Heart of the West (49 page)

Most of the old-timers recognized the flow of change, called it progress, and went along with it. Snake-Eye acquired a last name to go with the new barn he put up in 1881. Painted above the barn's big sliding double doors in bright red letters was a sign: Smith's Livery, Horses Bedded and Shod, Several Conveyances for Rent and Sale. Sam Woo carried giant powder and caps and fuses in his mercantile now next to the bags of seed and sheep shears and cowhide reatas. Nickel Annie had given up the open road and now drove her string of mules for the Four Jacks. And Hannah Yorke had fancied up the inside of the Best in the West Casino, putting in gilt mirrors and a brass bar rail and a parquet floor until it looked like the sort of high-toned den of sin a man would expect to find in San Francisco, or maybe even in New York City.

And there was a schoolhouse in Rainbow Springs now, painted red, and with a pine flagpole in the yard and a copper bell on its roof.

The schoolhouse proved to be a bit too much progress for some. "The country," Pogey told his crony Nash, over a bottle of Rosebud whiskey in Sam Woo's mercantile on the day the new schoolhouse opened for business, "done got tame on us when we wasn't even lookin'."

"Tame as a neck-wrung rooster," Nash said.

"Tame as an old toad in the hot sun."

"Tame as a toothless coyote."

"Holy God," said Sam Woo.

On that Fourth of July afternoon in 1883 a miner stepped out of his boardinghouse in Dublin Patch. He hooked his hands on his hips, threw back his head, and breathed deeply of the warm sage-spicy air.

"'Tes a fine day," Jere Scully said aloud to himself. "A fine day for a frolic." Jere rather liked the idea of celebrating an Independence Day, the Cornish being of an independent bent themselves.

He spotted little Meg Davies coming down the dusty road, a straw basket of posies on her arm, and he waved her over.

"You want to buy some flowers for your girl, Mr. Scully? Only cost you a nickel," she said, trying for a smile and not quite making it. Her red hair was twisted into such tight braids they curled out from the sides of her head like jug handles, and freckles splashed like spilled cinnamon flakes across her cheeks and nose. But bleak shadows haunted her eyes. She was taking the death of her brother Rolfe hard; the whole of the Patch had taken the nipper's death hard.

Jere bent over for a better look at the bunches of flowers in her basket. "What have you got here?"

"Bluebells and shooting stars and wood lilies. I picked them fresh just this morning. Which do you like best?"

Jere didn't know one flower from another, except maybe for roses. "I'll be having the orange ones, then," he said.

Meg Davies plucked a posy of the orange flowers out of her basket, at the same time dropping Jere's nickel into her pinafore pocket with a deft flourish. "Do you got a girl, Mr. Scully?"

Jere looked up and down the road, then bent way over until they were nose to freckled nose. He put his finger to his lips. "Don't you be telling anybody."

The little girl pressed her lips together, but her eyes glinted with laughter. "I won't... Oh, look, here comes your brother!" she shrieked, and hurried off down the street, giggling.

Jere whipped off his derby and stuffed the posy inside the crown, slammed the hat back on his head, and turned with an easy smile. "'Tes about bloody time..." His eyes opened wide at the sight of his brother resplendent in a brown windowpane-checked suit, a stiff white collar, and a yellow four-in-hand. "Cor! But if you don't look prettier than the primroses on a lady's Sunday bonnet."

Drew Scully took an exaggerated sniff at the air, wrinkling his nose. "Peeyew! And who smells worse than a sailor on a Saturday night, then?"

Drew scrubbed at his cheeks with his big rough hand. "'Tes the bay rum I splashed on me face after I shaved. Do you think 'tes too much, then? Mebbe I should go and wash it off—"

Laughing, Drew gripped his arm, hauling him down the dirt road in the direction of town. "Come off wi' you, my handsome. There's beer to drink and ladies to seduce, and they won't start the frolicking without us."

The festivities were being held on the north edge of town in a big meadow that bordered the river. The air was sweet with the smell of crushed grass, gunpowder, and chicken with all the fixin's. The Miner's Union Band tooted away at a mournful rendition of "The Girl I Left Behind Me," but the music had to compete with the patriotic flap of dozens of flags, the crackle of firecrackers, the clang of horseshoes, and the shrieks of children dunking for apples in a horse trough.

