"...jes an ole black cook." (Chapter Three to "The Last Plantation")

Chapter Three

“…jes an ole black cook.”
(Part of: “The Last Plantation” Chapters)



Doctor Ritt (Albert John Sr. Ritt, born 1891) who owns a bank in Fayetteville, and is a medical doctor, is called in the morning to the Wallace Plantation, he knows the Wallace boys first hand, his older brother went to school with him James J. Ritt, class of 1897, born the same year the Wallace boys were.
Minnie Mae had discovered Wally dead on his back, exposure to the elements, she presupposed, told Frank about it, woke Burgundy up in the chair she had fallen to sleep in.
Doctor Ritt looked at the old man, an impressive face, a little bald, muddy nose and eyes, and muddy blue-jeans, some gold in his teeth showing, “The second fall did him in,” said the doctor. He must had tried pretty hard to get up out of that slush, hit his head hard the second time, see here, the pump, he was knocked out, froze to death the rest of him. He reeks with alcohol; perhaps he thought he was warm, nothing more to say Frank. Too bad someone left the window open.”
Frank turned to Burgundy, and gave her the evil-eye, didn’t say a word, just the evil-eye.
Captain Chamberlain from the Fayetteville police station, was on hand, and said in so many words: it doesn’t look like a crime and made some notes, left just like that, as if nothing really unusual took place; a mornings work for him, completed in fifteen-minutes at the plantation, and an hours ride out to the Wallace Plantation, and another hours ride back to Fayetteville.
“Where’s you sister,” asked Dr. Ritt.
“She’s visiting folks in Ozark, Alabama, she’s always down there, likes it there better than here, I’ll let her know don’t worry,” commented Frank.
“You alright Frank?” asked Minnie Mae.
“I’ll never be alright again, what you talking about, alright; do you think I’m sick,” he said trying to catch his breath from this exhausting shock.
“I reckon I knows more ‘bout you than you-all knows about yourself, cuss you is sick in dhe heart, and you need to rest before you have one of those heart attacks, folks talk about…” said Minnie Mae.
“What did you come down here for Doc, Wally or me?” asked Frank.
“For Wally of course,” replied the doctor.
“Then do what you-all need to do, and leave me alone,” said Frank, walking up to his room, a tear in his eye.
“Aint that somethin’ ” said Minnie Mae.
“Yes,” said the doctor, they were together all those years, I wonder who left the window open? Maybe he feels guilty.”
“No, he dont feel no guilt, he knows.”
“Who then,” asked the doctor.
“Yous got to ask him, not me, I’m jes an ole black cook.”


Written in the afternoon, and retyped in the evening of 6-17-2008

Death from the Window (Chapter two, to: "The Last Plantation")

Chapter Two

Death from the Window
(Part of: “The Last Plantation” Chapters)


(1961) The December frost was over Fayetteville, and even more so on its outskirts, where the three plantations were, where the Abernathy, Stanley and Wallace Plantations resided; from twilight on the Wallace plantation was pretty quiet, its owners resting, or preparing to go to bed. Wally was awake in the living room this evening, by the health, rubbing his hands together, feeling the warmth of the heat on his balding head, glowing and heating up the rugs his bare feet stood on, making his white milky skin a pinkish red, and there he stood, stood erect, silently stood listening to sounds of the flickering flames, coming off the dry wood in the health; the old man, Wally Wallace, 81-years old, felt younger than he should have, perhaps his nineteen-year old lover, made him feel that way. She was sitting in a rocking chair, rocking back and forth, feeling her stomach, looking out the side window; there you could see the front gate to the plantation, and Wally and Frank’s 1950-Chevy, green, spotless (usually).

Down the road a bit, Cole and Caroline Abernathy, owners of the Abernathy Plantation, were writing out a check for their son’s school, Langdon Abernathy was attending a private prep school, prepping him for college along the way through his normal studies to be a future professional. He was twelve-years old.

Wally, looked out the window, the same one Burgundy Washington was looking out (his maid), “Black Beauty, what do you see with those big dark eyes?” he liked calling her that, the negress was more than a lover now to him, more than a maid also, she was carrying his kid, now six months pregnant, and she had only been working there seven months.
“Your car, I love your car, I think you brother left the window open though!” She commented.
He looked closer, put his nose against the glass, opened up his eyes-lids wider, the rain was coming down, it was hard for him to see, then he ran and got a flashlight, shined it on the car, and lo and behold, she was right, Burgundy was correct, it was open, the window was wide open, and the rain was coming in.
He said in haste, “Got to roll it up, got to roll it up,” as he stood there, looked at Burgundy’s belly, “I’ll do it, I’ll roll it, you can’t, and Minnie… she still up?” he asked, but he knew she was fast asleep in the back shanty by the barn. A rhetorical question, at best, “No, I’ll roll it up…!” he says again.
Burgundy was no longer sleeping in the maids room, next to the parlor, she was sleeping in one of the guests room up stairs on the second floor, next to Wally’s room, with a fire place, and a light lit fire every night.
Old Wally was going to have an heir, a successor, something that really never dawned on him before, and now it was special, and he was proud, Frank wasn’t, but for once, the fraternal twin brother didn’t care, it got too cold in the old house, and there was no furnace, nor electric or gas heat, just health’s, and his unborn was priority, thus he, Wally made it clear, there would be wood in her heath ever night until the child was born.

Quicker than a jack-rabbit, Wally ran to the back door, out it and onto the side to the front yard to close the car window.

Betty Hightower, and her husband Jason, were up for the holidays visiting her sister, Caroline, at the Abernathy plantation. She did almost every Christmas that is, those Christmas’ her sister did not go down to New Orleans to visit her. She brought her daughter Cassandra along (daughter to Betty Hightower, born 1954).

Old Wally ran like faster than a jack-rabbit out that door, to his beloved car, the one he and his brother worked on from the day they bought it, talked things over while working on it, actually created work that didn’t need to be done on it, so they could work on it and be together, and talk.
There was now a cold wind about, Wally felt warm inside though, almost not sensing the cold, he felt warm from the several shots of whisky he had in the past few hours, as he went to open the car door to roll up the window, but he slipped into the mud, onto his back, hit his head, but he was alright, looked up as if he was trying to refocus, felt like a turtle upside down, like humpty dumpy, then grabbed onto the handle of the car to help him pull himself up, gripped it with his hands, but the wind and the rain, and the coolness in the air, penetrated his muscles and bones—a spasm occurred in his joints, his muscles, and he couldn’t pull his weight up, and his fingers opened up and he slipped back down onto his back again, back into the mud, the cold freezing mud, that he felt warm in because of the several shots of whisky, fooling his body, because he was really cold, he just didn’t know it, his mind didn’t know it, his body functions did, this time he didn’t get back up, but screamed, yelled, yelped like a dying dog for someone help him, that is when Burgundy closed her eyes, and fell to sleep.

Written in the afternoon, and retyped in the evening of 6-17-2008

The Last Plantation (1960, Fayetteville)

The Last Plantation
(1960, Twenty-two miles outside of Fayetteville,
on the last Plantation)


The Wallace brothers don’t realize the things we know, they think we don’t hear a thing, or see a thing, as if we are blind and deaf, as if we are so busy with doing this and that, and singing and caught up in some black spell, they haven’t learned much in their 80-years of life, I suppose, in some ways they are ignorant, in somewhat old fashion ways that is; on the other hand, they are no different than any white men. Perhaps, it is embed into them, like all those little ducks that follow their mother, they follow their old ways, two brothers like two peas in pod. When they start changing things around here, they are going to die, they are twins you know, although they don’t look alike, one looks like their pa, the other looks like their ma, you just got to look at their pictures on the mantel, but the clock in the living room
Mr. Cole Abernathy calls them the old James boys, you know the legend of Frank and Jessie James, because they hang around each other so much; they don’t like the changes coming about here, the three plantations, the Abernathy’s, the Stanley’s, and here, their plantation, the Wallabies. Guess they want to build a road along the three plantations that will take a large hunk of land from the three, take it from the back area that is, and I suppose in time the county will want a part of the front, god forbid if they have to move the house, and this one being the last in line, the last of the six plantations, this is the last one now down the road. But I suppose you can’t ride on a dusty hard old road with holes in it forever, I mean, it is 1960.
We, when I saw we, I mean, Sweet pea and I used to call the two Wallabies slick men, you done got her job, she passed away two months ago; because they are meticulous about things. They like things certain ways, their way, is normally the only way. Mrs. Ella Stanley, next door says they like to show their masculinity, they like to fight, and drink, and watch their younger sister, which is not all that much younger then they, and not much older then me, she’s 67-years old, they watch her like a hawk, to insure no, no good-for-nothing bum comes around and dates her. They been doing that for fifty-years, Gladys is her name, she’s been out of town, down to New Orleans this past week, and you already know Wally, and the shorter one, is Hank, he’s the quieter one.
They all got the same last name.
Earnest Stanley likes the brothers, drinks at the table in the kitchen on the weekends with them. One time he thought Amos made a pass at Gladys, was disrespectful, Hank the taller one, robust, and glary eyed, walked over there, chased Amos up into the hills, he didn’t come out for a week, and then Gladys’s said it was a white man, a bum that insulted her down town, down in Fayetteville. Wally felt bad, and bought Amos a fishing knife, Amos likes to fish a lot.
They go every place together, down to the old grocery store, an’, and you know, just every place.
“Hank was kind of nice to me,” said Burgundy “I got him his whisky this morning, and he drank three shots down like it was being squirted right out from under the cow.”
If you got brothers, you best tell them don’t come around when Gladys is here, they’ll think they got the eye for her.
“No, no, I am not going to do any such thing,” said Burgundy, “but I can tell they ant up to much change taking place here.”


(They, Hank and Wally, are out side trying to get their 1950-Chevy started. Hank swearing away quicker than an auctioneer; “You like the new girl?” says Hank to Wally. “Hey,” he said in response, as he tries to fix something in the carburetor with a screwdriver, “She’s prettier than old fat Minnie Mae; I’ll say that,” said Wally. “Listen up brother, Minnie Mae and I have had our times, old she may be, but she got a way with men, she gets hot as a pistol, and she’s only as old as sis, well almost, she’s 65 I think.”)


