Li Jun and the Iron Road Read online

  Li Jun piped up. “Somebody cut my ropes.”

  “Wasn’t me,” managed the Controller. “Edgar’s the one who did that.”

  James released the Controller from his grip. “Edgar? My God! Do you mean that?”

  Li Jun held up the photograph in front of the cowering man. “You stole this from my tent. Why?”

  The Controller snarled. “You thought you were so clever, discovering our scam, but I heard ya having yer sweet talk with him between the railcars. Seemed mighty cozy for a tea boy and the boss’s son, so I did some checkin’ and sure enough, I found that picture in your tent. Saw that baby. You’re a girl, aren’t you? You can’t hide it any more.”

  He looked at James and added snidely, “I figured that you’d pay good money to keep me from telling your father that this kid Little Tiger was actually your Little Whore.”

  Li Jun would have spit in the Controller’s face, except that at that moment James threw a punch that landed on his cheek. The bone cracked and the Controller screamed.

  “You wouldn’t have made a cent,” growled James. “I’m proud to be with her and I was about to tell my father.”

  “So, if that’s the truth, are we gonna have a white wedding then?” snarled the Controller. “Oh, that’s right! You China girls don’t wear white. You wear red like the hootchy-kootchy girls.”

  James hit him again, on the other cheek.

  Li Jun smiled wistfully. “See? Two different worlds. White is for death, not weddings. Red is for good fortune.”

  She turned to the Controller. “No wedding. People like you make sure we never be happy. But tell me, when did you know Bookman was my father?”

  James and the Controller both sputtered. “What?”

  Li Jun looked from one stunned face to the other. “Yes,” she said, running her hands over the picture. “Bookman was my father. He was Li Man.”

  “So that’s why he called out ‘Li Jun!’” said James. “And why he climbed down the rope to save you. Your father gave his life for yours.”

  Li Jun nodded.

  James tied the Controller’s hands together. “Now you ’n’ I are going to see Edgar,” he said. “Come on, Li Jun. We both need to hear the whole story from him.”

  They marched the Controller down to the office car and cornered Edgar just as he was ripping pages out of Bookman’s ledger.

  “No you don’t,” said James. “You leave that evidence for the constables in Yale.”

  Edgar looked shaken. The Controller held out his tied hands. “The jig’s up, m’ lad.”

  Edgar looked at Li Jun and growled, “I knew you were trouble from the very first.”

  “Did you cut ropes under my chair? Did you?” she shouted.

  “That I did, and it would have worked if Bookman hadn’t played the hero.”

  “Did you know he was my father?”

  “What!” Edgar slapped his thigh, amazed.

  The Controller added, “Yep — Little Tiger is a girly girl and Bookman was her father.”

  “Well if that doesn’t beat all. You goddamn Chinks!” said Edgar.

  Li Jun explained to James the scam between Bookman, the Controller, and Edgar.

  He turned to the two of them. “That about right? You were keeping dead men on the books and pocketing their pay? But why did you go after Little Tiger?”

  “That kid was too smart. Figured it all out,” said Edgar. “I put him on the explosives crew thinking he’d blow himself up, but he was too damn good. We had to do something that guaranteed he’d stay quiet — an accident while setting charges on the cliff, a chair collapsing beneath him. Nobody would guess it was murder. One more dead Chink fallen into the river, who would care?”

  James was about to throw another punch but Li Jun put up her arm to stop him.

  “Mr. Edgar, did Bookman know about your plan to kill me?”

  The Controller and Edgar looked at each other. “No. He didn’t even want to put you on the dynamite crew. He wanted to keep you safe.”

  Li Jun ran all the other questions through her mind. “Did he kill a man?”

  “Yeah. Can’t blame him,” said Edgar. “Would’ve done the same myself. He worked hard in America, found himself a gold claim, but another Chinaman jumped it. Bookman wanted justice. The way I understand it, he hit the guy but it was a freak accident and he died, so Bookman came up here for a new beginning.”

  James interrupted. “But you held that over him, right? You blackmailed him ’cause he could be sent back to China for killing one of his own.”

  “How else do you think we got him to fix the books?” said Edgar nastily.

  Now Li Jun had all the pieces to the puzzle. James tied up Edgar and the Controller, and left them in the office railcar for the police.

  As she and James walked out together toward the camp, he shook his head. “My God, Li Jun! I can’t believe everything that’s happened. You were almost killed. Thank goodness Bookman got to you in time.”

  At the mention of her father’s name, Li Jun brought her hands to her heart, then stopped in her tracks and clapped a hand over her mouth. “James. It was because of you!”

  “What?”

  “You heard my name and you came. You told the men to listen to me, to lower me down beside him.”

  “Against my better judgment. Imagine what could have happened.”

  “Something very good happened. I learned the truth about my father. I would never have known without you.” Li Jun clasped his hands in hers. “Thank you, Mr. James.”

