by Various
He didn't bother to towel off after his shower, allowing the air to cool him as it dried. The day was so humid that this didn't work very well, sweat replacing the water before he ever reached the point of being dry. He limped into the bedroom and lay down on top of the sheet. Carol reached
out for him and he took her hand, grateful for the warmth and companionship. She murmured sleepily and rolled into his arms. He held her tightly.
"Richie, are you . . . ?" He placed a finger over her lips, and she bit back the words. It was Carol in his arms, her short blond curls cushioning his shoulder from the weight of her head. This time he tried to picture Thot but found that he could not do it. This was the way it was supposed to be and yet it wasn't right. It was as though a piece of himself were missing. Without knowing why, he was afraid.
For a long time they lay there, without moving. The door opened and Jason stuck his head into the room.
"Good morning, Daddy," he said. Richie lifted his arms and the child crawled into bed. Richie clasped him tightly. What was the matter with him? He was a man of riches, his family surrounding him with love. How could he let a thing that had happened almost fifteen years ago—a thing that had not entered his thoughts in many years—shake his faith in that? He kissed his wife and his son, each on top of the head, and forced himself to dress.
The heat, dreadful for April when the day started, soared to temperatures that would have been bad in the dog days of August. Air currents moved down Ninth Street, but they were not cooling breezes. To Richie it felt more as if some giant, foul creature were breathing down his neck. So real was the image that he found himself continually looking over his shoulder, expecting to see . . . he wasn't sure what. Nothing there but the heavy, invisible heat. And as the day wore on, bright scarlet fruit turned brown and rich greens darkened and shriveled, until the whole market began to take on the sickly, sweet rotting smell of the jungle.
Only a very few people picked their way through the stalls, as if the unseasonal heat had made most folks afraid to venture out of the cool shade or away from their air-conditioning.
Once Mrs. Ly looked up and smiled at him from across the street, but he turned his head away, unable to answer with a smile of his own. He couldn't shake the feeling that something actually was coming, and he knew that whatever
it was, it would be coming from that direction. He could almost make it out when he looked down the little street that entered Ninth Street from the east, right next to her stand. A vague white mist rolling down the street.
"You all right?" Joey asked.
"I'll manage," he answered coldly. "Heat's so bad I almost feel like I'm seeing things," he added half under his breath. He rubbed his eyes to clear the hallucination, and yet when he looked back it seemed even more detailed—a great white mass, visible, and yet so transparent that he could clearly see the street behind it.
Two old ladies came by, followed by a younger woman with children. Richie's mouth was so dry that he couldn't even wait on them. He grabbed one of his own overripe peaches and sucked the sickly sweet juice to clear his throat, but by the time he had finished, Joey had already taken care of them. "Why don't you go home, Richie," Joey said when he had finished with the customers.
"I'm okay," Richie shouted, his fists knotted, amazing himself with the force of his anger. He had to take a deep breath and calm himself down. Slowly, he would turn his head and look across the street. He would force himself to see it the way it really was, the way it rationally had to be. Slowly, he turned his head and raised his eyelids.
It was still there. Perhaps even a little more solid than it had been before. A white and terrible thing that seemed to be taking the shape of a giant beast.
Richie whirled around and pounded his fist on the stand, shattering an overripe cantaloupe into an explosion of orange pulp. He pulled off his fruit-stained T-shirt and wiped his face and neck with the damp material. "You're right, kid. Maybe I should go home," he said.
All the way home Richie paused at every corner to see if he was being followed, but if the creature was behind him, it was far enough away that he couldn't see it.
Carol must have been staring out the window, for she greeted him at the door with a look that he could have sworn was furtive and nervous. "Guess who came to see me today?" she said before she even kissed his cheek in
greeting. The thought passed briefly through his mind that she was having an affair. He limped up to the top step to see his father sitting on the sofa.
"Hi, Pop," he said, but his disappointment amazed him. How convenient it would have been to find out she was cheating on him. How easy it would have made everything.
He made an effort not to limp as he entered the house, though the leg was hurting so badly that he was beginning to wonder if he hadn't reinjured it. "What brings you to see my wife in the middle of the day? Should I be jealous?"
"Ah, if it weren't for your mother . . ." the old man said.
"Honey, I have to pick up a few things for dinner. Pop, if you'll excuse me?" So that was the setup. Carol had asked Pop to come over and have a talk with him, and she was afraid that Richie would be angry. Well, far from it. Richie was glad to have a chance to speak to his father alone.
"Carol's worried about me?" Richie asked the moment she was out the door.
His father nodded. "And not just Carol. Your mother and I are a little worried, too. She says you've been acting funny."
"Acting funny?" Richie asked, raising his voice, feeling the old rage boil back up in him.
"Slow down, son." Frank Augustino patted him gently on the arm. "She's only concerned for your welfare. Your mother and I saw it, too, last night. Moody, short-tempered, staring into space, your mind a million miles away. Son, this isn't like you. What's bothering you?"
