The Sand Pebbles (45 page)

The shackmasters, Burgoyne among them, were granted special liberty. They understood it would be canceled the first time any one of them got in trouble. Holman’s jaw healed rapidly and he was busy every day fastening the engine room floorplates around the bridge for makeshift armor. He had plank walkways down below in place of the floorplates, revealing everywhere the raw red lead of the bilges, and the engine room looked ripped open. Po-han worked at the job. The way things had changed ashore made him value his job aboard a great deal more than being a landlord. But he was also worried about the ship.

“Evahbody speak, all gunship go, nevah come back this side,” he told Holman.

“No, no, Po-han,” Holman assured him. “Right now we makee plenty more gunship in Shanghai. Pretty soon we have two, three American gunship this side.”

Holman had never seen the Sand Pebbles so uneasy. They watched the troops passing downriver and repeated all the scuttlebutt. The commercial steamers were being fired upon. They came into Changsha with armor around their pilot houses and sand bags piled along their cabin decks and almost all the paleface women and children were leaving for Hankow. The consul sent out word to evacuate Western Hunan and all the Americans left the Chien Valley except the people at China Light. The China Light people did not send in their waivers. The Sand Pebbles cursed about that and seemed to take it as a bad sign. They were very touchy. Word came of a big gearwheel victory near Yochow. General Wu’s men were said to have been undermined by propaganda and their officers bought with silver bullets. The Sand Pebbles repeated that. They did not want to believe that any Chinese could really fight. Word came that the gearwheels had mined the river in the Chenglin narrows and all commercial steamers stopped running into Hunan. Gearwheel troops monopolized the railroad. Changsha was more cut off than in the wintertime. The days were hot, sultry and electric, and no one knew what to expect.

One day they were eating their noon meal when they heard a far, strange noise. Wong dropped a tureen clattering on deck and burst into the compartment, very frightened. “Topside sampan! Topside sampan!” was all he could say. They all went out on deck curious to see a wonder and it was only three airplanes flying low over Changsha. They had the gearwheel on their wings and tails.

“First time I ever seen one of them infernal machines,” Restorff grunted.

“It’s Russians flying ’em,” Crosley said, with assurance.

Bolshevik Russians were known to be with the gearwheel troops. The planes made much face for the gearwheel in Changsha. They added to the unease on the
San Pablo
. England and Japan and America had thousands of airplanes, but they did not have any in Hunan Province.

The students paraded along the bund nearly every day, very bold and noisy, with a forest of placards denouncing the treaties and the treaty people. According to scuttlebutt, many were the sons and daughters of big landlords and merchants who were in gearwheel prisons or who had even been shot. It was a thing unheard-of in China, where they worshiped ancestors. It was the student parades, more than anything else, that rasped the nerves of the Sand Pebbles. But they always watched them, in the way a man’s tongue will seek an aching tooth.

“What the hell
are
the unequal treaties, anyway?” Wilsey said once.

“They give us our treaty rights,” Ellis said. “We got to stand up for our rights.”

“What the hell
are
our rights?”

“I don’t know. I guess the officers know,” Ellis said. “Ask Bordelles, if you really want to know.”

Crosley aimed an imaginary gun at the line of students. “Boy oh boy, just like ducks in a row!” he said. He closed one eye and clicked his tongue rapidly. “Ducks in a rain barrel,” he said. “Bet you they’d knock off that sign crap, quick enough.”

“You can’t shoot students,” Ellis said.

“Old Chao stripped the girls and led ’em around in front of the soldiers,” Crosley said. “I bet them soldiers liked that.”

“I’d like it,” Ellis said. “I bet some of them young ones are real tender gear.”

“Hot damn!” Crosley snorted and pawed with his foot.

“You guys been aboard too long,” Wilsey said. “Too bad you ain’t shackmasters.”

The shackmasters were not having it easy. All of them except Burgoyne were arranging to send their women to stay with relatives in the country, until the storm blew over. Maily had no relatives. The others urged Burgoyne to unshack, but he would not consider it. He was looking worried and not saying much. He had not told Holman about Maily being pregnant, and Holman did not mention it.

