Читать книгу Dukkha Reverb - Loren W. Christensen - Страница 9

CHAPTER TWO

After a seven-hour nap, a Disney movie, and few more chats with Bobby, we landed in Tokyo for an hour, just long enough for us to grab a bento box for—I don’t know if it was for breakfast, lunch, or dinner—and wash up a little in the restroom. Our last plane is Cathay Pacific Airways, my favorite so far of the three. Bobby was seated a couple rows forward, but he managed to charm the guy next to me into switching seats. It was the boy’s turn to sleep this time, which he’s been doing for the past few hours.

Although I’m enjoying the break from all his questions, the cabin is anything but quiet; the closer we get to Vietnam the louder and more excited the chatter throughout the plane.

Most of the Japanese got off in Tokyo and were replaced by Vietnamese, who now make up about ninety-nine percent of the passengers. Some are probably returning home from abroad and others, like my restroom pal, are likely American citizens making a routine trip to the motherland. I wonder if there might be some on board who haven’t been home since fleeing the invasion by the North in the seventies. If so, I can’t imagine their emotions.

What’s Bobby’s story? I like to think that I can read people but the boy is a challenge. At first, he came across as a charming kid with an abundance of enthusiasm for the martial arts. Then a couple of times I thought he might be working in some capacity for Lai Van Tan and trying to uncover something useful about me and my family. Curiously, he became subdued and evasive when I asked about his parents, and he remained so during the last leg of the flight into Tokyo, and throughout the hour-long layover.

Once we were airborne, flight attendants handed out Arrival/ Departure Cards and Baggage Declaration forms to everyone. The boy helped me with mine and said that I shouldn’t lie about anything because the customs police could be pretty hard. He said they are harder on Vietnamese Americans than on Caucasian Americans, but it’s still important to be honest so as not to give them any reason to harass. Once we completed them, he twisted in his seat and rested the side of his head on the seatback, his face toward me. I had a fleeting thought that he wanted to keep me in his company as he went to sleep. He conked out in a minute and has yet to awaken six hours later. Cute kid, but what’s going on behind that cherubic face?

In the last few minutes, the rising sun has splashed the ocean of clouds with orange, blue, red, and some other colors that only a poet could describe.

I look for a hint of Vietnam in the distance but there are only more clouds and blue. When I was a rookie in uniform, one of my first training coaches was a Vietnam vet. Elmer didn’t talk about it much, and whenever the topic did come up his entire body, especially his face, became so tight that he looked as if his skin might rip open. He did open up a little once and told me about his initial arrival into the country.

Elmer and I were on a stakeout in the middle of the night, sitting in our car and watching the front door of a house half a block down the street. We sat mostly in silence for a couple of hours when out of the blue he just started talking about it.

“We were on our way to Nam. It was nighttime,” he said. “About two in the morning, like now. After the captain announced over the PA that we were entering Vietnam airspace, he shut all the lights off in the cabin, except along the floor. You know, so the VC down below couldn’t see us. It was real spooky in there, and there wasn’t a peep out of any of the troops. Down below we could see an occasional flash outline the mountains. Artillery. I remember how my hands trembled… no, not trembled, they were shaking like crazy, so were my legs, and my head. As we got lower and lower, I could see tracer rounds down below on the ground. Not coming up at us. Moving parallel with us. A firefight.

“I wasn’t the only shaky kid. At one point, someone way in the back of the plane screamed, ‘I ain’t getting fuckin’ off. No way in hell am I getting fuckin’ off the plane.’ Someone yelled at him to shut up and he did. Then the guy next to me started throwing up. He had been all about killing VC all the way over, but when we started descending he threw up. Not in a bag. Down on his chest and lap. He just puked and sat there looking across me toward the window, like he didn’t know he was doing it.

“When the plane was descending, there was a sudden, metallic clattering throughout the aircraft. When all of us fresh-faced, wide-eyed, and scared-shitless boys looked around, we could see a long line of inch-wide holes along the aisle floor next to the small lights. The plane was still too high to hear the weapon that did it, and we didn’t see tracer rounds coming up from the ground, but there was no doubt that all those quarter-sized holes were from big rounds that had punched through the bottom of the plane, passed through all the luggage and structural members in the belly of the plane, and ripped through the floor. Once we landed and the lights were turned on we could see holes in the ceiling where the rounds exited.”

Then Elmer let out a bark of laughter, “It would have been a real pain in the butt if those metal-piercing rounds had punched up through the floor a couple of feet to the right or left of the aisle and had gone through the occupied seats.”

“Ladies and gentleman, please make sure your tables are up and your seats are in the upright…”

The announcement brings me out of my reverie. I can see the ground now, flat, large squares and rectangles of green. Rice paddies? Surreal. Two months ago, I had been planning another trip to Maui. Man, my life would make a great amusement park ride, except some of those hills and curves haven’t been all that amusing.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty,” I say, giving Bobby’s shoulder a nudge. He’s still facing me, not having moved an inch in hours—ahh, to sleep like that again… “Time to wake up and meet the Land of the Rising Dragon.”

