Slip-Slidin’ Down Gold Mountain
Edward Orem
A Salty Dog Production
Copyright registered 2017, U.S.A.
ISBN 978-1-365-98841-7
All rights reserved. You may not reprint any of this book for commercial purposes without prior authorization from the publisher.
Anyone using anything longer than a sentence in any other format—print, digital, electronic—is forbidden without said authorization.
Author’s Notes
Slip-Slidin’ Down Gold Mountain is an edgy historical fiction novel, an American wu-jia action-adventure story of how heroes and villains from three cultures (Native Peoples, Chinese, Anglo) collide violently as they struggle to survive the raw, quickly-changing frontier society of the California Gold Rush.
Notably, California was unique in being the first place in North America where the state officially sanctioned extermination of a race. This story—of people seeking better choices than beheading, hanging or slavery at the hands of the governing elite—is not new. Slip-Slidin’ Down Gold Mountain recounts a story of cultural myopia and its paradigm that have goose-stepped us up to the edge of self-extinction.
What this novel does not have/does not do:
• This novel doesn’t merely recount events.
• There’s no great emphasis on love scenes, none of the sappy soap opera romances, nor fortuitous sex.
• It doesn’t have the “smart, snappy, with-it voice" of the modern man or woman.
• It’s not a piece of the normal commercial literature built around vapid, untested characters, contrived dilemmas, and elitist world views.
• It is not substantiated by "official," politically correct revisions of history as presented in schools and universities.
What this novel does offer:
• True accounts of events—not politically-correct propaganda—that moved men and women of the mid-to-late-1800’s.
• An understanding of the value systems generating the acts of individuals within historical events, their differing mind-sets and behavior.
• No-holds barred accounting of what went down between the dominant Euro-Americans and people of color—their sludge-like mentality, their subsequent actions during the Gold Rush, the events that led up to it, and the resulting paradigms that continue to present day America.
• The story-line is even more extensive in that it weaves in influences from the ancient Silk Road, the Ching Dynasty, the American Revolution, and the Civil War.
• It examines such issues as class warfare, cross-cultural gender models and manipulations, and inter-generational expectations.
• It shows that the impact of History lies forever with us in our daily moments.
And for my qualifications for bringing you this story, check the backend of the book for “About the Author.” I’m sure you'll be animated by my distinct lack of credentials or authority to speak to these matters. Also, there's a photo that’s sure to offend someone.
Dedication
For My Children:
You know who you are. Get busy.
Prologue
It wasn’t the haunting bouquet of stale beer and sweat on oil-stained motorcycle leathers that bothered me. Talking here about that up-close-and-personal waft from a 300-lb biker as he hovered over me grinning like a goosed banshee.
Too damn close for comfort, not to mention hygiene.
“Jeezis, Bear! Get them rubies outta my face!” Yeah, you’d figure it’d be the smell. But what bothered me were the jewels plaited into his auburn beard and now dancing on my nose.
“That’d be just Bear to you heathen hippies.”
It’s early morning, just on the Marin County side of the Golden Gate, at a turnout on the way to old Fort Baker. I always admired that view of San Francisco Bay and The Bridge from the turnout. But it’s a stretch to get gooey about a great view when you’re hog-tied over a motorcycle. I had to admit that I was in fact mighty discommoded, garroted with bungee-cords and spread-eagled face up like that on top of a vintage 1941 Indian.
Embarrassing touch, those bungees.
The Bear was about to cut off my ponytail with his ancient Corps-issue KA-BAR. My wardrobe signature that I spent eight years growing. I felt compelled to remind him that not all hippies are chicken-shits and deserved to die like commie vermin.
“Of course, I do not include myself in that category just for convenience, you unnerstand.” There were built-in limits to free speech here, though: it wouldn’t do to voice concern over his manner of protest.
Hell, I knew he was just funnin’ me, in one of the few short-circuited ways still left to him that didn't include taking out a platoon of gooks crunching their way over the north Korean snow-covered hills, with the jarheads advancing to the rear quick-time, aided by a tailwind of anal-puckering fear of those waves of hard-as-nails Chinese communist troops.
Bear flourished the KA-BAR blade for a damn fine dramatic effect. “Ya keep wigglin ya might be talkin out yer nether end.”
“Mebbe then you can understand me. Lemme up, goddammit!”
He paused to finger the pendant around my neck. “Whatcha got here? More gook shit, Jack?”
“I am up in five seconds, or swear to your totem Grizzly, my next stop will be The Dragon Head.”
