“What about Toker?”
“I don’t know how to feel about him. I thought I knew, but that was before I found out how he felt about…Vietnamese people, and before I found he’d disinherited me.”
“He was what he was,” I told her. “You should let your feelings be formed by the way he treated you, the things he did for you while you lived with him.”
“Then I still don’t know how to feel.”
I thought about that for a few minutes. “Tell me something. Suppose your father were here, on this deck. What would you say to him?”
She didn’t answer. I looked over and found her staring at me with a pale face. “No!” I said quickly. “I don’t mean it like that! I mean, just suppose he were sitting beside you. What would you say?”
“I’d ask him why he never came for me, never tried to find me. I’d ask what his life was like. I’d ask how he could abandon a little girl without even caring what happened to her.”
“And if he answered all those questions, what would you want from him? Money? Recognition?”
“It would be nice if he recognized me. But if he couldn’t, I suppose I would live with that. Mostly I just want to know.”
“I think you already do know, April. But let me help you out a bit. When Sissy was shot, the bullet went in a little higher than he let on.”
“Sissy? It was Sissy?”
I nodded in the dark. “It had to be. Phoung might have used sex against Max or Roy if she needed to, but not while she thought Sissy was alive. She loved him. He said so. Roy said so. I say so. It could only be Sissy. And look at what he’s done. He didn’t know you existed. When he learned, he found Toker and got him to find you and take care of you. He gave him the money he’d saved all those years.”
“Then he knows?”
“Sure, he knows. Do you remember how he hugged you when we left?”
“Yes!” She sounded happy for a moment, then remembered something. “Anna knows too.”
“I think so. But she doesn’t want to. And Sissy is afraid that his marriage will be over if she finds out.”
“But that’s silly! I happened long before he met her. How can he think that?”
“We don’t know what kind of marriage he has, April. If he thinks that recognizing you would destroy it, maybe it would.”
She said nothing for a long time, then shivered and hugged the thin silk blouse she was wearing closely to her. She came over and sat beside me. I put my arm around her and she nestled into my side. “Feeling better?” I asked.
“Yes. You?”
“Yes.”
She put a hand on my chest and kissed my neck. I ignored that. “It’s your turn,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“If my mother were here, sitting where I am now, what would you say to her?” She waited patiently while I thought about it.
“I guess I’d apologize,” I said at last.
“What for?”
“You know what for.”
She shook her head. “That’s not good enough. I’m Phoung, and I’m sitting here beside you. Talk to me.”
It was hard. The words tried to choke me. They wouldn’t come out. “Go on. Talk to me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “For not being able to do more. For telling Roy I saw you with Corvin. For not telling you how I felt about you.”
“How did you feel?” Her hand played lower, down my belly.
“I loved you, Phoung,” I said. “I loved you, and I let you go. I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry.”
She began to work on my belt. I took her hand away. There was nothing in there she could use.
“I knew how you felt,” she said. “I knew it all along. But there was nothing I could do either. There was always someone else. You know that.”
“It didn’t matter. I really didn’t want anything from you.”
“Not even this?” She took my hand and put it on her breast. It lay in my hand like the soft weight of a little bird, and her nipple kissed my palm.
“There’s always that,” I said. “There was always the wanting, Phoung.”
She lifted her lips to my ear and whispered, “I forgive you, you know. I never blamed you for what happened.”
I squeezed my hand gently and she put hers back between my legs. This time there was something for her to find. I turned my head and kissed her lips and her tongue found mine. She made a little noise and I put my hand under her blouse, lifted her brassiere up over the breast, and cupped her bare skin.
“Wait,” she said.
She pushed me back and straddled me, then lifted off her top and tossed her bra away. She tore open my shirt and lay back down on me, so that her nipples rested on mine. The golden monkey hanging from my neck dug into my chest just over my heart. I tried to move it out of the way, but she took my hand and placed it on her hip. I hugged her and let my hand slip under her slacks, between her panties and her skin, and cup her cheek and pull her against me. She ground against me and then murmured impatiently and pulled away. I caught at her, but she stood and pulled her pants and panties off and started fumbling at my belt. I helped her, kicked off my pants, and tore off the rest of my shirt, my shoes and socks. Then she bent over me and caught me in her hand and lifted me up and crawled on top of me again and guided me where I had dreamed of being for so many years.
I slid easily into her and she shuddered and lay still for a long moment, feeling me within her, and I closed my eyes and felt her hot moistness enclose me. She kissed my cheek and whispered. “What’s my name?”
“Phoung,” I gasped.
“No,” she said. “Phoung would never do this with you!” She rocked herself up and down my length. “What’s my name?”
“Holly.”
“There is no Holly. You made her up. She only existed for a little while, for those few minutes you needed her in the Philippines. What’s my name?”
I gave up and began moving in and out of her. “April,” I said. “April.”
Then we began moving together. She rolled over and pulled me on top of her. “Again,” she said. “Say it again.”
