Max Brand

Clung

Warsaw 2019

Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 47

CHAPTER 1

THE Lord having made Clung and placed him where he did, the rest followed by the inevitable law of matter-of-course. Nobody understood this. Clung least of all. The whites said he was “just a plain, no good Chink, growing up for a rope necklace;” the Chinese said he was “possessed of a devil.” Clung probably thought that both parties were right. He never said so, but then Clung was not given to words. The whites would probably have lynched the boy save for two things: first, Clung confined his attentions to the Mexicans; second, everyone had a warm spot in his heart for old Li Clung, the boy’s father, who ran the laundry in that Arizona town. In the Southwest they will tell you that when a Chinaman is good he’s not too good to bear watching, and when a Chinaman is bad–well, he’s awful. Clung was bad. He killed men. Everybody knew his record, or at least a part of it, but for the sake of old Li they postponed the inevitable hanging. Nevertheless, if Clung had been built in a different way, or had lived in a different place–

The lot of a weakly man in the Southwest is peculiarly unfortunate. There is no place for him; people wonder why he exists. He’s a public encumbrance–an eyesore. Clung was weakly. For a Chinese he was tall; among whites he was of middle height; but he was exceedingly frail. His hands were like the hands of a woman, small, transparent almost. It was a graceful thing to watch that delicate hand against the ugly red-brown of a whiskey glass. His wrist was so slenderly made that if a strong man had grasped him there the bones would have crunched together.

Obviously he was a half-breed of some sort–perhaps his mother was Spanish, though old Li would never speak of that. She must have been white; otherwise there was no accounting for the fine, pale complexion of Clung. His eyes, too, were not slanted, but wide, gentle, brown. His hair was black and as smooth as silk.

Being weakly, Clung was early forced to find something which would take the place of physical strength, because without protection of some sort he was sure to perish early. For this was the Southwest, and the border was in a continual need of taming. Clung had not far to look before he found out what he must do. He became expert in the use of weapons.

Nothing is very really mastered unless it is first at least commenced in childhood. A man must begin to learn acrobatics before he’s ten. The same thing is true of language study and other things–amongst them of guns. Clung began using revolvers when he was hardly more than an infant. His father, old Li, pampered the boy; he used to show off his accomplishments to his patrons. When he was eight years old, Clung had a little twenty-two rifle. And he practiced with the weapons continually. Li paid the bills and Clung banged off countless rounds of ammunition. The cowpunchers showed him many ways of carrying a gun and how to pull it, and whirl it, and shoot with a quick turn. Of course he could never have been great with a gun if he had not had the instinct for it; anyone in the Southwest will tell you that. A man may practice all his life, but unless he has an instinct for shooting quick and sure he will never be a startling success near the border.

Those early times were golden days for Clung. The patrons teased him and talked with him; old Li adored him. Little Clung, when he was not playing with his knives or guns, sat cross-legged on a table near the front door of the laundry, and kept his blank brown eyes fixed on the passers-by, and smiled the faint, faint smile of the Orient. He always wore his pig-tail twisted in a funny knot on top of his head, and Li kept it tied at the end with a ribbon of black silk. When he turned his head, with one of his catlike motions, the ribbon flounced foolishly from side to side. Then the golden days ended.

Clung had grown up; he possessed his full portion of slender, erect height; the cow-punchers were beginning to ask him when he would open a laundry of his own, and Clung, in place of answering, would wave those fragile hands unmeant for work, and smile that faint smile of the Orient. Then one day a stranger came to town and entered the laundry. He was a Mexican of much importance; he had two followers in the street on horseback. The Mexican did not know Clung. How should he? Neither did he know that after the midday meal Clung loved to sit in the sun on the little table near the door, with his legs folded cat-wise under him, and sleep, and smile into the sun while he slept. Also, Clung did not like to be roused from that afternoon siesta. Of all this, however, the Mexican was ignorant. He came in with the sun flashing on his silver braid, and started to ask Clung a question.

It was not answered, so he snapped Clung on the end of the nose with his riding quirt.

