Beauty Rising

by Mark W. Sasse

  I took it off the key ring, and placed it into my wallet.

  “Thank you Martin. You really are a good luck charm. I hope you have some more magic in you. I need it.”

  We arrived in Haiphong about 1:45. I had an hour to find Tran Hung Dao Street and to try and organize the large stash of cash in my backpack. I had never been in Haiphong before, so I didn’t know where to start. However, Tran Hung Dao was a very prominent general in Vietnamese history who thrice repelled Chinese invasions. It was such a common and popular street name in every city that it usually was in a very central location. I would walk down the main streets and hope to find it. I found an open public restroom off the back end of a large market complex beside the bus station. It reeked of urine and only a small incandescent light dimly lit the room. I went into a stall which had a normal squat pot. There was very little room, but I decided to use this place to reorganize my money. I must have had more than $100,000 with varying stacks of 100s, 50s, and 20s. I put one stack of 100s in my underwear and a stack of 50s in my bra. I put several stacks of cash in my purse and a couple more wrapped in the extra clothes I brought. The rest I left in the backpack. I understood what my odds were with the type of characters I would meet that night. I had to give myself the best chance to get away, and by dispersing the money into several locations, I hoped I would be able to keep something. I took a deep breathe, opened the stall door, and walked out of the bathroom.

  I walked through the center of the large park by the bus station and ended up at a small square which had a French-era theater on one end. This looked to be the city center. I noticed a main drag lined with various shops which headed slightly downhill opposite the theater. This looked to be the old section of town and an excellent place to find Tran Hung Dao Street, and down three blocks on the right I found the street sign. I was relieved. I walked down the street a short way and squatted in the shadows of a small alley. I didn’t want to be early. I felt exhausted, but I had to make sure I didn’t fall asleep. Thirty minutes passed as I squatted in a trance-like state. No one had come by or bothered me. I felt fortunate.

  At 2:55, I walked down about one block and stood outside the gate at number twelve. The house was dark. I was afraid to ring the bell. I jiggled the handle on the gate, and suddenly two large German Shepherds charged the gate and barked ferociously. After a few seconds a voice yelled out through the window.

  “Quiet. Quiet.”

  The dogs quieted immediately and out walked a middle aged man wearing no shirt and only boxer shorts. He came right up to the gate and shined a flashlight on me. He looked at my wounds and scars and nodded.

  “What do you want?”

  “Hung sent me.”

  “Who do you want?”

  “August Revolution.”

  He paused for a moment and looked back at me. I held the $10,000 in my right hand behind my back.

  “Money.”

  I handed it to him. He immediately went into the house. I took out a stack of 50s fully expecting having to pay more. I waited at the gate for several minutes, then a young man in his late twenties came out. He unlocked the gate and grabbed me by the neck.

  “Listen. There is too much going on tonight. Just get out of here. We can’t help you.”

  “I can pay more.”

  “What do you got?”

  I handed him the other stack of 50s. He looked at me in a peculiar manner. Perhaps it was usually not so easy to extract extra money.

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “Just my belongings.”

  “Where did you get all this money?”

  I didn’t answer. He gently rubbed his hands over the wounds on my face, and eventually shook his head.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  I got on the back of his motorbike. I realized what I was doing was a longshot. I had just given a complete stranger – one involved in criminal activity – $15,000 to get me out of the country. For all I knew, he could have been taking me to the outskirts of town to kill me in the quiet of the night. I didn’t trust him at all, but I had no other available options.

  After about ten minutes, we pulled up within sight of the shipyard. Large container vessels stood straight up out of the river, and I wondered if one of them would be my salvation. The driver pulled off the side of the road.

  “Wait here.”

  He walked about fifty feet away from me, made a quick phone call, and finally came back to me.

  “Down that way about thirty meters, there is a light post. When you get to the light post, walk to the fence. There is a portion of the fence which is loose. Pull it up and crawl under it. There will be a trash dumpster to your left. Wait behind it.”

  I nodded.

  “Go now,” he said forcefully.

  I grabbed my backpack and walked down until I got to the light post. I walked to the fence and found that part of it was curled up at the bottom. I pulled it up slightly and noticed that it was big enough to get through. I laid down flat on my stomach, pulled up the fence with my right hand and slowly wedged myself under it. When I was halfway through, my right hand couldn’t hold it anymore and the metal wire came down directly on the wounds of my back. Pain shot through my whole body, but I kept shimmying until I was finally clear of the fence. The dumpster stood off to the left just as he said, and I quickly ran and huddled down behind it. I marveled at all that happened in my life to bring me to this point. If my mother were still alive, she would be ashamed of me. I knew that for a fact. A karaoke hostess, a thief, and a murderer. Is any mother ever prepared to hear those words to describe her daughter? It wasn’t my fault, I thought. What choice did I have? This was the lot that God gave me. My body ached; my head hurt; my heart was empty. I was ready for the end for many hours now, but I kept moving forward; I kept hoping; I kept going on without really understanding why.

