"The Sad Boy" & "Louisiana Girl" (from: "Voices out of Saigon)

The Sad Boy
(Story Five)



Lifting the bruised body of the women the police would find out later to be Betty Hightower, from Fayetteville, North Caroline, they checked out her purse for identification, and her passport was missing, perhaps stolen and would be sold on the Black Market, and then they found her wrist watch, surprised it was still on he took it off for safe keeping, and put it in his pocket.
Two young men, one with the watch in his pocket, picked her up, dropped her onto a wooden canvassed stretcher, one used for soldiers in WWII, it looked. The other helper, asked him to be a little more gentile, respectful to the dead. But the other’s comments were simple and to the point, “Let the dead be dead, the living got to eat, and I am getting hungry for lunch.”
They dropped the body like a Childs toy would have been thrown into a bedroom with a mother whom was fed up with picking up toys, or trash. Then the emergency vehicle she was took off, followed a curved road onto the morgue. It passed a sign that read: “U.S. Air Base this way…” and an arrow guided you in the direction.
The driver just drove, the one with the watch in his pocket, he was called Hai (Chien being the helper); hence, Hai was mussing with irrevocable astonishment a female would be wandering alone in this part of the city, especially an elder attractive female (she had several hundred dollars of travelers checks in her purse, and a gold ring on her finger, a diamond to boot). I suppose the driver was musing in the fact, didn’t anyone tell her the facts of life, was she so unseasoned to step into the abyss without looking. Whatever, it is exactly what she did. I suppose if she learned anything, revenge was perhaps not all it was made out to be. You have to have a plan A, B, and C would help.
The driver for the most part, was detached, just curious, as most people seemingly are, yet with some attention to the situation.

As they drove a little further, there was a child—perhaps three years old—a white boy, with inescapable cold blue eyes, as if waiting for its mother or father or anyone to feed him, care for him, to return for him. You couldn’t have mistaken him for anything other than who he was, he was different, he had round eyes, he was American looking, it had found—at such an early age—grief and despair; it was plagued looking, it had sores all over its body, its mouth, and hands and feet, its father must had left it there to die (not so uncommon, especially for a half-breed, especially when a father has to feed three, and it is cheaper to feed two); plus, it was to many, a reminder of the enemy, invading our country.
Kids were walking by the child, a few kicked dirt in its face, and those who stood by watching, took there turn after deliberation on: who would stop them, and discovered or came to the conclusion, no one, so let’s have fun. A few kids, older kids, took their cigarettes out of their mouths and burned the child’s legs, and when the child cried, they pressed harder on the cigarette, until its body gave in, and shut down.
That evening the child remained where it was left, by its step-father, but a shadow a sad showdown was the child, in a dark empty world alone. Had Betty been alive perhaps she would have said: ‘…this is what you get for being indecent, it is God’s revenge on the innocent, that we pelage with our guilt.’


Vang’s husband, Nguyen had given the boy his death certificate when he left it out in the dreary night; night being the time of destruction, where animals search the streets and robbers look for whatever. This would have been speechless for the likes of Langdon, his real father, and by morning the saga would be over, there would be no more links to the Abernathy name, no male links anyhow. Perhaps the husband, Nguyen, had the last laugh, and got the least blame, if one was to give out portions of blame, he got the least. He got his revenge, also, what Caroline started out to want, couldn’t do, and what Betty would have done, but it was done for her. Thus, wearily now, Nguyen, was treading almost like an old woman about the house, buried Vang in the back yard, took a few of her bones, ribs, and placed some into a open wooden coffin, so the fiends, the ghosts would not come back and haunt him, then he went into her room and cleaned it, the children crying hopelessly for someone to undress them, feed them, then he heard a knock on the door, it was Zuxin, and he played the persecuted father, and grieving husband, she would remain there, become his new wife, he had a way of persuasion.

“Perhaps,” Mr. Jason Hightower said, in his wheelchair back in New Orleans, “just perhaps,” he said to his daughter, now 19-years old,” it was all started because of a man, not Vang completely, but a man who was feeling he had a pointless journey in life, an empty man, with an empty life.”
Cassandra Hightower said in response—with a glance towards her father—now smoking a cigarette in his wheelchair,
“I don’t know much about what’s been going on in the Abernathy family but now it has jumped over to ours!”
The father expelled smoke, “No” of us saw it coming—but somehow, someway, Vang and her husband were invited into our house, perhaps by Langdon.”



