The Sand Pebbles (33 page)

“We just beat up some gangsters out on North Terrace,” Holman said. “We thought you might like to know.”

“Very interesting,” Shu said politely.

He was not letting much feeling show on his big, coarse face, but his eyes were narrowed and watchful. Po-han and Burgoyne closed in on either side of Holman.

“They were bothering Maily,” Burgoyne said. “We’ll really get mad if it happens again.”

Shu poured himself a cup of tea from the pot on his desk. “A man must always be ready to protect himself and his property,” he agreed amiably. He pulled open a desk drawer and laid an automatic pistol beside his teacup. “You see I am ready.”

Holman took out the Belgian pistol and balanced it in his hand. “We make ’em all sizes in America, up to sixteen inch,” he said.

Shu raised his eyebrows. “I do not think you can get the big ones into Tungting Lake,” he said easily. “Neither do I think you can claim consular protection for the girl Maily. She is Chinese.”

“We won’t bother the consul,” Holman said. “We’ll just come ashore with whatever men and tools we need to do the job.”

Shu gave up the sparring. His face muscles set harshly and his voice turned hard. “Changsha is not a foreign concession. Chinese law applies here,” he said. “The girl is Chinese. There is nothing you can do about that.”

“Inside a couple of days she’s going to be my legal wife,” Burgoyne said flatly.

Shu’s eyebrows raised again. “Oh well, if you can do that …”

He shrugged and put away his pistol. Then he studied some papers on his desk, sipping tea and ignoring his visitors. Holman looked at Burgoyne and noticed that a dozen Chinese had come up softly to stand just behind them. The back of his neck felt strange. He jerked his head toward the door.

“Let’s get some fresh air,” he said.

It was pretty feeble. They walked back, not swaggering, all of them knowing that Victor Shu had had very much the best of it. Burgoyne’s statement had jarred Holman. He was thinking about it.

“Frenchy, you meant that, about marrying Maily?”

“I purely do. I been after her all last week to marry me,” Burgoyne said. “I thought it was the only way to make her safe, and now I know it.”

“Well, hell!”

“It ain’t only that. I want to. I think about her all the time,” Burgoyne said. “She’s so decent and helpless. Jake, I’m that pushed and twisted and hauled and squeezed around inside I ain’t a mite myself any more and sometimes I think I’m crazy. What do you think?”

Holman didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to think.

“I keep having the feeling it’s the biggest, onliest chance of my life and I got to take it if it kills me. I got to do it right,” Burgoyne said. “Jake, what
do
you think?”

“I think maybe you’re in love,” Holman said. “Whatever that means.”

They came home to Po-han’s courtyard like conquering heroes, all the same. The neighborhood people were shooting firecrackers to celebrate the rout of the gangsters. They bowed and called out to Po-han and he visibly enjoyed it. He had much face. He was a property owner with two gold teeth and a son and ocean devil friends to stand by him, and things were all right with him. It made Holman and Burgoyne feel good too and they swaggered again, grinning as they swung into Po-han’s courtyard, with its single tree. Maily came running to meet them.

“Jake! Jake!” she cried. “I’m so glad to see you!”

“I’m glad too, Maily.” He clasped her hand. “You’re looking good.”

She wore a black embroidered Chinese jacket and trousers and she was very excited and pretty with no strain and only natural color in her face. They all had tea in Po-han’s main room and Holman learned that the wife’s name was Mei-yu and he should call Po-han’s mother Tai-tai. The two children were shy of Holman and would only peep out from behind the bed curtain. The bed had been cleared out of the other end of the room and there were two tables, half a dozen chairs, a new and larger stove, and quite a lot of other new gear. Po-han was so very proud of it that he could hardly pretend not to be when Holman praised it.

Then the men had to go and have more tea in Maily’s room, and
show it to Holman. It was smaller, freshly whitewashed and cheerful, with a red-and-white-striped bed curtain and green rush matting on the floor. She had a small table and two chairs and a chest and she would not sit down herself because she had to brew the tea. She had Mei-yu’s old clay stove and a basket of grass and weed stems to feed the fire.

“Hey, it looks good and clean and happy in here, Maily,” Holman said. “It’s just like you.”

“Thank you, Jake.” She blushed and she was very pleased. “Frenchy helped me pick everything,” she said. “He paid for it all, too.”

