by Greg Dragon
“Who?”
“Bud Lee. He says he needs to meet with you.”
Ahomana looked at the clock his grandfather had built from mahogany, an antique with slender black arms and rotating second hand. “Don’t be like people who live a day at a time,” his grandfather had said. “Live each second of every day.”
“What should I tell Mr. Lee?”
“Have him meet me at The Coral Reef. I’m starving.”
* * *
Ahomana frowned at the two Americans seated at the table he had reserved. I wonder what kind of scam they want me to buy into. Any time there’s two or more of them, it’s not good.
“Hi, Ahomana. This is Tim Beheard.” Bud stood to introduce them.
“And I guess you are the mysterious Mr. Lee my secretary told me about?”
“Yes. Remember?” Bud turned his head, hoping a profile might jog his memory. “I’m the one who met you at Dr. Grave’s house.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Graves, at the Cheyenne River Standing Rock Reservation.”
“Oh yeah, right. I was there on a quick trip a few months back. Some promoter wanted to bring a casino here to the Marshall Islands. He kept me pretty liquored up so it’s all sort of blurry. Please forgive me if I don’t remember meeting you then.”
Bud spent the meal detailing his earlier visit to the islands to collect Ahmona’s DNA sample and The Club’s meeting. His host shook his head each time Bud punctuated his story with, “Remember?”
His stomach satisfied with sea bass, roast chicken, breadfruit, and coconut ice cream, Ahomana motioned to the waiter for the check.
“That’s quite a story, Mr. Lee. But honestly, I don’t remember being a part of any of it except some time I spent at the Cheyenne River Standing Rock Reservation’s casino. Maybe you have me confused with another Islander who you met. You know what they say: ‘We all look alike.’” He winked at Tim, who tried to hide his laughter.
“Do you mind if I scan you for an implant? Dr. Graves put one into all six members of The Club. I think that’s what is keeping you from remembering.”
He patted his stomach and sighed. “Good thing you asked when my stomach is full so I’m in a good mood. But let’s go outside. Other people need our table.” He nodded at those crowded in the waiting area.
The sky seemed to be on fire as the bottom of the sun touched the horizon, where the reddish blue sky met the calm pale blue waters. Ahomana watched the sunset while Bud ran his tiny scanner over his 300 plus pound frame.
“I don’t get it. It’s only showing what it says is a piece of fishing hook in your leg and nothing else.” Bud cursed, the first time Tim had heard such language from him.
“Look.” Ahomana placed his right hand on Bud’s shoulder and turned him toward the sunset. “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight…”
“Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.” Bud slinked away and found a bench and sat down.
“Your friend is typical of Americans who visit here. All stressed out, too busy to enjoy what is really important in life. Bud acts so serious all of the time.”
Tim nodded. “He thinks he’s on a mission for God.”
“Listen, I know the perfect place to take both of you to fix your perspectives. Meet me at the airport at 7 a.m. tomorrow.”
* * *
Tim convinced Bud to accept the invitation, instead of leaving the islands.
Bud grumbled as Ahomana, dressed in traditional native garb of a loose fitting ankle-length cloth wrapped about his waist, met them. His chest was bare. During their two-hour flight in a four-seat, twin engine plane from Majuro to Rongelap, Ahomana described his nation and its people.
Tim listened to glean background for his current story. Bud pretended to sleep, stretched out on the back two seats.
“First the Spanish came to our islands, then the English and later on the Germans and Japanese. But we lived in peace until World War II. Then the Japanese used us as a strategic base of operations. The Americans came and defeated them, but instead of going away after the war and leaving us alone, they stayed and used some of our islands for conducting tests of their atomic bombs.”
He told how the first blasts had exposed U.S. sailors and civilian scientists to radiation, and a later bomb’s larger than expected fallout traveled to an island group to the east of the test site.
“First, they evacuated those islanders after they got sick from the radioactive fallout. Then, they brought them back to live on that island. Next, they evacuated them again.” Ahmona’s voice broke. “Some of my ancestors died prematurely because of all that.”
