Fire Summer

by Thuy Da Lam

  “The stone of springtime,” Na said, “from the Marble Mountains.”

  “Na and the Hi-Los had it set on the ring for you,” Xuan said. “Paid for from their first advance.”

  “Little Sister,” Pâté said, “it’s a reminder that we’ll always be with you.”

  “You’re not alone,” Lai said.

  Na slipped the ring onto Maia’s finger. “It’s a perfect fit!” The flat, almost circular stone was rough, with lines, pockmarks and crevices, like a moon.

  “Very nice.” JP studied the stone. “White marble from the Marble Mountains? Gravestones and souvenirs.”

  “What?” Na said.

  “The marble shops sell gravestones to the locals and souvenirs to the tourists.”

  Na slapped him.

  Without looking at Xuan, Maia knew the stone was from the girl he met by the riverbank on the trail.

  “Xuan is leaving with the Camel-less Troupe,” Na announced. “They’re smuggling him out in their box, and No-No is going, too.”

  After the feast, the xích lô boy led the group in gathering dried branches and bark to twist into a two-ply rope to practice rappelling off the rocky cliff. Xuan and Maia stood under the quarter moon overlooking the sea. They could hear JP and Na and the Hi-Los hooting with excitement.

  “Na has the ashes,” Xuan said, “until you decide.”

  “What if those are not my father’s?” she blurted out. “What if there was a mistake at the crematory in South Philly? Na sees a black man.”

  “Come with me, Mai.”

  He whispered so quietly she had to turn to him. “With Old Seeker and the motley others? Why?”

  “You’re free! You don’t need to do anything. This regime will disintegrate.”

  “Is that why you’re leaving?”

  “My family left after the war. I stayed because we fought for so long. I waited. I understand now that I must leave in order to return. Besides—” He gazed at her. “If I stay longer, I might fall in love.”

  “Where will you go?”

  He laughed. “Not many obeyed the three delays during the war, we didn’t.” His eyes were distant. “Why are you?”

  “What happened to the girl—?”

  He shook his head before she could finish the question. “Do you know why your parents named you Hoàng Mai?”

  “It’s a Vietnamese Mickey Mouse flower.”

  “Is that what you want to believe?” He was about to say something but then changed his mind. After a pause, he said, “I’m thinking China, the Soviet Union, France, or America.”

  She looked up at the night sky.

  “It’ll always be with you,” he said. “The faithful moon.”

  Early the next morning after everyone left, JP proposed a plan to Maia.

  “We’ll leave Nha Trang on bicycles. We’ll bike to Ninh Hoa on Highway 1.”

  She nodded sleepily, feeling lightheaded from the night before. She turned the stone ring around and around on her finger.

  “Because of the killer hills,” he continued, “we’ll hitchhike Route 26 toward the mountains, crossing rivers and passing villages with names like . . . like . . .”

  “M’Đrăk, Ea Krông Búk, and Krông Pắk.” She played along. “We’ll reverse the retreat of 1975!”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Let’s stay here for another day,” he said. “We’ll take off at daybreak on our one-speed made-in-China bicycles. We ride north toward a fat rubicund sun that rises over the horizon between blue and blue.”

  “You know, JP Boyden, I’ve heard that before.”

  “Right. ‘Where one may float between blue and blue,’ George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda.” He scribbled in his embossed leather travelogue. “But this is our story.” He flipped backward to the first page. “As with all stories, it begins with a chance meeting.” He smiled at her. “Or is it fate?”

  The Shuttle

  AT DAYBREAK, THEY left Nha Trang on bicycles and pedaled north on National Highway 1 along the coast. As the sun rose and fog dissipated, the Truong Son Range became visible in the west. When the wind blew from the east, they would smelled the briny South China Sea.

  “This way,” JP called out to Maia, “we can see the country.”

  The traffic drew around them like a traveling circus act. A man on a Vespa decelerated to practice his English. A woman in a xích lô with a basketful of groceries invited them to her home for breakfast. A boy on a bicycle too big for him stood on his pedals, pushing hard to match their speed. “Hello, Liên Xô! Hello, Liên Xô!” He grinned at JP, his white shirttail flapping in the sultry wind.

