Come Landfall: A Novel

Five: Foreign Correspondence

five Foreign Correspondence Along Oak Street, by the Vietnamese Catholic Church with its pagoda roof and statue of Mary like a Bodhisattva near the koi pond, Cam biked through the Saturday afternoon sunshine. She’d played piano at Coastal Arms that morning while Daddy headed to his shrimpboat to work on the engine. As she cycled along, she passed two teenage girls in jeans and T-shirts logo’d with Benneton and Abercrombie, and a wizened old woman in a rice paddy hat, one of the conical, straw numbers sold, along with dried noodles and Vietnamese-dubbed Chinese videos, in Trai Huong Market. How she wished for a car, a red Mustang like Carrie O’Connor from St. Benedict’s, or a bright blue Saturn like Marie Schwartz, who had Cam’s same piano teacher, a shiny rocket ship to take her to realms she could hardly reach on her bicycle. Daddy let her drive his peeling truck on rare occasions, but he was not even willing to upgrade the sound system from cassette tapes to CD. When the Vietnamese and Laotian guys, with their tricked-up cars, had their drag races along the county highway, she yearned to have any kind of wheels at all, even a boxy little Chevy. A postcard had just come in the mail that showed Ho Chi Minh City—Daddy insisted on still calling it Saigon—and she knew her father would be eager for the greeting from his brother, who had stayed in Vietnam and now had a thriving shoe store. The architecture of the buildings looked strange to her—she had never traveled there—although she had seen images of her homeland countless times on the Internet when clicking on its news, weather, or sports for Daddy. 64 Roy Hoffman She approached the docks with the giant, steel-hulled shrimp boats moored closest to the High Chaparral. With their huge refrigeration units, the steel boats, largely owned by long-time American shrimpers, were able to go out for weeks on end, deep into the Gulf of Mexico. The smaller, wooden boats, like Miss Mai, many owned by Vietnamese, went out for a few days at most, though her father and cousin Thanh pushed way out into the unpredictable Gulf when state waters were closed for shrimping in winter and spring. She cycled down the wooden planks to where the Miss Mai was lashed to its pilings and shouted out, “You’ve got mail!” Daddy appeared from the engine room, smudged with oil. “I must speak with you.” She handed him the postcard, and he pressed it to his chest. Then he gazed at Cam with sadness. “Who is trying to do this to me!” “Do what, Daddy?” “It is the Rebel men in the trailer.” “What do you mean?” “A policeman called our house this morning when you were gone, someone made a report, they said we are burning paper. They gave the license plate of our truck. What do you know about this!?” “I don’t know anything. Why would I know anything?” Her heart churned. “Have you been smoking cigarettes near the temple?” “No sir.” “Cam, have you been smoking marijuana there!?” “Daddy, what do you think I am, a drug addict?” Only the second time she had been to visit Quan Am, to send her letter in ashes toward the Bodhisattva’s wise countenance, the flame had caught the pine straw and skittered toward the fence dividing the temple from the trailer park. She had hurried to stomp it out, then sped away in the truck. “The Rebel men in the trailer,” he fumed. “I will find out their names and go to them!” “What if they have a gun?” come l andfall 65 Phi produced a long, curved knife from beneath a coil of rope, but a police car turned by the docks. He stashed the knife away, peered out at the squad car. The cop saw him, waved, kept driving. He leapt off the boat, hurried up the walk, and called out, “Policeman , sir. I need your help.” The car slowed, circled back, crunching over the oyster shell parking area. Cam recognized him from St. Benedict’s. How could she forget Joseph Donahue leaping toward the basketball goal, swishing the ball into the hoop to win against Gulf Pines Military Academy. Lanky, lean, short black hair curly like a little boy’s, he’d been...