Fire Summer

by Thuy Da Lam

  Around dinnertime, a young girl came with a bowl of rice and leafy green rau muống stir-fried in fermented bean curd. She did not step into the cell but placed the bowl and a pair of chopsticks on the ground. As she chained and padlocked the door, No-No slid in. He sniffed and wrinkled his nose at the stir-fried greens and then came up to Maia. He arched his back and rubbed against her legs a few seconds. He strutted toward the door and squeezed through underneath. That night he came back and curled up next to her, smelling both familiar and strange. He left before daybreak, leaving sandy paw prints on the bench.

  On the second day, the girl brought her bag and a needle and yellow thread for the tear in Maia’s shirt. Everything was still inside: wallet, Swiss Army knife, toiletry, first-aid kit, pen, and a pouch of dried leaves, berries, and barks.

  “You’ll be transferred tomorrow,” the girl whispered and left quickly.

  JP and Na did not come, nor did Xuan. That evening No-No did not slip in with the girl delivering dinner. Maia let the rice and silverfish sit untouched on the bench. It had been a day and a half and her stomach was churning, filling her mouth with a sour, bitter taste. She needed to clear her mind. She had not slept for thirty-six hours. Sleep. She needed sleep.

  She reached for the pouch of dried herbs from the Isle Pagoda. Xuan and the Public Security Trio didn’t know it was mixed in their tea, but she didn’t get away, and they’d caught up with her. A pinch for a restful night, the old woman had instructed. More than a pinch and you’ll rest forever. Comrade Ty got his dose, Maia thought to herself. He no longer carries the burden. Fatty and Cross-eyed got a good night’s sleep, but Xuan was limping and twitchy.

  She nibbled on a dry leaf that had a bitter aftertaste. She crumbled a pinch of leaves and berries like furikake over the rice and took a bite of the fried fishtail before swallowing a mouthful of rice. The salt and oil in the fish cut the bitterness. After the third bite, she began to feel better. Her stomach calmed, and the flavor of crispy fried silverfish filled her mouth. The dried leaves and berries tasted tangy and bittersweet like an unripe fruit.

  She listened to the evening sounds of the nearby open market—no longer the morning buzz of early shoppers, the lull of afternoon nap, or the closing-up cacophony of bamboo brooms sweeping wet garbage into sewers, a stench that passed into the cell with the breeze. Nightfall came with the laughter of teenage boys, the roar of a motorcycle down an alley, the murmuring of lovers, the marching rhythm of a revolutionary song, sometimes a lullaby. As the human commotion came and went, leaving the rustle of leaves and chirping of crickets, she thought of her mother, of her letter from prison, of words she did not understand.

  I am free, perhaps one of the happiest times of my life.

  I do not worry. My fate is in another’s hands.

  Something did not feel right. She was weakened with nausea and spat out the half-eaten food that left her mouth salty and bitter. She was reminded of a quote she had copied in neat cursive in her high school journal—clear handwriting, round and resolute.

  destiny is not a matter of chance

  it is a matter of choice

  it is not a thing to be waited for

  it is a thing to be achieved14

  She could not sleep the night away. She could not wait for something to happen. Words from Old Seeker came to her: Compose life, guess its riddles, and redeem its coincidences. If she were to not fear the same life recurring but at its end shout, “from the beginning!” she must act.

  Her eyes had become adjusted to the dull silvery light from the quarter moon that entered through the holes and cracks of the cell. Like the night, No-No slithered beneath the door and came to her. The cat sidled up for a belly rub, and her fingers began on his head, chin, and chest. Tonight, he smelled of Hawaiian Tropic and the briny sea, but there was something else, and then she remembered the evening air in the River of Nine Dragons when the travelers had a brew of sweet spices over the bonfire.

  No-No purred, turning on his back, four paws in the air. She scratched his belly and he chortled. His navel seemed more swollen and warm. “Umbilical hernia,” JP had said—his final diagnosis. “A protrusion of the stomach’s stuff through the abdominal wall opening that would normally close, but it looks like the little fella has a delayed closure of the abdominal ring. Not a serious surgical operation. An American vet could repair it. Cut him open, push the bulge in, and sew him up. He’d go home the same day.”

