The November weather is deteriorating so I'm tempted. Already extended beyond my budget, I have no choice but to ride straight into the teeth of it. One day, an English-speaking fisherman tells me a gale warning has even the big freighters heading for ports. All afternoon, a strong wind broadsides me. Around dusk, it quiets. Somewhere south of Shimizu, I find a stretch of clean beachâa rarity in Japan. The thought of a campfire is irresistible. Storm warning forgotten, I cook and eat a meal of hard-boiled eggs and curry with spaghetti next to a crackling driftwood fire, my campsite a good thirty yards from the surf. The wind picks up when I hit the sack. An hour later, it rains. The wind blows harder. My tent, unstaked on the sand, begins to warp, shaking like a lump of Jell-O. I peek out at the surf crashing white in the ambient light. It looks rougher than before. I zip up my sleeping bag, telling myself it will pass. I've sat through plenty of storms. Once I sat in my tent two days waiting for the rain to stop. How bad can it get?
The rain turns pelting. Gusts lift the tent's windward end. I poke my head outside and taste sand and a tang of salt in the air. This is bad. The
ocean looks a lot closer, maybe fifteen yards off. The tide is coming in. I am worried. Okay, time to pack up. Holding down the jumping tent, I dress as fast as I can. Although I have a flashlight clipped to my baseball cap, I do everything by feel, instincts gained from months of touring. I can't get out of the tent. Without my weight, it would turn into a kite in this wind. I figure out a way to collapse the tent from inside. The surf rolls in fast. I'm racing the ocean. Frantically, I bundle my gear and drag it up a ten-yard concrete embankment, running, slipping, scrambling back and forth in horizontal rain. It's pitch-dark in the storm and my rain-splattered glasses aren't helping. As I push the bike up to safety, the ocean mats my campsite.
I huddle with my pile of gear on the walkway above the embankment. Trees bow and bushes quiver like slaves before an angry master. The heavens crack, thundering. Lightning scrawls across swollen clouds, tearing up the night and putting the fear of God into me. I mutter thanks to Him, Buddha, and my dead sister Chi. Another minute and things might have turned out very badly. I don't want to think about it. I strap the panniers onto the racks and push the bike to the road. Rain stings my face. I'm drenched, my teeth chattering. A steaming bowl of instant noodles and hot coffee would be really good. I need shelter quickly, but my funds aren't sufficient for a hotel room even if I trip over one. The wind is too strong for riding, so I slog two miles back up the road to a 7-Eleven.
I step inside the heated store. My glasses fog up. I'm smiling gleefully like a maniac. I made it. I beat the storm! I whoop and rip off my helmet, dripping a puddle just inside the door. There's no one besides the clerk, a chubby Japanese guy in his early twenties. He is reading
manga,
a Japanese X-rated comic the size of San Francisco's Yellow Pages.
I'm so happy I want to let him know what a fine place his store is. I pull out my Japanese phrase book and try to strike up a conversation.
“Bad storm, no? Camp on beach. Me. Bad storm! Heh-heh-heh
.
Hahahahahahaha!
”
He gives me a pained smile and says something I can't understand.
“Me, American. From America.”
He lifts a dubious eyebrow.
“San Francisco,” I say, and because I am in the mood I start to sing: “I left my heart in San Francisco. High on a hill ⦔
The more I sing and babble the more he looks at me like a bad dream. He flips his
manga,
making a show of reading. I attempt a few more phrases and give up on Manga-man.
Well, bugger him. I settle cross-legged on the floor next to the news rack and slurp my bowl of instant noodles. Heck, I could sit here all night and look at magazine pictures. Who needs to talk anyway? I work my way through two bowls of noodles, two cans of foul Japanese coffee, a carton of custard, and a chocolate bar. The whole time Manga-man doesn't budge from his counter fortress, the phone, and, no doubt, the policeâpanic button never out of his reach. He doesn't even pick up his comic again. He wipes down the counter a dozen times, waiting for me to do something crazy. After an hour, I feel a twinge of guilt for torturing the poor guy. It's not his fault the storm is bad and my Japanese is worse.