He stirs and opens his eyes. “We’re landing?”

“Either that or we’re crashing veeeery slowly.”

He sits up. “Wow, I slept the whole time.” He leans over me and peers out the little window at the panorama of green earth, the brown snaking rivers, and a sprawling city that grows larger as we near the runway.

“Amazing,” I say. “I saw something on the History Channel about a Viet Cong attack on Tan Son Nhat Airport in the late sixties. The footage showed lots of explosions, sputtering small arms fire, and spirals of black smoke. Look. There’s Tan Son Nhat’s runway, and beyond it, some buildings. No explosions. That’s a positive.”

“You nervous?” Bobby asks, perceptibly.

“Nervous? Nah.” Actually, it feels like there is a herd of butterflies having a shit- kickin’ barn dance in my gut. It’s the unknown that’s bothering me. I haven’t a clue what to expect in Saigon: the culture, people, Samuel, Mai, Kim. The ongoing problem with Lai Van Tan.

Mai. I think it was love at first sight with us, though neither of us has said it in so many words. I can feel it, though, in our phone conversations, emails, and webcam chats. Man, the way she looks at me through the screen. The big question is will it continue now that things are more normal than they were in Portland? Sometimes distance can end a relationship and sometimes it can distort feelings, making one think that there is more to it than there is. When we actually see each other in the flesh again, might it dawn on us that there is nothing more between us than that initial crush we had in Portland?

The plane touches down with a bump and a jolt and a screech of rubber. Is that long beige building at the end of the runway the terminal? Samuel won’t be meeting me because he had an emergency to take care of. Mai told me that yesterday on the phone—or maybe it was two days ago. Time is upside right now. It’s either noon or early evening today, or it’s some unknown time tomorrow.

The laughter and chattering in the cabin is quite loud now, the energy palpable. The thrill of coming home, I guess. That butterfly hoedown in my gut is now a bare-knuckle brawl. I can’t tell if it’s excitement, fear, happiness, anxiety, or dread. Dread?

Bobby and I stuff our things into our backpacks as the plane taxis to the gate and a female attendant’s voice gives us the welcome message, first in Vietnamese and then in English. English last. Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore. It’s three-thirty in the afternoon, she says.

“Here,” I say, handing Bobby a slip of paper. “My cell phone number and the cell number of Mai Nguyen, the friend I will be visiting here. Maybe we can have a Coke or something one day.”

“Okay,” he says distractedly, looking through the window at the working ground crew. A moment later, he looks at me as if he just realized what I said. “Oh. Cool.” He takes my number, stuffs it into his pants pocket, and looks back out the window. “Thanks.”

The aisle is jammed with people pulling things from the overheads. “Let me ask you the same question, Bobby. You nervous?”

“Nervous?” He’s still looking out the window at the ground crew.

“You seem nervous. Just wondering.”

“No.” He looks at me and back out the window. “Yeah, maybe a little.”

Don’t know where his head is so I’ll leave him alone.

I’m told that we go to Immigration first, Baggage Claims, and then to Customs. Mai and Samuel both said it’s a fairly smooth hour-long process, sometimes less. That’s going to be one long hour knowing that Mai is waiting for me on the other side of it.

We’re jostling down the aisle now, Bobby in front. He’s carrying a large backpack, so big that I’m surprised they let him carry it on board.

“No hassle about your pack, huh?”

“Almost, just barely made the size limit,” he says over his shoulder. “They really hassle American Vietnamese in Customs, especially if you got a lot of luggage. They want you to pay them something. So all I have is this.”

No luggage. Hmm.

Five minutes later, we’re out of the plane and walking through a jetway to the terminal. My God! The heat is overwhelming in this thing and the breathable air is negligible. My clothes are already sticking to me and my face is dripping. A half dozen people rush by, bumping and jostling us without apology and without slowing. Those crowding in front and those pressing in on us from behind are raising the heat and humidity into the death zone. Plus I’m starting to feel a whole lot claustrophobic. Just when I start to think that there is no end to this hellish tube, and that I just might freak out and start swimming over the top of everyone, I see people bunching up at what must be the exit point.

A minute later we’re regurgitated out into a modern-looking terminal, where the heat is happily a few degrees lower than in that tube. Didn’t expect shiny tile floors, massive cement pillars, chrome and steel all about, and everything as clean as a whistle. This isn’t the same Tan Son Nhat Airport I saw in the documentary.

“We need to go over there,” Bobby says, pointing toward a series of counters. “Immigration.”

Glad I’m with him. The heat, the rush of people, and all the instructional signs in Vietnamese is a bit much.

