Burning Moon

by Richard Barre

  Like then, everything was going wrong.

  Tam looked at the girls, the fight in them gone once the door had swung shut. He knelt, pulled them to him so that they had no choice but to focus on him. When they had, he said, “We gotta do this, understand? Don’t want to—got to.” He brought the roll of wide gray tape down off his forearm where he’d jammed it, ripped off a piece, began wrapping the older girl’s wrists.

  “Noooooo…” This awful thin wail, while the littler one, more like seven and so pretty despite her tear-streaked face it broke his heart to look at her, heaved up wracking breaths. Reminding him of his stepmother’s rabbits when their time came: just giving up.

  “I won’t let him kill you, I promise,” Tam said with sudden resolve. “But you gotta do as I say. All right?”

  That’s when he heard the pops. Rapid, like an exchange of fire, the girls’ eyes as wide as his own. Too many, even if Trong had blasted the Suns three times over.

  Which meant the dragon was indeed loose.

  Which meant the girls were next.

  Crazy fucking Trong.

  Tam dropped the tape and, to the older girl, said: “Gotta hide you—right now. You know a place?” Whispering it until she nodded. “I’ll say you got away. Go!” Closing his eyes like he was six and playing hide-and-seek with his cousins again; wanting the girls to be somewhere he and Trong and the rest couldn’t find them. Wanting even more to shut it all out, to open his eyes and just be somewhere else.

  Anywhere. Even home.

  He opened them; the girls weren’t there. No flashes, no doors easing shut: gone. He took a breath, heard the door behind him swing open. He stood to face them, tough it out.

  But it wasn’t Trong who stood in the doorway.

  The man letting the door come to rest on its hinges was tall and leather tan; if Tam had thought about it, he was dressed in clothing too dark for summer. But Tam’s eyes still glimpsed what he’d seen when the door opened: the sprawled bodies of Trong, Lang, and Kenny. Dark stains spreading under them.

  Tam heard someone moan—Mrs. Sun—Nam Sun’s voice trying to calm her. The tall man raised a huge-looking pistol and sighted on the bridge of Tam’s nose. “The girls,” he said.

  As if requesting the time.

  “Hiding,” Tam managed. “Told them to go hide. When I heard the—”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t look. It’s the truth. Please.”

  The man lowered the gun slightly to scan him with cold eyes.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Eighteen,” Tam said, trying to hold them—viewfinders into the Antarctic. Tears were coming and he could feel a wetness where he shouldn’t. “Seventeen…”

  Tam thought he detected a thaw, but he was too confused to be sure. Because now the man was asking him something in Vietnamese, a fluency he’d never before heard from a Caucasian. Like a window opening on his soul.

  “How do you feel about redemption?” the man repeated.

  9

  Kicking himself the four blocks to the Bonneville, Wil was unlocking when he figured he might as well stop by an attorney he knew who specialized in marine law. But John Pereira was not behind his arched and nail-studded door, so Wil left his card in the crack and returned to the car. By the time he was easing out, still thinking What a horseshit performance—three months of not seeing her, then THAT, a man in a sombrero was waiting for the space.

  Free of downtown the traffic thinned and Wil caught the freeway west to the University of California at Santa Barbara—UCSB—new and older institutional buildings set on a cliff above the ocean and molded around a curve of green-water lagoon. Creek-cut wetlands and airport runway on the mountain side, Campanile in the middle, its own surfing point and secluded beaches.

  Far too good for students, he’d long-ago concluded.

  Bigger now, anyway: which meant the information he wanted was in a different venue than when he’d transferred up pre-Vietnam from UCLA. Still, he found the schedule of classes—anything to do with physics—one on electromagnetism ending, another, a materials lab, concurrent but longer running.

  Double-timing it to Physical Sciences, the electromagnetism door-window, he failed to see her, then stepped back as the class rose and filed out. He asked one of the filers where the materials lab was, and this time Mia Tien was in attendance: Planet Hollywood tee, khaki shorts, black-and-white Simples. She was working with a taller girl with red hair, the experiment they were bent over on a Formica surface near the window.

