American Meteor by Norman Lock

after a half day’s rest, which meant, for most, a booze-up in the Irish saloon. General Jack never missed an opportunity to needle the “worthless bog trotters” for proving themselves even lower than his yellow drudges.
    That night, I went to see the men who’d shared Chen’s room.
    “What happen Chen?” I asked in pidgin English. They stood like a quartet of Easter Island statues, poker-faced and inscrutable. I tried shouting next, as if theirincomprehension were the result of ear wax. “What happen Chen?” They must have been used to bellowing white men, for they never even flinched. Frustrated, I impersonated someone with the shakes and a bellyache. The charade must have appeared comical to the Chinamen. They jabbered among themselves critically, and then one whose ear was a scorched stump laughed. Irked, I knocked him down. He was smaller than I, and I gloated to see his surprise. I left the room, haughty as a general delivering an ultimatum to a beaten foe. I was sorry for it later—that, and much else besides.
    Passing the cattle pens on the walk back to the depot, I suddenly recalled a conversation I’d had with Chen.
    “Are there cows in China?” I’d asked, betraying once more my ignorance of the wider world.
    He smiled tolerantly. “Yes, but we do not drink so much milk as you. I never do; it disagrees with me.”
    In the morning, I went to the infirmary to talk to the company doctor.
    “I want to ask you about Chen Shi,” I said.
    “Who is Chen Shi?”
    “The Chinese tailor who died of the trembles.”
    “Go on,” he said, hooking his ankles around the legs of the stool. The black hairs on his legs poked through his checkered socks.
    “Chen didn’t drink milk,” I told him. “It didn’t agree with him.”
    “There’re a hundred ways to die,” he said, with a shrug that looked like helplessness. He glanced at a sickbed where a man was pledged to one of them. “He could’ve been bitten by a rattler. Or maybe someone put whitesnakeroot or arsenic in his tea. He was Chinese; he was bound to have enemies.”
    Like a German tailor, I thought. Or the quartermaster, also German. History will show you can’t trust a stinking sauerkraut.
    The infirmary smelled like the Armory Square Hospital, where my fiction had been hatched, and I was itching to leave. There was nothing I could do for Chen. I wasn’t about to demand an inquest or to pursue the poisoner. I’m no Auguste Dupin.
    “Do you know where Chen’s buried?” I asked the doctor, who had unhooked his ankles from the stool and was listening to the dying man’s chest with a stethoscope. I considered the instrument superfluous. I could hear the croup and rattle of pneumonia from across the room.
    “In the ‘Chinese cemetery’ behind the train shed. Look for fresh-turned earth.”
    I took Jericho, determined to play taps over Chen’s grave. I could be a vain and pompous ass in those days. There were only a few graves; most of the Chinese workers died in California and Nevada, dynamiting through the Sierras—blown to bits or buried beneath tons of American rock. A sad ending for those who’d dreamed, once, of gold ingots. Each grave had a cross for decoration. Was it ignorance or malice to have buried them like Methodists? Or did a high-minded evangelist with a shovel intend to convert the misbegotten heathen when they could no longer object? I knelt—it might’ve been the first time in history that a white man had knelt before a Chinaman, quick or dead. Not knowing any Chinese prayers, I said a Catholic grace: “We give Thee thanks, Almighty God, for all Thy benefits, and forthe poor souls of the faithful departed; through the mercy of God, may they rest in peace. Amen.” I crossed myself, and then I blew taps. I couldn’t have done better if it were Abraham Lincoln himself lying in the ground before me. I was so moved that tears started up in my eye. Seized by a fit of generosity, I took off my medal and laid it at the