The Fortunes by Peter Ho Davies Read Free Book Online Page A

his chest for his shirtfront, stiff and gleaming as armor. “Obliged,” he said again at last, and perhaps because he’d already tipped Ling once, or perhaps because Charles Crocker was not a man who liked to be obliged to a Chinaman, he offered him a job there on the spot as live-in laundryman and manservant. “At least I’ll get my consarned shirts washed faster.”
    It was a gruff, almost begrudging offer, but to Ling it was as if he’d struck gold.
    Â 
    Uncle Ng was ironing when Ling told him of Crocker’s proposal. “Bird matters,” the old head opined, waving them away. But he paused for a long moment, the smell of hot cotton, with its sweet trace of burnt sweat, rising around them, until Ling thought the shirt must be scorched.
    â€œI have been meaning to speak to you,” Ng said at last, as if to the shirt he was smoothing again. “You know I have no son. I would adopt you.”
    â€œI have a father,” Ling began.
    â€œThe man who sold you to me?” Ng sipped, spat. “Or the one who sold you to him? Who sells a son? A daughter maybe, not a son.”
    â€œI don’t believe you,” Ling cried. Big Uncle had favored him, he was sure.
    Ng shook his head without lifting his eyes from his work.
    â€œThe girl came of age to work. You cost less than another girl. Also, you spoke Melican.”
    â€œIt’s not true!” But he knew it was; he could already feel the tears rearing in his eyes, clamped his jaw to stanch them.
    â€œIf you were
my
son,” Ng went on, working the iron in circles now as if polishing the cloth, “you would inherit the business when I die.”
    And tend to your spirit,
Ling thought dismally.
    Ng was folding the shirt now into a neat square of cloth with just his fingertips, the movements suddenly nimble after the clenched effort of the ironing. He pulled another shirt from the pile and set to it with a fresh iron. Over his bowed head, among the rough beams, Ling saw the metal hook gleaming dully.
    â€œBut . . . I mean to be rich.”
    The old man bent once more to his ironing, the board groaning under the pressure.
    â€œThe girl,” Ng added presently. “You would own her too, of course.”
    Ling was wrapping his few clothes tightly into his bedroll. Now he paused.
    â€œDid she know about me?”
    Ng shrugged. “She’s a whore, not a fool.”
    Both of them sold, Ling thought. But her as a prostitute, him as a son. He secured the roll with twine, slung it on his back.
    â€œI don’t want,” he managed at last, “to own her.”
    â€œLove, is it?” Ng spat on the shirt before him, as if the issue were no more than a particularly obstinate crease.
    â€œYou don’t believe in it.”
    â€œOf course I do. Men love gold, don’t they? But gold can’t love them back. Only a damned asshole thinks that.”
    They stared at each other then, the old man’s knuckles whitening around the handle of his iron.
    â€œDon’t try to stop me,” Ling warned. “I’ll drown you in your own dirty water.”
    â€œI never told you,” Ng said at last, setting the iron down and lighting his pipe from the stove with a spill of paper. “That Frenchman, the Frog, the one with the shirt? He was my friend before. His claim was next to mine. Neither of us had any luck. Not in the creek, not in town. The Melicans called him foreigner too, made fun of his English. Same as me. Once when I caught two fish I gave one to him. Another time we shared a rabbit he trapped. We both enjoyed frogs’ legs. No gold, maybe, but plenty frogs in that creek.” He took a long draw on his pipe, exhaled smoke. “I called him friend. He called me brother.
Fraternité,
he taught me this. And he was the one said they should let me in the saloon, join the game.
Egalité,
that was another of his words. But after, when he beat me, made a fool of