  He smiled. “Just James, remember?

  “I’m sorry your father died. You spent so long looking for him and had so little time with him. I want to help you plan his burial, but first I have to tell my father about those two crooks and make arrangements for the Mounties to lock them up.”

  “That is good … James. But me — I am not sure what to do. I promised my Ama that I would bring back my father’s bones to bury beside her, but I have been thinking …” Li Jun chewed her bottom lip.

  James put his hands on her shoulders. “What is it?”

  “How do I know bone cleaner will come for his body? It will be many years, maybe five or six, till he comes, if he comes at all, and I will not be here. Even then, how do I know my father’s bones will really go back to his village?”

  James thought long and hard. “You’re right. There is another way. We could arrange to cremate your father. Powder will know how to do it properly, with all respect.”

  She had been thinking the same thing. If her father’s body could be cremated, she could keep her promise. After the ceremony, she could place the ashes and unburned bones in an urn and take them to Victoria by train. Powder would know someone there who could make sure that the bones went back to China, to her village. Her mother and father would be together again — just as her mother wished.

  She looked into James’s blue, blue eyes and threw her arms around him.

  “Thank you, thank you, James. That is best.”

  But still, she scrunched her brow.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll arrange for an honourable ceremony and see that you have a fine urn. And I want to pay for getting it back to China.”

  Li Jun knew that she was not going back to her village. Canada was her home now. But all she said was, “No, I want to pay for that. I have saved enough.” She bowed to him with an enormous sense of relief.

  ***

  Flames leaped from the funeral pyre that was prepared for her father. Li Jun knelt beside it wearing her mourning band around her head. Together with James and Powder, she threw spirit money into the fire. It was so intense that she couldn’t really see her father’s body disappearing but she felt that his spirit was rising, free because soon he would lie beside his wife in their ancestral village.

  Nevertheless she felt a deep sadness. All along he was near to me every day, she thought, here in the camp — my own father! I hated him and his scar and what I thought he had done. If only I�
�d known, I could have told him about my mother and me, our life after he left us, how much we longed for him. At least I know that his soul will not wander, searching for his wife and his homeland.

  ***

  James stayed close to her during her days of mourning and she still had many questions.

  “Tell me, James, why would Bookman go along with cheating you and your father by paying the dead workers and keeping the money?”

  “I don’t really know,” he answered. “Those two could have got him hanged. Or maybe he thought it was his due. Maybe he planned to give the money to the families of the dead men. We don’t send their pay back home when they die here. We take them for granted. They’re honest and hard-working but we … we don’t keep our promises to them.”

  Li Jun nodded her head. “I know. No one told us we would be paid less than the white workers. No one told us we would have to pay back our passage. No one told us we could die here.”

  James nodded, and put his arms around her. “Our part of the railway is almost done.”

  “And done on time,” she added.

  “Thanks to you. You really do explode fantastic!”

  She laughed. But then her laughter turned to tears. Over and over she had wrestled with the biggest question of all: could she make a life with this white man, rich and privileged, whose world was so different from hers, whose family would be appalled at the idea of him marrying her? Did they really know each other? They’d had so little time alone, most of the moments stolen. He didn’t even know her real name till a day ago.

  She thought of Powder’s advice — “Never trust the gwailo” — and of Bookman, her own father’s, warning — “Their friendship means nothing; only Chinese look after Chinese.”

  Yes, James had changed since their first meeting. Yes, she had opened his mind and heart to care about her and her Chinese friends, but how long would that last? Again she thought of Mr. Relic’s advice: “Look, but never touch. That way heartache lies.” He had loved his Chinese almost-wife but her family despised him, his own world shunned him, and he had abandoned her. Surely that was what awaited James and her. His promises were comforting, but reality was another matter.

  However, she could not go back to China. There she had nothing and no one, while in this new country, with her courage and skills, she had a future — even as a woman. She made her decision.

  “I must leave,” she said. “Leave you and make my own way.”

  “Leave? No! I want you to stay. I want to make a life with you.”

  “I have to go,” she murmured.

  “Then I will go with you.”

  Li Jun smiled sadly. She knew in her heart that it could not be. “That is an impossible dream, James. You think we can change the world, but I think it more likely the world changes us. I have dreams of my own. Maybe I go to school in Victoria. Powder say times are changing. He hear that some Chinese women are coming here. They work in restaurants and in laundries. Maybe there’s a fireworks factory! There are mission schools. Who knows, maybe one day I can be a teacher. My father was a teacher, you know? I will go my own path and you will stay here to finish the railroad.”

  James was speechless, heartbroken. He reached out to her but she stepped back. She longed for his arms around her, but instead she smiled sadly and turned away. Her future was not with him.

  ***

  In her tent, Li Jun packed her few belongings and the money she’d saved into her satchel, picked up the urn with her father’s bones, and walked through the camp toward the waiting train. She passed workers setting out for the tunnels, the bridges, and the tracks. She hoped their lot might be better now with Edgar and the Controller gone.

