Chapter 3

The whore opened the motel room door, the light snapped on, and Vithu clutched her collar, his fist full of red pleather and fake fur. Samay saw that the tattooed letters on the back of his mentor’s fingers spelled LOVE. The irony wasn’t lost on him—the whore suddenly sported a human-hand necklace that advertised her trade.

She almost escaped before Vithu slammed the door. In fact her hand was flat on the guest instructions—CHECKOUT AT 11:00. ICE MACHINE DOWN THE HALL. Samay and the eleven others, ethereal in a cloud of hash smoke, stood around a bed with a nappy ivory spread and watched Vithu trap the girl for bauk.

Bauk—the Cambodian practice of gang raping a prostitute, was the first initiation rite for the Ocean Park Asian Boyz. Samay found her surprise exciting, delicious, as if she’d stumbled onto her own party. But tonight the party was for him, and they were guaranteed privacy. Two Ocean Park policemen, paid off by Vithu, stood sentry outside the door, easy duty on a slow Monday night.

Seconds later the girl nodded, knowing her choices were rape or a beating—and then rape. Samay was glad. They’d already spent too much time waiting. Smoked a lot of hashish and drank sweet wine. Talked too much about gang fights and Pon, the legendary Asian Boyz gang leader traveling to Ocean Park from Long Beach.

Laughter rippled, surrounding the girl as she stripped with the resignation of a prisoner walking to the gallows. She lay on the sagging mattress. Pale skin peppered with freckles and moles. Samay was first, and though he was a stranger to white women and the company of others to so intimate an act, he had no trouble performing. His friends cheered, congratulated him when he was done, then jockeyed for their place in line. The girl’s musk and sweat mixed with the sweet smoke.

There was trouble once—a question of place in line, booze-fueled threats, shoving. Vithu stepped forward and surprised everyone with a vicious chop to an ear that knocked the troublemaker down and drew blood from a gash on his scalp. The Boyz candidates quieted.

The sex was exciting, but not the way he thought it would be. Camaraderie was the high, the laughter and joy of his new friends, the ones he was pledging his life to.

When Vithu helped himself to the girl and spread his other hand next to her head, Samay saw HATE tattooed on those fingers. Vithu was a strange man.

No matter. This was the greatest night of Samay’s young life.

Bauk was good.

Brotherhood was good.

****

Samay trudged through the muddy banks of the Saugus River, the crooked finger that poked the coastline just north of Boston before meandering through Ocean Park. He and Vithu waded through ragweed and cattails, each with a hand grasping chain links on the curving, rusted fence around North Shore Auto Salvage. Their feet plunged into sandy gray mud that sucked nosily and stank like something alive—or dead.

Samay scratched his arm. He’d been tattooed the night before, right after bauk, and the skin was irritated. A row of Khmer letters, whimsical curls and wavy lines, ran the length of his arm. Two of his three rites of initiation were complete—the Brotherhood of Bauk and the branding of the Khmer sign of the Asian Boyz. Only the Lesson was left.

Not that the Lesson was much. They were to retrieve guns because Pon said a war was coming. A simple, boring task, hardly worthy of the term Lesson. Samay was more anxious to learn the Asian Boyz trade—jacking cars and pulling B&Es. He’d been recruited because of his speed and athleticism, and he was anxious to prove himself.

“Maybe they’re not here yet. We should go,” Samay said, shaking his bothersome arm as if he could flick the ink off.

Vithu continued, pushing back a big swath of weeds with his free hand. Dusk approached, and if they timed this right, the day’s last light would help them find what they were looking for and oncoming darkness would hide their leaving.

The tick of an outboard engine grew loud. They sank behind the growth. Samay’s buttocks touched the ground and the moist soil wet his pants like a cold sponge. A skiff puttered by, captained by an old man wearing a knit cap. He navigated the shallow channel, weaving toward the Saugus marshes.

Vithu clapped the shoulder of his sore arm. “If Pon said they’re here, then there’s no doubt. None.”