The Bear stopped smiling and loosened the bungees real quick, mounted and kicked the Indian to life. “Go see yer Dad,” he yelled. “And quit lying about them gooks.” Bear threw me the finger and scattered rocks as he spun onto the asphalt.
That was The Bear’s way of saying he’s proud of me. I ambled stiffly back to my flower-power van, caressing the coolness of the jade pendant, and climbed up.
Now, to some people, all that might have a patina of aggression and mebbe a tad of violence tucked in there. What he was referring to was my being accepted into the Master’s program in Asian studies at Harvard. He’s ex-Marine, one of the many who roll with my Dad. No prob for me: I speak Chinese, Chamoc Indian, and Jy-fucking–reen.
I draped the leather cord over the rear-view mirror, next to the dangling red-hawk tail feather. Damned if the blue jade eagle didn’t look like it was pulsating.
The more I looked at it, feeling the colors reach into my skin, the less it seemed like just a fashion trinket. I mean, a flying blue eagle inside a red triangle within a golden circle... adds up to more than adornment. Chinese red, I figured. I really did need to see The Dragon Head about this. Still early, so I knew just where he’d be.
Time to talk Chinglish.
The VW wasn’t going anywhere, just sitting on the Bridge in the morning rush. I found my hands kinda automatically floating up to the rear view to work the five-inch diameter, rose-and-cerulean jade circle like an old friend. Or family. Wasn’t the first time I’d mused on the pendant’s mysteries – more like the hundredth...
I ‘member it was the late ‘60’s, during my Mellow-Yellow, Dead-concerts-at-the-Family-Dog days. The amulet had been laid on me while I was working the table at my commune’s Sunday morning Groovy-crafts-and-Whatever sale in the hills above Berkeley. We were renting this five-bedroom place on a quarter acre--what a score! Landlord was glad to have three carpenters work it over and pay him premium rent in a yuppie neighborhood. Didn’t matter that some of us had ponytails down to our 5th Lumbar.
I was in the front yard setting stuff out, alone ‘cause it was early, ‘bout 10, and it was my turn to make it happen that particular Sunday. I didn’t even hear Morning Star come floating along the sidewalk through the mist and up the river-rock steps, swishing her ankle-length Romanian peasant skirt and puffy sleeves Panamanian blouse, all beatific as hell, as usual, and barefoot, also usual. Morning Star believed strongly in crumbling a little Lebanese blond into her morning tofu scramble. She just laid a “Namasté” on me, beamed her beatitude, and started pawing through our stuff. She was always first at all the grooviest yard sales in the Hills. Probably not addicted to the hashish, but definitely to stuff. Never heard of a 12-Step in the U.S. to help ya outta that one, though...
How cool was it that she never paid cash, and always glided in with something interesting to trade. Very hip. So I laid out our heaviest scores. Hand-dyed indigo batiks from Bali, shadow puppets from Jogyakarta, an abo Bull-Roar, a Mescalero power stick (four-foot long, covered with hand-painted yellow and pink symbols—actually a gift from some tribal healers after I helped them gather sycamore and ash branches for sacred carvings. I was holed up in Geronimo’s old hideout cave, half-way up a cliff-face in Sycamore Canyon Wilderness, getting myself jimsonweed-purified, when the Deputy -- Jeezis, wonder if anybody untied that sucker before...?).
Anyway, I knew I had a trade going when she fixed on a pair of tiny silver toe-rings with tinier hammered silver bells jingling the Sanskrit prayers etched on the inside.
“From Ladakh,” I let her know. “Blessed by a rinponche.”
She held the toe-rings in a closed hand against her forehead, eyes closed. “I can feel his vibes,” Morning Star cooed, then dug into her dark blue velvet beaded Victorian draw-pouch. It wasn't bread, brother, that she offered. Her face became solemn when I took the jade circle thing. “That belongs to you, man,” was all she said.
She drifted down to grass-level to slip on the bells.
“Far out,” I said, turning the jade piece every which-way. “What do you make of it?
She looked up with a small, mysterious smile. “It’s a key.”
“What? Outtasight,” I said, way dubious. But I ended up trading, just the same.
Morning Star put her hands together. “Namaste. The Bliss-Out will be fine,” she announced.
I hate it when chicks go all enigmatic on me. “What?” I wondered again, louder this time. But she was already gliding back out, toes tinkling into the receding morning mist of the hills.
A key? I mean, a flying eagle inside a triangle inside a circle? I didn’t believe her. Yet.
I took the secret route into Chinatown. Forget that ugly tunnel, forget trying to find a space in C’town, or even North Beach, in less than a half-hour. I always chugged to the top of Russian Hill, left the van there, and walked on down into Chinatown. Fifteen minutes, tops. Nice views, too.