Tears rolled down his cheeks. “Did you know only about one out of seven of America’s atomic bomb tests were detonated here but about eighty percent of the bombs’ entire total yield happened here on our islands? Too much radioactivity and fallout on us.” He shook his head.
“How big is the population for your nation?” Tim asked.
“Almost 100,000.” Ahomana wiped his cheeks with his calloused hands. “Many are expatriates from America.”
After circling over the islands of the Rongelap Atoll and reciting the names of each as if they were his children, Ahomana set the plane down on an airstrip that seemed to begin and end at the waters’ edge. Its residents hosted a feast favored by islanders of the South Pacific: fish of every shape and size, a five-foot long pig roasted by burying it under glowing embers, and vegetables and fruits harvested from their yards that morning.
Bud and Tim longed for a nap to help digest the meal, but Ahomana offered another suggestion.
“You two are finally beginning to relax a little bit and even look younger than yesterday. How about a tour of Monkey Island?”
Before they could decline, he led them alongside a dirt road for a quarter mile to a pier and introduced them to a wiry fisherman and his boat. Its twin diesel engines moved the craft so rapidly Tim thought it would take less than an hour to reach their destination. Instead, it took five hours because Ahomana monitored the sonar equipment in the boat’s cabin for schools of fish.
He ordered the captain to drop the anchor above the most promising schools and they fished while the boat rocked in the swells hitting it every thirty seconds. Neither of the guests held a pole, they instead clutched the rail and vomited or retreated to the cabin and buried their heads on a small table. When the boat anchored 140 yards from a tiny island, their dizziness subsided.
Ahomana plopped a four-man raft into the water and helped Bud and Tim climb into it. “Oh, I almost forgot. No electronic devices allowed on Monkey Island in honor of the dead buried there.” He collected and bagged their links to the world and tossed the gunny sack to the grinning captain, who handed him a bag of flounder, cod, bass, and a baby shark.
“Why isn’t your friend coming ashore?” Tim asked after the raft beached on a stretch of sand.
“He thinks it’s still too radioactive. But the last readings I took here with my Geiger counter indicate that a weeklong stay once a year is not harmful.”
“A week? We have to leave before then,” Bud said.
“Don’t worry.” Ahomana took them across the beach and into the island’s sparse vegetation of palm and breadfruit trees. He stopped in front of a bronze memorial supported by chunks of mortared coral erected and dedicated in 2001. Its words glinted from the sun’s setting rays:
Here lies Kong, monkey king of Monkey Island and the soldier he befriended, Private Jason Dalrumple, U.S. Army, 1941 to 1946.
“His widow sent Jason’s ashes to my great grandfather and he buried them there.” Ahomana pointed at the rocks and coral covering the graves. “The monkey troop here all probably died from the radioactive fallout.”
Neither Bud nor Tim regained an appetite as darkness fell and a fire seared the fish Ahomana had impaled on sticks anchored in the sand.
“Here, at least drink some of this so you don’t dehydrate.” Ahomana handed them coconuts with punched holes large enough through which they
could drink their water. “The way you guys were barfing on the way here, I’m surprised you haven’t passed out yet.”
After dinner, Ahomana retrieved three thermal blankets from the raft and showed the others how to stay warm by positioning their beds of sand and palm fronds near the fire. When Bud awoke an hour later, he stumbled to the water’s edge to urinate. A feeling of being disconnected overwhelmed him and he stepped into the waves. A voice stopped him.
“You might make it to the boat if…” Ahomana joined him. “…you don’t die from stepping on a stone fish or from getting attacked by a shark or barracuda. You really don’t want to become fish food, do you?”
“Then let me take the raft instead. I really need to check on how my father’s stock is doing and if there are messages from him or my mom or—”
“You’ll live. If it makes you feel any better, I acted the same way you are the first couple times my grandfather brought me here. He said I went through withdrawals from all of my electronic idols. Here’s something to read if you still can’t sleep.” He handed Bud a book.
