Donald Duk
(Excerpts)
1
WHO WOULD BELIEVE anyone named Donald Duk dances like Fred Astaire？[5] Donald Duk does not like his name.Donald Duk never liked his name.He hates his name.He is not a duck.He is not a cartoon character.He does not go home to sleep in Disneyland every night.The kids that laugh at him are very smart.Everyone at his private school is smart.Donald Duk is smart.He is a gifted one， they say.
No one in school knows he takes tap dance lessons from a man who calls himself “The Chinese Fred Astaire.” Mom talks Dad into paying for the lessons and tap shoes.
Fred Astaire.Everybody everywhere likes Fred Astaire in the old black-and-white movies.Late at night on TV, Even Dad smiles when Fred Astaire dances.Mom hums along.Donald Duk wants to live the late night life in old black-and-white movies and talk with his feet like Fred Astaire,and smile Fred Astaire’s sweet lemonade smile.
The music teacher and English teacher in school go dreamy-eyed when they talk about seeing Fred Astarie and Ginger Rogers[6] on the late-night TV.“Remember when he danced with Barbara Stanwyck？[7]What was the name of that movie…？”
“Barbara Stanwyck?”
“Did you see the one where he dances with Rita Hayworth？”[8]
“Oooh, Rita Hayworth!”
Donald Duk enjoys the books he reads in schools.The math is a curious game.He is not the only Chinese in the private school.But he is the only Donald Duk.He avoids the other Chinese here.And the Chinese seem to avoid him.This school is a place where the Chinese are comfortable hating Chinese.“Only the Chinese are stupid enough to give a kid a stupid name like Donald Duk,” Donald Duk says to himself.“And if the Chinese were that smart, why didn’t they invent tap dancing?”
Donald Duk’s father’s name is King.King Duk.Donald hates his father’s name.He hates being introduced with his father.“This is King Duk, and his son Donald Duk.” Mom’s name is Daisy.“That’s Daisy Duk,and her son Donald.” Venus Duk and Penny Duk are Donald’s sisters.The girls are twins and a couple of years older than Donald.
His own name is driving him crazy! Looking Chinese is driving him crazy! All his teacher are making a big deal about Chinese stuff in their classes because of Chinese New Year coming on soon.The teacher of California History is so happy to be reading about the Chinese.“The man I studied history under at Berkeley authored this book.He was a spellbinding lecturer,” the teacher throbs.The he reads, “‘The Chinese in America were made passive and nonassertive by centuries of Confucian thought and Zen mysticism.They were totally unprepared for the violently individualistic and democratic Americans.From their first step on American soil to the middle of the twentieth century, the timid, introverted Chinese have been helpless against the relentless victimization by aggressive, highly competitive Americans.’
“‘One of the Confucian concepts that lends the Chinese vulnerable to the assertive ways of the West is the mandate of heaven.As the European kings of old ruled by divine right, so the emperors of China ruled by the mandate of heaven.’”The teacher takes a breath and looks over his spellbound class.Donald wants to barf pink and green stuff all over the teacher’s teacher’s book.
“What’s he saying?” Donald Duk’s pal Arnold Azalea asks in a whisper.
“Same things as everybody—Chinese are artsy, cutesy and chickendick，” Donald whispers back.
Oh, no! Here comes Chinese New Year again! It is Donald Duk’s worst time of year.Here come the stupid questions about the funny things Chinese believe in.The funny things Chinese do.The funny things Chinese eat.And, “Where can I buy some Chinese firecrackers?”
And in Chinatown it’s Goong hay fot choy[9] everywhere.And some gang kids do sell firecrackers.And some gang kids rob other kids looking for firecrackers.He doesn’t like the gang kids.He doesn’t like speaking their Chinese.He doesn’t have to —this is America.He doesn’t like Chinatown.But he lives here.
The gang kids know him.They call him by name.One day the Frog Twins wobble onto the scene with their load of full shopping bags.There is Donald Duk.And there are five gang boys and two girlfriends chewing gum， swearing and smirking.The gang kids wear black tanker jackets，white tee shirts and baggy black denim jeans.It is the alley in front of the Chinese Historical Society Museum.There are fish markets on each side of the Chinatown end of the alley.Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s[10] famous City Lights Bookstore [11]is at the end that opens on Columbus Street.Suddenly there are the Frog Twins in their heavy black overcoats.They seem to be wearing all the clothes they own under their coats.Their coats bulge.Under their skirts they wear several pairs of trousers and slacks.They wear on knit cap over the other.They wear scarves tied over their heads and shawls over their shoulders.
That night, after he is asleep, Dad comes home from the restaurant and wakes him up.“You walk like a sad softie,” Dad says.“You look like you want everyone to beat you up.”
“I do not!” Donald Duk says.
“You look at yourself in the mirror,” Dad says, and Donald Duk looks at himself in his full-length dressing mirror.“Look at those slouching shoulders, that pouty face.Look at those hands holding onto each other.You look scared!” Dad’s voice booms and Donald hears everyone’s feet hit the floor.Mom and the twins are out in the hall looking into his open door.
“I am scared!” Donald Duk says.
“I don’t care if you are scared,” Dad says.His eyes sizzle into Donald Duk’s frightened pie-eyed stare.“Be as scared as you want to be, but don’t look scared.Especially when you walk through Chinatown.”
“How do I look like I’m not scared if I am scared?” Donald Duk asks.
“You walk with your back straight.You keep your hands out of your pockets.Don’t hunch your shoulders.Think of them as being down.Keep your head up.Look like you know where you’re going.Walk like you know where you’re going.And you say, ‘Don’t mess with me, horsepuckie!Don’t mess with me!’ But you don’t say it with your mouth.You say it with your eyes.You say it with your hands where everybody can see them.Anybody get two steps in front of you, you zap them with your eyes, and they had better nod at you or look away.When they nod, you nod.When you walk like nobody better mess with you, nobody will mess with you.When you walk around like you’re walking now, all rolled up in a little ball and hiding out from everything, they’ll get your for sure.”
