Early Morning Hounds (Story Four, to "Voices out of Saigon")

She was in a dream, sleeping on the floor of that big mansion, “Let’s go Betty, let’s try it, jump…!” Caroline said.
“Fine,” Betty said out loud, still in a state on incongruous oblivion, her hand held out to grab Caroline’s, as if ready to jump. It was the first time, she had spent time, real quality time with her sister since they were kids, now Caroline was married, had her boy, Langdon, and Betty likewise.
The crew shouted for Caroline not to jump, and Caroline wouldn’t leave Betty, and Betty wouldn’t leave Caroline, they planned their trip together, two sisters holding each others hand—hand to hand—now shoulder to shoulder, they jumped, just like that, jumped onto the edge of the fairy boat, at the last minute, a crew man shouted, “You fools, you could have been killed,” the boat was a few feet off the dock area, ready to transport a hundred or so visitors over to Nantucket Island. But the dream was better than reality, because Betty got hurt in reality, not in the dream, skinned her left leg when she jumped those few feet, hung onto the railing of the boat, a dumb thing to do, but at the last minute they did it, and one crew man tried to shove them off, and Caroline hit him as the boat pulled away, and a few folks standing nearby yelled at the crew man, and he hightailed it out of sight.
But open the door to the boat he would not, so she did, because they were on the other side of it, the crew member didn’t help, and if there were any watching this happening besides the one who hightailed it out of there, they were not exposing themselves to be questioned afterwards, on the rights and wrongs of this. For Betty it was the one last, and profound adventure her and her sister hand, she hung on to it like a hungry cat would to a dead mouse.
Betty moved restless on the floor of the living room, covered with blankets, it felt as if she was flat on the earth, but for some reason the air was crisp fresh, she had fallen to sleep in her dress, and she wanted to dream more, finish the dream, even if she had to help it along, thus: the boat shot away across the waters to Nantucket, they were now inside the large waiting room of the boat, clinging onto the chairs as the boat tugged its way across the choppy waters, looking at the shadow of the boat out of the window, and onto the glazed water, a few young men, looking at them, not men-of-war, but young college men, smiling in a floating quiet way, round young eyes, and then Cole jumped into the dream (Caroline’s dead husband), and Caroline said, “I lost my mate,” and Betty scolded her sister right there and then in the dream, “You fool, you damned fool, you should have shot Vang, been done with this iron-gray dilemma she put you into,” and then the quilt got tight over her body as she lay on that flat wooden floor—and woke up to an empty house of furniture, that she had sold the past few months (it was February, 1973).

The fire had gone out in the hearth, and it was complete darkness, she thought little to nothing on her husband in his wheelchair, at their home in New Orleans, only of her sister, had she triumph in killing Vang, this might not have happened, she might not have hung herself, what stopped her, I mean, she committed suicide instead of getting the culprit. So she thought as she lay there thinking.
She had to sell the house, and the land, she’d sell the land by plots, but after that then what? Christmas had passed, the New Year was gone. Then she heard the sounds of hounds running across the fields in back of the house: perhaps one is Tabasco, she thought, but she didn’t get up the check. The dogs were chasing the cats, whom where chasing the rats she conclude, trying to get back into her dream world, perhaps the rats were trying to corner one of them: all yelping at one another, screeching from the rats, and the hounds barked like wild deranged wolves, with rustic voices, and interwoven there was a faint voice of a dog, perhaps Tabasco. And there was nothing else to do this night but let the sounds penetrate her brain, let the haunting night emanates the sounds into her soul.
Betty Hightower, made no noise, just thought how funny life was, it stunned her the way events in her sister’s life turned out. She deserved more out of life, perhaps revenge; perhaps God would have looked around this one, overlooked it, had she killed Vang, knowing revenge was God’s preference, but he is forgiving. And she knew the old sayings: revenge destroys both parities the seeker and the victim. And the best revenge is success, and letting go and going forward in life is better than living with revenge which consumes you. But all these witty sayings just clutter the brain; she told herself, belongs to culprit, he wants you drowned in them, so you don’t go after him or her. They say heaven will get the bad guys later, or girls and thus, they will get their just reward, their due judgment, on judgment day, but we are on earth, and here we do things a little different, and if we wait for heaven, while on earth, we’ll have to fill up the attic with these evil doers, feed them, pamper them, wash their cloths and all. That is what she mumbled, that is what she was thinking.