  “Dear God. Dear God,” I kept praying.

  There was nothing else to say.

  After about twenty minutes, two dark figures came around the corner of the dumpster. They stood looking at me for a moment.

  “What do you have for us,” one of them finally said.

  I had another stack of cash in my hand. I had just randomly grabbed it out of the backpack.

  “Here,” I offered it to him.

  “Let me see your bag,” said the other one and grabbed the backpack from my grip. He opened it up to see ten or so stacks of bills in various denominations.

  “Look here,” he said to his buddy.

  They both gawked over the large amount of cash in their possession.

  “This will do. Come quickly.”

  We walked down through several rows of containers. The engine of a large container ship roared right in front of us. We walked onto the ship through some sort of gang-plank and were quickly met by a merchant marine who started complaining about me. The men opened the bag and showed him the stash, and then he directed me down a small alleyway and out a door which led to a massive stack of containers in front of us. We walked down between the stacks until we came to a certain blue container with the words “Essex Four” on the outside. He unlatched the back and opened the door. There were a large stack of wooden crates that towered almost to the ceiling.

  “Climb up to the top and then over to the back of the container. There is a room there where you will stay during your trip.”

  This seemed absurd. A room at the back of the container? I had to climb crates in my condition? I nodded and started the climb. The crates were staggered enough that I could get up to the top without any difficulty. There was about a four foot dark tunnel in the center of the container. This must have been the route, because there was no other way to go. I crawled on the tops of the crates through the darkness, thinking that I would probably die in the deep recesses of the Essex Four container. After I crawled a ways, I saw a dim light ahead which gave me tremendous hope. I inched toward the light, keeping my head down, focusing on the faint hopeful
sight which became brighter and brighter. As I got closer, there was a buzzing sound of some engine roaring. I finally came upon a rather large wooden structure with a hole in the center. I peered into the hole and saw two other people inside.

  “Hello,” I said from the top. “Is there any way down?”

  “You have to jump,” said one of the two females there.

  I turned my body around so my legs extended down into the wooden room. It was about three meters down, so I balanced my arms on the edges of the opening and jumped down. My feet hit the floor hard and gave way as I crashed painfully to the floor. I lay on the wood floor and swore under my breath as the pain throbbed through my body. The room was about three meters square. A single light bulb illuminated the makeshift wooden room and a small fan blew from one of the corners. The constant drone of an engine pulsated throughout the room.

  “What’s that noise?” I asked.

  “That’s a generator blowing oxygen into the room,” said one of my roommates. She was a middle aged woman with a large scar down her left cheek.

  “What’s your name?”

  “I’m My Phuong,” I said feeling like I was in some bizarre dimension of time and place. My senses completely confused my head as I wondered if I, perhaps, was dreaming all of this.

  “I’m Hang.”

  “I’m Huong. You are messed up.”

  “Do we have to stay in here the whole time?” I asked.

  Huong came over to me and looked me over real carefully.

  “What happened to you?”

  “I fell down some stairs.”

  “Yeah, sure. Those were some nasty stairs. We have to stay in here during the day. At night, someone will come and let us out for a few hours.”

  “But why does it have to be so secretive?”

  “There’s about twenty crew members on board this freighter, but only four know about us. They need to keep it that way, so we are locked in here,” said Hang. “But we can’t leave here tonight. The first twenty-four hours, they said we would have to stay put. That will get us far enough out to sea.”

  “What if I have to pee or-”

  “There’s a jug here. Welcome to our voyage to hell.”

  “No,” I said. “I’ve just come from hell.”

  Freedom

  It was after 4 AM that we started moving. The first hour and a half was very smooth, but it quickly became obvious when the ship passed from the inland shipping lanes and hit the open sea. All three of us started holding our stomachs and swaying our heads back and forth. I threw up first into a plastic bag and Hang and Huong followed my lead shortly thereafter. The insufferable stench from the three bags of vomit gradually started seeping out, but we could do nothing but suffer through it.

  “How long will we have to live like this?”

  “About two weeks,” replied Huong.

  I sat in the corner, leaning my left arm against the wooden wall and trying to keep my back comfortable, but it was nearly impossible. I mercifully fell asleep shortly after that and was gone for twelve hours, though I intermittently faded in and out, searching for a comfortable position and swaying with the motion of the ship. I had no food, and Huong and Hang were reluctant to share theirs. They told me that I would get one meal a day during the middle of the night once the first twenty-four hour period expired. So I anguished in pain and hunger, also trying not to think about having to relieve myself. Hours dragged on slowly. Huong talked non-stop about her desire to get a good job and meet up with her brother in Vancouver at some point. Hang and I said very little. I watched our only source of light the small bulb dangle up and down. The low humming of the generator tucked in the front of the container became nothing but white noise after several hours. My ears couldn’t really focus on the noises around me with all the repugnant smells and piercing pain pre-occupying me.

