Free Gold Mountain Blues by Ling Zhang

money would have to grow legs and race back to make the deadline. Much later, when that was done, he wanted them to buy a field, but just now Ah-Fat did not dare to think of it. Just now, all he wanted was for his mother to have a roof over her head.
    By day Ah-Fat went out to sell charcoal, and in the evening he returned to sleep at the Tsun Sing General Store on Cormorant Street. The people who lived on Cormorant Street were all Chinese, and the store was owned by a man called Kwan Tsun Sing from Chek Ham. Ah-Sing, as everyone called him, had two shacks, one behind the other. In the front one, he sold general goods, and in the rear, he had erected two long bed planks which he rented out to twelve people. Each bed plank was five feet wide, and would just fit six sleepers if they pulled their legs in and slept one against the other crossways. If one slept too soundly and stretched out straight in his sleep, his feet would dangle over the edge. If two people stretched out at the sametime, then all hell would break loose. One morning, Ah-Fat awoke to find himself sleeping on the floor, squeezed off the bed by the others.
    Ah-Fat and Red Hair had now been living at Ah-Sing’s store for six months. The rent, which included bed and board, was ten dollars a month. Ah-Fat only earned twenty dollars a month, and hated to spend so much. After asking around discreetly, he discovered this was the lowest rent in Chinatown, so he had to put up with it.
    That evening, Ah-Fat sold all his charcoal and limped back in through the door later than usual. The cloth shoes he had brought with him had long since worn through. He stuffed them with two layers of oilcloth and bound his feet with the strips. This made the shoes tight so that they rubbed his feet sore. Everyone had already eaten; a bowl of rice gruel, a strip of salted fish and two chicken claws were left in the pan for him. Ah-Fat pulled off his shoes, sat down on the bed plank, got the gruel and drank it down. Then he started to unwind the foot cloths, but the sores had formed scabs which stuck to them. He jerked them free and found his feet covered in blood.
    Ah-Sing came over with a basin of warm water and told Ah-Fat to wash his feet. He immersed them in the water, frowning with a sharp intake of breath as he did so. Ah-Sing said the leather shoes made by the Redskins were really good. “They’re lighter than a fart, with a helluva nice fur lining, warm as a charcoal burner, and they won’t wear out in a hundred years. You should barter a bag of charcoal for a pair. Otherwise, your feet won’t last a Gold Mountain winter.” Ah-Fat started to work out in his head how much a bag of charcoal would sell for, but did not say anything.
    A dark mass of men were crammed onto the bed planks, some picking their teeth, some rubbing at the skin of their feet, others smoking. Only Red Hair lay in a corner, head pillowed on a broken Chinese fiddle, gazing vacantly at the ceiling. In the summer, after their arrival in port, Red Hair had been to the North to find out about gold panning. He was told that even in the North, the gold was exhausted. The sandy debris had been panned two or three times too. In the end, he turned round and returned to Victoria. On the way, he found the Chinese fiddle, which became a treasured possession. Every now and then he would pick out some Cantonese melodies to relieve the boredom.
    The men began to tease him: “You know they say you were gold panning with a man in Cariboo when you found a gold nugget as big as a man’s fist. You hid it in the crotch of your trousers, and made off with it the same night. Is that true?” “Mother-fuckers!” Red Hair swore at them. “Do you think I’d still be living in this damned room of Ah-Sing’s if I had nugget as big as a fist?” “Then how did you pay for such a fancy wedding feast?” they asked him. “You had over a hundred chickens slaughtered, and that