The Sand Pebbles (44 page)

It was a very cold homecoming for the Sand Pebbles.

Lt. Collins came back, looking stern, and went straight to his cabin. Word came down that there would be no liberty until further notice. Red Dog came back with mail and the Sand Pebbles gathered around him in the compartment to hear the scuttlebutt.

“The Red Candle’s closed,” he said. “They got Victor Shu in jail. They say he’s an enemy of the people.”

That hit them hard. The missionaries had never been able to close the Red Candle. No one spoke for a moment.

“Well, I guess the missionaries are all getting their guns over that,” Wilsey said at last, somberly.

“I hear a lot of ’em favor the gearwheel, all right,” Red Dog said. “Damned if I know why, though. I hear the town’s full of missionary women and kids from upcountry. The gearwheels are raising hell with the missions upcountry.”

“What doing?”

“Taking ’em over for troop quarters,” Red Dog said.

They were putting their horses in the churches, he went on. They tore out crosses and holy pictures and put up their gearwheel flag and pictures of Sun Yat-sen. All the people, missionaries included, had to come in and bow to the flags. They were doing the same thing in the heathen temples.

“Well, but God damn it!” Farren said. “You’d think the biblebacks would be screaming for blood.”

“They ain’t, though,” Red Dog said. “From what the clerk at the consulate told me, they’re the ones behind the no-shoot-back order.”

The Sand Pebbles cursed and wrangled over that mystery until taps.

After breakfast Holman had to go ashore with Jennings. When he took a dress white jumper out of his locker he found that a spent bullet had driven wood splinters into it, but the cloth was not harmed. The sampan coolie demanded a dollar and the rickshaw coolies on the bund wanted a dollar each to go to the mission hospital. It was far too much. The coolies would not bargain. They spat curses and turned their backs and an unfriendly crowd began to gather.

“Hell with ’em, Doc,” Holman said. “Let’s walk.”

They walked. The rickshaws in Changsha were no good, anyway. They had wooden wheels and hard rubber tires and no springs and all the important people rode in chairs. It was a pleasant morning for a walk. All the shops were open and the streets thronged and gearwheel troops were moving through. Holman was struck sharply by the difference. Warlord soldiers straggled on the march, slouching and slovenly and hung with strange gear such as teapots and umbrellas. Or they loitered along the streets with a sly, sullen, hangdog look that marked them more surely than their uniforms. The people feared and despised them. The people smiled and waved at the gearwheelers. Little boys ran shouting after them, clutching paper flags. The soldiers marched briskly along in step, fairly neat, heads up, and more often than not they were singing. Holman saw several girls swinging along in ranks with the soldiers.

“They’re all just kids,” he said.

“Cantonese all look like kids,” Jennings said. “It’s Malay blood.”

Holman tried to place his feeling. He was feeling
left out
, he thought, wondering. He had not felt that, to care a damn about it, since years ago in Wellco, Nevada.

The hospital was a big brick building with a Chinese roof. There were other brick walls and buildings and trees and neat green lawns and tennis courts and it was an extensive place. They had a gearwheel flag and a U.S. flag side by side over the main building. Inside it smelled of ether and iodoform, and people in white, most of them Chinese, were very busy. They all knew Jennings. It was strange to hear Doc Jennings called “Alfred.”

After the x-ray Holman had to sit a long time alone with Chinese patients on a wooden bench in a passageway. A Chinese nurse had a desk at one end. People in white, and some in the gearwheel green, kept passing. They looked curiously at Holman. He felt like a strange specimen with his sailor suit and his bandaged jaw.

Jennings came and led him to a small white side room and he sat in a dentist’s chair while a pretty Chinese nurse took off his bandage. He had whisker stubble under it. The doctor was a thin, fussy little
man in a white gown. He studied the x-ray plate and asked Jennings how it happened. Jennings made it sound as if Holman had been storming the Halls of Montezuma, because that was how they were telling it on the ship. The doctor sniffed.

“Chiang Kai-shek is going to do away with all that banditry and piracy,” he said. “There won’t be any excuse for gunboats being here.”

“Who’ll keep Chiang in line, if we go?” Jennings asked.

“You’re as bad as the oil company people, Alfred.” The doctor pressed fingers along Holman’s jaw. “Does that hurt, sailor?”

“Little bit.”

