Oren
‘And that boy’s name was Oren,’ I said.
‘Is that your real name?’ Lexi asked.
I sighed in the dark. ‘Yes, my real name is Oren.’
‘Prove it,’ she said.
‘I can’t prove a negative,’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to explain,’ I said. We sat and listened to the muffled roar of Jimmy’s motorcycle circling the house. Then I said, ‘The boy’s name was Oren, and he grew—’
Lexi said, ‘I want to go back down and find Cristofer.’
‘He’s safe,’ I said.
‘You say it like your words make it so. How do you know?’ she asked.
‘As you say, my words make it so. Now, stop interrupting.’
‘I’m not—’
‘Shh,’ I said. We listened again to Jimmy’s motorcycle circling and circling. I said, ‘Oren grew up in circumstances that were unusually trying—’
She said, ‘I always think it’s strange when people talk about themselves in the third person.’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I grew up in the kind of circumstances that lead to violence beyond anything you’ve ever heard of or imagined.’
‘Have you been in prison?’ she asked.
‘Shh,’ I said. ‘Before we talk about me, we need to discuss Amon.’
‘My dad?’ she said.
‘Is that your dad’s name?’
‘Don’t do that,’ she said.
‘Why not?’ I asked. When we planned this trip, Paul said, You’ve got to disorient if you want to reorient.
‘Because I’m scared,’ she said.
‘Nothing to be scared of,’ I said. ‘I’m here with you.’
‘That scares me,’ she said.
‘Amon grew up in Waycross, Georgia,’ I said. ‘This was in the nineteen-fifties. His father was a banker and a member of the Rotary Club and the First Methodist Church. His mother smelled of talcum powder and lilacs. Have you heard about this?’
‘No,’ Lexi said. ‘My mom doesn’t talk about my dad.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ I said. ‘Amon’s mother – your grandmother – was a lovely woman, fleshy and warm. She called her big hips her peach cobblers, which embarrassed Amon when he brought friends home as a teenager, though even as an adult he thought of her as the embodiment of sweetness.’
‘This is necessary?’ Lexi asked.
I said, ‘They lived in a big wooden house – painted yellow, according to his mother’s wishes – near the center of town, when downtown Waycross was still the place to live. Amon’s father was the kind of man who said, Belts are for whipping children. But he rarely whipped Amon because Amon was a good and kind-hearted child who rarely broke the rules and almost never found trouble.’
Lexi said, ‘My father grew up in Waycross.’
‘Of course he did,’ I said.
‘But he wasn’t good or kind-hearted,’ she said. ‘Mom says he was a bastard.’
‘I thought she doesn’t talk about him,’ I said.
‘She likes to call him a bastard,’ Lexi said.
I said, ‘So Amon lived what one might think of as the ideal small-town life of a child in the nineteen-fifties. The big world still loomed outside without threatening to disturb his family and families like his. A neighbor talked of moving outside the town limits to avoid change, but Amon’s father only laughed at him. Progressive thinking had yet to reach into places like Waycross and shake men like Amon’s father out of their backward little desk chairs and expose them to the world’s contempt. Although Amon’s mother poured her first drink each afternoon at four thirty and she and Amon’s father, who arrived home at five fifteen, continued drinking steadily through the evening until they stumbled upstairs to bed, they didn’t think of themselves as alcoholics. There were a few known alcoholics in Waycross, but they were public drinkers and spent regular nights in the town jail.’
‘You’re making this up,’ Lexi said.
I said, ‘I’m filling in the gaps.’
‘Don’t,’ she said.
I said, ‘Amon had a happy childhood. He rode his bicycle to school. After school he and his friends played football in the fall and winter, baseball in the spring. In the summer they rode their bicycles to Herrin Pond out by the cemetery and they fished with worms for croakers. Or they rode farther out of town to the Satilla River, where they poked through the long grass for alligators and water moccasins, which they threw rocks at.’
‘Where did you get all this?’ Lexi asked.
