The local looked up and spoke angrily in Vietnamese. He released his grip on Minh, who was pulled from danger by Mai. As the guard continued to rant at Noah, Iris arrived and stood protectively in front of the children. “What happened?” she asked Mai.
“We only ask customer to play game.”
“That’s it?”
“Sure, sure. Nothing else.”
Noah swayed unsteadily on his good leg. “Why did you grab his ear?” he asked the guard, his voice loud, his anger over Tam’s illness threatening to overwhelm him.
“You in Vietnam,” the guard replied, standing his ground. “You speak Vietnamese!”
“I’ll speak whatever I—”
“That’s enough, Noah,” Iris interrupted. “We need to leave. Now.”
Noah glared at the guard, aware of the children’s tears. “You don’t ever touch them again. You hear me?”
“Next time I call police,” the guard replied. He turned toward Mai and Minh and spoke in Vietnamese, his voice much louder than the nearby traffic.
The children lowered their heads, avoiding his eyes. He continued to lecture them, then kicked one of the game pieces into the street. Before Noah could respond, the guard stepped back into the store.
A taxi nearly ran over the piece before Noah managed to retrieve it. Minh stooped to collect the remainder of the pieces while Iris held Mai’s hand. “What did he say to you?” Iris asked, wiping a tear from Mai’s cheek.
Mai shook her head slowly. “He . . . he say all street children the same. He say . . .”
“What? What, Mai?”
“He say we all garbage. Should be put into a dump forever.”
“Oh, Mai, you know that’s not true,” Iris said, hugging Mai while Noah moved beside Minh.
Mai thought about sleeping next to garbage, about eating garbage. She wondered if the guard was right. “He say what he believe. Not first time we hear this.”
Iris dropped to her knees. “You speak two languages, Mai. You’re smart and you’re beautiful. And just because you’ve lived on the street doesn’t mean that you can’t do wonderful things.”
“She’s right,” Noah said. “She’s right and he’s wrong.”
“No, you wrong!” Mai replied, tired of trying to run from the truth. “You say I do wonderful things. What? You think I become doctor or movie star? Or maybe I be president? That man . . . he right. He say only what everyone think.”
“We don’t think that,” Noah said.
“What I care what you think? Maybe you gone tomorrow, go back to America. That man, he here always.”
“But—”
“And today we have no games. Minh win nothing. And tonight, how we give five dollar to Loc? If we no give him five dollar, he hurt us.” She thought of Loc pressing her face into the water, and her tears increased.
“Who’s Loc?” Iris asked, again wiping Mai’s face.
“No one. Everyone.”
“Who is he, Mai?”
“He big man. We pay him five dollar each day. He protect us. But he also hurt us. I very afraid of him. Sure, sure, I am.”
Minh moved to Mai’s side, offering her his stump, which she grasped.
“Where do you sleep, Mai?” Iris asked.
“Under bridge. In basket.”
Iris stood up, placing her hands on Mai’s shoulders. “Would you like to live with us? In our center?”
“But your center only for girls. I never leave Minh.”
“But we could find another center for Minh. We could—”
“No!”
“There must be someplace he can—”
“No!”
Noah saw the pain in Mai’s face and was reminded of his own sufferings. “Wait,” he said, as she turned away. “What if . . . you lived in the center and . . . and Minh lived with me, in a nearby apartment?”
Mai wasn’t sure that she’d heard him correctly. “With you?”
“That’s right. Maybe he could study with you, but live with me. At least for now.”
“But Loc. Sure, sure, he be angry. He look for us.”
Iris glanced at Noah, thinking of the man who’d threatened her. She’d told Noah about the man, and wanted to tell the policeman. Now it sounded as if they had two such men to worry about.
“I’ll handle Loc,” Noah replied.
“You no understand,” Mai said, seeming to shrink. “He hurt us if we no pay.”
Noah took a step closer to her. “Then we’ll pay him. We’ll find him and give him enough money to leave you alone.”
Mai dropped Minh’s stump and took Noah’s hands in her own. “You can do this? No lie? You can pay Loc, and I can stay in center, and Minh can stay with you?”
“That’s exactly what we’ll do,” Iris said. “And you can do something for us. Something important.”