  “The cat’s going to America?” Na had asked JP.

  “To the U.S. of A.,” he had replied.

  Umbilical hernia. Surgical operation. In the U.S. of A. And a plan came to Maia: Cut him open. Push the bulge in. Sew him up. Cutting things did not faze her. She had dissected an earthworm in ninth grade, a frog in tenth, a guinea pig in eleventh, and a tomcat in her senior year. She wanted to be a coroner or an astronaut, an idea that came about after a space shuttle’s explosion, a burst of flames across the sky. She was obsessed with death—her own and others’.

  Her mind was already composing a letter to slip into No-No’s belly.

  She set her tools on the bench: hydrogen peroxide wipe, razor, Swiss Army knife, needle and thread, and bandage. She crumbled more leaves and berries onto the rice and placed the bowl under the cat’s nose, clicking her tongue. “Come, boy,” she cooed. “Come, boy—you’ll sleep like a kitten.” She forced a few crumbs through his clenched teeth. He hissed, bit her, and leapt from the bench. He settled in a far corner, licking himself and staring back.

  The idea of being transferred in the morning began to sink in. She had heard stories of torture and recalled the warnings at a war crimes exhibition in Ho Chi Minh City.

  Punish and Smash All Crimes and Criminals

  to Protect Vietnam’s Independence,

  Social Order, Safety, and Territorial Integrity.

  She sat up, knocked the rice bowl onto the dirt, and staggered to the door, screaming into the silent night. “No! No! No!”

  Dogs barked, someone cursed, but no one came.

  She slumped on the ground.

  Scurrying. Wrestling. Loud squeaks.

  The cat leapt from the corner and pounced on something in the tipped rice bowl—a rat, a baby, its belly full of fish and rice. After a brief struggle, the rat went limp under No-No’s paws; the victor gnawed at his captive.

  The back of JP’s note was blank. Torn from his journal, the five-by-eight-inch sheet could be folded in quarters, rolled tight like a joint, and wrapped in plastic. It’d be waterproof and almost indiscernible under the belly skin.

  The silver moon through circles and slits provided enough light for her to make out the boundary of the paper’s whiteness against the darkness. Soundless and stone-still, the cell began to feel tomblike. She steadied the pen between her quivering fingers and pressed its tip onto the blank page. She saw each word and space in her mind’s eye—words imprinted from the briefings with the Coalition before her departure.

  She had memorized the list of indictments: Communist Vietnam does not have peace and freedom but repression and fear. People’s lives have not improved but worsened. They are living in poverty while Party members enjoy privileges they grant themselves for the years they sacrificed fighting. Vietnam is now run by men whose only experience is from fighting, not governing a country. Party members prosper; the masses live in destitution.

  Each indictment could be authenticated by a personal tragedy. But the words left her with mixed emotions. There was something evolving at the edge, beyond her mission—a connectedness with others in the here and now. She grasped to pinpoint those feelings that made her less alone, that grounded her in relationships in a community.

  She began her letter to JP Boyden.

  The ballpoint rested on the space where she left off. Sitting upright on the bench, she slept and dreamed of the operation.

  No-No, anesthetized and unconscious, sleeps with eyes halfopen.

  His belly’s taut, the navel lump enormous. He seems to stare at h
er, but he’s out, his back on the bench and four paws in the air. The double-bladed Gillette slides smoothly over wet tummy hair. She wipes the shaved rectangle with hydrogen peroxide. An inch above his navel, she punctures the skin lightly with the Swiss Army knife. Dark fluid oozes. He yowls loudly several times. She puts a finger over the cut to stop the flow. The liquid seeps under her finger and drenches the orange hair, dribbling over the bench onto the ground.

  His eyes bother her. When her fingers move to close them, his eyelids shoot back up, and she drops the Swiss Army knife. Avoiding his stare, she retrieves the knife and makes a lengthwise two-inch incision over the navel. Warm liquid gushes over the bench and onto the ground, pooling around her ankles. She peels the skin back, separating it slightly from the stomach muscles. She’s relieved. Just like chicken, she says to herself, but with chicken, there’s not the pulsating liquid, not so much liquid beating with life.

