Heart of the West (51 page)

The doctor settled for wrapping a bandage around the injured hand and consigned his ungrateful patient to hell. Men pressed around Drew, slapping him on the back and offering to buy him a drink, but he broke away from them, his gaze intent on Hannah.

He came to where she stood and looked down at her. "Will you be nursing me back to health, Mrs. Yorke?" he said. "I could be using an angel's sweet ministrations."

"What you could use is a clout on the side of the head, and then maybe you'd acquire some sense. And besides, I ain't no—"

"Angel," he finished for her, and he smiled. Not one of those cocky grins this time, but a slow, soft smile that changed his face and left her feeling as if she'd been punched in the stomach.

He squatted and, putting his weight on his good hand, swung to the ground. He hooked his butt on the edge of the platform and wrapped his arm around her waist, somehow maneuvering her so that she was between his legs. She was amused by this blatant trick and shocked at herself for letting it happen. His spread thighs brushed hers. Her breasts pressed against his chest. Her belly arched into his groin as his hand splayed across the small of her back, pulling her closer. His thighs were as solid as the rock he had drilled so proficiently. She drew in a deep breath that was thick with his scent, of male sweat and granite dust and the violent, coppery odor of blood.

And though it seemed their faces were but a breath apart, she couldn't look at him. Her gaze drifted over to the refreshment tent just as Zach Rafferty turned away from the makeshift bar, a tin pail of foaming brew in either hand. Across a meadow of crushed grass and wafting gun smoke their gazes met, and Hannah stiffened within the boy's light embrace.

Callused fingers gripped her chin, pulling her head around, and she looked up into eyes the hard, dark gray of the flint the Indians had once used for their arrowheads. They were old eyes.

"When you're with me, m'lass," he said, his voice low, and as hard as his eyes, "you'll be keeping those lovely brown eyes of yours on me, then, and you'll not be looking at him."

She pushed off his chest with such force that his head snapped on his neck. "You are sorely mistaken, Mr. Scully. I am not
with
you. Indeed, you may go straight to hell, and you may go there by yourself!"

"Aye." His smile came again and it was irresistible. She thought she probably hated him. She definitely wanted him. "I've been told to go to the nether regions often enough and by enough women. I suppose if they have any say about it a-tall, that sure enough is where I'm bound."

He brushed her cheek with the backs of his bandaged fingers. "G'day to you, then, Mrs. Yorke," he said, and sauntered off without a further by-your-leave. She stared after him, her chest heaving with anger and bludgeoned pride.

Blue and red ribbons flashed in the corner of her eye and she turned her head. Miss Luly Maine had come up beside her. The girl's chin trembled, but she managed to get it up in the air. She swept aside her skirts as if the ground around them had suddenly become defiled, and she too walked away, the twitching of her bustle more eloquent than any words.

Hannah watched her go. She wanted to call the girl back, but she knew it would do no good. When you are seventeen there are only good girls and bad girls and no in-between girls.

Every man's girl and no man's girl...

Hannah's eyes blurred, and she blinked angrily. She focused her gaze across the meadow, where the Rainbow River wound its way, sparkling like tinsel, through the aspens and cottonwoods. Oh, what she wouldn't give to be seventeen again. She wanted to be innocent and pure, with a heart that hadn't been broken and patched together so many times it resembled the last whiskey glass in the last honky-tonk on earth. She wanted to have it all to do over again, with her life stretching ahead of her, empty and shiny, just like the river.

And with love at the end of it.

CHAPTER 21

Erlan knealt on the bank and launched a paper boat into the river, a plea to the river god to answer her heart's desire. She thought of the many times she had sat high on the garden wall of her lao chia, her back pressed against the rough, sun-warmed stones, hugging her knees as she dreamed of doing just this—setting her secret wishes adrift on the distant, mysterious river.

