Gold Mountain Blues (46 page)

But Sundance was paying no attention, because she had seen the bag hanging from the oak tree by her door, swaying gently in the breeze. “Oh, Dad!” she cried in a voice choked with happiness.

By the time Kam Shan walked out of the door with his cowhide bag hung from a stick over his shoulder, he could already hear the beating of the powwow drum. He had seen the elkskin-covered drum before; it was housed in the big teepee where the ancestors were worshipped. It was huge, bigger than the banqueting table they dined on when his father was home in Spur-On Village, big enough for twelve drummers to sit around it. He felt, rather than heard, its thunderous reverberations beneath the soles of his feet.

He could hear singing too. Sundance called it singing but he thought of it more as the sounds of wild beasts—the roar of a tiger or the howl of a wolf. He did not know what the singing meant; it may have been a war chant, a song of jubilation, an invocation of the spirits of heaven and earth, or an expression of anger. When he was not with Sundance, they were just ear-piercing shrieks or earth-shattering growls.

He wondered if Sundance had started to dance. At the powwow, the men sang and drummed. The women danced, although they were only allowed outside the circle. The men sang, drummed and danced in the middle.

Sundance and her mother had been eagerly waiting for the powwow. Her mother had been sewing Sundance's dance cape for ten years, beginning the work when Sundance was just five. On her birthday every year, her mother sewed on another ten bells, making one hundred bells this year. Sundance had tried it on for the first time the evening before, filling the house with a tinkling of bells clearer than the sound of gems falling into a
jade dish. Once she had her cape on, Sundance did not stop smiling all evening. Kam Shan had not slept well that night, and he knew that she had not either. He kept hearing her reed mattress creaking as she tossed and turned. When he got up to go out and piss, he found her sitting on the ground with her back against the wall, her teeth glinting in the darkness. She was still smiling.

She was happy because the cape was so beautifully made it put all the other mothers in the tribe to shame—and because this was her coming-ofage powwow. But Kam Shan knew that there was another reason why she was happy.

Yesterday evening at dinner, Sundance's father had told her mother that he would ask the Chief to preside over Sundance's wedding. Kam Shan started so violently in astonishment that the rice leapt out of his bowl.

“Sundance … getting married?!”

He tried to catch her eye, but she bent her head to her food, and bore his gaze silently.

“When Sundance marries, she'll carry on living with us so she can help me with her younger brothers and sister,” said her mother.

“You won't need to chop wood and make charcoal,” said her father. “You can keep Sundance with what you earn from taking pictures.”

It was some minutes before Kam Shan realized this remark was directed at him, and even more before he realized their import. His lips began to tremble: “M-me?” he stammered.

“Sundance accepted the belt you gave her, so of course it's you,” laughed her mother with a glance at Silent Wolf.

Kam Shan's head seemed to explode into tiny fragments. He could not put all the bits together though he tried all evening, and all night when he was in bed. Only with the first glimmer of light in the sky did he feel that he had got his head around this whole complicated business.

Sundance was out of bed before the cock crowed a second time. She woke the little ones. Soon afterwards, her father got up. He was not normally up this early but today he had to wear his ceremonial dress as the lead dancer at the powwow. He put on a long blue gown with bears' paws sewn around the hem. On his chest he wore a decorative woven strip of yellow pheasant quills. He looked imposing, but the stateliest part of his
outfit was yet to come; he donned a headdress of the finest eagle feathers, grey around the crown, white down his back. The feathers had dulled a little over the years, but Silent Wolf liked to wear feathers which had seen a bit of life. It was only young men who were seduced by freshly gathered feathers. The headdress was large and heavy and Silent Wolf needed help putting it on, so Sundance's mother rose early too.

Kam Shan was up last of all. He watched Sundance's mother paint her husband's face. Sundance had dressed the younger ones and was now changing her own clothes. She looked at him without speaking; her words were written on her clothes, in the bells which tinkled in eager expectation when she moved.

