Fire Summer

by Thuy Da Lam

  She was reminded of the lines her father once recited from a self-help guide found at a used bookstore: Two men looked out from prison bars. One saw the mud . . . the other saw stars.16 A deep ache for her Ba overcame her. She understood he saw his life as a prison and tried to seek freedom from within. What imprisoned him? What freed him? If life were his prison cell, what were his stars?

  On the path, she saw Old Seeker with No-No at his side, tawny and lionlike, and the motley others parading by. The fruit boy twirled the stolen rearview mirror, a sudden blinding flash of illumination. Perhaps she could join their restless search for answers—to ask questions, to learn from their lived experiences. Perhaps they could make sense of her purpose, help her find a way to string together a life of chances and choices, to see a beginning and an end. The soporific heat weighed on her like a blanket as she watched the parade head west. She closed her eyes to the glaring noon light. When she woke, it was in the grayness of the next morning.

  Maia continued across the barren land. She walked westward on Phoenix Pass until she came to a T-junction. She turned north onto a provincial road leading to a small town on the western flank of the range. She passed farmers tilling the earth that produced nothing but backbreaking labor. Fording a side stream, she arrived at the foot of the mountain. She stopped in front of the last thatched hut. A sliver of the full moon peeped from behind evening rainclouds.

  A thin white-haired man emerged from the hut.

  “Is that the Vong Phu Mountain?” she asked.

  The man was silent.

  She recited the lines she had memorized:

  A crane flies—

  cloudy peak, still water

  a shadow awaits.

  He searched her face, as if looking for someone. “Where did you hear that?” His accent told her he was a native of the coastal plains of central Vietnam.

  “From overseas friends of the poet.”

  “I composed those lines during the war.”

  “For my Great-Aunt E. Tien.”

  His expression softened. “Black Fairy,” he murmured. Raindrops splashed on the dirt road. “I will take you to the Moon Fest.”

  Moon Fest

  MIDSUMMER NIGHTS WHEN the moon was full, people would gather atop the Vong Phu Mountain to celebrate the Moon Fest. The poet insisted on taking his single-speed bicycle even though it was pouring rain. “Not to worry,” he assured Maia, his small figure shrouded in an oversized gray poncho. He straddled the bicycle and gestured her to climb on the backseat and get under his cloak. “We’ll get as close as possible to the trailhead and hike the rest of the way.”

  Inside the poncho, as if blindfolded and hidden from view, Maia held onto the poet as he maneuvered the slippery circuitous pass—now this way, now that way, around and around. Eventually, he could not pedal further. He grunted. When the bicycle threatened to slide backward, they got off and pushed it uphill until they reached a trail of unattended vehicles: old vans, trucks, farm tractors, makeshift trailers. The poet left his bicycle beside a wooden vessel attached to a motorcycle.

  He gripped her hand and pulled her up the mountain. All around, people were making the climb. They could not see faces but heard code-switching and mixing between various tongues of the lowlands and highlands. Here and there, red embers of cigarettes dotted the meandering trail. After many twists and turns on the muddy slope of intertwined dead roots, then stones, and finally boulders, they could see blazing bonfires and moving lanterns illuminating the misty peak. They heard music.

  The Moon Fest was in full swing when they arrived. A large canopy shielded the center stage from the pouring rain. Surrounded by bonfires and people carrying colorful paper lanterns, the stage lit the night.

  “Welcome to Highlands Got Talent!” the stout emcee greeted the audience. At his side was a gesticulating simian.

  Maia looked at the poet in disbelief.

  “The Black Fairy attends every year,” he said.

  “Three nights of competition,” the emcee explained. “As always, the themes are departing, waiting, and returning. Tonight, it’s departing. Our first contestants hail from the marble stone village.”

  A group of eight children in crimson garb performed an intricate lantern dance, followed by a band of husband, wife, and child, playing a lively piece on the monochord zither, long zither, and bamboo flute. An aging crooner from the Mekong delivered a grief-stricken vọng cổ rendition of Hòn Vọng Phu.

