Return to Dust (23 page)

Hank and I shared a quick look. Karen hadn't mentioned any encounter with Tony, but she might have paid it no mind—perhaps forgot it. I'd have to question her about that.

Her words finished, Aunt Marie sighed, settled into the sofa, her arms sagging by her side. It was as if she'd weathered some awful tempest and now, a surprised survivor, she had little energy to move. Her face caved in, deep wrinkles around her mouth, her eyes wet. She was gazing at the redundant watercolors of Vietnam done by Phoung, a child's delightful fantasy of a Vietnam she'd never seen. Aunt Marie's eyes moved from one to the next—a bamboo sway bridge, a cluttered market square in Saigon, a towering banyan tree, and a yellow river surrounded by bamboo groves—and she started to cry.

Hank moved next to her, wrapped his arms around her.

“Thank you for telling me this,” I told her. “But please don't worry about this. And tell your son it doesn't matter. Nothing happened. He simply sat there.”

“But something did happen,” she insisted, making eye contact. “The woman maybe was murdered.”

“But not by your son,” I answered. “Or husband.”

“Who will believe that?”

“I do.”

For the first time she showed a hint of a smile. “You do?” A tick in her voice.

I nodded—and I did. I saw question in Hank's eyes, but I smiled at Aunt Marie. “I do,” I repeated.

She rose, bowed, and returned to the kitchen.

Hank was watching me closely. “That was nice of you.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But I don't believe Tony or Willie could kill Marta. They come from a family that's seen too much grief from killing, no? What happened to his sister. The daughter. Other families in Saigon. I mean, it's possible, but my gut says no.”

Hank whistled softly. “But if Marta was murdered, the authorities”—a flash of a grin—“authorities other than you, of course—won't be as understanding as you are.”

“True. And that's the problem. Tony put himself in harm's way.” I glanced toward the kitchen. “But Aunt Marie and the family don't need to know that part of the story yet.”

“Let's hope they don't have to.”

“That means I'd better identify a murderer soon.”

Hank made a clicking sound and pointed a finger at me. “Well, what are you waiting for?”

I pointed back. “If I believe what epic tales you tell your grandmother, you are integral to the investigation.”

The grin returned. “Perhaps I exaggerated my position a little.”

“Really?”

A sudden rush of voices in the kitchen, the slamming of a door, a yelled greeting, boisterous. The men of the family had returned home, followed quickly by Hank's younger brother Vu and sister Phoung. Laughter, sputtering, the boy teasing his sister, but Hank's father suddenly yelled at his fifteen-year-old son, who'd not finished an earlier task. The kitchen got quiet for a moment, then erupted as the boy sputtered an apology that his father talked over, his voice harsh and nasty.

Hank caught me eye. “Christ, not now.”

Sometimes, I knew, Tuan Nguyen came back from his factory job after stopping for a few beers and shots of whiskey at Meyers' Tavern, two streets over. There were nights when Hank, sitting with me somewhere, answered his cell phone and then bounded out the door, rushing home to rescue his mother from his father's angry and cruel hand.

Grandma opened the door to the living room and called us to supper, her tiny old hand waving us in. As Hank and I walked into the room, his father was still berating his sheepish and moody son, but the man stopped talking. He dropped into a chair, fingers tapping the table. It was Hank's grandfather who glared at me, ice in his eyes, as though I were the reason for the father-son spat. The old man, small and withered like a gnarled twig, sat in a chair, his arms folded. He called out his son's name—“Tuan!”—and shook his head. As his eyes went from my face to his son's, the expression communicated one thing—look who is violating our warm and loving Vietnamese kitchen. Our evening meal. The child of the dust from under a rock. But Grandma, watching the horrible tableau, began humming as she spooned rice batter into a skillet, a tune I did not recognize but was obviously some Vietnamese song they all knew.
Cay Truc Xinh.
She sang about a lovely girl who stood next to a lovely bamboo tree…so serene a snapshot.

Her daughter smiled broadly.

Hank heaved a sigh and muttered, “A hymn to beauty.” He went on, “I think that I will never see a poem as lovely as a…” He stopped when his father grunted at him. He whispered the last word: tree.

Grandma stopped humming but she was smiling at Hank.