“You’ll civilize him yet, Maily.”

Burgoyne chuckled and tugged his mustache. “The little gal has got herself a great big job there, don’t you think, Jake?”

They drank tea and laughed and talked. Po-han was left out of much of the talk because his English was not good enough, but he grinned and was happy along with them, all the same. He caught Holman’s remark that it was too bad they had not stopped to buy some bottled beer along the way.

“I sabby shop hab got plenty beeah,” he said.

Burgoyne stood up. “No, sit down, Jake,” he told Holman. “You’re company. You and Po-han are having supper with us tonight, and I got to get stuff for that, too.”

Maily, flushed and happy, whispered to Burgoyne what to get, because it was to be a surprise for Holman.

“You sit here and talk to Maily, Jake,” Burgoyne said. “She ain’t seen you in a coon’s age. We’ll only be gone a few minutes.”

As soon as they left, a discomfort filled the room. Holman half expected Maily to put on her hostess manner and ask him about Nevada. But she sat down in the other chair, her manner very earnest.

“Jake, Frenchy wants me to marry him. I don’t know what to do.”

“Yeah. Frenchy told me.”

“I owe him everything. He’s simply
good
, Jake, I think more than anybody I ever knew. But I don’t think I love him.”

“I don’t know much about love.” Holman squirmed. “I don’t believe much in love.”

“I’d do anything for him, even die. I’ve told him I’d just live with him, as his wife.” She was blushing. “That’s his right, now.”

“Well, ain’t that love?”

“It’s love … but it’s not love, either. I can’t explain. It’s something you just know.”

“I don’t know,” he said heavily. “I think Frenchy loves you.”

“I know. He demands me silently … to love too … and I can’t. Nothing I ever read in novels or magazines says what to do … what happens then.”

She talked about love, all she had read, in uneven bursts of talk. Holman listened uncomfortably. Love happened to you like a whirlwind and changed you and made the world around you into heaven, she said. True love always won out. Holman did not believe that stuff. Women grabbed just whomever they could grab, and that other was only a smokescreen. Maily was a fool not to grab Frenchy, Holman thought. She had never seen movies, or she would be talking about them too. She kept talking and Holman only half listened.

He was thinking it must be tough to be a woman. They had to have stuff around them, a room and furniture. They were all needs and wants and wishes and the only real trade they had was going to bed. They did not have a place where they could live safely and do what they pleased outside of that place. They were out in the middle of it, and when they grabbed a guy to save themselves, all they could do was to pull him out in the middle of it too. No wonder they made up that love crap, Holman thought. It was their way of getting drunk and forgetting their troubles.

“For Christ’s sake, marry Frenchy, if he wants that!” Holman said at last, to stop her.

“I don’t want to hurt him,” she said. “I’m afraid I’d be evading my punishment. God’s will for me. I don’t want to involve Frenchy.”

“You been punished enough already to satisfy any decent god,” Holman said. “Forget that stuff. Load it all off on Frenchy, if that’s what he wants.”

“You think everyone is as strong as you are.” She was twisting her handkerchief around her left hand. “Frenchy’s good, but he’s not strong. Not the way you are.”

“He’s as good a man as anybody I ever knew,” Holman said. “Marry him and let him worry about it.”

He felt very uncomfortable. None of the talk made sense. There was no sense in it. It was woman stuff. Something was pushing at the door and he got up to open it. It was a very little girl in padded red jacket and trousers and tiger shoes.

“Su-li!” Maily said.

She brought the child in. It was Po-han’s daughter, she told Holman. Su-li was just learning to talk and she was always in mischief of some kind. The little girl skirted Holman at a safe distance, watching him with fear and fascination, while they talked about her. Then she was at his knee and in a few more minutes in his lap and pulling at his nose to see if it was real.

“She likes you, Jake,” Maily said.

Holman made up a game with Su-li. She had her hair in a pigtail tied with a red string. He would pull her pigtail gently and say
ding ding!
as if ringing a bell. After a while, when he tugged it, she would say
ding ding!
She would look pleased when Maily and Holman laughed and then turn shy and press her face into Holman’s chest while he patted her in reassurance. They were still playing the game when Po-han and Burgoyne came back with the beer. Su-li would not say
ding ding!
when the other men pulled her pigtail, and it pleased Holman.

