Looking out upon the sunlit street from the musty confines of what was rapidly beginning to feel like a prison to him, Jewell balked at the thought of even three more days spent shuffling papers. He might as well just be locked up in the iron cell that occupied one corner of the building, the place where illegals were held while awaiting deportation. After Porter’s retirement things might be different, but at the moment, two days felt like an eternity.
“It’s a laundry mark, sir,” Jewell said. “How long might it possibly take to pursue it in the Chinese community?” He looked from the street over to where Porter sat waiting out the remaining hours until his retirement. “Besides, they’re Chinese. Just where would they have been able to go to report one of their number missing?”
Porter reached for his new watch again, looked longingly at it, as if willing the minutes to go by more quickly. “Immigrant Inspectors are not to involve themselves in local civil matters.”
“Perhaps you ought to have thought of that before you sent me down to collect the body, sir.”
Porter gave a sigh so violent that for a split second Jewell thought he might be having a seizure. Looking at his watch a third time, the older man said, “If only Clute were here. He’d know what to do.”
Clute. The man Jewell had been sent to replace. The fellow whose abrupt resignation had reportedly been greeted within the hallowed halls of the Treasury building back east in Washington City by a satisfied and protracted silence.
Clute, who had an answer for everything. Clute, whose efficiency and commitment to his profession had allowed Porter to commence his life as a pensioner a couple of years early in everything but name. Clute, who understood and respected the Celestials who Immigration Inspectors were supposed to be encouraging to return to their homes in China. Clute, who had left his letter of resignation on Porter’s desk and promptly vanished.
“But Mr. Clute isn’t here, Mr. Porter. I am. In scarce two days’ time you’re to be pensioned off. In the three months I’ve been here you’ve had me hard at it, mastering the intricacies of our particular bureaucracy. This is an opportunity for me to gain some experience working outside of our office, while I still have you as a source of advice. Your sagacity and good counsel will be sorely missed once you’ve returned home.” That last part was sheer flattery. Porter had done little over the past three months save arrive late, take long lunches, and leave early. “Why not make the most of this opportunity while I still have you here?”
At first Jewell thought he might have overplayed his hand. Porter sat there staring at his watch for a number of heartbeats. At length he asked, “Where’s the body, anyway?”
Jewell blinked once while Porter’s question registered. “They need a day to release it. Paperwork, I was told.”
“You’re hell-bent on following this up, aren’t you, lad?”
“In this man’s shoes I would want my mother to know what became of me.” When Porter said nothing, he continued, “It’s the Christian thing to do, sir.”
Porter gave a loud rumble that might have been a chuckle or it might have been a grunt. “The Chinese,” he said slowly, “seem to know very little of either Christianity or sentimentality. In China, life is a cheap commodity. This fellow’s family likely wrote him off the day he set out for Gum Shan”-he used the Cantonese name for America; it translated as “Gold Mountain” in English. After pursing his lips and squinting at Jewell for thirty seconds, Porter finally said, “If I forbid you to pursue this, you’ll just wait out my remaining days and then set about it on your own anyway, won’t you?” Rather than wait for a reply, Porter sighed and looked at his watch again. “You have one day, young man; all of today and till 12 noon on the morrow. I expect you here not one jot later. After all, there’s still the matter of the collection of that body.”
When Jewell began to thank him, the older man cut him short.
“I can spare you the rest of today and tomorrow morning, but nothing further. Do I make myself clear?”
Jewell savored the feel of the sun on his face as he headed downhill in the general direction of Chinatown. No clouds today; the sky bright blue. Off away to the west across the Sound the jagged snow-capped peaks of the Olympics showed themselves. Gulls reeled and swooped overhead, looking for their next meal.
Taking the Skid Road, Jewell wove his way in and out of the foot and wagon traffic to be expected on so glorious a June afternoon. Known alternately as “the Mill Road” and “Yesler’s Drive,” the Skid Road was the first (and, to that point, only) paved street in town.
Built at public expense at the direction of former mayor Henry Yesler in order to more easily get freshly cut logs downhill to his huge sawmill on Front Street, the Skid Road ran straight down Seattle’s steep western slope all the way from the timberline where it crested First Hill to the fill-dirt of the waterfront. Surprisingly, Yesler’s primitive plank pavement did its work, serving as the “skid” that gave the avenue its name, and keeping logs being sent down the hill from sticking fast in the ever-present Seattle mud.
Such a reliable thoroughfare quickly sprouted residences and businesses running along both its sides. The Skid Road already boasted saloons, general stores, two millinery shops, a carpenter, a tinker, a hostelry, a cobbler on the corner of Fifth, and, at the foot of the hill, the elaborate cornice work and hand-carved façade of the three-sided, three-story Occidental Hotel stood on the corner where James Street dead-ended into it right in front of Yesler’s massive mill.
This growth had made the Skid Road the anchor of Seattle’s burgeoning downtown, and had spilled over onto neighboring streets, such as the spot a block to the north where the significantly pious whitewashed bulk of Trinity Church rose. As far as Jewell knew, Chinese were not welcome within. Furthermore, not a single business lining Seattle’s busiest street was Chinese-owned.
The first Chinese to come to the area during the labor shortage of the late 1850s had been welcomed by Seattle’s white settlers. When businesses began to fail in response to the panic of 1873 and available jobs dried up, Chinese laborers, always willing to work hard for lower pay than white men, became less welcome. Anti-Chinese riots periodically broke out across the Northwest, culminating in the Knights of Labor successfully running nearly two hundred Chinese out of Seattle aboard a steamer bound for Victoria only three years earlier.
In the time since then, most of the Chinese still residing in Seattle had been pushed out to the south end, clinging to a few blocks between the businesses downtown and the Duwamish mud flats that ran east from Elliott Bay right up to the foot of the craggy, flat-topped escarpment that the locals called Beacon Hill. Washington Street bordered Chinatown on the north, and since the mud flats were just spitting distance south from it, Seattle’s Chinese population of between three and four hundred found itself crowded into the narrow space between.
While many of the neighborhood’s structures were single-story frame affairs like most of those occupying the slopes of other areas such as Capitol Hill, First Hill, Belltown, and Magnolia, Chinatown’s buildings doubled as both businesses and tenements, with living quarters in the back for both owner-operator and staff. The Chinese had been known to sleep ten men and more to a room. According to the records with which Porter had kept him so busy, no less than twenty-seven Chinese houses occupied the block of Washington Street that ran between Second and Third alone.