  Something moves beneath the abdominal wall. Umbilical hernia. A protrusion of the stomach’s stuff, but JP didn’t say it’d move as if it were alive. She makes a deeper incision where she’s made the first and something bursts, oozing more dark fluid, and a feathered tail pokes out. She tugs at the tail. A sparrow slowly emerges, peeping softly. Soaking wet but invigorated by the release, the bird chirps louder, and from No-No’s tummy, a flock of birds rises, beating their wings, slowly lifting from the throbbing slime that oozes from the belly over the bench and onto the floor, dark liquid surging to her knees, up to her chin.

  She stands on the bench. The birds circle above. The cat floats to the surface, four legs spread eagle, and out of its stomach a woman backstrokes, the handles of a red basket looped around her shoulder. She treads in place in the pulsating ocean.

  “Don’t play with knives.”

  “It’s an assignment, an operation.”

  “Your hair, do something.” The woman gathers her own tresses that flow outward and knots them into a loose bun, all the while her legs pedaling as if on a bicycle. “I should visit a beauty salon myself,” she says. “But today, off to the market for catfish soup.” She floats on her back, then turns and dives through the opening beneath the door. Her hair unravels like seaweed.

  “Liên Tỉnh Express Bus Station for ten đồng,” a voice whispered. Padlock and chain rattled.

  “Five,” she replied. “Five đồng.”

  “Five đồng from Clouds Motel. It’s farther from here. Ten đồng for two.”

  “Two?” She sat up and reached for No-No, but he was not there.

  Scraping, a click, metal chain rattling, the door creaked open. Pale morning light passed into the cell. The xích lô boy stood at the door. “I borrowed the key from my sister.”

  Maia squinted past the boy at his xích lô. In the passenger seat sat a tall figure in dark peasant pants, a large woven basket in his lap. A straw cone hat hid his face.

  “JP!” She rushed outside.

  The neighborhood dogs, agitated by the sudden commotion, let out several yelps before falling back to sleep in the yards nearby. A rooster crowed in the distance as the ashen sky turned rosy on the eastern horizon. When the boy retrieved her bag and was about to lock the door, she stopped him and ran back inside to look for No-No.

  “Hurry, Maia!” JP called. “He’ll find his way.”

  “JP,” she said, “you can’t come with me.”

  The seaside town became visible under the gray morning light. The noises of early traffic and metal gates being rolled up filled the silence. The boy had already climbed onto his backseat, his hand resting on the thin rod that with a slight pull would release the brake.

  “You’ll stick out and draw attention.”

  “I’m heading for the Central Highlands,” JP replied, “and you’re returning to your birthplace, aren’t you?” He grabbed her hand, and with a strong pull, she was next to him. “Besides, you’ll be safer with me.”

  The Cliff

  THE XÍCH LÔ boy pulled up beside a tree stump and hopped off his seat. He lifted the rear to lower the front for JP and Maia to step off. “They won’t find you here,” the boy said.

  Their hideout was a small earthen shack that clung to a boulder on a cliff overlooking the South China Sea. The shack had a rusty tin roof and three makeshift walls. The fourth was the boulder that the shack clung to. The boulder sloped into a plateau of smaller stones, where tough grass grew in crevices, and then plunged steeply into the sea. Here, on the northern outskirts of Nha Trang, the boy lived with his young sister.

  The late morning sun rose, but the cliff was breezy and cool, with a sticky sea mist in the air. “That’s the Isle of the Swifts.” JP pointed to a hilly island in the distance. “We were there, Na and me.”

  Maia lay on the pebbly ground, arching her back over a smooth protruding stone. “What now?” she asked herself.

  JP stretched his back over the large rock beside her and lifted his feet straight up. The cramped hour-long xích lô escape from the bus station had left their bodies aching, with kinks in their sore muscles. None of the buses would take foreigners. When they tried to bribe a driver with U.S. dollars, he threatened to report them to public security.

  The boy returned from the shack with a plate of assorted fruits that included a soursop, kumquats, wi apples, guavas, and starfruit and a dish of salt and chili. He had to pedal xích lô for the day, but they could stay until they found a way out of Nha Trang.

