by CW Ullman
Charlie took Jordan with him to the hospital the day Bryce was discharged. Bryce had been up walking the halls of the hospital for ten days prior to his release. While he liked how the nurses treated him, he was eager to leave and get back in the water. Jordan had become very protective of his older brother. Jordan, who was considered a surfing prodigy at the local beaches for his skill and his ruthlessness at snaking others on waves, promised himself he would never snake his brother again.
By the time Charlie, Bryce, and Jordan arrived at the surf shop, the parking lot was full and the shop was crowded with family and friends. Colleen had made large trays of sloppy joes. Chris was picking up empty cups and paper plates. Curtis had arrived earlier with a couple to whom Bryce and Jordan ran to for hugs. It was Harold and Lila Mae, the couple who sheltered them the first night of the riots.
Lila Mae said, “Well, look at you two.” Smiling at Bryce, she said, “I bet you wished you would’ve stayed with us? How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay, I’m jonesing to get back in the water,” Bryce said.
“This is my dad, the man we were looking for that night,” Jordan said.
“You have some very dedicated boys. We did a lot of praying for them after they left our house. Harold and I are very glad they survived it all,” Lila Mae offered. Harold had a plate of sloppy joes and gave bits of meat to Surgeon.
Charlie saw Darla, walked over to her and asked, “Have you heard anything yet?”
“Not yet,” Darla answered. “Jim Halloran said CPS would call him with the final disposition of the case and relay it to us. Tobie feels like shit, because she thinks she may have said too much. Look at her over there next to her father. She won’t leave his side.”
Charlie walked over to the two of them and asked, “How are you two doing?”
Tobie looked up to Charlie with a melancholy expression, while Rusty just stared straight ahead.
“I wouldn’t worry, Tobie. These things always have a way of working out,” Charlie said.
Charlie sat down at a large wooden spool table. On the table top were flowers under a coating of resin. Around the table were the five friends. He looked at them and thought how far they had come in their lives, all arriving at this point by traveling different paths. No path was more varied than Charlie’s.
He was born in Tulsa, but grew up in Manhattan Beach. He had worked oil wells and been to the Monterey Jazz Festival. He joined the Navy and would have made a career of it, had the incident on the Enterprise not happened. He lived in an ashram and met Mahatma Ji, whose presence and sage wisdom he still missed.
When he met Darla in Denny’s, he would never have imagined they would be lifelong friends. He often wondered what path she would have taken had Mahatma Ji lived, or if he had left Denver without her. She was such an integral part of his life. His children looked upon her as a foul-mouthed aunt who gave great advice. Charlie’s parents had virtually adopted her as a daughter, and most importantly she had saved Rusty from himself. She had said her time with Mahatma Ji was a sort of training to deal with all of Rusty’s challenges. In the months after Rusty was released from the VA, Charlie had realized no one was better equipped than Darla to handle the multitude of problems Rusty would present.
In the middle of this reflection, he was overcome with a chill that pressed in on his chest and made it difficult to breathe. His heart sped up and he felt an electrical charge in his back. He could see his buddies talking, but could not hear anything. He felt heaviness and realized the news from CPS was probably going to be bad. Tobie’s matter of fact recitation of the story about them throwing the girl into the ocean was playing in his head. He was overwhelmed with a self-loathing for thinking there would not be consequences for their participation. The back of his neck was stiffening from the self-criticism. CPS would contact someone in authority and they would at least arrest Rusty.
He decided when the call came, if it was bad news, he was going to ship Rusty, Darla and Tobie to Canada. If he got arrested for helping them, so be it. He could survive and it would probably be for only a short time. He regretted talking his shipmates into letting Tobie talk. If they did not go to jail, they might go broke paying legal fees to defend themselves. The chill squeezed his chest and the silence had a sound to it. The foreboding felt palpable. He spotted Cecily who patted her chest. This was her way of saying she loved him. He thought, “What do you know, little girl?”
“Hey, Dad, come here,” Jordan called.
Charlie got up and walked to the front of the store where Jordan pointed to the parking lot as four LAPD police cruisers pulled up, each carrying two officers. Charlie did not want to be handcuffed while his children and friends were watching. He imagined the embarrassment this was going to cause. They were going to be arrested for something that happened seventeen years ago. He thought for moment about locking the front door and sending everyone out the back; as his heart sank, he realized he could not. Everything, he mused, finally catches up.
“Dad, what’s that?” Jordan asked. He pointed at two olive green cars whose logos read Child Protective Services for The County of Los Angeles. Rusty’s family would be torn apart and the six sailors from the Enterprise arrested. As he turned to go back to the table, he saw a phalanx of police officers walking in the direction of the shop, and behind them a few civilians. Charlie sat down at the table, looked at the guys and apologized.
The police officers opened the front door and walked towards the back of the shop where the six were seated. Charlie looked over at his wife and parents and mouthed the words, “I’m sorry.” Behind Rusty, Molly stood with tears in her eyes, holding Cecily who said, “Put your hands out, Rusty,” and Rusty obeyed.
Darla looked at the front door and immediately recognized Dexter Smith. Next to him was Chief Biwer whose eyes were red-rimmed. Charlie briefly exchanged a glance with Darla who was shaking her head and repeatedly mouthing the word, “No.”