Instead of returning to the campfire, Bud walked down the beach until he found a small sand dune. He rested his back on it and looked up at thousands of more stars than he had ever seen in SLD or South Dakota. For the first time, he felt small, insignificant in a vast universe.
He returned to the fire and read the slender book by Jason Dalrumple about his extended time on Monkey Island by delaying his rescue as he had shirked his duty of fighting in a world war that had begun to consume his soul. A sentence from the last page caused Bud to begin questioning his own motives: “In the end, it’s just you and God; and He always wins because He is the Creator.”
* * *
Ahomana wanted to stay for two days on Monkey Island. But Bud’s nonstop restlessness, caused by his separation from his electronic umbilical cord stretching from his soul to the rest of Earth’s inhabitants, cut the campout to one night.
On the long boat ride back to the island with the airstrip, Ahomana watched his pair of visitors gaze at their electronic devices. He sat next to Tim.
“What are you reading so intently?” Ahomana asked him.
“I have to do research on Vietnam before we get there,” Tim said. “There has to be at least one story waiting there for me.”
“You remind me of the way I used to be.” Ahomana shook his head. “I was married to my work like you are to yours. But ever since my trip to visit that Indian casino it’s like I’ve learned to forget.”
21
Chan Lee underwrote his son’s trip to the Marshall Islands and Vietnam, “for two reasons, one business and one personal.”
First, Bud was to travel on one of the freighters used in his father’s import and export company, “so you can learn more about my business. You are the only one I trust to take my place when I retire.” Second, he was to continue on to Vietnam, “So you can explore a possible new market for us and meet your bride-to-be. I have also ordered the freighter’s captain to drop you off at the Marshall Islands to seek new business for our company.”
* * *
Because Bud and Tim landed in Vietnam a day later than planned, Bud’s intended bride pouted as she met them at the airport. Her chaperone’s face radiated even more displeasure. They conversed in Mandarin about how unreliable Americans were.
Even Tim could interpret the frowns and tones, if not the words. But Ling’s smile, slender body, and waist length ebony hair tossed gently from side to side helped to soften the tense introduction, Tim thought. Mrs. Lu, Ling’s chaperone, reminded Tim of a descendent of Chinese royalty that had appeared in Showdown in Hong Kong.That character had been as deadly as she was mean.
Their meal did not fare any better.
When Bud tried to order a dinner for four, Mrs. Lu objected and ordered what she deemed worthy of her and Ling. Bud shrugged and reordered a dinner for two. While Bud and Tim ate pork fried rice, chicken chow mein, and broccoli beef, the other two feasted on pressed duck, fried perch, and jumbo prawns. Two separate pots of tea were required, one with black tea leaves, the other, green.
Tim waited until they parted company at Ling’s hotel room before asking about the hostility and missing courtesy he thought was part of the Chinese culture.
“My guess is they’re testing me,” Bud said. “It’s her aunt’s way of deciding if I’m worthy of her niece.”
“So is it done this way all the time? It sounds like Chinese torture.”
“Who knows?”
The charade lasted one more day. Then Auntie informed Bud, “I and Ling must return home. Good-bye.” She shut the door to their room. While Bud waited in the hallway to accompany them to the airport, he sent Tim to meet Bud’s first prospect for his father’s business, Minh Pham, to explain his unexpected delay in meeting her.
* * *
Minh Pham’s smile relaxed Tim. What a difference from those two Bud is stuck with, he thought.
“Would you like to see some of our countryside while we wait for Bud Lee to arrive?” she asked.
Tim’s eyebrows shot upward. “Anything around here that’s interesting? You see, I’m a writer and need to send off another story to my editor back in America.”
“I understand. Let’s go.” Minh led him to a 4-wheel drive Jungle Cruiser Tim thought should be renamed Jungle Bruiser because it carried so many dents and scratches.
