It was the last time Benito and Joseph worked side by side, and I was conscious of the bittersweet event even if Joseph remained silent about it. We all behaved as though nothing had changed, Joseph and Benito laughing through the dust, speaking of the feistiness of calves, never mentioning their friendship. Anna and I readied baskets of food for the dozen buckaroos; she served and cleaned, freed me to ride and rope. My mind would not let go the thought of how I’d miss not having them close to my side.
But the Lord never closes a door but that he doesn’t open another.
By spring, I knew something else of Anna’s I truly missed: her food handling! It wasn’t that I couldn’t cook. I did, and liked to. I could stir flour, salmon, and milk into Sunmiet’s lumpy gravy known as luckameen as well as anyone. Joseph called it “spring runoff with rocks.” The two or three buckaroos we held over the winter did not complain. Joseph did. In truth, I think he wanted more time with me beside him, less of my efforts in the kitchen. He didn’t express it that kindly.
“We need ourselves a cook,” he said, sawing through the beef steak I’d gotten a little too done on the cookstove. “The crews won’t take to your way of making steaks, Janie.” He chewed. No juice dribbled from the slab. “Not that your meals don’t show care,” he added quickly, seeing the defense in my eyes. “And I suppose well-done kills off the critters.” He grinned.
“Sunmiet says its bad medicine to touch food when you’re upset or angry,” I said. “So if you want me to cook again, best you not complain too much.”
“No offense intended,” he said, lifting his hands in protest. “Travelers want a hot, fast, tasty meal. Personally, I like a foreign touch.” He leaned back in his chair, pretending satisfaction.
“Suggesting I’m ‘foreign’ to a kitchen?” I said, taking up the dishes. Water heated on the wood stove for cleaning them.
“Not my meaning,” he said, smiling.
“I miss Anna, too,” I said. “I actually like cooking, just not having to choose between doing it or spending time on the books or being with you.”
He sat quiet. “Thought I’d check with Chinaboy Tom at the Umatilla House.” He stood, walked to the window, looked out at the river, swirling. Sea gulls screeched at the base of the falls, dipping and swooping for early, weakened fish making their way upriver against the rapids. It was March, early in the salmon run.
“Why do they call a grown man, older than you even, a boy?” I said. “Seems demeaning to me.”
Joseph brushed a spiderweb from the window, held a cold glass of spring water in his other hand. “Never considered it,” he said. “Doesn’t say much for me, does it.”
I shrugged my shoulders, dipped the plates into the steaming water. “Wasn’t being critical. Just wondering.”
“Suppose some folks still see Tom as a boy, from when he first came there working in the kitchen and taking care of the chandeliers, cleaning and all. Thinking on it, though, no boy would have stuck it out so long. Or been so quiet doing his work. Not complaining, just sending his money back to China for his family.” He took a drink, swallowed. “Something to think about. Anyway, we could ask Chinaboy—Tom—if he knows any of his countrymen who would cook for us, passengers, and crew.”
“He’ll most likely send us to Canyon City or John Day town,” I said. “Gold mines petering out there might free up some cooks. But we haven’t time for a trip now, pushing on roads like we should be. And didn’t you say you wanted to build a bridge across Buck Creek too this year?”
My clanking of dishes filled the silence. “That might not be such a bad plan, if we do it soon enough. Before Peter gets here with his men. Put two chickens in one pot.”
“What?” I asked, still steaming the plates, not following where his mind had gone.
“If we head out to John Day town now, we could seek ourselves a good, authentic Chinese cook to add to the Sherar’s Bridge family.”
“That’s one chicken in the pot. What’s the other?”
His voice gentled, letting me know he spoke of something of import, something that truly mattered, and something he had not forgotten. He turned from the window to face me. “We could collect some advice from Dr. Hey while we’re there. About expanding a family of our own.”
UNPREDICTABLE
Sung-li’s almond-shaped eyes slid like a slow snake down Joseph’s body, halting at my husband’s feet.