The only one not happy was the grandfather.

But unlike the grandfather, Hank's father, Tuan, always distrustful of me, the visiting dust boy, had long ago made a separate peace in the household. Respecting his son's delivery into American culture—just as he celebrated his daughter Phoung's slavish imitation of Matisse—he acquiesced to the strange and serendipitous god that sent him into exile in America and then allowed someone of impure blood to break bread with him. Or, in this case, the cheerfully but ironically named Happy Pancake. What I knew might happen, of course, was that Tuan would initiate a conversation with me about his current hobby horse—the reinstituted trade relations between Vietnam and the United States—a diatribe that somehow blamed me for world events. I'd learned to keep my mouth shut.

Tuan savored the incendiary headlines of the day, gleaned from the yellow pulp tabloid newspapers printed on the West Coast. He culled tidbits about restored relations with Communist Vietnam and the death of the old life.

Now, occasionally hurling a sharp look at his younger son, he caught my eye. “
Time
magazine tells me that Vietnam is a favorite place of the wealthy American tourist these days. Cruises, tours.”

I said nothing.

“Dad…” Hank began.

“Isn't it funny how a Communist country, one that slaughtered nearly forty-thousand American soldiers, not to mention millions of their own people, tortured them, beat their children, can now become a…a popular resort…” He pounded his fist on the table.

I kept my mouth shut.

“So we begin another Vietnamese-American Conflict. This time the bodies are the ghosts of those left behind, maybe unburied, during the first war. People who fell from helicopters, fleeing. Unavenged, their spirits trampled on by the feet of laughing, rich Americans.”

“Some of them are Vietnamese returning home—or their children.” Hank spoke in an even voice, quiet.

“I spit on them all.”

“Now, now,” Grandma interjected.

I kept my mouth shut.

“What do you think?” he finally spat out at me.

A loaded question, for sure, because any answer I delivered would be twisted and mocked and derided. I was allowed to sit at the supper table, but there was a price I had to pay. Because, in effect, I was the nagging symbol of the bastardization of the homeland. I was the American metaphor that was paradoxically also the Vietnamese metaphor for failure. Both these metaphors—melded together—centered on a man who was determined to keep his mouth shut.

Luckily, I didn't have to answer, because Grandma delivered the first batch of crispy, savory Happy Pancakes to the table. The glorious
banh xeo
. A sizzling crepe, crisp and aromatic, filled with chunky pork, split shrimp, diced green onions, a generous handful of bean sprouts, all fried until the rice flour shell hardened into a saffron yellow, to be folded into fresh lettuce and basil and mint, then dipped into a savory fish sauce.
Nuoc mam
. Sloppy, chaotic, rich, but—happy. Hushed, expectant, we lifted our chopsticks, sipped from bowls of jasmine tea, bowed our heads over the sumptuous feast. Grandma kept replenishing the community dish on the table. The Happy Pancake—a peacemaker, that pancake, because we stopped fighting the war I was never a part of—and dug into the food. When we ate, we talked and laughed and slurped and whooped it up. Grandma winked at me, which Hank caught. He gave me the thumbs-up, as though he'd brokered my little entente.

Afterwards, the men disappeared outside to smoke Marlboros, while Hank and I sipped hot jasmine tea.

Hank belched, which made his mother frown.

“In Arabian countries,” he explained, “a burp after a meal is a sign of satisfaction.”

“Yeah,” said his little brother, “in some cultures it's a sign of being a pig.”

Hank laughed. “You hear that, Rick? Fifteen years old and a wisecracker.”

“He's had a good teacher.”

His mother smiled. “All my children speak before thinking. That's what comes of living in a world of twenty-four-hour cable and teachers who have tattoos on their arms.”

“Mom,” Hank said, “that makes no sense. All you watch on TV is the Cooking Network.”

“I watch nothing.” Aunt Marie was speaking for the first time. She seemed startled by her own words. She raised her hand to her white hair, then slid her hand over her jaw.

“Why?” Hank asked.

“America is a place that will always confuse me.”

Her words served as a period to the meal because the women began clearing the dishes. Aunt Marie looked distracted and apologetic, as though she'd spoken out of turn. She picked up a greasy platter, but it almost slipped from her hands. She yelped, then smiled.