Louisiana Girl
(Story Six)



Cassandra Hightower’s bedroom faced the empty wall, on the second floor of the house, in the hallway, her father whom almost lived in a wheelchair (because contracting polio when he was a kid) lived down stairs, seldom came up to her bedroom, or the second floor in general, his bedroom was centered towards the library, where he could, if tired, go easily to the bedroom from the library, which he used quite often. She’d tell her father this evening, it had been bothering her for a while (it was July, 1974, and her mother had passed on some four to five months now,
“Every time I get ready for bed, I look for mother; so far it still haunts me, her being gone. It’s hard to deal with, this grieving process you talked about before…that I can either grow through it or simply go through it, you said something like that anyway, or was it, if you don’t grieve it will come out sideways anyhow. Whatever you said, I can’t do it, her death has put me into a depression, and I can’t help it, and I don’t want to feel it, and I don’t want to deal with it. I wish she was here, she was always so very strong”
Jason Hightower, her looked up at her, hopelessly looked up at her pale face looking down, it was painted heavy with sorrow, “Why did she do it, go to Saigon, we’ll never know, sometimes we don’t know the other person like we think we do.”
“What was the matter with her? I mean, what she was thinking about while selling Aunt Caroline’s furniture, sleeping in that big old house, night after night!”

That evening Linda Macaulay (Girlfriend to Cassandra Hightower, 20-years old, 1974), came over to visit her, and they waited for the evening to darken, and was picked up by Henry, Cassandra’s new boyfriend, and they drove outside of Fayetteville, to a private location, parked the car, Linda in the back seat with her boyfriend.
“Give me a kiss,” Henry said, and with its tone, it sounded more like a demand.
“No,” was his answer, and Cassandra added, “there’s noting else to do but bring me back home, I’m tired, I want to go to bed.”
She of course was not really, really tired, just fatigued form the depression, trying to figure out things that had no answers, things that men do to others without a motive, plot, plan, things that happen suddenly because you are at the wrong place, at the wrong time, like her mother being rapped and killed in Saigon some months back.
With a deep sigh, Henry said, “Alright,” thinking, for the past four months, she’s been laying with every Tom, Dick and Harry, now why this?
Henry was eighteen, and Cassandra was two years older, and what he didn’t know, she was that just trying to keep herself busy, keep some sanity in her, she didn’t care for him, or any of the other boys—and perhaps they didn’t care about her, but she was not doing the wondering.
As far as she was concerned, she would never trust a man, she told her father, after his stated, statement, that perhaps Vang’s affair with Langdon was the cause, or more of the cause of Vang’s husband, Nguyen, because of her husband because her husband wanted what he wanted, and didn’t care what his wife had to do to get it and the consequence was, the long, long ripple effect, which was still in progress, all from Vang’s Husband, not Vang in particular.

When Cassandra got out of Henry’s car she asked herself—as he pulled away—asked herself, out loud standing in front of her big house, “Why do I do this? What is the matter with me? …and tomorrow what—and the tomorrow after tomorrow then what?”

She got to the top of the stairs in her house, her father was still awake, and it wasn’t all that late, 9:30 PM.
“So you like the young new boy….?” He said.
“Like who pa?”
“Henry, that’s his name isn’t it?”
“Oh yeah, I guess so,” she glanced at her father over the railing.
“You’re lying!” He said (after expelling smoke from his cigarette) “…you’re inviting many people into your life, you know that don’t you?”
“Come on now,” said Cassandra, walking back to the stairway-
“Are you afraid? What are you afraid of pa?”
Said Jason, “Tomorrow that is what I’m afraid of, yes, oh yes, tomorrow.”
This time she remained silent, neither did she lean over to hear what he was mumbling, but she heard it faintly anyhow, “I wonder what your mother would say if she knew about this new way of life, this lifestyle you are enmeshed in!”
Then she continued to walk to her hallway bedroom, she seemed to watch her feet as they entered the room, head deep down in emotions; she seemed plagued with ghosts, uncountable and unnamable ghosts, who were starting to possess her whole being.

In bed, the depressed Louisiana girl tossed lightly from side to side.
“At least I had my chance to sin,” she told herself, loud and clear, as if hoping her father might hear, even God. She had shame, but no regret, that she was no longer a virgin, her mother—rapped and stabbed—was engulfing her every conscious thought and subconscious like cancer cells racing across her body to paralyze it; she felt it was medicine, therapy, and she counted the cost.
“I don’t really want a man,” she told someone in the room, although no one was in the room, “how can I, how can anyone.”
I don’t know who she was talking to, perhaps her dead mother, maybe Caroline, but her father was down stairs reading newspapers, so it wasn’t him, and she was not talking loud.
“I suppose we should go down stairs and talk to Pa about selling the house, Abernathy’s house, it’s a big plantation, and perhaps I can go to Paris next summer if we can sell it. If I’m idle, idle too long I’ll go crazy. I only wish I was far away from all this, and not have to hear all those voices out of Saigon.”