“No need for that,” French Louie said, clearing his throat. He added something that sounded like Cantonese, repeated it in English as though talking to a child. “Don’t challenge this man.”
Any who needed translating in the gold fields of Canyon City called on Louie at one time or another. Today, Louie came to the cooking hut of the Lodi mines to help his old friend, Joseph Sherar, find a cook with a reputation.
He found us a temperamental cook, though any other kind was rare.
Sung-li moved his eyes slowly from the blue morocco on Joseph’s boots, gauging his wool pants, appraising the value of the turquoise stones at the end of his belt, the soft weave of his vest. He ignored Louie’s command and boldly looked into Joseph’s eyes instead.
“I speak Engli,” he said in a voice as loud and brash as the dinner gong that called the men to eat. The blue silk of Sung-li’s pajama-like shirt pulled tightly across his back as he braced his legs and crossed his arms in front of himself. He hid his small hands in the folds of the wide sleeves. His mouth was a straight line beneath a small nose and he wore his coal black hair straight away from his face, pulled tight and hanging in a queue down his back.
“Good,” Joseph answered. “It’ll save time. The question is, can you cook?”
“I cook good for many here,” Sung-li said as he turned his back on the older men and walked like a satisfied king behind the throne of his butcher block. “No mind to leave,” he added, picking up the cleaver, turning it over in his immaculate fingers. He handled the blade like a new weapon. He never took his eyes from Joseph’s. Defying his look of confidence, his feet stepped back and forth in one spot, as though stepping on hot coals. He seemed to realize his strange habit and stopped, abruptly.
Joseph pulled on his beard. The man was bold, but I suspect Joseph liked that, liked someone with confidence. Yet something about him struck a tender note too, I think. Perhaps the smallness of the slippered feet that shuffled nervously again on the floor. Joseph ran his tongue back and forth like a metronome over his upper lip. His tongue stopped abruptly with his mind made up. “You will work with my wife? Take directions from her?”
Sung-li paid attention to me for the first time. With that same boldness, he looked me over, checked out my wide-brimmed hat, tiny earrings, paused briefly at my eyes, my throat, easing his eyes imperceptibly down to the parasol I held in my hands. Looking back at Joseph, he nodded his head slowly in concurrence. His demeanor nudged a caution in my mind, but I set it aside.
“But no wish to change,” Sung-li said, his voice still loud but closer to a whine.
“You come with good recommendations,” Joseph said. “Louie here heard you were looking to leave. But we’ve no need to disrupt a happy man. Nor to beg,” Joseph said, fingering the turquoise bola at the end of his belt. “Guess we came for nothing.” He tipped his hat to the man and I took it as a signal that we would leave the closeness of the hut and the heavy scent of herbs. The four of us filled the small space to overflowing; I liked the idea of leaving.
“You no go,” Sung-li said, a desperate note in his voice. “What you offer? Wages?”
“Five dollars for a seven-day week, your own room, and a saddle horse as needed. And we don’t hold to spitting on the bread.”
The smaller man nodded his head. “No spit,” he said, “but one day week. For my time.” He slammed the cleaver onto the block a little too hard I thought. He must have thought so too as he shot his hands back into his sleeves. Sung-li’s feet swished on the hard dirt floor, that nervous hot-rock step.
“A day a week!” Joseph said, hi
s deep voice filling the small cook hut in Canyon City. “That’s robbery! I’ve an inn to run seven days a week. No,” he shook his head. “That won’t do. Tell him that won’t do, Louie.”
Before Louie could even open his mouth, Joseph took my elbow and we turned to leave, the fullness of my dress filling the hut door as I started to push through into the sun-filled April air. Joseph bent to pass through the low door behind me then stopped. When I turned, I saw that the smaller man must have touched the sleeve of Joseph’s short coat, then stepped back, submissively. I couldn’t believe how quickly Sung-li had flown around the butcher block to reach us!
“Half-day, mine,” Sung-li said, stepping back beyond a fist’s reach, “to send letters home.” His eyes dropped like a rock, staring at the embroidery on his slippers.