See them boys talking out there, out there by the fence, they goin’ work on that old car until midnight I bet unless Wally catches your eye then they goin’ to come in here fancy free and flirt with you-all, and then demand to have their lunch, and whisky, and then have to pay you for a week’ wages and me for a month wages. Their papa left them a lot of money, I means a lot of land, four-hundred archers, and they done sold three-hundred already, in this plantation; that their land and money its goin’ to out live them, I think, or I hope, so I gets to keep my job, and you too honey. Around here, folks work for plantations from da cradle to da grave, or used to anyhow, thinks are a changing. Betty Hightower, from New Orleans done stopped over dhe other day, she’s related to dhe Hightower’s, a nice kid of lady, likes to paint her hair red. Its a mistake honey to think them old fools arent talking about you, they goin’ see which one is bold enough to try and swing you to his bedroom.
If-in you want to fight with them, you goin’ git to, Hank likes me and now Wally I think likes you.
“But he’s as old as da hills, Minnie Mae, I mean I don’t think he can even get it up, let alone find my bedroom, maybe cant even find the bathroom” said Burgundy, with a kind of chuckling laugh, an eyebrow in the air as if Minnie Mae was kidding.
I swear child, he’ll be sneaking in your room in another week, if-in that long.
“Come on now,” said Burgundy.
You’ll see child, you is but twenty-years old, or is it eighteen (she nods her head to eighteen) but them old coots they think they is nineteen. No matter what you tell them, they aint going to grow up, and the lead in their pencil still works, I know this for a fact.
Burgundy’s face, her nose, a small, semi flat kind of a nose, and her firm strong looking body, went into a spasm “I wonder how much money they-all got left in their savings?” she said smoothly adding to her dialogue, “old Wally looks like he’s in his 60s, not a bad looker, for an old coot, I’ll find out how much he has the second time he sneaks into my bedroom.”

The two women start laughing, and Hank and Wally come into the room at that very moment.
“What’s so funny,” says Hank, looking dead-eyed at the jolly face of Minnie Mae.
Not a thing, not a thing, well I suppose it was thinking something, I told Burgundy here, you both are like old time prize-fighters, jes a little stiff in the joints. And she said, Burgundy said: Wally looks like a rich
man.
“Now Minnie Mae, you girls got to stop talking about us, cleanup the place, and feed the dogs and cook me some fried chicken, and get me and Hank a whisky, we done worked hard enough for a day.”
Sure enough boss, I done told Burgundy you’ll want your whisky every night, helps you sleep.

Written 2:00 AM, Monday; 6-16-2008

Linda's Black Magic (Chapters 1 thru 3)(part of Story 13 to,"Voices out of Saigon")

Linda’s Black Magic
((Fall of 1985) (part III, to ‘Cassandra’s Delicatessen’))



Chapter I:
A Touch of Black Magic


Allen Pitman was now fifteen-years old, and Linda, thirty-one, and she bought him a year’s membership at the gym, the one she went to in Fayetteville, North Caroline. Allen showed it to his mother father, Rose and Paul (Rose and Paul Pitmen (owners of the ‘Pitmen Delicatessen, 1985, each 32-years old, having Allen, their son born when she was 17-yeaars old, pregnant, one year older than Linda Marie Macaulay).
Both Allen and Linda were seeing each other on the sly, when the parents were gone, she’d pull him to the floor, behind the counter, and there, right there, make love, as she ate a few items from the counter and he, Allen learned his way about a woman’s body.
“Are you done Allen?” she asked. And he’d always say yes, and then a minute late say “Wait, one more time…!” And this went on for several months. Now he had a passport to her gym, and this was exciting. Etiquette was not her best virtue, but Allen couldn’t tell the difference, it was as it was, an affair, one he bragged about at school, but at the present, only to a few close friends, for the most part it was kept quiet. And Linda, had very few friends at this point, most of her school friends were long gone, married, or in the Army, or finishing up Graduated School, and going onto bigger things. Linda never went to collage, her looks were still pretty good, and she maintained a good shape. Allen didn’t know love from lust, but he did know he desired her, and perhaps took her fifteen times a week, if he could, and made love until he was sore. Somehow this impressed Linda, youth at it finest, if not most potent: she even called it, “Black Magic.” (As if she had a touch of Black Magic.)
She heard about Henry’s fortune, and that he left the country, not sure where he went, but perhaps somewhere along lifers line, when the world got smaller, she’d bump into him, she really won’t all that concerned at the moment. She still had the Cadillac automobile, Jason Hightower bought for her, and the same cloths he bought for her, and the watch, she never did buy anything beyond those items for herself, her ex husband, Henry, never bought her anything, so she claimed.

It was the tenth or perhaps fifteenth time, Allen and Linda went to the gym together. It would seem, she wanted to show him off, he looked eighteen years old if not older, which his gym card surprisingly indicated, and his mother Rose and Paul, never paid any attention to.


Linda’s Black Magic
Part III, to: Cassandra’s Delicatessen, Chapter Two: Allen Pitmen;
Chapter Three the Gym; (Story Thirteen)



(Chapter two: Allen Pitman) Allen’s face was peaceful, quiet and at night uncovered, and he dreamt of Linda, preoccupied with his puberty, growing up and what not, and what next, what adventure could he expect out of life. Life was a coconut for him, you just had to crack it open, and it all would be white and blissful inside; actually he felt funny some of the times when he was at the club with Linda Macaulay, he wasn’t sure that he suited her. He was a bit alarmed on some of the things she‘d do at the club, the one she and he attended, about two or three times a week.
He told her he wanted to move in with her, into her apartment with her, but she insisted he stay at home for at least until he was sixteen, another year, and that was a whole year off for him.
“No,” she said, with toxin eyes “It is way to early for us to be talking like that…moving in and all that kind of stuff.”
“Oh, I guess I see,” he replied, a tinge taken back, quietly taken back, with a deep ingestion of air.
“Living together isn’t what you think, not all it is made out to be, at that there High School you attend, not all that great, you kids think it is.”
He jerked his head to the right, out of her eye sight, he was pouting, and he was angry and a little embarrassed. She was telling him—in a motherly tone and way—you’re still a kid, good enough to frolic around with, to make love to, but don’t forget, you’re a kid with a hard leaded panicle, that is all.
“I’m sorry Allen,” Linda said as soon as she put two and two together, that her comment and gesture turned his composure into a show of displeasure, a sulk.
Although you could see in the a blink of her eye, she enjoyed the power she found she had over him, for good or evil, she had the treasure men seek, and lured over, fought over, and even kill over, like a spider to a fly, and he was seemingly caught in her web. This part she liked, the smile on her face said so, not quite a smile, more a grin, almost but not quite a smirk. It said so, it said, I can, and she did for the most part, control, if not out of looks and pretend anger, out of lustful movements, and tender touches. She liked being a woman; a woman with a touch of Black Magic, especially over him.
Allen said with a sigh, “I can get money for the rent, I have a…a savings for college, and it belongs to me, I can use it.”
“How is that?” asked Linda.
“I can take it out, it is not like stealing, I mean it is mine, I mean I can take it out little by little, so no one notices it,” said Allen with a high smile, as if he was cleaver.
“But there comes a point where there is nothing left, then what?” asked Linda.
“I’ll be old enough to marry you then!” replied Allen.
“I hate to say it again, but again you’re silly—money is too easy to earn than having to go to such lengths to get it…,” said Linda—but this time playing the big sister role.

Linda and Allen looked at each other a moment, then she said with sincerity in her voice and facial expressions to accommodate that sincerity, and even her arms were laid softly on his shoulders as if to express friendship, not playing the lover, “If ever anything beyond this period of time, beyond this moment, this season you might call it, if ever we come together become more serious than this ongoing romantic stage we are presently in, you will need a college degree to support me, and if not me, whomever you choose, today it is me for you, and you for me, I can’t seem to go beyond this point, and you at your young age shouldn’t.”
It was actually hard for her to overlook that money, perhaps a kind act, but should he take it out, she’d be blamed for it, and that in itself was an illegal, and she didn’t want a court action on this case, and making love to a miner was bad enough, yet she felt she had enough control to where she could black mail him if it came tot hat, meaning, she could yell rape, and that would stop any ongoing legal action. But it had not come to nearly that at all.
“Ok,” said Allen Pitmen, “when I’m sixteen, we’ll take up this discussion again, alright?” he asked.
“Ok, when you’re sixteen, and not until, it gets a little trying on the nerves,” said Linda, with a sigh of relief that it all turned out well for the interim.
Allen looked at Linda, “I’m not afraid to work, or wait,” he expressed with a jolly tone, and a bold looking extended chest, and then jerked his head to the right side, and gave the world an empty look, as if he gained his pride back, saying, “We got to finish up Linda, I mean clean up the delicatessen, its almost eleven o’clock, and mom expects me home a quarter after, no later.”



Chapter Three

The Gym


Linda was in the sauna with Allen and a few other folks, club members of the gym, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, her having bought Allen a years membership, along with renewing hers.
The Assistant General Manager came in Tony Garcia, asked Linda to go and see the General Manager, Marcella Marco and that Allen could go along with them, it would seem he was part of the conversation, or would be, “And take your pizza off the hot rocks, this is no place for trying to use it as a grill, as you so often do,” said Tony with an arrogant tone, as if he had had enough of her style of improper etiquette in the gym, the others looked at the three and didn’t say a word. Linda grabbed the sandwich looking pizza, “Why not,” she said, “I’ll eat it on the way—I’m hungry.”

In the office, of the General Manager’s, a wind beat against the window, kind of masking enough noise as if to drawn out any unwanted tension with everyone’s nerves, she looked from the top of the window down, as if to pretend she was distracted, but she was just placing things in order, preparing for the confrontation. She knew she had done some unethical things at the gym, she had to, no one else was doing them but her, and if she didn’t she wasn’t as shrewd as people gave her credit for.

Linda had now focused her eyes on Marcella, “What is your complaint now on?” Said Linda, as if she was in charge because she had paid for two one year subscriptions for the used of the gym, and Marcella was simply the caretaker, no more than a hired janitor. Matter-of-fact, she walked up to her desk; put her hands on the desk top waiting for her complaint.
Marcella, said with a curious look, “You sure, Allen you are eighteen?”
Linda intervened quickly, “Is this it’s all about, his age?”
Said Marcela, lowering her head, “No, not really, not at the moment anyhow. It’s about you, and your etiquette, which means manners and gym protocol.”
“I know what it means,” replied Linda.
“Well, that’s one up on me, it would seem you either didn’t know, or you don’t care to know, or you simply don’t know but we’ve told you so many times you got to know, because you’ve violated our rules here at the gym for the past two years, this is not a new subject, it is as old as your first day arrival here. Do you see anyone else cooking sandwiches in the sauna?” asked Marcella, adding, “no you don’t, and you’ve continued to take off your sweaty shoes and leave a hair dryer in them, while you take a shower, the Assistant Manager has told you time after time not to do that, again I ask, do you see anyone else doing that? I’ll answer that for you—no! You don’t. And then you go out of the locker room butt naked and weigh yourself on the scale, in the hallway, and you of course get your attention from the guys, and so forth and so on. I won’t ask if you see anyone else do that, the boy looks like he’s embarrassed enough, and you, you are so unembarrassed, it makes me assumed I allowed this to continue so long…and still this is not the number one violation, you go take your yoga lessons, and do not wear any pants, I mean underpants, and all the guys are now paying $20 ahead to sit close to you, people are fighting in the hallway to get into the yoga class to get a view of you.”
Linda almost wanted to laugh, but held back, Allen was in shock.
“Well Linda, what do you have to say for yourself, and here is your check back, if the boy wants to rejoin, he can, but you, you are not welcome here, ever, god forbid.”
Said Linda with her head held high, “Twenty dollars, ha! That’s a bargain for the view.”
Then grabbing the check, and Allen’s shoulder, she turned around walked straight out the door, and never looked back.