Grandma wagged an amused finger at her. “Dear Marie, you lie to us. I've been to your home and we've watched the American soap operas all afternoon.” Grandma, tickled, leaned in and said something I didn't catch.

Aunt Marie nodded. “Watching those American women yell and scream and cry is like being hypnotized by a snake—as much as I try, I cannot turn away.”

Hank guffawed in English, breaking the smooth Vietnamese rhythms. “Aunt Marie, you are something else.”

She turned to him, puzzled. She started to say something but a staccato
wah wah wha
from a car horn made her jump.

“My Vuong is here to take me home.”

Aunt Marie looked into my face. “He will not come in.” Again the apologetic look. “He prefers…”

Hank leaned into me. “He never does.”

The horn blared again, the same three sounds, each one longer in length.

I sat up. “I wonder if I could have a word with him?” I asked Aunt Marie.

Fright flashed across her face, caving it in. Watching her, protective, Hank's mother waved her hand wildly in the air, as if looking for a way out of this situation. Only Grandma, eyeing me closely, wore the sliver of a smile.

“You have questions?” she asked me.

“I just want a clearer picture of a few things that happened.”

Hank spoke up. “Maybe I can…”

I interrupted. “No, Hank. Let me be alone with him.”

Perhaps my abrupt request was a violation of something I could never fully understand, perhaps not. But I had been wondering about timelines, fragmented details, Marta's erratic behavior back in April, and now was an opportunity I might not have again. Violation or not, I had no choice. Willie's encounter with Marta back then, his final days working for Joshua Jennings—perhaps he might recall an anecdote or a few spoken words—maybe even something he'd spotted but didn't comprehend—that might provide me with a spark, a direction.

“I mean the man no harm.” I smiled at Aunt Marie. “In fact, I want to help him. You do believe that, don't you?”

She stammered, “Yes.”

“Good. Then let me do this.”

Hank made a squeaky sound, irritated at his exclusion. But I understood that Willie had to be approached with delicacy, man-to-man conversation, direct, honest. Faced squarely, he'd talk to me. I recalled his comment about old man Joshua—how the patrician gentleman treated him fairly, a mutual respect, even conversation Willie welcomed. At heart here was a good man. I believed that to my core.

The kitchen froze, no one moving except for Hank who leaned back in his chair, two legs off the floor, rocking dangerously. When I looked into his face, I saw an enigmatic smile. He understood me.

“Go outside,” Hank advised me. “If I know Uncle Willie, he's standing in the cold, shivering, back against his pickup, smoking a cigarette. Any minute now he'll lean in and blow the horn again.”

Grandma bowed me out.

Willie looked startled to see me approaching him. His body stiffened, turned away, his collar buttoned up against the chilly November night, a faint hint of pale white smoke wreathing his head. The red tip of a cigarette glowed in the darkness. For a second he leaned into the pickup, as if to take shelter there, but, resigned, he faced me.

“What do you want?” In English.

“A minute of your time, Willie. Please. Some talk.” I answered him in English, my words sounding harsh after the smooth rhythms of Vietnamese at suppertime.

“I ain't got nothing to say.”

“I think you do.”

“I told you everything.”

“Your wife told me about Tony sitting at Marta's house.”

“I told her not to.” He swore under his breath.

“But she had to. It was unwise of him, yes, but innocent. He was thinking of you. A son defending his falsely accused father. Your son is not a killer.”

His shoulders slumped as he dropped the cigarette to the ground. He raised his hand to tap the pack of Marlboros in his breast pocket, his fingers trembling.

“Yeah, I know that. But it ain't right.”

“And neither are you a killer.”

He nodded. “You know that?”

“Yes. That's not who you are.”

“Then what do you want from me?”

“I have a few questions.”

He nodded toward the Toyota pickup, still running. “Sit.”

Inside the front seat I surveyed the messy truck, an ashtray stuffed with cigarette butts, spilling out. The stale scent of too much cigarette smoke and too much fast food. Vietnamese newspapers strewn on the floor. A white carton from old Chinese food, cheap wooden chopsticks jutting out. A crumpled McDonald's wrapper. A pair of work boots, the laces broken.