Little Saigon

Chapter 31

A few days later, Edison captained the Absolute out of Newport Harbor, followed by a Coast Guard escort and a flotilla of little boats with photographers on them. Edison promptly lost them all when he got outside the warning buoys, gunning the twin diesels to thirty knots and heading west, Frye stood next to his father as they sped to sea, the sun hot through the black wool of his suit coat. Looking back to the deck he saw Hyla and Li and Crawley: three dark figures sitting amidst the polished teak and gleaming white of the ship.

Far out, Edison cut the engines, then he and his father joined the others. Hyla read from Psalms and Matthew. Crawley added something he had written. Edison wept. Li tilted the urn, and Bennett finally mingled with the ocean he had once loved, wisps of dust consumed by a gray Pacific.

Frye sat in the cottage with his father that night. Edison poured two big snifters of brandy that neither of them touched. He began, several times, to say something, but after each start he seemed to lose interest and stared instead at the dead fireplace. Edison’s favorite dog sat at his feet. Finally he looked at his son, then around the room. “You’re in line for all this now, son. We should talk about it. Do you even want it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You said you wanted back in.”

“I want in. I don’t want the stuff.”

“Big job, running Frye Ranch.”

“I’m not the one to do it. But I’d sure like to feel I was welcome.”

“There hasn’t been a day in your life you weren’t welcome here.”

Frye thought back. “It was a good place to be, Pop.”

Edison looked at his brandy. “I know there were things I could have done differently. What I thought was best might not have been. I made some mistakes. Can you forgive me?”

“You never did anything that needs my forgiving.”

His father breathed deeply. “I know I locked you out, son. Bennett was always so easy — I’d just point him the way I thought he should go, and he’d take right off. It’s an honor when a son listens to a father. It made me feel... like what I’d done was worth something. Like I had something to offer that was good. Debbie was my only daughter, and I let her wrap me around her little finger. I loved being able to spoil her. But you, Chuck, you had your own notions. You kind of scared me. You made me doubt myself, and I’d never done that before. I blamed you for her, I admit that. Deep inside, I did. And every step you took away from what I wanted you to be, I felt like it was a step away from me. If there’s anything I should have done differently, it was to realize that my job on planet Earth wasn’t to make you into a little Edison Frye. I guess a part of me wanted a couple of sons to be just like me. Maybe I figured if you were like me, you wouldn’t see what a hard-headed unforgiving old bastard I really was.”

“That’s one of the things I loved about you, Pop. Running against you was like running against an ocean. It made me strong. I love you for it.”

Frye watched his father battle back the tears. His chin quivered, then stilled. He drank the brandy in one gulp. “Thank you for what you did, Chuck. For the Paradiso.”

“Let’s start over, Pop.”

“I’d really like to do that son.”

“Do one thing for me. Love your wife instead of somebody else. She could use some right now.”

“I know. I will. I do.”

Long after Edison had gone to bed, Frye sat up with his mother in the big house. They made a fire because neither of them could seem to get warm, and finished off the bottle of brandy. It was the first time Frye had ever seen Hyla drunk. For some reason, they kept remembering little stupid things that were funny. All of those things had happened a long time ago. The silences between their quiet laughter were longer than the laughter itself, and Frye knew that neither of them was fooling the other.

He lay in his old room the rest of the night, staring out the window.

There were official matters, though the first of them hadn’t seemed very official at all. Paul DeCord and three men in coveralls had showed up at the cave-house just after he returned from Cristobel’s. They bagged Burke’s body. They removed the blood stains from the cave with a light blue organic solution, the plastic bottle of which actually said FDA APPROVED. One of the agents noted that it was great on melted surfboard wax. They used a portable vacuum with incredible suction to remove trace evidence. They washed and waxed his hardwood floor. When everything was just as it had been, they used a small bellows-like article to apply a fresh layer of dust in the disturbed places. Frye gave him Cristobel’s gun, which DeCord assured him would be destroyed forthwith.

DeCord gave him an envelope stuffed with money and a wink too clandestine for words. “Silence,” he said.

Frye threw it back. DeCord shrugged and headed out the door. They came and went within an hour. It was magic.

Lucia, Frye found out later, had been on a CIA jet to Washington thirty minutes after he left her.

Frye collected Dien’s suitcases from the cave and drove to Bennett’s house.

Li was helping Donnell Crawley pack his things. Frye watched them, each with a pasteboard box, heading toward his old pickup truck.