It must have hurt exceedingly, but Clung merely opened slowly those wide, brown, gentle eyes, and his smile never altered. He looked beyond the Mexican and into a thousand years of space. It angered the Mexican to see that impassive face. He reached out to grip Clung by the shoulder and shake him into complete wakefulness. Then it happened.

Before that hand touched the Chinese shoulder a knife appeared from under the silken tunic of Clung, and the knife blade passed in and out of the palm of the Mexican’s hand. There is no place on the body more sensitive than the palm of the hand. Perhaps that’s why school-mistresses whip refractory children there. Strong men have been known to weep when hurt in the palm of the hand. The Mexican screamed with pain, leaped back, and drew his revolver with his uninjured hand.

There was a white man in the laundry at the moment, and he swore in court afterwards that the gun of the Mexican was out of the holster before Clung made a move. Then a gun appeared, as if conjured out of thin air, and the Mexican dropped in a heap with a bullet fairly between the eyes. His followers started shooting from the road; Clung killed them neatly and with dispatch; a bullet through the head of each.

And he remained sitting on his table by the door. The marshal found him there, smiling into the sun. The judge cautioned him, declared it self-defense, and dismissed the case.

CHAPTER 2

In the Southwest any man can be excused for one shooting match, provided that the other party is Mexican; but a second affair causes people to frown, and a third is almost sure to bring down the heavy hand of the law. Now, within a week Clung killed his fourth man; within ten days he had killed his fifth.

Always he was apprehended sitting cross-legged on the little table at the door of the laundry, drowsing after dinner; always his excuses were allowable; always the Mexicans were the aggressors. They were avengers come to wipe out the blood-debt. They waylaid Clung and fell upon him at weird times and in strange places, and they were killed suddenly, neatly, with bullets through the head.

This caused his marksmanship to be more admired than ever, but the cowpunchers ceased to linger at the table of Clung and he was no longer asked to show his skill with the guns, shooting at fantastic targets. This caused Clung to wonder. Finally he went to Li with one of his rare questions, but Li merely raised his calloused hands to the witnessing gods and shook his head.

The silent feud went on. The Mexicans had marked Clung, and now and again they came in parties or one at a time, heated with mescal and eager to win a great name. They departed again the worse for wear, and Clung still sat cross-legged on the little table near the laundry door. This continued; men began to refer to Clung as a bad ‘un.

In the end it was sure to result in tragedy to someone more important than a Mexican, but the fatal day delayed. Li grew older, more withered, more like a yellow mask of grinning comedy; Clung continued to bask every day in the sun.

And so it came to a spring day when the air was cool and a little crisp and gently fanned the cheek of Clung where he sat on the table. He raised his head and saw a triangle of wild geese winging north; their honking dropped to him, now a single cry, now a faintly jangled chorus, wind-blown; the smile went out on the lips of Clung.

He uncurled his slender legs and asked money of Li, and received it, for the old Chinese had forgotten how to refuse. So Clung went out and returned with a little Victrola. It played with a wheeze and a rattle, but nevertheless it kept a rhythm. Clung brought in an Indian girl and in the evenings he learned to dance.

He practiced diligently, silently, for hours and hours, until the girl would drop to a chair, exhausted. Having mastered the steps, he wound his pig-tail in the most obscure of knots and put on store clothes–the clothes of the whites–and rode many miles to a country dance.

Now, as anyone from the Southwest will tell you, this was very rashly done. Men were loth to touch Clung, however. They would as soon have put hands on a rattler coiled to strike.

It seemed that tragedy would be averted again from the path of Clung and the day of reckoning postponed, for it chanced that there was in the crowd a marshal exceedingly wise in the ways of the border. He came to Clung and spoke softly–with his hand on the butt of his gun. He explained that Chinese were not welcome at dances of whites. The dreamy smile returned to the lips of Clung. He tried to shove his hands into the alternate sleeves, but was prevented by the unaccustomed cuffs of the white man.

He stared about the hall until he saw a girl laughing at him. She had pale yellow hair and the light burned like a fire in it, and her throat was white, and the bosom that curved out below it was as keen as snow. Clung turned very pale; he was whiter than the whitest man in that room. He managed to wriggle his fingers into the alternate cuffs; he bowed to the marshal, and turned on his heel.

