Killings

by Calvin Trillin

  It has been a month since Marilyn McCusker was killed, and the Rushton mine has, of course, long been back in normal operation. The normal operation, though, remains something of a disappointment to Blair Rickard. For some time, the mine has not been meeting his expectations. A bonus plan was put in last spring—a plan that means additional pay for just about everyone in any month when the production of clean coal exceeds about twenty-five hundred tons a day—but the production has met the bonus requirement only once. There have been a lot of equipment breakdowns. There have been the usual problems with absenteeism, particularly on Friday swing shifts. Another miner was killed in July, crushed under a machine he was trying to repair. At times, Rickard connects the problems of the mine with the hiring of women. “It seems to be a jinx,” he said recently. “The mine ain’t been the same since they came.” After Marilyn McCusker’s death, Mary Louise Carson says, the mine’s front-office secretary asked all the remaining women miners whether or not they intended to quit. “I told her I wasn’t planning on it,” Mrs. Carson said not long ago. “The men don’t quit if one of their buddies gets hurt. If they had the choice—if they could make the money outside—there’d be nobody in that mine.”

  Resettling the Yangs

  * * *

  Fairfield, Iowa

  MARCH 1980

  As a refuge, Fairfield, Iowa, has a lot going for it. To Theng Pao Yang and his wife and their four children, who arrived in Fairfield at the beginning of December from Laos by way of a refugee camp in Thailand, it might have looked like any other frigid and startlingly foreign place, but, as the fortunes of Southeast Asian refugees go, the Yang family could have been considered fortunate. The entire state of Iowa seems to have taken upon itself a special responsibility for Southeast Asian refugees. The one state agency among the American organizations resettling refugees from the camps is the Iowa Refugee Service Center. When the nations of the world were trying to decide what to do about the boat people, the governor of Iowa announced that Iowa would take fifteen hundred of them. Iowa’s response to reports of widespread starvation among Cambodian refugees in Thailand was to raise more than five hundred thousand dollars in small donations and dispatch what amounted to an Iowa relief column with food and supplies, accompanied by a Des Moines Register and Tribune reporter to make certain that it reached the people it was intended for. There are, of course, Iowans who believe that the United States should concentrate on the problems of its own citizens instead of worrying so much about displaced Asians—a Register poll last year indicated that a shade over half the people in the state were opposed to resettling more boat people in Iowa—but they have not been outspoken about their reservations. The dominant attitude in Iowa toward refugees seems to combine spontaneous generosity and genuine concern and great pride in the leadership Iowa has taken. Asked to account for all of this, Michael Gartner, the editor of both the Register and the Tribune, tends to smile and say, “Iowa has a better foreign policy than the United States.”

  Fairfield is a pleasant town of eight thousand people in the southeast corner of the state. It remains financially comfortable through trade with the area’s hog-and-grain farmers and the presence of a dozen manufacturing plants and the official business of Jefferson County—conducted out of a magnificent pile of a courthouse that was built in 1891. Fairfield people are accustomed to strangers. In the sixties, the local college, Parsons, was transformed into an education mill that became known nationally as Flunk-Out U. The campus now belongs to Maharishi International University, where students of Transcendental Meditation are said to be instructed in arts that include human levitation—although, as one of the hog-and-grain farmers might say, not so’s you’d know it. When the Yangs arrived in Fairfield, there were already three Laotian refugee families in town—ethnic-Lao families from the lowlands—and another arrived a couple of weeks later. The men in the Laotian families were already employed. The older children were in school. Daily English classes had been established for some time in a room at the First Lutheran Church. While the adults learned English, Fairfield volunteers acted as babysitters for their small children.

