The Celestials (13 page)

One of the cooks claimed that the children of such women would be redheaded devils whose knees didn't bend.

The other claimed they didn't bear children; they stole them. “There's nowhere to put your little thing,” he pointed out.

Charlie colored. The cooks were the only two of the seventy-four whom he hadn't personally interviewed. He added their names to his growing list of reasons to do things oneself.

By the end of that week, the last of the Chinese were trained and hard at work in the bottoming room, and the town assumed that the further disgruntled and deflated Crispins were responsible for the delivery to the Celestials' entrance of two milk crates of dead rats that Saturday afternoon.

Charlie carried them himself to Sampson's office, bowed slightly, and said, “We have no use for these.”

Sampson assured him that he also wanted nothing to do with the dirty things and suggested that he get one of the Celestials to dispose of them.

Charlie felt put off by this. Ignorant Americans seemed to be more Sampson's responsibility than his own. On his way back to the Celestial quarters, Charlie called over a newly hired office boy, not more than ten, loaded the two crates in the boy's thin arms, and said that Mr. Sampson had ordered the boy to discard them. “Work fast,” he added conspiratorially. “Today, his mood is not so good.”

It had taken Alfred hours to gather enough dead rats to fill even half of the first crate, but when his energy flagged, he had merely to conjure the image that had prompted him in the first place: Ida and one of her Celestial boys walking up the hill behind the factory carrying a kite of foreign design. He had heard that students and their teachers had begun these little outings, but he had not expected to see
Ida partaking in them. Why he had not, he didn't know. The town was, for the most part, in favor of these jaunts, seen as they were to be the harmless, happy games of children. And indeed, Alfred was witness merely to a man and a woman walking up a hill. Perhaps it had been the banality of the image that had so bothered him. But it had bothered him so severely that he had stood there and stood there across the street, his eyes never leaving the top of the rise over which they'd disappeared. And there he was when they returned, an hour later, now more animated, though not, he had to admit, more intimate, and the moment they crested the hill, making their careful way down again, he winced as if it were his knees bearing the weight of their downhill strides, and he stood there feeling as if he were an idiot or a dog, something other than himself.

So when, trudging through the muck of the riverbed or slipping on the stacked wood in his neighbors' woodsheds, a burlap bag tied around his waist with baling twine, he thought he might just give it up, all he had to do was remind himself of the way she'd made him feel, ambling slowly up the hill with her Celestial, noting Alfred not at all.

What did he guess they'd been up to, he'd demanded of Daniel.

“Flying a kite?” Daniel had suggested.

So he was left with his imagination, and it was then that his rancor and rage began to rise in his throat like floodwater. And it was then that he got the idea of borrowing Henry Bolt's terrier, which he set loose in the feed rooms of a handful of barns while he stood against the closed door to
watch. The dog climbed walls, even made it partway across ceilings, grabbing the fleeing rats and dispatching them, his eyes already scanning for the next gray blur. Alfred was left more satisfied than he'd been in weeks. He asked Henry Bolt to set a price for the animal, but Henry called the creature to his side and said he wasn't for sale. And just like that, the warmth of satisfaction was gone from Alfred's chest, replaced by something he didn't know to call loneliness.

As the summer proceeded, more of the Chinese spent their free time out and about. They frequented the local stores, went to church and public lectures, marveled at traveling amusements. They flew more kites. They sat in the park, their faces to the sun.

Sunday school sessions became less formal and pinched. Laughter was more common than not. The exchange of gifts between teachers and students increased. Shoes of perfectly reasonable quality rolled out of Sampson's factory at two dollars a case less than they used to. The Crispins continued to hold their mass meetings, but by the second one at Tremont Temple, of the two hundred workingmen who convened the meeting, only fifty remained at the adjournment. Their half-hearted attempts to convince the Chinese to join their band of brothers had been unsuccessful, and by the end of July, all danger from them seemed, most of the town agreed, to be over. For a while, there were no new incidents.

And then Ah Ang Fook was accosted at the corner of Eagle and Main on his return to the factory. Small rocks
hailed down on him from the rooftop of the Ballou Block. Several hit their mark and the following morning he dressed to conceal the bruises. The police were called to the scene, but by the time they had identified the roof and climbed the staircase, the perpetrators were long gone. Sampson denounced the act and out of his own pocket reimbursed Ang Fook for his purchase from the drugstore of the two bottles of Renne's Magic Oil that had been broken.

The week after that, Sunday school was extended to Wednesday evenings, and the women who had volunteered for extra duty turned in various directions outside the factory fence, calling their good-byes to each other in the cool summer twilight. Of course, Alfred had not intended for Mrs. Sampson herself to be any kind of a target, and Ida even less, but sometimes when one begins a boulder rolling down a hill it is impossible not only to stop it but also to keep it from gathering speed. He should have known there would have been other brothers equally unsatisfied with the Order's apathy in the face of the Celestial invasion, others secretly thrilling at each new revenge, but the thought had not entered his mind, largely because the Order's apathy was not central to his rage. The other brothers knew only that those coolie boys were partaking of a meal that belonged on a Crispin's table. Crispin hands had been tied by capital and the Order's own leadership, and they lashed out at those within reach.

They set upon the women from behind with volleys of stones and handfuls of gravel and saw only Mrs. Sampson's back as she fell to the ground, covering her
companion as best she could. Ida did not fall. She held her primer as a shield before her face and began walking toward them. “Tom McLaughlin and Charlie Upham,” she called. “What kind of cowards do you take us for?” she asked loudly enough that several neighbors reported hearing her clear as a bell.