According to all rules of man and the unwritten laws of the Southwest, the thing should have ended there, but where the laws of the Southwest leave off, John Barleycorn often begins. He stepped in here in the person of Josiah Boyce.

Now, Josiah wore guns because everyone else wore them, but he had never been known to use them on even a rabbit. He probably wouldn’t have known what to do with them if they had been naked and loaded in his hands. Ordinarily Josiah was a sleepy fellow who sat in corners twisting his long moustaches and looking out upon the world from beneath shaggy brows with moist, pathetic eyes. But when he had a few drinks of whiskey under his belt Josiah became a noisy nuisance. He was always either extremely confidential, going about and assuring everyone that they knew him and that he was their friend; or else he waxed boisterous and insisted on telling greybearded jests. He was in his boisterous mood this night. Unfortunately he forgot for a single second about the record of Clung. The moment the marshal turned his back, Josiah rushed up, clapped his hand on the shoulder of Clung, and whirled him around as if he were a top. He started to bellow out that the damned Chink ought to be whipped, and that if no one else would do it, he’d take the job on his own hands.

Everyone laughed, except the marshal, who started on the run. Clung was smiling, and the marshal had seen that smile before. What Clung really saw was not Josiah at all, but the convulsed mirth of the girl with the yellow hair. The laughter, apparently, thrilled Josiah with joy. He saw himself at last in the role of a successful entertainer, and grasped Clung by his pig-tail, preparatory to dragging him out of the hall.

The marshal was only a step away when this happened–only a step away–one step too late. He arrived just in time to receive the toppling body of what had been Josiah Boyce in his arms. Clung vanished through the door.

They started a half-hearted pursuit, but Clung rode one of the best horses in Arizona and his weight was so light that the marshal knew he had no chance of wearing down the fugitive. He called off the ride and went back to town to have Clung outlawed. In the meantime Clung cut back by a sharp detour and went to the house of his father.

Li sat on a cushion on the floor with a taper-light rising high on either side of him. Across his knees a large volume was opened; he wore on his head a little black silk cap with a crimson tassel. Clung closed the door softly and stood very conscious of his store clothes–waiting.

When Li finally looked up, it was with a slow glance, starting at the boots of Clung, and the further the glance traveled up the person of Clung, the paler Li became until he looked like parchment which has first been yellowed with age and then bleached in the sun. Then he got up without a word and went to a little safe at the side of the room. He opened it and took out a bag of money–a canvas bag plumply filled.

“It is all I have, my son,” said Li. “Go!”

Clung took it in his hand, weighed it, and slipped it into his pocket. He seemed very excited and his nostrils were quivering, so that he was not a pleasant sight to see.

“I have killed a white man,” he said.

“It is true,” nodded Li.

They talked much more perfect English than the whites around them, and Li, for some reason, would never talk their native tongue with his son.

“Father,” said Clung, “I am not well about the stomach.”

The old Chinese ran to him swiftly, making a little sound of dole, a sort of guttural whine.

“No,” said Clung, “they have not hurt me, except here.”

And he pressed both slender hands against his breast.

He said: “I have seen a white woman and I am hungry with a hunger that food will not fill up; and I am weak and sick here.”

Old Li cried out in Chinese, a harsh wail.

“Mix herbs for me,” said Clung rapidly. “Make me strong before I leave, for I have far to go. They will never leave my trail.”

“Oh, my son,” moaned Li, “there is no drink of herbs that will help you. No water will put out the fire of woman; it will burn you to ashes; it will make you hollow.”

“You,” said Clung in his soft voice, “are not like me. No woman could make you burn or make you hollow. Why am I different?”

“Your mother was white,” said Li.

“I am neither white nor yellow,” said Clung. “Father, I am damned two ways. I go.”

He stood stiff against the door, one hand raised high over his head; old Li stiffened in the same manner. Then Clung turned and caught the knob of the door. He swung it open and then closed it again. He turned on Li.

“Your eyes have told me one thing and your tongue another,” he said. “Which lie shall I hold to, father?”

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