  In Fairfield, it is natural for Christian charity to be channeled through a church. Sponsoring a Southeast Asian refugee family began as a commitment taken on at one church or another, but it quickly turned ecumenical. The sponsorship of the first Laotians to arrive in town—Kesone Sisomphane and his family, who came only last spring—passed from the Episcopal priest to the Lutheran pastor when the Episcopalian moved away. A widower and his children from Vientiane were sponsored by the First United Methodist Church through the Catholic resettlement agency and eventually decided to attend Sunday services with the Lutherans. Sponsors shared ideas and problems, and the refugees seemed as compatible as the sponsors. When congregants of the First Lutheran Church decided to sponsor a refugee family—the family, as it turned out, that arrived just after the Yangs—the Lutheran pastor, Keith Lingwall, specifically asked for lowland Lao in order to preserve the homogeneity of the group.

  The Fairfield church that sponsored the Yang family, First Baptist, is considerably smaller than the congregations that were already working together with the Laotians. As an American Baptist rather than a Southern Baptist congregation, it is not opposed to ecumenism. Its pastor, Lynn Bergfalk—who, like Keith Lingwall, is in his thirties and bearded and well educated—has served as president of the Fairfield ministerial alliance. Still, there remain limitations on the Baptists’ ecumenical participation, and there remains in the minds of other Fairfield Christians some residue of the old notion that Baptists tend to stand a bit apart. Among the refugees in Fairfield, Theng Pao Yang and his family stood more than a bit apart. Although they came from Laos, the Yangs were not lowland-Lao speakers but Hmong—members of a mountain tribe that has had trouble with the dominant Lao for as long as anybody can remember.

  In Laos, the Hmong were always called Meo, which means “barbarians”—a name they understandably despise. The Hmong originated in southern China, and over the past century or so many of them have migrated into the highlands of northern Laos and Thailand. To readers of National Geographic articles, they were mountain tribesmen in intricate ceremonial costumes—deft with the crossbow, sure-footed on mountain paths, skilled at coaxing a steady opium crop out of the steep hillsides, persistent in their animism despite some conversions to Buddhism and Christianity. To military men in Laos, the Hmong had a considerable reputation as guerrilla fighters; there were Hmong forces in the Pathet Lao and in the Royal Laotian Army and particularly in the secret army financed by the Central Intelligence Agency. In Laos, the Hmong have sometimes been considered naïve hillbillies—people subjected to ridicule or harassment or even extortion.

  To refugee workers—such as those in the American Baptist Churches resettlement office, which received the Yangs as part of its refugee allotment from Church World Service—the Hmong are known for being close-knit, even clannish, people who seek each other out through a tribal communication system that sometimes seems to work almost as well in California or Pennsylvania as it did in the mountains of Southeast Asia. The Yangs had requested resettlement in Iowa because of a friend they mentioned as living in the northeast part of the state—in a town that did not, as it happened, have a Baptist church to act as a sponsor for the family. In Fairfield, a hundred and fifty miles to the south, First Baptist, which had sponsored a Burmese technician and his wife who immigrated in 1975, was eager to sponsor a refugee family. Although the Baptist resettlement office was aware that some antipathy exists between Hmong and Lao, the antipathy had never been considered serious enough to require segregation. The presence of any Laotians in Fairfield—their ethnic background was unknown to the resettlement office—had been considered an attraction: it meant that the town was used to refugees and had some facilities in place for them.

  No one in Fairfield knew much about the Hmong. The Iowa Refugee Service Center, which does employment and social-service work among refugees as well as
resettling, had pamphlets on Hmong culture and a Hmong outreach worker on its staff and knowledge of some Hmong families in Ottumwa, only twenty-five miles from Fairfield, but First Baptist was not in touch with the Iowa Refugee Service Center. There did not seem to be any need for out-of-town assistance. Theng Pao Yang spoke and understood some Lao, so communication was possible through the Laotians who were available every day at English class. A lot of communication was possible through sign language. The church installed the Yangs in a small bungalow that was empty while on the market to be sold. The two older children, an eight-year-old boy named So and a six-year-old girl named Bay, were enrolled at Roosevelt Elementary School and given individual tutoring in English. Theng Pao Yang’s wife, Yi Ly, was taken to the doctor for a checkup. The Burmese who had immigrated five years ago began taking the family to the supermarket once a week. After a week or two, the main burden of transporting the family and looking after its daily needs passed from Lynn Bergfalk to a warm and cheerful couple from the congregation—John Heckenberg, a recently retired postal worker, and his wife, Madelon, both of whom had spent the first thirty or so years of their lives on an Iowa farm. John Heckenberg drove the Yangs to English class. Madelon Heckenberg did the Yangs’ family laundry in her automatic washer. Even without a common language, Madelon Heckenberg and the Yangs had what she calls “regular laugh sessions.”