‘They threw rocks at them,’ I said, ‘but Amon, being a good and kind-hearted child, never wished to hurt them. When he was thirteen years old, his father bought him a deer rifle – a two-eighty Remington – and they drove out to a place north of Dixie Union. The sun was rising through the mist in the forest, soft like it could have been the first day of the world. They walked through the trees and came into a clearing, the dry grass breaking under their feet, then stepped into another grove. Amon and his father said nothing to each other but walked hip-to-hip, shoulder-to-shoulder, like they were on a pilgrimage. More than at any other time in his life, Amon felt a deep love for the trees and the dirt under his feet and the man beside him. When they came to a second clearing, they saw a deer. It was a yearling, and though it didn’t seem to have smelled them, its tail hung down between its hind legs like a guilty dog’s. The meadow grass was so long it brushed the yearling’s belly. Its nose was so narrow it could have been carved from a stick. Its shiny black eyes looked like blown glass.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Lexi said, like I was telling a lie.
Outside, Robert’s motorcycle revved. Then Jimmy’s revved too. Then they revved together. I knew they were sitting side-by-side on their bikes – I’d seen them do it a thousand times – and when they hit the gas they would race, side-by-side, out to some point they’d decided on and then they would spin and race back. They hit the gas. Carol whooped. Beside me in the dark, Lexi jumped.
So I said, ‘Standing at the edge of the grove, Amon’s father helped him position his rifle, whispered in his ear, instructing him how to line up the shot and squeeze the trigger slow, then whispered again, like an eager lover, “Do it, boy. Do it.”
‘But Amon couldn’t.
‘Whether the deer heard Amon’s father as he told his son to shoot or it smelled danger as the wind shifted in the trees, it raised its head, darted through the grass, and disappeared into the next grove.
‘Amon’s father swore at him. He said he wouldn’t have a coward for a son. Amon knew that in refusing to shoot he had dishonored his father and that if he was to repair the bond between them, he must do so right away. But when they saw another deer later that day, he again couldn’t bring himself to fire a bullet at it. He hated killing.’
‘Nope,’ Lexi said. ‘Not true. My dad had a lot of guns. He loved to shoot.’
‘Later he did,’ I said. ‘That’s right.’
‘You’re wrong about him,’ she said. ‘He was in the army. He went to war. Mom says he volunteered.’
‘Yes, he did,’ I said. ‘Again, that was later. Where are his—’
‘This is ridiculous,’ she said. ‘How do you know all this?’
‘He told me,’ I said.
‘You know my dad?’ she asked.
‘I’ve had long talks with him,’ I said.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Where is he?’
‘Do you want me to tell the story or not?’ I asked.
The motorcycles stopped racing and Robert and Jimmy cut the engines. Only the generator in back of the pickup stuttered and hummed. ‘It’s quiet,’ Lexi said.
‘Where are the guns now?’ I asked. I couldn’t see Walter getting rid of them. I figured he’d hidden them. He would oil the black gun barrels in the dark. He would love and caress the guns as he loved and caressed himself.
Lexi said, ‘Mom didn’t want them in the house after my dad left.’
‘I think you’re lying,’ I said.
‘What are you talking about?’ she said. ‘Why would I—’
‘That’s what I’m wondering,’ I said.
‘You’re insane,’ she said. ‘Are you going to tell your story or am I going to climb down?’
So I said, ‘Much more than hunting, more than throwing rocks at alligators and snakes, Amon loved to read.’
The engine on Robert’s motorcycle roared again.
‘You’re like him that way,’ I said. ‘By the time he was fifteen he was skipping football and baseball games to go to the library. There was a bookstore a couple of blocks from his house, and on the third Saturday of every month a truck arrived with new books. Whenever Amon had money, he would wait for the truck, offering to help unload it, offering to open the boxes inside the store. He was book crazy, his mother said, but he believed that she secretly approved of his love of reading as much as his father feared it.’
Carol, Paul, Jimmy, and Robert started whooping and yowling outside in the yard. They laughed. Carol’s laugh was light and high and easy.
‘Will you get to the point?’ Lexi said.
‘Am I going too slow?’ I asked.
‘Uh-huh,’ she said.
‘What if there is no point?’