I don my wet gear and go out to face the storm. Manga-man is visibly relieved. I wander in the dark, come upon an all-night gas station, and stand under its awning. The old station attendant looks me up and down from inside his booth. When it is clear I am not a customer, he slides open the window, says something, his words drowned out by the whipping rain. He flicks the back of his hand at me, shooing. I go. All the houses and shops are shut against the storm, making the world look dead. Not a soul stirs. Heavy rain hoods even the streetlamps. Shivers set into me again.
I find it here in Japan where I least expect it: the black-hollow desperation of a runaway.
I luck onto a stone wall, five feet high, enclosing an empty lot. The gate is padlocked. I hoist my gear and bike over the gate. I pitch the tent behind the wall, stake it down good, and crawl inside. The wall shoulders most of the fury. A dozen yards away, the wind howls through a greenhouse, bansheeing on the loose aluminum sheets, jetting through and punching out plastic tarps. I peel off my wet clothes, then do push-ups, sit-ups, and leg lifts until I break a sweat. Things can't get much worse than this. I fall promptly asleep, thinking at last I am ready for Vietnam.
Last â Gamble
On the highway downwind, the Saigon bus driver, at the first whiff of fish, announced, “Phan Thiet, the Fishsauce Capitalâtwo more klics.”
I was nine, traveling with Uncle Long back to the town of my birth. The trip initiated my family's second escape attempt from Communist Vietnam. The plan had been hatched half a year before, on the very night my father stumbled home, barefoot and bedraggled, from Minh Luong Prison. For months he paced the attic, fearful of recapture, poring over books and maps, ironing out every detail with my mother's help. This morning, he guided me out the back door saying, “Don't be afraid, son. It'll be fine. You're going home.”
The bus rolled into Phan Thiet. It was one of those odd Vietnamese coastal towns steeped in one trade and indecisive about the cloak it wore. In the rainy season, rich red clay swamped the province, pasty on thatched walls, runny on children's faces. In the hot season, blistering shards of wind blasted sand into every crevice so thoroughly that old women complained it gritted their joints. This was the narrow season of transition. It had the air of paradise despite a briny tinge of decomposing fish that haunted the streets and alleys year-round. This town, after all, was famous for its fishsauce.
My step-grandfather Grandpa Le was a fishsauce baron, born into a sea-heritage that dated back before the Japanese and the French occupation. He used to claim that his ancestors invented fishsauce. The whole town was built on this industry. Everyone knew how it was made and at one time most people in town, when they weren't dragging the ocean for fish, were putting fresh fish, unwashed and ungutted, into salt barrels to ferment. While they waited on the decomposition process, all they ever talked about was fishsauce. Which fish produced the best-tasting extract? How to mix various types of fish to make a balanced bouquet. Indeed, there were many varieties of fishsauce, each suitable for a certain style of cooking. The finest batches were flavorful enough to be savored directly from the bottle. In a few weeks, a smelly black ooze seeped out the bottom of the barrel. Fisherfolk diluted and bottled this black gold and sold it all over the country. Blend mastersâlike Grandpa Leâguarded their secrets zealously and made fortunes. In the old days, the village folk prized bottles of fishsauce concentrate as great gifts, the equivalent of fine wine and cash.
Uncle Long said these days people treated it like an illicit narcotic, hiding their production from the tax collectors, squirreling bottles of it away for bartering. Liberated into Communism or not, Vietnamese needed fishsauce the way we needed air. For us, it was salt and a thousand other spices, the very marrow of the sea to a country of coastal people. It was a good thing Grandpa left us a stockpile of fishsauce when he died.
Grandma Le's house and sundry shop sat five yards from the main road, the national highway. The bus dropped us at the front door. Grandma, Auntie Dung, and all my siblingsâChi, Huy, Tien, and Hienâcame out to greet us. Grandma took me into her shop and said I could eat as much candy from her store as I could swallow on account that she hadn't had chance to spoil me as she had my siblings. They had been living with Grandma when we came back from prison. While I was locked up in Saigon, they were running wild with the local kids.
Auntie Dung took all of us out for milkshakes. We walked down the shady avenue, holding hands, singing, our sandals scrunching on
sandâthis a beach townâto a kiosk that had been in the same spot under a tamarind tree since I could remember. The vendor, whose laughs were as fresh as the sweet fruits she served, hand-shaved ice for us until her arms ached. Huy and Chi had durian milkshakes made with shaved ice and condensed milk. Tien had his favorite, a breadfruit milkshake. I had soursop.
