Dragon House

by John Shors

  Though normally Minh feared Loc more than Mai did, he could see that she was terrified of being thrust underwater. And so he picked up his game box and started walking around the immense market. His legs trembled, and he looked about, trying to take his mind off Loc. A nearby vendor bartered back and forth with a foreign woman, each typing figures into an oversize calculator. Ahead, a ladder rose far upward, and a man perched at its peak worked to restart a ceiling fan.

  Minh rounded a corner, moving into a quiet part of the market where tourists sometimes sipped fresh coffee. To his surprise, a pair of older Westerners sat at a table. Between them lay a chessboard. Minh had seen chess played two times before and on each occasion had been fascinated by the game. When one of the men looked at them, Mai asked if they could watch.

  Soon Minh’s chair was near their table. He observed the strange pieces being moved up and down, diagonally, even two spaces up and one across. Minh didn’t know the names of the pieces, but soon grasped their powers. The little ones seemed insignificant. The horses could create turmoil. The large, pointed ones appeared all but invincible.

  The men, both gray haired, continued to play, paying no attention to the children. Minh wasn’t sure what the term “checkmate” meant, but one player said it, and the other nodded and removed his remaining pieces.

  Mai pointed to Minh’s game. “You want to play Connect Four?” she asked in English. “Why go outside? It raining . . . cats and mice. You only get wet. Maybe catch a cold, and then have no fun tomorrow, when it be a beautiful day.”

  One of the men smiled. “Play him?”

  “Sure, sure. You play for American dollar.”

  “Not Vietnamese dong?”

  “U.S. dollar is better for us. Everyone want them.”

  The other man looked at his companion. “Fancy a game, Paul? I reckon it might be a wee bit of fun.”

  “Of course it fun,” Mai replied.

  “Can we both play him?”

  Mai glanced at Minh, certain that he’d be nervous about trying to beat two chess players. “Sure, sure,” she said. “But if he win, he get two dollar. If he lose, you get one dollar.”

  The men agreed, moving their chairs so they could sit opposite Minh. Mai explained the game as best she could. As she spoke, Minh gathered his red pieces, his heart thumping quickly. He didn’t like the prospect of playing two men who’d been so intent on their chess game. Mai had only a single dollar in her pocket, and if he should lose, they’d have to return to the bridge with nothing.

  The older man, who wore bifocals and a vest full of pouches, dropped his black piece into the center of the game board. Minh would have preferred to go first but, having been preempted, let his piece fall beside the other. Additional pieces were played while Mai watched anxiously.

  As the game board filled, the men took more time to play each piece. They spoke and strategized at length, clearly understanding the nuances of the game. Minh began to scratch his stump, something he did when nervous. Mai might have said that he tied tigers to trees each night, but now, as he debated where to place his next piece, he didn’t feel powerful. He felt tired and hungry. He felt afraid. But he played and the game went on.

  “Bloody hell, he’s trying to force our hand,” said the younger of the two men, who relished the challenge before him.

  The older man looked at the board, aware that fewer options were available, that most of the slots had been filled. “Clever little bugger, isn’t he?”

  Thunder crashed outside. The younger man produced a cigarette and began to smoke. “He’s dictating things, and you’d best put a stop to it before you get whipped.”

  Minh listened to them strategize, glad that they made their thoughts known. For a few moves he let them force the action, let them believe they were making him go where they wanted him to. Before they knew what had happened, only two slots remained for them to place a piece in, and either slot would let him connect a fourth piece. Relieved, Minh sat back in his chair, glancing toward a porcelain vendor.

  “Checkmate,” Mai said happily, extending her hand. “Two dollar, please.”

  The older man nodded. “Blow me down. That was really something, how he did that.”

  “Well,” said Mai, “you are good players. Very good. I never see him so nervous.”

  “Is that so? Is that why he doesn’t talk?”

  Mai shook her head. “No. I think when he lose his hand, he lose his voice.”

  “How did he lose the hand?”

  “Me not know. He lose it when he very little.”

  The foreigner looked closely at Minh. “You’re quite a player.”