The Henchman from Saigon (Final Story to "Voices out of Saigon)

Finality to: “Voices out of Saigon

The Henchman from Saigon
(Sept 1—2001 /Final Story to “Voices out of Saigon)





Toai Le was now in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The trip they handmade to Lima, Peru for the cockfight, was still puzzling Morgan Carter, and he told his wife, Ming Ho Carter, not to visit, or see, only talk, to Zuxin, her best girlfriend. He had put two and two together, and explained to Ming; Zuxin’s husband was related to the Koea boss’, the syndicate bosses of Saigon. She thought this a little farfetched, since it was never brought up by Nguyen, Zuxin’s husband. Nonetheless, he wanted Ming to promise him, she would not see her again, unless they all decided to go to the United States. Things just didn’t fit into place.
“Listen up,” he said, “Zuxin got a belated wedding gift, the bosses felt guilty, that perhaps they could not kill her for her leaving the sons, their grand sons, to an old witch, and thus, got killed because of her negligence.”
“Ok,” said Ming, “But I think you are taking this to a level beyond reason.”
Morgan had done a little investigating to come up to his conclusion, that if they stayed out of the way, there was no reason, for the family to go after them. And nobody gets a free holiday from some unknown source; when something is too good to be true, it is just that, something that will bite you later. If you smell some, you can bet there is a fire somewhere, someplace nearby.

Morgan went down to the Mekong to fish, he often did, with Zuxin’s relatives, and Ming was to go to the Russian Market, buy some vegetables. When at 1:15 PM, Zuxin calls her up, says, “Come over I want to show you my lip stick…”
“I can’t I promised Morgan I’d stay away from you, he thinks your hot, meaning, Nguyen family, the syndicate bosses will send someone to kill you.”
“I never thought Nguyen was part of that group, or at least he never mentioned it. I think it must be some far off un- connecting relative, not directly related to him. You’re safe here.”
“Well, just for a minute, I don’t want Morgan to get mad, incase he comes home, and calls you looking for me. He’s gentile, but when it comes to direct defying, he’s back in the Army I think, and I have to stand at attention until he is done.” (Both the girls laugh,)


1:45 PM


Ming had now arrived at Zuxin’s second floor condo, which was as big as a house, if not two, 1600 Square feet, with beautiful carpeting, and drapes, and new everything in it, and she went inside to visit Zuxin. At 1:50 PM, the door bell rang, it was a woman selling lipstick: what a coincidence thought Ming, and opened the door unthinkingly, automatically (unknowing the house was bugged, and Le knows every move Zuxin made).
No sooner had she opened the door, looked at the lady, Le had his machete pulled out, and beheaded her like a chicken, the woman caught the head, and Le put the body down in the hallway, not a sound was made, and the lady put a shroud over her, as not to frighten anyone who might come by, it covered most everything fleshly visible. The head was laid on her lap. And then Le paid her $500-dollars, and told her go, and never to mention what took place.

Zuxin was in the bedroom, she say Le now, sat firmly in her chair, her skin turned pale, her fair beauty, once deep, now it turned limp in a matter of seconds, wrinkles that she thought were long gone with cosmetics, showed up, she looked like a dead fish, arms long and unmoving, slim pale face, legs moving, pink lips, “I am Toai Le, and with a switch of the machete, she was decapitated also.



Sergeant Morgan Carter II
(October 7, 2001)

On October 7, 2001, Morgan Carter returned to the United States of America, and bought a home on Albemarle Street, in St. Paul, Minnesota, and goes to the local bookstore nowadays, and just writes. He did not remarry, but last I heard he was thinking about going back to Peru, to see another Cockfight, he remarried a Peruvian woman, and lives there to this writing (2008).


Mr. Jong


On January 1, 2005, Mr. Jong married a young girl from Saigon, and on January 15, of 2005, he had a heart attack in bed, from you know what. But he died happy I understand, with a smile on his face.



Henry, Linda and Gills

Will, this is strange, but this is the way it happened. Corporal Phillip Gills, got out of prison, went to New Orleans, and during one of those celebrations they have, on Bourbon Street, met none other than Linda Macaulay, this was in December of 2002, they married, and had seven kids, and that is another book. They live to this day, or writing, June, 2008, in New Orleans.

Henry Small, Cassandra’s old boyfriend, went on to law school, didn’t like it, and started playing in a band, he likes ‘The Doors,’ he says, and who knows maybe we will be hearing from him in the near future.

The Saigon Syndicate ((2000 AD )(Story Twenty: "Voices out of Saigon")

The Saigon Syndicate
2000 AD (Story Twenty)



Toai Le, until he was nineteen years old lived with his mother and father a neighbor to the Ly family, whom was the sister to Vang’s husband, Nguyen Koea.
Grandson to Bao Koea (a syndicate boss, in Saigon, born 1918, now 82-years old), and Great Grandson to Kha’n Koea (born 1891, now 108, years old, and a boss in the Saigon syndicate). Gangsters that went back to the late forties, to the Corsican gangsters in Marseille, smuggling gold, currency and narcotics into Europe, and the United States. They both wore the ‘Per Tu Amicu Conein’ (‘For our friendship, Conein’) a saying on their Napoleonic Eagle and Corsican Gold Crest, a kind of ID, to let people know they were who they were, among the world leaders in the underworld traffic, more fearsome than the Sicilians, more ruthless than even the Corsicans. The French Vietnamese, originally ruled the syndicated between the 40s and early 60s, but throughout the years, other families got into the game, and the Koea family was one of them.
Nanh and his brother An the boys of Nguyen Khoa, and mother to Vang, whose step mother was Zuxin Ho (now married to a Mr. Jong). Nanh died two years prior, by one of the hands of Pol Pot’s generals. He was clumsy, the bosses of Saigon thought, and so never asked him into the family business, but Toai Le was different, and was told he would be a boss some day if indeed he qualified, and in the mean time, he wanted him to insure the drugs, got from Saigon, to Hong Kong, to Latin America, in particular Chile, and onto Paraguay, and onward to the United States. This was the route they took. But while in Saigon, he would be his teacher (something like an understudy), he would be by his side.
The old boss, Kha’n, took a liking for the boy, a special interest you might say, one he would have likened to have taken with An, but he was too religious, and Nanh was too reckless, and their father was too involved with too many other things.


Toai Le, walked into the small restaurant with the two family bosses, and three body guards, wearing their emblems, their gold eagle insignias. The owners mind lurked, bald-headed, good natured, he put his newspaper down on the table, where he was sitting, stood up, “Good morning,” he said to each of the bosses, nodded his heads at the guards, as if to say all was ok in the restaurant, as he was always instructed to do, and greeted the young gangster, Mr. Le, as well with a smile.
This was what Nanh always wanted to do, find a way into a power base, where money lingered about, and here was Toai Le, on top of it.
Before the old boss died, Kha’n, he had a special project for Toai, and he told him so, it had to do with Zuxin Ho, the one who left his two grandchildren off at Ly’s home, and never returned for them. He remembered they waited and waited and finally they called him, and he had to investigate, only to tell them, his step mother run off, left the country. He found this out by killing a woman called Si Manh, evidently, either Ming or Zuxin told her they were leaving the country, Cambodia; Si had evidently killed her husband who was cheating on her with Zuxin and Ming, forcefully making them his sex slaves. But first things first he told Toai Le, and of the tings he wanted him to do, was create a Trojans Horse, situation, offer a prize, and see if they fall for it, and give them a trip of a life time, follow their every footsteps, and when the time was right, do her in. If any other person was around when the time came to kill Zuxin, do them in likewise, leave no one behind, was his philosophy.

Said Kna’n, with a hunger to his eyes, “Let me taste the soup,” and the bald-headed owner, had the busboy bring out a heavy bowel of noodles and chicken, with heavy yellow broth.
The boss tasted it, said, “The noodles are too soggy, I’d not feed it to the dogs, throw it down, the whole thing down into the toilet, and flush it.”
And so the bald-headed owner (Mr. Lac) heeded what the old syndicate boss said, and told the busboy, “The soup, and the whole pot we have in the back, flush it all down the toilet!”
The busboy looked a bit apprehensive, and nodded his head ‘ok’ and went back into the kitchen, but thought upon wasting all that soup.
The old boss had looked at the busboy sternly, knew he was careless, and knew someone somewhere someday, along life’s path would have to suffer for it, and he made a check mark in his, way back in his brain, brain on the matter; and he thought ‘I eat at this place a lot, who would be the victim of this busboy’s carelessness?’


The Kitchen


The old boss knew, no man stays in power overlooking another man’s indolence, or indifference, or unprofessional work. Matter-of-fact, the reason he made it to the ripe old age of 108, and his son 82, was because they never did overlook a thing. And his son was faithful to him everyday of the year. Otherwise he would have had him killed long ago.
Boa, asked the waitress, “What time doses the busboy go to lunch?”
“At 12:30 sir.” She replied.
“Let me know when he does take his lunch, I’ll be here.”
He also informed her to keep this request quiet, keep it a secret between him and her, and not even tell her boss Mr. Lac should he ask. And she reconfirmed twice, it would be so.
The two bosses, and Le, ate fish, and rice, with some vegetables, as the three bodyguards, guarded the premise, one at the door, one outside the door, the other by Kha’n’s side, and Toai Le, sitting on the opposite side of Kha’n.
“You are my henchman,” said Bao, to Le, then corrected himself, “our henchman; have you ever seen a cockfight?” He asked.
“No,” answered Le.
“You will have, within the near future,” responded Bao.