They continued on the cloying soil. The sun was almost down, streaks of yellow and red reflecting its last light. The temperature dropped so fast it felt as if they’d walked into a freezer.

Samay zippered his coat to the collar and thrust hands into pockets. Without the aid of the fence, he stepped awkwardly, bushwhacked by tall weeds Vithu let swing. “Pon,” he said louder, stretching the name in a high voice. “Everyone talks of Pon. Everyone fears him. Why can’t he carry his own guns? Is he afraid?”

Vithu cocked his head for an instant, but kept moving and answered.

“My friend, Pon is an avenging angel, and everything he does has meaning. When Buddha acts, Pon is his hand. You have been chosen. Feel fortunate. You ask if he is afraid? The only fear he knows is the one he brings.”

Fortunate? For an arm that screams pain? A silly mission? And Vithu—he was different now that he’d recruited Samay and the initiation was almost over. Quiet. Serious. Samay looked at the old man in the boat, a speck in the distance, and wished he were riding with him. Maybe not, he thought. Rivers have ends, and right now he felt like traveling far. He glanced the other way to the open ocean.

“You made your choice,” Vithu said. “Never regret it. And never disrespect Pon. His ears are everywhere.”

Samay shuddered, not because he was cold, but because Vithu had just read his mind. Coincidence? Samay’s legs were still shaky from squatting, and he almost stumbled.

Near the corner of the junkyard fence, in the shadow of a rusting sandwich of Dodge Diplomat, Ford F-150, and a late model Sentra, three gray suitcases sat, handles up. Vithu flipped the hinges on one and let the top fall to the ground. Automatic pistols gleamed from cutouts in hard foam, out of place in the mudscape of the river bank. He snapped the suitcase shut and stood silently until the last light disappeared.

“See?” He nodded toward the last rays of the day. “Everything is as he said. Even the sun is commanded by Pon.”

“So this is the Lesson?” Samay asked and shrugged, palms up.

Vithu hoisted the smallest suitcase, cradled it on his forearm, flipped the latches, opened the top. A pair of severed hands lay in a foam cutout, closed in tight fists, thumbs clenched around the first and second fingers. Flesh and bone had been cut clean at the wrists.

Vithu clutched Samay’s tattooed arm and pulled him close. The hands looked fake, but Samay knew otherwise when he smelled an odor like uncooked steak. He tried to step back, his gorge rising.

Vithu’s face was as tight as the fists, inches away from Samay’s.

“He doubted Pon too, my friend. You’ve been given a second chance by our merciful leader. Witness the Lesson.”

****

That same evening, Channary walked in a quiet, spacious courtyard. The American woman—Shee-la—held her hand in a warm, gentle grip. Strange. Shee-la was white but spoke Khmer perfectly. She walked straight and tall like a model, a woman of importance, but she treated Channary like a princess.

The courtyard was surrounded by flat-roofed buildings so high they blocked the sun and cast cool shadows. Porches lined each floor, their railings grinning like smiling teeth.

They came to a tall building, a great green box as big as a temple. An old Cambodian woman on the bottom landing wore a red sampot that touched her sandaled feet, a loose white blouse, and a krama scarf that hid her neck. Her long hair, parted in the middle, was pulled back tight like a working woman’s.

“Chhmua ei?” the woman called, stretching the words.

“Channary,” she answered.

Shee-la led her up the steps and into a house with hallways the color of rainbows. The familiar scent of incense greeted them, then the mouth-watering smell of meat cooking in oil. They passed a prayer room with a golden Buddha sitting on a table. A kitchen next, with more women, and Cambodian children and teenagers at tables, working and eating.

So this was America. Different. But the same.

They stopped at the end of the hall and the beginning of a narrow staircase. A bright round light shone from a ceiling high above and made the stairs and railing gleam.

Shee-la loosened her grip, kissed the top of Channary’s head, and backed away. The Cambodian woman clasped Channary’s hand in a grip that was hard, firm, and strong, and together they climbed the stairs.