Here was life, at its rawest, she felt, amazed outrage inside her head, building up as the hounds chased the cats and cats chased the rats, and the sounds penetrated Betty’s brain.

Here was a girl called Vang, six-thousand miles away, who brought misery to a whole family, altered the course in their lives, something no one expected, lest Caroline, and Betty—Betty whom was still in amazed outrage over something like this was tolerable without revenge.
Said Betty, talking out loud, staring at the ceiling, listening to the hounds, “You got to finish what you started, clean up another’s mess,” and she was thinking of the boat ride to Nantucket, “We’ll jump off the dock together, one more time,” she whispered to the wall. Then she heard a sound of a dog, it sounded like Tabasco, it sounded like rats were cornering him, and his barks, and their screeches, and she heard the noise outside the back screened-in door, and she ran with a gun she had found in the house, and she ran to the door, and opened it, and rats as big as fat cats stared at her as they tried to drag Tabasco away from the door—pulling ripping at his flesh. And she shot at the rats, five bullets, leaving one for Tabasco; he was viciously torn to shreds.
She then closed the door, said with a scent of vengeance, “I got them for you Tabasco! And now for Vang”
Saigon Bound

At daybreak, she went to the neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Stanley, asked if she could borrow, or if she would loan out her help, Amos, the Negro who befriended Old Josh, all those years. He himself was 79-years old, but spry as a forty-year old. Mrs. Stanley saw him out by the corral, called to him, as he approached, he was muddier than usual, and put out his forearm to have Mrs. Betty Hightower shake it, instead of his muddy hands, and she did. She knew him from before, but not well.
“Mrs. Stanley agreed with me, if it is ok with you, to loan you out to watch the Abernathy Farm while I’m away. You’ll get paid the same and if you do both the watching and the farm work for Mrs. Stanley, which is up to you, you’ll make double.”

Well, the agreement was made, and Betty Hightower was on her plane to Saigon.

Morning in Saigon

Still carrying notes, she had made back in Fayetteville, on the location of Vang’s property in Saigon, notes she had gotten from Caroline, when they discussed her leaving for Saigon, she pulled them out of her purse, checked them out, followed the path they led, and they led to a rundown shack of a house, not a house in the sense of a house she was used to, it was close to the U.S. Military Air Base. You could hear the jets, and helicopters, and propeller planes taking off. And there she stood, like a motionless pillar, a figure in stone, and she again took her notes from her purse and checked them out along with a picture of Vang, it was the house, so she confirmed and the door was slightly open, she approached looked around it, turned about to see if any faces where checking her out, no one was around, no one that is that mattered, they were all whizzing by in cars and carts and motor bikes. She checked her purse out again, her knife, four-inch pocket knife was there, one Jason (her husband) used for fishing, cleaning fish. She dispersed the knife from her purse, held it in her hand, and entered the proprietress’ home, once in the house, all the outside sounds ceased, the horns of the cars and buses, the motor bikes tires on the pavement, the children, noisy children in bus’ and just voices in general, noise in general, city noise, the kind no one really pays attention to, it all seemed to have ceased. She entered the kitchen, it seemed to be the main room of the house, and then into a bed room, three beds, it was cold in there, an empty cold, it seeped into her veins, made her blood chilled, and she left just as abruptly as she entered it, and back she was in the Kitchen, and then onto the second bedroom.
She passed a shadow, a slumped shadow in a corner, but made no reply, and when it reappeared, with the little light seeping under the curtained window, she saw that it was a body, in a fetus position, a dead body, no motion, it had to be dead she quickly work out —she looked closer, it was waxy dead female. It was covered with bus and sores especially around her lips, legs, eyes “Vang,” she said, “it has to be her…!” and it was so terrifying, so sudden a shock, so awful, without concentration, or a plan, she caught her breath, and ran out of the house, and up a deserved street, no cars no folks walking, just three young men, and she cried, not for Vang, but for herself, it was so ugly, she was frightened out of the house, ascending that hill, away from everybody, The three men grabbed her, let her skirts lifted from her trim ankles, they put her hands over her mouth to hush her up, and she knew to be true, she would not survive the ordeal, they had knifes, and her hands were empty, only her purse strap around her shoulder, and that was tore from her, the knife once she held, must have dropped when she saw Vang, but she was not looking for it, she was quiet now—ready to believe.