This river surely was different from the Min, which was muddy and silty, yellow as an old man's skin. This river was so clear she could count the stones that lined the bottom. White down floated like snow flurries from the tall trees overhead. And those other trees, those slender silver ones—their leaves glittered where they caught the light and shivered even when the wind was still.

Erlan rose to her feet and drew in a deep breath of air, filling her head with the smell of the river and the sun-baked grass. A string of firecrackers went off with a rat-a-tat-tat, and the new fire wagon's bell clanged like a bronze gong. The sounds reminded her of the New Year's Day celebrations back home. There had been fireworks then, of course, rockets that burst into stars and flowers of colored lights, dragons that writhed across the sky trailing green fire. And, oh, had they feasted! On steaming meat dumplings and long rice noodles for long life, on moon cakes and good-luck oranges.

At one time, even just a short while ago, these thoughts of home would have made her soul ache, but now she smiled. She could bear to think of her lao chia, now that she believed in her heart that she would see it again someday.

Her smiled faded, though, as her thoughts turned to her
anjing juren,
her gentle giant. A while ago, as she had walked along the river, she'd seen him up on a wooden platform, wielding an enormous hammer. As if possessed of a spirit of their own, her feet had started toward him. But then she had made herself turn away. In this life it was their fate to be like the moon and the sun, only passing in the vastness of the sky with no hope of ever being together. And though she thought perhaps she could come to love him, still he frightened her. He was too big, too fierce.

Lost in her thoughts, Erlan rounded a bend in the river and, lifting her head, saw a woman kneeling on the stony bank. The woman had a child with her, and she'd just finished cleaning his face with a white cloth. As Erlan watched, the woman dipped the cloth in the water and began to scrub at her own face, rubbing vigorously. Erlan took a step, and her golden lilies sent a trickle of pebbles splashing into the river. The woman's head whipped around. Erlan smiled and bowed when she realized it was Clementine.

"Good day to you, my friend."

"Oh, Erlan, I didn't see you there..." Clementine pushed to her feet, struggling with heavy dark green skirts. Her fingers shook as she pushed stray wisps of hair off her brow, tucking them beneath the curled brim of a straw bonnet. Her face was whiter than the cottony tufts that floated through the air, and there was a fine trembling going on inside her.

Erlan held out a concerned hand to the other woman. "Are you ill?"

"No, no. A man was hurt, and his blood splattered..." Again she smoothed back her hair, and her hand still shook. "Oh, it was nothing, really. I am being silly, but..." She shuddered hard. "Oh, God, I hate this country sometimes. I just hate it."

Erlan felt a tug on her chang-fu, and she looked down into the child's face, which was as round and bright as a moon cake. "You got funny eyes." he said. "They're skinny at the corners."

Clementine laid a hand on her son's head, drawing him back against her knees. "Hush, Charlie. It's impolite to point out another's differences."

A pair of young girls ran past them, just beyond the trees, pulling a kite through the air. The kite's rag tail was laced with playing cards and whistles so that it sang and hummed like a dovecote. The boy Charlie twisted out from beneath his mother's hand and went running after the girls with the kite.

Clementine started to follow, then she saw that the other children had gladly welcomed him into their game, even passing the flying line into his dimpled hands. The kite dipped and soared through the breeze-ruffled sky. Charlie shrieked with laughter, and the sunlight turned his head into a cap of gold.

"He is a beautiful little boy," Erlan said.

Clementine turned back, smiling now. "He's a bit wild, though, I'm afraid."

They began to walk side by side along the riverbank, following the children as they were pulled along by the kite. Clementine had stopped trembling, had even smiled, but Erlan sensed that a battle still raged, deep in the well of her being. There were too many spirits in this woman, Erlan thought, pulling her this way and that and allowing her no peace.

"Why, whatever do you have on your feet?" Clementine said.