Donald does not like his dad waking him up like that and yelling at him.But what the old man says works.Outside among the cold San Francisco shadows and the early morning shoppers, Donald Duk hears his father’s voice and straightens his back, takes his hands out of his pockets,says “Don’t mess with me!” with his eyes and every move of his body.And, yes, he’s talking with his body the way Fred Astaire talks, and shoots every gang kid who walks toward him in the eye with a look that says,“Don’t mess with me.” And no one messes with him.Dad never talks about it again.
Later, gang kids laugh at his name and try to pick fights with him during the afternoon rush hour, Dad’s busy time in the kitchen.Donald is smarter than these lowbrow beady-eyed goons.He has to beat them without fighting them because he doesn’t know how to fight.Donald Duk gets the twins to talk about it with Dad while they are all at the dining room table working on their model airplanes.
Dad laughs.“So he has a choice.He does not like people laughing at his name.He does not want the gangsters laughing at his name to beat him up.He mostly does not want to look like a sissy in front of them, so what can he do?”
“He can pay them to leave him alone,” Venus says.
“He can not! That is so chicken it’s disgusting!”Penelope says.
“So, our little brother is doomed.”
“He can agree with them and laugh at his name,” Dad says.“He can tell them lots of Donald Duk jokes.Maybe he can learn to talk that quack-quack Donald Duck talk.”
“Whaaat?” the twins ask in one voice.
“If he keeps them laughing,” Dad says, “even if he can just keep them listening, they are not beating him up, right? And they are not calling him a sissy.He does not want to fight? He does not have to fight.He has to use his smarts, okay? If he’s smart enough, he makes up some Donald Duck jokes to surprise them and make them laugh.They laugh three times, he can walk away.Leave them there laughing, thinking Donald Duk is one terrific fella.”
“So says King Duk,” Venus Duk flips.The twins often talk as if everything they hear everybody say and see everybody do is dialog in a memoir they’re writing or action in a play they’re directing.This makes Mom feel like she’s on stage and drives Donald Duk crazy.
“Is that Chinese psychology, dear?” Daisy Duk asks.
“Daisy Duk inquires,” says Penelope Duk.
“And little Donnie Duk says, Oh, Mom! and sighs.”
“I do not!” Donald Duk yelps at the twins.
“Well, then, say it,” Penelope Duk says.“It’s good line.So you you,you know.”
“Thank you,” Venus says.
“Oh goshes, you all, your sympathy is so…so…so literary.So dramatic,” Donald Duk says.“It is truly depressing.”
“I thought it was narrative,” Venus says.
“Listen up for some Chinese psychology, girls and boys,” Daisy Duk says.
“No, that’s not psychology, that’s Bugs Bunny,” Dad says.
“You don’t mean Bugs Bunny，[12] dear.You always make that mistake.”
“Br’er Rabbit!” Dad says.
“What does that mean？” Donald Duk asks the twins.They shrug their shoulders.Nobody knows what Br’er Rabbit[13] has to do with Dad’s way of avoiding a fight and not being a fool， but it works.
One bright and sunny afternoon, a gang boy stops Donald and talks to him in the quacking voice of Walt Disney’s Donald Duck.The voice breaks Donald Duk’s mind for a flash, and he is afraid to turn on his own Donald Duck voice.He tries telling a joke about Donald Duck not wearing trousers or shoes, when the gangster—in black jeans, black tee shirt, black jacket, black shades—says in a perfect Donald Duck Voice, “Let’s take the pants off Donald Duk!”
“Oh oh！ I stepped in it now！” Donald Duk says in his Donald Duck voice and stuns the gangster and his two gangster friends and their three girlfriends.Everything is seen and understood very fast.Without missing a beat， his own perfect Donald Duck voice cries for help in perfect Cantonese Gowmengahhhh[14]！ and they all laugh.Old women pulling little wire shopping carts full of fresh vegetables stop and stare at him.Passing children recognize the voice and say Donald Duck talks Chinese.
“Don’t let these monsters take off my pants.I may be Donald Duk,but I am as human as you,” he says in Chinese, in his Donald Duck voice,“I know how to use chopsticks.I use flush toilets.Why shouldn’t I wear pants on Grant Street in Chinatown?” They all laugh more than three times.Their laughter roars three times on the corner of Grant and Jackson, and Donald Duk walks away, leaving them laughing, just the way Dad says he can.He feels great.Just great!
Donald Duk does not want to laugh about his name forever.There has to be an end to this.There is an end to all kidstuff for a kid.An end to diapers.And end to nursery rhymes and fairy tales.There has to be an end to laughing about his name to get out of a fight.Chinese New Year.Everyone will be laughing.He is twelve years old.Twelve years old is special to the Chinese.There are twelve years in the Asian lunar zodiac.For each year there is an animal.This year Donald will complete his first twelve-year cycle of his life.To celebrate, Donald Duk’s father’s old opera mentor, Uncle Donald Duk, is coming to San Francisco to perform a Cantonese opera.Donald Duk does not want to Chinese New Year.He does not want his Uncle Donald Duk to tell him again how Daddy was a terrible man to name his little boy Donald Duk, because all the bokgwai,the white monsters, will think he is named after that barebutt cartoon duck in the top half of a sailor suit and no shoes.
14
DONALD DUK DREAMS he’s sleeping at night and wakes up dreaming,and wakes up from that dream into another, and wakes up into the real.
Morning in San Francisco Chinatown.The clammy milky light before dawn collects in the tissue paper skins of Dad’s model planes hanging from the ceiling, and they glow like Chinese lanterns.Pieces of the balsa wood skeleton of the P-26A Donald is building to replace the one he still remembers burning over Chinatown lie assembled and pinned to the plans laid out on his worktable.The planes seem to move as he passes the doorway to the dining room.He feels like he’s still a character in his dream and expects to wake up just one more time.Is this another dream when he sees the girl his age with the staff at the White Crane Club? No.It’s a tubby boy with glasses and braces.