  “I think my friends are here,” Maia whispered.

  The poet led her from the canopy into the rain. Away from the light, she noticed tents of different sizes and shapes on the peak’s shadowy fringe. They visited the tents to inquire about the Black Fairy. People spoke in various Montagnard tongues that Maia did not understand. Their impassioned voices reminded her of the night at the motorcycle-cartman’s home.

  A sudden pounding of gongs and drumbeats reverberated through the rain. The familiar marching rhythm drew Maia’s attention back to the center stage, on which a trio in traditional highland wear was performing. The woman in the middle was clapping a cymbal, flanked by a chubby rice drummer and a thin man beating a large gong with a mallet. They banged the indigenous instruments in the rhythm of a French military band that at times echoed the Russian Red Army marching song, “Katyusha.”

  “Those are my friends!” Maia said and rushed toward the stage to see Na and the Hi-Los up close. The trio sang in unison the first “Hòn Vọng Phu” by Lê Thương.

  the king orders the army depart, drums beating

  along the river over the mountain, flags fly

  farewell drinks, happy songs: a husband goes ten thousand miles

  a wife awaits in shadow of wind and dust17

  The drumbeat and gongs stirred the audience. Hundreds of feet marched in place and the ground trembled. Maia stepped in time with the people around her, feeling the inevitable tragedy of war. Beside her, the poet stood stone still.

  “Your great-aunt departed with the army,” he said and led Maia from the crowd. They left the canopy and walked into the rain.

  “We were classmates at the Collège de Qui Nhon. I was a student of classical literature, she was history. We had many long discussions about our futures. We were young and idealistic. We both wanted the same for our country. I remained in the South, and she joined the Viet Minh. Like many highlanders, she fought for the Liberation of the Central Highlands, a promise yet to be realized.

  “It’s said that lowlanders and highlanders are brothers and sisters, that we can live together on our ancestral land, free in the mountain, but that’s not so. In the end, we’re tilling the same lot of barren earth.”

  Na and the Hi-Los concluded the first round of competition. People dispersed from the light into the pouring darkness. There was no sign of her great-aunt.

  “Perhaps the rain has delayed her,” the poet said.

  On the second night, the heavy downpour doused several small bonfires. Under a veiled moonlight and shrouded in a floating mist, the peak turned dark and vaporous. People abandoned their dripping wet paper lanterns but still huddled around the center stage.

  The competition opened with a boy blowing a leaf horn, the quiet soulful notes barely audible above the rain. The poet, sinking into melancholy, confided in Maia. “We fought and made sacrifices, but here we are still waiting for the promised peace and harmony.”

  On stage, a woman plucked a two-string moon lute and crooned “Hòn Vọng Phu 2.”

  why wait?

  reunion will come

  rain seeps into the soul

  mountains gather and form the western range

  trees, flowers, and streams urge: do not let spring pass

  islands keep watch for the return

  nine great dragons carry words

  a thousand years pass before reaching the waiting stone18

  “Your great-aunt didn’t wait,” the poet said. “She went north and fought for the revolution. She fell in love with its leader.�
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  “Uncle Ho?”

  Something flickered in the poet’s eyes. “When a child was born, the boy was sent to her village to be cared for by others.”

  “My second cousin?”

  “Dead. Burned alive in the crossfire of war.” The poet steadied the rising tension in his voice. “She kept fighting. Only afterward did she realize the promise of independence was a lie. We were chess pieces moved by more powerful players. We believed we were fighting for our own ideals, but were we?” He looked at her. “What were we fighting for? What are you fighting for? Tell me!”

  She did not have a thought-out answer. She marched to the drumbeat of South Vietnamese expatriates to carry out what she envisioned was her father’s wish. She supported the Coalition unquestioningly and bore its slogan: Down with Communism! Democracy for Vietnam! She knew stories of those who fought and died for their beliefs.

  But did she have the zeal to kill or die?