It hurt like hell. They had to put in a metal prop to help him keep his mouth wide enough open. The doctor was after a piece of metal with probe and forceps. He kept talking to Jennings about the new warlord. Sweat streamed down Holman’s face. The nurse kept wiping his forehead with gauze and the touch of her fingers helped him. The doctor was not feeling anything. He was just doing a job with tools.

“Got it!” he said. He took the prop out of Holman’s mouth. “Rest a while,” he told Holman. “Rinse your mouth.”

The nurse held a basin for him. Holman’s head cleared and he tried not to pant audibly. His calf muscles were trembling.

“No, Chiang is not another warlord,” the doctor was telling Jennings. “China is becoming a nation, being newly-born as a nation, all around us. Can’t you feel it in the streets and see it in people’s faces?”

“No,” Jennings said. “What’s China been all along, then?”

“A geographical expression.” The doctor turned back to Holman. “This is what hit you,” he said. It was like a blunt tack. “What sort of guns do they shoot these in?” the doctor asked.

“A big two-man shotgun, kind of a blunderbuss,” Holman said.

He remembered the gun lying in the courtyard. Crosley had thrown it into the burning kerosene.

“You were lucky the whole charge didn’t hit you,” the doctor said. “Well, shall we get on with the rest of it?”

“What do you mean, the rest of it?”

“A molar has to come out. I’ll have to probe for broken roots.”

“Jesus Christ,” Holman said. He should not have begun letting down.

“Oh, come now, no profanity, please,” the doctor said. “We pulled a tooth for General Chiang last week, over at his headquarters. He only took five minutes off work.”

“You know what we call him on the ship?” Holman said. “We call him Chancre Jack.”

The nurse hid a smile. “Do you?” the doctor said. “Open up, please,” he said.

It was very, very bad. Holman stood it by hating the doctor. He would not give that son of a bitch the satisfaction. But it came over him in waves and it was the nurse’s fingers that held him in place. Her fingers, and glimpses of her soft mouth drooping in pity. She carried him through the red haze of it and then they had him resting there with his head down on his knees and their voices sounded far off.

“I’d rather not give him a bed,” the doctor was saying. “We already have the wounded coming in from the fighting around Yochow. You can take care of him in your sickbay, can’t you?”

“I’m all right,” Holman mumbled. He raised his head, hands on trembling knees. “Let’s go back to the ship, Doc,” he said to Jennings. He stood up. He was groggy, but he felt strength coming back. “Let’s go, Doc,” he said thickly, around the cotton in his jaw.

“You ought to rest an hour or two,” Jennings said.

Holman turned his back on the doctor. “Thank you very much,” he told the nurse, and tried to smile at her. She smiled very sweetly at him. “See you aboard,” Holman told Jennings.

He walked out. Jennings caught up with him and took his arm. “You have to rest a little first,” he insisted.

“Not in this God damned place,” Holman said. “I’m going around by the railroad and stop and see how Maily is. I’ll rest there.” Jennings didn’t like it. “You don’t have to go with me,” Holman said. “I don’t even want you along.”

Maily was all right. She was in Chinese rig and her room was clean and neat. She made tea, and it warmed and firmed Holman’s stomach. She was sympathetic about his jaw and she wanted to know all about
the trouble at Paoshan. She was very curious about Paoshan. Holman kept waiting for the children to come laughing and scrambling in.

“How’s Su-li?” he asked, finally.

“She’s well. She’s a little darling,” Maily said.

She said it strangely. Her eyes were shiny and sad. Holman was feeling stronger.

“Let’s go out and feed the fish,” he said.

The black ones came and ate rice cake from Maily’s fingers, and it was just like before under that friendly tree, except that nobody else was in the courtyard. They all had tigers back above their doors, Holman noted. Then a woman came out of one of the rooms across the court. She came and spoke to Holman in Chinese and her voice was shrill and angry. Holman did not know what to think.

“What’s wrong? What’s she saying?” he asked Maily.

“She’s Ling’s wife, you know, the water coolie,” Maily said. She was blushing. “She says you owe Ling money for water for the fishpond, ten dollars.”

“I already paid him for all summer,” Holman said.

“I know. He raised the price.” Maily was embarrassed. “The students have been telling them they should charge more for work, for everything, if it’s for rich people.”

“I’m rich, for God’s sake?”