Next, the waitress appeared outside the swinging doors that led into the kitchen, she nodded her head, as if to say, ‘He’s at lunch, in the kitchen eating, the busboy.”
The three at the table sitting down, now stood up, and walked forward, with the brute of a bodyguard following close behind. The guard just inside of the door, put a sign up, closed for the next hour.
They all walked into the kitchen area.
Over in a corner was the young lad with a bowel of soup, chop sticks in hand, long noodles being sucked into the inside of his mouth. He paid them no attention, as Mr. Lac approached.
The owner leaned against a post, one that held the tin roof in place, as Bao said, “I thought my father told you to throw the soup away?”
The owner really hadn’t noticed the boy eating, not until this very moment, and then saw the bowl soup in his hands. His lips started to tremble, as the boy continued unabashed of what was taking place.
The boy just kept sucking those noodles from the plate to his mouth, and the more he sucked, the angrier Bao and Kha’n got, you could hear it, the long slurping sounds.
“Evidently,” said Bao, “the boy does not know who we are, and you have not even noticed what he is doing. If you were in our Army, this would be negligence, if not treason. And the bodyguard, at Bao’s request, told Lac to shoot the boy: now the boy heard this, eyes wide open like an owls, “You got three seconds to pull the trigger,” said Boa, and he did, he shot the boy in the shoulder, and the bodyguard pulled out a second gun, and finished the job.
It all was not over, the bodyguard, grabbed the hand of the restaurant owner, and with one slice of the butcher knife, that was being used to cut fish, off came four fingers from his left-hand.
“We got to get rid of what is not productive, what is not worth cultivating, human trash.” Said the old man, the boss, and they walked out onto the street.

Beneath a Gibbous Moon (Cockfight)(story Twenty-one,"Voices out of Saigon")

Beneath a Gibbous Moon
((Cockfight in Lima, Peru) (Story Twenty- one))


Preface: this is a story about death, written by a robust sixty-year old man who had his fights in life over death, seemingly an imminent road we all have to go down, and not return to our heroic days here on earth, leaving youth and vitality behind. But a live dog is better than a dead lion, or so they say? And added into the stories of this book “Voices out of Saigon,” the author adds a moment at a real cockfight, which he has been to many, as well as bullfights, boxing matches, and other combat sports, and we can add war, Vietnam. This is life engaged, a tremendous adventure, where in the crowed you hear the whispers, and the roars, devoted human beings to their sport. Here is a sport equal to any, and in some cases beyond most.
To the artist, the imagery in a cockfight, knifes or no knifes hooked onto their legs (ankles) which sentences the loser to a quicker death—here the people come to see this small, animalistic gladiator show of blood, a mimic of one out of the days of Rome, all the spectators wanting their hunger for blood to be satisfied, a reality perhaps more for the male soul than the female, one they no longer can produce without a penalty by civilization; not murder, but perhaps close to it, misuse of God’s creatures absolutely, but not the unpardonable sin, and to some painfully watched as one cock attacks another, as one cast its shadow over the other.


The Story:

Beneath a Gibbous Moon
(Cockfight)


“We come to see,” said Morgan Carter II, with his wife Ming Ho Carter, “a cockfight, I hope they are using knifes attached to their ankles, it makes for a quicker and bloodier death. So make up your own mind if you want to come in and see the fight,” Morgan told Zuxin.
“To what purpose?” she asked.
“To kill any lingering reminders that we are still savages reviewing, suspiciously reviewing the taste of a kill, the blood of the wounded. The thrill of the truth, that we refuse to lay down and die like a dogs, we want to go out like a lions.”

The trip to Lima, Peru, was paid for by a man named Kha’n Koea, it was his way of doing things before he killed his prey, give them something, a tribute, and Zuxin Ho was with Morgan Carter friend, as well as Ming on this trip, and so four tickets were sent. His intentions were to murder Zuxin when she got back to Cambodia, Phnom Penh, for abandoning his Great Grand Children, as simple as that.

Zuxin, she was having a hard time walking through those doors to the cockfight. But all three made it, and they sat right behind two couples, seemingly two happy couples, a man with a white beard, white beard and mustache, called Dr. somebody they didn’t get the last name, and Rosa, Peruvian, Armando and Martha, one Japanese Peruvian, the other Peruvian only.
Ming had been to bullfights with her husband, but never a cockfight, there was a gibbous moon out tonight she noticed, and she felt it, as if there was a marvelous ritual dance of death to be performed.
The crowed slowly gathered around this small arena, likened to a bullring, miniature size. The animation of it all was not much different than an American Football game, or baseball game.
Behind her two owners of cocks were standing, holding their animals, ready to bring them out into the glorified arena for battle, colorful they were, with long wide wings, and stern eyes, stiff necks, there was little mercy in their looks, they were battle ready; there was no music like at the bullfights, with the brass horses, but the arena had no space to offer one more body, or horn or cock, a 1000-people, in a room that fit 700. Some of the cocks had dreadful reputations, first-class ones.

The following fights would be breathless, Zuxin starting with the skimpiest of protests with her murmurs of please stop the fight, to 998-others (for the woman in front of her was on her side) screaming at the cocks to fight on, fight and kill the opponent, heavy voices, old timers sitting in the front seats, gathered to talk to watch, to pat each other on the shoulder as friends do who know each other for years, some with expensive suits, others badly worn servants of Lima, all screaming to undo the opponent. Chusco vs. Aji Negro, were now fighting.

Armando won the bet, the gentleman in front of them with Doctor somebody, Chusco vs. Aji Negro, the white and black spotted cock.

The second fight Peladito vs. Aji Seco, it was a tie; and the third fight, the cocks ran arund the arena, one chasing the other for ten minutes, until the time limit was over. Both Zuxin and Martha seemed to be happy for the cock; if anything, they put on a good show, and gave the folks a minute or two, for the heart to calm down.

(It was strange how they got these tickets, thought Morgan. They had gotten four tickets, Zuxin’s husband could not go, business in Saigon, with his several boutique shops. They simple got four tickets in the mail, saying you won a random contest out of Saigon, that her late husband’s name was registered, and since she and his kids had passed on, they were in search of her, and …
through a kind lady known as Si Minh, found they were in Cambodia, and this led to Phnom Penh. And of course, Zuxin and to give them her address was necessary, to send the tickets forward, and even though it took the post office three months to find the correct address of Zuxin Ho (Jong), they were relentless in giving the tickets to the rightful owner (of course this was a ply of Toai Le; Le, on behalf of his boss Kha’n Koea.
Morgan thought it quite suspicious, but did not put Zuxin’s last name, previous last name of her husband’s into its proper perspective, for there were many Koea’s in Saigon, but only one syndicate family, and that was mostly hushed up.)


It was 2001, Morgan had heard from a friend, Sergeant Gills was being released this year or next, he was going in front of the board, and his name was given to the board to write a statement on his behalf, that he was a good soldier in the Army. The problem was, he had only met Corporal Gills once, and played a trick on him at that, perhaps he owned him something for that watermelon trick—none the less he wrote the board back, and told them, he found the young corporal to be a strict soldier, that under such circumstances, perhaps many other soldiers would have done the same thing. Right or wrong, when it comes to family affairs, we do not remain tourists and standby and watch them get hurt. And this was what he thought of the situation.

—As the cockfight continued, these thoughts were going though his mind. When you watch a battle in front of you, many things come back to mind, death and killing, even his old nightmares of a downed helicopter in the bay of Cam Ranh, our mind seems often to pick at random, what it identify with, it never forgets, it just places items within our life time, into different vaults of the mind, some deeper than others.

“Are you all right?” asked Ming, to her husband.
“I’m fine; I just started thinking about so many things when we have these ten-minute intermissions.”
Ming now looks at the two couples in front of them, they are eating a pork sandwich, drinking some juices, and Martha sticks her tongue out at her brother in law, a protest, Ming gathers, a friendly and cordial protest, that such battles are not her forte.

The fight started again, the two owners each brought their cocks into the arena, pushing their faces into each others face, to get their scent, to punish one cock into other, the one that was soft perhaps, to make hard, no gentleness to it, the average spectator could not detect the long pointed, white nail like knife attached to their ankles wrapped with a tie of sorts, not a knife like the steal ones that would be used tomorrow, to slash and kill one another in a matter of minutes, but just one sticking out enough to aggravate it opponent.
They were bred for speed, and the first cock, the one with a white back, used its wings to lay heavy on its opponent’s back, while he pecked with his beak, into the neck and eyes of him. They are like little horns, stabbing horns that sink through the feathers and into the flesh of the other, once through the feathers of the foe—it is easy to draw blood.
Backwards the cock fell, and couldn’t regain its balance, like a turtle turned on its back, it was now helpless, and the attacker gained the moment, and came back several times to inflict more pain into the abdomen of the cock. It was wounded.
Incapacity was the name of the game, fear was also an attribute, inflict it, and you gain the unrelenting festivity’s glory.

“So,” said Ming, “this is how it is?”
Morgan made no response, it was as it was, a combat sport, cold with fever, soaked sometimes in blood, but today there was no real atrociousness, the knifes would be tomorrow night, the long three inch sharp knifes that would be tied around the legs, the ankles of the cocks, as they slowly, bright eyed, fast as a mouse, feed to its audience, a dazing fight to the finish.

Keys to the Jeep & A Scorned Mother ((Story Sixteen) ( "Voices out of Saigon"))

Keys to the Jeep
((Story Sixteen) (October, 1970)
(Story told by Morgan, April, 1987))




“Corporal Gill, give me your jeep keys, I need to get to the back area, where the Ammo dump is, Alpha dump is, and fast!” said Staff Sergeant Morgan Carter; then added, so there would be no resistance, “that is a direct order Corporal, from a Staff Sergeant!” (Knowing he out ranked him.)