  She thought of her father and his fight. Perhaps, like her father, she was not made of the kind of heroism that war called for. She wished to live as equally as she wished for others to live. She realized what moved her was living for what she loved.

  She asked, “What is the shape of one’s life when one’s action is based on love?”

  The poet gazed at her, his eyes distant. “Your great-aunt will be here tomorrow. It’s the finale of returning.”

  The rain let up on the third night. The full moon came out, illuminating the barren peak in a silvery light. The makeshift shelters on the outskirts dissipated with the fog. Maia learned that they were not standing on the Vong Phu Mountain. From where they were, they could discern the silhouette of the mother cradling her child on the next peak.

  “No one has reached them,” the poet said. “They can only be seen from a distance.”

  Maia also learned that her great-aunt did not attend the festival that year.

  “It’s not like her to miss the event,” the poet repeated as they questioned others on her whereabouts.

  On stage, under the starry sky, renditions of returning were playing out. An odd pair of performers pierced the night with animal-like calls. One sported ripped Levi’s and Ranchero Stars and Stripes boots, pale as a ghost; the other was charred black, barely covered with a loincloth and shaking a brightly painted bamboo tube. The shrill cries of the black-shanked douc, songs of the golden-winged laughingthrush, and hiss of the water monitor filled the audience with a deep yearning for reconnection. People retreated within themselves and listened to the beating of their own hearts atop the bare peak, momentarily transformed into a lush forest. As the last note echoed, the audience slowly emerged from the feast of silence.

  The odd pair bowed and vanished into the night. The next act took the stage, but people no longer paid attention. They milled about restlessly, debating the current situation of the Central Highlands. They could not be pushed further from their ancestral land. They must act, or they would turn into stone, waiting. Many had fought for the North, trusting that the highlands would be liberated and the indigenous would be free to live in the mountains after the fight. Instead, they were pawned and now forced to relocate further into the uncultivable jungle. They must rise up in order to return home.

  The momentum of time made it urgent to find her great-aunt. Amid the frenzy, Maia saw a deep inner conflict, one that she needed to rethink and reconcile. To her surprise, the person she thought who might understand her was JP Boyden. She had not truly listened when he told her about his brother. She realized that she and JP were both searching for what was lost. Were they wishing for the impossible—to go back to a time before the war? Were they seeking the past to extend it into the present? Did they have other choices?

  She wanted to tell JP that his losing a brother and his hope that he might still be alive somewhere linked their lives. She wanted to tell him that his brother’s refusal to fight was a recognition of others, of kinship.

  The last performers were drowned out by the heated deliberations of the audience. The songs and dances on stage became white noise for feverish talk of an organized demonstration to voice the people’s discontent.

  In the midst of the chatter and jubilation about a clear resolution, the poet managed to obtain information on the Black Fairy’s whereabouts. He passed the directions on to Maia and bade her to go quickly before the mass descent from Waiting Mountain. He disappeared into the crowd that pulsated like the beating heart of a caged animal ready to spring.

  Legitimacy

  LEE HAKAKU BOYDEN anticipated the sea change long before Vinnie and Kai returned from the Moon Fest with news of unrest on the Central Highlands.

  “Tension is rising between the highlanders and Hanoi,” Vinnie reported. “The people are planning a demonstration. We must act.”

  “What should we do?” Kai asked.

  “We do nothing,” Lee replied. “We observe the boundaries as we’ve been doing.”

  “We infiltrate from the western border,” Vinnie proclaimed. “We overthrow the Communists and bring democracy to the people. Hanoi is preoccupied with the crisis on the highlands. Now is the time to strike. We can’t wait for directives from overseas.”

  “It’s one jungle,” Kai said. “Where are the borders?”

  Quietly, Kai considered the options: to remain uninvolved, inhabiting the in-between, or to stand up and fight for the oppressed. Was it a simple question of to fight or not to fight? Was there a third path?

