Dead Man's Gold and Other Stories Read Online Free

revealed he had never worked or suffered.
    They sailed up the coast through a gray mist as rough waves pummeled the company boat. Craggy cliffs covered with forests rose into view. The boat came to a deep bay where trees marched to the waterline. Each one was so tall and thick that ten men with arms linked could barely circle its trunk. The trees were straight as pillars at a grand temple, with the sky above forming its roof.
    Never before had Shu seen such proud growth. China had razed its forests for farms and cities long ago, and the trees at his family home were puny saplings in comparison.
    Moved by this grandeur, he recited two lines of poetry:
    â€œTrees along heavens edge grow neat as grass
And land gleams moon-like while waters pass.”
    The crew chortled and tossed him into the saltwater like a sack of garbage. Shu sputtered and flailed helplessly, for he couldn’t swim. The men chuckled as he bobbed up and down.
    â€œLet’s see if rich boys sink as fast as poor ones,” they said.
    Finally the cook threw out a rope and Shu grabbed it.
    In the forest, he wielded a long ax while balanced on a springboard jammed into the tree’s trunk. He splashed kerosene onto long saws to make them slide through the unyielding wood. When a tree fell, he hacked off branches and sawed them into sections. A single tree created four or more days of work before its logs hit the water to be towed to a mill.
    The Pacific Northwest was cold and wet. Dark clouds pushed in from the sea and rain fell for days, even weeks. Shu struggled to walk in cracked and leaky boots as sheets of water washed his face and stung his eyes
.
When the rain stopped, the puddles bred mosquitoes — thousands and thousands of buzzing pests, all thirsty for human blood. Desperately, he rubbed grease and wax and soot onto his skin to thwart them, but the insects sneaked into the tents, drawn by lamplight and the smell of wet socks.
    Thick calluses erupted on Shu’s hands, and his skin grew red and hard from bites. His body ached as muscles filled his arms and shoulders. At night, he took a lantern and tramped into the woods to read aloud, letting the rhymes and images of poetry relax him.
    The men heard him reading alone and imitated him, but chanted jumpy rhythms to spoil the lines. At mealtimes, they mimicked how he held his rice bowl, used his chopsticks and pulled fish bones from his teeth instead of spitting them out.
    Shu saw their mocking faces but his ears focused elsewhere: the tide washing over shoreline sand, the fluttering of birds’ wings at treetops, or the toot of a ship passing far out at sea.
    Meanwhile, the loggers pushed inland, and the greased path that took the logs to the water grew longer.
    One day, as Shu swung his ax into a tree, he heard strange sounds. It wasn’t the seagulls cawing and gliding overhead or the distant grunts of grizzly bears. The sounds were deep groans, long sighs and sharp yelps of pain. They came loudest after each thwack of the ax. Both human and animal at once, the sounds chilled Shu to the bone.
    Across from him, his partner showed no signs of distress, so Shu kept quiet. All day long, he chopped and sawed. The sounds grew louder, as if the entire forest were moaning and suffering. But the crew worked on, as if deaf.
    That night in camp, Shu hardly tasted his rice and fish. After tea, he grabbed his book and lantern and went into the forest. The round faces of stumps caught the moons light as tree sap oozed out and dripped down the bark like teardrops. All he heard was the swish of waves from the beach.
    From his book, he read aloud:
“Along seven clear strings,
Silent pines are sliced by winds
With old songs long adored
That no one performs any more.”
    When he had finished, the leaves above him swayed and rustled, even though the night air hung heavy and still. He trudged deeper into the woods, to the biggest tree there. He had named it Sky-High. Its trunk was twice as