Li’s smile was minor, drained, as he walked up. She hugged him and kissed his cheek.

“I’m glad you’re staying,” he said.

“Where else would I go?”

“Memories are tough.”

“No memories is worse.”

“What about the resistance?”

She looked at him a long while. “I’ll continue. It’s all I know.”

“You still want the leading role?”

She nodded, wavy black hair catching the sun. It looked almost blue. “Our fight will never end.”

Frye looked at the meager possessions in Donnell’s truck: a little black-and-white TV, a radio, the bed and sheets, a bunch of potted plants, flatware, clothes.

Li looked at him. “I couldn’t express my thoughts on the boat yesterday,” she said. “But what I wanted to say was that he was the kindest man I ever knew. Even in the war, he had kindness in him. He tried to preserve it, and he knew he was losing it. When I began to know Bennett, it was like a new world I didn’t know was there. He had passion, too. Maybe too much. What he did to Lam... it was a sin that God tricked him into committing. I don’t know why. A test? I forgive him, Chuck. But he never forgave himself.”

Frye walked around to the cottage, where Donnell was packing. He helped him with some boxes, a trunk, then a dozen or so plants from the yard. Donnell placed them carefully on the truck bed, then spread some blankets to keep them from sliding around. Frye watched his big hands make the gentle arrangements.

“Going home, Donnell?”

Crawley wiped his forehead, nodded.

“Sure you don’t want to stay?”

“I never liked it here.”

“What kept you?”

Crawley considered. “Lots of people thought it was Bennett takin’ care of me because of my brains, but that wasn’t the whole story. I was lookin’ after him too. Now he’s dead and I’m going home.”

Frye carried another pot to the van and set it in. “Thanks, Donnell.”

“I couldn’t see him carrying all that on himself, Chuck. Benny was the kind of guy who thought everything was his doing.” Crawley leaned against the bumper and folded his arms across his chest. He looked at the ground. “I couldn’t let him believe that. We was all responsible. It was me actually threw Huong from that chopper. That was one of my jobs. It’s one of those things you don’t feel good about, even if it’s your country they say you’re doing it for. If I’da killed him proper, Benny’d still be here right now. We’d be drinking beers or something. I think what I can realistically do now is just forget. It’s time for me to go on to the next thing.”

The silence got long. Frye finally said the only thing he really felt was true. “You did good, Donnell.”

Crawley looked bemused. “Don’t think I’ll ever really believe that.”

“I do.”

“You weren’t there.”

“It doesn’t matter. I know.”

“Thanks anyways.” Crawley shook his hand. “You gonna write all this up and get famous?”

“I don’t know yet. Got some offers, though.”

“Might be a good thing, since he was your brother. Anybody else just get the story all wrong. Papers don’t seem much interested anyway.”

Donnell got into the van and started it up. “I got a long drive. Take care of Li, now. Take care of yourself too. Good luck in the contest.”

“Will do.”

“Well, ‘bye, Chuck.”

The Committee to Free Vietnam headquarters was busy. Frye pulled up and parked, eyeing the group of young Vietnamese hustling about.

Tuy Nha came out, smiled, and hugged him. She had lost weight and her skin was pale. For the first time, she looks like a woman and not a girl, Frye thought. She looked at him and for a brief moment their silence said what words never could: something about Bennett and Xuan, about loss and the stars at night, about going on. There wasn’t really much that was say able. The silver wave necklace he’d given her in the hospital now shined against her breast.

“Billingham at the Ledger gave me back my job,” Frye said. “He said he owed me one, so I told him to hire you, too. Rewrite desk to start. You’d learn fast. Lousy money. Interested?”

She looked down, then up again. “I am. Thank you, Chuck.” A young man walked past them, and she smiled at him. The young man smiled back.

“I’ve got the money. Have you figured out a way to get it back to who gave it in the first place?”

She nodded. “We have a good lawyer, and time. Many people have come forward to claim what is theirs.”

They leaned against the Cyclone. “What about the network?” Frye asked.

Nha sighed. “If even one POW comes home Friday, there will be a new era. Maybe it is time to stop fighting for what we don’t have, and start building what we do have. Maybe it is time to fight harder. Is it really possible to go back? I don’t know. We never knew. It’s a time now to think.”

Frye opened the trunk, then swung open the tops of the suitcases.

Nha looked from Frye to the money and jewels, then back to Frye. She smiled oddly, eyes glimmering, and Frye saw in them something of his brother’s passion, a look telling him that Nha was and always would be a follower of her own agendas.