I picked my way carefully through the maze of Chinese shoppers on Dupont for a couple blocks, then turned left onto a secluded lane. Real nice little park at the dead-end, surprisingly quiet and peaceful. Perfect for wu shu training.
And that’s what a small group were doing at 6:30 in the morning—every morning, mind you, Sundays and holidays included. I saw the Dragon Head leading a section of circular moves.
Now, a guy has to be kinda careful and obtuse about approaching him: waaay old-school Chinese. Not just yer every day, inscrutable old Chink fart, but also a Taoist master. You know—qigong, baqua, kuang ping taiji. But I was counting on some strong Chinese values to kick in.
I strolled over to a bench where a diminutive Chinese matron was seated, smoking. Probably Lucky Strikes, hoarded since the War, knowing her.
You see, The Dragon Head is my teacher, and I’m family.
“Hey, hee-pee nefoo, you come ovah heah, we talk story,” the Chinese matron says to me.
I laid a wet one on Aunty May and sat. As far as Auntie May knew, Hippy Nephew was a corporate title. I settled back and glanced up. The Dragon Head was sporting traditional Taoist garb; that meant it was Swimming Dragon Pa-Kua day.
“But you not pray animahs today,” Auntie reminded me. She was referring to the “Five Animal Frolics” Uncle was laying on me that year. It always floored me how this ancient stuff was intact for three thousand years. But hell, as May always liked to remind me, Kwangtung’s got bean curd shops older’n the United States of America.
“Just here for a minute, Auntie. I have something to show Unca.”
“He teach now. You wait, I humah you. Uhh, you heah the one ‘bout a pleest, a bodhisattva, and ‘Melican injun shaman go inta bah?”
May had more socially oblique, befuddling jokes than anybody in SF. “No. Which bar was it, Auntie?”
“That good question, nefoo. Espeshary in San Flan. It was gay bah. They get toss out on holy ass.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Ya hadta be patient with Auntie’s jokes sometimes. “Well, that happens if you’re not gay.”
May liked my response. “HA! That what bah tendah whispah donkey.” And she slapped my knee and laughed out loud.
I was a little confounded, but only paying scant attention. Uncle was bowing out his students. “What was it he said?”
Zheng San Feng, the Dragon Head, approached with a slightly quizzical smile. I rose, Uncle Zheng threw me a martial salute, and pronounced in his deep Mandarin tones, “Overthrow the Qing, Restore the Ming.”
See what I mean? Uncle still hopes the Ming Dynasty will re-take the throne. The last Han Emperor fell in 1644. I saluted and bowed: “Good Morning, Marquis of Extended Grace, Honorable Uncle Zheng sifu!”
Uhh-the Marquis stuff is kinda hard to explain, like he’s a special person in the Chinatowns on the West Coast.
“Good see you, nefoo! How--?” Uncle stopped dead and his face lit up as I opened my shirt to reveal the pendant. I took it off so he and Auntie could oooh, aww, paw, and squint over it. They immediately started pumping for info.
“Haven’t a clue. I thought you two might…”
Uncle Zheng looked thoughtful. “Definitery Han, velly old.”
Just in case you don’t know any overseas Chinese, or perhaps you’re harboring some kinda liberal bullshit against portraying the real way millions of people talk, I gotta explain. Uncle speaks Mandarin and Auntie Hakka, so we all lingua franca in Chinglish.
“You reave here,” Uncle advised. Maybe we find someting foah you. Wheah you get?”
“Hee-pee yahd sale in Buhkerey Hills. Guhl say it blessed by Tibetan Rinpoche Rama,800 yeah ago.”
“I know who that!” the Dragon Head exclaimed. “And you, nefoo.”
I guess I looked dubious. “It a key,” Uncle said.
“That what she say!”
“And it berong you.”
“She ahso say that! I no get.”
May was all eager to help me. “You brud speak tlooth, nefoo.”
Huh? I just shook my head.
Uncle was on it. “Brud, brud, uh blood. You blood know, nefoo.”
But I wasn’t with him.
“Nevvahyoumine,” May said, patting my arm. She had to reach up to find my elbow, the Hakka half-dwarf. “We find crews for you. You no woolly.”
“Hope you say that. I gotta know what it mean when it grow.” I was getting up to take my leave when May put a tiny foot on top of mine.
“Wait, you not yet heah what donkey whispah back!”
