep often proved impossible. On several occasions he found it prudent to take his ease in the branches of a tree to avoid the marauding packs of coyotes that haunted the dark. Often their distant, nocturnal howls set his hair on end as he fantasized them to be anything but what they were. It might be taken as an indication of the terrors of the journey, or perhaps a natural reticence to speak about himself, but for the rest of his life, Sing Fat chose never to speak about those arduous and frightening weeks.

Always fearful of bandits or beasts, starvation or thirst, Sing Fat had worn away layer upon layer of courage and resolve until he thought his soul would cave in upon itself.

When he did at last arrive on the outskirts of Salinas one dry, star-choked night, he was no more than a wraith, with little to show for his long ordeal except an empty stomach, a hollow-eyed expression of total fatigue, and bleeding feet.

Like every town he had skirted on the way south, Salinas had delegated her laboring minorities to isolated enclaves, and it was there that Sing Fat at last sought refuge. He knew himself to be suffering from exhaustion as well as maladies that had come upon him as a result of his withering life on the road. So at the first opportunity, Sing Fat appealed to an old charcoal vendor for directions to an apothecary where he might purchase medicine.

He thought he was becoming delusional when the old
man pointed out the way to Chow Yong Fat’s venerable establishment, not six doors away near the corner of East Lake Street. The old vendor added an endorsement to the effect that the elder Chow Yong Fat was the finest doctor in the valley. His store of medicines and cures was superior to anything white men could provide. Chow Yong Fat was also a sage of the mystic needles, that most esteemed of the healing arts. Sing Fat bowed weakly, thanked the old man, and half stumbled in the direction he’d indicated.

The vendor watched the stranger depart, noticed that he had cut off his braided queue, and shook his head. It was sad to see any creature in such a depleted and careworn state, especially a son of the Middle Kingdom who had resolved never to return to his homeland. But from what he had observed, the stranger would not live long enough to regret the folly of his choice.

Sing Fat found the establishment a few minutes later. The calligraphic sign above the modest shop was handsomely painted, but to Sing Fat’s disappointment there was no indication of life within. Through the door’s dusty glass panes, Sing Fat could see a small kerosene lamp, well turned down, set on the rear counter. It softly illuminated the interior and cast a warm veneer of amber light upon the countless pigeonholed drawers and porcelain jars containing herbs, ointments, and medicines. In desperation, Sing Fat knocked upon the door, but not a flicker of movement came in response. Sing Fat was about to knock again, but his spent constitution would tolerate no further exertion. With hand raised, he fainted from exhaustion where he stood.

*  *  *

As he later remembered it, Sing Fat was not brought around to consciousness easily, but rather floated ever so slowly toward sounds and light that seemed forever beyond his reach. Just as he sensed he might break free to the surface of apparent reality, he would slip once more into a pallid, murky insensibility. There he drifted helplessly like a mote of plankton until the light and sounds called him forth once more. But the faculty that finally netted him toward consciousness was smell, the pungency of ancient aromas, familiar but forgotten scents of home, of China, of childhood.

Each distinct odor was an amalgam of a multitude of different sources, some sweet, some piquant with a disturbing but familiar stench, all ancient, mysterious, and definitively Chinese.

Opening his eyes proved difficult and revealed an inability to focus on anything farther than a few inches from his face. He perceived detached precincts of light and dark, but little else. He could attest to neither movement nor sound, and he became aware of a creaking anxiety that tingled his bones. Sing Fat felt about in the gloom to find that he was laid out comfortably on a thick woven mat and covered amply with a sturdy, warm quilt. His head was cradled on a small wicker bolster. He tried to stir himself into a sitting position, but a firm yet gentle hand restrained him. A distant man’s voice instructed Sing Fat to have no fear. He had been very ill, but if he followed a prescribed course of care he might yet live to bless one or two generations. Sing Fat, too devitalized to protest, did as he was told.

Moments later the same hand lifted his head, and a cup of warm but bitter medicine was placed to his lips. The remote voice encouraged the stranger to drink as much of the concoction
as he could. It would aid in rest and make recovery more comfortable. Sing Fat accepted the brew without objection. Within minutes he noticed the mat began to feel like goose down and the coarse linen quilt became a fur-lined mantle. He slept for two days and awoke to visions unlike anything he expected.