The powwow was held half a mile or so from their village, and attracted people from all the villages around. In addition to dancing and drumming, the powwow included a marketplace. Sundance's mother took charcoal and reed mats to sell and with the proceeds planned to buy a “hundred family quilt,” a new set of wooden bowls, two deerskin tunics and two pairs of lightweight boots. The tunics and boots were for Sundance and Kam Shan to wear at the wedding. She also wanted to buy two big pouches of the best tobacco to give the Chief, who would preside over the wedding.

The powwow did not start until midday but no one could wait that long. “When are we leaving?” asked Sundance's father, once his face was painted. He sounded like an impatient child. “It's too early,” her mother replied gravely after a moment's consideration. “The sun's not fully up yet.” But she could not keep up the severity for long. “Let's go! Let's go!” she said with a laugh. “What are we waiting for?”

Then she noticed Kam Shan sitting on the edge of his bed. He was neatly dressed but in his everyday clothes. And he was holding his head in his hands as if it was so heavy it might fall off. His hands hid his expression, and he had not said a word all morning.

“What's got into you, wooden-top?” she asked.

“Don't worry. The wooden-top will dance as soon as the drumming starts,” said Silent Wolf.

They set off with her father leading their pony in front. It was loaded up with two large sacks containing things they would sell at the powwow and three bladders full of food for their breakfast. Sundance's mother
walked beside her father, the children followed and Sundance and Kam Shan brought up the rear.

The three young ones competed to see who could throw a stone the highest. The stones startled the birds who squawked in protest. The stocky little pony had been fed before they left, and clip-clopped along the track in a spirited manner, its head held high. Even the village dogs sensed the excitement, and set up an unbroken chorus of barking which accompanied them all the way out of the village. The sights of this powwow morning were like a scroll painting unrolling itself before Kam Shan's eyes. But he heard only one sound—the jingling of the bells on Sundance's cape.

The bells knocked against his eardrums, and his temples began to throb. In a sudden fit of irritation, he shouted: “Sundance!” His voice sounded strange—brittle like a dead twig. She looked at him: “What's wrong?” She had started to sweat and her forehead was beaded with drops of moisture. Kam Shan looked at her in a daze and saw that in the space of a few months she had become a beauty.

His lips trembled. “Sundance, I … I.…” But the words stuck and he could not go on. “What's the matter?” she asked. He shook his head. “Let's go. Your mum's waiting.”

They walked on silently.

About fifteen minutes out of the village, Kam Shan suddenly slapped his forehead. “I've forgotten the camera,” he said. “I can take pictures of people in the market and charge each person a few cents.”

“Go back and get it and be quick,” said Sundance's mother, beaming in satisfaction. “We'll wait here.” She had known he was a smart boy from the first time she set eyes on him. But he replied: “Don't wait. I know the way to the powwow. We'll meet up there.”

Kam Shan tossed his straw hat to Sundance. “It's hot, you'll catch the sun,” he said as he started back. After a few paces, he looked back and watched as the little procession wound its way along the country track until the figures became tiny and faded into the distance. They turned a corner and disappeared from view completely, leaving only the tinkle of the bells wafting on the breeze. Kam Shan felt a great hollowness in his heart. It was only many years later, when he was middle-aged and had experienced life's
ups and downs, that he was able to put a name to his feelings that day. Desolation.

He went back to the house and retrieved his cowhide bag from under his pillow. He had not opened it since the day he was almost sent packing. He took off his leather boots and put them by Silent Wolf's bed, then put on his old cloth shoes. He tied the bag shut, hung it from a stick over his shoulder and set off. The village was empty; everyone was at the powwow. The cloth of the shoes wrapped itself around his feet with such light weight that, strangely, he felt as if he were walking on puffs of air. By the time he got used to the feeling, the village was well behind him.

He had to hurry. The sun was well up by now and he needed to reach the nearest settlement before dark. He was not really worried; the bag still had the water and food in it that Silent Wolf had given him. And so long as he had the camera, he could beg a crust to eat and a place to sleep wherever he found himself. Now that the Whites had brought their cameras to the Redskins' land, the latter, after some trepidation, had come to like the strange idea of having their images shut into the black box. He did not know where the next settlement was or how far he would have to walk to reach it. His hair brushed his shoulders. In another six months, he thought, just another six months, he could face his father again.