  What Madelon Heckenberg knew about Hmong in general she heard from Kesone Sisomphane, the best English speaker among the Laotian refugees, who told her that they were rather primitive—a remark she took as “sort of a put-down.” Other people active in Fairfield refugee work took similar remarks as a natural enough effort on the part of the Lao to distance themselves from people who might make a bad impression on the hosts—or even as a way of pointing out that adjustment might be more difficult for people who had never driven a car or operated a typewriter or spoken any French. To the English teacher, Barbara Hill, it appeared that the other Laotians were trying to help Theng Pao Yang and his family—trying to include them in the joking that sometimes went on in class, trying to commiserate with them when they were sad. Theng Pao was often sad. In English class, he sometimes began sobbing.

  One of the Lao explained to Mrs. Hill that Theng Pao was sad about having to leave his parents behind in the refugee camp. It was apparent that the contrast between life in Fairfield and the life the Yangs had left behind was strong enough to be upsetting. The Yangs had been in a refugee camp for five years. The biographical document that had been sent from Thailand on the Yangs summed up the schooling of all members of the family in one word: none. Mrs. Hill, through Kesone Sisomphane, explained to Yi Ly, through Theng Pao, that nursing a child publicly might be considered provocative rather than natural by some American men—an explanation Kesone Sisomphane carried out with dramatic warnings about locking doors and pulling shades. When So and Bay were being registered in school, Theng Pao seemed bewildered, and eventually walked off to squat silently in the hall. Although So, who was more outgoing than Bay, seemed to be responding particularly well to Roosevelt, the two younger children seemed frightened of everybody except their mother—a fact that made for some disturbance in the English class. At first, Mrs. Hill’s main concern was for Yi Ly—who appeared troubled, and burdened with her children—but gradually it turned toward Theng Pao.

  Although Yi Ly began joining in the classroom joking, Theng Pao often seemed to retreat within himself, chewing nervously on his pencil. He sometimes seemed upset by having the members of his family separated for any reason. He said, through the Lao, that he didn’t understand why he couldn’t have a telephone. (First Baptist had decided that it would be wasteful to pay for installing a telephone in a house that might be sold at any time—particularly considering the fact that the Yangs could not speak English and might even be alarmed by a wrong number.) An attempt to find Theng Pao a job at a local plant that employed two of the Laotians as sweepers proved unsuccessful. The personnel man found him distracted and asked Mrs. Hill if there was anything wrong with him. Mrs. Hill did not believe that there was anything wrong with Theng Pao—or anything serious enough to bring to the attention of Lynn Bergfalk. Theng Pao was, after all, in a difficult position—suddenly placed in a strange country, where he could communicate with his hosts only through a third language. He presumably did have relatives who had been left behind. He was less equipped to deal with the shock of modern America than the urban Lao were. Mrs. Hill simply thought he would be slower to adapt. Lynn Bergfalk had seen Theng Pao cry a couple of times, but why shouldn’t a man in his situation cry? With the Heckenbergs, the Yangs seemed all smiles and genuine affection. “They just smiled,” Madelon Heckenberg has said. “It was easy to work with them, because they appreciated what you did for them. That family wanted to please more than anybody I ever heard of.”