She drove through an endless throng of pedestrians, bicycle riders, buses, trucks, motor scooters, and occasional cars, all adhering to unwritten rules of the road. Tim marveled how so many of the vehicles used only petrol. Because of their fumes, his eyes burned. The traffic did not thin out and air clear until they reached the city’s perimeter and water buffalo cooling off in rice paddies replaced the mass of humanity. Now, few vehicles and pedestrians traveled in either direction.
“So, what do you think of my country?”
“A land of contrasts,” Tim said while steadying himself against the jarring motion caused by potholes. “So peaceful out here and so crazy just a few miles back that way. And I thought SLD was crowded.” He turned and studied her. Somehow, she appeared different from the other Vietnamese women he had seen since landing in Vietnam. Her hair was not as jet black or straight; her complexion and eyes not as dark, her lips not as thin. He blushed after she noticed his examination of her.
“Why are you staring so much at me?”
“Ah…” Tim tried to conjure up a question interesting enough to change the subject. “…I was wondering…”
“About my appearance?” Her laughter further tightened his constricted throat as he fumbled with the canteen attached to a bracket welded to the metal dashboard. “That’s okay. I can explain if you wish.”
Tim nodded and swallowed a mouthful of lukewarm water fortified by purification tablets for his sake.
“I’m a descendant of a war baby.”
“War baby? What’s that?”
“You have read or heard about America fighting here against the communist North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong during the 1960s and 1970s?”
Tim remembered the single paragraphs about the war from his history textbooks. “Only a very little bit.”
“Millions of American soldiers came here during the war. Some of them fathered tens of thousands of war babies. My great, great, great grandfather was one of the war babies. He was born in 1973.” She tapped the button to the glove compartment and found a small photo album that she dropped onto Tim’s lap. “That’s him on the first page as a baby.”
The faded photo showed a baby with brown hair, very pale yellow skin and hazel eyes that sometimes would reflect his father’s blue eyes and, more often, his mother’s dark brown ones throughout his lifetime.
The stranger seemed to age rapidly while Tim turned the album’s crinkled, yellowed pages. Tim watched him grow to toddler, then small boy, teenager, and young adult before middle age set in. He was in his sixties when his mother took her last photo of him. The last pictu
re showed him at rest in his coffin. His folded hands, wry smile, and wispy gray and white beard gave him the appearance of a monk, Tim thought.
“So that was how many generations back?”
“Six. So I am one/thirty-second white since my grandmother married a European businessman from Denmark. Does it show?” She turned so Tim could better see her face.
“Barely. Is it an issue for you? Do your fellow Vietnamese hold it against you?”
“Mostly just the communists who still hate the United States. But war babies born when my great, great, great grandfather was suffered the most. They were shunned their entire lives.”
Thirty kilometers from the city, she pulled onto the road’s narrow sloped shoulder of dirt.
After placing a wooden block in front of a back tire, she handed Tim a pair of rubber boots that extended three inches above his knees and led him into a rice paddy. She stopped in the middle of it and yanked what looked to Tim to be a blade of long slender grass from the muck anchoring it beneath the water. Tiny rice kernels fell into her palm after she rubbed the blade.
“This is our newest variety, very high calorie and high density nutritionally. Did you know we supply China with almost twenty per cent of its rice?”
“That much?”
“Yes. The hungry dragon to the north has tried to devour my much smaller country many times over the centuries. Now it must remain content to only devour a portion of our rice. For a fair price, of course.”
While they walked back to the road, Tim’s foot bumped into an object and stubbed his toe. He reached into the muddy water and pulled out a piece of jagged metal half the size of his hand.
“What is it?” He washed off the top layers of mud until parts of it reflected the sun’s rays.
“Computer, analyze object.” Minh ran her golden bracelet over it.
“Preliminary analysis indicates an age of approximately 130 years. Origin appears to be of American manufacture. Metallic composites are typical of those used in U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force helicopters of that era.”
