Shanghai (55 page)

Then a second whizzed by his head—and a third and fourth. He saw the pack of boys coming at him from two sides. The lead boy in each group carried a large stick. This was no fun snowball fight.

“Hey, Chinky!”

The insult seemed to float on the cold air, enter Charles's ears, and crash into his heart.

Then a chorus of “Chinky, Chinky, Chinky!”

Charles looked quickly to his left. They were coming that way. Then back to his right, the other group was
coming at him from there. He took a breath and sprinted toward the fenced-in park in the middle of the square.

And they raced after him.

Charles ran straight at the iron gate and leaped up as high as he could manage. His hand found purchase on a metal post but seemed to stick to the iron. He ripped it free, leaving some of his palm attached to the frozen metal, and scrambled up and over the fence … but so did most of the boys chasing him.

Charles ran to the fountain in the centre of the small park, desperate to find a place to make a stand. And he waited. And waited. But no boys followed him. He strained to hear. But there were no more chants of “Chinky, Chinky”—although there were thuds, several thuds as things fell to the ground.

Charles peered into the darkness and he saw motion. He readied himself to fight, then, as a cloud moved past the moon, he saw the large, dark figure of Edward coming toward him. His face was bloodied and his hands a mess. His coat had a large rip in it, but there was a huge smile on his face. “Can Edward come with you now?” the man asked.

Charles ran past Edward and saw almost a dozen boys lying on the ground in various degrees of distress. Charles turned back to Edward and said, “Sure.”

They made their way quickly out of the park, but once again Charles couldn't figure out the way to the docks. He'd gotten all turned around and couldn't determine which way was north.

“Can Edward help?” the African asked patiently.

“Only if you know where the docks are.”

“What direction are they?”

“North,” Charles said, almost crying since the night was passing and he knew that only on New Year's did
he stand a chance of getting past the sentries of the heavily guarded docks. Everyone at the Ploughman's Pune talked about New Year's being the only night that the owners didn't care if the sailors got roaring drunk.

Then Charles looked at the large Black man. He was pointing.

“North?” Charles asked.

Edward pointed up at a bright star and said, “North toward that star, always, my grandma told me.”

And Edward was right.

Less than an hour later they were at the cargo docks. And twenty minutes after that they had snuck past two sleeping sentries and stowed away on a cargo ship.

January 1890

The darkness was complete. Above them, Charles and Edward heard the footfalls of the sailors. On occasion they heard a gruff order and a surly response. But shortly there was only silence in their hiding place onboard the ship—silence and darkness.

Then the rats came.

“Buggy bite my foot,” Edward whimpered.

“What?” Charles whispered.

“Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no!”

“Shh! Come on, Edward, you have to …” Then Charles felt something furry scamper over his hand, up his arm, and past his cheek.

“Buggy bite my foot! Buggy bite my foot!”

Edward's voice was rising in both pitch and volume.

“Ouch! Help Edward!” the poor man called out. “Edward needs help!”

“Edward, Edward, it's just mice. Just little mice. Little tiny mice. A big fellow like you can't be afraid of little mice, Edward.” Charles heard the Black man's breath loud in the closed space. He reached for Edward's hand and grabbed hold of it. “Hold my hand, Edward, just hold my hand. We have to get out of harbour before they catch us, otherwise they'll put us back in Boston.” Charles had an idea. “Does Edward want to be put back in Boston?”

“No, Edward doesn't like Boston.”

Charles thought,
It's more likely that Boston doesn't like Edward. Sure as shootin' Boston doesn't like Charles
. But all he said was, “That's right. Now just ignore the little mice and this nice ship will take us to a much better place.”

Something seemed to catch in Edward's throat as he said, “This ship goes to the better place? This ship goes there?”

Charles didn't understand Edward's excitement but was pleased that Edward was quieting down, and he said, “Yes, a better place. A better place than Boston.”