  Mai watched the younger, cigarette-smoking man reach into his pocket. He removed several bills, one of which fell to the ground. He didn’t see it fall, and she was tempted not to tell him about it. She could see that it was a ten-dollar bill, as much money as they’d make in two days. Tapping her foot in frustration, she picked up the bill and gave it to the man. “You drop this,” she said, wishing that she’d found the money on the street.

  The man put his cigarette butt in an empty soda bottle. “Thank you, dear,” he said, handing her two dollars.

  Mai pocketed the money. “Maybe you play one more game. You win this time. Not same, same as before.”

  Both men smiled. The younger one rose from the table, walking toward a food stand. The other helped Minh organize the pieces. “You both should be in school,” he said kindly. “You’re too bloody bright to be here.”

  “If we go to school, we no have money for food, for clothes,” Mai replied. “We must make money during daytime.”

  “You don’t have parents?”

  “Maybe once, the day we are born. But not now.”

  The man was about to respond when his friend returned with two orange Fantas and two bags of potato chips. “For the victors,” he said, giving Mai and Minh each a bottle and a bag.

  Minh smiled, grasping the bottle with his good hand.

  Mai took a sip, melodramatically licking her lips. “Thank you, mister. This very lucky day for us. Sure, sure.”

  “For us, too. Even though we stuffed up the game.” The man looked at his watch. “We’d best be off.”

  The foreigners said good-bye, waving when Mai called out her thanks. When they disappeared, she turned to Minh. “What a wonderful day this has become, Minh the Victorious. Such nice men. And such good players. I thought for sure that they were going to beat you. But they got impatient at the end, and you tied them to a tree.” She laughed at her joke, taking his elbow. “Let’s drink these outside.”

  Minh carefully wrapped his game in a plastic bag. He stood up and followed Mai as she zigzagged her way through the market. Outside, the rain seemed to be falling even harder. Scooters sped by, sending up fountains of spray. Cyclo drivers huddled beneath old umbrellas. Mai and Minh moved under the canopy of a nearby bank, pausing when they spied a beggar. Mai recognized him as Dao, a kind man who’d lost his sight in the American War. He sat motionless, apparently listening to the rain. Though many people who lived on the street preyed on one another, Dao had been generous to Mai and Minh, giving them money when they’d been desperate.

  Mai sat next to him. “Hello, Dao,” she said, still pleased with winning two dollars and being given the Fantas and chips.

  “Mai, sweet Mai. And is that Minh?”

  “He’s here,” she replied, holding her bottle carefully. “He just beat two men at once. And they’re expert chess players. They sure were surprised.”

  Dao smiled, revealing pink gums and a few crooked teeth. “Are you staying dry?”

  “Oh, it’s a warm rain, Dao. Nothing to be afraid of.”

  He inhaled deeply. “It smells warm.”

  Mai studied Dao’s leathery face. His body seemed thinner than usual, his legs reminding her of fence posts. “Are you getting enough to eat?” she asked.

  “This old body doesn’t need much, Mai. All I do is sit.”

  Minh glanced at Mai
, remembering how Dao had saved them. She nodded and Minh carefully placed his Fanta and bag of potato chips on the ground in front of Dao.

  “What’s that?” Dao asked.

  “A treat for you,” Mai replied. “From Minh.”

  “No, no. Minh, you take your treat back.”

  Mai stood up, knowing that they had to leave or Dao would force them to take back their gift. “It’s right in front of you, Dao,” she said. “A bottle and a bag. Merry Christmas.”

  As Dao continued to protest, Mai and Minh walked away. Soon the rain splattered on their backs. Mai led them into a park and moved beneath a massive banyan tree. The tree looked like a giant green insect that towered above them. They sat under a particularly dense section of branches, which protected them from most of the rain.

  Minh sipped the Fanta and, smiling, handed the bottle to Mai. She tasted the sweetness, exhaling melodramatically. “I thought you might lose that game, Minh the Mighty.”

  He nodded, pinning the bag of potato chips between his stump and his hip. He opened the bag with his good hand, took out a few chips, and gave the bag to Mai.