Charlie looked back to see the police officers separate to allow three civilians to come forward. Dexter and two women approached the table. Dexter pointed at Rusty and then everything slowed to a crawl. Charlie waited for the police to pull Rusty out of his chair and read him his rights, but instead they held their positions. Charlie could not see the faces of the two women, because the setting sun behind them silhouetted their heads. Then the smaller of the two spoke.
“Are you Russell William Armstrong?” the smaller woman inquired. Rusty nodded.
Then out of her hand tumbled two small oblong metal plates. They floated almost like leaves into Rusty’s hands. When they came to rest in Rusty’s palms, Charlie could read “Russell William Armstrong, DOB: JAN 31, 1955 CATHOLIC U.S. 5466841.”
Then the woman quietly stated, “I am My Ling.”
In Rusty’s hands were his dog tags. He looked up from his hands to see an Asian woman’s face with eyes he had been painting for seventeen years. His mouth was trembling and tears were running down his cheeks. The others looked at her, and Curtis reached out to touch her.
He said, “I was there…we were there.”
Rusty stood up and reached across the table to cup her face. He said, “It’s you. It’s you. It’s you.”
Gaston could not compose himself and could not speak. He reached for her hand and held it to his cheek. Carlos slid out of his chair and Ronnie wept while looking upon My Ling with reverence. My Ling’s face shone with a beatific smile as tears filled her eyes. Darla, Tobie, Cindy, Colleen, Chris, Molly, and Sister Marie Celeste, all the people who knew the story, were crying. They did not look at My Ling so much as behold her.
My Ling said, “I have hoped to see you for a long time. I work at CPS and Mrs. Wiley wanted me to hear the tape of your daughter for my opinion of whether it was a war crime. She did not know I was the girl on the ship.”
They stared at each other, until My Ling realized she had not introduced her family. “This is my husband, Hao,” she said.
They nodded at him, still speechl
ess. What happened next may have been the most shocking.
“This is my daughter, My Ling,” she said.
Her daughter stepped out from behind her and the six former sailors were stunned by her appearance. She looked identical to My Ling when she was on the Enterprise seventeen years ago. Rusty walked around the table, got down on his knees in front of the child and gently caressed her, murmuring repeatedly, “I am sorry.”
The adult My Ling said, “Had I not gone back, I would not have been able to save my family. It was because of you. I need to thank you.”
Her thanks hung in the air, unfathomable for all to understand, except Rusty. He had awakened from his seventeen-year stupor when he was able to apologize to the personified image he had kept alive all this time. Compelled for years, he chased after Asian girls for absolution, only to compound his frustration by traumatizing complete strangers. His vain attempts to be released from his sin only drove him further into madness. The young My Ling’s embrace returned Rusty to the seconds before he put her mother back into the ocean. He was able to see again the look of gratitude her mother had for being rescued. He was able to feel the accomplishment of beating the odds that day by pulling her from the sea and was finally able to accept that act as one of valor. For seventeen years Rusty lived between these two worlds. For seventeen years he had been unable to escape the void created when his act of worthiness was followed by an act of horror. He was now free of the relentless visual looping of that day on the Enterprise. His mind was clear and his heart was full. He stood to embrace the adult My Ling with eyes fully opened.
“I know you said thank you, but will you please accept my apology,’” he whispered.
My Ling held him close and said, “I know what you have been going through. I know, because I have been going through it, too. May I sit down?”
Charlie got up from his seat so My Ling could sit. Rusty sat next to her holding her hand. My Ling’s daughter sat on her mother’s lap as Hao stood behind her. My Ling said, “I have quite a story to tell you: how I got from the ocean to here. Do you have time?”
Rusty said, “All the time in the world.”
She unfolded the story slowly, describing her time adrift in the ocean, until her unfortunate discovery by Thai pirates.
Charlie’s dad, Chris, thought, “This is a story everyone should know.” He asked if he could write it down.
“Yes,” she said.
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I was very lucky to find Kathy Wiley as my editor. She brought a devoted attention to this book that was above and beyond anything for which I could have hoped. She not only caught grammar, punctuation, syntax and typo problems, but suggested alternate phrasing throughout the book that tightened the read and made for a better flow. I trusted her so much that if she suggested a deletion of many pages, I followed her advice. All writers know that having a good editor is like having a good physician and she is absolutely the best word doctor. I cannot thank her enough for reading, correcting, rereading and correcting again. I could not have written a final product if it were not for her.
I also would like to thank the U.S. Navy Veterans, U.S. Army Veteran helicopter pilots and medical staff from the West Los Angeles VA facility who lent technical advice and for their service to this country. I also want to express appreciation for the help of former refugees from Vietnam now living in Little Saigon in Orange County, California. Thanks to Dennis Ridge for his publishing assistance.
I also want to acknowledge the readers of various drafts of this manuscript for their support and criticisms: Richard Chase, Paul Cooper, Roger Stone, Renee Sokol, Tim Auringer, Suzy Seymour, Roger Biwer, Russell Rothner, Shari Tidwell, Richard Ham, Sharon Grandinette Allman, Ron Schendel, Gail Pezzimenti, Jackie Jung, Pamela Sperber, Kathleen Terry, Martha Thomas Cobb, Sarah Weismann, Chris Mirosevic, Susie Biwer, Kathy McElroy, Patrick Malloy and Karen Keith, Dr. Anne-Marie Kelly, and special thanks to librarian Barbara Siegemund-Broka who wrote a lengthy and involved criticism that was very helpful.