  They rode with the rise and fall of the winding highway. They stopped for warm baguettes and fromage and iced café au lait. They made detours onto dirt paths to see how people lived. They ate fish and rice for lunch at a family cơm bình dân and swam in the sea. They rested a while under coconut palms as the sun grew unbearably hot. Then they were off again. When they became disoriented from the heat and queasy from eating unfamiliar street food, they crashed by the roadside and vomited. They continued north.

  They made thirty-something kilometers after an all-day ride and reached the T-junction of the highway and Route 26. Exhausted, aching, and sunburnt, they got off their bicycles and stood under the dusky sky. They scanned the deserted juncture as night arrived and realized they had miscalculated the time and distance.

  “We go west from here.” Maia pointed to the shadowy upslope to the highlands.

  A few hundred yards beyond the juncture, a faint yellow light flickered in the wind. They pushed their bicycles toward the illumination and found a spacious tin roof structure, its entrance without a door and its windows without curtains. Rusty metal tables and chairs filled the airy eatery yet there was not a single customer. A teenage girl was placing round aluminum trays of food on the tables. Each tray consisted of the same dishes: rice, dark stewed meat and hardboiled eggs, lettuce and herbs, pickled vegetables, and chili fish sauce.

  JP’s greeting “Chao em!” startled the girl, who grinned when she saw him and called him “Uncle!” before vanishing from the dining room. She returned with her mother carrying a glowing oil lantern.

  The woman raised the lantern near JP’s face. “He does look like your Ba’s friend.”

  “Are you serving dinner?” Maia asked.

  “The food looks stale,” JP whispered in Maia’s ear.

  “We can make something else for you,” the woman said.

  The girl took JP’s hand and led them to the well in the back to wash up. They passed the family’s bare living quarters—a đi văng by a curtainless window and a modest dresser on which a black-and-white framed photograph sat.

  “Má said that’s my Ba.” The girl bowed her head to the youth in a crisp ARVN uniform in the picture.

  When they returned, the girl told them that their meal would be ready in a moment and seated them at a table near the kitchen, where they could hear the sizzling of cooking. The girl flitted from table to table to light joss sticks. Soon the place was hazy with incense smoke.

  The woman brought out a tray of food for Maia and JP—rice, dark stewed meat and hardboiled eggs, lettuce and herbs, pickled vegetables, and chili fish sauce. “Please, eat.”

  Maia avoided JP’s eyes.

  The woman pulled a chair up to their table, sat down, and started a conversation. She watched as JP tried to poke the leathery egg with his chopsticks. She told them what they already knew: foreigners were not allowed on the Central Highlands.

  “We’ll bike there,” JP said, “in the moonlight.”

  “He’s kidding, isn’t he?” she asked Maia. The woman sliced the egg into quarters for JP.

  “Is there a place to spend the night around here?” Maia asked.

  “If you’d like, you can rest on the đi văng,” the woman said. “There’s a shuttle to the highlands that comes at midnight. I’ll send the girl to alert you when it arrives.”

/>   Jasmine incense filled the family’s living quarters, making the air thick and heavy. JP took off his L’amant T-shirt and batted at the mosquitoes, generating air like a low-speed fan. Their tired bodies welcomed the smooth wooden surface of the plank-bed.

  Pale moonlight passed through the naked window.

  “There’s a lake atop a mountain where the earth and sky meet, where you can touch that cool silver moon,” Maia said.

  “Where would that be?”

  “In my father’s letter to my mother.”

  “Is that a real place?”

  “My father could’ve made it up. He regretted that he and my mother didn’t meet by the lake for a date.”

  “You don’t want to regret not having time together.”

  “Did you pluck the moment?”

  “Na is a lot of fun. She’s all there.” He stopped fanning. “But you, I don’t understand. You’re—”

  “Inscrutable?”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” He studied her silently. “You speak English.”

  “Oh, thank you.”