It came back alright, with a whole troupe of “crews.” The amulet (cuz that’s how I thought of it by then) made the family rounds, didn’t see it again for two months. Uncle Zheng huffed and puffed Tao jia qigong over it for awhile, then fedexed it north to the Pitt Tribal Offices in Shasta Co., to cousin Wilson, full-blood Chamoc. There it stayed, getting chanted over and smoked on, and all kindsa very cool native peoples’ ways laid on it. Then it journeyed on to the Hat Creek Trading Post, the Pittville General Store, and finally to Hal & Kathy’s Country Cooking Cafe in Fall River Mills. Hal hoofed it over to the Ft. Crook Museum in town, where the Curator ‘bout had a kanip-fit because Hal had barbeque sauce on his hands. Two days later, the Curator gave it a personal escort westward in his 1932 Ford pickup, to the Steward at the Joss House in Weaverville. The odyssey wasn't over, but by then, the jade-with-thong wasn't alone. Anyway, the Confucian Steward, Jong Mei, is a biker, and so happens he knew my Dad. Jong Mei calls Pop, spread-eagles his bright yellow Hog in the back of his pickup, tosses a keg of beer in, with all the stuff added by my relatives, and next thing ya know, he’s in Black Point, last refuge of longhaired redneck outlaws in yuppied-out Marin County. Pop lives there in a single-wide, got a Harley shop tacked onto one end, fulla bikes and Korean War vets he runs with, all in assorted states of dysfunction.
It was time to go see my Dad.
“Two-legged mutton is what we are, in a pinch,” he pronounced solemnly.”
“Jeezus, Pops! I haven’t had breakfast yet.”
Bear reached across the table with a beer bottle. “We‘re engaged in yet another existential discourse, Junior. Breakfast?”
I took a swig. “The topic?”
“A terse but eloquent discussion of which cuts are best from humans,” Dad said.
I gagged on my beer with that. Wasn’t the starkness of the response, but his frighteningly precise, practiced manner.
“Get over it,” he counseled. “It’s a time-honored reserve for all our ancestors.”
“No way!”
Bear gestured solemnly with the bottle neck. “Sonny, what you think you know could get you killed.”
“Lemme recount an incident that stuck in my own crusty craw,” Dad began. “I wuz pulling a shift at the Bar None that summer. Fella came in sportin’ a heavy flannel shirt one lunchtime. You know what a cooker that bar was in the 50’s, Bear.”
“Yep, typical low Sierras summer.”
“Anyway, hot as hell it was, and we wuz all wonderin why the fella kept himself in heavy clothes, buttoned to his damned neck, when we wuz all in skivvy shirts. Up to the top, I shit you not.
“Maybe he was disfigured. Fire, mebbe.”
“Yeah, good guess--but not in the way you imagine. I wuz curious, but kept my peace.”
Bear guffawed. “Shure as shit, you didn’t. Never kept your peace a day in your life.”
“Well, mebbe I allowed him to fill me in a bit. Filled his glasses with doubles, on the house. Damned lot of ‘em, too. Three hours later that Red-Eye wuz making him sweat so much he had to loosen his shirt.” Rock teased us by taking several swigs of beer.
“And??” I wanted to know.
“Tole me a story of his ancestors. But only after I asked him about the scar I saw starting about the second button down.”
Bear wasn’t buying it. “You just come right out and ask about a man’s disfigurement? Don’t sound like you.”
“No way. Summabitch was burning to tell me--hahahahaha--god! I love my jokes sometimes. Anyway, summabitch was glad to tell me. He burnt hisself on purpose, seems like.”
“Naw!” both Bear and me protested.
“Swear ta gawd. Said he was emulatin’ an ancestor, first with the burn, then with a tattoo over it.”
“Y’all must think I’m retarded.”
“Beside the point. The point being the tatt.” Rock swigged a time or two. “The tattoo was simple, just three-inch blue ink block letters: HE WHO EATS LAST, WINS. Can’t say that I understood all that, especially with the burn.”
“I hope you requested that he elaborate for your personal edification.” The clipped consonants gave The Bear away. I counted five or six empty breakfasts of champs making a corral around his elbows.
“Damned straight,” Pop said. “Tole me his ancestor was moseyin in the high Sierras with some friends, and went down for some shut-eye. Woke up to one of his buddies setting him on fire. That wuz a hunnert years ago, he said, and his family had trouble sleeping every since.
What was his family name? I wanted to know.
“I asked him that as he downed the last shot, picked up his cigarettes and moved toward the swinging door. Donner’s the name, friend, he said. Joseph Donner.”
That woke The Bear from whatever cave he had retreated into. “Krikey, josie, ‘n their toasted buttocks!”
“Yep. The very same ones: the Donner party winter picnic at the Pass, 1846.”
Christ!
