The Price of Compassion by A.B. Michaels

Author:A.B. Michaels [Michaels, A.B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780997520118
Publisher: Red Trumpet Press

Chapter Twenty-Four

“He kill my Bo San without a second thought. Who can do such a thing?”

* * *

—Li Zheng, Chinatown Neighbor

Somewhere a horse was screaming.

Half asleep, Tom didn’t catch on to what was happening, why the bed was sliding, why the walls were groaning. He wasn’t dreaming, was he? He sat up in the pre-dawn gloom, trying to get his bearings, and found he could barely hold on to the shifting frame.

He could hear his apothecary jars breaking downstairs and recognized the metallic crash of his instrument tray on the tiled floor. A cart—his examination table?—seemed to be rolling back and forth, slamming into the cabinets, like a bully venting his rage against the room. Fully awake now, he understood.

Outside his window, whose glass had broken, Tom heard the continuing shrieks of a horse in agony.

As soon as the shaking stopped, he pulled on his trousers, shirt, and shoes, making his way down the stairs to the rooms below. As he’d imagined, they were in shambles. He stepped through the debris to the front door, but the door had twisted in the upheaval and could not be opened. Tom grabbed a towel from the linen shelf, wrapped it around his arm and broke out the glass in the large, cracked storefront window. Shards painted with “Chinatown Free Clinic” and “Pay What You Can” fell to the pavement outside. Stepping over the sill, he saw the full extent of the calamity.

The bully had raged against the world.

On either side of him, Tom’s neighbors were filing out of their respective boarding houses, calling to each other in rapid Cantonese. Are you all right? How is old Mr. Chin, did anyone check on him? What is happening? Li Zheng, who lived three doors down, was standing by his horse, trying to console the panicked beast, but making the situation worse with his own keening cry. Li had been on his way to the farmer’s market on California Street—his daily trek to buy produce to resell to Chinatown’s neighborhood grocers. Except this morning, apparently, as they pulled away from the curb by the livery stable, the street itself had split in half and shifted, opening up a chasm just wide enough to swallow the back legs of the horse into a deep crevice. Still attached to the wagon by its traces and flailing for solid ground that didn’t exist, the horse was being slowly stretched to death and was calling for help the only way it knew how. The animal could not be pulled out, so there was only one way to help it.

“We need a gun! Coeng!” Tom called out. “Please, we have to—”

“No! No! Bo San, she my precious morning!” Li cried, even though it was plain as day his beloved companion was doomed. One man, sizing up the situation, ran back into his room and came out a minute later brandishing a .38-caliber Colt revolver. He stopped at the sight of Li’s hysteria and looked at Tom. It was obvious he didn’t want to cause his countryman any more grief.

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