  On a cold Thursday in January, Su Thao, the Hmong outreach worker at the Iowa Refugee Service Center, happened to be calling on a Hmong family in northeast Iowa. He was shown a letter from Theng Pao Yang, who had written that he was homesick and wanted to move in order to be with other Hmong. The next day, Su Thao drove to Fairfield to look in on the Yangs. Theng Pao cried when he saw Su Thao. He told Su Thao that he wanted to move to California, where he had a first cousin. Su Thao tried to comfort Theng Pao. He said there were seven hundred and fifty Hmong in Iowa, some of them as close as Ottumwa. He told him that the people at First Baptist were obviously attentive and caring sponsors. He told him that the Yangs would be wise to remain in Fairfield, where there were people committed to helping them, at least until Theng Pao learned some English. Su Thao did not consider Theng Pao’s mood alarming. He had seen a lot of homesick refugees. He had seen a lot of refugees who did not have sponsors as attentive as the people from First Baptist. The family he had been calling on when he heard about the Yangs had been brought to Iowa by a man and wife who then decided to get a divorce. Su Thao left Theng Pao his office telephone number and his home telephone number.

  The Tuesday after Su Thao’s visit turned out to be a day with a lot of changes in the Yangs’ regular schedule. The eight-year-old boy, So, was taken to the dentist to have a tooth pulled. In English class, Mrs. Hill announced that the students would begin coming at two different times so that she could divide up what amounted to the elementary and intermediate speakers. That evening, the Heckenbergs, who had learned of an out-of-town funeral they would have to attend, realized that the laundry they would have ordinarily delivered the next day might be needed before they returned from their trip; John Heckenberg drove over to the Yangs’ with it. He found Yi Ly distraught. Her son, So, was lying on the living-room sofa. The boy’s eyes were closed. He was cold to the touch. Theng Pao and Bay seemed to be moaning or grieving in the bedroom. Heckenberg, seeing no light on in nearby houses, drove home, and his wife phoned Lynn Bergfalk, who phoned for an ambulance. Theng Pao and Bay turned out to have been moaning not out of grief but because of serious injury. They were rushed to the Jefferson County Hospital and then taken by air ambulance to a hospital in Iowa City. So was pronounced dead at the scene.

  It was not at all clear what had happened. Yi Ly, of course, spoke only Hmong. Finally, she pulled Madelon Heckenberg out of the crowd in the bungalow’s tiny living room and led her down into the basement. Some of the Yangs’ possessions were on the floor: five dollars in American bills that had been cut up with scissors, a Hmong flute that had been shattered, a knife whose blade had been broken. Over a pipe, there were six cords with nooses tied in them.

  —

  Yi Ly told two or three stories—in sign language then, in Hmong later to Su Thao, who had hurried down from Des Moines to interpret—but the one the Department of Criminal Investigation and the county attorney came to believe was that the entire Yang family, upon the decision of Theng Pao and with the acquiescence of Yi Ly, had tried to commit suicide—with the parents hanging the children who were too young to hang themselves. Apparently, Yi Ly had changed her mind at the last minu
te and had finally managed to cut everyone down—too late for So. If John Heckenberg had not happened to walk in with the laundry, the authorities believed, it might have been too late for Theng Pao and Bay as well.

  Theng Pao, rambling and incoherent in his hospital room, had even more stories than Yi Ly. He said that his dead sister had asked him to join her. He said Jesus had given him orders. He said one of the children had broken the case of First Baptist’s tape player, and the Yangs were afraid their sponsors would no longer love them. He said that he had read in a book that they would all die anyway. Eventually, Theng Pao and Yi Ly offered a story that caused consternation among the churchgoing people of Fairfield: they said that Theng Pao had acted because of a threat from the lowland Lao. The threat they related was specific. Theng Pao would be killed. The Lao men would sleep with Yi Ly. The children would be divided up among the Lao families. Yi Ly would be married to the widower from Vientiane whom the Methodists had brought to Fairfield.