“I guess they say things in Chinese that hurt her feelings,” Burgoyne
said. “I can tell that much from faces. But nobody offers to hit her, or anything. But they overcharge her and Mei-yu both, now. They got to go clear over by South Gate to buy at a decent price.”

“How about you?” Holman asked. “They give you a hard time?”

“Well, not right out in a way you could understand it that way.” Burgoyne’s face twisted and he tugged his mustache. “Maybe they cuss me, but they don’t throw rocks, I mean. It’s just a feeling so strong you could nearabout cut it with a knife.”

“Well, piss on ’em!”

Burgoyne shook his head. “Po-han feels it, too. We don’t never sit out by the fishpond any more. Him and me sneak home like it was a crime for us to have a home.”

“How’s Maily taking it?”

“She makes out to be cheerful.” Burgoyne dug out his snuff. “But she cries in bed, when she thinks I’m asleep. And she’s back on that crazy stuff, that God hates her.”

“You got to get her to Hankow, Frenchy.”

“I know that. I know that, now.”

They talked about it. The only way was to go by junk. The word was that all junks were being commandeered by one side or the other, in the fighting above Hankow. It was not safe, but neither was Changsha safe. Po-han had offered several times to arrange a junk passage to Hankow for Maily.

“Makes me wonder, is it his way of hinting that Maily is bringing extra trouble on him?” Burgoyne said. “And she is, all right.”

“I don’t get it. Why in hell should she?”

“Account of me. And she’s American too, and they know that, too.” He pinched out some snuff. “I don’t know what her raisings were, for she won’t talk about that, but she’s more American than you or me.”

Holman felt an obscure warning signal. “No, Frenchy, she’s Chinese,” he said.

“Only on paper.”

“Paper’s what counts. It’s down on paper that no Chinese can ever be an American.”

“How about Chinatown, in Frisco?”

“They ain’t Americans. We had Chinese in my home town, but even when I was a little kid I knew they wasn’t Americans,” Holman said. “Not any more than the Piutes up on the Duck Valley Reservation.”

“Maily’s always been American to me.”

“You come from the wrong part of the country.”

“Well, I got to get her out of this part of this country,” Burgoyne said. “By the Lord God, I hope General Wu up there kills half of them gearwheelers and runs the other half clean out of China! Things was real good here, till the gearwheel came.”

Bordelles took his section to the consulate to relieve Franks’ group. It was easy duty. They slept on cots on a screened side veranda and stood two-hour sentry watches at the front gate. There were a deck of cards and a few old
Country Gentleman
magazines for the men off duty. The head was poor: a room off the kitchen with several big slop jars and a circular pottery tub four feet across and a foot deep. Coolies had to bring water in buckets. The consulate food was not half as good as Big Chew’s meals. It was easy duty, but they were standing by for trouble, and a small noise at night would bring them all awake.

Trouble was in the air. The consul was deep in
walla walla
with the gearwheel people over mission property upcountry. It was almost a relief when the alarm came one sunny afternoon that gearwheel troops were trying to move into a mission school right in Changsha, the same school Bordelles had cleared of Chao’s soldiers in April. They marched to the scene with the feel of springs unwinding.

Holman and Farren headed the double file behind Bordelles and they swung along in step, arms at right shoulder, washing the people aside like the bow wave of a destroyer. The school courtyard was full of green soldiers and carrier coolies with baggage. Two missionaries were talking to a little knot of gearwheelers. Bordelles barked, “Detail
… halt!”
and their feet went
one … two!
“Order … arms!” and they brought them down with a slap and a jingle. Bordelles stepped forward.

“Hello, Mr. James, Mr. Ingram,” he said cheerfully. “Little trouble, eh?”

“A small misunderstanding, I’m afraid,” the older man said. “Ensign Bordelles, may I present Major Liu of the National Chinese Army?”

Bordelles in his white and gold bulked much larger than the slender Chinese officer in neat green. No one moved for a second. Then, to avoid saluting first, Bordelles held out his hand. Treaty people did not salute warlord officers. Bordelles went up on his toes, leaning a bit, in an effort to crush Liu’s hand. Liu’s face did not show anything.

“What is your mission here, Mr. Bordelles?” he asked.

“My mission is to ask you that, Mr. Liu,” Bordelles said. “This compound is American property. You can’t just
lafoo
it.”