The feasting started then and lasted until the moment we left. Grandma didn't think she would see us again so she made us our favorite dishes. Grandma and Great-Grandaunt, who was so old and stooped I could touch the top of her head, roasted chickens for Huy and Chi, stewed hams for Tien and Hien, and fried mountains of delicious egg rolls for me. Grandma's little house was full of laughter; the stove in her kitchen, which was separate from the main quarters, never cooled off. They were constantly making treats for us. There was so much to eat, we forgot the rest of the country was beginning to starve.
I could tell people were hungry because I often watched the store for Grandma. It was a mom-and-pop operation, hardly bigger than an average bedroom, carrying a variety of goods: a dozen bolts of cloth, kitchen knives, flour, candles, several shelves of canned foods, spices, dried edibles, and the occasional baked goods from a local baker. Neighbors came in and bought ingredients, one meal at a time: a grab of dried shrimp, a cup of fishsauce, a few spoons of sugar, a scoop of lard. The bin of white rice stayed full. I sold it by the cup to be offered to portraits of dead ancestors. People ate the red rice, a dry, tasteless wild variety that farmers once fed to chickens and pigs.
One afternoon while I was snouting through a jar of candy, the cute girl who lived next door came in. She smiled and gave me a nickel-bill and two chipped teacups.
“My mom needs a tablespoon of cooking oil and half a cup of fishsauce,” she said.
“What is she making?” I mumbled, trying to swallow a mouthful of sesame caramel and grinning like a moron. My parents had enrolled me in an expensive boys' prep school. I didn't know any girls except my friend who used to live in the alley behind our house in Saigon.
“Stir-fried spinach and onion omelet.”
“Oh.” I filled one teacup with cooking oil, the other with fishsauce. “You want some peppermint candy?” I handed her a fistful.
She shook her head, hesitating.
“It's free!” I said, grinning so wide my face nearly split.
“Really?”
“Yes, it's all mine.” I exaggerated, pointing at the row of candy jars.
“Thanks.”
“My name is An. What's yours?”
“Hoa.”
“What else would you like, Hoa?” I gestured magnanimously at the entire inventory.
Grandma knew I was pilfering her store for a few smiles from Hoa, but she looked the other way, kindly going inside for a nap when Hoa came around. She was letting me grow up the way she had let Chi find her footing.
I could tell Chi was different. She smiled a lot, a lopsided grin brought on by growing up among the coconut palms and basking in Grandma's affection. This place had seeped into her, filled her out, made her a part of it. She was tall and strong. She swam, climbed trees, chopped wood, and practiced martial arts. She bullied the bullies and fasted with Grandma, who was a devout Buddhist. Chi owned the village the way it owned her and she shared it generously with me, something I, the spoiled first son, never expected.
Early every morning, Chi took Huy, Tien, and me down to the bay to teach us to swim. Grandma sent us off with steamed rice cakes filled with peppered pork and sweet beans. We walked down to the beach, our breakfasts warm in our pockets. These were to be saved for after our swim, but we ate them on the road, knowing there was a meal waiting on the beach. In the water, Chi held each of us up by our stomachs and we learned to dog-paddle. We swam, waded, and built sand castles. Entire clans of fisherfolk, from grandfathers to toddlers, gathered on the shore to bring in the morning catch. When they hauled in the nets, we pitched in, digging our feet into the sand, heaving the lines to their rhythm in a tug-of-war with the sea. The net made a great big U in the water, taking a bite of the ocean as we brought it in. Silvery fish came out of the water like coins pouring,
bouncing, hopping out of a slot machine. The fisherfolk went mad with laughter, dashing about, scooping up the jackpot into handwoven baskets, screeching to each other to grab this one or that one before it flopped back into the water. We worked with them, laughing, competing to see who bagged the most. In return, they gave us a couple of fish and lent us a pan and oil. Chi built a driftwood fire on the beach and fried the fish. We pinched the meat from the bones, and ate it off banana leaves with salt and lime, sitting on the sand, watching the sun come up out of the water. It felt as though Chi had never gone to live with Grandma. I never thought we could be so happy again, Chi and me playing as though it had never happened. Like I'd never betrayed her and Leper-boy, three years before.
