Wishbones by Cherie Priest

Author:Cherie Priest [Priest, Cherie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: tor.com
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

There’s a Chinaman here in camp, a small fellow who looks like he might be a thousand years old. Someone told me he came from out west, out across the frontier—someone said he’ d come east from California, but I can’t imagine why.

He says he’s no Chinaman, and he seems to get offended if you call him one, even though I don’t think he understands one word of English out of three.

I don’t know his name or what he’s doing here, except that he runs errands between the officers. He washes pots and clothes for the Confederates when there’s water to wash them, and I guess that’s not strange since there aren’t any women around.

The little old fellow is mostly quiet. He mostly listens and keeps his head low, not wanting to draw any attention to himself. Henry says he looks strange and wise, and I don’t know if that’s right or not, but the Chinaman sure has these black, sharp eyes that always seem to know something.

He came up on us, the other night while we were talking about the thing that eats the bones out back. Like I told it, I don’t know how much of our talk he understands—but he got the idea. He saw our fear, and he watched the way we pointed and whispered at the sheds out back.

One of the guards heard us too, and he told us to shut ourselves up and be quiet, we were just trying to start trouble. He was complaining how we didn’t need any more trouble than we’ d already got, and he was right, but that didn’t change anything.

When he was gone, the Chinaman approached us with small steps and a hunched back that bowed when he tiptoed forward. He nodded, yes. He nodded like he understood. He pointed one long, wrinkled finger towards the sheds where the dead are stored and where they wait to be buried.

“Gashadokuro,” he said. It was a funny, long word filled with sharpedges.

We stared up at him, blank faces not comprehending very well. He lookedback at us, frustrated that he could not make us comprehend. “Gashadokuro,”he said again, pointing harder.

And then I nodded, trying to repeat the piece of foreign tongue and probably mangling it past recognition. I tried to convey my realization, that yes—the thing was there, and yes—it had a name, and it was a foreign name from across the country, and across the ocean, because white men like us wouldn’t know what to call it.

Gashadokuro.

We can’t even say it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.