  For a moment, he just watched. In oval metal-rims, brushing back the forelock, this Mia Tien was engaged and animated. Not the dug-in hardcase of last night. He checked his watch: forty-five minutes.

  Taking sun-laced paths to the Student Center as bicycles whipped past, he marveled again at the surroundings, then cruised the bookstore, finding in a sketchy fiction section a marked-down Philip Caputo and a Don Winslow. He bought both, then ran himself out, wondering what in his closet he’d have to banish to the library to make room for them.

  Fifteen minutes.

  She came out holding the door for the red-haired girl, who nodded her thanks before heading up the hall. Mia Tien’s eyes widened, dropped to his bag, then came up again. Hurriedly, she lost the glasses in the backpack on her shoulder.

  “Hey, there,” Wil said. Casual. Unthreatening.

  “What are you doing?” Looking around. “How did you find me?” A drawbridge rising shut.

  “My work, remember?”

  He caught a kid with angular cheekbones and a mustache with aspirations bearing down. Torn jeans and unlaced Reeboks, Hawaiian shirt with blue palm trees. Stepping up beside her, the kid said, “You ready, babe?” A long, portent-filled glance at Wil.

  Mia regarded him. “I won’t be long, Derek. You in the lot?”

  “Till I get tired of it,” he said.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Derek was about to turn away when he said, “You need any help with this guy?”

  “So now it’s Bruce Lee?” Rolling her eyes.

  The kid cast another look at Wil’s six-two as the others streamed past. Air conditioning pulsed in the ceiling vents, the murmur of post-academic chat.

  “Do I pass?” Wil asked.

  “Derek, I can handle it,” she said to his glower.

  “This time,” the kid said. “Late.”

  “As in too late for any of us?” Wil asked after Derek had slouched his way down the stairs.

  “Derek has his moments.”

  “Babe?…”

  “He also has an IQ of 119. What do you want?”

  “A moment of your time would be nice.”

  “There something in it for me?”

  Wil reached into his bag, handed her one of the canned teas he’d also bought.

  “What joy is mine,” she said, a smile half-forming as she popped the tab and took a sip, then led him back into the now-empty lab. Offloading her pack to lean against a countertop. “Well?”

  “You said something the other night, Mia. About your father being the one who killed your brother.”

  “What of it?”

  “It got me wondering. Two things, actually: One, I don’t think you’re as tough as you’d like some people to think—me, for instance. Two, I wanted to see if you actually believed it.”

  “Why should I tell you anything?”

  “Because words mean things,” he said. “Start something like that, you finish it.”

  “Says you.” Glancing at the clock.

  “Case in point: Did you tell the sheriff that? If you didn’t and it’s true, you’ve wasted valuable time your father had to cover his tracks.”

  Her gaze stayed put, Wil’s answer. “He’s a bully,” she said finally. “A workaholic bully who terrorizes everybody, and my mother just stands for it.”

  “Meaning what, exactly?”

  “They’re just so…I don’t know—stuck.”

  “That exp
lains it, all right.”

  “My brother looked out for me and he was great and I could fucking talk to him, and now he’s gone. And guess who in effect drove him to my uncle’s and told him not to come back.”

  “Maybe your dad was so scared of losing him he held on too tight, Mia. It happens. And maybe your brother had a little something to do with it.”

  “He drove Jimmy away. Because of what he is.”

  “Something else I’m not getting?”

  She paused, decided, drew a breath, plunged. “Just for kicks, ask him what side he fought on. Ask to see his pictures. The ones he keeps in the crawl space.”

  Wil felt a sound rather than heard it: dissolved limestone dripping into a subterranean pool. Hardening. “How about a reason.”

  “Do black pajamas mean anything to you?”

  Just like that.

  Wil saw it as bullshit to shock him, tried to read her expression and came up short. “Your father Viet Cong? Sorry, no sale.”