A moment later, a dark limousine rolled up. It stopped and a back window lowered. General Dien’s withered face looked out with curiosity, and, Frye thought, maybe longing too. You didn’t lose it, you old bastard. You sold it. Then the glass rose and the car slid away.

“I’d put that somewhere safe if I were you.”

“I will,” said Nha.

Detective John Minh was sitting in his cubicle when Frye walked in. It was late in the evening, three days after Bennett had been buried, the week of the scheduled release of American POWs from Vietnam. Minh had sounded subdued on the phone.

“Those three bodies they found up in Mojave weren’t locals. I can’t prove it, but I know they weren’t.”

Frye said nothing.

Minh stood up and poured two cups of coffee. “I’m sorry, Chuck. I suppose that doesn’t mean much now. I knew your brother had a lot going on, but I didn’t know how much until a day ago. I got curious about all the refugees he and Li sponsored into this country. I wondered where they all went, whose property they were paying rent on, how they were living. I knew Bennett was into real estate, so I did a little legwork, a little paperwork, too. He owned thirty-five homes in Little Saigon. Made the payments on every one of them himself. That’s thirty-five families he set up here and never charged them a cent. He paid the utilities and insurance too — everything.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I thought it was all just guns and supplies. I talked with the president of the Vietnamese Scholarship Fund of Orange County yesterday. Bennett had willed them money in the event of his death. One million dollars.”

Minh looked out his small window. Frye saw sadness in the detective’s eyes. “When the FBI started giving me directions, I thought I’d take orders like a good cop. But later, when they started pushing me to arrest Vo, clamp down on Bennett’s gunrunning, and denied even the possibility that Thach’s men were behind it all, I got suspicious. John, they said, we need you for disclosure control at the back end of this operation. John, the bureau is keeping an eye on you for possible federal work in the future. How would an assignment with the Asian Task Force sound to you? I had two legitimate sightings of Thach’s men! I had others worth checking out. But the bureau sat on me, did the interviews themselves, and nothing happened. I let them run over me, Frye, and that makes me angry. I’ll never let it happen again. Ever.”

Minh lit a smoke. “What I wanted to do here in Little Saigon was see this little refugee community have a chance at fitting in. I wanted to keep the gangs in check and to make the people feel free to live and do their business. And I wanted the department to let me recruit some young Vietnamese men to help accomplish that.”

Minh handed Frye three personnel request forms, each describing police department positions now open. They called for Vietnamese men and women with good English language skills, two years of education, and a desire to uphold the law.

“Congratulations.”

Minh studied him. “When the FBI let Bennett walk into an ambush up in the desert, I decided they were covering up. You wouldn’t happen to know what, would you?”

“No.”

“You ever see him?”

“Who?”

“Thach.”

“Far as I know, he’s under house-arrest in Hanoi.”

Minh looked at him doubtfully, then stood. “Thanks.”

Frye shook his hand and walked out.

Lucia Parsons spent a well-chronicled week in Hanoi. Negotiations fell apart, then came back together; impasse was reached, then surmounted; the Vietnamese walked away from the bargaining table twice, and so did she. The final deal was struck. Unspecified amounts of “reconstruction aid” were reportedly agreed upon. House Bill 88231 passed overwhelmingly by both houses in an emergency session. The men would be freed in a “phased release,” News analysts speculated that diplomatic concessions to Hanoi were in the balance, though just what they were, no one was sure. Hanoi hinted that withdrawal from Kampuchea was inevitable. Administration spokesmen remained enthused, mum.

That Friday, an air force jet from Honolulu scraped down at Orange County John Wayne Airport, which people felt was either appropriate or ironic, depending on their political bent.

Frye, wearing his new press pass, worked his way through the vast crowd and managed to get close to the ramp leading off the plane. A red carpet had been laid from the steps to a roped-off section of the runway, where the president of the United States waited amidst very heavy security.

Beside that was another area for VIPs. Frye scanned the dignitaries and spotted Cristobel’s golden head of hair. He waited while the air force jet taxied into place and the crowd began cheering.

A moment later, the first POW came down the stairs. He was a thin, slow-moving man whose alien gaze suggested a lifetime spent on another planet. He wore a crisp, tan uniform. He was alone. He saluted the president and waved to the roaring crowd. Lucia joined him and the president. She sported a gray suit and hat, and she stood as straight-backed and impressively as any of the color guard. She shook hands with the frail man, then with the president, who took her hand and raised it to the crowd. The applause was robust.