  “Sometimes I think I understand you, but then I don’t. It’s as if you’re all cut up under that composure.” He started fanning again. “What’s with you and Xuan? Why was he following you?”

  “He’s not following me anymore, is he?”

  “He likes you.”

  “He’s not available. He’s delayed—”

  “That’s interesting. He said that about you.”

  “I am not.”

  “You’re not available.”

  “Why? Are you interested?”

  He leaned close to her. “Do you know that portentous things happen when the moon is not quite full?”

  They fell into a silence as if waiting, listening.

  Then they heard a distant rumbling.

  “Like that?” she asked.

  They listened to something massive coming down from the highlands. The unexpected din at midnight sent chills up their spines.

  JP put on his shirt. “That’s a six-cylinder diesel engine.”

  The air in the room, just cleared of jasmine incense, was now filled with an overwhelming stench of decay and blood as the rumbling increased, gradually deafening and then screeching to a stop. They heard an army of feet and voices entering the diner. The girl came to tell them that the shuttle had arrived.

  Their ride was the remnants of a badly burned truck. The driver was the youth in the picture from the dresser. When he approached, Maia noticed his uniform was bloodstained. The smell of blood, diesel, and smoke made her nauseous, and she held onto JP, who stood awestruck in front of the battered 10-tire vehicle with a covered cargo bed. Patches of camouflage paint remained where the truck was not scorched.

  “We should ride our bikes,” she said.

  The driver and JP shook hands like two old friends.

  “We’ll collect a few passengers along the way,” the youth said. “You’ll be on the Central Highlands in no time.”

  “Come, Maia.” JP headed for the crew cab. “You can take the window seat.”

  The youth was already at the steering wheel. JP climbed into the cabin and pulled her up beside him. He whispered, “She’s an M35 Deuce and a Half!”

  They left Ninh Hoa, heading for the highlands on Route 26.

  The blaring music was cranked up high, and the wind whipped through the truck, yet the smell lingered. She hung her head out of the window to breathe.

  She heard voices. What with the tape player and the howling wind, she first thought they were coming from outside. The driver and JP were talking in a low conversational tone. When she listened more closely, the voices sounded as if they were singing along with the taped music—sometimes harmonizing, other times off-key, sometimes in a group, other times a resounding solo.

  She finally asked the driver, “Who’s singing?”

  He cranked up the tape player. “Nhạc này cô nghe được không?”

  She turned the music down and heard the singing continue from the cargo bed.

  “Are there people in the back?”

  The driver was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Some boarded and haven’t gotten off, riding back and forth, no destination.”

  The truck suddenly screeched to a halt. The driver got out, and JP followed him through the driver’s door. Moments later she heard the rear gate slam and then a disturbance on the truck bed. JP and the driver returned, and they continued.

  They stopped several more times. Each time the smell of smoke, blood, and rotten flesh became more unbearable, making it hard to breathe in the cab. Her nausea worsened.

  Near daybreak, they picked up a young highlander, who squeezed in the cab with them. Wearing blood-soaked fatigues, he brought with him an overwhelming stench from a festering open wound, but JP did not seem to mind. They exchanged stories—JP from books and the soldier from experience. They eagerly filled each other’s gaps; piece-bypiece, a picture emerged.

  “How much farther to Phoenix Pass?” Maia asked the driver, raising her voice over JP and the soldier’s exchange.

  “After the next bend.”

  “Please let me off at Phoenix Pass.”

  JP and the soldier stopped talking. “Why Phoenix Pass?” JP asked, turning to her, noticing her paleness and sweat. “Are you feeling okay? You look like you’re about to throw up.”

  “From Phoenix Pass, I can get to the Vong Phu Mountain.”

  “That is the shortcut,” the Montagnard soldier confirmed.

  The driver met JP’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “You’ll stay on until Pleiku, won’t you? It’s still quite a way. Plus, we can use your advice.”

  “Tell me again, what’s at the Vong Phu Mountain?” JP looked hard at Maia.

  “I’m collecting oral stories on Hòn Vọng Phu. And no, you cannot come along, and no, I am not accompanying you as your translator to Pleiku.”