  “Suit yourself,” she delivered with a little flash of triumph. “But you two might even have traded shots.”

  Welcome to the ruins, he thought. “Mia, you know something? If I were the suspicious type, I’d say you either hate your father beyond all reason or you’re trying to run me off because you’re afraid of what I’ll find. You’re too smart for the former. Which leads me to believe you aren’t too sure what your brother got himself into.” Giving it a second to percolate. “We anywhere close here?”

  She tilted her head, tried a deep breath without success. “You see anybody who cares what you believe?”

  “I happen to. Did you know his girlfriend?”

  “Wen? Of course I knew her.” Angry swipe at the forelock that had fallen across her face.

  “And liked her?”

  “She was nice enough. She worked at my uncle’s after…”

  “After what?”

  “Nothing.”

  File under something. He said, “What was she doing for your uncle?”

  “Are you for real? Why do you think Jimmy said it was his baby other than to get her out of there? God knows whose it really was.”

  Bingo. “Real match made in heaven, huh?”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “Not enough, obviously. Might be time I had a talk with Uncle Luc.”

  “Yeah, right.” Beyond skeptical.

  Wil realized he hadn’t opened his tea. Handing it to her before heading for the door, he said, “I’ll make you a deal. Cool Bruce Lee’s jets with this and I’ll get back to you on your uncle.”

  “Some deal.”

  “Beats whatever Derek’s offering, and you know it.”

  10

  After a slow go past a Rincon with mainly kids trying to make something from nothing but still surfing, Wil heard the phone on his way up the stairs. By the time he’d gotten the door open and sidestepped Matt’s greeting, the answering machine was taping a message from John Pereira, his marine-law friend.

  “Out long-boarding, I assume,” the message went. “Must be nice—”

  “John…just got in.”

  “Never lie to an attorney, we’re experts.”

  “Can’t pass off a call screening on you, huh?”

  “Never,” Pereira came back, “What’s up?”

  Wil told him: Jimmy Tien, no distress calls on the radio, the missing detection finder. The findings in the articles he’d seen.

  Pereira said,”I remember it, sort of. Shit happens, right?”

  “Jimmy’s father swears it was no accident.”

  “What’s he going to say—that he did it?”

  No, his daughter took care of that. “He’s putting money up, John. What I want to know is whether or not it’s a good idea.”

  “You’re asking a lawyer about taking money?”

  “Who better?” Hollow-sounding even to himself.

  “Or am I sensing somebody looking for an excuse to beg off?”

  Am I? Wil thought. Shadowy figures flashed behind a lattice of green, the clink of a mortar round against its tube launcher. Darkened brass chambered into rifles old when they drew down on the French at Dien Bien Phu, the metallic rasp of a bipod under a treasured light machine gun.

  He knew guys who’d served and who still hadn’t lost their resentment: the country, the ARVN, politicians and profiteers—gooks, period. Guys who refused to talk about it, who’d seen so many friends turned to meat they’d simply torched the idea of having friends. Where if the fires ever did go out, they wouldn’t know themselves…even if they made it past the cold that set in.

  “Want me to write you a note excusing you from school?” Pereira broke in.

  “I knew I’d called the right John.”

  “I’ll say this for your edification: Marine law is a different crockpot. None of those landlubber niceties. Some years ago a fishing boat went down off San Nicolas Island. Like a range shell maybe took it out? For months the families of the guys that bought it lobbied for bringing up the hulk and proving it. Finally your favorite uncle agreed, and guess what they ruled in spite of all?”

  “Accidental,” Wil said.

  “Hey, you ever think of going into law, call me.”

  “Any second now, John.”

  After hanging up, he changed into shorts for a walk with Matt. But instead an old weariness took him and he walked a tea out on the deck, thinking it might restore him. Across the moving line of cars, blue stretched beyond his bay, past the oil rigs and the Channel Islands, Hawaii and the Philippines. To a sweltering Mekong evening in 1972…

  He’d been below decks, going over the list of possible hot spots with Rodriguez when Belcher stuck his head in on the meet.