I said it again and again, and we made the world over new, just for the night, just for the hour. Then we held each other until it was time to sleep, and we walked inside hand in hand. She started to cuddle up against me in the dark of the bedroom, but I reached for her and said her name again.
She rolled toward me and held me and kissed my chest, but she held me away instead of holding me to her. She had a question. “About what happened at Las Colonias,” she said.
“What about it?”
“Was it the same for you? I mean the same as it was in Luzon? Did you…were you…excited?”
“It will always be the same,” I told her.
“Then I have another question,” she said. “When Roy offered you the job, the chance to leave the jungle, why did you take it? If you liked the killing?”
“I didn’t say I liked it. I said it turned me on. Not the killing, but the risk. Putting everything on the line.”
“But why leave it?”
I thought about it for a while. “I guess it’s because I don’t believe in heaven,” I answered slowly. “If I kill a man, I can’t tell myself I’m sending him to his reward. I’m just stopping him. I have to make up my own moral principles. One of them is not to do more harm to others than I have to. But first I take care of myself, my family, and my friends. In no particular order of importance.”
“I didn’t know you had a family.”
“There’s you. Sissy. Johnny Walker. That’s about it, now. A week ago I would have included Roy.”
She held me for a long time, and then she nodded and opened herself to me.
I woke early in the morning, well before dawn. April lay beside me, breathing gently. I stared up into the darkness for a long, long time, thinking about what had happened. And then I thought about the one question that had never been answered. The question of her legacy.
&nbs
p; Where had the payoff money gone? Sissy swore he had given it to Toker. It wasn’t in Toker’s house after his death. Roy claimed never to have seen it after Luzon, and though I’d turned the Rancho de Las Colonias upside down, it was not to be found there. I stared into the dark, listened to April breathe, and waited for the sun to come up. When it did, an answer, one possible answer, came with it.
I climbed quietly from the bed and pulled on a pair of jeans. I went out to the garage and grabbed my toolbox. Then I began dismantling the red Jaguar. I was still at it two hours later when I noticed April sitting on the front steps, stark naked as usual, watching. I ignored her.
Half an hour later, I found it. Toker had removed the dashboard and formed a pocket in the wiring between the radio and the instrument package. Then he had covered the heavy canvas bag with a piece of formed plastic and screwed it into the fire wall. It would never have been found. I’d never have found it if I hadn’t been sure that Toker wouldn’t steal from April. He might not have adopted her, but he had felt something for her. He had recognized the obligation.
It was not a bad hiding place if you assumed that Toker hadn’t expected to die. He owned the Jaguar dealership. No other mechanic would ever work on the car, not while his shop was available. He could get to the jewels anytime he wanted just by telling April the car needed to be serviced. Even if there had been an accident, he could have gotten hold of the car without any trouble. And yet the stones were at a safe distance from him. Accessible, but safe.
I carried the bag into the house. April followed me. I emptied it carefully on the kitchen table. A mountain of blue and red and yellow and green. None of the stones was smaller than a quarter carat, and none was larger than three carats. That was the way Roy liked to buy. Easier to dispose of, he said.
I scooped up a double handful. They were cool in my hands. April reached over and scooped up a double handful for herself. There was a large pile left on the table. She let them trickle through her fingers back into the pile on the table. I poured my handful over her hands and she wriggled her fingers under the shower of jewels.
“Beautiful,” she said.
“They’re all yours,” I told her. “Sissy gave them to you. Toker saved them for you. Both your fathers.”
“Maybe I don’t want them,” she said, but she said it experimentally, as though to test her own reaction to the words.
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “They’re yours. You do have a history, you know, and these are part of it.”
She nodded slowly and lifted one handful after another. She held her legs together and poured them into her lap, a glittering mound that seemed to spill out of the blackness of her hair, a treasure born of a treasure. Beautiful, I thought.
Just at that moment, Jenny Murphy pushed the door open with a grocery sack in each arm and said, in rapid succession:
“Knock, knock!”
“Oooh!”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”
Then she paused, looked at us, and asked, “Can I play?”
I broke out laughing. “Ask April,” I said. “They’re hers.”
April answered solemnly. “You can touch,” she said, “but you can’t keep.”
Jenny blushed. “You all don’t mind me,” she turned and set the bags on the counter. “I was just returning some of those groceries you left with me when you took off.” She hesitated, then added, “The door was open, you know, and folks around here, well…”
“I know,” I said. I emptied my hands. “And we thank you. April, why don’t you get some clothes on?”
It took her several minutes to separate herself from the treasure. She managed to look nonchalant as she walked from the room.
Jenny apologized again and began a hasty retreat. I insisted she stick around for breakfast. She agreed without too much resistance and went to sit at the table, staring down at the jewels. Curiosity must have been killing her, but she held it.
I started some eggs and toast. April came back in wearing a T-shirt and went directly to the table. The two women started sorting the stones by color.
“What are you going to do with them?” Jenny asked.
“I’m going to Paris, I think. If I can talk him into coming with me.”
I fingered the golden monkey on my chest. “Maybe you’d better take the groceries back with you,” I told Jenny, “at least for a while.”
