When Kid Jack first passed their shack in a cowboy hat the Qian clan couldn't hardly tell that he weren't a white man. His skin 官-pale, the eyes . . . strange. They almost flashed in the gloaming, like a cat's. It was only as he neared that the almonds of 'em appeared, more like Bubba Qian's than those of the 鬼佬 under whom he'd bent his back nailing railroads' tracks.
Jack didn't sound like any Indian they'd known, either. They couldn't understand his words at all, at first. Everything emerged from his smile as one ghastly drawling croak, the sort of a man who hasn't spoken for too long. But that soon cleared enough for legible introduction, and there was a different music to it: tones rising in all the wrong places, as when Ma Qian attempted English whose meaning escaped her.
They offered him vegetable soup from their own crops' providence. There wasn't much question of it: night was cast and there wasn't another soul for miles. It was the Christian thing to do. To their surprise, he produced fresh rabbit, a fine addition to their supper.
Bubba was no fool, but gained a measure of ease when Kid Jack joined his family in prayer and still more at his civilized manner in consuming the meal. Jack spoke nothing of himself but seemed to delight in the tale of the three Qians' journey to this life. He laughed just once, though, and that was when his eyes met those of the daughter, Grace. She was taken with him, too, and of the perfect age.
To Bubba's great relief and confusion, Jack declined evening quarter. He returned inside a day with an offer: four weeks of work for consideration to court Bubba's daughter. They could grow to know each other as men in that time, and as a man he would honor whatever verdict the father saw fit to render.
What he lacked in skill, Jack doubled in vigor. He listened, learned, and tanned in toil below the sun. By the end of the first week their productivity had increased tremendously, and Bubba couldn't help but compare this red cousin to the son of whose apprenticeship he'd once dreamed. The work now a second nature, their exchanges loosened.
It was as a mirror would speak: Bubba learned nothing of Jack, and Jack everything of him. Bubba enjoyed it too much to notice until Ma apprised him of this late in the second week, and so disturbed was Bubba by the epiphany that he at once bolted from bed and checked on Grace, safely asleep.
Jack, in the shack, was not only awake but standing when Bubba entered. He spoke now with no croak or misplaced lilt, in perfect Chinese.
"With apologies for presumption, I perceive by your grave manner that you rightly regard me with paternal reservation. This is the correct path of any thoughtful and courageous man, and I assure you of my utmost respect for these matters, as well as the sincerity of my word in all things. Whatever I may do within common reason that should bring you peace, simply ask and consider it done."
Humbled by the baldness of his own intrusion, it took Bubba a moment to ask Jack how he had come to know this language.
The Indian explained his talent by illustration. Beginning in complete Chinese, then peppering in an English word here and there, and at last with a seamless transition into the full phraseology of the latter, he expressed an ability to smoothly glide across all tongues of man. By the time Jack finished, Bubba realized that they had been speaking not English but Chinese in the fields for days: the transition now clarified in acceleration had been imperceptible to him in Jack's slow introduction of it over the course of a fortnight.
"If you are a demon," cried Bubba, "out with you at once! In God's name, I demand this!"
The creature proffered a hand, supinated. "You mistake my nature. If you feel my arm, you will feel a pulse. If you cut me, I will bleed. I came to you as a man, and as a man you may destroy me. But I have come to know you as a man, and I find only creation in your nature. You have seen many moons, and your body is nearly broken by this hard and honest life. It may betray you at any time, and your crops and sustenance are at its mercy. I know this troubles you. With your permission, I may convey my gift toward our work, and we can together endeavor to nourish your family in such a decisive manner as to bring you a peace that you have long ago forgotten."
Jack's voice calmed Bubba, and he began to consider the offer, but as he opened his mouth to speak he realized with horror that he knew not in what language. "I cannot know peace in the face of this insanity! If you are, as you say, sincere in all things, then reveal to me what you are."
He awoke with no recollection of what had next transpired and hastened immediately to the fields, past glances from an idle Ma and Grace. Around Jack, plainly demonstrated in the sunlight, formed a congregation of rabbits. He was speaking to them in a language Bubba did not understand. Jack waved him over with a grin. The rabbits eyed him with interest but did not flee even as he came to stand beside them.
"Father," said Jack, "in the following manner we may effect a trade to our mutual benefit: The rabbits will help themselves to your crops, and you shall welcome them to it, refraining from treating them as pests or otherwise attempting to deter them. In exchange, they will offer one of their own for your consumption each fortnight. The crops shall remain sufficiently plentiful for your vegetable soup, and in this way the women of your family shall receive greater variety in nourishment."
Before Bubba could respond, one rabbit leapt into Jack's arms. He snapped its neck.
By the fourth week, the enterprise had grown even as Jack's honest labor and convivial discourse continued alongside Bubba. So delicious and nourishing had been the rabbit that the Qian clan welcomed an equivalent deal with the deer. Something in Bubba screamed, but he ignored it as noise. If ever he understood the language of this instinct, it surely was now lost to him.
That night, Bubba awoke to the howling of wolves. From a distance in the moonlight he spotted them beside the shack. Jack crouched before them, speaking in hushed tones. He stepped into the shack to reemerge with the carcass of a buck, which the wolves dragged away.
All but one. One wolf offered his neck to Jack, and the rending of flesh that ensued stirred Bubba from caution. To his scream, Jack looked up from his meal and spread a bloody grin. His eyes were not a man's after all: they flashed the yellow of a tapetum lucidum as he called out to Bubba, calmly.
"Look what we have created together! Come, Humble Father! Come and see!"
Animated by a devilish puppetry, Bubba found his legs were moving him on their own toward the abomination. He opened his mouth to protest - or scream, or cry - but found no voice for such pleas. Instead, he emitted the same ghastly croak he'd first heard from Jack.
"What is your verdict, Humble Father?" cackled Jack, sinking his fangs into the mangled, twitching wolf. "What of my future with Grace?"
Bubba could only walk closer; in terror, his croaks grew louder, and now his croaks drew a murder of crows. They spoke to him as a chorus, in a language he did not realize he had learned. Just one question, over and over, back and forth between each bird.
"May we consume you, Father Qian?"
"May we consume you, Father Qian?"
"May we consume you, Father Qian?"
Jack howled with laughter, his eyes' glow growing to fill Bubba's entire field of vision as he drew helplessly closer. Fear stripped his mind completely save for the one word Jack had taught him, subtly at first, then over and over until he could remember no other.
"May we consume you, Father Qian?"
He tried again to scream but could only croak, and at last remembered what the croak meant.
"YAAAAAAS!"