She said, ‘Just move it along.’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘The abridged version. On Christmas morning when Amon was seventeen, his father shot Amon’s mother in the head with a pistol. It seems that she’d been sharing her peach cobblers with their next-door neighbor. Then Amon’s father put the hot end of the barrel in his own mouth and pulled the trigger. Three weeks later, Amon enlisted in the army and soon after that he was deployed to Vietnam. Maybe he enlisted to compensate for a sense that he had failed his father. Maybe he had other reasons too. Whatever led to it, the experience changed him forever. This was nineteen-sixty-nine.’
‘Jesus,’ Lexi said.
‘You asked for it.’
‘Maybe not quite that fast,’ she said.
Then there was a gunshot. One of my friends was shooting at the house. No one was supposed to do that until Walter shot at them. Carol laughed – light and high and easy.
‘We’ve got to get down from here,’ Lexi said, and scrambled toward the attic hatch.
But I held her, loosening my grip only when she stopped struggling. What good would come of going down before I finished the story?
I said, ‘Amon’s superiors put him in a non-combat position. He clearly wasn’t fit for fighting.’
‘I’ve got to check on Cristofer,’ Lexi said.
‘Because Amon was good with language,’ I said, ‘they made him an assistant information specialist at the Bien Hoa military base in Dong Nai, across the river from Saigon.’
Lexi kicked at me but I held her.
‘Cristofer is fine,’ I said. ‘I promise.’
‘How do you know?’ she asked.
Because unless my friends had burned our plan, they would protect Cristofer as carefully as they would protect each other. ‘I know,’ I said.
She stopped struggling.
‘On Amon’s first weekend leave,’ I said, ‘some of the other guys from the base took him to the Hall of Mirrors brothel. This was the biggest brothel in Saigon.’
Lexi said, ‘Why do you think I want to know this about my dad?’
‘It’s not about what you want to know,’ I said. ‘There were more than two hundred whores – and more mirrors than whores. There were more opportunities for pleasure and pain, for the making of dreams and nightmares, than Amon had ever thought possible. He stumbled out of the brothel on Sunday morning with a mixture of pride and guilt.’
Outside in the yard, Carol laughed – high and hard.
‘He couldn’t find his friends,’ I said, ‘so he wandered through the city. The Tet Offensive had ended. The communists had drawn back to the north. Except for occasional shootings, peace had returned to Saigon. Now the streets were filled with scooters and pared-down motorcycles, little German cars, three-wheeled tuk-tuks, and bicycles. Exhaust and dust filled the air. A tangle of electric and telephone wires hung overhead like a wrecked spider web. Children watched Amon from the glassless windows in concrete tenements. Everywhere there was the noise of motors and horns, people shouting, people laughing, babies crying. Everywhere there was the smell of fish oil and salt, rotting vegetables, and the wet decay of buildings. Against all odds and for reasons that he was at a loss to explain to himself, for the second time in his life, as he walked through these streets, Amon felt a deep love for the earth and the people who lived on it. Maybe it was that he had just lost his virginity. Maybe it was that he was so far from home and he’d experienced a total freedom from all that had weighed him down. Whatever the cause, he felt himself falling in love with life in a way that he’d believed impossible after his parents’ murder and suicide.
‘So,’ I said, ‘he wasn’t surprised that when he turned a corner on to Tu Do Street he found several bookstores along with a mix of bars, newsstands, and hotels, or that when he walked under the awning of the first bookstore – a place called Tin Nghia that had huge stacks of Vietnamese and Chinese books on plywood tables – he saw behind the counter a girl he thought he would spend the rest of his life with.’
‘And they lived happily ever after?’ Lexi said.
‘The girl’s name was Phan Thi Phuong,’ I said, ‘and, like him, she was eighteen years old. She spoke a little French but no English, and when he came to the counter with a Vietnamese book that he was incapable of reading, she laughed at him because he had chosen a novel called Plum Blossom Love that had been popular mostly among middle-aged women.
