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.