Two men in dark suits escorted Cristobel toward the man. He looked long at her, then opened his arms, and stepped forward.

Cristobel and Mike Strauss hugged a good long time. Frye watched the sun bounce off her shoulders while Mike’s hands clutched her back. The crowd roared even louder.

No one else got off the plane. Lucia explained that afternoon on TV that the POWs — twenty-seven in all — would be released one per week if the United States continued in good faith to abide by Hanoi’s conditions. Said conditions were not so much explained as simply referred to.

Frye listened to Mike Strauss’s speech. He said, “I thank you. I thank God. I never forgot you. If I could explain how it feels to be back on American soil, I would try, but I’m afraid I couldn’t do it. Thank you all for never forgetting us.” Then he faltered, and his face broke into a smile. He and Cristobel disappeared into a waiting limousine.

Frye watched all this with a sense of abstraction and unreality, the same feeling that had been with him since Huong Lam had walked into the hangar in Mojave. He was there, but not there, mind and body somehow separate, a tenant in himself. He cut out early and missed the president’s address. Frye hated crowds.

A day before the Masters Invitational started, a south swell rose from Mexico. Frye stood on shore and struggled into the orange vest. He was number four. He picked a seventy-inch thruster and ground on a fresh layer of MegaWax. Just after sunrise his heat was called and the other five surfers hit the water. Frye watched the big gray waves rolling in beneath a purple blanket of clouds. The crowd was a good one, even this early. Amazing, he thought, that people want to watch this.

Even more amazing was the arrival of Edison and Hyla. Frye was about to head out when he heard his name called and turned to see his father. Edison was holding tight to Hyla’s hand, hustling her across the damp morning sand, an arm raised in greeting, his gray hair wild and long. Even from this distance, thought Frye, he looks so much older.

“Gonna win, Chuck?” he panted.

“I’ll try.”

“Get first, or I wasted my time and gas.”

“Oh, Ed.” Hyla smiled. Frye detected a hint of genuine happiness in it.

Bill Antioch was there, pissed that Frye had missed the surf movie of which he was the star and had failed again to stimulate retail sales interest in the Mega line. Shelly Morris clung to his arm, drawn to stern businessman Bill.

The heat went by quickly, as they always do: scrambling for position on the waves that look like point-getters, trying to keep the stupid vests from riding up and choking you. Frye stayed to the outside in hopes of getting a big one. Finally he did, a magnificent six-foot right all to himself. He played it out, a little conservatively, rising to the top to snap off the lip, charging down for a turn at the bottom, then a long quick streak with his fingers on the flank of the wave. When it sectioned, he hung on and broke through, riding out the last of it, crouching in a tiny tube exactly his size. He could hear the applause as he paddled back out.

About halfway through, he kind of forgot what he was doing. The sun had peeked out to spray its rays through a cloud wall in the east: the kind of scene you get on complimentary bank calendars with a line from the national anthem under it. Frye decided that this was certainly a good time to count blessings, and he did. So many of them right up there on shore, he thought, watching this silly stuff. He looked back and saw Cristobel standing with Edison and Hyla now, her hair a golden patch against the gray sand. As he sat on his board and scanned the horizon for the next set, he realized that he wasn’t afraid anymore, that the old terror had simply fallen away. Making room for new ones, he thought. Stronger in the broken places. Count that as a blessing, too.

Something inside him was big and fragile, huge and tender, and he could feel it right on the edge of exploding, on the verge of spontaneous combustion. A flutter, a shifting of things, a long moment of waiting. Then a feeling that there was new territory out there, a world of things beyond what he had felt before and what had gone before. You close your eyes and jump, he thought, grab for anything that might apply on the long way down.

He sat on his board and waited. He looked back to shore again.

And something else kept trying to get through to him, something that Bennett had taught him in a thousand ways but never quite managed to learn himself, something about forgetting what’s gone and holding for dear life onto what’s left. If you’re one of the lucky left standing, it’s the least you can do. Forget the losses; exaggerate the wins. Maybe not exactly how Benny would have put it. There will be time to think it through. Time. We’ve all got some of that left, thank God. That’s all there is, between the living and the dead. I’ll see you soon enough, sweet sister Debbie. You too, Benny. Sorry, I’m just not in a hurry to get there right now.

Remember, forget. Nice wave coming outside, paddle right over. Remember, forget. This thing has ten points and my name written all over it. MegaGood. Slide right in now. Comin’ your way, Cris.

Anyhow, he got second.