  Wang Ma was the last of them. He stopped in front of her and threw his hands in the air. “Powder told me you’re leaving.”

  “Is that the only thing he said?”

  “Well, no — he complained again about the rice and the noodles, then said that no one can make tea like you, that you must sneak in some magic potion he doesn’t know about.”

  Li Jun laughed, then quickly changed her tone. “Wang Ma, prepare for a shock. I am going to tell you something that I have hidden from you all this time.”

  “I think I know,” he said. “When I heard Bookman call you Li Jun, I remembered long ago a little girl in my village with that name.”

  Li Jun was amazed and stared into his eyes. “So you know why I am leaving. I cannot stay here as a woman.”

  Wang Ma cocked his head and looked at her as if seeing her in a whole new way.

  She gave him a friendly poke in the ribs. “Stop that!”

  He returned the poke and smiled. “Who would have guessed that under that hat and all that grime, you were such a good-looking woman?”

  Li Jun felt a blush rise to her cheeks.

  Then Wang Ma spoke from his heart. “Li Jun, you’ll always be my best friend. That day on the cliff, you saved my life. You gave me hope that things would get better. I owe you a debt.”

  “Then come to Victoria one day and buy me a bean cake,” she quipped.

  Wang Ma teased her. “My life is worth only a bean cake?”

  She grinned. “I’m going to miss your jokes, Wang Ma. Please take care of yourself. It’s still dangerous here but when you finish the job, I hope you’ll come to Victoria and start a new life there, like I’m going to do.”

  Now serious, Wang Ma stepped closer to her. “I will come and find you,” he promised. Li Jun felt he was about to hug her but at that moment she spotted James.

  “Make sure you do, Wang Ma!” she called out as she ran to James for one last goodbye.

  “At least let me walk you to the train,” James said.

  They arrived beside the steam engine and she whispered, “I need you to hold me one last time.”

  He put his arms around her and she felt him tremble in that long embrace.

  The sharp sound of the whistle signalled that the train was about to leave. Li Jun released herself from his arms, picked up the urn with her father’s ashes, and walked to the open railcar. It was the same railcar she had arrived in and this time it seemed an endless walk. When she arrived, she turned for a last look at James. He stood tall, but he was shaking. She climbed up onto the railcar just as she had climbed down from it when she first came to Hell’s Gate. Slowly the train wheels began to move, the great locomotive belched smoke and began to steam along the tracks. Li Jun held her father’s funeral urn close to her heart. She didn’t turn to look at James, afraid that she might change her mind and leap off the train to go back to him. She was not the girl who had left China on her quest. But she was not Little Tiger either.

  She could hardly wait to take off her slouch hat and throw away the bindings that had hidden her secret for so many years. Now she could stop all that cursing and swaggering. She could walk like the woman that James had shown her she could be. It would be scary — but also exciting. She imagined herself in a beautiful gown just like the one her mother wore in the family picture and let out a huge sigh.

  Things were going to be all right. Powder had arranged for someone to send her father’s bones back to her village and James, thoughtful James, had arranged for a family he knew in Victoria to let her live with them until she could find work. Already she was dreaming of soaking in a tub of hot water and scrubbing the mountain dust away.

  She cradled the urn more tightly. Rest, Father. Rest well in China beside Mother. I will stay here to make a new life in this new land. You taught me to be first class, and showed me that life must be lived with a fire in my soul. Thank you, Father.

  Li Jun looked ahead. The rails seemed to stretch forever in front of her, and she knew that her true journey was just beginning.

  Historical Afterword

  The railway was completed in 1885. Immediately after that, the Canadian government imposed a head tax on all Chinese immigrants, which prevented most of the Chinese railway workers from bringing their families to join them in Canada.

&n
bsp; Even so, $23 million was collected from this tax — 1.2 billion in today’s dollars — more than it cost to build the entire railway.

  In 2006 the government finally issued an official apology to Chinese Canadians for the head tax.

  Three Chinese workers died for every mile of track they laid.

  Copyright © Anne Tait and Contextx Inc., 2015

  Based on the screen story by Barry Pearson and screenplay by Barry Pearson and Raymond Storey

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

  All characters in this work are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Editor: Cheryl Hawley Design: Laura Boyle

  Cover Design: Laura Boyle

  Cover images © Anne Tait

  Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Tait, Anne, author

  Li Jun and the iron road / Anne Tait ; with Paulette Bourgeois.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4597-3142-4 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-4597-3143-1 (pdf).--ISBN 978-1-4597-3144-8 (epub)

  1. Iron Road (Television program)--Juvenile fiction. I. Bourgeois, Paulette, author II. Title.

  PS8639.A35L5 2015 jC813’.6 C2015-900595-7

  C2015-900596-5

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

  Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.