Fire Summer

by Thuy Da Lam

  They did not talk about their outing again until Lee pressed them.

  “It’s like a ranch in the middle of nowhere with only children,” Vinnie reported. “Kai snuck through the window and stole their serpent.”

  “I traded the moonshine.” Kai shook the brightly painted bamboo tube he had been carrying around camp. Vinnie thought it sounded like a hissing serpent from the abyss; for Kai, the sound of sand in the bamboo echoed like falling rain and rejuvenated his spirit.

  “What did you see?” Lee asked. “Did anyone see you?”

  “There was a woman without hair like Cook Cu, and all the children were—”

  “Not normal,” Vinnie said.

  “They helped one another,” Kai said. “The right hand helped the left.”

  “You could be a ranch hand.” Vinnie peered at Kai. “Twittering and charred-face, you’d fit right in at the Helping Hands Ranch.”

  Lee was of the same mind with Vinnie that the boys should not eat, drink, or swim in the water, no matter how hungry, thirsty, or hot they were. He made them promise to observe only from afar. Vinnie suspected something was in the water and soil, but Lee was certain the area was poisoned, recalling the nightmarish rain from the C-123s that turned the forest a sick yellow. He could not convince the boys not to go back to the lake, nor could he bring himself to cross the border with them. He had taught Kai all he could about surviving the jungle. There seemed nothing more he could do. Sho ga nai, his father would have said.

  Each time the boys returned, Lee would sigh with relief. He listened to the tunes of nature they picked up from the children: the shrill cries of the black-shanked douc, the songs of the golden-winged laughingthrush, the hiss of the water monitor, and the rustling wind through a young pine forest. He listened in anticipation of a sea change.

  The Bay of Boats

  ONCE CALLED CAP Saint Jacques, a seaport for trading ships from Europe, Vung Tau today drew local vacationers, searching for shade under pines or anchoring their umbrellas in the sand and stretching out beneath to catch the breeze. The hotels, motels, and inns were all full, but Uncle Mao had a comrade in the National Oil Company whose villa on the front beach was vacant.

  Soft morning rays reflected off the water and pale sand. From the villa’s terrace, Maia could see JP and Na bobbing in the waves and hear their laughter. The lightness of their play distracted her until a group of barefoot women meandering along the shore came into view. The women bore large woven bamboo baskets and wore loose black bottoms and áo bà ba tops, their faces hidden under cone hats.

  “People came here to cross the sea,” Xuan said, leaning against the balustrade, “to Hong Kong, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia.” He looked at her. “Your mother came here to leave the country—”

  “For a life elsewhere.”

  He lit a cigarette. “Mai,” he called her name softly, “if you haven’t heard from your Má after all these years . . .”

  She slipped off her sandals, hooked her fingers through the straps, and stepped off the terrace onto the sand. The beach was silky and cool. She then felt the sharp broken shells beneath her bare feet and wanted to put her sandals back on. She kept walking. She did not want to hear his words. She knew he could not let go of his own past, nor could she stop searching without knowing what happened.

  The women were gathering shellfish. Every summer, they came from nearby villages with their young children and old parents. They stayed in makeshifts along the back beach, away from the tourists. They did not know much about the Bay of Boats, except that on certain days in certain spots, they could find clams in abundance. They had never met a grown person looking for her mother.

  “She left because she knew you could feed yourself.”

  Someone tossed a spade on the sand near Maia.

  “My child is sick today. Mr. Sky sends you to help.”

  The women beckoned Maia to come closer and showed her the tiny holes in the sand where water was squirting up. “Dig here.”

  Maia worked alongside the clam pickers. She followed them from one cluster of holes to the next, from the front beach, around Nghinh Phong Point, to the back beach. After hours of bending and digging, her body stiffened and she felt lightheaded from dehydration. She wanted shade and water, but she continued until they stood before the shanties. Erected along the mossy stone wall that separated the boulevard from the sandy shore, the makeshifts were invisible from afar. The low roofs were made from bits and pieces of black moldy tin. The cardboard sides were the color of sand, making the shelters undetectable to those not looking.