Erlan lifted her chang-fu the better to show off her new shoes. "Do you like? They are called croquet sandals." She had found them tucked away in a back corner in the mercantile. The box they'd come in had said they had a vulcanized rubber sole with a canvas upper. Some of these English words were unknown to her, but she did discover that the shoes were wonderfully comfortable. She stretched out her curled and deformed toes, pushing them against the soft sides. "I am allowing my feet to become as big as boats, like a regular American girl."

She'd been loosening the bindings gradually, bathing her golden lilies in herbed water every night to make the calluses and bones soft again. The process was horribly painful, and her feet swelled up like melon gourds every time she walked on them. Her crippled toes would never lie completely flat again, and she would probably always walk like a drunken sailor, but with each passing day, as her feet broadened, she felt all of herself grow stronger. Strong in body and strong in spirit.

She nodded in the direction of the open field, where the band played and couples moved in a circle of swirling skirts and clapping hands, their heels tapping a gentle cadence on the packed earth. "Perhaps someday I shall dance like those ladies. What is it called—the poker?"

"The polka." Clementine flashed another one of her sudden smiles. "You seem happy today, Erlan."

"Perhaps it is more accurate to say that I am at peace. I have stopped cursing my destiny and have decided instead what I shall do."

"You will go home?"

"No. I shall stay. And then I will go home."

So many hours she had spent thinking about her fate, taking long walks, walks that hurt her golden lilies and her head. At times it seemed she had to hold on hard to her jumbled thoughts. She yearned so for the Flowery Land, for her home and for her father, for her sisters and cousins and aunts. Merciful heavens, she even missed her father's three wives. She could not bear to accept a fate that meant she would never see them all again. But she wondered, too, if she were only dragging the lake in search of the moon, if she was not destined after all to spend her life in exile in this alien land, where the gods had surely sent her as a punishment for her mother's shame. And then one day she remembered a proverb her father had once told her: "Many paths of honor lead out of a forest of shame."

She sought now for words to explain. "We Chinese believe that to be born is not enough, to live is not enough. And if that is so, what matters then? Honor matters, and hope." She looked into Clementine's strange eyes, that were wide and intent and full of restless, shifting currents. "I will go home someday because I must. I cannot bear to think I might never see the green tiled roofs and scarlet pillars of my home again. But there is honor involved as well, for what my mother has done will shame all future generations that come of my womb. I must return to the place of my ancestors and find a way to atone for her disgrace. Until then I have no face. i am unable to lift up my head."

"But it seems so unfair to hold you to account for what she did."

Erlan shrugged, for that was the way of things. You were tied to your ancestors and they to you, and what each did affected the honor of all. She would return to her father and seek redemption so that Tao Huo would know peace in the spirit world. Just how she would accomplish this she didn't know, but she couldn't let ignorance or fear cause her to stumble on the path of duty.

She noticed Clementine was studying her intently. "So you must go home for your hope and honor," Clementine said. "But why do you stay now?"

"Because there is also the debt of honor I owe to the merchant Woo, who paid the bride-price for me in good faith, thinking he had acquired a wife to give him sons for his old age. Hope—that I could not live without. But neither could I live with the disgrace of not having paid all of my debts."

"Hope and honor." Clementine smoothed a hand over the gentle swell of her expectant happiness. "Hope and honor. Yes, i see... I think. At least I understand why the thought gives you peace."

"And have you not been home since you wed?" Erlan asked, for she knew from that day of whiskey drinking a part of the story of how Clementine had run away with her rancher lover, to follow him out here to this raw place.

Clementine shook her head. "No, not once. i used to send letters, but they were never answered. I thought that after Charlie... that when Father learned he had a grandson, he would relent. But I know in my heart he never will."

"And my father, too, might never relent. The gods don't always let us have what we want."

Clementine's gaze sought out her son. Her husband had joined the boy and the girls with the kite. He was a bright, laughing man with eyes the color of blue porcelain, and Erlan liked him. With him was the brother, a man Erlan did not at all like, for he was too hard and raw and wild, too much a part of the lonely mountains and the endless, empty miles of grass and the even emptier sky. And he had terrible yellow eyes, hard and predatory and fierce, like an eagle's.