  I started looking for trivial things to do to keep me occupied. I organized my purse, kept looking at my beaten face in my compact, and filed my nails. At one point, Martin Kinney’s license caught my eye at the bottom of my purse. I reached down and lifted it out into the light. I looked at Martin’s face. I found it ironic that his face looked beat up as well with Mr. Duc’s blood splotches on it. I took out a cloth, dabbed a little bit of drinking water on it and began to wipe it clean. I stared at Martin’s funny face. It was round and red with that scraggly red beard. But unlike most other mug shots, he had a beautiful smile – jolly would be the word. His eyes looked kind. I kept looking at him and the thought hit me that he actually looked like a baby. A baby with a half grown beard. I couldn’t contain myself and let out a small chuckle. It was the first time I smiled in many, many hours. Hang noticed my amusement.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No really. What is it?”

  “It’s something that saved my life.”

  “Let me see it.”

  “No.”

  “Let me see it,” she stood up and walked over two feet and ripped it out of my hand. “It’s just some foreigner’s driver’s license.”

  She looked skeptically at me and then tossed it against the wall. I picked it up and put it back in my purse. No one would ever touch my good luck charm again. I put my head back against the wall, and eventually nodded off again.

  A banging from the top woke me suddenly around hour twenty-four. I looked to see a Vietnamese man attach a hanging ladder down into our room.

  “Come on. You can come out for a little bit now.”

  We didn’t hesitate. We took the bags full of vomit and a container of urine and climbed to the top of the wooden room. Then we crawled along the wooden crates and down and out the back of the container. The chill in the air felt invigorating, and the freshness immediately lifted my spirits. Another Vietnamese man was standing outside our container.

  “Walk down there between this row of containers. You can spend a little time at the front of the ship.”

  I walked through the canyon wall of containers and then out to the small opening on the very front of the ship. Stars were out in full force. They had a couple small bowls of rice and soup which I greeted with reckless abandon. I felt so hungry that this simple meal tasted more like one of Mr. Duc’s feasts he often had for me. Maybe I could do this, I thought. Perhaps. After I ate, they showed me to a restroom where I could freshen up, and then I returned to the front of the ship and just gazed into the blackness.

  After another hour, one of the sailors came to warn us that we had to get back in the container in about ten minutes. I nodded, and then thought of something.

  “Do you have a shortwave radio?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Can you get the Vietnamese news broadcasts?”

  “Yes, we get the Dai Tieng Noi Viet Nam.”

  The Voice of Vietnam. Would it have anything about me? I thought.

  “Could I listen to the news before I go in?”

  “Let me get it for you,” he said and disappeared underneath. About five minutes later, he was back with a handheld radio which he promptly handed to me. I turned it on and started moving through the dial.

  “VOV-1 News. 2145-1700,” he said.

  I dialed in and immediately heard the familiar rhythms of my native language. They were giving a report about tourism in Ha Long Bay and how its development had helped establish five new schools for some of the poorer districts of Quang Ninh province. The tone sounded for the top of the hour, and the news began.

  “This is the Voice of Vietnam News. The town of Thai Nguyen is still reeling from the tragic death of its head councilman Dr. Nguyen Ton Duc, who was found beaten to death in his office at the Thai Nguyen People’s Council Building. The motive behind Dr. Duc’s murder appears to be robbery as the safe in his office was opened and an undisclosed amount of cash belonging to the People’s Council is missing. The widow of Dr. Duc spoke to the media for the first time earlier today. ‘There are no words to describe my hear
tbreak. Duc was a loving husband and a wonderful father. He was a family man at heart. He cared deeply about the people of Thai Nguyen. In my opinion, this was a carefully planned robbery by a group of professionals, who knew his habits and took advantage of the peoples’ servant.’ Police spokesman Ngo Dang says they are looking into some criminal gangs in Thai Nguyen, who may have had a hand in this brutal killing. In the meantime, you can pay your respects to the family of Dr. Duc as his body will lie in state at the provincial People’s Council building later today starting at 10 AM. This is the Voice of Vietnam.”

  I switched it off. My head spun wildly, but my face remained expressionless and everyone who had gathered around to listen looked at me. I handed the radio back to the sailor and went and stood at the railing. They would cover-up the truth to save everyone the embarrassment of the affair. This meant one thing; they would not be coming after me. A gust of wind whipped through my shortened hair. It felt like the gust of freedom. On the horizon, the morning sun was just beginning to paint its colors lifting the darkness which had hung over me. The glory of life once again bolstered its claim on my soul. I felt free. I looked up into the heavens.

  “Thank you, God.”

  Part III

  Under the Banana Tree

  Second Point of Contact

  “Martin. I just saw the first lightening bug of the season,” my mom said.

  Lightening bugs start illuminating the night around dusk of late spring.