The Sand Pebbles (32 page)

“Three
hundred gold dollars!” Quinn shouted. “That only buys one leg, boys!” He twitched Maily’s brown dress above her knee. “Clean,
fresh, brand-new goods, untouched by human hands!” He passed his hands in the air near her, outlining her breasts and hips. “Hey day! Bid her up! Show your red American blood, boys!”

“Three-fifty!” Van said.

The crowd cheered again. Burgoyne, white-faced, was smoothing his mustache savagely. The gunpowder feeling was coming back into the air and they were all crowding the auction table. Holman looked around and caught Red Dog’s eye. Red Dog made a pinch motion and Holman nodded. He didn’t know what Red Dog meant, but something was due to break in seconds. Van took a drink from the bottle he was holding.

“Give up, sailor,” he told Burgoyne.

“Four-fifty,” Burgoyne said, through bloodless lips.

That was about all he had. Holman pushed through and grasped his arm. “You can have what I got, Frenchy,” he said. Burgoyne’s arm was like iron and he did not answer. They were all whistling and cheering, with a high, howling note in their voices, and their faces did not look good. Quinn was shouting, red-faced and eye-bulging. Holman could not hear what he said. Quinn went down on one knee and began raising Maily’s dress slowly, in teasing jiggles. Her face was absolutely bloodless, and she swayed, eyes still closed. She must feel awful alone up there, Holman thought. He had his fists clenched and every muscle tense, and the mob lust was exciting him too, and he didn’t know what to do.

The mob roared in outrage. Maily had on Chinese underwear, loose blue drawers that came halfway down her shapely thighs. “Undress her!” Vincent screamed and they were all shouting hoarsely, “Strip her! Strip her!” Quinn stood up and ripped savagely and her dress fell down around her hips. The fire was in the gunpowder.

Red Dog barked high and sharp and Holman took it as a signal. He kicked fiercely at a table leg and caught Maily as the table tilted her down to him and passed her to Burgoyne, shouting, “Outside, Frenchy!” Then he slugged Quinn and turned to see Van scream and plunge forward with Red Dog riding high on his shoulders and yapping frantically. Red Dog snatched down the overhead light and
Holman bruised his way through screaming darkness to the door, hurling them aside each way like a snowplow. He saw Burgoyne and Maily in the courtyard and ran to join them. Behind him in the darkness a roaring, howling, wood-splintering fight of all against all raged on. The Red Candle had finally exploded.

“Run, Frenchy!” Holman said. “Some of ’em may come after us!”

Someone did, shouting in Chinese behind them as they ran down narrow streets and around twisty corners, working inland from the river. Maily could not run fast.

“Go on with her, Frenchy,” Holman panted. “I’ll wait and stop that bastard behind us.”

He turned with fists ready, catching up breath, and it was Big Chew who came pounding along. As he gasped and puffed and tried to talk, his two coolies with his sedan chair loped up. Holman turned and cupped his hands.

“Hey, Frenchy, wait!” he hailed. “It’s friends!”

Lights were coming on behind barred and latticed windows. They were making too much noise. Big Chew made them walk on quietly and slowly until they came to a silent, deserted street. He was still drunk and happy that he had gotten so neatly away from the fight. Maily had to keep holding her dress up, hands crossed to shoulders. She was shivering and Burgoyne had his arm around her.

“We got to take her someplace,” he said. “Some safe place.”

“How about the bund hotel?”

“Shu’ll find her there. He’ll get her again.”

“Can he, though? I mean, there’s Chinese cops, ain’t there?”

Burgoyne laughed bitterly. “There ain’t no law in China, Jake, only warlords. And Shu’s in with this warlord.”

“Let me go back to the Red Candle,” Maily said in a broken voice. “There’s no hope. It’s just God’s will.”

“No it ain’t God’s will!” Burgoyne said, with fierceness strange to him. “Tomorrow I’ll go pay Shu exactly what you owe him and not a clacker more. And then we’ll get you on the train for Hankow.” He hugged her against him.

“How fashion speakee?” Big Chew said. Holman explained and
Big Chew nodded thoughtfully. “Mus’ hide she,” he said. “Shu makee looksee, this side, that side, no can find. She stop by Po-han, I tink all maskee.”