On the way home, at a trot with Arnold Azalea, Donald Duk does not feel all here.There is a peculiar silly stillness about Chinatown.He walks home by streets and through alleys he does not usually walk.Everything is closed this early in the morning.Cold darkness inside every shop.Cold light.A book-and-magazine store is open in an alley.
Strange.The lights are on bright.The doors are open.A Chinese woman wearing a buttoned-up sweater sits on a high stool behind a cash register.A lookout for a gambling den? No.The gamblers go home before first light.They are all asleep and dreaming, not to wake up till noon or later.
No one is surprised Donald Duk and Arnold Azalea step inside to browse this early in the morning.A cat pads between the rows of books.Donald Duk faces a wall of softbound multi-volume sets of comic books telling the stories of The Three Kingdoms, and The Water Margin,Monkey’s Journey to the West, The Seven Women Generals of the Yang Family and other heroic tales with bows and arrows, swords and slings,spears and horses.Donald Duk slides open the box reading Characters in Water Margin Playing Cards.Made in Shanghai, China.Two full decks of cards inside.One with red backs.One with blue backs.Full-length portraits of the characters of the popular novel are on the playing-card faces.Each deck has four suits with ace, king, queen, jack, two through ten,and three jokers.One of the red jokers is the man who stopped Lee Kuey from throwing a battle axe through Donald Duk.The peach-colored robe.The long trailing feathers, like the long trailing pheasant feathers on the headdresses of Aztec warriors on the calendars in Mexican restaurants.“Arnold! Come here! Here he is.”
“Who?”
“The Timely Rain, he called himself,” Donald takes the red joker to the woman knitting behind the cash register.“Can you tell me who this is?” he asks.
The woman glances at the card.“Why, that’s Soong Gong.So, who did you think it was?”
“Who is Soong Gong?”
“Who is Soong Gong?” the woman laughs, “Come on, boy!”
The door behind the cash register opens.A medium tall man in a black three-piece suit and a black hat steps into the doorway.He slips a coiled black bullwhip over his shoulder.He focuses his eyes on Donald Duk, and Donald Duk doesn’t like it.He feels himself coming apart being seen by this man.
“Come on, Ah-Bok, people here don’t wear hats anymore.And that bullwhip, I’m surprised they let you on the plane with such a terrible thing,” the woman says.
The man with the bullwhip yawns and slips a large round gold pocketwatch out of his vest pocket, and drops it back in.“I’m a detective sergeant of the Honolulu Police Department.People on the plane are happy I carry my bullwhip, and my gun too, by dammit.”
“Watch your language in front of this boy, Charlie.Wuhay! He doesn’t know who Soong Gong is.”
“What’s that you say?” and the bullwhip snaps his eyes on Donald Duk again.Donald Duk shows the card to Sgt.Bullwhip and asks, “Who’s this? She says his name is Soong Gong.I think he’s called the Timely Rain.So who is he?”
“He’s the leader of the 108 outlaws.Name Soong Gong.Nickname him: Timely Rain.Don’t you know that , boy? Every boy and girl knows that.Why don’t you? You some kind of dimwit? Everything a little foggy to you?”
Donald Duk shows Sgt.Bullwhip from Honolulu the card showing the dark naked man with a battle-axe in each hand.“Who’s this?”
“Why, that’s Lee Kuey.They call him the Black Tornado, because he is ugly, bad-tempered and cuts through fighting men like a buzzsaw.This guy is crazy in the cabeza.He kills as many of his friends by accident as bad guys.But he’s so good at it, understand me? You never heard of him?So why do you ask?”
“Where are you from, boy?” the woman asks.“You a Chinatown kid?”
“Yeah…”
“How come you don’t know these guys?” the woman asks, buttoning her buttons again.“Do you know who this old man is?”
“No.”
“This is Charlie Chan.”
“Charlie Chan?” Donald Duk asks and looks at the man without looking into the man’s eyes.“He’s not fat enough to be Charlie Chan.”
“The real Charlie Chan，” the woman says.“His family name is Chang.In Hawaii they call him Chang Apana.”[15]
“Sergeant Chang Apana,” Bullwhip says.
“He’s famous just famous for keeping the peace on Hotel Street in the twenties.Aren’t you, Ah-Bok?”
“I keep the peace at the baseball too,” Bullwhip says.“Get him a copy of that poster picture of the 108 outlaws.” He points at the characters appearing lined up on the banks of a river or lake as the woman unrolls the poster.“There, you see, here’s Soong Gong.And here’s the Black Tornado.Ugly fella, huh! Stupid too.Loyal.Righteous too.Bad combination.”
“That’s just the way I saw them！” Donald Duk says.The 108 outlaws are lined up on the riverbank the way they were on the edge of the cloud.He pulls money out of his pocket to buy the poster， but Bullwhip won’t let the woman roll the poster up and wrap it.“See here， this one.Sagacious Lowe.[16] Wanted murderer becomes this Buddhist monk.Eats meat.Drinks booze.Beats people up.Breaks statues of Buddha up.Too devout to live in a monastery.Ha ha.And this one’s Tiger Killer Jung.One by one all these fella join up with Soong Gong in the Water Margin.This is the one guy who is not jealous.He give you a helping hand in good times or bad times.When I’m a kid like you， I daydream someday someone from Leongshan Marsh—that one Marvelous Traveler—find me and say， The Timely Rain says he is man no talent， but he’s seen lots of war.He longtime admire your bravery.Soong Gong asks you to join him and his gang of outlaw heroes in Leongshan Marsh.Before you lie.Before you betray.Before you sell out… But you grow up.You sell out.You lie.Just a little bit， maybe you cheat on your wife， no good， and think it is just little bit， but too much to ever expect the Marvelous Traveler to come up with that message from the Timely Rain…”
“If you’re the real Charlie Chan, how do you solve murder mysteries?”
“I got my bullwhip.”