He got to the bend in the river and stopped, rooted to the spot. His bag dropped with a thud. Someone was sitting on the stone where Silent Wolf tied his canoe. The silence was shattered with a jingling of bells.

“Get into the canoe. I'll take you,” said Sundance.

She knew. She knew everything.

Emotion flooded over Kam Shan, filling his eyes with tears. He dared not look at her, or he would not be able to hold them back. He must not cry. Redskin men never cried.

“I'm not … I'm.…” he stammered, but could not finish the sentence. She did not interrupt but when he did not say any more, she asked: “Why? Why?” She was looking upwards, as if addressing her questions to the sky.

He gave a sigh. She sighed too. The silence hung heavily between them.

“The ancestors … won't accept you.…” he began haltingly.

Sundance untied the mooring rope and gave the paddle to him. He stepped in and reached out for her hand. She got in but still he did not let go. She did not pull free but allowed their palms to rest moistly one against the other.

“That's what my granddad said when he left my granny,” she said quietly.

Kam Shan had been on the road more than six months before he glimpsed, far in the distance, the pair of red lanterns that hung on either side of his father's door.

After leaving Sundance, he wandered from tribe to tribe, from town to town, for months. He took the same road his father had taken all those years before when he was building the railroad, but that he did not discover until much later. At the time, the only idea in his head was how to get to the next settlement before dark and fill his hungry belly.

As winter approached, his aimless wanderings acquired a direction— home.

The idea came to him quite suddenly. His hair was not long enough yet; in fact, he could only braid it into a stub of a pigtail. But something made him change his mind—a newspaper.

He was at a Redskin market one day when he saw a man carrying bottle of soy sauce bought in Vancouver's Chinatown. It was a long time since he had tasted soy sauce and just the sight of the bottle made his mouth water. But what really caught his attention was the old newspaper in which the bottle was wrapped. It was so long since he had seen any Chinese characters that he paid the man a few cents for the filthy newspaper and sat down on the ground to read it.

It was several months old and had passed through many hands, each of which had left its mark on it. Kam Shan started to read it in minute detail, character by character. But then his eyes fell on one small item of news, and everything else in the newspaper receded into the background.

Chinatown's barbers have recently been doing a roaring trade. The success of the revolution means an end to pigtails and the Chinese have wasted no time in shaving their heads in preparation for the celebrations of the first New Year of the Republic.

The Chinese Times,
12 February 1912

He put down the newspaper. His first thought was to get hold of a pair of scissors. When finally, several weeks later, he managed with some difficulty to borrow a pair from a Redskin, he hesitated. It should be his father wielding those scissors, he decided. Not him.

Dad. Oh, Dad.

The words filled Kam Shan with a sense of urgency. Home. He must go home immediately.

It was not an easy journey. It was a hard winter and the snow was deep. The cloth shoes his mother made him were soon worn through, but he had managed to buy a pair of thick deerskin boots from a Redskin. The rivers were frozen over so there were no boats; he had to make the journey on foot. Whenever he came to a market, he took photographs of people and taught the Redskins how to make charcoal. In return, he asked not for money but for food and warm clothing. His cowhide bag was sometimes stuffed to overflowing. On occasion, he could not reach a village before nightfall and had to take shelter in a hollow tree or a cave, but he kept his spirits up with the thought that every night brought him closer to home.

On the last stage of the journey, he hitched a ride on a cart going to Vancouver. When the man put him down in Chinatown, he went on impulse to the office of the
The Chinese Times
. All the staff were new, and only the old man on the door recognized him. “Where's Mr. Fung?” asked Kam Shan. “Gone back to China. Been gone a long while.” “Has he got himself a job in the Republican government?” “Job? No fucking way! The Hung Mun members mortgaged their properties and gave the money to Mr. Sun to go back and seize power in China. But once the Cudgel got what he wanted, he forgot about the Hung Mun. They haven't seen hide nor hair of him.”