They ate supper in Po-han’s main room, pushing the two tables together. It was the pork bits with sweet peppers and gingery sauce that Maily knew Holman liked. Mei-yu had helped her cook it, but it was not as good as Big Chew’s version. Holman praised it anyway. Maily ate with the men, but Po-han’s women would not sit down. Maily’s easy laugh and free manner contrasted with Mei-yu’s modesty. The old lady had a bold eye. She was wispy and straight and dignified. The children called her Nai-nai.

After supper they drank more beer and talked and it was very
cozy. Holman had the little girl on one knee and he tried to coax Po-han’s son onto the other one. The boy, Ah Pao, was about four, crop-headed and moon-faced and much more shy than his little sister. He stayed close to Po-han, who plainly liked him best. Finally Holman got the boy on his knee also.

“Look what I got,” he said. “You’re out in the cold, Frenchy.”

“That’s what you think,” Burgoyne said.

He unbuttoned his cuffs and began rolling up his sleeves. At once the children wriggled off Holman’s lap and ran to trace their chubby fingers over Burgoyne’s tattoos. Holman had to laugh.

“If you took off your jumper, you could be the Pied Piper,” he said. “You walking picture book, it ain’t fair.”

There was an awkward moment when Holman remembered the Belgian pistol and offered it to Po-han for protection of the house. Po-han took it, but his women began a furious chattering in Chinese. The children, frightened, ran behind the women, and Po-han sadly gave the pistol back to Holman. He explained that when warlord soldiers looted, they always pretended to be looking for arms. Wherever they found them, that house and all the people in it were forfeit. If it was a rich house or had pretty women, they would often pretend to find one of their own pistols, so they could loot and rape. At such times pretty women put on rags and smeared dung and soot and ashes all over themselves, so they would not be attractive to the soldiers.

The talk made an ugliness in the room. They could not get back all of their good feeling. But when Holman and Burgoyne decided to go back to the ship, Holman tugged Su-li’s pigtail again and the tiny girl unexpectedly said,
“Ding hao!”
It made a good laugh to say goodnight on. Burgoyne lingered in the courtyard to say goodnight to Maily privately and Holman waited for him in the street. He waited quite a while.

They were almost to the river before Burgoyne spoke. “Maily said she’d marry me.” Their footsteps on gritty stone scuffed loudly.

“I don’t know what to say, Frenchy,” Holman said. “I hope it works out good.”

No one was on the streets. Somewhere back in the dark alleys a
watchman beat bamboo sticks together and sang out in Chinese.

“How does it feel? All jumping around inside?”

“I’m like to busting inside,” Burgoyne said. “I couldn’t be more scared if I was facing a firing squad.”

Snow was falling on China Light. It hurried whitely across the classroom windows, dry and cold. Shirley Eckert’s ankles felt cold, under her neat table. She wished the stove coolie would come by on his rounds to shake up the grate and add coal to the small heating stove halfway down the room. Dignity would not permit her or her students to do it.

The room held thirty desks. Her eight students had taken the ones nearest the stove this morning. She felt removed from them. They were busy with paperwork she had set them. They had about ten minutes to go before the reading period. Cho-jen, as usual, had already finished. He seemed restless, leafing through the text and then glancing at the snow dance in the windows.

She was afraid of Cho-jen. She wondered, as on all the other mornings, if this would be the day.

It was a large white-plastered room with a blackboard and maps of China and North America on the side wall. Behind her back, on the front wall, were U.S. and Chinese flags and portraits of Lincoln and Washington. The students wore padded gray or blue Chinese gowns, all but Cho-jen. He affected European suits, poorly cut and gracelessly
worn over his lithe young limbs. This morning he wore a red scarf, which he kept fingering.

She felt his eyes on her and met his gaze. Unabashed, he studied her, as if she were a museum exhibit. She smiled slightly. He did not respond. Finally, carelessly, he dropped his eyes to the text.

It will be today, she thought.

They had warned her about Cho-jen. He was a brilliant student who delighted in making fools of his teachers. His attacks were unpredictable and devastating, they said. Once he began on a teacher, he did not stop. He would destroy all discipline in a class. As much as they could, they kept him in classes taught by native staff. But for Shirley’s first year they were forming this special class of advanced students who could be taught wholly in English. Cho-jen, for all his youth, was easily the most advanced student they had. He would have to be in her class.