“Home.” Joseph said, chewing on his lower lip. “What’s your thought, Mrs. Sherar?”
I hesitated and Sung-li’s eyes got smaller, softer as he lifted them to peer into mine. “He does come highly recommended. We can manage, I suspect. We’ve need to hire a girl or two anyway and one could be trained for kitchen help, to cover Sung-li’s half-day off.”
“Well, Sung-li,” Joseph said to him, smiling. “I suspect you’re hoodwinking me, but except during round-up, half day a week is yours. Every man needs at least some time to call his own even if I haven’t found any myself. It’s a deal then?” He extended his hand to Sung-li who lifted his head, smiled a vacant smile that only later reminded me of a sneer, then bowed. He did not proffer his hand to his newest employer.
“Must just be their way,” Joseph said as we departed with plans to pick up Sung-li later in the day.
“The mine foreman says he has some weird ways,” Louie said as he helped me into the buggy we’d rented from the livery. “But, um, he is harmless enough.”
“Why’s he want to leave do you suppose?” I asked.
“Something about relatives in The Dalles. Wants to be closer.”
“Can’t begrudge a man for that. Sure drives a bargain,” Joseph said with admiration in his voice. “Don’t remember many Chinese being bold enough for that.”
Dr. Hey, the “herb doctor” as Joseph called him, had a temperament the exact opposite of Sung-li’s. Warm and inviting, he remembered Joseph, asked about his leg. Then with tenderness and skill and the gentlest hands of any who had poked and prodded my body, he examined me. Looking into my eyes, as Sunmiet had that very first day, Dr. Hey smiled but I could tell he saw something different there than “huckleberries.”
I knew that my eyes looked unusual. They seemed to push out from my face at times, showed white all around the dark blue when I looked in the mirror each morning to tie up my hair, powder my face.
“You take Oregon Kidney Tea? From Stark Medicine Company?” he asked, referring to the Portland druggist’s latest cure. It surprised me he was so well-versed on current medicine. We sat in the Chinese doctor’s tidy office surrounded by small ceramic and blown glass vials that lined the dust-free shelves. Herb bunches hung neatly from the ceiling giving the room a sweet yet pungent scent. A small pewter frame with a fading picture of a woman and child sat behind him on a shelf, staring out at us.
“Sometimes I take it,” I said. “When my stomach hurts. Is that wrong?” I was suddenly worried, hoped I’d done nothing to counter my chances for a child.
He shook his head and touched my gloved hand softly, to reassure me. “Just wish to know what you do. To care for self. And Pfunder’s Headache Wafer?”
“No, I don’t have headaches. Just sometimes feel tired though usually I can go the day without stopping. My friend Sunmiet says I move like a sandpiper at the sea always running close to the water but never getting wet.”
He smiled, made a tent with his fingers, touching them lightly as he thought. He moved around the room as though floating. I studied the embroidery that marched in tiny stitches hemming the sleeves of his silk jacket and the hat that fit like a small box on his head. I envied the smoothness of his olive-colored skin, his gentle eyes. Beyond him, through the washed window, I could see a slender woman walking hand in hand with a small boy across the muddy yard, the child’s single braid bouncing as the boy looked up, talked and smiled to the woman who must have been his mother. I turned back to the doctor.
“I never will have children, will I?” I said, finally putting words to my fears.
He walked behind a small desk table and motioned for Joseph and me to sit in the high-back armchairs across from him. He sat, his hands reformed into their thinking tents. “No way to know, for certain,” he said kindly. Joseph reached for my fingers, held them gently as the doctor spoke. “Sometimes birds born in nests we do not think could bear them, resist the storms. Others come to perfect branches with best material. Eggs are laid. But do not hatch. Something happens.” He lifted his fingers like birds in flight. “It is the way of all life.” He rested his hands flat on the desk now, kept looking into my eyes. “Your body shows me no reason why you do not bear children. Eyes like yours, sometimes, mean pressure, many headaches, but you do not have these.” He shrugged his shoulders as if to say it could go either way. I stared at the half moons of his well-shaped nails arched high. “Is best if you live full life. Baby arrives more quickly to restful nest. And if no baby comes, then you have not waited, hung on so long to hope for one thing, you fail to find joy carried on other wings.”
