Candle in the Attic Window(78)

By Sarah Hans





“Are you nervous about tomorrow, Li?” Shen asks, between mouthfuls of rice.

Lien shrugs. “I’ve done it before.” She sips her tea, watching him over the rim of the tiny porcelain cup.

“I would be scared,” Shen says, trying to goad her into an embarrassing confession.

Lien knows this trick and deflects the conversation.

“I know. That’s why they send me instead of you.”

“They send you because you’re the smallest,” Shen replies. This is a dance they have done before; he knows the steps.

“They send Li because he’s the bravest,” the ordinarily reticent Bao adds. “He volunteered and you did not.”

Lien lowers her head, a show of respect whose real intent is to hide her blushing cheeks. Her affection for Bao has become bothersome. Sometimes, she even thinks, when he defends her like this, that he knows her secret. Earlier today, his hand brushed hers while they worked and, though he seemed not to notice, the unexpected contact drew a shuddering breath from Lien. Her skin touching his was like an electric shock, sending a tingle to parts of her that she has long ignored.

The flap of the canvas tent opens and the Foreman enters. Though the crew is almost entirely Chinese, the Foreman is a huge Irishman. He counts on his enormous size and grizzled appearance to intimidate his workers; he does not know that they call him “Maxì Tuán Xióng” – “The Circus Bear” – mocking his size, hirsutism, and the way he takes orders from the Superintendent, always ingratiatingly willing to please. ‘Storbridge’ is his name, but when he enters, Bao boldly says: “Xiong! How can we help you today?” in heavily-accented English.

The others stifle their laughter at the mocking name behind sips of tea and mouthfuls of rice. Many become engrossed in their reading or chores.

“Will Li-Li be ready tomorrow?” Storbridge demands, his voice deep and rasping, with an edge of menace. ‘Li-Li’ is the white man’s nickname for Lien, who is one of the tiniest of the Chinese workers.

“Yes, Li will be ready,” Bao replies, nodding to Lien. She averts her eyes, not wanting to attract the Foreman’s attention.

“Good. Be up at dawn so we can get to work.”

Storbridge lumbers back to the tent flap, a blast of freezing air rushing in as he exits.

Lien shivers, pulling the rough wool blanket closer about her shoulders.

Shen starts laughing, first, and the others join him in low, appreciative chuckles.

“Bao, you are too bold!”

Bao ignores the laughter, looking at Lien.

“Sounds like the blasting did not go well today.”

Lien nods.

“It’s too cold; the rock will be too hard. But the Superintendent demands satisfaction, so the white men ignore our engineers and the blasting will proceed.”

“With our lives the ones at risk,” Shen says bitterly.

“We knew the risks when we signed our contracts,” Lien reminds him, but her voice is bleak, and she stares with regret at her cracked and callused hands.

The tent flap opens again, and the assembled men groan and mumble about the cold as a few more workers enter. They rush to the cooking fire to warm their frostbitten hands, ill-covered in mittens full of holes. Lien counts them and finds only six.

“Where is Fa?” she asks. There is a hard knot in her belly while she awaits the answer.





One of the men by the fire turns slowly to her, a warm bowl of soup held in his palms to warm them. His expression is sorrowful. “He fell,” he says, and the others nod somberly.

Lien tries to fight back tears. Like her, Fa was small and nimble, perfect for the dangerous work of blasting the cliffs. He had taught her the ancient Chinese art, and had been the quickest and most agile of all the dynamite-setters. She can’t believe that he fell. Her mind reels with conspiracy theories, but just as quickly, she dismisses them. The work is dangerous and men die blasting the tunnels for the railroad every day. It was only a matter of time before Fa, too, met his end.

She can’t allow the other workers to see her tears, so she rises and hurries out of the tent, with the blanket still clutched about her. She has to be stronger and braver than the others to prevent suspicion. They have seen many men perish in the grueling work on the railroad and she has cried for those who were her friends, but always in secret.

So much of her life is a secret.

Lien finds her way through the tent city to the latrine pits, which are thankfully less noisome in the extreme cold than they are in the summer months. No one wants to venture far from the warm tents, so the men have been urinating in the snow nearby, rather than make the trek to the designated area. The latrines are virtually abandoned, a silent sanctuary for her tears.

Lien takes a few moments to empty her bladder, squatting on the far side of the latrine behind some snow-covered bushes. Once relieved, she feels a little less like weeping. She stands near the pits, forlorn, unwilling to return to the tent but unable to cry. She thinks of Fa and tries to mourn him as he deserves, but she has been exhausted by the sorrow of the last terrible weeks and can’t muster much beyond a few sad sniffles.

While she stands there, knee-deep in snow, waiting for the cold to leech the heat from her bones before she returns to the fire, snowflakes begin to drift down from above. There are only a few at first, spinning like tops, but as she watches, they begin to crowd the sky, falling faster and faster. Soon, the dark landscape is all but blotted out in the torrent of snow. Panicked, Lien quickly stumbles back to her tent before the snow obliterates her path and makes walking impossible. Though she is not far from her tent, she recalls vividly when several men were lost in a blizzard the first week on the mountain, found the next morning only a few feet from their dwelling, unable to make their way to safety in the disorienting whiteness.