“What?”
“There’s a girl in our center, a very sick girl. You met her. Remember? You can be her friend. You can learn at our school and be her friend.”
Mai had never been asked by an adult to do anything other than earn money. At first, she didn’t know how to respond. Then she thought of living at the center, of helping the sick girl, of Minh staying with the nice American. And these thoughts, which were gifts almost beyond her ability to imagine, prompted her to smile. “Thank you,” she said, squeezing Noah’s hands. “Thank you so much.” She wiped her face of tears and grinned. “And Minh thank you too. Later you see. He let you win game and then you know how happy he is.”
Iris wiped away a tear that Mai had missed. “We need you, Mai. You can help us. You really can.”
“Sure, sure?” Mai asked. “We stay with you? We no worry about Loc?”
“Sure, sure,” Iris replied, smiling.
Noah looked into the store. “Let’s go in there. Let’s buy you a pretty dress. We’ll show him who you really are.”
Mai’s grin wavered, but Minh moved toward Noah and nodded, eager to see Mai in such a dress.
“For me?” Mai asked. “But . . . but maybe dress too pretty.”
Iris glanced at Noah, surprised and pleased by his idea. “Every girl needs a pretty dress, Mai. Especially if she’s going to make a new friend.” Iris put her arms around the children. “Let’s go find you both something,” she said, moving toward the store. “And then we’ll take you home.”
As Mai answered excitedly, Noah turned about, looking for a man called Loc, wondering if the man could be bought. Most people could be bought. But what if Loc wasn’t such a person? What if he came for the children?
Noah reached for his flask and took a small sip. He didn’t want a confrontation. But Mai wanted to laugh. And Minh wanted to learn. And Noah was going to take whatever steps necessary to let them do both.
NIGHT HAD NEARLY FALLEN BY THE time Noah and Thien drove toward the bridge, which was in a putrid, rotting part of the city. Squat buildings loomed like old tombstones over the rutted street. Half-dead trees sprouted from planters alongside weeds and lonely flowers. Iron gates protected the wares of filthy shops, enclosing engines, axles, bricks, and vats of oil and diesel fuel.
The unlit street twisted like a serpent, vacant but for occasional scooters. Thien followed this serpent, deft with the handlebars of Iris’s scooter, unworried by the darkness. Noah sat behind her, peering ahead. He couldn’t believe that Mai and Minh walked this street and slept nearby. Despite recent rains, the entire area smelled as if it hadn’t been cleaned in a thousand years.
“Do you think we’ll find him?” Noah asked, his voice rising above the purr of the scooter.
“Do not worry. They have not paid him for today. And so he will be there.”
“Will this work?”
“Sometime, Mr. Noah, I hope you can see the beauty of Vietnam. Now all you see is an old street. But Vietnam has green mountains, white beaches, and beautiful temples.”
“Tell me about your village.”
“My village?” Thien avoided an immense pothole, maneuvering the scooter as if it were a part of her. “My village is in a valley next to a wide river. It often floods, so all of the homes are on stilts. In the shade beneath the homes, women sew, children play. My father’s rice field is not far away. It is so lovely, Mr. Noah. Rows of green stalks, water reflecting the blue sky. When I see it, I always sing.”
Noah heard the happiness in her voice and experienced a brief pang of jealousy. How lucky she was to love such simple things. “Do you miss it?” he asked, her ponytail flopping against his chin as they hit a bump.
“I miss my family the most. My brothers and my sisters. But I always go home to help my father with the harvest. And then my mother and I talk all night. And she knows that I am not so far away.”
The buildings on either side of the road vanished. Noah glanced to his right and saw the silhouette of a river. A bridge appeared before them. “Is this it?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you scared?”
“No. But I have heard of this man. This man who wears the baseball shirt and . . . and makes children his slaves. We will have to be careful.”
“Is this smart? Maybe we should be going to the police.”
“I will tell Sahn of what we have done. And I think he will approve.”
Noah studied the bridge. “Please translate for me.”
She drove up on a sidewalk that ran alongside the river. Switching the ignition and headlamp off, she used a chain to lock the scooter to a nearby lamppost. “He will not be happy about losing Mai and Minh,” she said. “But the money should be enough to change his mind.”
