SUN 4. Gold Mountain, Part 3 / An Upright Man, Part 1
Staring into the Sun
This is a serialization of short story collection, Staring into the Sun. Start here for more info and the full index.
Previous installment: Gold Mountain, Part 2
Long Tow Wan, Chung Shan County, 1895
Song glanced back at Long Tow Wan’s watchtower as he walked the stone path that led to Poa-Poa’s village. There he would give her one egg, and sell the rest. He felt lightheaded, everything around him in sharp focus with oversaturated colors. Overlaying his fallow hunger was a new life-force germinating from his decision to go to Gold Mountain. For the first time in a long while, he felt like one unified being, free of vacillation.
He couldn’t wait to tell Poa-Poa. Like his mother, she would try to convince him to stay, but Song would argue his case to her, telling her about the stack of gold bracelets and how quickly Chowlin earned his silver dollars. He would send money to her—she would have mountains of food and she could buy chairs like Chowlin’s.
He adjusted the too-light egg basket on his shoulder. Left, right, left, right, go, go, go.
The strains of a woman singing arrived to him through the dry air.
Oh, just marry all the daughters to men from Gold Mountain.
All those trunks from Gold Mountain, you can demand as many as you want!
Oh, don’t ever marry your daughter to a man from Gold Mountain.
Lonely and sad, a cooking pot is her only companion.
The path climbed into a wooded area. The trees’ leaf buds seemed even more shriveled than yesterday. As Song’s breath became more labored, he focused on keeping his legs moving, and his conversation with Poa-Poa evaporated—
All in a split second, shouts came from the trees, his basket was wrenched from his shoulder, and he was shoved to the ground. A foot pinned him down and hands were on him, rummaging in his jacket until they found the money pouch. The hands ripped it away and the foot lifted.
Song pushed himself up, dazed, and caught a glimpse of two scrawny men escaping into the woods. They had dark cloths tied around the bottom half of their faces.
His jacket was torn and the open toggles hung limply.
My eggs! The money!
What now? Continue to Poa-Poa’s, disgraced, or return home (disgraced)? He still had his news to share, though he could no longer redeem it with an egg. Grazes stung his hands as he brushed dirt off his jacket and pants. Eggless, he kept climbing toward Poa-Poa’s house, swinging his arms with purpose to distract himself from the bandits’ theft.
Poa-Poa took in the whole situation in one blink. She consoled him, “You poor thing. It wasn’t your fault.”
“You’ll go hungry,” said Song.
“I’ll be alright.” Poa-Poa brewed some tea and they sipped it together quietly, sitting side by side on her platform bed. She patted Song’s knee.
As his nerves steadied, Song turned over some phrases in his mind. Finally, he said, “I’ve decided. I’m going to Gold Mountain. I’ll go with Chowlin when he returns. He’s going to pay for my ticket, and he has a place for me to work.” Did Chowlin say what it was? A store, a laundry? Definitely a merchant of some sort.
Poa-Poa looked sad.
Words streamed out of Song. “He knows people in a place called Vell-ay-ho, near San Francisco. He said I won’t have problems with the immigration papers. They might ask me to draw a map of Long Tow Wan, but it’ll be easy.” He made himself stop talking when he felt nervous sweat in his armpits.
Eventually, Poa-Poa said, “It’s not immigration I’m worried about. It’s you not coming back here. I’ll never see you again.”
A chill went through Song. Poa-Poa had a gift of seeing beyond the surface. She had predicted both droughts a year in advance, as well as Maa-Maa’s death. Her insight extended to a new world of politics with its emerging Chinese nationalism: recently, she had said to Song, “Remember the solar eclipse last autumn? That’s a sign that the dynasty is about to fall.”
Song didn’t want to go to Gold Mountain if it meant never seeing her again, but he couldn’t keep himself from presenting his newfound argument. “I’ll send you more money than you can imagine,” he promised. He didn’t like hearing greedy Maa-Maa’s tone in his voice, so he tried another angle. “I’ll come back soon to marry.”
Poa-Poa shook her head. “I can tell that you’ve decided, but I want you to go with open eyes. Do you know how much people in Gold Mountain hate us?”
Song didn’t answer. The people who had returned home talked about America in reverence, with no discouraging stories beyond getting past immigration officials. Did they think he was too young to handle ugly truths?
“Ten years ago, there was a massacre of Chinese people, not in California, somewhere inland. People get lynched. It’s like two separate societies. Chinese people have to band together for protection in Chinatown.” Poa-Poa’s face sagged in grief.
It made Song wonder about her sons, the uncles his mother never talked about. Maybe he could meet them in America. If he didn’t ask her about them now, he never would. Almost whispering, he said, “What about my uncles? What happened to them?”
Poa-Poa pressed her lips together. Song waited.
“I don’t even know if they’re still alive. None of them sent any letters, ever. I heard that my eldest lost all his money gambling in Chinatown, and nothing at all more than that,” she said, resigned. It seemed like she had already said farewell to them, and she had no tears left to shed, as drained of vitality as the trees that witnessed Song’s ambush.
If nobody knew what had become of Song’s uncles, it meant that their bones couldn’t be returned home to rest in their native soil, the same soil that emigrants would take with them and eat to combat homesickness. If his uncles were dead and someone knew where they were buried, the Long Du Association could have their bones dug up and shipped home via Macau or Hong Kong, the reverse of the hopeful journey they took years earlier.