“For solving murders?”
“And for crowd control too,” Sgt.Bullwhip says.
DONALD DUK AND ARNOLD AZALEA are the only people in the huge marble reading room of the main library.“Here it is!” Donald Duk whispers.
“Me too,” Arnold says, reading from a book on top of a pile of closed books, “I found it too.Thursday, April 29, 1869.”
Donald Duk reads from the book on top of his stack of closed books,“Listen to this: Each man in Strobridge’s astonishing team of tracklayers had lifted 125 tons of iron in the course of the day.The consumption of materials was even more impressive.25,800 ties.3,520 rails, 28,160 spikers, 14,800 bolts…”
“Wow,” Arnold whispers.
“Listen to this： As soon as the epic day’s work was done， Jim Campbell， who later became a division superintendent for the C.P.[17]， ran a locomotive over the new track at forty miles an hour to prove the record-breaking feat was a sound job as well.Does it say anything about Kwan in any of your books？”
“I don’t see anything yet,” Arnold says.
“Look at this: At rail’s end stood eight burly Irishmen, armed with heavy track tongs.Their names were Michael Shay, Patrick Joyce, Michael Kennedy, Tomas Dailky, George Elliot, Michael Sullivan, Edward Killeen,and Fred McNamara.Not one Chinese name.we set the record and not one of our names.Not one word about out last crosstie.” Donald Duk whispers in the library.
And while working on his model P-26A Peashooter at home, he says,“We made history.Twelve hundred Chinese.And they don’t even put the name of our foreman in the books about the railroad.”
“So what?” Dad asks.
Donald Duk doesn’t say a word back.
Dad catches Donald Duk’s eye.“What’re you look at me that way for?Fix your face.”
“Didn’t you hear what I said?” Donald Duk asks.
“They don’t want our names in their history books.So what? You’re surprised.If we don’t write our history, why should they, huh?”
“It’s not fair.”
“Fair? What’s fair? History is war, not sport! You think if you are a real good boy for them, do what they do, like what they like, get good grades in their schools, they will take care of you forever? Do you believe that? You’re dreaming, boy.That is faith, sincere belief in the goodness of others and none of your own.That’s mysticism.You believe in the goodness of others to cover your butt, you’re good for nothing.So, don’t expect me to get mad or be surprised the bokgwai never told our history in any of their books you happen to read in the library, looking for yourself.You gotta keep the history yourself or lose it forever, boy.That’s the mandate of heaven.”
15
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, the mandate of heaven?” Donald Duk asks.“I know.I know.I asked before.But I’m really listening this time.Really,I’m listening very carefully.”
“The mandate of heaven.Hmmmm.”
“Listen to your father, girls, and learn,” Mom says.
“They don’t tell you the mandate of heaven in Chinese school?” Dad asks.“You know, tien ming.”
Donald Duk does not say he does not go to Chinese school anymore.“Mr.Meanwright says the mandate of means the emperor is all-powerful and gets his power from God in heaven, like the divine right of kings in Europe.”
“Nah.” Uncle Donald Duk snorts.
“Nah?” Donald Duk says.
“Nah! That’s nothing Chinese,” Uncle Donald Duk says.
“Haaaaa!” Dad speaks a weary roar, “I told you! Ah-tien ming,mandate of heaven, is Confucius.Confucius says to the king, to the emperor, Watch out! Your power is going to corrupt you.Pervert your princes and make outlaws of the honest people and your rotten dynasty will die nasty for sure.Kingdoms rise and fall.Nations come and go.That’s the mandate of heaven.
“That’s the mandate of heaven?” Arnold asks.
Dad turns and Donald sees his eyes.“Daaad!” Donald Duk says with a smile.“Arnold asked that, not me!” He throws up two fingers in a V, the old peace sign, “Peace, brother! Right on, far owooot!” Wow! When the twins aren’t here, he invents them.
“You know how you have to talk pretty language to the emperor.Like,you do not say peepee doodoo to the President of the United States,” Uncle Donald Duk says in an easy happy voice.“Confucius just can’t say what they call the will of the people.The emperor or someone who wants to be emperor only talk the language if he’s the Son of Heaven and tells all living things what to do.So Confucius calls the will of the people heaven.”
“Like in my restaurants,” Dad says, “I don’t say sliced cross-section of broccoli spear alternate with slices of Virginia ham and chicken breast.Sounds too laboratory science.Who wants to eat some kind of autopsy?Ugh! So, I say Jade Tree Golden Smoke Ham and Chicken.In Chinese, oh,it sounds even more beautiful.Yuke shur gum wah faw tur gai kow.Jade tree.Sounds so pretty you don’t feel bad about paying too much money to eat broccoli.”
Dad holds a plane up to the light, which casts the shadows of cheery bombs and fuses he’s mounted on the wing spars on the paper skin of the wings.“Poetry is strategy, you see? Strategy.”
Donald Duk is warm, even now when it’s foggy and wet outside late,walking in the shadows with Fred Astaire.Donald and Fred dance a little.They walk a little.The wet streets and fog add a razzling echo to their taps,dancing and walking.“I ask him a question and I get double talk.He treats Arnold Azalea better than me.I don’t think he’s setting me a good example at all.”
“Fathers are hard to understand when you’re the son,” Fred Astaire says.
“I have always dreamed of being like you.Did you ever dream of being like me?”
“Oh, no.I have always dreamed of being Fred Astaire.No one knows my real name anymore.”
“Fred Astaire’s not your real name, Fred?”
“I can’t be certain after all these years being Fred Astaire, and all these conflicting reports and rumors and affidavits…but if you ask around,I’m sure somebody, some fan or cinema buff, will know for sure what my real name is if it isn’t Fred Astaire.”
“All that matters to you is you are what you always dreamed you’d be.”
“If you forget who you are in your dreams, maybe, then maybe, that is what dreams are for.” Fred mingles away with a gaggle of reporters,telling jokes.
