El Paso Way (2 page)

Pang Lo

SUMMER 1883

Tucson, Arizona Territory

Pang Lo looked forward to quiet evenings with his family—content moments, with the toned down noises of a city at rest outside their tent and the fragrance of incense to liven the dry desert air. He sat on a pillow in front of a short square table and bowed to Hingon, his father, whose years of enlightenment were evident in his calmness, as well as the few thin gray hairs that hung from his chin and on each side of his mouth. And Pang was proud of the women in his family: his sister, Mun Lo, and his fiancée, Sai Min. They approached the table dressed in red-and-black batik robes, their hair pinned up neatly in large black buns and their faces the color of fresh snow. They served soup and rice in white ceramic bowls, and tea in matching cups, and then bowed to the men.

The young women sat down on their pillows across from the men and waited for them to sample the food. Pang pinched a knot of rice with his chopsticks and dipped it into the soup. He was sure that it would be good. Mun was an excellent cook, taught by his mother. Pang was about to savor the rice on his tongue, when the flap of the canvas tent flew open and he dropped the rice into his lap. He jumped from his pillow and Hingon grabbed his arm.

Three men, with darkness behind them and amber lamplight on their swarthy faces, walked slowly toward the table. The two in the lead wore serapes and straw sombreros. The last of them wore black—all black—save the scarlet headband tied around his head of long raven hair.

Antonio Valdar, his serape crisscrossed by bandoliers, stood between the two other men, staring and grinning. Andres Baliador, poised at Valdar's side, grinned with a solitary, decaying tooth on his upper gum. On the other side, the one in black, Beshkah, named for the silver plates that covered the toes of his shoes and the razor-sharp rowels on his spurs, stood and glared.

Valdar appraised the family with reptile eyes that never blinked just the same. Pang knew that Valdar and his men frequently visited the Chinese to seek the pleasure of opium, but the Lo family ran a tailoring business and did not deal in any vices. He also knew that these men gained influence by their vileness, and to break up a moment of family intimacy would be very soothing to their deviant minds. They were the most frightening men he had ever seen, with a presence like nothing short of a dooming storm.

Pang figured that his father understood the intentions of the men immediately, even before Pang jumped from his pillow. He was thankful that his father held him back.

Valdar walked toward the table. “Ah,
compadres
, I was right.” He stared at the two women who remained seated with their heads bowed. “There
are
flowers growing in this tent.”

He stepped closer to them. Reached over to Sai Min and rubbed his fingertips down her powdery cheek.

The muscles in Pang's jaw tightened. “She is to be my wife!”

Hingon clenched his hand tighter around his son's arm.

Valdar looked squarely at Pang and let out a scoffing laugh. He grabbed a clear bottle of tequila from Baliador and took several large swallows. He smacked and licked his lips. “Your wife, eh?”

He grabbed Sai Min by the arm and jerked her to him. She gasped with fear and tried not to show her face.

Pang wanted badly to stop this humiliation, but his arm was locked in his father's grasp, and he could only vent his fury by exhaling large breaths of air.

Valdar laughed again and pushed Sai Min toward his comrades. Baliador grabbed her and shoved her to the ground.

The bandit leader picked up Sai Min's pillow and tossed it away. She bowed her head toward the table as he plopped down next to her. He grabbed her chin and turned her head toward his face, drawing a gasp of fear from her lungs. Without looking away he took another drink.

Hingon addressed the men, with the calm grace that Pang had always admired.

“What do you want from us?” Hingon asked. “We have no opium”

“Aye, there is more to life than opium,
viejo
,” Valdar said, rubbing a knuckle down Mun Lo's cheek.

Hingon maintained a steady composure, breathing heavily in through his nose while he continued to hold Pang's arm.

Valdar snapped his fingers, and Baliador rose and came to him with a long and narrow box. Valdar placed the box on the table and opened it, revealing a silver-and-porcelain opium pipe. Though handsomely made, the pipe represented all that was bad in this world. From a tailor's perspective, it was like a needle of destruction, and the smoke it created the thread that sewed seams of ruin through the blood of those who inhaled it.

Valdar removed the glass globe from the oil lamp and stuck the end of a chopstick into the flame. The dry wood ignited quickly, and Valdar brought the flame to the pipe and inhaled. He removed his fingertip from the porcelain damper and held the smoke in his lungs for several seconds, then blew it toward the roof of the tent. He took several more tokes, and before long his eyes became gray and rheumy.

He handed the pipe to Mun Lo, and she accepted it with trembling hands. He tipped back the tequila and watched her. His eyes peered over the bottle as if he were in a trance. When he removed the bottle from his lips, a trickle ran down his chin. He looked at Mun Lo with a befuddled smile then grabbed her by the arm and jerked her to him.

As before, Pang wanted to go to her aid, but his father continued to restrain him. Pang did not understand, with their special talent for self-defense, why they could not stop this atrocity. Kung fu was something that the people of this country did not know, and Pang had always believed it was their special weapon. But Hingon continued to hold back, and even when Pang looked at him, he responded only with a discreet shake of his head.

Pang just stood there, his muscles as tight as piano strings while these men invaded their home and challenged their integrity. He watched them all carefully, especially Baliador, who kneeled and clutched the arm of his fiancée.

Baliador looked back at him through black, squinted eyes. A long, narrow mustache hung over his chin at both ends, and his thin face, like the others', was sweaty and dark from many days in the sun.

Unlike Baliador, Beshkah paid no attention to Pang. He sat on the floor beside Sai Min. The silver of his shoes and spurs reflected the dull light as he held the ivory end of a bamboo pipe to his lips and sucked in the smoke. Then Pang watched the bandit's hand as it moved under Sai Min's robe.