The village leper didn't have a name. People called him Leper-boy although he was at least a young man. Perhaps that was because he was short, very small-bonedâ“hardly more than a lame chicken,” Grandma used to say. I was in kindergarten then, and he didn't seem all that much bigger than me. He walked on one leg and crutches. His other foot had withered around the ankle like a bad squash. But he was a great traveler, getting around the village more than most two-legged folks. They said he even made it out to the countryside a couple of times a week. It was how he ate.
From house to house, he begged with his one gift, singing in a voice so pure the older folks grieved over his tragedy. That misshapen face, they said, cheated him of a professional career in the opera. But really, it was their way of overlooking his malady. Sad, sad, they hushed, his ancestors must have done something horrible to cause him such misfortune.
An observer of courtesy, Leper-boy made himself scarce in the morning when merchants went to market. Begging from the sellers before they could sell, people believe, brought bad commercial luck. Leper-boy let the vendors returning from market find him in the afternoon sitting by the side of the road, serenading them a cappella. Kind souls gave him bits of what they could not sell. Snack girls, walking with rounds of rice crackers, as big as trays, stacked three feet
high on their heads, would stop. They often gave him a little of what they had left. He thanked them and put their gifts into a bag he slung over his shoulder, the bag a gift from some Buddhist monks, who were also, in their fashion, great beggars.
Leper-boy didn't like sesame crackers and shrimp paste as much as he liked tobacco, and he found, in my sister Chi, a suitable trading partner. He exchanged his tidbits with her for cigarette butts she had salvaged from the family's ashtrays. It was a transaction which my father had forbid. Dad said Leper-boy might be contagious and none of us could talk to him or touch anything he touched. But as children, we were not allowed to have money, and sesame rice crackers and shrimp paste were my sister's favorite snack.
Dad came home after work and found Chi snacking. He asked her how she got the food. He knew that without money she couldn't have bought it. Chi said a friend gave it to her. He asked me and I don't know why I said it. Maybe I was angry at Chi. Or, simply, I was just spoiled. Full of a first-son righteousness, I told on her. Dad raged through the house, furious at Chi.
You dare disobey me! I'll teach you how to be respectful in this house!
He laid her out on the living room divan and broke bamboo canes on her, exacting the Vietnamese punishment in a cloud of blind wrath. Neighbors crowded the front door, begging him to stop. Men shook their heads, women beseeched him for mercy. Yet no one crossed the threshold. It was a man's right to beat his child. The police weren't summoned because they wouldn't have intervened. Mom cried, kneeling beside the divan. Dad rose above them, his visage terrible to behold, an angry god, vengeful and unyielding. Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Chi screamed. Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! People clamored for mercy. I cried, cowering in the hallway terrified, for I had brought these blows on her. Like striking vipers, the canes blurred through the air, swishing, biting into Chi, one after another. Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! She howled. I cringed, covering my ears, knowing well the taste of bamboo, the way it licks out at flesh, first a jolt like electricity, then sharp like a fang, then hot like a burn. The canes broke over her back. The neighborhood women, wringing their shirttails, muttered that Dad's cruelty was a curse upon our house. The
last cane splintered into bits, and Dad stormed away to find another. Mom dragged Chi up and put Chi's hand in mine. Take her to Grandma's, Mom told me. Chi and I fled the house. I returned home that evening, but Chi never wholly came back into our lives again.
Mom came out to Grandma's a week before Dad. When she finally sent word for him that things were ready, he sneaked out of Saigon and arrived in Phan Thiet by hiding on a cargo train. Dad came into Grandma's house like a rat crossing a dark street. We were sitting on straw floor mats in the living room eating dinner. He stepped into the pumpkin warmth of our oil lamp and I, familiar with the carefree beach days, saw him as though I hadn't seen him in months. He was a thin bag of shallow breaths and sweaty skin. Fear had bled away his commanding air. His cheekbones poked out while his eyes sank deeper into his head. His new stoop and rain-sloped shoulders made him small.
In one step, he reunited the whole family for the first time in over a year. And suddenly, I felt Chi withdrawing to the side. She started lurking on the edge of us, constantly on one errand or another when Dad was around. She developed an eerie knack for sensing him around corners, and she had this ability to melt into the furniture when he came into the room. She never looked him in the eye. Fourteen summers old now, she was too young to have fallen permanently from grace with Dad. There was a wedge between them driven, perhaps, deeper by the fact that she lived with Grandma, who was never fond of Dad in the first place.