The Sacrifice (18 page)

Thelma was standing on the porch and started crying when she heard the sound of Lester climbing the steps.

“Welcome home, boy,” she said and hugged him for at least ten seconds before he pulled away.

Jack ran excitedly back and forth around their legs until they went inside. Like most rural families, the Garrisons didn't allow dogs inside human dwellings. When the screen door slammed in his face, Jack began moaning, and Thelma said, “Go ahead and let him in the house for a few minutes.”

The dog lay close to his master's feet. While Bonnie and Thelma talked, Lester leaned over and scratched Jack's favorite spot behind his left ear.

“Does Jack need any food and water?” Lester asked.

“I don't know.”

Lester went into the kitchen and put some fresh water in Jack's dish. The dog followed close by his heels. Lester watched him drink.

“Grandma!” Lester called out. “I'm going out to the shed for a few minutes. I need to check on some things.”

A previous owner of the property had built a tiny, windowless storage building from scrap pieces of lumber and plywood. The shed had been painted white at one time, but now only a few flecks of paint stubbornly clung to the aging wood. Lester had claimed the little structure as his own. He kept it locked. No one else had a key.

Inside the shed Lester reached up and pulled a metal chain that turned on a bare overhead light. He had put two sheets of new plywood on sawhorses to provide workspace for his projects. An orange extension cord hung down from an outlet built into the light fixture and provided a power source for several tools. Everything was exactly as he had left it. He locked the door and went back into the house. Bonnie had left.

“Lester!” his grandmother called out from her bedroom. “Come in here, boy.”

Thelma was sitting in a brown vinyl recliner she'd covered with an old sheet to keep the plastic from sticking to her skin. A square fan was sitting on the floor near her feet doing its best to stir the air in the bedroom. Lester noticed that a sore on his grandmother's leg that wouldn't heal was getting larger.

“Get yourself something cold to drink and come talk to me,” she said.

“I'm just here for a few minutes. I have some things to do.”

“But you just got home,” she protested.

“I've been cooped up for over a week and want to ride around without anyone telling me what I can do and where to go.”

“'Fore you go, I need you to check my blood sugar. I've been feelin' like it ain't right all day. I can't even remember if I took my shot this morning.”

“You always do it first thing.”

“Please, don't go yet,” the old woman said pitifully. “I really need to check my sugar.”

Lester hated it when she talked in that whiny voice. He walked out of the room and down the short hall past his bedroom to the kitchen. There was a plastic jug of iced tea in the refrigerator and he filled a large glass.

“Lester? Are you comin' back in here?”

He didn't answer. He drank his tea, put the empty glass on the counter, and walked back to the bedroom. “Yeah, I'm here.”

“Is the tester thing on the nightstand?”

The apparatus used to draw a tiny sample of blood and determine the glucose content of Thelma's blood was always in the same place. Lester was sure his grandmother touched it twenty times a day to make sure it hadn't grown legs and walked off. Beside it was a packet of disposable lancets.

Lester picked up the hand-held device and handed Thelma a lancet. She pricked her finger and held it out so he could collect a small drop of blood onto a strip of testing paper that he put in the glucose meter. Anything over 109 was outside the normal range. He watched until the digital readout flashed a number. It was 215.

“How is it?” she asked.

“It's okay,” Lester said. “It's 95. I've gotta go.”

Thelma sighed. “I guess that's good to know. I thought it was high. When will you be home?”

“Not too late.”

Lester walked out to the front porch. Jack immediately hopped up to greet him.

“Not this time, boy.”

Jack raced to the truck and wagged his tail excitedly, but Lester didn't change his mind. He often took Jack on short trips but not when he was going outside the Catawba area. Lester rolled down both windows before putting the key into the ignition. It was a pleasant evening, and he wanted to feel the wind on his cheeks. Before turning around in the yard, he reached under the front seat and felt the cool metal barrel of one of the pistols he'd purchased a couple of weeks after buying the truck. Its mate was in an evidence locker at the Blanchard County sheriff 's department. The pawnshop owner on the east side of Charlotte had taken the cash Lester carefully counted out in front of him, put the bills directly in his pocket, and slid the two guns across the counter. He had never even asked to see Lester's driver's license. The serial numbers had been filed off both weapons.

The truck's engine coughed and sputtered to life. Lester turned on the radio and listened to the scratchy sounds that came through the one working speaker. One thing he shared in common with his grandmother— they both listened to the same radio stations. He turned right out of the driveway. By the time the sun went down, he would be on the outskirts of Charlotte. There were other things besides stolen guns that were difficult to buy in a small town like Catawba.

14

The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are
good, your whole body will be full of light.

M
ATTHEW 6:22

T
he following morning, Lester sat in his truck in the school parking lot until he heard the bell sound for first period. He didn't want to go back to school, but the prospect of returning to the YDC eliminated other options. He walked through the front door and turned left down the hallway toward his locker as the last students were entering their classrooms. Frank Jesup glanced over his shoulder and saw Lester. Frank hesitated but knew he couldn't stay and watch the fun.