Richie wanted to tell him. While there were things they had never discussed, he had never actually lied to his father. Besides, he wanted the old man to take charge and make everything better—the way he had when Richie was a boy, but Pop was so sick. The heat alone was dangerous for a man in his state of health, and if he took the news badly . . .
"It's nothing, Pop," he said at last. He tried to keep his hands from trembling where his father could see, but the
feeling was back. That same feeling of being watched, stalked, that he'd had all afternoon. Something was out there, just beyond his range of vision . . . just outside the window. He wanted to go and look and yet he knew that it was the worst thing that he could do. Looking at it, acknowledging its existence, seemed to give it form and substance—as if it were his own willingness to give it power over him that gave it that power.
"Richie?"
He wouldn't look. He wouldn't even think about it. He tried to find something that he could concentrate on.
"Richie, look at you. How can you tell me there's nothing wrong?"
"Damn it, Pop. It's nothing. I can handle it." He heard a noise. A low bass rumble that could have been a roar. He had to look. He got up and crossed to the window, forgetting to hide his limp.
It was there, outside the window, just as he knew that it would be. A great white beast, no longer featureless, and so familiar that he knew that if he could just lift the veils of gauze from his mind, he would know just what to do about it. He felt a moan escape his lips—and the next thing he knew, his father was at his side, helping him back to the sofa, the sick old man taking most of Richie's weight on his shoulders.
"Richard, if there's something wrong, you can't just ignore it and hope that it goes away. You can't just say, `I can handle it.' You're a husband and a father. You have responsibilities. If you let your problems get out of hand—if something should happen to you—who will be there to take care of your wife and your children? Your mother and I won't be around much longer. Your brothers are barely supporting their own families. Think about Jason growing up without a father's guiding hand Think about the coming baby who would never really even know you. It is a terrible thing for a child to grow up w
ithout a father."
Richie looked up, startled by his father's phrase, and his eye caught a shape at the window. It was visible, now, from where he sat, and its form was quite distinct. Scales
scalloping down its back, red eyes that seemed to glow from within, snakelike white tendrils curling from the sides of its awful mouth . . . It might have been his own little dragon grown to mammoth size, except for a large yellow stain down its side. It stood outside in the street, so motionless that it might still have been carved of bone, and yet he could tell that the eyes were watching him, the ears taking in everything that he had to say. His dragon. He had forsaken it, and now it had turned on him. He didn't know if he could win it back, but he knew that he had to try.
"Pop, listen!" Richie said with sudden urgency. "There is a problem, but I have to tell you something about my life in 'Nam for you to understand.
"When I was stationed at headquarters, I worked with a local translator, a man named Pai Som Trinh. You know me, Pop. I was never one for hanging around the bars, chasing hookers and getting drunk, yet there wasn't much else for a man to do in his spare time. This man and his family sort of took me in. I missed you all so much, it was like having a second family. Anyway, Som had a daughter named Thot. She wanted to learn to speak English and she wanted to learn to play chess and she wanted to know all about America. I thought it would be fun to teach her. She was such a cute little kid. And then one day I realized she wasn't a kid anymore. I never meant to fall in love with her—there was her father, and there was Carol—but things just happened." He paused, trying to decide what kind of look it was that flitted briefly over his father's face.
"Things got pretty desperate after a while. Both of her parents were killed, and she was pregnant. I really wanted to marry her, to bring her and the child home with me when I came, but in the Army there was a lot of red tape involved in that sort of thing.
"I only saw the baby once. All leaves were canceled, and then we were bombed and I wound up in the hospital. When I finally got out, I tried to find them, but they were gone. I got word later that they were dead."
"All this you never told us?"
"I'm sorry, Pop. At first I couldn't bear to talk about it;
later there didn't seem to be any point. Carol was willing to forgive my long silence without asking questions and I found that I still had feelings for her. Why hurt her? I squeezed myself back into my old life and tried to pick up the pieces."
"And what has this to do with now? Have you found this woman again?" Pop asked.
"No. Thot is dead. I accepted that a long time ago, or I never would have married Carol. But I think I've found my child. I know I have. My daughter." The old man's eyes were closed; Richie could read nothing from his expression. "She's living right here in Philly—not more than five blocks from here—with a family of refugees. Pop, you should see her. She's a beautiful child with her mother's eyes and hair, but the rest of her face is pure Augustino."
"I can see why you've been so troubled. Does the child know that you're her father? Is she asking you for anything? What do you plan to do about it?"
"I wanted to tell her, but Carol . . ." He spat his wife's name bitterly. "How could she have become so prejudiced without my even knowing? Now I don't know what to do."
"You told Carol?"
"No, I didn't tell her about the girl. Not yet. Not after the reaction I got from telling her about Thot." Richie sighed and watched his father expectantly.