Mun Lo screamed as Valdar ripped open her robe and licked her neck. He let out a coarse laugh then took another drink. This time Pang could feel a different tension in his father's grasp, as if this wise old man had reached the peak of his tolerance. But when Valdar stood and pushed Mun Lo away, Hingon kept his stance.

Valdar called out to his men.
“Vayamos, hombres.”

Baliador stood quickly, but Beshkah was a little more hesitant and kept kissing Sai Min's ear. Valdar walked to him and kicked one of his shoes.

“Vayamos!”

Beshkah grunted angrily and pushed Sai Min away.

Valdar came back to Mun Lo, grabbed her by the arm, and lifted her to her feet. Beshkah grabbed Sai Min in the same manner. The two women screamed and cowered.

Hingon stepped in front of his son and confronted Valdar. “Why do you do this to my family?”

“What is wrong,
viejo
? Do you not like to see us enjoy ourselves?”

“Please, leave our home. We have done nothing to you.”

“Maybe we
will
leave. And maybe we will take something with us.”

Pang broke loose from his father's grasp, and this time Hingon did not stop him. Valdar pulled a revolver from under his serape and pointed it at Pang. No one moved.

“Ah,” Valdar said. “You know that no one can stop us, right?”

“My daughters have done nothing to you,” Hingon said. “Leave them. I will give you everything I have.”

“That is very kind of you, but these fine young women are worth more than anything you have.”

“Please, I beg you.”

“Do not beg,
viejo
. It's something I cannot bear to watch.”

Valdar and his comrades laughed wildly as they dragged the screaming women out of the tent. Hingon and Pang ran after them, but Valdar turned and shot his revolver, forcing them to refrain.

Hingon fell backward and collapsed into his son's arms. Pang lowered him to the ground, observed his narrowing eyes, then a spot of blood that grew on the white cotton robe over his chest.

Pang put his hand on the side of his father's face.

“Father?”

Hingon's jaw quivered and his mouth opened. “Have faith, my son. For the justice you desire, do not pay with blood, but with service to your people.”

After a lengthy exhale between his lips, Hingon's eyes closed, and Pang looked up into the sky and from the bottom of his lungs cried for the soul of his father.

* * *

The gunshot had brought out the neighboring Chinese from their homes, one of them a special friend to the Los, Vin Long, who came quickly to Hingon's side. Pang embraced his father, reciting a Chinese prayer that asked for protection of Hingon's spirit.

Vin placed a hand on Pang's shoulder. “Peace will one day belong to us, but by the grace of He who is more powerful, your father will never know the wicked again.”

Pang looked up at him with a bitter stare. “Take his body and prepare it for burial.”

“You do not need to ask twice. I will be at your service.”

Pang looked out to the end of the street, to where the gaslights faded away. “And if it kills me,
I will
be a service to my people.”

The Chinese had been in Tucson less than a decade, and little had changed other than that they now had the ability to form a separate community. Pang's father, like Vin, had once worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad, and during a shutdown period in the severe heat of July, he came to Tucson rather than waiting out the downtime or returning to Mother China.

He and Vin went into business, his father starting a tailoring trade and Vin a restaurant. The start-up was difficult, as they weren't welcome anywhere they tried to settle. They were thought of as filthy heathens and faced humiliating and often brutal resistance wherever they landed. But Hingon and Vin were clear-minded and knew that because of the poverty back in the Guangdong Province, made worse by the Opium Wars, they could not have a better life than what they could gain here. If possible they would make their fortune and take it back with them, or else they would send for their families. When the time came, they would do whichever seemed more feasible.

But now, to Pang, it all seemed to have been in vain. He remembered how happy he was when his father had arranged for his sister to join them in this place called America. They could not afford to bring their mother for another year, and the special gift was to be that she would be there for Pang and Sai Min's wedding.

Pang had to be the one to deliver the sad news of his father's death to his mother, and by letter, not in person. With all that he now faced, he feared he would never see her again either.

He left his father's body to Vin and walked steadily toward the railroad tracks, out of the Chinese district. He was certain that the gunshot was heard on the other side, but no attention was ever given to their part of town, their people, unless it was to the gain of the whites.

No gaslights were near the tracks, so he walked a short distance in total darkness, destined to the street ahead, where lights on the poles glowed again and where the saloons gave off the only signs of activity.

He walked up onto the planked sidewalk and under the awning, past two doors to an adobe building with windows guarded by iron bars. The door was locked, so he gazed down a ways and across the street at the glow that came through the windows and above the batwing doors of the saloon. Laughing, hollering, and music from the building polluted the serenity of the night. Chinese weren't allowed to enter the saloons. Havoc sure stirred if ever it happened, and it rarely did. Pang credited the wisdom for the avoidance of such trouble to his elders, but there were those stray few with a death wish. Pang wondered if he suddenly had one of his own.

Nothing could stop his drive. He felt no fear and walked on, diagonally across the dusty street to the walkway in front of the saloon. He peered through the window at the many patrons sitting at the poker and faro tables, with saloon girls at their side or on their lap, encouraging their bets with drink, gartered thighs, and cleavage. A man sat at a piano while a woman watched him and played a white man's tune Pang didn't know. He didn't know any, and didn't want to. All he wanted now was to find the sheriff, and he found him leaned up at the bar sharing a laugh with a well-dressed man.

Pang took a deep breath and walked up to the doors. A man came through, bumped into Pang, and nearly fell down, but he caught himself and looked the young Chinaman over, then shook his head and said, “No, no, can't be . . . ,” and turned and staggered into the street.