“I work for a Major, and he wants the jeep cleaned for tonight, and he wants me to get it cleaned at the airstrip,” answered Corporal Gill, “plus I am not sure exactly what a direct order is.”
“First of all, I don’t see the Major, second I don’t need the jeep tonight, third, this is an emergency, if you need to contact him, and then do so, and to educate you, there is no such thing as a direct order, other than, the order is being given to you face to face, and that this order you do not seem to want to follow is coming from an authority, me, and you are a subordinate and let me add one more thing this dialogue, or two…you are really being given a lawful order, because there are no such things as unlawful ones, and you are in a war zone which means if you refuse me, you can be put to death.” said the Staff Sergeant.
“I haven’t a phone as you can see, now how can I do that?” said the corporal, a little stubborn and witty.
“Bad luck for you corporal, my emergency outweighs his car wash, unless you get a lawful order (perhaps a written one) by him not to follow my directions, or my orders, which he can supersede, if he ware reachable, and which you will be accountable for not following a non commission officer’s request.”
The corporal now looked confused; he had never come under such a silly attack, especially when he worked as a Major’s driver.
“But how do I know you are a real staff sergeant, you are in civilian cloths?” said the Corporal, feeling unarmored and frustrated.
“You do not know this, but if you want to go check out my locker, at the 611th Ordnance Company, you will see my strips. Also in there is my id card, read at your leisure.”
“Sergeant, I really need to get to the air strip…!” said the corporal, as if the Sergeant was fooling with him.
The sergeant was taking down his jeep number, and his name, and the time of day, and the corporal was looking at him as he was doing this, and at the bottom of the paper it read, “Corporal Gill’s refused this Staff Sergeant a direct, lawful order… .”
“Where you from Corporal,” asked the sergeant.
“Well, I used to live in Vancouver…” replied the Corporal.
“Canada right?” confirmed the sergeant.
“Corporal Vancouver, give me the keys or take off those stripes.”
“I can’t, I just take orders from a Major,” said the Corporal.
“No, you are now taking orders from me, who out rank you, and the Major is not here to protect you. And to be honest, the jeep looks clean and there are no ballrooms here to be cleaning jeeps for folks who are just going to get them dirty in an hour after they are cleaned anyhow! Listen up, you give me a lift to the Ammo dump, and go to the motor pool and tell them I sent you, and they will wash the jeep for you.”
Fine, the corporal said and drove the Sergeant to Alpha dump, and he walked in to a shack, a few minutes later, the Sergeant came out with a rounded package, something heavy, somewhat heavy in a bag, got back into the jeep, and told him to drive back along the coast of the bay, and onto his unit, and he could drop him off and go get his jeep cleaned.
“What’s in the bag Sergeant, if you do not mind me asking?” asked the corporal.
“No, I don’t mind you asking, but what do you think is in it, I mean what would you think a sergeant who have you bring him to an ammo dump for, take you out of your way to drive him to an ammo dump put something into a bag that looks heavy and round?”
The corporal thought on this for a few minutes, looking at the road, the bag, the bay, the sergeant and back to the road. “You sure have a way with a conversation Sergeant, I mean a simple question needs a simple answer, and you make it out to be an act of congress, as if we got to debate everything out.”

(Ming was sitting in the living room, with Morgan Carter, her husband, he was telling her about his times at the 611, back in 1970. They had eaten lunch, and the afternoon was warm, and it was simply a nice do to nothing, and perhaps out boredom, he was telling her this story, Corporal Gill just popped into his mind you might say. “Well said his wife, what was in the bag?” she asked. “What do you think was in the bag?” He asked his wife. I suppose a shell casing of a bomb.” She replied. “Why that?” asked Morgan. “Because you wouldn’t be allowed to carry a live bomb in a jeep over a rough road on your lap, would you? She answered and asked at the same time.)


Well, we got down along the beach area, and he said, the corporal that is, said, “A bomb, or its shell or its parts, it must be a defect your company commander wants to look at.”
Fine, I thought and then said, “Boy, are you right on corporal,” and he smiled at me like he had just received the Army Commendation Medal, for miraculous service. Next he dropped me off at the 611, and I went into my hutch, and opened up the bag, sat on my bunk bed, and ate my watermelon.
Part Two

A Scorned Mother

Ming asked Morgan, “Did you ever see the corporal again?”
“Funny you ask that,” said Morgan, “No, I never did, but I heard what happened to him, as I look back, I kind of liked him, he was kind of laid back lad, simple, in way trying to make everything seem right.”
“Well, it’s a long story, but I’ll tell you it in a nut shell. We don’t really know people we bump into, for they have a history, and baggage, they often do not share, and we think because of this, we get to know them pretty well, but so often we kid ourselves, I shall tell you what I heard: his mother, she utterly condemned her husband, the three boys’ father, for whatever reasons, after he left, and the three kids were raised by a scorned mother. He remarried, and had three more kids, two boys and one daughter.
“When the old man died all the kids went to the funeral, all six of them, one side loved him the other hated him because of the scorn they heard from their mother all those years. The boys from the scorned mother’s side of the family, never got the side of the father, what took place, he let the hot sun beat on the kids head, just like the mother let the scorn burn out their hearts. The mother used hate to control the kids I’d say, and it was a way to get even with the father, teach him a lesson, have his kids hate him, you know what I mean, if I can’t have you, I’ll turn the kids away from you, thus, her revenge settled into a cold mold.
“And what you plant in kids is what comes out usually, what you harvest I mean, and so a perfect love was for the father on one side, by his new family, and a perfect hate on the other, form the old family.
“Corporal Gills went home to Iowa, with an energetic spirit, and found the two families fighting over vaporous old wounds, the ones the father set by not saying anything all those years, and the one the mother knitted into their fabric, their flesh all those years, and he was no longer around to put out the little fires, that would or could grow into a forest fire.
“Corporal Gills tried to put out the fire between the kids of both families, but it ended up quarrelsome, and one of the boys from the new family of the Gills, Charles Riley Gills, killed one of the boys, Corporal Gills younger brother. Thereafter feelings crept in the little sleepy eyed town in Iowa, and Corporal Gills, killed Charles Riley Gills, by beating him over the head with a pipe, but no one saw it, so he was under suspicion, not yet convicted of the crime. The daughter took a shotgun and killed the other brother of Corporal Gills, and she ended up in jail.
“Well, fine, they seemed to have gotten even (two for one although), but at the local bar, inside the bar, the remaining brother of the new Gills family, met Corporal Gills in there playing pool, awaiting trial, and started a fight, and he killed the boy, they called it manslaughter.
“Well, Corporal Gills got twenty years, and so did Peggy Gills.
“Hate is a form of control I believe, anger that eats at the soul. I suppose Corporal Gills is still serving his twenty-years in prison, and will be getting out in another three. Sometimes hate is a recurring nightmare, it controls you, you got to put it to sleep, you got to forgive the other person, not for their sake, but for yours, so it has no more control over you, so you can be set free, and go forward. You know what I mean about nightmares, because I get them as you already know Ming, old war nightmares, they call nowadays, stress related.
“It is funny now that I think of it Ming, ugliness sometimes shines brighter, and echoes louder than love. And family can be the most burdensome.”

Ming took in a deep breath, she was not expecting that from an American family, she thought it was just poor old families in Saigon, or third world countries that struggled with such emotions, and vengeance feelings, she said,
“I guess we are all connected somehow, to one another being human, and we all get hurt along life’s road, and we get that inclination to hurt back, and we just never take into consideration, the ripples that come out of it all. I wonder if I will have to pay for my sins here or in heaven, or in the waiting place before one goes to heaven.”

(I think what Ming realized, and it took her a life time to fully understand it, was that she was not the only one that came out of a bad satiation, it was all around her, all over the world, she just didn’t see past her’s until this day.)

"Sure..." (Part II, to: Walking Men)

“Sure…”
((April 16, 1998) (Story Nineteen)
Part Two to: Walking Men

Sometimes we make history by who we know, and hang around with, not by who we area, and Nanh Khoa, was determined to do so. He fled to Thailand from Saigon, it was 1989, and he stayed there until the opening months of 1990. He found where Pol Pot was living, living since 1984, on a plantation villa, near Twat, under the protection of guards, and the unit 838. We all have hero, and Pol Pot was Nanh’s new hero, even though he killed 26% of the population in Cambodia, between the years of 1976 and ’79. And history would record, and did record him to be amongst the top elite of evil men that have thus far walked the earth since man was first seen upon it.
There he met Pol Pot, through his persistence, and there he became a soldier under his right hand man, or one of them, for he took orders from Son Cham, who took them indirectly through Son Seu by way of Pol Pot.
In 1989, Vietnam withdrew from Cambodia, and between that period and into 1990 Pol Pot organized himself to make his comeback, his return to Cambodia, he would not accept any peace deals with anyone. Of course the legacy of the Khmer Rouge was over for the most part, the so called Red Khmer Tribe, and the massive starvation of the people thrown out of their cities, and brought into the country side to farm for the new kingdom, the 1.7 million people that died under his three year war regime, now he was back in the jungles building his forces. Although in 1996, they would desert, but not Nanh Khoa.
Nanh Khoa, had found a cause to live for (as often men do in religion, or a cult or don’t do, and hide in alcohol, or drugs), a reason that is, one to even die for if necessary, for he would have given his life up for Pol Pot, as easy as his step mother, Zuxin, gave him up to his Aunt Ly, so many years ago.
He thought a few times of his brother An, that how fragile he was, he would have never survived in today’s world, with its roads sunken without truth, coal poured over his kindness by evil doers, the grass as bristly as stout chives, he would never have survived all this, therefore he did him a favor, if God takes martyrs, he got one as a gift by him.

But what he didn’t realize was, when you played with the devil, expect to bleed a little, and perhaps a lot.
It was April, 1998, and Pol Pot had a stroke, his left side was paralyzed. Before he died he ordered the execution of Son Seu. And Pol Pot died on April 15. On April 16, Son Cham brought in a recording, it was the voice of Nanh Khoa, and he had agreed along with Son Seu, that the ongoing negations for peace within the rebel group were a good course to take. This is of course what drove the nail into Son Seu’s grave, an act according to Pol Pot, as treason.
In consequence, Son Cham asked Nanh Khoa, why he made such a statement, and basically it was a simple reply, as truthful and simple as Nanh Khoa could ever be, but to Son Cham, it was too silly to be truthful, for Nanh Khoa said the following:
“I had never really talked to Son Seu, as you well know, and this was a great thing to me, to have been in his presence, as I have been in Pol Pot’s presence, yet I had never talked to either one directly, and that day I was sitting, guarding the door, and he looked at me and he asked me if I went along with his beliefs, I never said, yes or no, I nodded my head ‘yes,’ and said ‘Sure…’ so I suppose I was trying to impress him, but believe me, that was it.”
“The Americans call this one man, a little man in a fairy tale Rumpelstilskin, do you know why?”
“No,” said Nanh Khoa.
“It is because he could, and did spin Gold out of straw; can you?” he added.
“No,” said Nanh.
“Then you need to stop lying.”

Then he started to remember his brother, An, all his pious talk, he told him time and again, and tired he became of it. How he refused to listen to his brother, and now how Son Cham refuses to listen to him. When you lie, they listen, when you tell the truth they laugh, he told himself, as Son looked at him with cobra eyes.
“You have put your foot into the grave, Nanh, what are your last words?”
Thin lipped he was, and he knew, Son was looking for a scapegoat, and he had nothing to offer him, not a ragbag or a silver coin, nothing.
“The dead are bored you know,” said Son, then he ordered three men to take him to the graveyard, lie him down face down into the mud, and bury him alive.” Said Son Cham, and he walked out of the office he was staining in like a pious king, and he told him, told Nanh one more thing on his way out, “Get busy being dead, just like your brother.”
And he was executed within the hour.