"Look over yon," Drew said, pointing to a fresh wooden platform with a six-foot-thick block of granite sitting in the middle of it. "They'll be having a double-jack drilling contest later. What do you say we enter it?"

"What—in our Sunday-go-to-meeting suits?"

"If we win, they'll not care how we're dressed."

Jere ran his finger beneath his stiff paper collar. He was already sweating up a swamp. The sun was beginning to bake the open field, but Mrs. Yorke, enterprising woman that she was, had set up a tent beneath a stand of aspens, where Shiloh hawked beer and sarsaparilla to cut down on the heat and dust.

And it seemed that no sooner had Jere thought of the woman than she appeared before his eyes. She, along with a good part of the rest of Rainbow Springs, had gathered to admire the town's new fire wagon on display in the middle of the meadow. A scarlet woman with scarlet hair was Mrs. Hannah Yorke. Today she was dressed in layers of cream lace, all frilly and frothy like a sugared marchpane confection.

Drew had seen her, too, and his face took on a familiar sharp look. It was the look he'd always gotten, even when they were little tackers, when he saw something he wanted and made up his mind to go after it. There was no one as determined as Drew when he set his teeth into something. He stopped at nothing to get what he wanted, did Drew. Nothing.

Jere breathed a silent sigh. His little brother was after a bagful of trouble here, though. That Hannah Yorke was the sort of woman who'd chew up a boy like Drew, spit out the bones and gristle, and not even dull the edge of her appetite.

Jere caught his brother's arm. "I could be using a beer."

Drew's head swung around, his eyes intent and a little wild. "Could you, then?"

Jere's mouth kinked into an easy smile, but his grip tightened on the boy's arm. "Aye. A beer would be good. A nice wet something."

The hard, sharp look clung to Drew's face a moment longer, then he shook his head on a short laugh. "I'll get you your beer, then. 'Twouldn't do to have her thinking I'm too eager, would it?"

While Drew went to fetch the beer, Jere strolled over for a closer look at the new fire wagon. The bright red paint on it still looked wet, and the firemen, volunteers all, were button-busting proud in their matching red shirts. The brass pump had been polished to an eye-dazzling shine down to the hose screws. Jere hovered at the edge of the crowd a moment, then he turned aside, squinting against the glitter of the river between the trees, and he saw her.

He got quite close to her this time before she saw him. Always before, when he'd stopped by the mercantile, she would disappear into a back room and leave Sam Woo to serve him, and so he had been unable to say one word to her since that first day. This time her head jerked up like a startled doe's and she looked around as if she would flee, but in the end she didn't. She stood in trembling stillness, her hands stuffed up the sleeves of her blue high-necked quilted robe, her gaze riveted on the ground.

"G'day to you, Mrs. Woo," he said, softly, so as not to frighten her.

"Good day, Mr. Scully," she said to the grass.

He stared down at her, suddenly unable to speak. His gaze traced the graceful curve of her back, the small knob of bone at the nape of her neck. The sharp white part in her hair, which was so dense a black it was the absence of all light. He remembered seeing an etching in a book once of a wild black swan swimming on a lake in front of some fairy-tale castle. She reminded him of that swan, a delicate creature not of his world. A strange feeling clutched at his chest, a need to cherish and protect.

He took another step to bring himself closer to her. She smelled like a spring apple, crisp and green. "Mrs. Woo..."

She lifted her head. Her eyes were as dark and impenetrable as lampblack. "Yes, Mr. Scully?"

He swept off his hat, almost crushing the brim. Her eyes widened at the sight of the wilted wood lilies lying like a clown's orange rag wig on top of his head. She started to smile, smothering it at the last moment with her hand.

He'd forgotten about the flowers. A tide of color flooded his face, but he couldn't help laughing at himself. He plucked the posy off his head and folded his body into a bow. "These are for you. Pretty flowers for a pretty lady." And then he wanted to curse himself. He'd sounded daft, like a moonstruck schoolboy.

She took the flowers, her fingers brushing his. A strange, quivery feeling rippled down his spine. He thought she might have felt it too, for she trembled and her lips parted on a sharp expulsion of breath. "They are lovely flowers," she said in her sweet, lilting voice. Her gaze slid away from his, and her lips moved slightly, as if she were smiling to herself. "Thank you, my
anjing juren."