“There aren’t many people right now,” he says, “so we should get through without a problem.” He leads the way, jerking his head right and left like my cat does on a windy day. Looking for what?

After about thirty minutes of working our way to the front of the line, two stern-faced officials light upon Bobby. The one wearing impossibly thick Coke-bottle glasses looks over his passport as if searching for microscopic flaws in the paper. Satisfied, but looking unhappy about it, he hands it to the younger man who examines it even more closely. I’m assuming the scrutiny is because the boy is young and traveling alone. After responding to several sharply worded questions, Bobby retrieves a folded sheet of typing paper and hands it to Coke-Bottle Glasses. The man looks under the top fold, then wads whatever is underneath—I’m guessing money—into his palm and quickly stuffs it into his trouser pocket. Both men speak sharply to the boy, all the while he responds with several quick head bows. The younger officer slaps the passport onto the counter top, dismissing him with a jerk of his head.

“I’ll wait for you over there,” Bobby says tightly. “It shouldn’t take you long.”

I start to ask him if everything is okay but Coke-Bottle Glasses asks me in English to step up to the counter. He thumbs through my passport, checks my ID, asks why I’m in Saigon, and how long I will be. I tell him that I’m visiting friends, skipping the part that one is my father and the other is kind of a girlfriend— I think, I hope. He nods, stamps the pages and hands the passport back to me. “Go get bags now and go Customs.”

“It’s easier when you’re white,” Bobby says bitterly as I walk over.

“Hey, look around, dude. I’m the minority here. It’s probably because you’re a kid traveling alone.”

He shrugs and flips his backpack over his shoulder. “Come on. I’ll show you where you get your luggage. You’re getting picked up, right?”

I shoulder my pack. “Yes.” Did I tell him that? “Your parents picking you up?”

He nods distractedly as he leads me into a throng of people, past a food court with a myriad of smells, and finally to a carousel where I spot my two burgundy bags on the floor. He picks up one to carry for me.

“Please call me,” I say, as we jostle our way through another crowd of sweating people. “I’ll buy you a bubble tea.”

He makes a face. “I hate that stuff. Don’t worry, I will call. But for phở.”

I look around waiting for the Boogey Man to jump out from behind one of these giant pillars. Maybe I shouldn’t have watched those war documentaries before I came over. Or maybe Bobby is making me paranoid: sitting next to me on the plane, no luggage, odd behavior. And the way he’s been looking around since we debarked, like he, too, is expecting the Boogey Man to leap out. Or Lai Van Tan.

“phở it is,” I say.

It takes a couple of minutes for us to snake through the throng before the boy points at a sign ahead of us. “Okay, there’s Customs. Hopefully, it will be easy for me this time.”

We wait in line for another thirty minutes in which I drop four, maybe five pounds from sweating. It’s so damn hot and humid it’s funny. Actually, it’s not funny; it’s miserable. Bobby goes first again, and this time he breezes through. My trip through is uneventful as well, though it was a little embarrassing when the pretty girl smiled at my underwear, new stuff I purchased before I left.

Bobby and I walk a few feet away from the crowd to say our goodbyes. “Good meeting you,” I say, shaking his hand. “You’re a nice young man. I’d be proud to have you as a student.”

“Thank you,” he beams. “I’ll take you up on that. My ride is at the far end.”

I don’t know if it’s my imagination, but suddenly the invisible weight Bobby was carrying earlier is gone. Just like that.

We walk silently side by side out onto the sidewalk where a mob of people look anxiously at us to see if we’re their loved ones. I start to scan the crowd looking for—

“Sam.”

I freeze. I know that voice.

“Over here, Sam. To your right.”

At nearly six feet, Mai towers over everyone, many of whom are staring at her unabashedly. She’s behind several people so all I can see is her cascading raven-black hair framing a face that would make a monk question his life choices. What sends my heart rate so high that I’m in danger of needing a defibrillation are those exquisite brown eyes, their hint of elongation. Even from fifteen feet away they electrify each and every nerve up and down my spine.

Bobby’s voice comes from somewhere off to my side. “Dude! Is that tall chick the one you’re coming to see? Daaaamn!”

Mai snakes her way to the front of the crowd only to have another group move in between us. She laughs as she slips around them and resumes heading toward me.

“Excellent choice,” I barely hear the boy say. “Her legs in those jeans go on and on.”

“Mai,” I half whisper as she nears.

“I’m out of here, Sam,” Bobby says. “I’ll call you in a couple days.” He sings, “Have fuuuun.”

“Sure,” I say, without moving my eyes from Mai’s.

Mai and I lightly grip each others arms. She warned me on the phone that we can’t kiss or hug because it’s still considered taboo by most.

“Hi,” I whisper.

You know, people joke about those romance novels, but man-oh-man, it’s just as those writers described. The room really does spin and sounds really do muffle.