‘Somehow the hungover American soldier, smelling of whorehouse sex, managed to convince the bookstore clerk to have lunch with him before he returned to base. On his next leave, he skipped the Hall of Mirrors and headed straight to the bookstore. Not only was Phuong waiting for him, but she had learned a few words of English, which, along with Amon’s growing Vietnamese vocabulary, kept them happy for his full forty-eight hours. Over the next several months, Amon spent all of his leave time with Phuong and volunteered for any assignments that might take him off base so that he could see her, if only for a few minutes or an hour. Phuong’s father, who came from a family that had been wealthy before the war, owned the bookstore, which he also used to run a black-market money exchange and small-scale weapons depot, so she had a set of keys, and when there were no customers, she would lock up and they would have the store to themselves. When the monsoons came and the streets flooded, they made love behind the plastic curtains that kept the books dry, but, after a close call when one of Phuong’s uncles arrived as Amon was zipping his pants, Amon rented a room in a nearby apartment building and they met there as often as they could.’
Lexi said, ‘Why do I need to know this?’
‘It’s who you are,’ I said.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said.
‘You’ll never love him unless you know who he was,’ I said.
‘Why should I love him?’ she asked. ‘He ran away. He left us here.’
I said, ‘If you’re going to hate him, you should know who you’re hating.’ She stopped arguing, so I said, ‘Phuong’s uncle must have seen more than she and Amon thought he did, because one afternoon when Amon arrived at the store, Phuong’s father stood behind the counter with a friend. Amon knew better than to ask where Phuong was. She had told him that her father’s only politics were that he despised the Americans and the Viet Cong equally, and his only interest was in protecting his family – his wife, who had gone to live in the country, and his daughter, who had refused to leave. As Amon thumbed through the books on the plywood tables, Phuong’s father, who was as handsome as his daughter was beautiful, nudged his friend, a short man with little teeth. The friend approached Amon and asked, “What do you like?”
‘Amon, thinking he would break the tension, said he wanted a copy of the book that he had tried to buy on his first visit – Plum Blossom Love.
‘The friend showed him his little teeth and pulled a snubnose Baby Browning from a pocket. He said, “Come with me, funny man.”
‘Phuong’s father and his friend took Amon into a back room where there was a rusting hotplate and, for reasons Amon never figured out, a crate of tongue depressors. The friend held the gun against Amon while Phuong’s father talked. The father said, “Because my daughter loves you, I give you a chance. One. You go away. You will not see my daughter any more. This is your chance.” He looked at Amon hopefully.
‘Amon asked, “What happens if I don’t go away?”
‘Phuong’s father said, “What happens? I have a gun. Many guns. I buy guns. I sell guns. You want to buy or sell guns – that is good. You want to be with my daughter – that is bad.”
‘“I love Phuong,” Amon said.
‘“No,” her father said. “You do not love Phuong. No more. You go.”
‘The friend crammed the snubnose into Amon’s ribs.
‘“Fine,” Amon said. “I go.”
‘He left, and after that he and Phuong were careful. They met in the apartment that Amon rented or at hotels in parts of the city that they believed were safe from her father and her father’s friends.
‘Then,’ I said, ‘Phuong got pregnant.’
‘Wait,’ Lexi said. ‘My dad had a kid in Vietnam?’
‘Just listen,’ I said. ‘When Phuong’s father found out, he threatened to kill her. He threatened to castrate Amon. He went to the gates of the Bien Hoa military base and threatened to shoot himself if the sentries didn’t turn Amon over to him. Phuong left the city and hid with her mother. Now Amon saw her only once every month or two, when he had enough leave time to travel into the countryside, and on each visit Phuong’s belly swelled and the skin tightened until it seemed they would need a knife or a razor to relieve the tension.
‘They had a daughter,’ I said, ‘and they named her Lang. Even—’
Lexi said, ‘I have a sister? That’s ridiculous.’
I said, ‘Even at a glance, it was clear from the baby’s skin, her face, and her brown hair that she was Amerasian. That was bad for family peace. When Phuong’s mother showed her husband a picture of the baby to try to reconcile him to reality, he just added Lang to his list of people to kill. They kept the baby and Phuong out of sight when he visited. Phuong’s mother learned to avoid even mentioning them in his presence, treating them as if they were – as he wished to think them – dead. But one day during the next monsoon season he arrived unexpectedly at the country house and found the baby alone. In one of those moments that should lead to happy endings, he looked at the child and his anger seemed to break inside him. He stood, stunned, alone with this baby whose eyes and face were at once so familiar and so foreign, and then he went to Lang, picked her up, and held her to his chest. When Phuong’s mother came into the room, she thought that he was suffocating the child, but then she saw tears on his handsome face.’
