Gold Mountain Blues by Ling Zhang

against Ah-Fat’s leg, licked him till the warm drool ran all over his hand. Ginger was a wolf-dog cross and stood so tall that if he stretched, he could almost reach Ah-Fat’s shoulder. Ah-Fat had to shove the dog away a few times before he finally got rid of him.
    He asked the cook what was for breakfast. “Boiled potatoes, rice porridge and salt fish.”
    â€œIt’s potatoes every day,” complained Ah-Fat, “potatoes every meal. We piss potatoes … can’t we have something different?” “You don’t know how lucky you are,” said the cook. “If we ever get snowed in, there won’t be a fucking crumb to eat.” “If there’s no fucking crumb to eat, then at least there won’t be potatoes,” said Ah-Fat. The cook’s expression tightened: “Potatoes are all the supply team ever bring into the mountains. Even if you killed me off, you wouldn’t get anything different to eat.”
    When they had finished breakfast, the record-keeper relayed the foreman’s instructions: “You’re breaking up stones all day today.” The stones which had been blasted out the previous two days all had to be carried up the mountainside basket by basket and tipped down into the canyon. The thirty-strong team would be divided into groups of ten, one to do the stone-breaking, another to load the baskets and the third to carry them up the mountain. Red Hair and Ah-Fat were stone-breakers; Ah-Lam was in the carrying team. “Mind your step,” said Red Hair to him as he set off. “If you miss your footing, you’ll be over that damned cliff quicker thanan eagle can squawk.” “I know my way well enough,” said Ah-Lam. “Don’t go wishing bad luck on me.”
    The stone-breakers had to break the stones small enough to fit into the baskets. Some of the stones could be broken up just using a sledgehammer but the bigger ones had to be split with a rock drill first, and then each piece had to be broken into smaller pieces. Red Hair and Ah-Fat worked as a team then: the boy held the drill and the older man swung the sledgehammer. The constant jarring soon made the skin between Ah-Fat’s thumb and forefinger crack and bleed. He had to rip the lining of his cotton jacket into pieces and make a bandage. The blood leaked through and formed a hard scab. He soaked his bandage in water every evening when they got back to camp, then dried it over the bonfire, ready for work again the next day. The cracks would begin to heal overnight, only to split again the next day. Gradually the cracks got bigger and would not heal over. Rock dust got in and they began to look like dirty black gullies.
    Red Hair told Ah-Fat to go and buy a pair of deerskin gloves with good thick lining of animal pelt inside them, from the Redskins. When Ah-Fat heard they cost three dollars a pair, he refused. Red Hair sighed: “That’s two whole days’ wages if you don’t spend a cent on food or drink, or shell out on a woman,” he said. “Those thieving motherfuckers have hiked the price sky-high.”
    Ah-Fat said nothing but he suddenly realized that he was not capable of being a carpenter, a bricklayer or a grinder. Back home, all he could do was farm work (and he had never done more than muddle along at that). If he worked himself to the bone all day breaking and carrying stones, the most he could earn was one dollar and seventy-five cents a day. But as soon as work started on the railroad, prices shot up and all his wages went on daily necessities. At this rate, how long would it take him to save up enough to buy fields and property? His mother might not last that long.
    The break that Ah-Fat was hoping for came just five days later.
    The group had set up camp in a new spot, but after two whole days, there was still a blank next to their names in the record-keeper’s work log. Several attempts to blast the rocks had failed,