“The English word is ‘commandeer,’” Liu said. “This is Chinese soil. I have already shown Mr. James my authority under Chinese law to commandeer his school for a battalion headquarters.”

His voice was quiet, but he was tense. It was very tense and quiet in the courtyard. Mr. James said something about the Chefoo Convention. Bordelles stepped nearer Liu and looked steeply down on him.

“May I see your authority?” he asked, just as quietly.

“No.” Liu stepped back. “You have no right even to be here, in uniform and under arms,” he said. “I will have you and your men escorted back to your consulate. If necessary, I will post a guard to see that you stay there.”

Bordelles jerked visibly at almost every word. His eyes stared and his lips tightened. The Sand Pebbles shuffled their feet, getting set. All the colors were brighter. Bordelles spoke slowly.

“Let me warn you, Mr. Liu. Any interference on your part with me and my men in the performance of our lawful duty will constitute an act of war against the United States of America.” He paused, to let that soak in. “If your superior officers are not prepared to go to war against America, they will probably disavow your action and make amends.” His eyes holding Liu’s eyes, Bordelles drew his forefinger
slowly across his throat. “It has happened before,” he said.

Liu was pale, too. He did not flinch. Holman felt numbly that two great, groping giants were touching fingertips. When Liu spoke, his English was slurred from tension, but his voice was still quiet.

“All too often before, but we have had enough of that now,” he said. “I will quote your own history to you, Mr. Bordelles. If you mean to have a war, let it begin here.”

You know, it could
, Holman thought suddenly. Bordelles’ nostrils were white and flaring and all his cheerful farmer look was gone. Liu spoke a command and the green-clad soldiers began to form up. They all had rifles and the noncoms had Mauser machine pistols in the wooden scabbards. There were at least four squads of them.
Custer’s Last Stand
, Holman thought.
Remember the Alamo
. It did not seem to have anything to do with him personally.

“You may have your men sling arms, or you may have them lay down their arms,” Liu said.

Bordelles was silent as stone.
Please. Please, gentlemen
, the two missionaries were saying.
Be reasonable. Make allowances
.

“You may go under escort or you may go under full arrest,” Liu said. “That is all the choice I will give you, and you must make it now.”

The missionaries slipped away. Bordelles stood frozen. Time seemed stopped. Liu spoke in Chinese. The noncoms echoed and the green soldiers fixed bayonets. The sudden hedge of bright, sharp steel was like an electric shock that started time again. A veil came over Bordelles’ face. He turned half left.

“Sling arms,” he ordered, in a choked voice.

One squad of gearwheel soldiers walked ahead of them and another came behind. All the street people knew. They pointed and taunted and jeered and they came out on narrow balconies and looked out of upper windows to laugh. Some spat or threw melon rinds and street filth. The gearwheel sergeant had to keep shouting at the people to stop it. It was a great, numbing wind of laughter. Bordelles walked sturdy and straight as a mast just ahead of Holman. His uniform was
turning slimy. Holman heard it and felt it all, his gunsling chafing and the thud of his own marching feet, but he did not seem to be involved in it personally.

It was much better when they got outside the wall, on a wider street. The escort halted smartly at the consulate and the sailors went on through the gate. Bordelles went to his room. Without speaking or looking at each other, the sailors threw their guns on their cots and went to the washroom. The coolies had to bring a great deal of water. Afterward, dressed in clean uniforms, they were still silent. The laundry coolie came to pick up the dirty uniforms.

“No good. Throw away. Makee cumshaw beggar man,” Farren told him. “Nobody can ever wash them clean enough again for me to wear.”

Heads nodded slowly. They were all in a kind of shock, Holman realized. They were like women who had just been raped. He did not feel badly about it himself. He had the familiar feeling of a dirty job well done, a boiler cleaned or a stretch of bilge mucked out and painted, and he was all cleaned up again and that was behind him. He wished that he were a ready, fun-making man like Red Dog, to cheer the others up. He went over and stood behind Red Dog and squeezed his shoulder.

“Arf! Arf!” he said.

“Go to hell,” Red Dog said.

He did not even look up to say it. Holman went to his own cot and sat down and read a
Country Gentleman
. In about an hour Franks came to take them back to the ship. There was not going to be any more landing force at the consulate.