"No, we don't always get what we want," Clementine was saying, her eyes on her husband and son, her voice low and rough. "But sometimes what we want isn't right or fair. Or even possible."

Erlan watched as her gaze shifted to her brother-in-law and he looked back at her, and for an instant they loved with their eyes. It was like lightning streaking across a stormy sky, a wild yearning for something the gods would never allow them to have.

Erlan's chest lifted in a sad silent sigh. Oh, Clementine... And Hannah, and her
anjing juren
—they were all alike. They seemed like children sometimes, unable to accept that all their rages and protests against the gods were as meaningless as raindrops falling into the ocean. That a soul could not resist its fate any more than grass could stand up before the wind.

Clementine turned, holding out her hand. The pained restlessness was back, biting deep within her now, and the source of it was the brother-in-law with the empty spirit and the eagle's eyes. She gripped Erlan's arm, holding on to it too tightly. "We will be unpacking our picnic basket soon. Would you care to join us?"

Erlan bowed her head. "This worthless girl is honored that you would ask, and she..." The brother-in-law came up to them then, and she felt Clementine stiffen as his shadow fell between them. "She thanks you for your kindness," she went on, "but she must seek out the merchant Woo. She has something important to say to him."

Clementine squeezed her arm, gently this time, and managed a smile. "About hope and honor?"

"Yes," Erlan said, her lips curving into an answering smile. "His, as well as this worthless girl's."

Erlan thought it strange that the Chinese of Rainbow Springs helped to celebrate this American festival with things Chinese— with cymbals and gongs, with painted silk lanterns and dragon flags and baskets of boiled eggs dyed red for happiness. Strange and sad, too, to celebrate Independence Day in a land where, because a man was Chinese, he could not till the soil or dig for silver in a mine or take himself a wife unless he bought a slave girl from the tong man.

The Chinese had appropriated a distant corner of the field well away from the foreign devils. The air around them was filled with the rattling and scraping of fan-tan beans and mah jongg tiles, with the smell of duck frying in peanut oil, green tea brewing, and hot rice wine. If Erlan shut her eyes, she could almost believe herself back in the courtyard of her lao chia.

A group of children—demon children—suddenly dashed around her, forming a circle with their linked hands to lock her in. "Chinaman, Chinaman, rode 'im out on a rail!" they shrieked as they skipped around her. "Along came an Injun and scalped off his tail!"

Laughing and hooting, they danced around her once more and then ran off in search of a fresh victim.

Erlan stood where the children had left her, trembling with an engulfing fear. It was only a game, she told herself, only children's teasing. They had meant nothing wicked by it. Yet she could not stop shaking. She would never belong in this place. Even if she lived a thousand years, even if her bones rested for all eternity in this red soil until they became bleached and weathered like pieces of sea wood, she would never belong here. It was why the Chinese who came to America, even those who never left, always spoke of themselves as sojourners.

At last she spotted the merchant Woo. He was sitting apart from the others, on the protruding roots of an old tree, and smoking on a water pipe. The merchant Woo was not liked by the other Chinese because he tried too hard to be an American, with his smart and sassy talk and his black barbarian suit with the flowery flag pinned to his lapel. But he, too, was only dragging the lake in search of the moon. He could not even own the mercantile he was so proud of; the title was in Hannah Yorke's name.

He looked up as Erlan approached, and no expression crossed his wrinkled, teak-colored face. Since the night she had tried to slit her own throat, the wall between them had grown as high as the one around the Forbidden City.

"There you are," he said, not in his harsh Cantonese, but in the English he forced her to speak. "Where have you been?"

"Walking."

He grunted. "Walk, walk, walk. That is all you ever do, worse than a Buddhist pilgrim, yes? It's a wonder your golden lilies do not ache from it."