  He felt warmth stirring within, ignited the day they came upon the children by the lake. Vinnie teased him that it was love, that his true love’s kiss would break the curse of hellfire and wake Sleeping Beauty, and they’d all live happily ever after.

  The strong pull Kai felt toward the children made him question his origin. He was named Kai for Lee’s yearning for the sea that surrounded his home in the Pacific, but he was found in the fire. His name was a contradiction. His beginning was lost.

  How could such a life be legitimate?

  “Who am I?” he asked. “What am I to do?”

  Homecoming

  MAIA REACHED THE outskirts of the Central Highlands in late morning. The poet’s directions for locating her great-aunt were straightforward. From Waiting Mountain, go northwest toward the border of Vietnam and Cambodia. Beyond the outermost town’s open market, wooden church, and footbridge, cut through the thorny honey locust forest to a clear stretch of barren land. On a plateau behind a bamboo fence, look for a thatched longhouse with square windows.

  “You’ll know when you’ve arrived.”

  The dwelling sat on red dirt amid overgrown tussocks and bamboo. The place was quiet except for the wind ruffling tall grass, a stream flowing over rocks nearby, and an occasional whistling that sounded like a child or wild dog.

  She walked along the bamboo fence to a latched gate and let herself in. She crossed the bare dirt yard and followed the smell of cooking to an open area behind the house. An elderly woman on her haunches with her back toward Maia was fanning several fires. Over the fires were a pot of rice and barley, a pot of dark green leafy vegetable soup, and a pot of stewed meat.

  “The bowls, please,” the woman said without looking around.

  Maia hesitated. The woman stood up and turned. It was her great-aunt. Her head was shaved, but Maia recognized her strong features. She had lost the softness of youth and was gaunt in old age, accentuating her intense eyes.

  “You’re not my helper from town.”

  “I can help.”

  Her great-aunt directed her to line up the large plastic soup bowls on the ground. “You’re family, aren’t you?”

  “I am your great-niece.”

  “You must be my older sister’s—”

  “Granddaughter.”

  “How is your grandmother?”

  “She passed away.”

  “Was she unwell?”

  “It was her time.”

  “You don’t want to go too early or too late.”

  �
��She planted the fruit of her desire, but I don’t know what that is.”

  “She did her part. But me—?” Her great-aunt stoked the fire, making embers glow and ashes fly.

  “I have words from the Independent Vietnam Coalition.”

  Her great-aunt did not seem to hear. Instead, she fluffed the rice and barley, stirred the soup and meat, and began to assemble the meal. In each bowl, she put a scoop of rice and barley, poured a ladle of vegetable soup, and sprinkled bits of salty meat on top.

  As soon as the last bowl was prepared, Maia heard twittering and saw movement in the bamboo thicket. A group of mud-covered children came through, carrying a variety of makeshift farm tools. They stopped at the stone well to wash up before gathering around the outdoor kitchen.

  The children were mostly teenagers. From a distance, they appeared normal, but a closer look revealed that each had something odd. An elfin girl with long hair came for the bowls and helped to serve others. Her lack of eyes made her seem as if she were sleepwalking. A brown lanky boy pranced along with a twisted torso, walking on all fours. A child without arms nimbly clutched the bowl with the arches of her feet. The boy without legs propped himself against another child to balance upright. One had a head much bigger than the bowl, another far smaller, both with ogling fishlike eyes. The teenager with the shakes cradled a blood red bundle.

  Great-Aunt told the teenager to give it to Maia.

  “I’m Binh.” The teenager introduced himself and held out the bundle. “This is the fifth meat born to the lieutenant’s family. It’s called Sixth Kabāb.” Binh grinned broadly. “Don’t make Sixth Kabāb cry.”

  When the little one was placed in Maia’s arms, it woke, panicked, and wetted her. Binh gestured Maia to rock it back and forth. She was given its bowl. The children sat on the ground, eating and conversing like a flock of birds. The nursling was calm after the initial panic. Its mouth opened and chewed slowly every spoonful of food, not making a peep.