  The women set the baskets among their scanty belongings and poured Maia a small tin of warm pandan tea. She asked for a second cup and a third. They disappeared into the shanties, leaving her with an old woman and a sallow-skinned girl who were tending several cooking fires. Over one was a large pot of rice mixed with barley. The second cooked cassava. The smallest boiled an earthy mixture of dried barks, leaves, and berries.

  “What’s the brew for?” Maia asked.

  “A concoction from the Isle Pagoda,” the old woman said. The morning before, when it was low tide, she had walked a third of a kilometer to the isle off the southwest coast. The nuns there grew varieties of medicinal plants.

  “For the girl?”

  “No. For her father, my son-in-law.” The old woman glared at the man swinging in a hammock nearby. He was badly sunburnt and unshaven and had a distended potbelly. His dull eyes stared blankly before him. “He hasn’t slept for days. Can’t sleep. Can’t eat. Can’t work. The brew will help.”

  The Sea Swift

  “FRESH CATCH FROM the sea! Fresh catch from the sea!”

  The cry from outside the shanty woke Maia. The clam diggers had gone for the morning, and the old woman and young girl were nowhere in sight. Only the potbelly man was left sleeping in the hammock, the wind rocking him to and fro, lulling him into deeper oblivion.

  Shoppers gathered near the water’s edge, picking over live fish on a plastic mat on the sand. A boy about seven or eight years old was culling small silvery fish, gray crabs, and prawns into a red plastic pail. When he saw Maia, he called out, “Cá tươi! Cá tươi!”

  After people left with their purchases, Maia bought the rest for ten thousand đồng and walked back to the shanties with the fish. The man was still lying in the exact position in the hammock. When she came to wake him, it occurred to her that he might not be sleeping. Her heart began to pound.

  “The brew will help,” his mother-in-law had said.

  Maia quickly put the fish in a pail of water and placed it near the blackened sand where the cooking fires had burned. As she turned to leave, she saw the boy and a wiry man, an older replica of the boy, watching her from several yards away. The fisherman glanced past her at the shanties, the sleeping man, and the pail of fish. He then picked up the plastic mat, shook the water and sand from it, and folded it into quarters. He tucked the folded mat under his arm. The boy was at his side with two large woven baskets.

  “Looking for work?” the man asked Maia. “Come with us.”

  He started off toward the shore with his son dragging the large baskets, making winding parallel lines in the sand. “See that boat?” the man called back, pointing to a pink wooden vessel bobbing in the distance. “That’s the Sea Swift. We built her. She can take us to Hong Kong, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, anywhere!”

  “How do you get there?” Maia followed. She slipped off her sandals at the water’s edge, where the broken shells had been smoothed by the waves.

  “To Hong Kong, the Philippines, Indonesia, or Malaysia?”

  “No. How do you get to that pink boat?”

  His young son pushed the baskets into the water and climbed into one while keeping a hand on the other.

  “You can ride with the boy,” the man said. “We’ll go around Nghinh Phong Point back to Ben Sao Mai. You can get off at the front beach.”

  “Wait! Could you help me—?”


  The man had climbed into the other basket, his hands sculling water to keep from drifting away, but she could not finish her question. Instead, she waded into the deep. “You’ll let me off at the front beach?”

  The father and son nodded, their baskets bobbing up and over the incoming waves.

  The basket tossed erratically when she climbed in with the boy, who squatted on one side. Between them was the red plastic pail with the miscellaneous fish, crabs, and prawns.

  “Be still and balance yourself,” the man called across the waves.

  Glancing back, she could barely make out the tin-roof shanties along the dark stonewall or the man in the hammock, knocked out, she now realized, by a sleeping potion from the Isle Pagoda. She hoped the concoction would wear off before the fish spoiled in the heat.

  The Sea Swift was a twenty-foot fishing boat built from young poplar wood. The deck did not have much walking space. Its sides were lined with barrels of fresh water, more barrels for fish, and several plastic containers of gasoline. There were cooking pots and a gasoline stove in one corner of the deck, a heap of fishing nets in another, a narrow plank bed inside the cabin, and an oil lamp hanging from the ceiling.

