LEE HAKAKU BOYDEN did not tell his hānai son everything he remembered, and the one detail he kept to himself consumed him. By the time his platoon had arrived on the outskirts of the Central Highlands, the hamlet was already burned to the ground. Many believed it was the People’s Army, others blamed the ARVN, and some suspected American soldiers.
After twenty-something years, who was directly responsible seemed to matter less. The aftermath was the same. A village had been reduced to ashes, and no one but Lee heard the crying.
Whenever asked, Lee repeated only the bare bones of what happened next. He found a scorched child curled up in the burning ruins. He dropped the things he carried, secured the child in his duffle bag, and walked away.
He did not regret leaving his platoon. By then, he was convinced of the illegitimacy of war. But what haunted him, the one detail he had not told anyone, was what he saw in the child’s grip—a crumbled photograph of Ho Chi Minh, which he pried from the tiny fingers and let drop into the fire along with the things he carried.
The ashes scattered in the wind, but a question remained lodged in Lee’s memory and resurfaced in Kai’s yearning. Why was Ho in the child’s death grip?
Observing the child over the years, Lee felt as if time stood still, and he could only guess his age. It had been more than two decades, yet the child had not grown from his skeletal frame. He suspected the boy might have been older when found, perhaps a severely malnourished teen—stunted and weightless riding in his duffle bag.
Though he had not physically changed, Kai seemed to experience an increase in being. Lee was pleased with the child’s metamorphosis from a burned block of wood, seemingly oblivious to the world, to a sponge that absorbed all there was around him. From Lee, the boy learned a confluence of people’s languages in a contact zone. From the children, he imitated the calls of the mountain. From Cook Cu, he concocted bits and pieces of the jungle for sustenance. From the passersby, he accumulated histories of dispersal: the stateless seeking asylum, the lowlanders crossing the sea, the indigenous forced from the highlands.
Lee was a proud Pops until the boy came under the influence of Vinnie Huynh, who filled his ears with The Art of War.
“We must assess the way of the Communist regime, its command and regulation,” Vinnie told the group. “We must anticipate our enemy’s strengths and weaknesses.”
“How do you propose we gain such information?” a man asked.
“Foreknowledge,” Vinnie said and then quoted the ancient manual:
Such foreknowledge cannot be had from ghosts and spirits,
educed by comparison with past events,
or verified by astrological calculations.
It must come from people—people who know the enemy’s situation.
“And who are these people who know the enemy’s situation?”
Vinnie and Kai exchanged furtive glances.
“The two of you?”
The boys nodded in unison, and Vinnie recited another passage from the manual:
There are five kinds of spies that can be employed:
local spies, inside agents, double agents,
expendable spies, and unexpendable spies.
When the five kinds of spies are all active,
and no one knows their methods of operation,
this is called the imperceptible web.12
“And the two of you are—?”
“Unexpendable!” Kai could not hold still the rattling of his painted bamboo tube.
“We’re cultivating local spies,” Vinnie whispered. “We have eyes and ears—”
“You boys are in communication with the highlanders?”
“With the children!”
Kai shook the bamboo, and Vinnie whistled the sound of wind through pine trees. The two echoed the shrilled cries of the black-shanked douc, the songs of the golden-winged laughingthrush, and the hiss of the water monitor.
Lee interrupted the duet. “Weren’t you warned to watch only from afar? Have you been seen by the children?”
“Our purpose is to infiltrate.”
“Looking like the two of you?” someone asked. “The Lone Ranger and Tonto?”
“Kai blends in,” Vinnie said. “He’s in love with a girl with long hair that smells like wood and flowers.”
“It’s just a girl.” Kai clasped the rain stick to his chest.
“Not any girl,” Vinnie said. “Sleeping Beauty’s our eyes and ears.”
Lee scrutinized the pair. Vinnie was all talk, and Kai was blushing. Perhaps their excursions beyond the campground’s perimeter were nothing more than youthful restlessness. Lee wanted to believe wholeheartedly that Kai’s yearning could be assuaged by his love for another—however conflicted or ideal, real-life or fairytale.