Walking Men ((February, 1989) (Story Eighteen to "Voices out of Saigon))

Walking Men
((February, 1989) (Story Eighteen))

Saigon


Danh, the elder of the boys (born 1964), was named by his father, and it meant fame, and An, was named by his mother (Vang), and it meant peace, perhaps they knew something, before hand, a premonition, because their personalities seemed to shape, or mold that way; Vang, although shrewd as she was not half as shrewd and mean as her husband, Nguyen Khoa.
The boys were dropped off in 1979, at their Aunt Ly’s home, in Saigon, ten years have now passed, and Danh is twenty-five years old. And An, a year younger; Ly, is in her 70s, and handicapped, she walks now with a limp, she had put on a second floor to her house, several years past now, at the request of Danh, he said, if she didn’t he’d cut her ankles off, and he would have. He has turned out to be lazy growing up these past years, not in the gentle manner of his brother, An. Oh, I almost forgot, Ly got that broken ankle, and busted up toes by Danh one night, he done it without Ly saying anything, just woke up from a drunk, and suggested she give him, her savings, wherever she hid it in the house, or suffer the consequences. She didn’t think he had it in him, and he did, and took a hammer a seventy pound rock that is and like hammer used it, he had brought this huge rock home from the Canal Ben area, for such an occasion, went to his closet picket it up, came back into her bedroom, she had closed her eyes, lying silently on her bed, and bang, he threw it on her right side foot and ankle and toes, it fell on her like an eight-inch projectile. In a like manner, He tried to bully An, but he couldn’t.

An, he worked for the Canal Ban city project, just sweeping the canal area clean, a peasants job, but it was peaceful. He wanted to be a clergy, a monk or Christian priest. He was having what you might call, a mental conflict over Buddhism and Christianity, especially with Ly and her sister Oni. Danh thought it all hogwash.
“Your have to learn things and I suppose I’ll have to be your teacher,” said, Trang, the brother to Ly and Qui, born 1922 (named for honor, and was a man of wisdom, a learned man of theology, and was once a professor at a college in Saigon, before the war.)
And so it was that An did his work, and his studies in theology, and his menial tasks at home to help Ly as much he could.
An worked to work, to the Canal everyday, and walked over to Tang’s house after work, and home to Ly’s house thereafter, and Danh did his share of walking, but it wasn’t in the same directions, he’d walk over to his neighbors house, and make love to her, while the husband was gone, and gamble in the afternoons, with the local men, at the parks, and walked down to see his brother, and fight with him over trivialities while he was working at the canal, trying to convince him to join him in a life of awkwardness, to rob and do what needs to be done to the new tourists coming into Saigon for fame and fortune, as he was Robin Hood, but was not going to give to the poor, he was the poor. They could start a mafia type gang, and the local merchants pay them tribute, in American dollars, but An, just laugh at the suggestion, and kept sweeping, and told him to go find his treasures without him.

As the old saying goes, when the student is ready, the teacher will come. And it was so, his learning from Trang had come to an end, he was asked to send, a letter by Trang, to the Bishop of Saigon, who had been release from prison, after many years, and who proclaimed he was needed in the prison system during his imprisonment (from the communist takeover of Saigon in 1975), and thus, made no qualms, even laughed at the ungainly, if not adopted new home environment the government gave him. The Bishop was to be ordained a cardinal, and was newly assigned to the Vatican.
Danh, got hold of this information, went done to the Canal, his brother sweeping it as usual. He had told him how he annoyed and irritated him, flesh and blood, whatever, however could he be his brother and so simple minded, it was what he mumbled on the way walking down to the canal: that he did not like the people he hung around with, associated with. As quiet and peaceful as the boy was he said nothing when Danh arrived knowing his nonsense, just kept sweeping as if he was already in paradise. This in itself irritated Danh more, the turning of his back on him, as if he was no more than a huge stump in a forest, or a stupid huge rock in the rice field.
“Look at me,” he said, “when I talk to you.”
The water in the canal was deep and rich, and if you felt it, it was cool, clear for the morning, Da was breathing in the freshness of it all, then he turned around said with the kindest of smiles, “Do you not have something better to do with your unproductive life?”
It was not the best choice of words, for the climate and mood his brother was in. He, Danh looked into his brother’s eyes; they were filled with a rich deep soil, and one that was full of promise. His brother turned about again, even whistled this time, which brought more discouragement to the face of the elder brother.
For the most part, it was hard for Danh to make ends meet, in his life, and most folks spoke of the hard conditions in Saigon as temporary. But in many minds, the future held did hold promise, but for some odd reason, Danh never saw that part of life, he was angry, perhaps because Zuxin, his step mother though of him as unworthy to care fore, left him behind, and his father gave to his real mother a disease that killed her, and his father, the bad seed, died in a bad way. It all was a reflection of him, it all was to him steadily fixed in his mind, the world had to pay off this mortgage, this debt life had burdened him with, for they owned it to him for his hardships.
He also saw his community, his surroundings as hopeless, beaten men, defeated women, all walking along the Canal daily, begging and sleeping wherever they could. He was to be the undefeated, the unbeatable, and find a better position in life; a millionaire maybe.
“You do everything well,” said Danh to his brother.
“Isn’t that the way things are done?” he commented back.
If there are two self’s in a man, he lost one, and it was the higher self he lost, and became subject to the lower, perhaps jealousy in that life was starting to favor his brother, in retribution for his brother’s satisfied life and position in it, he took out a nine-inch knife from his boot, and with an exalted motion ribbed him upwards, from his stomach area to his heart.
Neatly and clearly and perfectly the task was done in a matter of seconds. He stood there a moment, several people saw his face, he actually stood there admiring his work, his brother now an ugly picture on the dockside of the canal, and then he ran.
Word had gotten to Trang, what Danh had done, and he was in his own right, a man of means and friends, and he told his friends whoever saw Danh, to let him know, that he should go, leave Saigon, and do it before twilight, lest he end up like his brother; to go to Phan Rang, or Phan Thiet, or Dang Nai, it didn’t matter where he went, but never to return to Saigon, for he was a dead man should he try, and he had but hours to leave the city before he would condemn him publicly to death, if found in the city thereafter, and he ran, and he ran, and not a soul knew where to.

Poor Folk Along the Levee ((spring of 1988) (Story No: 17 "Voices out of Saigon"))

Poor Folk along the Levee
((spring of 1988) (Story No: 17))


Advance: Everyone has some skeletons in their closets and so did Sergeant Morgan Carter II. He and his mother lived in a hole of an area of St. Paul, Minnesota, on the levee, along the Mississippi River, they tore it down in 1960, that was when he went into the Army, he was seventeen years old then. The judge gave him a choice, the Army or Jail: with no exceptions in-between. It was the way the Army got many of its recruits back then.


The levee was a narrow strip of land, between two bridges along the Mississippi, between the High Bridge, which headed West, and the Robert Street Bridge, a half mile east of it. Many of the folks on the levee were poor folks. It was a sandy, worthless piece of land, that slowed the river down a bit, stony underneath it, and it often flooded ever spring, especially if there was a harsh winter, and most winters in Minnesota were harsh, and most had ninety plus inches of snow a year.
The merchants that had the bars, and small grocery stores, and restaurants, which were poorly made, ramshackle affairs for the most part, lived in them as well as used them for, what I just said, their place of business.
The folks of the levee were really invaders, folks who came into town for one thing or another, had no place else in the country, had a mountain of bad luck, so they would build a shack, and in time made it into a house. It all started long before my mother ((Teresa Carter) (maiden name being Wright)) moved onto the levee with me her son, my father had left long before I was even born, no sense in giving you his name.
Back then, back in the mid ‘50’s, on the levee, folks didn’t have credit per se, like stores would provide in the future, with credit cards and so forth, although they did have a credit system in place. Whatever they handed out over the counter, they wrote on a tab, piece of paper: even the carpenters, and shoemakers and other tradesmen did this, especially the two saloons on the levee, and you’d pay on payday the sum, or whenever the piece of paper told you, you had to pay.

(Carter stopped for a moment, caught his breath)


As I was saying, Ming, or about to say: we got credit back then with a handshake, and a written note, an IOU note, even the farmers did it that way, in 1953, I was ten-years old (you were a year old). And no matter what, one could find cash to get drunk, and every Irish Man on the levee and Italian drank from the age of eight to eighty, blind, crippled or crazy. If you didn’t they’d think you were a sissy.
I cleaned cisterns, swept floors for every establishment in town, and sold papers for the Pioneer Press, a nickel then. When I got older I drank even more, and for days slept it off, caught fish, and took the few cents I sold them for and drank more, I was a drunk at sixteen years old. You don’t know at sixteen or seventeen, it is going to last a life time if you don’t stop your drinking now. Your body is healthy, and your spirit is strong, and you recover, recoil, and rebound quickly. And then age creeps up, and it has its toll on you. It’s the way it is.
In between these years of drinking you become more like an animal than a mature adult, you produce for yourself a hard youth.

(Ming began to get sleepy-eyed, wiped her eyes, and for the first time in her life, she had sat down regularly at a table with a man, and enjoyed listening; his life along the river was not perfect, she told her second self, the person that was locked up in the back of her mind, the one she kept detached most of the time, unless she wanted definite things. And now she had learned to store patience for the man she married, and got up washed her face, and said, “You were saying”:)



I wasn’t so smart back then, I had a sharp- tongue, and fast fists, and hated this levee town, and then mother took me out of her and we moved to the north end of the city, as they still call it.
Most of my friends got jobs from the Railroad, or went onto trades, I was kind of door-jammed not knowing what to do, and watched them move on, one by one. I had several misdemeanors for drinking underage, a few accidents, and I wrote a few back checks out, like thirty of them, and was driving at the time, and had twenty-one parking tickets. I got into a few fights, and put a few people in the hospital.
Well, to make a long story shorter, all this annoyed the judge, and he said, “Son, indolence is found in you,” he devoted all of fifteen minutes lecturing me and when he could think of no more to say, I thought here I go, mister bum to the big house, the jail. But he didn’t say that, he said this:
“Boy, learn to keep things natural, not cloudy, or sleepy minded, get a plan, and work it, fix it in-between, if you wait for a perfect plan, you will end up straight back here, and not even know the purpose for being here, you will join the Army, or I will slam all I can on you and you will not see freedom for two years.”
Well, I thought, two years in the Army or two years in jail. I had to pick one. And as you know Ming, I spent a large part of my life in the Army, and I sobered up. And so this impulse to tell you my background was just an impulse, no more.