Afterword
Epiphanies and Profanities
Ten thousand hours. I did the arithmetic once, when words were coming hard, and that’s about how long I’ve spent at a keyboard, trying to pound some sense into the lives of imaginary characters. It’s a respectable number. Others have done far more, of course, but ten thousand hours represents an investment in the craft that I look on with satisfaction until I ask myself why.
No one has ever asked me why I write. How I write, sure. Where I find plots is a popular question. Where the characters come from, even what time of day I’m most productive, but no one, reader or writer, has ever asked why. Maybe they think they know.
I don’t.
Around the world, billions of people live full and satisfying lives without writing books. A case could even be made that the average non-writer lives happier and dies easier than the average writer. Writing has nothing to do with love, children, or any of the truly important things in life, and while, for most writers, the compulsion might pay for a Christmas turkey, the February pot roast requires a day job. So why do it?
Sam Johnson said that only a blockhead writes for any reason but money. Of course, he did non-fiction and there’s good money in non-fiction, though writing it is about as futile as sex without reproduction—there’s the pleasure of the act, but it lacks issue, extension. It doesn’t reach outside itself. In non-fiction, a line about pruning a tree, for instance, speaks only of pruning a tree. It implies no thought of pruning a life.
But who am I kidding? There’s no pleasure in writing, not the way I do it. Others may have a different experience, but for me writing is painful. The words pour out, but then they must be examined, each one, with suspicion. Does this define the character? Does that fix the setting? Why isn’t there a word for the way an unrelenting wind can sharpen anger into a howling rage? Or for that helpless guilt I feel when my best intentions have done an injury? And how in the hell can I tell a story by wrapping words around a vacuum? For, make no mistake, the heart of fiction is emptiness.
The characters don’t exist, the events never happened, and even the setting has usually been changed to some degree, if only to avoid lawsuits. Only the words exist. They wrap the story’s empty heart, defining it much as the invisible man was defined by his bandages.
This grows worse and worse.
Now I begin to wonder why anyone would read fiction, much less write it, and yet billions of people around the world do. They read the wrapping words and are enrapt. They hunger for more. They refuse, for instance, to allow Conan Doyle to kill off Sherlock Holmes, and when, a hundred years later, other authors resurrect the character, readers flock to their bookstores.
Why?
It has to be the stories, the shape of the emptiness the words define. Perhaps I focus too much on the issue of lies, the character that isn’t there, the fundamental falsehood in the events and the setting. Perhaps the story should be viewed, not as a vacuum, but as a container, an empty vessel into which the readers fit their own life experiences. There is an extension: a stepping outside of Self allows escape from the tyranny of the day-to-day that grinds away at our lives, and a kind of resonance that promises new perspectives, new meanings, and an opportunity for re-evaluation and redefinition.
But what does it offer the author?
What was there about Rainbow Porter, Nick Cowan, Helen Daws, or any of the other characters I’ve mid-wifed, published or unpublished, that drew me back to the keyboard for those ten thousand hours? Why did I want to know what happened to them badly enough to make that kind of investment? Because I really didn’t know
, as I wrote, what was coming next. Not for sure. No matter how carefully I plotted, the characters always took over, and by page one hundred or two hundred or three hundred I was just typing. I moved my fingers while the characters told the story of their lives—each a life I never lived, but could have, in a world God never made…and no, I didn’t make it either. We collaborated in the creation, God and I. He provided the model, I supplied the words, and the meaning arose somewhere in the gulf between model and writer, writer and reader.
Still, why do it?
Ego enters into the answer, but a technical writer sees his books on the shelf as often as those of us who devote ourselves to fiction. Power? Try politics or business for that. Money? Programming computers pays far better than writing, and the paychecks arrive more reliably. Sex? Ambition in that direction would have led me in other directions: politics, perhaps. So eliminate pride, power, money and sex. Pride falls, power crumbles, money wastes, and the hot urgency of sex fades quickly to indifference.
What remains?
Back to the stories, those ineffable silences we somehow fill with meaning.
Meaning. That’s a nice, glib answer, and I’m tempted to leap on it. We all hunger for meaning in our lives, but there’s a problem here. Look, for a moment, at the creative process, the act of laying words down on paper and then revising them until they are lined up right, until the emptiness they wrap holds a firm and satisfying shape.
The words come from the author. They must. There’s nowhere else. How can writing them offer the author any meaning, any insight, that he does not already possess? That’s the central problem, the underlying mystery.
Stories are built of words, so let’s consider words, and let’s get particular. Lay down a few at random. Rose garden, for instance. And since this is a mystery, let’s add death and surprise. Each word has a specific meaning surrounded by a constellation of associations that belong, at this stage, exclusively to the author. A rose garden can be a bright and cheery place, full of scent and remembered labor. Death evokes loss, grief, perhaps horror. A surprise may be pleasant or unpleasant—the word is full of birthday parties, Christmas presents, chance meetings…but when they are juxtaposed, something happens. They feed off each other. Each shrinks and the combination grows.
Monkey on a Chain Page 29