“Well, all treaty people …”

Maily seemed scared. Mrs. Ling—Holman recognized her now—was still jabbering. For Maily’s sake, Holman gave the woman twenty dollars. She took it and shut up, but she did not bow or smile.

“Thank you, Jake,” Maily said softly.

The door scraped behind them and Ah Pao came out. He was chubby and pouting in red. Su-li came behind him. They did not run to Holman. They stopped short and stared at him with big eyes. He thought it was his bandage, and the medicine smell. He squatted down and held out his arms.

“Su-li,” he said. “How’s my girl?”

Su-li wavered and tears came in her eyes. She was biting her hand. She shrank behind Ah Pao.

“Su-li,” Holman said.
“Ding ding.”

“Bu hao!”
the little girl said.

She turned and ran back inside her open door. Ah Pao went to Mrs. Ling. He looked over his shoulder at Holman and jabbered to Mrs. Ling. The coolie woman began to laugh. Holman stood up and looked his question at Maily. She would not meet his eyes. Po-han’s wife came out, with a frightened smile and a bow at Holman, and snatched Ah Pao away. She scolded the little boy and dragged him wailing back into the room and shut the door. Holman took Maily’s arm.

“Maily! What’s it all about? What’s wrong with everybody?”

“Please come inside again, Jake,” she said.

They sat down at her table and she told him about it. The gearwheelers—she called them
Kuomintang
—were preaching hatred for the treaty people. They were supposed to be oppressing and exploiting the Chinese under the unequal treaties. The gearwheel was against all rich people, who were supposed to be automatically on the side of the ocean devils. You didn’t really have to be rich to be in trouble. Po-han was in trouble, because he was landlord of the courtyard and because he worked on a gunboat. That was why Mei-yu was so frightened. The gearwheelers had cut all rents in half, not that it helped the tenants any, because they had to give the other half for a tax. It all came out of Maily in a rush.

“What was Ah Pao saying?” Holman asked.

“He was asking Mrs. Ling when the green soldiers would come to put you in the fishpond.” Maily smiled sadly. “The street orators have been saying that the treaty people will all be pushed into the sea. Ah Pao has never even seen the river. It’s the only way he can understand it.”

“Jesus,” Holman said. “Even the little kids. Even
babies!”

“It’s like a sudden poison.”

Maily began to cry silently. Holman reached across the table and patted her shoulder.

“Are you … are they giving you a bad time, too?”

“They overcharge me, on our street,” she said. “Mei-yu has been buying for both of us.”

“It’s more than that.” His voice roughened. “What the bastards been doing, Maily? Tell me!”

“Nothing, really. It’s just a coldness. I feel that I’m being … left out … shut out … pushed away, somehow.”

“I know. I been feeling that all day.”

“You’re an American. But if I’m pushed away, where is there for me? If I’m not Chinese, what am I?” Her voice was breaking.

“You’re Frenchy’s wife,” Holman said. “He’ll take care of you, Maily. I’ll help all I can. Don’t you worry now.”

“I can’t help it. I worry what will happen to Frenchy.” Her face was all broken up with her crying. “I’m just God’s curse to myself and everybody,” she said. “I wish I were dead!”

“Maily! Don’t say things like that!” Holman slid his chair around to where he could put an arm around her shoulders. There was nothing nasty about it. “You ain’t told me everything,” he said. “What you told me ain’t all that bad. Come on now, what’s the rest of it?”

Crying into his shoulder, she told him. She was going to have a baby. She had been very happy about it and suddenly it was … all wrong, a danger, not fair to Frenchy, he might hate her for it, she couldn’t say all the ways it was wrong.

“Everybody in the streets is so happy and hopeful and I’m … I’m …”

He smoothed her hair. “It’s all right,” he kept saying. “I’ll get back to the ship and tell Frenchy he’s just got to get special liberty and come over here. You just need Frenchy with you.”

She stopped crying and he prepared to go.

“I won’t tell Frenchy the news. He’ll want to hear it the first time right from you,” Holman said. “He’ll be proud, I know. He really loves you, Maily.”

That started her crying all over again.

Franks’ landing force section was standing by at the consulate. There had been no trouble right in Changsha, but everyone expected it. Gearwheel agitators were making speeches on street corners and they held rallies on the bund every day. They were forming everybody into unions and making fantastic promises of how good it would be when they won their rights and blaming all their troubles on the unequal treaties. It was bound to lead to riots.