  She ate a chip and handed the bottle back to him. “Dao was looking thin, wasn’t he?”

  The bottle to his lips, Minh nodded.

  “Too bad he can’t sell fans or play games,” she said, wondering what would happen to him.

  Minh returned the bottle to his friend.

  “Should we go to the train station?” she asked, eating another chip. “People will want to leave the city with this rain. You know foreigners. They have to always be doing something. They’ll be getting on a train and heading somewhere sunny.”

  Minh let her know that he agreed. But he ate and drank slowly, as he was in no mood to leave the tree so soon. He’d never owned an umbrella, and the tree was like an infinite umbrella, protecting him from the elements. Beneath its canopy, he smiled, sipped more Fanta, and nibbled on a chip. For the moment his hunger had been suppressed, his fears scattered. He was just a boy sipping a sugary drink, happy to watch the rain fall into big brown puddles.

  NOAH SAT IN THE KITCHEN, UNAWARE that he’d remained almost motionless for several hours. His whiskey bottle was nearby, next to the uneaten fruit that Thien had prepared for him much earlier. After e-mailing his mother, Noah had moved as far away from the women as possible. He didn’t want to hear them talk, or even laugh. Being reminded of happiness was something best left undone.

  The whiskey-induced numbness that surrounded him was wearing off. He felt the edges of his emotions starting to sharpen. If it hadn’t been raining, he might have tried to spread more soil on the playground. He felt trapped inside, with two sets of such keen eyes on him. Iris had already checked on him twice. And Thien had popped into the kitchen to make a fresh batch of tea. Covered in white paint, she’d squeezed lemon juice and honey into boiling water. She had smiled at him before leaving, and he’d tried to hide his misery.

  Noah was tempted to go outside but wasn’t sure how the rain would affect his prosthesis. It wasn’t hard to imagine the sleeve slipping on his thigh, further inflaming his stump. Though sometimes Noah sought out pain, today was not such a day. He felt inordinately tired and planned on closing his eyes and listening to the rain. A nap would help pass the time.

  He reached for the bottle, intending to carry it to his cot. After taking a few unsteady steps, he heard someone descending the stairwell. Not wanting to meet anyone on the stairs, he leaned against the kitchen counter. Iris emerged, her clothes almost as paint covered as Thien’s.

  “You’ve been in here all morning,” she said, her eyes not leaving his.

  “So?”

  “What are you doing here, Noah? Why did you come?”

  He glanced outside. “I’m . . . I’m thinking about leaving.”

  “And doing what?”

  “I don’t know . . . really. Maybe just traveling . . . from place to place.”

  Iris stepped toward him, for the first time frustrated by the inertia that seemed to grip him. She handed him a piece of folded paper. He opened the paper and saw that it bore Vietnamese writing. “These are places,” she said. “Two places not far from here. I want you to see them.”

  “Why?”

  “Please. Go find a cyclo driver, and show him this paper. He’ll take you.”

  “Did Thien write this?”

  Iris nodded. “I’ve been to these places, Noah,” she said, her voice softening. “They aren’t easy to see. But I think you should go.”

  “What are they?”

  “Would you please go for me?”

  “For you?”

  “For someone you used to love.”

  He looked away. “That was a long time ago. I was a boy.”

  “So?”

  “So I’m different now. That boy . . . he’s gone. And I don’t believe what he believed.”

  “Just go. Please do that for me. Go see what I saw.”

  Noah started to respond and stopped. Iris found his eyes again, then turned and walked back up the stairwell. He glanced at the paper. Setting his bottle aside, he left the kitchen and moved through the center’s greeting room. A bucket near the doorway held several umbrellas, and he took a black one.

  Outside, fat raindrops thumped against the fabric above him. He moved forward slowly, not wanting to slip. After a minute or two, he approached a busy street. Almost immediately a man stepped in his direction. “You want ride?”

  Noah showed him the paper. “Here.”

  “Fifteen thousand dong.”

  The fare was about a dollar, and Noah nodded, following the man to his cyclo. The driver got on a small seat that rose directly over an old-fashioned bicycle wheel. In front of this seat was a padded cushion positioned above two wheels. Noah sat on the cushion, bending slightly as the man pulled a canopy over his head. Soon the driver was pedaling, steering his cyclo by moving a bar that was connected to the two wheels ahead of him.