Edward shifted his position, rubbing hard against Charles. The man's odour was hard for Charles to ignore. Charles's house was not fancy, but they were conscientious about cleanliness there. Being Chinese, they knew the connection between sanitation and disease—knew it all too well from the family's experience.

“Move over, Edward,” he said.

Edward moved his large body to one side, then reached out for Charles, inadvertently smacking him hard in the face with the heel of his meaty hand. “You
promise Edward this boat is going to the better place? You promise? If you lie to Edward there be a curse on you.”

Charles was confused by Edward's response, but before he could answer he heard the African's hoarse whisper, “Buggy bite my foot!”

—

It's far better than whaling,
Malachi thought as he watched the last of the cargo placed in the hold and the hatches being secured. Although, for religious reasons, he wasn't pleased with his present cargo—strong Irish whisky from Boston to New York—he was pleased with the rest of his routing. Small appliances, soft manufactured goods, household items, and decorative blown glass from New York to Norfolk, Virginia, and Wilmington, North Carolina, where he'd pick up cotton to bring back to Boston to feed the textile mills of New England. His offload and reload schedule in Wilmington would give him enough time to visit the seminary there—for years a place of peace for him after all the killing of his whaling time. This particular sojourn at the seminary would also allow him to contemplate his imminent fatherhood. He and his wife had already agreed that if the baby was a boy they would name him after the father that Malachi's mother, Rachel, had told him so much about. He was going to be a father—the Hordoon line was going to continue.

He ran his fingers through his thick red hair and then applied more of the salve to his severely sunburned nose. All those years ago his mother had warned him about exposing his white skin to the sun—even the winter sun.

“Tide's begun to turn, Captain.”

Malachi nodded. “Just check the seals on the forward hatch and be sure the longshoremen haven't decided to join us on our voyage. Breeze is up, so once we've cleared Peachey Head, set a top and gallant.”

“Aye, sir.”

Although this was a merchant ship, these seamen had survived several close calls at sea because of the bravery and seamanship of their red-headed Captain, so they treated him with military courtesy, a true rarity in their hard and rancorous world.

Malachi took the Bible his mother had given him on the day he was confirmed—the day she'd told him who his father was—and opened it at random. The verses of the Book of Ruth presented themselves to him, and he scanned the elegant seventeenth-century words with an old, familiar pleasure.
Old friends, they are,
he thought as he allowed the tips of his fingers to glide across the beautiful tissue-thin paper.

He'd found the Bible his mother had packed in his sea trunk a real sanctuary in his whaling days. The horror of the kill zone, the screaming of the wounded mammals, the night ocean red beneath the swaying of the oil lanterns, and everywhere the smell of death and the screech of carrion birds—while the sharks circled endlessly. Only the beautiful Bible poetry could lift the revulsion from his heart. And then there were his mother's elegantly penned words on the inside of the cover leaf: “Read and spread only the best of the Words herein. Think kindly of me, when you are far away, and remember that men's hearts are the object of your quest, not their minds. Your Mother, Rachel.”

The tide was heading out quickly now, as it often did near the full moon in Boston Harbor. His sleek bark caught the wind and headed seaward.

—

“We're moving, Edward. Can you feel it?”

“Edward is on the boat to the better place.” The African's voice was resonant and calm.

“Right. Now just relax. Ignore the mice and try to get some sleep.”

“Edward isn't afraid of the mice because he's going to the better place.”

* * *

ON THE THIRD DAY at sea, Charles awoke to the kick of a hard boot and the order, “Stand up! Stand up, I say!”

He and Edward emerged from their hiding place and were roughly walked up on deck, where they squinted in the early morning January sun. Two strong seamen held them against the port rail. Charles tried to compose his thoughts. It was possible they would throw the two of them overboard. Very possible. He hadn't thought of that before. Then a red-haired man came forward and said, “And what have we here?”

“Stowaways, sir. An African and a Celestial. A dinner for the sharks, sir?”

The red-haired man signalled that the two should be separated. Charles was walked forward while the red-haired man, who Charles assumed was the Captain,
went to talk to Edward. The African had a wide grin on his face, as if he were about to meet an angel.