“Do what I’ve been doing, worry less, and get on with my life.” I said with resignation. “That’s what you’re telling me, isn’t it?” I swallowed back tears. “We came all this way for you to tell me that.” Anger and disappointment mingled. I sounded like my mother and my voice cracked as I spoke. Joseph squeezed my hand, to steady me.
“You have much to give,” Doctor Hey said, his voice still soft and calming. “Do not wait to offer it only to the child of your dreams or you miss great joy, perhaps pass by dream caught for you by another. Each labor is different for each child. Labor is not only of your body but of mind also.”
He rose, approached the shelf of vials and selected one, removed the cork and poured the tiny flakes into a piece of parchment paper rolled into a cone. “For the bee stings, in your stomach,” he told me. “Brew in hot water.” He handed me the cone, folded the top over. Joseph took it, holding it like a white candle in his big hands; the other arm around my shoulders. We stood, readying to leave.
“Each child arrives to different family,” the doctor said. “Though may come of same mother and father. First child comes to parents; second to parents plus one.” He held his index finger to the air. “Next child, plus two. Different family, distinct. Perhaps your child come in separate way, too, looking for own family, own place of belonging.”
It struck me that his words described my sense of belonging that day at the falls, the first time I felt a part of a family, after the babies died. Perhaps the falls would provide my family after all, if I let it. If I let “family” be different than I’d thought.
Sung-li proved a good traveler: quiet, undemanding. Unfamiliar with a horse to ride, he bounced a bit, but hung onto the little mare we bought for him. He made no complaints as he followed behind us, all his worldly goods bobbing in the canvas bag that hung from the side of the saddle. Even down the steep grade we called Hollenbeck’s Point, following skid marks from the wagons using the Barlow cutoff, Sung-li did not protest.
Only his demeanor with Bandit when we arrived concerned us. The dog growled at him before doing anything else. Sung-li kicked at him. Joseph said “Hey, hey! That’s Bandit! He’s old! Won’t bother you if you let him be!” The dog dropped flat on his stomach as though guarding, circled Sung-li close to the ground with quick-quick steps before dropping to his stomach again, stalking, wary. Sung-li scoffed, turned his back on the dog, and stepped inside.
“Where room?” he said in his gong voice.
Our life with a temperamental Chinese cook began.
He proved a worthy man, one well needed for the crew Peter
brought the following week. Sung-li knew what thickness of salt pork the men liked, had a good sense of how much flour and oil to order for the weekly trips I made to town. His feet moved steadily in their hot-rock step as he cooked. Surprisingly, he and I worked well together, I thought. He occasionally resisted my suggestions for a meal, but nothing drastic. Except for his annoying habit of humming, we got on fine.
The sing-song nasal quality drowned out my words if he did not want to hear me. The humming provided a curtain for ignoring me. Later, he feigned innocence when I had to touch him, cause the humming to abruptly stop, to bring his concentration onto what I wished to tell him. The humming proved a caution to me, and I thought well before I caused its interruption.
Sung-li did not work well with Alice M, however, a child we were forced to name, as what she called herself sounded like a foreign language. It just came out to us as “Alice M.”
We guessed her to be about eleven on the day she arrived, on foot, wandering down the first of the roads that Joseph and his crew began working on that year of 1872. But the depth of pain in her eyes said she was probably some years older.
Appearing from nowhere, she fairly dragged her frail body down the grade from Bakeoven, her buckskin and sagebrush clothes hanging in shreds from her, exposing calloused knees and scratched arms and thighs tanned to a bronze leather. Her brown eyes stared out at us as though from far away. They were the most prominent feature of a face that looked to be chiseled out of jasper. Oddly, she initially spoke a language only Peter seemed to understand.
“Sounds some like Paiute,” he said. “She speaks as someone who did not grow up with the words, but learned them late. She is not Indian,” he added to our surprise.