(Ming had a tear in her eye; understanding came to her, and her arms ached to hug her husband, he had come on a long journey, and he made it, he had beaten all odds, the world would treat him always with respect, for he demanded it, and worked hard for it, he had tamed the beast in him, and was no longer a burden on anyone. What more, she asked herself, could I ask for, in a man, I mean I have it all, love, devotion, some hard times, a character background that shaped him, and she got up from the sofa, and laboriously started sweeping the floor, as Morgan went back to reading, “All My Pretty Ones,” a book he had sent for. )

Amos and the Mutt (a short story)

Amos and the Mutt
(Story Fourteen; fall of 1986)

Tabasco the II, now being the fall of 1986, was twelve years old, Amos, 92, they climbed up to the hillside over looking the Hightower plantation, new owners occupied the house now, since back around 1973, or so, just right after Tabasco, who was left out in the raw by Caroline Abernathy, the day she hung herself, let the dog run free, not a good thing, and Betty Hightower, kind of did the same thing, but Tabasco produced a litter, before her death, and she carried one of them to Amos, dropped the little he-dog, off at his feet, and then shortly thereafter, was skinned alive by rats, and Betty had put a bullet in his head, to stop the suffering. Hindsight, everything it seems for the Abernathy and Hightower family carried along with it an ounce of hindsight.

Amos now has walked up to the hillside, over looking the two plantations, Abernathy’s old place, and Mrs. Stanley’s place, where he worked all his life, for her, and for her parents, and then Mr. Stanley came along, and married into the family, inherited the plantation.
Sitting on the roots of an old tree, Amos talks to his long time friend, the Mutt, the dog Mrs. Stanley calls Tabasco the II’
“I got to find us a way to git us dead ole pal, come her’ Mutt, wes got to think dis out…you got to be prepared to die, jes like dhe living got to be prepared to live, man is weak and woman, she like dhe Eve, weaker, and women is evil, but dhe man he is eviler, dat is dhe way it is, and you and I cant fix dhem up, dat dhe way it is again. Man at war with himself, flesh and blood, father and son, flesh and spirit, cant live together, and man he cant tell between good an evil anymore, dats dhe way it is Mutt, you knows that, as well as I do. Man he tries to change dhe world, make it his kind, and Jesus he didn’t even try dat.
“If I die before you, dhe rats goin’ to eat you like your mama, so I got to figure dhis out, you an’ me together.”
Amos and the Mutt fell to sleep, it was dark when they Amos woke up, a penetrating chill in the air. The dog was awake, and that was to old Amos, an unspeakable delight, but he had to figure out a way to say Farwell, he knew in his heart his time was limited, and he took the dogs head and laid it back down on his leg, and the dog and he fell to sleep again.

And then he mumbled, to the dog,
“Dhe best thing I done learned in my life is dhat I learned it all by the age of ten years old, since then, I jes learned it eight times over, yes sir, I firmly believes dhat, I keeps a-learning, over, an’ over dhe same ole thing dog. And I learns ever one is looking for something her an’ dhere, wher at one time, it was all wrapped up in faith.”

Daybreak

Said Mrs. Stanley, to her husband, Amos and that there dog of his, slept out all night up the hill a ways, they are going to catch their death.”
“Maybe that’s what he wants, maybe he wants to die, but not first, he wants old Tabasco II to go before him, to make sure those rats his mother tangled with are no long around, gone for good.”
“Could be, didn’t think of that…” Mrs. Stanley replied.
“I think Amos is going to rob the devil and God himself out of death, he’s going to call the shots.”
“Well, when I saw them this morning, he looked like a dead scarecrow, and so did the dog.”
Mr. Stanley brooded a moment, “That old negro worked for your pa, he’s 92-years old, and the Mutt, he’s something like fourteen I think, perhaps he caught up to Amos in Dog years though.”
“Maybe it is best you go check on them,” Mrs. Stanley asked her husband.
“I reckon so…” Mr. Stanley replied, “now that I think of it, I saw Amos walking up that hill yesterday, he looked like Mosses; not Amos’ father, but the bible Moses.”


The Night Before

The dog—he was yellowish red in colored, patches, something likened to a Golden Retriever, but was a mixture of breeds, nothing pure, more on the mutt order, but a handsome looking mutt. Tobacco, the dogs mother, died in 1972, born in 1960, the only father or parent the dog ever knew was Amos, he had a gun with him this evening, he closed his eyes and shot at the dog, tried to kill him but missed, and that was that, he could not do it again. And he couldn’t allow himself to die before the dog, cause the rats would get him, even if the Stanley’s took care of him, he’d not sleep in his grave, not in peace anyway, he’d have to come back as a ghost, to check on the Mutt, and he told the dog this. If dogs understand, if they can sense things beyond food and danger, Amos was hoping the Mutt could understand his reasoning, not Amos’ father (Moses James Tucker, born 1875, died from exposure, sleeping in a barn, one winter’s day, and froze to death, at the age of 65-years old), but the one in the bible, the one who got the Ten Commandments from God, came down the mountain and smashed them out of anger for the people had created idols during his absence.
Thus, Amos James Tucker, called the dog over to him, said, “You fool, ya ole fool of a dog, you can’t climb this hill anymore, your legs are too thin, and they wobble, jes like mine, wes got to stay her dth night.”
In the middle of the night old Amos woke up, saw that the dog was dead asleep on his knee, I mean, really dead, and had fallen to sleep on his knee, and said to the corpse, “Ok, now it’s my turn, thanks Lord for making it easier for me.”

(The funeral was held three days later, and both got buried on that hill site, the dog in his already dug grave, and Amos, beside him.)

Henry Small’s Secret: the Aneurysm

Henry Small’s Secret
((Summer of 1984)(part II, to ‘Cassandra’s Delicatessen))


Henry Small ceased dancing, looked at his wife Linda Macaulay, they had been married two year now, said,
“I’m really too old for this, I’m thirty, and so are you.”
She watched him, then responded,
“Yes,” she said, “yes—but what?”
“I drove by the old delicatessen yesterday, got thinking about Cassandra, we should visit her up in Wisconsin. Tell her we got married. Or perhaps I should, and say that for you,” said Henry.
“I know she used to be your girlfriend, I suppose I have to say that for you (her hand buttoning the top button of her blouse, they had stopped dancing moved off the dance floor to their table almost unknowingly) but if you need, I can take the strain off of you, if you go, don’t come back.”
He drew out his wallet, leather, and a picture of her, it was roughly creased and soiled, from what it looked like, much usage, or so it would seem, handed it to her, clumsily
“No allowances I suppose?”
“I was there a week ago, nothing looks the same since the new owner last year bought the place, the Pitmen’s, they have a cut son, he’s only fourteen but going to be a honey when he grows up, they are from Minnesota, someplace by the Canadian Boarder,” said Linda.
“You like to show your control over me by getting me jealous, don’t you?”
“Funny you say that, because it works too.”
“I assure you my dear; it never looks the same after you have it.”
“My dear husband, it all depends what side you’re looking at.”
“Oh,” Henry said, “you have allowances. Yes, yes, I suppose you would.”
Out of his walled he pulled a whitish piece of paper, he was going to say something, she looked, then he put it back, he already knew what it read, he had not told Linda about it though, not yet, and wasn’t sure if he was going to, it read “Prominent Fayetteville, woman, Cassandra Hightower dies from aneurysm… she was 29-years old.”
“I want to see that paper,” said Linda, after having torn up Cassandra’s picture.
Henry pulled it out again, showed it to her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, “what is an aneurysm?”
“I’m not all that sure of the term, but I think it means, she had some kind of blood-filled enlarged blood vessel, they often times get weak, the walls of the vessel, and dilate, and push, and this is what happened to her I guess. I did call the doctors, and they said they found a three-mm cerebral aneurysm, something undetected, had the doctors known about it, they could have saved her life…so they say. My school teacher had one, undetected, she died in two-weeks, after headaches, and so forth, to my understanding, one needs to detect these things early on before eh rupture occurred, or at least this is the best of the best results for saving the person, other than that, the doctors have treatments for such cases, but you are now in a crisis mode. You need to reduce interracial pressure, restore deteriorating respiration, they have their ways of ding this, like clipping the ruptured aneurysm to stop bleeding or reduce it, and so for and on.”
“I went to the ‘Pitman’s Delicatessen,’ a year ago or so, and heard from the boy, Allen Pitman, a girl died at the table closest to the window, that she was looking out the window, and just died, an aneurysm they say, and much like the one I just discribed. Allen said she had an ugly side to her face, and looked depressed, and just stared out the window, and asked for you by name.”
“How did she get out of the hospital, I thought she was mentally ill?” asked Linda.
“How does a bull get out of the fence gates at the bullring, she charged out, head first I heard, and now the question comes up, why they let here out too soon. Although she didn’t die from suicide or anything because of her so called maladaptive behavior, and they say she was mentally competent to take care of herself and that she was no risk to anyone. And they warned her of a potential aneurysm; all in vain of course”
“I bet,” said Linda, “you don’t know the other side of that innocent looking girl; she was a lion in disguise with a lot of hate and revenge in her.”
“Revenge for what?” asked Henry.
“Don’t be so silly, you know; I took you away from her, that’s what.”
He was watching her face, while he thought, “Yes, I might have married her if she had not done what she done and you might have not talked me into marrying you.”
“Henry Small, are you trying to provoke me!” yelled Linda, to the point several folks at nearby tables turned to see who was yelling.
“She never knew we got married you know,” said Henry.
“I suppose not, but how would you know?” asked Linda.
“I’m just presupposing,” answered Henry, adding, “when I was a boy, on my paperroute I took subscriptions, sold them for the paper, and I got a premium; that is how I met her, her father bought a year’s subscription of the paper from me, and she told her papa to do it, she always loved me, she just didn’t date me until I got older, and her mother Betty and father Jason got comfortable with me hanging around the house after awhile.”
“Here, take the picture, all the little pieces, put them back into your wallet, and keep your memories to yourself,” said Linda.
“Oh yes, I see, you wanted her father’s money, that is why you went after him. And now you take second best, her old boyfriend, the paper route guy, who now went onto college and is a reporter for the local newspaper. You’ve come down in your pickings,” said Henry.
“Oh shut up, you were available, I never loved you, I just got used to you,” said Linda, “…like Betty and Jason did!”
“I guess folks tell what believe when they are really angry, or fed up with living a lie,” said Henry.
Linda got up from the table, walked out, and shouted on her way, “you’ll be getting a letter from my lawyer, for inhuman cruelty—that’s called a divorce, in simple terms.”
It didn’t take long, but the term ‘inhuman crudity,’ was changed to ‘irresolvable differences,’ and the divorce was granted. And Linda visited that delicatessen almost daily, even worked part time there, and started up a side affair with Allen. And that was all for her.
And for Henry Small, he vanish after a few months, leaving no trace, in case Linda would follow him, after he inherited 2.75 million dollars, his inheritance left from Cassandra, with the stipulation, he needed to be legally single at the time he accepted the money, and he was. Last time I heard, he was living high off the hog, in Jamaica, and had his own delicatessen, several of them along the beach.

