Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler Read Free Book Online

happy,’ he confessed. ‘We figure they can understand this better - you kill a Chinaman, a Chinaman kills you. Simple and fair. They don’t see why we should care.’ He looked at Hank and shook his head. ‘Hell, why am I explaining? We don’t want Indian trouble, Mr Chin. You don’t live here. You just do this one thing and then you go back where you came from. Or you stand trial yourself. Like Hank told you, your bargaining position, it ain’t strong.’
     
    ‘I just put the rope around his neck?’ Chin asked.
     
    ‘And string him,’ said Jeb.
     
    ‘You want me to kill him.’
     
    Hank Webber put the small blade away and withdrew a clean white handkerchief from his breast pocket. He blew his nose carefully, first one nostril and then the other. He folded the material over twice and wiped the corners of his mouth with it. He put the damp cloth back in his pocket. ‘The law is killing him,’ he said. ‘He’s been tried and sentence has been passed. If you don’t do it, someone else will. It’s not as though you can save his life. We’re giving you a chance to save your own.’
     
    ‘To be or not to be,’ Jeb said. ‘It’s as simple as that.’
     
    Two years earlier a lynch mob, which included businessmen and bandits and men of the cloth and men from the ranchos and one member of the city council, had hanged every Chinese in Los Angeles that they could find. They had hanged doctors and cooks and children. When they ran out of rope, they sent their own children running home to beg for clothesline from their mothers. They hanged the Chinese from the gutter spouts and the awnings of Goler’s blacksmith and wagon shop, from balconies, in twos and threes, until they had hanged eighteen and there was no more room. The Oriental had carried the story and Chin had read it in a ragged copy brought from San Francisco almost six months later. He had seen nothing about it in the American papers. ‘I will do this,’ Chin said miserably.
     
    Jeb locked Chin back in the cell. Down the street he heard Mrs Taylor and Mrs Godfrey. They were coming toward the jail and they were singing, ‘God, I am your instrument.’
     
    ‘They want me to kill you,’ Chin told Tom. ‘They’ll kill me if I don’t.’
     
    ‘You want my permission,’ said Tom. ‘You’d like me to say it’s all right.’ In the pale beginnings of daylight, his straight hair was greasy and unclean. Last night at the window in the moonlight, he had seemed to have a certain potency, a large heart. The moon had been full for him. The birds had returned to say good-bye. Chin had sensed a malevolent majesty. This morning he only appeared to be dirty.
     
    Chin himself felt a movement on his scalp he supposed to be fleas. He reached into his hair in pursuit. ‘Just your understanding,’ he said to Tom. He had the tiny, husked body between his fingers, but as he pressed them together tighter, because he pressed them tighter, it slid away. ‘I want you to see that I did not choose this, but have been chosen. My fate is to cross paths with your fate. This is not a personal thing. I am not doing this because the man you killed was Chinese.’
     
    ‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ said Tom.
     
    The music reached a crescendo. One of the women had a beautiful voice, came down on each note from the note above it. The other could not sing at all. They threw open the door. ‘God is here,’ said Mrs Taylor. ‘God is here this morning with you, Tom.’
     
    Jeb brought Tom water and soap and a cloth. Tom knelt beside the bucket to clean his hands and his face. He had very little facial hair, no more than Chin himself. And the hair on his head was as black as Chin’s own. Around his face it was wet and locked together in clumps. ‘We’re ready for you now, Tom,’ Jeb told him. ‘We’re taking you out and you can talk to people if you like when we pass, but don’t touch anyone. And no stopping.’
     
    ‘Yea, though I pass through the valley of