Song asked, “What do you think I should do?”
Poa-Poa drew in her breath sharply. Song could tell she was about to cross a line, say something she shouldn’t.
“Go. I won’t see you again, which shatters my heart. Your mother and brother will also go to Gold Mountain. You will visit here with your wife and children, long after I am gone. You will make a fortune—you will become one of the wealthiest men in America.”
Song was stunned. Though they had often discussed his future, she had never spoken so precisely about it. Would her vision come true?
She continued, “Flip your name: use Zhou as your first name, Song as your family name. It will bring you great luck.”
His twin. In China he was Song and in Gold Mountain he would be Zhou—healthy and fortunate.
“But—” Poa-Poa said, “your bones and your spirit will not return home, bringing tragedy upon your descendants. The money will poison your son, your grandson, and your great-grandson. Once the wealth is frittered away along that lineage, the curse will end.”
Song swallowed hard as he weighed up his promised fate.
An Upright Man, Part 1
Oakland, December 1921
Henri Wu was smiling to himself, thinking about the promise of sex later that night, when he heard someone thumping on the door.
They had been eating dinner (broth, fried pork, steamed greens, rice), Mary getting dagger eyes from her mother-in-law, Lum Shee, who reproached, “Too much salt. Better too little than too much. You can add it, you can’t take it away.” Henri kept quiet; for him, the meal was delicious. His allegiances were split between his new wife and his mother: now that they were living together in one house, he just wanted to keep the peace.
He jumped up to answer the door. It was Lo, red-faced. Henri had never seen his sister’s husband look so desperate. Lo shouted, “Did you take it?”
“Take what?”
“The money. Five hundred dollars,” Lo said in his too-loud voice.
Henri was confused. “What? No, I’ve been here since I left the store.” It took less than ten minutes to walk the two blocks home from the Oakland Toggery. “What happened?”
Mary and Lum Shee, hearing the commotion, appeared behind him.
Lo quietened slightly when he saw them. “All the cash is gone. The silver is still there. I left just after you did but I forgot some papers there, so I went back after about an hour. The cash register was forced open and all the cash was gone. They left the silver, seventy-five dollars’ worth. Since the drawer was forced, I was hoping it wasn’t you, but I wanted to ask before reporting it to the police. I’ll go to the station now.” Lo looked at Henri, then at Mary and Lum Shee, then back to Henri.
The women followed Lo’s gaze and their eyes landed on Henri expectantly. He had nothing to say.
Lo seemed to be thinking something but restraining himself from saying it in front of Mary and Lum Shee. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” he concluded.
The next morning, Lo—his steely composure restored—led Henri down to the Toggery basement and pointed at the door. “I told you to double-check all the doors. Did you? This one was left unlocked. The police think it was an inside job.”
Henri swallowed hard. The myriad store opening and closing tasks were not yet routine for him. He prodded his memory from yesterday evening and found nothing about the basement door, only the novelty of Mary awaiting him, her latest attempt at adopting his mother’s dishes, and how good it would feel when they went to bed together that night. He admitted, “I must have left it unlocked.”
His mind kept churning. If it really was an inside job, there were about two dozen suspects between stock boys, clerks, window trimmers…not all working yesterday, but they all knew where the money was kept, and someone may have seen Lo leaving.
Lo said, “If we don’t find the thief—and I don’t want to start accusing innocent people—then you’ll have to pay the missing money back. As the manager, making sure the doors are locked is your responsibility, so you need to answer to the consequences.”
Five hundred dollars, two months’ wages. Henri knew there was no arguing with Lo, particularly for anything regarding the Toggery, which his brother-in-law had founded and owned 100%. Lo pinned everyone to their rungs of hierarchy and would not negotiate with anyone who clung on below him, even family. Especially when it must have been Henri’s fault. It was the right thing to do, and as the reality of the situation sunk in, he felt the burden of time stretching ahead of him. He would have to work off the debt over many months—he couldn’t go home with nothing at all in his pocket.
“Fine,” Henri said, resigned. “But could I ask you one thing?”
“What?” Lo was guarded.
“Could we keep this to ourselves, that I need to pay for the stolen money? I don’t want the rest of the family to know about it,” Henri pleaded.
“No secrets.”
“But it’s not a secret, it would be a…gentlemen’s agreement?”
Lo shook his head. “No. You need to pay for your mistake.”
Henri looked Lo in the eye and nodded slowly. His mother might hit him, like when he was younger. Even now, he still kow-towed to her every day when he arrived home, kneeling and bowing deeply until his forehead touched the ground.
He had no idea how Mary would react; though they had graduated from courtship into marriage, he still found her hard to read. She was quiet and seemed unthreatening, but Henri suspected that she had a sharp side—hopefully not as honed as his mother’s. There were three Chinese men for every Chinese woman in Oakland, and he considered himself fortunate to be Mary’s chosen one. Would she regret her decision?
From now on, he promised himself, there will be no more domestic distractions. The Toggery will come first.
To be continued on 30 August 2025.
Wow, I got shivers down my spine reading the grandmother's prophecy. Now I am waiting eagerly for the next installment, with some anxiety because I want to know how Henri works this all out and how Mary reacts!!