  The ride was surprisingly pleasant, and Noah watched the wet city pass. Many of the streets were covered ankle deep in water. Tarps fluttered over stalls. People hunched together beneath canopies and ate noodles. Young children pushed sticks along the water, pretending they were boats. Though scores of scooters darted about, there were fewer than usual.

  The cyclo driver was talkative, telling Noah how he escaped the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and fled to Vietnam. He’d been only sixteen at the time and had survived in the jungle for weeks by eating lizards, snails, and even worms. Initially, Noah wasn’t sure whether to believe the man, but the way he spoke about eating worms made his story convincing.

  Soon they approached a city block that was surrounded by an imposing white wall. A sign on the wall read, WAR REMNANTS MUSEUM.

  Noah turned to look at the driver. “This is what the note says?”

  The man replied in Vietnamese, then added in English, “That what it say.”

  After paying the cyclo driver, Noah turned around, wondering why Iris had sent him here. A ticket window was nearby, and he paid a nominal fee and was soon inside the complex. Almost immediately, he saw an impressive collection of Western war instruments. Several immense tanks were to his right. Ahead lay artillery pieces, a colossal seismic bomb, warplanes, and a helicopter. Everything was painted a jungle green, and most items bore a single white star.

  Noah had seen such sights a thousand times and didn’t need to see them again. He headed toward a square, four-story building that was half white and half black. Inside were a handful of dripping tourists and Vietnamese. Surrounding them, display cases revealed hundreds of black-and-white photos, as well as handheld weapons. Noah moved toward the photos, his steps increasingly unsteady. The first pictures were of warfare—of battles and planes and annihilated forests. Noah saw images of North Vietnamese fighting the French, and then the Americans. He didn’t like such images, for they brought back too many memories. But the photos didn’t shake him either. He’d seen worse sights.

  But then Noah roun
ded a corner and the pictures changed. His eyes welled immediately, and he had to steady himself. The images before him no longer told the stories of those who fought, but spoke about the victims of the war. He saw piles of lifeless villagers, shrapnel ridden children screaming as doctors pulled out pieces of steel, mothers wailing over dead sons and daughters. Next came photos of crippled survivors. Dozens of misshapen children, ruined forever by Agent Orange, stared blankly into the camera. A boy of three or four, his ears and nose missing from napalm, reached for his mother. Land mine victims too young to fight lay on bed after bed in a makeshift hospital. Everywhere a new horror seemed to confront Noah, an agonized face frozen forever in time.

  He turned from the images, tears streaming down his cheeks. Shuffling forward, he tried to keep from shuddering. But his body didn’t respond to his thoughts. He managed to make it outside, into the rain. He hurried toward a distant corner of the museum grounds, collapsing against a wall. Though he closed his eyes, the sights of the screaming, ruined children wouldn’t leave him, reminding him of what he’d seen in Baghdad. He started to weep—an uncontrollable sobbing that seemed to turn him inside out.

  Noah didn’t know enough about the Vietnam War to understand if it was wrong or right. But the photos tore at him. They blistered his soul. The rain mingled with his tears, thunder rumbling somewhere distant. He cursed miserably, haunted by what he’d seen. He thought about one photo he’d turned from—a little girl crying next to her mother’s bloody corpse—and suddenly found it hard to get enough air. He gasped, rose unsteadily, and left the grounds.

  The same cyclo driver was waiting. Though Noah was tempted to return to the center and his bottle, he showed the paper again to the man. Before long they were drifting through the city, pelted by rain. Noah needed to see where Iris was leading him. He needed to understand.

  Their cyclo left the wide streets and proceeded down a series of alleys. Modern-day Ho Chi Minh City disappeared. They rode into a shantytown. Tin rooms sprouted from either side of an alley that was nothing but a sea of mud. The man stopped pedaling. Noah handed him thirty thousand dong and lurched from his seat. The driver was still talking, but Noah wasn’t listening.