“Sam. I am so happy you have come,” she says with a slight nod, acting properly for those watching us. “Did you have a good trip?” I can see the green specks in her eyes now.

“Yes, thank you.” I so want to maul her. “It’s an incredibly long trip.” That’s all, just maul and maul and maul. “I hope you didn’t have to wait long.” And maul. “Time is a bit confusing to me right now. I’m not sure if we were on time or not.” Maul.

She smiles. “Yes, you were on time. It is five-ten in the afternoon.”

We had emailed each other dozens of pictures and did the face-time thing on the computer, but seeing her again in person just about sucks the breath out of my throat. Every doubt I had is sucked out with it.

“Mai,” I say, it sounding almost like a sob. “I am so happy to see you. I cannot express how much…” Am I tearing up?

Her eyes penetrate mine and tickle the inside of my skull. She nods almost imperceptibly, whispering, “I know. I thought this day would never come. My…” she looks down for a second, and then lifts her eyes to meet mine. “My heart has hurt for all these weeks. But now… it sings.”

My face muscles spasm into what can only be a goofy-looking smile. “Mine too.”

Oh man, if the guys on the Detectives floor could see me now, their teasing would be relentless. Hey Sam, is that your heart I hear singing?

I don’t bother wiping away my tears. “I can’t believe that I’m actually here—”

Shouts. Movement from my left.

“Something is happening,” Mai says, gripping my arm.

A woman’s scream. Another. The mass of people that had been waiting for arrivals press back from the disturbance. From where I’m standing it looks like… a fight?

When the crowd begins backing in our direction, I pull Mai protectively behind me. In an instant, my inner cop kicks in and I’m back on my beat working my way through a crowd that has surrounded a street fight.

“Sam, no,” Mai says in my ear, her hands on my shoulders. “Do not interfere here.”

I stop. “Whoops. I was on autopilot there for a second.”

“I do not know that word but it is very important that you not interfere. The police here are not the same—”

“Bobby?” I say, spotting him through an opening in the crowd. The boy is struggling with two men, both dressed in dark slacks and white overshirts. “What the…”

“You know him?”

“Yes, Bobby Phan.” They each have one of his arms, gripping hard as the boy writhes to get free. “We rode together all the way over. Who are those men?”

“I saw them when I was waiting. I noticed because they looked so serious and everyone else so happy. And they looked at every young face.”

“Lai Van Tan’s men?” But why would they attack him? Was he supposed to lead me to them?

“I do not—”

“Bobby!” Female voice coming a few feet from my left. “Bobby!” There, pushing through the crowd. A teenage girl, orange blouse, black satin pants.

The men are pulling Bobby in opposite directions. If they were stronger they would pull his arms out of their sockets. I take a step in that direction.

“Mai, I just can’t stand here and let them—”

Bobby launches a beautifully executed roundhouse kick into the face of the man on his left and, without returning his foot to the sidewalk, hook kicks his heel into the side of the other man’s neck.

“Oh, man!” I blare, shocked at the sight of the men stumbling back, one clutching his blood-spurting nose, the other swaying drunkenly as he reaches feebly toward his neck. “Bobby!” I shout, but he doesn’t hear me. He grabs his backpack and dashes for the girl’s extended hand. She leads him quickly through the crowd, and they’re gone.

The nosed-kicked man shouts something that I wouldn’t understand even if it wasn’t muffled by his hand that’s holding his nose in place.

“What should we do, Mai? I’m out of my element here. I don’t—”

The man shouts something again at the crowd and begins pushing his way through the people who have closed the path that Bobby and the girl took.

“Wait, Sam” Mai says urgently. “Do not do anything.”

I start to say that we have to find Bobby, but Mai’s raised palm hushes me as she strains to hear what the man who ate the neck kick is telling those holding him up.

“Okay,” she says. “These men are not Lai Van Tan. They are canh sát, policemen. He says the boy is… what is the English word? He leave parents. He run…”

“Bobby is a runaway? A runaway?”

“Yes, that is the word, runaway. Policeman say he leave his home without permission. Canh sát were trying to, uh, catch him for his father in California.”

So that’s why his demeanor changed when I asked about his parents. That’s why he was acting so suspiciously after the plane landed and while we were processing out. He was watching for the police.

“Can we go look for him, Mai? I want to see that he’s okay.”

“Yes, we are going that way anyway.” She picks up one of my bags.

She leads me around the crowd and over to the curb where there are lines of parked taxis of every make and color, and a mad horde of drivers calling to us and reaching for our arms as we pass. He could be in any one of these cars and—

“Sam!” Bobby’s voice penetrates the street noise.

Mai points toward a moving car. “There.”

Bobby is pushing his face out the back side window of a blue taxi that’s jockeying to get into the flow of passing vehicles. He waves at me, and puts his thumb to his ear and his little finger to his mouth.