“Let’s find him.”
Thien left the sidewalk. She walked to the end of the bridge and entered a labyrinth of shanties that teemed about the area like flies on a dead bird. The shanties were dark and mostly silent. Somewhere an infant cried.
Staying close to the bridge, Thien moved toward the river. Noah noticed that she walked slowly, allowing him the time to navigate the treacherous footing. To his amazement she started to sing, bringing life to a song that he’d often heard emanate from her lips. If she was afraid, she didn’t outwardly show it.
The rutted trail that they followed twisted under the bridge. Something large passed above, for the bridge rumbled ominously. After a few more steps they circumvented a woman asleep on a torn section of carpet. Noah carefully eyed his surroundings, reminded of searching for insurgents in the slums of Baghdad. Those nights he’d held an assault rifle and walked beside men and women whose bravery had often seemed limitless.
Glad that he no longer carried a weapon, but feeling vulnerable without one, Noah looked for a man in a Yankees jersey, a man who shoveled fear into the hearts of Mai and Minh. Discerning anything in the darkness was difficult. The only light came from a fire near the water. Several figures surrounded the flames, talking quietly.
Noah tried to avoid broken glass, splintered wood, trash, and sleeping people. Mostly men seemed present, though a few women and children lay atop makeshift beds. A cat hissed from the nearby shanties. Someone coughed. The scent of decay seemed to be a living creature that permeated each molecule of oxygen.
Thien walked to the river’s edge. The fire and those surrounding it were about five paces away. Noah studied the group, realizing that they were using pointed sticks to roast meat above the flames.
“He isn’t here,” Noah said, his voice carrying into the distance.
“Then we will wait.”
And so they waited. After a few minutes, they walked to the fire. Two men and a woman held long sticks, taking care not to drop their meals into the flames. Their clothes were patched and ragged, but remarkably clean. Thien looked at the oldest man. “Hello,” she said in Vietnamese.
The man had never seen a foreigner under the bridge. He guessed from Noah’s clothes that he was American. The man remembered the war with fondness, for he’d enjoyed driving Americans around Saigon. Those had been the best days of his life. “Yes?” he finally replied.
“So sorry to interrupt you, but we are looking for someone.”
“And who is that?”
“Someone named Loc.”
The older man’s gaze dropped to the fire. “He’s here.”
“He is? Where?”
From the shadows stepped a large man, his arms crossed in front of his Yankees jersey, as if he were cold. Thien saw the ugly mole on his chin and raised her eyes to his. She was aware of Noah moving closer to her, of his hand reaching for hers, but she was unresponsive. So this is what a monster looks like, she thought, disgusted by the sight of Loc, but hiding her emotions.
“Where are they?” Loc asked in Vietnamese, his arms unfolding. The grip of opium had left his body several hours before. He’d been searching for Mai and Minh ever since, his anger growing as the day aged.
“Who?” Thien answered.
“Who else? The half boy and the girl.”
Thien sensed his breath befouling her. It was the breath of a cobra, full of poisons and death. “Mai and Minh are safe,” she replied, hating him.
His nostrils flared. His bloodshot eyes widened. “You think you can steal from me?”
“We—”
“From me?”
“We’ve come to make a trade.”
“What trade?”
“Two hundred and fifty American dollars. We’ll give you that if you promise not to come near them. And in six months we’ll give you another two hundred and fifty.”
Loc glanced at her pockets and then the American’s pockets. He thought about robbing them but decided that no need existed. Promises could always be broken. He edged forward at the prospect of so much money. With it he could indulge in high-priced women and light his pipe for days on end. His gaze drifted back to Thien, and for the first time he noticed her beauty. “How much for you?” he asked, wanting to blow smoke on her naked body.
Thien stiffened. “I am not for sale.”
“Everything has a price. Everything. Now name yours.”
Though she wanted to turn away, to spare herself from further insults, Thien remained still. To turn from him would endanger Mai and Minh. “Do you want the money or not?”
Noah saw Thien’s jaw tighten. “What’s happening?” he asked, eager to help her but feeling powerless.