Two locomotives and tenders face each other head-on over an expanse of bare roadbed.The Central Pacific Railroad from the west is about to link up with the Union Pacific Railroad from the east.[18] The Central Pacific and Union Pacific have each built side tracks along the unfinished right of way and parked their elegant private cars and party cars on siding.Donald Duk knows this is Promontory Point.[19] Dust.No one would know it had rained heavily here a few days ago.The dust comes from the feet of moving men.The Central Pacific Engine No.60， the“Jupiter，” shines and gleams brass and polished paint as if it isn’t here at all.The Jupiter is a huge Christmas toy of a locomotive to Donald Duk’s eyes.
In Crocker’s private car， Charles Crocker[20] of the Central Pacific and the bearded Casement brothers， Jack and Dan， of the Union Pacific finish off a tense laugh， a civil cigar and whiskey.Crocker in his white frock coat and riding breeches.The Casement brothers in their dark suits.They glimpse the forms of four Chinese trotting past with an unusually decorated crosstie on their shoulders.“Now what the hell is this？” Crocker says， swallowing the lingering taste of whiskey and stepping to the window.He puts down his glass and grabs his hat.“The Celestials never cease to amaze me.”
Donald Duk is caught up， running with the Chinese gangs to get close to the last tie， to shoulder it and run with it.Donald Duk looks back and forth for Kwan the foreman and sees Crocker and Union Pacific Vice President T.C.Durant[21]， looking something like the owl on Sesame Street and something like a goat， and the Casement brothers climbing into a horsedrawn buggy.The Casement brothers look like the Smith brothers on Smith Brothers cough drops boxes.
The gangs come to a stop at the bed for the last crosstie, Kwan orders the men holding the tie to raise it above their heads so everyone can see the names.“They asked who can stuff dynamite and nitro six feet into a two-inch hole with a steel bar a hundred feet up a sheer rock face, and the bokgwai said they can’t do it.And the Chinamans says we are men of no talent but have seen much blasting.And the Chinamans blasted.They asked who can carve the mountains with hand tools.We carved the mountains.They asked who can live inside tunnels in the snow.They asked who can lay ten miles of track in one day.They bet $10,000 we can’t lay more than seven.We lay ten miles, twelve hundred feet of track in ten hours.One foot for every Chinaman who ever worked building this railroad.Your names are here.This is how far we have come from Sacramento.”
They lay the crosstie into the gravel right of way, tamp it and spike rail into it.Firecrackers go off, and the Chinese jump and make a show of stepping on the tie, do a dance on it, hop on it with one foot and wander back to camp.
Donald Duk lingers at the site, and is still here, studying the tie covered with the names of 10,000 Chinese on all sides and the ends, when the hatted and spatted railroad executives dismount their buggy and step up for a look.Men from the Union Pacific crews and a few reporters,sketch artists and sightseers come out for tomorrow’s last spike ceremony slowly drift through the heat to see what brings the railroad barons out of their private cars.
Crocker and the black-bearded Casement brothers in black coats look，to everybody， like they’re going to fight.The race to be the first to Promontory and win a huge government bonus has not been friendly.[22]The government has declared both winners to stop the railroads’ trading acts of increasingly violent sabotage.Crocker’s Central Pacific is not happy.The Union Pacific’s Jack Casement and his bother are not satisfied.There’s no taking it away from the Irish for the Chinese and vice versa.The reporters in celluloid collars， the sketch artists with their flicking，skeptical eyes and flurry of hands and the telegraph operators dog their every move outside their private cars.The too dapper， to San Francisco snooty， good-time Charlie Crocker would love to see himself written large in Harper’s Weekly[23]， or Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Magazine，[24] crossing the Sierra Nevadas like an American Alexander the Great or Napoleon，sneaking their armies over the Alps.A double-page steel engraving picturing him in white on his white horse， leading his army of Chinese and the beauty among locomotives， the Jupiter， over the Sierras.
The sadistic Jack Casement pushed his Union Pacific crews along with his bullwhip, whiskey and rolling bawdyhouses in boxcars.He dresses like a preacher of doom and silently buy otherwise openly shows he thinks Crocker is a namby pamby windbag.Durant speaks for the Union Pacific and keeps Jack Casement awed into quiet by the history the dignitaries and writers and artists are making of every word they say, every look they exchange.Outside of their private cars, and even inside, every word they say reaches for future quotation.
“What is this?” Crocker asks.
“Our last crosstie,” Donald Duk answers.
“Where did you learn to speak English, boy?” T.C.Durant asks.
“I was born in San Francisco.”
“The greater number of my boys should speak some kind of English,”Crocker says.“I am told your stalwart Irishmen do likewise.” The onlookers laugh.
“Charlie, your railroad seems to hire a smaller and younger breed of laborer than mine,” T.C.Durant says.
“Do you speak Chinese?” Donald Duk asks, looking up into Durant’s face.
“Are you addressing me?” Durant asks.“Unfortunately, no! I am an American, sir…” he clears his throat, “… young man.”
“Me, too, Mr.Durant.I was born here.”
“Now don’t you be rude and sassy, boy,” Crocker says.“He probably belongs to one of the families that follow the Celestials and sell them food and medicine.We realize great savings with the Chinese over white laborers by providing them with a food allowance instead of the usual kitchens and cook’s quarters on wheels.Your commissary unit and everything else you provide your crews with on wheels must cost a fortune.”
“Still and all, we have presented us here a most remarkable example of the breed.He speaks English like a white man.Tell me, son, what exactly are all these chicken scratches and scrawlings on that crosstie?”
“They’re our names, Mr.Durant.”
“He certainly knows your name.Do you know mine, too, young man?” Crocker asks.“You should!”
“Of course.You’re Charlie Crocker,” Donald Duk says.
“You say those are your names,” Crocker lurches on.
“All of our names.Ten thousand names.”
“Why?”
“We don’t want anyone to forget who laid these crossties and spiked this track.”
“…and built this railroad?” T.C.Durant coaxes with a sly eye toward the writers and artists.