  “If the weather is good, we can stay out for days,” the man said. “We have enough rice and fuel for two weeks.” He started the engine, turning the boat southward along the back beach. The Sea Swift glided quietly and smoothly over the waves through the narrow strip of water between the coast and the Isle Pagoda.

  “Is fishing your livelihood?” she asked.

  “It was my grandfather’s, father’s, mine, and will be my son’s.” He gazed at the boy, who was rinsing their small catch in the pail. “Clean them well,” he instructed. “Maybe our guest will join us for a meal.”

  She accepted the invitation.

  “Ben Sao Mai in the northwest where I grew up is the oldest fishing district,” the man said. “Everybody I know fishes, sells fish, or makes fish soup.”

  The man steered the vessel around Mui Nghinh Phong, the southernmost tip of Vung Tau. They sailed silently with the rise and fall of the waves in open water. The rough back and forth tossing of the small boat unsettled her. She locked her knees to steady her wobbly legs, but standing stiffly, she was knocked off balance. She gripped the side of the boat, her fingers slipped, and she fell backward onto the deck. The moving sea and shifting sky made her sick to her stomach.

  “You don’t sail much, do you?” the fisherman asked.

  His son peered down at her.

  “The last time . . . I was on a boat . . . was long ago.”

  “Breathe! Breathe! Breathe!” the boy instructed, inhaling and exhaling vigorously. He spread her arms and legs straight out in a corpse pose.

  “Relax.” The fisherman’s voice sounded far away. “Yield. Don’t fight it.”

  She let herself move with the rocking of the deck. She closed her eyes and her breathing slowed, falling into rhythm with the sea. As her body sank deeper into the ocean, she glimpsed a disorienting boundlessness. She bolted upright to keep from falling. She pushed herself to sit up against the side of the boat.

  “You’re seasick.”

  She smiled apologetically at the fisherman and his son.

  “Are you hungry?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s fish stew today,” the boy said. He had cooked the bony fish in thick soy sauce and black pepper, sautéed the tiny crabs and prawns with garlic and sea salt, boiled some greens, and made a pot of rice. There was also tea in a clay kettle.

  “You’ll feel better with a little food in you.” The fisherman turned off the engine. “Then we’ll drop you off at the front beach.”

  He spread a bamboo mat in the middle of the deck, on which the boy placed a large round aluminum tray. They sat cross-legged around their lunch. The boy scooped rice into a ceramic bowl and handed it to her with both hands. The man divided a fish in half with his chopsticks and placed the head portion in her bowl and the tail in his son’s. “Let’s eat!”

  They ate slowly and silently.

  “I’m looking for my mother,” she finally said out loud. “She came here over ten years ago but no one has heard from her.” She swallowed a mouthful of rice to keep a lump from rising in her throat.

  The boy moved an empty dish near her. “You can put the fish bones here.”

  They continued to eat in silence.

  When the meal was over, the boy cleared the tray. The man started the engine again. “See that?” He pointed to a massive white statue atop a green peak. “That’s Jesus Christ outstretching his arms. I was eighteen when the Americans erected Jesus on that mountain. We knew the South was losing when the high-ranking leaders left the country with their families and relatives. They feared a bloodbath. But my parents believed that Northerners and Southerners were one people.”

  His face was a tanned leathery mask, wrinkled around the eyes from squinting in the sun. She listened for his allegiance to one side or to the other, but he spoke without emotion.

  “From here,” he said, “the Sea Swift can sail north to Hong Kong, east to the Philippines, or south to Indonesia and Malaysia. We’ve gone as far as the Con Dao archipelago, where there are plenty of big fish. Beyond the archipelago, there’s a small isle where swallows make their nests and lay their eggs. When the morning sun’s glowing red, the swallows masquerade in their pink plumage and skip across the sky in a dance with their water reflections.”

  They sailed past the front beach, the tourist district of luxury hotels, giant colorful umbrellas, and a floating restaurant.

