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puzzlement, then outright laughter as he transferred a portion of logs to a second basket. “Who’s he think’s going to carry that ’un?” Strobridge snorted, pushing his straw skimmer off his brow. “I told ye they’re not worth half a man. Beats me how they built that there Great Wall.” But Ling had pulled his old bamboo carry pole from beneath the porch and threaded the handles of first one and then the second basket onto it, crouched between them, and raised the balanced load across his shoulders. The baskets bounced lightly in time with his strides, giving a little spring to his step as he circled the yard. You’d have thought he’d produced the Monkey King’s golden-clasped rod, such was the astonishment. Crocker nodded vigorously while Strobridge and even Stanford clustered around and tossed more wood into both baskets. “Stand fast,” Crocker told Ling, and so he had, even when pearls of sweat had sprung from his brow.
    â€œAre all coolies strong as you, boy?” Stanford asked. The man had recently had a giant sequoia named for him, before that a mountain. Up close he smelled faintly of horse.
    â€œYessir,” Ling began. “
K’u-li
is Chinese for—”
    â€œCoolie,” Stanford repeated slowly. “Coo-
lie.
”
    He’s correcting my pronunciation,
Ling realized.
    â€œYessir. Most Chinese strong as me.”
    He had wanted to explain that
k’u-li
in Chinese meant “hard strength.”
    Strobridge and Crocker exchanged a glance. The former rubbed his hands together and the latter, thumbs hooked in his vest pockets, cried, “Bravo! What did I say, Stro? They’re
from
China, not made of it!” And Ling, muscles still braced under his load, had trembled with pride.
    Crocker told him Strobridge, his foreman, had hired “fifty Celestials” the very next morning. “You’re a credit to your race, my boy.” (And to Crocker, it seemed; he’d won a tidy wager with Stanford in the process, he confided cheerfully.) It felt like a vindication to Ling. Tanka were looked down on by the Han Chinese, Eurasians viewed with suspicion. Yet here he was proving himself the best of them. It was the Year of the Ox, of hard work. He went about his duties in the Crocker home, even his ironing, with greater gravity, as if every load of laundry lifted required stiff-backed dignity.
    Ling had boasted to Little Sister about his new significance. They were lying together after coupling, her head on his chest so that he felt he was breathing for them both—a fleeting tenderness she might end at any moment, since it wasn’t part of her price, and which he tried to draw out with talk.
    â€œCredit to your race?” She twisted her neck to eye him. “How do you spend that?”
    He tried to settle her, stroking her hair, but now it seemed as if he were pushing her away with each inhalation.
    â€œBesides, what’s he pay these new workers?”
    Ling had to admit that it hadn’t occurred to him to ask.
    â€œNo head for business, lah,” she berated him, sitting up.
    â€œAs if you have!” He’d been teasing, reaching for her, but her eyes sparked.
    â€œWhat do you think? I have an ass for business, tits for business only?” Slapping at those parts, and not gently.
    And she told him the story of Ah Toy, the first Chinese courtesan in California, so beautiful—
ho leng
—men paid just to look at her. “Her face, I mean!” Little Sister shook her head at the wonder of it. “And you know what she did with her money? Bought her own brothel!” she added approvingly. “Now that’s what I’d do if I could.” She brightened suddenly. “That’s what we could do if you get more than credit! Sure. You make enough money, buy a brothel, I’ll run it for you.
Partners!
” She said the last in English and he’d laughed it off, but