He tried to say the Chinese words after her, mangling them badly. He laughed again. "And what was that you be calling me? 'Twasn't a slur on my mother's good name, was it?"

Her gaze flew back up to his, and a tiny crease appeared between her brows. "Oh, no, you must not think... It is an address of great respect. Truly."

"Hunh. So you say." He took another step, bringing himself closer still. She tensed, but did not back away. He pitched his voice low, touching her with his words in the way he wanted to touch her with his hands, with his mouth. "And what is something I can be calling you, then? An address, for instance, of deep affection."

She appeared to consider the matter seriously, the crease between her brows deepening. He imagined pressing his lips to it, kissing it away. "I shall allow you to call me Mei Mei, if you wish. It means Little Sister."

A firecracker popped nearby, and the smell of burned powder wafted between them. He drew in a deep breath, trying to ease the pressure growing in his chest.

The band suddenly struck up a loud martial song, and they both jerked around, relieved to have something to look at besides each other. Sunlight bounced off the brass wind instruments. The musicians' faces had turned scarlet from all that puffing in the heat.

Yet against his will his gaze slid back to her. Her skin was the pale cream color of antique ivory. Her eyes met his; he wished he could tell what she was thinking. He knew that what he was feeling for her showed on his face, but he didn't care. He wanted her to know.

"Little Sister... 'Tes not the kind of affection I have for you," he said, thinking how the words belied the depth of what he felt. He was in gut-love.

"In China a man does not look thus upon another's wife," she said, and for the first time he heard a strain in her voice. "Or speak to her so. Indeed, he would not speak to her at all."

He pushed a harsh breath out his tight throat. "And what are we supposed to do, then? Be forgetting about this thing that's between us simply because we met at the wrong time and in the wrong place? You shouldn't have married him, m' love, but 'tesn't a thing that can't be undone."

A taut silence stretched between them. A boy ran by, carrying a sparkler in his hand like a torch. The lighted stick hissed and crackled, shooting off miniature stars.

Her chest lifted in a silent sigh. "Where I come from, in Foochow," she said, "there is a pagoda that is one thousand years old, and it is only just beginning its sojourn upon this earth. Perhaps there will be another time and another place for us, my
anjing juren.
But not in this lifetime."

"To hell with that—"

She pressed her fingers against his mouth, stopping his protest. He grasped her wrist, holding her hand in place to kiss it. When he let her go, her hand fell to her side and her fingers curled as if she would capture his kiss and keep it forever.

But something flashed in her eyes. Anger perhaps. Or fear. "You don't understand," she said. "You do not understand me. A Chinese does not seek to undo her fate. She does not sacrifice her honor for the sake of her heart." Her hand started to come up and he thought she would touch him again, but then she let it fall. "It was not by chance the gods put a great sea between our peoples, a sea too wide for any bridge to cross. We are too different, you and I. No bridge can ever link us."

She turned then and walked away from him. She moved on her tiny feet as if she were treading on cinders, her hips swaying, her back straight, her head still. He looked down and saw the posy of orange flowers lying in the grass. He knew she hadn't dropped it accidentally. By rejecting even so simple and innocent a gift, she was rejecting him.

Jere's hands tightened into fists. He wasn't going to give up, not on her, not on what he felt for her and what he hoped she could someday feel for him. He didn't care how bloody wide a sea there was between them, he would find a way to build a bridge. And then he'd cross it, even if he had to do it on his knees.

The miner slammed his sixteen-pound sledgehammer onto the head of the drill with such force the wooden platform trembled, granite dust puffed into the air, and the clang of steel against steel bounced off the distant hills.

"Oh, my," Hannah Yorke said, as she twirled her white lace parasol and stirred the dusty air before her face with a Stars-and-Stripes paper fan. "I must say, there is something about watching a half-naked man beat up on a rock, the way his muscles bulge and go all shiny wet with sweat and the veins pop out against his skin... it gives me a tingling feeling low in my belly."

A blush spread over Clementine McQueen's cheeks, but she laughed out loud. "Hannah, what a thing to say! You are incorrigible."

"Mama, why is that man hammering a big nail into that rock?"

Clementine shifted her wriggling son from one hip to the other. "That isn't a nail, sweetheart. It's a drill. Now, you must stay back here, well out of the way."