Dad wanted to comfort me. “Toldja it was part of our heritage. All of us. Not all ancestors and family should be revered. Unless, of course, they seem exceptionally tasty.”
Rock and The Bear both leaned forward and clinked an accord.
“You guys got a candidate in mind?”
“I think Jack’s hungry,” Bear said, then wagged his finger in warning. “Beware of wimmin nicknamed ‘Crispy Bits.’”
Rock fished the pendant, my pendant, from his pocket, turned it over a couple times. “This thing—what ‘r ya callin it?—could be it’s kinda like a Tibetan prayer wheel. You rub it, and its effects spin out to the far reaches of our collective consciousness.”
Bear agreed. “You don’t even have to do anything. Perfect for you lazy-ass liberal post-industrialists.”
“Point bein,” Dad went on, “rub that thing the wrong way ‘n ya jes might set the spin to bring out the stains.
“What stains?” I asked innocently.
“Better said would be, which stains,” Bear put in.
Rock turned to the boxes piled up against the trailer wall. “The ones in the family blood. We all got em. But you--Ha! Ya got quite a passel of choices, being you’re Irish, Chinese, and Injun. Bear, clear off yer hoofs and empties. Here ya go. Let’s see what you’re up ‘gainst.”
The three of us worked our way through the boxes for the rest of the morning.
There were handwritten notes in three languages, some beat-up diaries (one in Chinese), a San Francisco Theatre Royale programme featuring Mme. Le Fleur, yellowed news clippings dated before 1880--and a hundred year-old Chamoc basket crafted from tule rushes.
Inside the basket were beaded deerskin pouches, a capped bamboo tube with a set of rusty acupuncture needles nestled inside, a string of Buddhist prayer beads, and four old daguerreotypes--one of three white men in suits standing on a street of wooden planks, pointing up at a store sign; another of a band of Native Americans and Chinese brandishing bows, war clubs, firearms and swords; one of what looks to be an Indian boy about 10 with long braids, stretching the leather thong around his neck out towards the viewer; and a fourth showing a thickly-built Indian woman with a tattooed face and a Mohawk cut holding a cradleboard, beaming down at her strapped-in baby.
Definitely intriguing was the two-foot long braid of black hair coiled on top of a dark blue, richly embroidered cheong sam inside an oversized millinery box with a sketch on the lid of a hat that Mae West would’ve worn. Tucked underneath the dress was a tiny, two-shot over-n-under .20 Derringer, about the length of your palm, shrouded in a scarf-sized piece of dark red silk embroidered with “The Pink Peony, Barbary Coast.” There was a hole in the middle of the silk, size of a small caliber round.
The mementos passed between us, man to man, until the last one, a photo, reached Bear. His eyes bugged out. “Well, fuk me running!”
“Don’t count on me callin ya Runnin Bear after every illicit romantic tryst,” my Dad warned.
Bear handed the photo over to Rock. “Do that rattle yer cage or what?!”
Dad studied it for a minute, squinting and turning it every which way, then handed it over to me.
It was my turn to turn bug-eyed. “How did we miss that?” I grabbed the pendant and held it up to the photo, the one of the boy. “Who is he?” I murmured.
Bear stuck his pinkie through the bullethole. “Wonder how The Pink Peony ladies are gettin on...”
I was blown away, for sure. But no way Pop and his buddies were gonna let me keep much. Finally got them to make copies of the paper stuff. Took me months to organize, longer to put together the family story. Even found out I had it wrong about the jade thing. Oh, it’s an amulet, all right—and a bunch more. I definitely owed Morning Star a namaste and lunch at Third Messiah’s Vegetarian Bliss-Out (you know—up from Shattuck and across from Peoples’ Park?) for turning me onto such a heavy family score.
Now, I got something to say about this story. This is my family story, it ain’t yours. I don’t talk about blacks and Mexicans in the 19th Century ‘cause we got none in our family, so don’t get cranky about equal representation. I’m sticking with what I know: rednecks, blue-blood Euro-trash, California Indians, and Chinese from Canton. A rainbow of human colors, some might say. A rainbow of human shame, more like it.
But even though it’s my particular story, you will recognize the themes, if not those particular rancher-politicos, high-powered biz-heads and good ol’ country boys who make up California’s blood lies. Too many entrenched interests, too many deceits been covering the truth so long—110 years just in California alone. There's a large likelihood that if your family has been in the Bear State a few generations, you’ll find yourself patched into this rainbow, somewhere.
Could be you aren’t ready to bite your own bear. I'm telling ya, dissembling after can be bitchier than maintaining a San Francisco diva.