  “Riding South with Northern Mothers” was a caption JP had been mulling over since the morning he saw the women and the yellow Russian bus. Checking into Clouds Motel, the group would not meet his eyes when he approached them. Their old eyes glazed over when Na translated his wish. They did not want an American to accompany them on their southward journey to past battlegrounds where they hoped to excavate and bring home the remains of their sons and daughters.

  “I could see anger in their eyes,” JP told Maia.

  They had eaten the fruits and climbed down to the shore, sitting on a mossy boulder, their feet touching the crashing waves. JP was silent for a long time. “See this?” He pulled up his shirtsleeve to reveal the faded tattoo. “My half-brother was deployed to ’Nam in ’66.” His voice cracked, but she kept silent. “We’ve lost, too,” he said. “MIA, last seen in Pleiku. Sometimes I think he defected, AWOL, living somewhere. He questioned the war. He was angry when his buddies took me to Waikiki to get this before their deployment.” JP touched the insignia on his arm. “This lightning bolt.”

  The xích lô boy did not return until late afternoon the next day. His young sister was perched in the passenger seat with groceries, enough for a party of eight. Two shiny red Honda Dream motorcycles trailed the xích lô. Na was driving Xuan on one, and the public security duo was on the other.

  “Girl!” Na called. “Xuan has something for you.”

  Her father’s ashes, Maia thought as she and JP watched from the shack where they had spent the night, still trying to figure a way out of Nha Trang. Her heart did not quicken when she realized they had company. Pâté and Lai were almost unrecognizable out of their public security uniforms. Though weak from hunger, dizzy from the heat, and feeling heavy from listening to JP, she was neither apprehensive nor alarmed. She felt an inexplicable lightness in seeing the group. JP also seemed relieved that their conversation had been interrupted.

  “A feast,” Na announced. “Pan-fried trout in ginger fish sauce, lotus-stalk salad with steamed prawns and sliced pig ears, summer squash soup, and parboiled taro leaves dipped in chili anchovy sauce.”

  The boy ran off to sweep the plank veranda. His sister, smiling shyly at Maia, showed them to the open-air kitchen. The girls were in charge of preparing dinner. “A farewell party!” Na said, high-spirited with her latest singing gig and Xuan’s news. Her skills at extracting information from individuals and then piecing together the details were ingenious, her delight in the moment infectious.

  By early evening, they sat cross-legged around the meal spread out on the plank v
eranda. “Let’s toast,” the xích lô boy said. “To new friends and good food.”

  Na laughed. “To old friends and a new beginning.” She clinked cups with Pâté and Lai, who had resigned from public security. The new trio had accepted advance payments to headline as Na and the Hi-Los at Love City Café.

  “We’re traveling to compete in the upcoming Highlands’ talent show!” Pâté announced.

  “To the past,” Xuan said. “Let it be.”

  JP raised his cup. “To future adventures.”

  The dinner’s conversation began with why the shack was erected where it was—suspended in midair, hanging off a cliff, its veranda creaking in the wind.

  “The Isle of the Swifts,” the boy’s sister said softly. “Our father liked to watch the swiftlets swerving in twilight.”

  “The locals harvested bird nests on that island,” the boy said. “A kilo fetches hundreds of dollars in the black market, but it’s too dangerous to climb down the rocks.”

  “Swifts, sea swallows, salanganes—same thing?” JP asked.

  “Harvesting bird nests is not more dangerous than fishing,” Na said. “I heard that the orange, pink, and red—the rarer kinds—fetch more. Then you can leave this place.” She laughed. “Though I love the sway.” She flung her hands about as if waving a conductor’s baton, directing the ensemble of shack and wind.

  “You can learn how to scale those rocks,” JP said, brighteyed from the blood-warm rice wine. “Once you get the technique, it’s pretty methodical, but you need proper equipment.”

  “How do you know? You know how?” Na gulped the last of her wine and turned to Maia. “Xuan has something for you.”

  Xuan dug into his pocket, took out a stone ring, and held it out to Maia. “It’s Na’s idea.”