“…and built this railroad,” Donald Duk says.
“You are just a little boy.You are too young to understand how history is made,” Crocker turns to his chief engineer and superintendent.“Mr.Strobridge, I wish to tear out and split this crosstie with Mr.Durant of the Union Pacific as a sign of my respect and the joint achievements of our great railroads.Will you see to the tie’s extraction and splitting, please.”
“I’m sorry, Mr.Crocker, I cannot do that.”
“Please, excuse me, Mr.Crocker, but if you will allow me, Mr.Strobridge,” the bearded Jack Casement turns to his bearded Central Pacific counterpart, “I believe I understand your dilemma.You have come many hard-worked miles with the Celestials, whose work has most assuredly accrued to your glory.But they don’t work for Jack Casement,and my men can tear out that Chinese crosstie without disturbing the placid surface of our Christian consciences.And the Union Pacific will be glad to replace this tie with one you provide us, as a gesture…”
“How magnanimous of you, Jack! They called your worktrain Hell on Wheels, I hear.And you carried a bullwhip.”
“Out here, everyone—man, woman and child—is either a muleskinner or a mule, Charlie.You know that.And the only difference between the muleskinner and the mule is the muleskinner’s got the whip.”
“Jack, please, I beg you, take your pick of any of those fine California pine ties I have stacked there…” Crocker says.
And Donald Duk is running a rage, gnashing his teeth, hardening his eyes to see fast and slow time down.Long before he can shout to Kwan and be heard, Donald sees Kwan the foreman hunkered down on the ground, playing Chinese chess on a blanket with a large railroader.Now and then they pick up teacups.A small group circles round to watch the game and eat out of bowls with chopsticks.Donald feels so close, the air is so clear, he is seeing so fast, still, all he can hear of what he sees are a few rattles and clangs from the deem sum people’s cooking and serving.Even now, he still cannot be sure he hears the gambling and gaming he sees.He catches his breath on the run and shouts, “They’re tearing out the tie!They’re tearing out the tie!”
Crocker, Durant, the Casement brothers are at the front of a crowd of curious railroad bigwigs, engineers, surveyers watching the Union Pacific crew spike rail into the new last crosstie, and hear the Chinese running toward them, throwing rocks and screaming so fierce and intense the bigwigs back off.
Kwan leads the Chinese in grabbing the steel rails over the last crosstie with their bare hands and pulling them up, exposing several ties.They grab the new pine tie out of its socket and beat it against the discarded rails.The Chinese walk away with their hands clutching splinters of the pine tie.When Donald Duk looks over his shoulder at the bigwigs’ crowd, he sees he is the last Chinaman, and not a trace of the pine tie left.
Crocker and the Union Pacific officers are stunned.“Governor Stanford[25] will be attending tomorrow’s ceremonies with his party from California， standing on this very spot，” Crocker says.
“And I reckon twenty or thirty newspapers and magazines have sent their writers and artists.The Union Pacific, for our part, does not need another scandal,” T.C.Durant says.
“Your candor is most refreshing and appreciated， sir.I promise you，Mr.Durant， there will not be a heathen in sight at tomorrow’s ceremonies.I will， with your permission， post riflemen up on the locomotives and the telegraph poles to warn us of the approach of any uninvited Celestials and keep them away， with force of arms if need be.The Golden Spike.The Silver Spike.[26] The Last Spike will be hammered home， the telegram sent，our photograph made to preserve a great moment in our nation’s history，without the Chinese.Admire and respect them as I do， I will show them who built the railroad.White men.White dreams.White brains and white brawn.”
17
MAJOR GENERAL G.M.DODGE[27] commands the U.S.Army from the Missouri River to California.The Indian campaigns of 1865 and 1866 shape and move on his orders.He has the chief engineer of the Union Pacific Railroad send a telegram.Donald Duk sees it in his dream： Dated Promontory Utah 10 via Omaha 11 a.Received at Washington May 11th.To Gen.J.D.Cox Secty Interior.The Final connection of Rail was made today at Promontory Summit—one thousand and eighty six （1086） miles from Missouri River and six hundred and ninety （690） miles from Sacramento—It enables the millions of China to find an outlet eastwardly and eventually they will be cultivating the cotton of fields of the South—G.M.Dodge， initialed by Western Union Telegraph clerk， 51 DH Pass.
Donald Duk is sleeping fast.He dreams at the speed of light.
“Up! Up! Up! Rise and run, boys and girls!” Dad! Another early morning.Arnold Azalea’s gone.The twins talk about it all the way to sunrise tai chi with Mr.Yin.Donald runs grim and angry.He wonders why nobody sees he’s going crazy.
Nobody notices how different he is from everybody else， even from his usual self， even at Uncle’s Café on Clay.[28] He feels a little sick ，being so isolated in personal weirdness in this crowd of Chinese.
Uncle’s Café is a Chinatown coffeeshop peculiar to San Francisco.It’s an old-time greasy spoon complete with breaded veal cutlets and hamburgers that squirt grease when you bite into them, flaky pies and a roast prime rib of beef special every day.Here the apple pie may be part of a meal of wonton and chow fun with roast pork and applesauce, and duck legs and chicken feet during deem sum lunchtime, with a strawberry milkshake.Uncle’s makes malteds too.The place has an ancient counter covered in some kind of awful plastic hardboard and even more ancient round, swivel-topped soda-fountain stools.And it has wooden booths built during the Great Depression of the thirties, when the largest people were still small and compact and six feet tall was unusually tall.Donald Duk likes the place.He can usually get lost here, studying the art students, the young white actors and cab drivers, who are the only whites and who have kept Uncle’s Café, early in the morning, a secret among themselves and make themselves a part of Uncle’s atmosphere, crammed hip to hip, knee to knee, elbow to elbow over a tiny table in a booth.The others are older and very old Chinese and with their families.Lots of bacon and eggs and oyster sauce and rice.A few bowls of jook and the long deep-fried doughnuts, yow jow gwai, demons boiled in oil.Lots of waffles and pancakes.Uncle’s is famous for its crisp Chinatown waffle.Uncle’s is famous for its custard pie.Dad and the family have to wait for a booth.They come knowing they will wait.It’s part of breakfast at Uncle’s Café.