  “There’s an old man in our neighborhood who captained three boats across the South China Sea,” the man said. “Old Man Giac might know something.”

  Ben Sao Mai, a strip of land between the shore and the foot of Big Mountain, had a heavy fish smell. The neighborhood consisted of some twenty shacks of fishermen and their families, clustering the main paved road that curved around the northwestern coast of Vung Tau. The street was lined with rows and rows of fish and squids and octopuses laid flat on the ground to dry in the sun, like an open market display of motley sandals, flip-flops, and slippers. Where there was no space, the catches were hooked through their heads or mouths and hung vertically on metal racks like enormous earrings from the sea.

  Maia followed the fisherman and his son through a wet alley strewn with fish carcasses of guts, fins, scales, and tails. In the backyard of a thatched hut overlooking the shore, they found a man drinking rice whiskey from a gourd and playing chess by himself. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of loose black pants. His wiry sunburnt back curved over the wooden chessboard. His forehead was creased in deep concentration, his thumb and forefinger holding a chess piece in midair. With his other hand, he grabbed the jug and took a long swig before placing the piece down with an audible click. “Chiếu tướng!” The old man’s lips trembled with pleasure.

  The fisherman told Maia that Old Man Giac was the most daring in his youth. He went the farthest in the worst weather to catch the biggest fish. He knew the shortest and fastest passage across the South China Sea to Hong Kong, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia. He made three crossings. On his third trip, he sold his home and took his wife, three sons, and four daughters. He then returned alone. No one knew why he returned. He had never set foot off land again.

  Maia approached Old Man Giac. “Mister, my mother came here to escape the country.”

  The old man’s expression changed from contentment to hostility. He brought the jug up to his mouth, tilted his head back, and gulped noisily. He placed the jug down and rearranged the chess pieces on the board, making loud angry click-clack sounds.

  “Uncle,” the fisherman said, “please help if you can.”

  Old Man Giac stopped chewing a dried octopus tentacle and looked at Maia with bloodshot eyes, his lips quivering. “If you haven’t found your mother,” he said, “she’s not here but gone to sea.”

  “What do you mean?”

 
He studied the chessboard. His forehead wrinkled in concentration.

  She reached over and pushed a red soldier one point forward. “Is she living somewhere? Like your wife and children?”

  He moved the black chariot. He drank the last drop from the jug. “All gone,” he mumbled. “No more.”

  From Ben Sao Mai, Maia walked eastward along Nguyen An Ninh Street, turning right on Binh Gia, which changed into Xo Viet Nghe Tinh, where she passed the open marketplace, hotels, and massage parlors. Instead of continuing on to the front beach villa, she ducked into the House of Night Water.

  Girls in white satin robes clustered around her when she asked for a massage.

  “A massage?” they repeated.

  “This is a massage parlor, isn’t it?”

  “Are you with the công an?”

  She shook her head, following their gazes through the darkened glass to the Public Security Trio standing outside under the yellow streetlight.

  “What kind of massage?” the girl eating a green guava asked. “Do you want a masseur?” Before Maia could respond, the girl called out, “Tèo ơi, có khách!”

  In came a slim, well-manicured man. He slinked up to Maia and circled her, smelling of musk and vanilla. He jutted his face into her neck and inhaled. “Oh my!” He breathed. “You can use a bath.”

  The girls looked at one another.

  “Đào,” the one with the guava called, “bring a bar stool to the backroom.” She set aside the half-eaten fruit, introduced herself as Ái, and led Maia to the girls’ shared quarters. Đào had stripped to her peach bra and panties and placed a tall stool under the showerhead.

  “Everything off,” Ái ordered. She disrobed herself and stepped into the shower in crimson lacy undergarments.

  Maia’s feet dangled above the tile floor when she mounted the stool. Cold water and sharp fingernails made her tremble.

  “Just got dumped?” Đào asked.

  Ái whispered, “Maybe she’s never been in love.”

  “Why be sad?” Đào said. “Many fish are in the sea. We’ll lovelify you to catch another.”