Maily rode in the chair. Chew was probably right, Holman thought, on the way there. It was a poor section of twisty, narrow lanes, mud walls and low tiled roofs over near the railroad cutting, very confusing. Po-han lived in one room of a small courtyard with a tree, and a dim light was on inside. Big Chew went in first, talking rapidly to a pale, pretty little woman who bowed to him. Both ends of the room were curtained off and there were only a chest, a clay stove, a table and one chair in the middle part. A small, smoky kerosene lamp burned on the table. They all came inside except the chair coolies, and it was quite crowded.

Po-han’s wife was putting wisps of grass in the stove and blowing and she got a fire going under a tin pan of water. A thin, waspish older woman came out and Big Chew talked to her. They argued back and forth. Maily’s head was drooping and Burgoyne was half supporting her. Big Chew seemed to win the argument.

“Maskee,” he said, grinning. “Gel can do, stop this side.”

The older woman was Po-han’s mother, he told them. Po-han was asleep on opium pills. The Chinese doctor had just left and Po-han was going to be all right. Holman had been expecting both women to spit curses at him, on account of Po-han, but the mother ignored him and the little wife was only shy and nervous, working up her modest fire under her pan of water. She murmured something and slipped out into the courtyard.

“Here, you better sit down, Maily,” Burgoyne said.

Maily was shivering again. Po-han’s mother spoke soothingly to Maily and led her behind one of the curtains. Sleepy child voices sounded back there, and Maily began a quiet sobbing. The three men talked about Po-han and the brave fight he had made. They were all standing, because there was only one chair. Po-han’s wife came back with some tea bowls she had probably had to borrow. She was red-cheeked and kept her eyes down as she brewed tea.

“She tink Po-han too much lose face, no hab got cheh, teacup,” Big Chew said quietly.

Holman looked around again. It wasn’t much, earth floor, no ceiling except the tile roof, whitewashed walls and one glazed-paper window. But it was simple and decent and good, he thought, after the Red Candle. She ought to spit in my face, he thought, blame me for Po-han. But she gives me tea. Po-han’s mother came back out and they all drank tea. She said something to Big Chew.

“Olo woman speakee mus’ pay litee money,” he said.

“I’m going to give Po-han half of what I won,” Holman said. “No, by God, every clacker of what I won!”

He began laying bills on the table.

“I’ll give him half of mine,” Burgoyne said.

Burgoyne began counting off bills. Big Chew explained to the women. There was quite a volley of Chinese back and forth with the old lady. Big Chew took out a sheaf of bills and added a generous portion of it to the little heap on the table.

“Same me,” he said jovially. “You luck-man, Ho-mang. Po-han too much luck, too much money, jus’ now. You makee he velly big man, Ho-mang.”

Po-han’s pretty little wife suddenly began to cry.

Next morning the Sand Pebbles proudly displayed black eyes and fat lips and skinned knuckles and Duckbutt Randall had a piece bitten out of his ear. They were all friendly to Holman. A good fight cleared away nastiness and resentment just as the spring flood swept away the winter garbage along the riverfront. A good fight, win or lose, settled things in a way a man could accept with an easy heart. And it had been a magnificent fight. The businessmen had been beaten to a pulp and forced to crawl on hands and knees across the courtyard. Lop Eye Shing and Victor Shu and most of the girls and the kitchen help had also been beaten up in the wild darkness. The Red Candle was a glorious, absolute wreck. The Sand Pebbles would tell and retell that fight for years to come, as a part of their folklore.

Even Lynch took it for granted that Po-han would stay aboard. Lop Eye Shing took his loss of face and did not quit. The
San Pablo
was too good a rice bowl to give up. Big Chew did not seem disappointed. He hinted to Holman of some kind of plan.

“I speakee somebody Hankow,” was all he would say about it.

Burgoyne went into the city and paid Shu a hundred dollars gold. He told Holman about it the next day in the engine room. Shu had
insisted that he must have four hundred and fifty, Burgoyne’s last bid, and if Burgoyne would not pay it, then Maily would have to come back and work it off.

“The greasy bastard!” Holman said.

“He tried right hard to fish out of me where Maily is,” Burgoyne said. “He told me his men were watching the trains and the riverfront and if she tried to leave town he would have her arrested.”

“He can’t do that!”

“She says he can. She’s Chinese, Jake.” Burgoyne spat in the trash can. “Victor Shu can do just about anything he wants in Changsha.”