The old bald waiter at Uncle’s pops out of the swinging door to the kitchen with plates of food in each hand and more plates stacked up his arms.The throws grabeyes onto people lined up to get in and breathlessly includes them in his constant patter as he lays out hot breakfast and calls orders into the kitchen.“You hammaneck over ease, sticky potatoes.You by you’self! Sit right dere! Don’t afraid! Sit! Yeah! Sit! Beckon anna scramboo, ricee no grave.Oh, Ah-King Sifu! Maestro! How many? Five!Wow! I kick somebody out for you, but bad for business to do things like that.But if you can’t wait.”
“We can wait, Ah-Bok,” Dad says, calling the baldhead Old Uncle.That’s a lot of respect.
“Pork chop, poachecks, Frenchie freis, you.Sausage patties,sunnyside ups.Okay.You a waffoo.I get the syrup, don’t worry.” The bald Chinatown waiter’s voice and clatter as he deals his plates of breakfast off his sleeve orchestrates the rise and fall, the ebb and flow of noisy crockery,hoarse patter and the crunch and ding of an old mechanical cash register as customers pass in and out of Uncle’s Café.
Mom and Donald Duk cram the little wooden bench on one side of the booth, and the twins pack the other, dressed exactly alike in the minop jackets Uncle Donald gave them.Donald Duk can’t kept himself from saying, “You know, late at night, on TV, when they have these commercials about terrible diseases and helping the starving and cosmetic surgery…?”
“Oh, I hate those things,” Mom says.“I think of all the old rickety folks staying up late to see Don Ameche and Gene Autry again for escape.”
“Esss-cape, Mom,” Venus says low and tries not to move her lips.
“You know what I mean.The traffic is quiet.No banging garbage cans for a while.They should be able to see one old black-and-white movie they saw first run when they were young…”
“…a thousand years ago,” Penelope says.
“They didn’t have TV a thousand years ago,” Mom says.“You little snots, wait till you’re old, and everything you like is only on late late at night, and every seven minutes during your esss-cape from the miserable right now, a crying starving baby with bulging eyes and bloated belly is stuck in your face!”
“Gee, Mom! You are so emotional!” Venus says.
“You know, you sound very neurotic today,” Penny says.
“I was going to say,” Donald Duk says to the twins, “you guys in this booth look like mass-produced refugee dolls packed in a green box.”
No one laughs.Dad pulls a chair up to the end of the booth and sits.“It’s Everybody’s Birthday today, so I ordered waffles for everybody.”
“Waffles!” Venus whines.
“Daaa-dee!” Penelope whines.“They’re fattening.”
“Everybody gets their own birthday cake!” Dad grins.
The twins groan.“Baaad joke.” Venus says.
“It’s no joke.The waffles here are the filet mignon of waffles.”
“Daaa-dee, stop with the food metaphors,” Penny says.“They’re just too Freudian for our young ears.”
“Yeah, Dad, you’re worse that Donald Duk and the Cuisinart.”
“The waffles as birthday cakes is a nice thought,” Mom says.“It shows your father may someday appreciate poetry.”
“You could have them make the waffles into a layer cake, Daddy!”Venus says.
“Yeah, with frosting in between, and all over!” Penny says.“Ask them for chocolate, Daddy!”
The waffles come and the twins slather theirs with butter, strawberry jam, syrup and honey and devour them fast.Mom and Dad watch amazed as they eat their own waffles with butter and artificially flavored maple syrup in smaller bites.Donald Duk nibbles and stares glum glum glum at his waffles.The twins have most of their waffles in their mouths and swallow, making all the noises in their mouths and throats they can, and smack their lips, then daintily wipe their lips and fingers with their napkins dipped in their water glasses.
“I think that’s the most disgusting thing I have ever seen,” Mom says.
“Not more disgusting than that boy collie getting run over by a Pontiac GTO when we were trying to cross Broadway…” Venus says.
“You would have to remember that!”
“You’re the one who said disgusting, Mom.”
“That car’s tires were so fat, and that dog was so little!”
“That’s exactly what I said just before the Pontiac stopped on it,”Penny says.
“Do you remember it crunched?”
“Please, ladies,” Mom says, “your mother is eating.”
“Pardonay moowah, poor fah-vor, Chef Boy-ar-dee.”
“How very continental of you.”
Dad finishes his coffee.“You done?” he says to Donald Duk.“I’ll drive you to school.”
“He’s not done with his waffle, Daddy,” Venus says.
“Let him finish his birthday cake,” Penny says.
“I’m not going to school today,” Donald Duk says.
“What do you mean, you’re not going to school today?” Mom asks.
“They’re nothing but stupid racists there…”
“Oh, Donald Duk!” Venus says.
“Hold it, girls, let him talk,” Dad says.
“I was just going to ask if there are any old-fashioned, insensitive,machismo, chauvinist pigs there too,” Penny says.
“Misogynists, in other words,” Venus says.
“Hold it, girls, let him talk,” Dad says.
“They’re a little snooty maybe,” Mom says.“But you know, you can be a snob and not be a racist.”
“And vice versa too, Mom,” Venus says.
“Or you can be both! Let’s be fair, Mom,” Penny says.
“That’s what I’m trying to say!” Donald says.
“I don’t care if they are snooty racists.You’re going to school.Do you know how much it costs per day to send you to that school? You’re going to school.”
“They don’t like Chinese…”
“Since when did you like Chinese?” Venus asks.
“Tell them they don’t like Chinese, not me.I have no problem with Chinese people.You’re going to school.”
“What’s wrong with racists, anyway?” Mom asks.“We have been living with them for over a hundred years now, and we get along with them fine.”