Lester popped open the door of his locker to grab his history book. Inside was a foot-long piece of shiny metal chain with a lock at one end and a note taped to the other. He pulled off the note:

HERE'S THE PERFECT GIFT FOR YOU. PUT THIS CHAIN AROUND YOUR LEG AND LOCK IT! GET USED TO IT BECAUSE YOU'RE GOING TO THE REAL CHAIN GANG!! SEE YOU ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD WITH THE OTHER PIECES OF TRASH!!!!

Lester looked up and down the hall to see if anyone was watching. He wadded up the note and put the chain in his backpack. If he found out who put the “gift” in his locker, he had an idea of how he would use it to teach them a lesson they wouldn't forget.

Jim Schroder, the superintendent of personnel for the Blanchard County school system, swiveled in his chair and picked up the phone. Behind him on a small credenza was a photograph with a handwritten inscription in the lower right-hand corner: “Da Nang, July 4, 1969.” In the grainy picture, Marine Corps Captain James A. Schroder stood in front of a green helicopter surrounded by his crew and several of the mechanics on the base. Of the ten men in the picture, three did not live to see New Year's Day 1970. One more did not live to see New Year's Day 1971. Six survived the war. Of those, one committed suicide in 1975 after spending years in and out of VA hospitals receiving treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder. The other five returned to civilian life, raised families, and tried to forget what they saw from the air and experienced on the ground in Vietnam. Jim punched in the pager number for Larry Sellers, the supervisor responsible for the janitorial and maintenance workers in the school system. In a few minutes there was a knock on his door.

“Come in,” he said.

Larry, a husky man in his midthirties, came in. “You called?”

“Yes. I've hired a replacement for Duane Mitchell on the janitorial staff at the high school,” Jim said. “He can start immediately. He's already been processed through personnel.”

Larry sat down across from Jim's desk. “Good. Any experience?”

“No. In fact, he doesn't speak English. He's a recent immigrant, a Hmong.”

“A what?” Larry asked.

“
H-m-o-n-g.
The
H
is silent. It means ‘free' in their language, and the name fits. I came in contact with them in Vietnam.” Jim pointed at the photograph on the credenza. “My most important job in the war was to rescue American pilots whose planes were shot down by surface-to-air missiles. If North Vietnamese soldiers or Vietcong guerrillas captured a pilot, he would be killed or sent to a prison camp in the northern part of the country. Our best help came from Hmong militia who lived in the mountains of Laos, northern Cambodia, and western Vietnam. They knew the area and were superb fighters: brave, tough, and unselfish.”

“Was this man a soldier?”

“I couldn't get a clear story through the interpreter, but I know he had contact with Americans during the war. He saw my photograph, pointed to his chest, and gave me a thumbs-up. He could have been on a rescue team himself. His name is Tao Pang. He's not young, probably about my age. He came in with a relative who speaks a little English. You should have seen his face when I said,
‘Nyob zoo,'
which means ‘Hello' in his dialect.”

“Do you speak the language?”

“Just a few words. Not enough to do any good.”

“How will I tell him what to do?”

“We can show and tell until he learns to communicate. Ask the guys at the high school to work with him. If anyone has a problem with him, send him to me.” Jim leaned forward, and a glint of the steel that had burned in his eyes when he was a marine returned. “Hmong soldiers died saving American lives. The least we can do is let this man clean our toilets.”

A few hours later, Tao Pang walked through the front doors of Catawba High School for the first time. He was five-foot-four with short black hair streaked with gray, deep brown skin, and dark eyes. No one but God knew that he was fifty-two years old.

A remnant of the Pang family had settled in North Carolina after entering the country in California. Like countless immigrants before them, the newcomers looked for a place in America that resembled the land of their birth, and the mountains of North Carolina resembled the hills of the Hmong homeland in Southeast Asia.

As a young man, Tao had been a warrior, and when the U.S. government broke its promises and abandoned the Hmong people after the fall of South Vietnam, he wanted to continue the fight. The village leaders disagreed.

“Many of our people have died. Many more will die if we stay. The land has vomited us out, and we must go.”

They left that day and began the difficult journey to Thailand. Tao's wife was pregnant, and the journey was difficult for the young couple. After they crossed the Mekong River and reached the first refugee camp in Thailand, she gave birth to a baby girl they named Mai. She was the most beautiful creature in Tao's universe. The tiny infant lived six months before contracting dysentery. Without medical care, she lingered for eight days, growing weaker and weaker. She died at sundown. Part of Tao died with her.

Two years later, Tao's wife became ill with a fever that climbed higher and higher. Tao sat on the dirt floor beside her mat, rocking back and forth, praying to the gods of his ancestors. Exhausted, he finally fell asleep, and when he awoke, she was dead.

It was the end. Tao had no more reason to live. He went outside, looked up at the starry sky, and asked to die. He considered swimming toward the middle of the nearby river until he sank from exhaustion and the waters buried his sorrow forever. But as he walked along the creek-bank, he could not make his feet enter the water. He didn't die. Instead, he entered a zone of numbness where he became a walking dead man.

Several months later a man arrived at the camp. It was in the evening and the heat of the day had been replaced by a southerly breeze that cooled the air. The men of the camp invited the stranger to sit with them on logs in a circle.