Holman stood quarterdeck watches every night, as his part of the general settlement. He became more aware again of the world outside the engine room. It was a dreary world of dull skies and misty rain and the mountain black across the river shrunken to steel-gray channels between the sandbars. Changsha crouched old and gray and smoky above its garbage and the
San Pablo
floated in its fish pond surrounded by a wreath of its own garbage. Burgoyne went ashore nearly every night to see Maily and he said she kept asking why Holman did not come over.

“Tell her I’m standing by for everybody, paying off watches,” Holman said.

He was obscurely glad of an excuse to stay aboard. Po-han was mending rapidly, Burgoyne reported. He had enough money to buy the whole courtyard where he lived and become landlord to the other tenants. He had thrown the tenants out of the rooms on either side of his own and put his mother in one room and rented the other to Maily. Burgoyne had been helping Maily pick out furniture and gear and she spent her time fixing up the room.

“You ought to come see it, she’s that proud of it, Jake,” Burgoyne said. “She thinks you’re sore at her, or something.”

“Pretty soon,” Holman said.

He was just as happy to have Burgoyne grapple with the problem of Maily. Life aboard was smooth and easy. Chiu-pa took care of the machinery well enough, and Holman had lost interest in it. He knew it was in fine shape. He began rather liking the quarterdeck
watches. Stawski came aboard with his jaw wired up, thinned down from living on liquids, cheerful and reconciled. Then Po-han came back to duty, very proud of two shiny gold upper teeth he had had put in. He was bouncy and cocky in the engine room, but he stayed away from the throttle platform and the coffee pot. Perna and Stawski treated him as they had old Chien. The fight had canceled everything, as if it had never happened, and it all went smooth and easy again. It was clean and warm and dry inside the ship and Big Chew’s chow was better than ever.

Burgoyne went ashore with Po-han almost every night and came back around midnight. He was afraid Victor Shu had found Maily. Some Chinese men in the street had tried to make her go with them. She screamed and a crowd gathered and she got safely back to the courtyard. She was afraid to go out again, except with Burgoyne. Then one morning the men had come into the courtyard and had only gone away after Po-han’s mother had cursed them and screamed up a crowd of neighbors. Burgoyne and Po-han and Holman had a conference about it beside the workbench. They were a gang of petty racketeers who hung out in a teahouse near his place, Po-han said, and they might well be working for Shu. The whole neighborhood was afraid of them.

“I’ll go ashore with you today, Frenchy,” Holman said. “Let’s take a look at that teahouse.”

Po-han knocked off early to go with them. The district was a spillover of mud walls and shacks outside the city wall, toward the railroad, narrow, dirty streets jumping with noise and people. When the three men approached the teahouse the people cleared away, as if they smelled trouble. Po-han led the way inside, not stopping, to a table at the back where five of the tough guys sat. Two were in Western clothes, the others in gowns, and they hardly had time to stand up before Po-han was at them, punching silently and savagely. Holman and Burgoyne jerked and slapped and cuffed them and there was a lot of high-pitched squalling, but it was not a fight. The men slapped and scrambled and squalled, but they did not really
fight. One of them pulled out a pistol, holding it as if just to show that he had it, and Holman took it away from him without resistance. The floor was slippery and crunchy with spilled tea and food and broken crockery. They kicked the gangsters into the street with blood on their faces and people came out of doors all along to point fingers and laugh and jeer. Po-han, puffing and happy, left a message with the teahouse proprietor for the gangsters who had not been present. Burgoyne gave the man some money for the broken furniture.

“Tell him if we have to do this again we won’t pay next time,” he told Po-han.

It had been very quick and easy and they all felt good about it. Holman put the pistol in his peacoat pocket. It was a cheap, nickeled Belgian revolver, and it was loaded.

“You know, we ought to go into the city and put a bug in Victor Shu’s ear, while we’re at it,” Holman said.

“Let’s go,” Burgoyne said.

The people cheered them as they passed. The gang had long been running a clacker-level squeeze racket in the neighborhood, Po-han said. Now they had lost so much face that people could refuse to pay. It was a good feeling, being cheered. They walked through North Gate into the city, striding along three abreast, and everyone got out of their way. Shu’s office was up a side street. It had a big red-and-gold sign in Chinese and a smaller one in English that said “V. Shu, Ship Chandler.”

Holman led the way in. It was a long place, dark-shadowy in back, with boxes and tar and oil smells, and there were three desks up front behind a wooden railing. Shu sat at one of them. Holman kicked open the low gate and walked in and looked down at Shu across the desk. Shu looked mildly surprised.