‘Nice,’ Lexi said.
‘Only a little,’ I said. ‘After that first moment of amazement, life became complicated in the family again. Phuong’s father still struggled with the fact that Amon was an American. He blamed him – as he blamed all Americans – for bringing death to Vietnam. He still struggled with the knowledge that Phuong had betrayed him, humiliated him in his own eyes and, he was certain, the eyes of both those who had respected him and those who were happy to see weakness in him.
‘But Phuong returned to Saigon and worked in her father’s store once more. In the evenings she would go to the apartment that Amon had rented, and, whenever he could, Amon would spend a few hours or a night with her. Because of their fears of another attack by the Viet Cong, they left Lang in the country with Phuong’s mother, but each month, on a weekend when Phuong’s father remained in Saigon, Phuong and Amon went to the country house and lived for two or three days as a family.
‘Never in his life had Amon been happier. Never had he felt more at home than in this place nine thousand miles from where he grew up. He re-enlisted after his twelve months ended, then re-enlisted twice more. As the United States drew down some of our troops from South Vietnam in nineteen-seventy-three, he arranged to move Phuong and their daughter with him when his fourth tour ended. But those plans reignited the anger that had always smoldered in Phuong’s father.’
Outside, Jimmy’s motorcycle droned and droned as it circled and circled the house.
Lexi asked, ‘Why are you telling me all this?’
I said, ‘I want you to know what you lost.’
‘OK,’ she said, ‘but why?’
I thought, Because it hurts too much to hurt alone. I said, ‘Two weeks before Amon was scheduled to fly out of Saigon, to be followed by Phuong and their three-year-old daughter, he was alone in the rental apartment, packing the few belongings he would take with him, when there was a soft knock.
‘When he opened the door, Lang was standing outside alone. She was wearing a red dress that Phuong had sewed for her third birthday and that already looked too short because the girl was growing so fast. Now her brown hair had been roughly cut off. Strands of the cut hair clung to her dress and to the little red socks that peaked out of her shiny black shoes. She had her hands behind her back as if holding a secret gift, and, despite the violence that had been committed against her hair, she looked excited to see her dad. Amon stared at her, confused. She was supposed to be at the country house with her grandmother. Even if there had been a change in plans, there was no reason for her to be here alone, wearing her best dress, and with her hair tattered.
‘But Amon stooped low to hug her and said, “Come here, baby.”
‘Lang went to him, but as she exposed her hands he saw that she had in fact brought a gift. She held – like it was a doll – an M-twenty-six fragmentation grenade, its safety pin-ring removed. At the Bien Hoa base he had heard drunk soldiers laughing as they’d described the damage the grenades had done to the Viet Cong, and later, after they’d sobered up, he had heard them crying as they’d described the same damage.
‘Amon rolled backward on to the floor, skittering away from his daughter.
‘She giggled at the game he seemed to be playing.
‘He asked, “Where did you get that?”
‘She held up the grenade as if it was as harmless as a lemon. “Ông nôi,” she said – “grandpa” – like that was part of the wonderful surprise. She presented it to him then, as her grandpa must have told her to, setting it on the floor between them, admiring it, and running to Amon.
‘He pulled her to himself so tight he knew that she couldn’t breathe. He wished that he could pull her into his own skin. He never could explain what he did next. Maybe he panicked. Maybe the anger and fear he’d felt when his father killed his mother had broken something inside him. Maybe he acted according to the warped logic of instinct. Maybe – and this was the thought that haunted him most – he was, as his father had thought he was, a coward. But he threw Lang down on the grenade and fell on top of her. It was an insane act at an insane moment in an insane part of the world. The explosion ripped through the girl and lifted them both into the air. For what seemed a long time, Amon felt that he was flying – hovering in the air in the middle of the apartment, a spray of blood, skin, and bone hanging in the air with him, his daughter’s red dress seeming to drift on a brown wind – and then he fell to the floor, torn and lacerated by shrapnel that had passed through Lang’s body and into his own.’