After five minutes of talking to Edward, the red-haired man approached Charles. “Let him stand on his own,” he ordered the sailor. “Do you speak English, boy?”

“I do, sir,” Charles said, unhappy that his voice quavered.

“You realize that this is a private sea vessel and that I am its Captain?”

Charles nodded.

“And that your crime is punishable in any manner that I see fit?”

Charles hadn't known that, but he nodded again.

“Why are you here, boy?”

Charles didn't know what to say.

“Do you think our ship is going to the better place, like your dark friend?”

“Any place would be better than Boston, sir.”

“Perhaps, but not
the
better place?”

“I don't know what Edward meant by that, sir.”

The man looked at Charles closely and finally asked, “Can you read, lad?”

Charles nodded and blurted out, “Yes, sir. English and Mandarin.”

“Really.”

“Yes, sir.”

The red-haired man turned away from Charles and looked toward the horizon. He pointed at a series of towering clouds to the west and scowled. “There'll be a storm, lad. When it's done, you are to tell me which of the two of you is to be thrown overboard. Either you or your African friend is not long for this world.”

The storm seemed to last for hours and hours. The forward privy in which they had locked Edward and
Charles was foul-smelling, but the tossing of the waves left them little time to be offended by the odour. Quickly they were thrown from one wall to the other, and ocean water squeezed between the loose planking. But through it all Edward was calm. Almost serene. Charles finally held on to the massive man for support and was surprised to finally awaken in Edward's lap, with the man's huge hands smoothing the hair from his face.

The door of the privy slammed open. Overhead, winter stars pierced the black of the sky like some sort of jewels. As Charles was marched toward the stern of the ship he saw the Dipper standing out so starkly that it almost made him laugh—as if God had put one constellation up there that any jerk could find.

The sailor opened the door to the Captain's quarters and shoved Charles in. The boy stumbled, then caught himself at the corner of the man's desk. A leather-bound book was on the desktop. The red-haired man came in and took a seat at the desk.

“You claim you can read, lad.” The man picked up the book and handed it to Charles. “Read aloud.”

Charles read where the man pointed. It was a story. It began with two women coming to a king with one baby that each woman claimed to be her own. The king questioned each woman, but both maintained their claim. Finally the king took the baby and threatened to kill it. Charles went to turn the page to read on but the red-haired man said, “Fine,” and took back the book. “Now it is time to decide. Who shall go overboard in these cold seas, you or your slow-thinking African friend?”

Charles couldn't think. All that was in his head was the story from the book, where the king wanted to kill the child to determine who was the real mother. Finally
he blurted out, “You can't kill him. He doesn't know what's happening to him. It wouldn't be fair. If you must, throw me overboard.”

Then Charles began to shake and tears streamed down his cheeks.

When the red-haired man's hand landed on his shoulder he was sure the man was going to lift him up and march him to the rail. But the hand rested on his shoulder, then gently brushed away his tears. “Very brave, lad. Very brave. Sit. You read well. Do you understand what it is that you read?”

It was Charles Soon's very first Bible lesson.

By the time they were halfway to Wilmington, Charles had read much of Genesis aloud, and looked forward to discussing it with the kind red-haired Captain after dinner each night. When they finally arrived in Wilmington it was agreed that he would enter the seminary there.

And Charles Soon and Edward spent the next seven years of their lives in Wilmington, Edward learning to be a cook and Charles Soon training to be a Southern Methodist missionary.

The Second Portal

In the flickering light cast by the taper, the Carver stared at the Narwhal Tusk. He had been drawn to the relic that night, just as he had been drawn to the sacred object over and over again in the past month, since the dreams had begun. Dreams of the Tusk alive with maggots and spiders and scorpions. He would awake in a sweat, slip from his bed, careful not to rouse his wife and sons, and race to the relic's hiding place in the depths of the Warrens. There he would light a taper, then release the Tusk from its mahogany casket.