The boys dropped their stones and gravel, backing up as they did so, and as she kept coming, their nerve, which had been spontaneous and rash to begin with, fizzled entirely and they fled, cutting across Freeman's lot until sure she hadn't pursued them.

Julia suffered a cut at the back of her neck, just above the collar, and Nancy Harding, the girl she had tried to shield, had to pick the dirt and chips of stone from the heels of her hands with a sewing needle, she had fallen so hard against the road, but other than that, the women were unharmed, though Julia was still so flushed, her eyes so bright, upon her return to the Wilson House that Sampson would not be convinced by her assurances until she allowed the doctor to be summoned and he pronounced her level of agitation to be completely normal given the circumstances.

Tom McLaughlin and Charlie Upham were dispatched to the county jail, paid their fine, and within a month had found their separate ways out of town for good. Still, there was no doubt now amid the town that the problem had not disappeared. For the most pessimistic it was a sign that the early success of Sampson's Experiment was over. In the days following the episode, Julia found she could set her heart to similar racing with ease. And as those effects of
the attack receded, she felt a vague sadness and impatience with all that was settled and sure.

Having heard about the incident, and the injury inflicted upon his employer's wife, Charlie made his way to the Wilson House, explaining to Sampson when he opened the apartment door that he was there to pay his respects and offer a gift of good health.

Sampson, surprised but not unpleasantly so, widened the door and stepped back, beckoning his foreman to enter.

Julia was seated on a chair by the window, a blanket covering her lap. Their eyes met, hers alive with tiny movements of alarm. Charlie bowed, lowering his gaze, his face still and blank.

He offered his hope that her health would be improved as quickly as possible. He placed a small carving of a dragon on the table before her, apologizing for its hasty and rough construction. He explained that the dragon was a symbol of blessing and fortune, as it was the only animal to unite heaven and earth. He politely refused Sampson's offers of food and drink and made his exit, wondering all the way back to the factory at the behavior of this strange American lady.

Had Alfred known that the photos of the Celestials had been Julia's idea, it is hard to know whether he would have felt better or worse about the attack against her. She had argued to her husband that they would remind the town that these boys were here, genuine people with genuine needs and responsibilities, and remind the Celestials of the
same things. Both walk down the street, both eat and drink, both are made of flesh and blood in the image of God.

Even as she was making these claims, she knew she did not really believe them. Each Sunday, she could not have felt herself to be more different from the pupils across from her. That feeling, since it both shamed and excited her, was why she was so insistent on the execution of her idea. It was as if she were seeking to pin those boys to paper herself.

Julia had never wanted her own portrait taken, though Sampson had suggested it on more than one signal occasion. It had been too nervous-making, the idea of a likeness of herself set onto card stock, held in a frame, slid into an album. What if she could not control her expressions? What if her portrait revealed something about herself she wished not to see? But while making her arguments to her husband, she found herself imagining a portrait with, to her surprise, Charlie Sing.

After his visit to the Wilson House, she had begun reading to him from time to time at the end of lessons. It was a way, she had told him, to improve his already strong command of the language. Sometimes he read to her, but not for long, instead passing the open book back to her, his finger marking the spot where she should take over. She never objected, partially because she enjoyed reading aloud and did not find opportunity to do so very often, and partially, though she would not know to articulate it this way, because there was something about his quiet and calm to which she was drawn. They never spoke of the fact that she had not identified herself as his employer's wife.

She had not thought she put him before any other Celestial in her mind, yet there they were in her imagination, the two of them framed in card stock. The unbidden nature of the image made her feel as she used to when Sampson would catch her unawares, placing a hand above her hip bone, sending small charges through her as if he were flint, she the tinder. The opposite of quiet and calm. She knew not to make these thoughts part of her arguments.

“Would it make you happy?” he asked.

She was so surprised at this question that she asked, “Would what make me happy?”

“Exactly,” he said, perplexing her even further.

She warmed beneath his gaze. Attention had always had this effect, as if a lighthouse beacon had suddenly fixed on her, picking her out from a shoreline of gray rocks.

He granted permission for her plan. Out of love, Thankful would tell her later, and she knew her sister-in-law to be speaking the truth, and over the following months and years this would be one of the many things for which she felt shame.

When Alfred found himself one Saturday evening sitting next to Ida and Lucy on a green picnic blanket, cutting thick slices of Lucy's homemade bread, all he knew was that he was sitting close enough to Ida to feel her warmth and smell the odor of camphor peculiar to her skin. When had she come to mean what it was clear to him she now meant? He knew not. What he did know was that she had rolled her dress sleeves to her elbows, and her forearms, bare in the sun, rendered him without words.

She had plenty of words. He'd done nothing but bow his head under the hailstorm of her speech for the last two days. She sat cross-legged on the blanket and pelted him with questions. Had he really had no inkling of the mischief of those fool brothers of his? Either he'd been part of their idiocy—and didn't he like to claim proudly that the brothers always acted as one?—and should be more ashamed of himself than usual, or he hadn't, and the loyalty of his tribe wasn't what he'd thought it to be. The impulse to add that if that were the case, then he'd lost another family rose in her throat and she was so taken aback at the cruel journeying of her own mind that she took an abrupt and oversized bite of bread to keep herself from speaking any further.

But it was too late; Lucy, who had been sitting at the blanket's far corner silently eating grape after grape, was weeping. They drew around her, though as he was asking his younger sister what was wrong he was also aware that the length of his kneeling thigh was pressed against the length of Ida's own. If not for the cloth of his pants and her skirts, he thought. And then he thought he should at least try and behave as a better person would and moved away to draw Lucy into his embrace.