Cassandra´s Delicatessen ((Story Thirteen to: "Voices out of Saigon")

Cassandra’s Delicatessen
((Story Thirteen) (Prescott Wisconsin, 1983))



Cassandra Hightower walked right through the hallway to Dr. Whitman’s room, stopping in front of his door. The secretary said, just inside the door, “He’s in conference now, Cassandra, I’ll tell him you wish to talk to him when he is finished.”
She, Cassandra could see through the crack of the door, him talking to Counselor Thymou, whom was assigned to her, this past year or so. Dr. Whitman must have heard his secretary talking to Cassandra, he looked through the crack of the door, even smiled at Cassandra.
“How much notice do you want from me, write me off and out, I’m going home, I spent over $400,000-dollars here these past few years. I’m as good as I’m going to get.”
“Write you out and off…such a term,” said the secretary.
“Yes, you’re fired, and I’m quitting,” she remarked, “will one day or one hour be noticed enough?”
She looked at Cassandra frog-eyed. “It sounds like you don’t like our care here…?”
“I had over three million dollars, it cost me $400,000 here, five-hundred a day, more or less. I have 2.6 million left, and interest of perhaps $250,000. You folks of course know all this, and want to spend it before I leave.”
“You’ve been with us a long while, Ms Hightower, and I think perhaps not long enough, but that is between you and Dr. Whitman, and Senior Counselor Thymou.”
“Well it happens to be, Mr. Thymou, feels the way I feel, enough is enough.”
“The trouble is, I have never learned to deal with your kind properly, you take command and try to hogtie your clients. If I was broke, I’d be out of her in the next five minutes, probably out that window. So if you do not release me, I’ll give the money away to the first bum I see.”

Dr. Whitman came out, said, “Counselor Thymou, has indicated there is really not much more he can do with you, but I sense losing you having you go back to your home in New Orleans, is not the right thing to do, but Thymou insists it is, and if you are like your father was, then I do not want to be battling with you everyday, but assure me, Ms Hightower, if you have a relapse, you will call us, and come back?”
“What is the big concern,” asked Cassandra, “other than my right side of my face, and that has healed as best it can, with multiple stitches, in and outside my face and the plastic surgery, and I’m still ugly as can be on that side of the face, but I suppose I could be uglier?”
Said Dr. Whitman with a drifting for the right words, “All your recent blood pressure tests have come up 50% higher than they should be, and all the medications we’ve given you seems not to do the trick of leveling it off at a safe count. Let me explain Cassandra, Hypertension, commonly is referred to as High blood pressure, when it is elevated, it can cause a stroke or heart attacks, sometimes we cannot pin point it to the kidney’s or perhaps even a tumor in the brain, we are lost in the cause of it, medications help, and this is your situation, but let me go further.
I cannot find, or your system does not indicate any specific medical cause for your high blood pressure, or hypertension, I fear if there is a bubble in the making of a blood vessel, let’s say in the heart, a balloon like bubble, I fear it will bust, and if it does, let’s say an artery, let’s also say the aortic, an aneurysm, it will lead to death. And yes, you are in an expensive freestanding hospital, private, and it is expensive, but we take care of our clients, and we do our jobs well.
“We are not going to keep you here, but I will have you sign a release form, that I have talked to you about not leaving, and the possible consequences. If not with the possible aneurysm, then with the unresolved emotional setbacks you’ve had, the suicide you tried is still not completely dealt with, and neither is your anger. Although you have come a long way in a short time, which seems like a long time to you. The finances, I know little about, and that how I like to keep it, it can fog the mind of the helper if indeed one gets too involved with finances, when he is trained in abnormal behavior.”
“No more medications and I’ll be ready in an hour to leave this place.” That was Cassandra’s last words to the Doctor.


The Next Day

The next day she was back in New Orleans, in her house, counting her interest of $250,000 dollars, and her 2.6 million dollars. Her mind was still drifting around—Linda, her friend came to mind, the one that was trying to rob her father of his money, the one who took his time, so she’d have to sit those long days in isolation in her room. She knew she wasn’t all there, but she, Linda McCauley didn’t have to steal him away. And that was how she thought of the old friendship. What a rotten friend she said.
She went down to the nearby delicatessen for a sandwich, a cheese and tomato sandwich, and coke. There she sat and watched the people walk by, without apologizing for her ugly side of her face, which was smoothed out, but discolored, and pretty dull looking yet.
“Too bad I didn’t do a better job in trying to kill myself, instead of shooting the side of my faced off…” she whispered to some character inside her head, or was it inside her chest, wherever he or it seemed to move inside her body back and forth.
What she was thinking, was not what she felt she was going to enjoy, just something she had to do. Perhaps, she told herself, it is because I am a Hightower, like my father, and mother, and we are this kind of person. To the few folks that waked by, she looked like a poor innocent girl, who had some kind of tragedy, who came down to get a bite to eat. But she wanted to kill Linda, or harm her, or somehow maker her pay for her evilness.
She didn’t see anyone she knew, evidently time had changed things, she felt as if she was a visitor, yet she had been in this delicatessen many times years ago. She noticed new owners behind the counter, a new waitress, two young men, strangers, in their early twenties.

For the next two weeks she was in there eating ham and cheese sandwiches every day.

“One minute will be enough,” she told herself in the delicatessen, sitting at the same table she always sat at. She wanted to harm, if not kill Linda, and the pressure grew and grew inside of her.
“She was a good friend, a good kid, was, but isn’t anymore.” She said out loud.
The owners, a man and woman, watched her from the side of their eyes, thinking she was either mentally disturbed, or simply blowing off some steam, she had heard worse from other customers, so they did not give it all that much attention.
“I just can’t seem to shut the voices up,” said Cassandra, then she heard another voice, it said, “Don’t bother,” and a blood vessel bust inside her head, sending her face flat onto her plate, her sandwich, she had just finished.

Mirrors of Canal Ben (Story Twelve, to: "Voices out of Saigon")

Mirrors of Canal Ben
((Story Twelve) (Yoon> Story, December 1981))



Advance: Yoon Tran, who worked at the Sanitary plant in Saigon, friend to Zuxin’s first husband, lives near the Chinese Pagoda, on Dai 40 street, off the main street known as Hong Bang. He has lived his whole life in Saigon, with his mother Kaojia Tran, aging mother, now seventy-two years old, and remains unmarried.
He is in his 40s, it is near the middle of December, 1981. He has heard the report Si Manh has made, last year concerning her husband’s death; he is dead, by the hands of three brutes, several stab marks were found on him by the police, right through the heart, Si has inherited all his prosperities and monies in the interim. The rape has not been mentioned, or told to the local police, and Yoon wonders if Si knows about his involvement. Of course, Yoon knows nothing about Si’s rape, but Si feels, Yoon has escaped the revenge of Zuxin and Ming, and taken it out on her and her husband. She even feels because of her husband, perhaps he had it coming, and her also for sticking around, she did know he was whoring about, but that was it. Her alibi could not have been a plea of innocence, but rather neglect, for allowing it to go on for so long, and who knows how many other woman had to face his mirrors of destruction.
Yoon, he now is the superintendent at the plant, and takes his daily walks along the Saigon Canal Ben, as he always has.
Yoon and Kaojia plan on visiting Phnom Penh. As Morgan Carter the II, would have told Yoon, had he asked, ‘What goes around, comes around—don-t expect anything different.’

The Canal
His voice had huskiness to it, more so now then in the past, dried up with alcohol, he had been drinking since the death of Mr. Manh, and mentally at work he was crippled. I mean, his boss was castrated and stabbed which was enough to scare an ape back into the jungle.
He had little agility left, and demanded it seemed at work, demanded his fellow works do his work for him, as well as theirs. His mind was grey, too soft for deep thinking, and reading those blueprints. He wanted to take a vacation to Cambodia, Phnom Penh, but as usual it was delayed, he was stuck in Saigon, until a project was finished, so he remained on Dai 40 streets, off of Hong Bang.
His eyes wild and his neck muscles tight, from the stress of the unknown: it was raining like cats and dogs, and he took his hot cup of tea, to keep the damp out of his bones,
“I was a good man in my day,” he tells himself out loud, walking to the Canal “I have pride in myself, in my appearance, I am no bum,” he adds, and because of the death of Mr. Manh, and the way he died, perhaps, who knows, he feels his time is coming. But when and where and how is the unknown question.
Fifteen minutes later he is walking along the Cannel Ben, as he usually does, sees Si. She seemed to have a truly untrammeled spirit. It would seem she found life good, now that her husband was gone, but it could be a mistake to say so.
Therefore, when she approached, he simply said his hello, and she her’s, and as they stood by the canal, she talked briefly about her husband.
“Did you know Yoon, my husband died for his sins, and you, you just walk around as if you conquered the whole world, the earth, and have none.”
It seemed the waters crawled up from the Canal; the sky was a flat grey, from the early morning rain, the sporadic rains of this early afternoon.
“Funny seeing you here, Mrs. Manh,” said Yoon.
“It’s all symbolical; I’ve been solidified like you and my husband. Hardened for life’s unexpectancies, such as this moment: have you been drinking again Yoon?”
“I got a drink on me yes, here in my pocket.” He said.
“Yeh, I see but why?” asked Si; he didn’t answer her.
Miraculously, he stood on one leg looking over into the Canal, she looked around for a policeman, none to be seen, and cunningly, she said with a push “Here is law and justice,” she had pushed him over the railing, quickly, fast, and looked in the strange light of the sun, as the dark clouds passed it, as if telling Zeus, that you for this murderous moment: with a shadow through the hopeless light. She knew Yoon could not swim, her husband told him so, and when he fell, you could hear his body tumble abruptly into the water hitting the side pavement of the canal, a dull clanging thump,
“So long, superintendent, this was for me, Ming and Zuxin, justice now is served.”

She could see him, his reflection out of the water; he floated for a spell, under its surface, and she could see his face bobbing up close to the surface, and then under the water, it was as if looking at a mirror looking back at her, but not her reflection in it, his.