  The truck turned sharply on a switchback and skidded to a stop.

  “Mai‘a,” JP whispered, “sweet banana.” He wrapped his arms around her. “I’ll see you again by the lake atop a mountain where earth meets sky.”

  Not looking at him, she climbed off the shuttle, which pulled away without delay and disappeared around the winding path.

  She threw up until she was empty.

  Five

  Phoenix Pass

  A WAXING GIBBOUS moon hung palely at daybreak.

  “Whatever you do,” the Independent Vietnam Coalition had instructed, “be at the foot of the Vong Phu Mountain on the first night of the full moon.”

  Suspended between verdant valleys and cloudy peaks, Maia walked on Phoenix Pass. She wanted to measure each step and feel the ground beneath her feet, but when the nausea worsened and she felt lightheaded, she hailed a passing motorcyclist.

  “Going to the mountain, miss?” A weathered taximotorbiker slowed down beside her. “Which one?”

  She pointed to a misty peak on the Western Range.

  She knew the peak’s many names. In a travel atlas published in-country, the mountain on which Hòn Vọng Phu stood was labeled by its popular Sino-Vietnamese name, “Núi Vọng Phu,” Waiting for Husband Mountain. A folklore collection referred to it as “Núi Mẫu Tử,” Sino-Vietnamese for Mother and Child Mountain; in French, “La Mère et l’Enfant.” In an old edition, the mountain bore its indigenous name, “Chư Mư,” or Wife Mountain in Jarai. She had heard the local folks call it “Núi Mẹ Bồng Con.”

  “Could you take me to the Mother Cradling Child Mountain?”

  “I can get you to the nearest town,” the man said, “though you might not see the original stone peak. The local quarries are operating day and night to supply rock for home and road construction.”

  She shook her head and refused a ride, not believing his story.

  “Well, stay out of the sun,” he warned, “or you’ll burn charred black like a block of wood.” Engine revving loudly, he disappeared around the winding pass.

  She cont
inued on foot. The man could have told the truth, she thought, recalling a California reporter’s claim that Hòn Vọng Phu had shattered and crumbled into the South China Sea.15 She questioned that news report, too.

  When the sun blazed at noon and moisture evaporated, she reeled off the burning paved path and found a grove of young trees, whose exposed roots entwined into a cradlelike nook. She sat down, shielded from the heat and enclosed in silence.

  She had returned only in time for her grandmother’s wake. She accepted that her mother was lost at sea. The past unfurled and then coiled into a tight ball. Learning the details of her mother’s life made the woman she called Má real. But she could no longer remember the time when she spoke the word Má aloud.

  She thought about her yearning for a home, and doubt began to seep through her. What was the possibility of making contact with her great-aunt, a woman whom she had never met, a woman who assumed the alias “Black Fairy”? If she were to believe what she had read or just heard, Hòn Vọng Phu might have fragmented and become a foundation for a home or been dispersed across the sea. If this were a dream, would she pinch herself awake?

  She should have listened to her friend Phat in Little Saigon telling her the story of a man who was dreaming he was a butterfly.

  Or was it a butterfly dreaming it was a man?

  “Am I in a dream?” she whispered to the stillness of midday. And whose dream—my own or another’s?

  Somewhere, a melody played, like the offbeat chorus from the midnight shuttle. The tune echoed, as if coming from beneath the earth or above treetops. A cacophony of voices surrounded her, a lively harmony, first faint and then loud and clear.

  She thought of Na and the Hi-Los just before their sparkly red Honda Dreams zoomed by, Na on one and the Hi-Los on the other. She remembered they were traveling to the highlands’ songfest. Na’s windblown hair, the Hi-Los’ blue jeans and T-shirts, and their singing in the wind had a gusto that Maia wished she could let go and be a part of.

  As the sound of their engines became muffled by distance, she heard the sputter of another vehicle. The trike motorcycle-cartman slowly passed by, towing a finished boat with what first appeared like a cabin but in reality was the waterlogged wooden crate falling apart, wide cracks revealing a shadow within. Xuan gazed out through the slats.