  “Skip wants you both on deck, Mr. H. Possible situation.”

  They went up—Rodriguez to take over at the stern .50 where they’d gathered.

  “What do you make of that,” Miller said, field glasses raised.

  Wil picked up his duty pair and homed in on this pathetic threesome waving at the Point Marlowe from the sagging remains of a dock—fishing-skiff access for a dead village Wil remembered from the charts. Small, scared-shitless-looking mother holding a squalling baby, a wide-eyed boy about three clutching her leg. River and earth smell reminding him of freshly dug grave.

  “What are they doing out there?”

  “You’re asking me?” The CO mashing a mosquito into red-black paste, humidity still rising from the afternoon rainshower that had neither cooled nor freshened. “What makes these people do anything?”

  Wil kept scanning. “Frightened of something. The woman keeps checking over her shoulder.”

  “I’m open to suggestion.”

  Belcher led off. “I vote getting our butts gone—sir.”

  “So noted,” Miller said. “Rodriguez, Tilson, Ford?”

  “The Point Faro ringing any bells here?” Rodriguez.

  Nods of affirmation from Tilson and Ford. Sister-ship to their own 82-footer sent over to serve under the Navy, the Faro had been shot up intercepting contraband two weeks prior, VC snipers picking off the ship’s XO and a crewman before they could get the hell out of there.

  For a moment no one spoke.

  Knowing Miller was hearing the same cries he was, Wil said, “She’s scared to death and the kids are a mess. Wouldn’t take much to swing over and pick ‘em up.”

  “Chief Gunnery Officer Rodriguez?”

  “Cheese in a trap, sir, but we can give it a try.”

  “We got the draft?”

  “Sir, yes, sir.” Tilson.

  Miller was silent a moment, then he nodded, lowered the glasses, headed forward. “All ahead slow, hard’a port, be ready to hit it. One pass, gentlemen. We clear on that?”

  “Yes, sir,” Wil said, hearing it echo around the ship as he snagged his M-16, checked the breech and safety. Braced himself at his assigned position.

  “Just pray you’re right,” Miller said mounting the bridge, and Rodriguez muttered “Semper Parat
is” to no one in particular.

  Right before all hell broke loose.

  Wil had time to see the mortar round intended for them fall short, the mother and her children vanish in a bloom of muck, small arms fire erupt from the undergrowth, Rodriguez cut loose with the fifty as their own mortar opened up. He was aware of spraying the undergrowth on full auto, green chaff, the flash of return fire, explosions turning the river inside out. Then, as the boat was completing its arc, the feeling of being lanced by white-hot wire as the bullets struck and seized his breath, spun him over into the dirty wake. Brown light and filtered sounds, no air, Rodriguez hauling him aboard about the time Wil had packed it in, Miller shouting “Go, go, go, go!” as the crew laid covering fire across a thirty-degree swath.

  And, as he passed out, of a body lying on the red-streaked deck beside him, a neat round hole cored in Tilson’s forehead.

  ***

  Matt licking his hand brought him out of it, the pop of tires in his drive. Dutifully, Matt barked at the man getting out of the white pickup.

  “May I come up?” Vinh Tien asked.

  “Why not? It’s open.”

  Wil waited for the sound of steps, the kitchen door opening and closing. Then Vinh Tien was on the deck, Matt sniffing him before lying back down, his eyes tight on the visitor.

  “He remembers me.”

  Wil didn’t answer.

  “May I sit?”

  Wil slid him over a deck chair.

  Vinh Tien took it, sat, regarded the ocean. “My daughter told me what she said to you.”

  “Life’s full of surprises,” Wil answered. But it was empty and flip and he felt nothing looking at the man. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I was expecting you.”

  “I was going to tell you last night,” Vinh Tien said. “Even though I feared your reaction. My wife made me promise. She said it would be worse if you found out later.” He cleared his throat. “Of course, she was right.”

  Wil stroked Matt’s ears. A small plane dipped in over the beach and buzzed north over the point.