Walking Men of Saigon

((February, 1989-2002))

Part One of Two



Two Brothers


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, the birth mother to Langdon Abernathy’s child), and it meant peace, perhaps they knew something before hand, a premonition, because their personalities seemed to shape, or mold that way; Vang, shrewd as she was, was only 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 ago at the request of Danh, who had said at the time: if she didn’t, he’d cut her ankles off, and she believed 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 seventy pound rock and used it as a hammer, a huge rock he brought home from Canal Ben, and so he was ready for such an occasion, walked into her bedroom, her eyes closed, lying silently on her bed, and bang, crash, smash, he threw it on her right ankle, foot 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 and tranquil, and he often used the phrase: ‘…it is better to be a live dog than a dead lion.’ Whereas for the other boy, his philosophy was just the opposite, what belong to him was his, and what belong to others was his if he was shrewd enough to get it away from the other person, in essence, he couldn’t or wouldn’t give up greed to save his soul, matter-of-fact, he’d vomit it out first, if indeed, he needed to. Perhaps it would have been best for him never to have been born, but he was, and man would suffer all the more for it.
An, 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 silly, if not plain dirty hogwash.
“You’ll 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. Along with his working everyday at the Canal, 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 neighbor’s 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 of life, while he was working at the canal, trying to convince him to join him in his lifestyle of awkwardness, to rob and do what needs to be done to the tourists coming into Saigon for fame and fortune, as if he was Robin Hood, but was not going to give to the poor, he was the poor in his eyes no matter how much he had. They could start a mafia type gang he suggested, and the local merchants pay them tribute, in American dollars, but An, just laughed 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 down 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. And 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, and he wasn’t there. 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, Danh was breathing in the freshness of it all, then he turned around said with the kindest voice, and smile, “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 for, 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, and this debt life had burdened him with, for they owed it to him for his hardships.
He also saw his community, his surroundings as hopeless, beaten men before they were beaten, 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 subjected 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, plunged the knife into his brother, ripped him upwards, from his stomach area to his heart (likened to Cain to Abel).
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 as long was it was out of Saigon, and never to return to Saigon in his lifetime, 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.


“Sure…”
((April 16, 1998) (Story Nineteen)

Part Two of Two


Sometimes we make history by those we know, and hang around with, not by what and who we are, and Danh 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 a hero of some kind, and Pol Pot was Danh’s new hero, even though he killed 26% of the population in Cambodia, between the years of 1976 and 1979. 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 Danh Khoa.
Danh 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 Danh 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 Danh Khoa, why he made such a statement, and basically it was a simple reply, as truthful and simple as Danh Khoa could ever be, but to Son Cham, it was too silly to be truthful, for Danh 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 Danh Khoa.
“It is because he could, and did spin Gold out of straw; can you?” he added.
“No,” said Danh.
“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, Danh, 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 to bring but the close on his body to the grave.
“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, walking out of the office likened to a pious king, “Get busy being dead, just like your brother.” (He knew the story behind his brother, and if you could kill your own brother, what wouldn’t you do? Not even the Devil could answer that question.)
And he was executed within the hour.