“They’re supposed to be my friends,” Donald Duk says.
“No, they’re not,” Dad says.
“What about Arnold? Donald Duk asks.
“What about him?” Dad asks without raising his voice, without missing a beat.“You don’t go to school to make friends.”
“Ah-King, don’t upset him anymore that he already is.”
“Is he a racist too?” Dad asks.
“No, he’s more interested in the Chinese that Donald even,” Venus says.
“Who asked you?” Donald snaps.
“I just want to know for my information,” Dad says.“The only reason we let him stay in our house and are so nice to him is because he’s your friend, not ours.And if he’s a racist and not your friend, we should know.And if he is your friend, you should go back to school and back him up.But you’re going to school to learn something, no matter what.”
Mr.Meanwright’s classroom is dark for the slide show illustrating his lecture.The old photos out of his dreams, out of the library books, warm up the screen hanging over the chalkboard.
“Unlike other immigrant groups, the Chinese came to America with no intention of staying, settling or pioneering.They were called sojourners.” Mr.Meanwright drones and buzzes in the dark.Donald Duk hears this from all his teachers and is surprised he’s flashing hot blood and angry now at what he hears all the time.
That picture of the Chinese tearing out the crosstie that replaced theirs is bright light and dark shadow on the wall.“These Chinese who worked on the Central Pacific were called Crocker’s Pets.” There is a face that might be Donald Duk’s.Donald Duk sees and looks harder as Mr.Meanwright recites on, “Their passive philosophy and noncompetitive nature rendered them ripe for exploitation and victimization.As the historian McLoed says, the Chinese failed in the gold fields and were driven by poverty and timidity to help build the Central Pacific leg of the transcontinental railroad.” He changes the slide.The photo of the meeting of the engines at Promontory appears.
“Excuse me, Mr.Meanwright.You are incorrect, sir,” Donald Duk says louder that he expects.
“Lights, please,” Mr.Meanwright says.“Let us see who belongs to this voice out of the dark.”
“Mr.Meanwright, what you just said about the Chinese is not true.”
“And you are offended, Mr.Duk.How many of you saw Mr.Duk on the news this morning? Freeing an innocent, though what some might regard as an unsavory man is a very noble act, Mr.Duk.” Mr.Meanwright leads the class in applause.Arnold cheers.“Now what offends you, Mr.Duk?”
“Yessir, I am offended,” Donald Duk says in an agreeable way.A nervous buzz and hush dries the air and shrinks the wet people dry.
“Well, I never said I was perfect, did I, Mr.Duk.Please, enlighten me.”
“You are…sir, Mr.Meanwright, not correct about us being passive,noncompetitive.We did the blasting through Summit Tunnel.We worked through two hard winters in the high Sierras.We went on strike for back pay and Chinese foremen for Chinese gangs, and won.We set the world’s record for miles of track laid in one day.We set our last crosstie at Promontory.And it is badly informed people like you who keep us out of that picture there.” Donald Duk jerks his chin up to look down his face with killer eyes at the slide of the Last Spike ceremony, still easy to see,like a faded painting projected on the wall.Everyone in the room avoids Donald Duk’s eyes but follows his gesture to the screen.The slide changes back to an old grainy shot of the Chinese in the Sierra Nevadas, in the first year, working above the snowline.The white foreman standing to the side of work on the right of way is lost behind his beard, fur hat and puffy bearskin coat.The Chinese with picks and shovels in their hands work in minop jackets, like everyone in class has on.Everyone in class looks straight into the eyes of a young Chinese boy in the midground, turning toward the camera and smiling.His hat is pushed back off above his forehead.The face is Donald Duk’s.No one asks to snap off the lights to see that face clearly.
“I have the books right here,” Arnold Azalea says, pulling books out of his briefcase and pilling them on his desk.
“We didn’t do all of that being passive and noncompetitive, sir.”
“The world’s tracklaying record was set…” Mr.Meanwright ponders.
“April 29, 1869,” Donald Duk says.“A Thursday, as I remember.”
“As you remember, Mr.Duk?” the teacher says.
“Chinese set the record—1200 of us—and the history books don’t have one of our names down.But the eight Irishmen who lifted rail off the flatcars with us, their names are the only names…”
“That’s right.Mr.Duk is correct, Mr.Meanwright.We checked the books out of the library, and here they are.”
“Gentlemen, boys, you have caught me completely unprepared for…”The lights go out.There’s big thump on the door and it flies out of its casing and falls flat inside the classroom.Kwan kung, red-faced,black-bearded, hairy arching eyebrows, green and blazing gold robe and armor, stands on one leg in the doorway.He brings his leg down and strikes another pose.
“Ha ha ha! I smell a room full of paaaaasivity! Arrrggghhh!” Kwan Kung says.Drums and gongs beat and crash in the hall way.Characters out of Cantonese opera are kicking down classroom doors all over the school.Kwan Kung charges around the room lit by the light streaming through the door and the slats of the Venetian blinds.Up and down the aisles between the desks he brandishes his Black Dragon Doh, never acknowledging, never touching any of the students so close they can touch him.He returns to the doorway and strikes another pose and with a grand gesture grabs the tips of the long pheasant feathers arching our of his helmet.
Out in the hall a voice—Dad’s voice?—booms behind Kwan Kung.“This free demonstration of the fine art of Cantonese opera courtesy of Duk Lau Opera.Now appearing at the Sun Sing Theater in the heart of Chinatown.”
Kwan Kung twirls his weapon and strikes another pose.A kid from the opera company runs in and holds his hand out to Mr.Meanwright.“Here are the hinge pins to your door,” the kid says, drops the steel pins clinking into Mr.Meanwright’s hand, and leaves.
“Happy New Year!” the voice in the hall calls, and a pack of firecrackers snickering a burning fuse drops at the doorway of every room.Everyone in the class yells and dives for cover.Mr.Meanwright stands with his eyes on replay.Donald Duk grins at him.“Goong hay fot choy,”Donald Duk says.