"How could you keep such a secret from your wife?" The elder Augustino sighed and shook his head. "Son, this is not an easy thing for me to say, but I think it would be best if we just kept this between ourselves. Best for everyone. I know that your mother and I raised you with a strong sense of family responsibility, but, I think you are being very selfish to want to bring that child here. You think you would be helping her, but she is almost grown. Her ways are not your ways. And could you really ask Carol to take in another woman's child, the child of a woman you had been prepared to leave her for? She would have to be a saint . . ." The old man kept on talking, but Richie was no longer listening. He had tried his best and he had failed.
And Thot's dragon was still standing outside the window.
Listening . . . Watching . . . Waiting until the moment was right . . . His leg throbbed, his mind was slow and foggy and the heat was almost unbearable, and Richie wasn't even sure he cared about anything anymore.
"Oh, Pop," he said weakly. "A moment ago you said it was a terrible thing for a child to grow up without a father. Now you tell me it's in my daughter's best interest to forget her."
"In some cases—"
"Please. I don't want to hear it anymore. Just go home, will you?" Without waiting for an answer, Richie got up and pulled himself up the stairs, leaning most of his weight on the banister. He was so tired. Much too tired to fight anymore. But even now, with everything against him, there was one final answer. One quick way to stop all of the pain and make everything right again. He reached up on the closet shelf and brought down a beat-up pink shoebox. With trembling hands he cleared away a stack of old photographs and greeting cards and pulled out his gun. It was an old .38 police special that Carol had bought for him to keep at the stand, but which he never remembered to take. He fished out the box of bullets and with gentle, almost loving fingers, he rolled out the cylinder and pressed a bullet into every chamber. Then he laid the gun down on the neat white bedspread and dropped to his knees on the floor.
Silently, he prayed. He said a prayer for his own redemption, for the future of those he left behind. He prayed that Jason would not be the one to find him. He prayed for the unborn child, but his father's words continued to haunt his prayers. It was a terrible thing for a child to grow up without a father, and he would be leaving three of them. But that left him no answer at all. Unless . . .
He wished that his mind would clear, that he could think things out. Yet even through the mist that shrouded his thoughts, he could see only one solution. He would have to take them all with him. No child left behind to suffer. God would open his waiting arms and take them all to his bosom.
He could not remember the walk to Mrs. Ly's house, the pause to sit and rest his leg on almost every block, or
the fear of the thing that stalked behind him—so strong that he dared not even look around. Fear that it would get him before he could finish his work. Before he knocked he made an effort to straighten up, brushing his hair back from his face and tugging at his clothes. The man who answered the door did not speak English, but soon Mrs. Ly appeared behind him.
Her eyes widened for a moment and then she lowered her eyelids, nodding, and backed up to usher him inside. She barked out a strange word and a plump, dour-looking woman got up from the sofa and ran upstairs. If there were other people in the room, Richie failed to notice them.
"I've come for my daughter," he said. "I want her to meet my wife and son."
"Augustino, it is getting late. I cannot go with you and you will need a translator."
He shook his head. "Mrs. Ly, I hope you understand. This is a very delicate matter. It cannot be done with strangers present. I won't take very long."
"You are certain then that she is your child?"
"Mrs. Ly, I don't have any doubts."
Mrs. Ly sighed. "I think you may be right. Wait for just a moment, please." She shouted something into the other room and a moment later the girl appeared in the doorway.
"I want her with me," he said, his voice hoarse and dry. "It is a terrible thing for a child to be without a father." He took the child's hand and led her out the door.
The ease with which they let the girl go—and with someone who was practically a stranger—strengthened his belief that what he was doing was right. They cared nothing for her. She was just another mouth to feed, cast in with them by chains of circumstance.
They walked in silence. At first she would giggle when he stopped on someone's stoop to rest, but after the first few times it a
ppeared to make her nervous. He quickened the pace in spite of the pain and heat, and did not stop again. When they got to the house, her expression changed and he could tell that she was frightened. She reached for something under her blouse. It was a gesture he knew quite well.
The dragon. Mrs. Ly had said that she had one. It would have to go. Nothing could interfere with his plan.
He moved behind her and swept the hair from the back of her neck. A silver chain gleamed against her pale skin. He undid the clasp and jerked it free of her clutching fingers, holding it high against her efforts to reclaim it. It was a tiny carved dragon, much like his own, except for a slight discoloration along one side. A yellow stain on the flank.
He froze. Then, slowly, he turned to look at the creature he knew was standing behind him. It was no longer still. It roared at him silently, pawing the air . . . a yellow discoloration matching the one on the carving he held in his hand. Her dragon!
Suddenly, there was hope. The child was jumping up and down, reaching for her necklace, but he couldn't let her have it back. Not yet. He grabbed her by the wrist and made her sit down on the front steps, then motioned for her to wait.
Carol was seated on the sofa. There was a book across her knees, but he could tell that she hadn't been reading. Used tissues littered the top of the cocktail table and dark mascara streaks soiled her eyes.
"Wait here," he shouted. "And whatever you do, don't come upstairs."
The dragon was still behind him. He could feel its breath on his back as he crossed the living room and forced his way painfully up the stairs. He wondered that the house didn't collapse under its ponderous weight as it mounted the stairs behind him.