World and Town (49 page)

“I’ll use our local facilities, thank you.”

He hesitates. “I didn’t mean to pressure you. It’s just that my dad would be mad if I didn’t point that out.” He toes the ground, boyish.

She smiles. “Tell your dad you did a good job. Real Chinese.”

“Thanks.” He looks thoughtful. “Though maybe you’d be willing to fill out a customer satisfaction survey? If you’re satisfied? Then you can tell him yourself.”

“I’d be happy to.”

“It already has a stamp on it. All you have to do is pop it in the mail.”

“That’s great.”

“I appreciate it.”

“No problem. Fathers can be hard on their sons, I know.”

He frowns. “Think so?”

It’s snowing harder now, the flakes large and light; they pile up quick and high as Hattie pockets the form and Lennie crams the bubble-wrapped urns into backpacks. He helps Hattie put her arms through the shoulder straps of one.

“It’s better to wear it frontwise,” he says.

“Like a marsupial,” she says.

“A what?”

“A kangaroo or some such. An animal that carries its young in a pocket.”

“Whatever,” he says. “This is heavy. You have to lean back.”

“Okay.” She supports the weight with her hands, the way she used to support her belly, sometimes, back before Josh was born. It’s like being pregnant again, only with her mother.

Your mother turned bowling ball
.

Lennie bears the other urn back to the car, one earbud in. In a show of respect he does not add the other bud until the car’s out of the cemetery and on the main road. He bops his head with a pecking motion, like a chicken.

T
he urns seem much larger in Hattie’s kitchen than they did in the graveyard and, next to Hattie’s computer, older—as if they hail from another reality.
The time of the large jars
. And as if with reverence for that ancient dispensation, Grace and Greta stand now, like the jars, side by side, a pair. They’re about the same height; they both fold their hands.

Twins.

“It’s a beautiful thing you’re doing,” says Grace.

“A compassionate thing,” says Greta.

Hattie shakes her head. “I think my relatives are nuts.”

Grace examines the glaze. “May I touch one?”

“Of course.”

“Is this your mother or your father?”

Hattie tilts the jar; she’s still surprised how heavy it is. “My father.”

“I’ll touch both.”

“I’m sure they’d like that.”

Grace stretches a finger out. Greenhouse gardener that she is, her cuticles are rimmed with dirt such as seems to befit the occasion as she touches the side of the urn, then lays a palm on its top, her fingers flat and splayed. Her eyes are squinched so tight her eyelashes flip up at the corners, but her face is serene.

“Thank you,” she says at last.

“You’re welcome,” says Hattie, though why is Grace thanking her? She asks if Greta wants a turn.

• • •

S
arun is home! As he’s still in a neck brace and supposed to stay still, he mostly watches TV or plays with his PlayStation, which he isn’t usually allowed to hook up to the TV but is now. What hair he has is not blond but black and enough like Mum’s that they’re quite a sight together.
Mother ’n’ son buzz cuts!
Lee would have said. It’s pretty wack. Mum lets him smoke marijuana in the living room, why not—everyone did it in Cambodia, it seems, and she likes the smell. In fact, when Mum has the energy she is going to make him chicken soup with marijuana in it, Sophy says. Hattie does not encourage this. All they need is to get busted, she says. But Mum is far more worried that Sarun will be charged with arson. Because someone must be upset, Sophy says. Like probably Everett is upset. And fair or not, people do think Sarun and his friends set the fire.

“But why the fuck would I burn down the mini-mall?” says Sarun.

He would shake his head if he could. As it is, he can only move it enough to jiggle his pirate earrings, which Sophy and Hattie have cleaned and fixed for him. The earrings rest lightly on the padding of his neck brace, around which is wrapped his gold chain, though it is barely long enough; it looks like an absurdly delicate dog collar.

“And fucking plywood!” he goes on. “That be low, man.”

Anyway, Sophy volunteers, even if he’s charged, he’ll get off, because she knows who really set the fire.

“Oh, really,” says Sarun. “Who?” His pupils are huge, his face alive and amused.

“Me,” she says. “I set the fire.”

“You!” scoffs Sarun. “You can’t even strike a match.”

“I can so.” Sophy takes some kitchen matches out of a drawer that could be the very drawer Hattie rescued long ago. She lights a match then immediately blows it out, dropping it in the sink.

Sarun laughs. “You see? You afraid of fire.”

“I did it!” she insists all the same, smiling.

“And why’d you do it? Please tell us.”

She pouts prettily, her lower lip protruding.

“Spit it out, now. What was your mo-tive?”

“I did it so they’d pin it on you!” She sticks her tongue out at him.

“Because you wanted me locked up?”

She plays with her hair. “Because you were upsetting everyone.”

“This was your grand plan?”

“I thought it was God’s plan. Because …” She wrinkles her nose.

“Spit it out,” says Sarun again.

“Because you were doing Satan’s work!” She juts her chin out.

Sarun laughs so loud Mum pokes her head out from her bedroom; Gift claps his hands but then stops, confused.

“Was it God’s plan that instead of going to jail I went to the hospital?” asks Sarun.

Sophy looks as though she might cry. Still, Sarun laughs some more as Gift climbs carefully onto his lap—knowing, it seems, that his brother is hurt. Knowing he has to be careful. He pats Sarun’s brace and gazes at his face.

“That be some kind of miracle, all right,” says Sarun. “And what about the old man?” He hugs Gift with one arm, gesturing out the window with the other. “Tell me, mastermind. He going to be sitting outside all winter? What’s God’s game plan on that?”

C
hhung sits by himself in the guard chair—smoking, drinking, brooding. Falling asleep. Mum is afraid he is going to die out there. She thinks he has been taken by
k’maoch
and that they need a
kru
to fetch him back; she just wants to know where they can find a
kru
.

Hattie calls the hippie Buddhist temple.

“
Kru?
” says the man. “Can you spell that for me?”

Hattie sighs and hangs up.

Mum goes on praying and praying, her hair shorter all the time, her carpet square tucked under her. Her shrine grows more elaborate, spawning bowls of fruit and incense.

“She says he has to come in. She says he’s going to freeze to death,” Sophy says. “But he says why should he come in when that’s what he wants. When he wants to freeze to death.”

Hattie shakes her head. “Has Sarun talked to him?”

“No, and he doesn’t want to,” says Sophy.

And sure enough, when Hattie broaches the subject, Sarun says, “That asshole almost killed me.”

Hattie checks his eyes to be sure he’s not high, then turns down the TV with the remote control. He leans forward to hear what he can of the show anyway, the cuffs of his sweatpants riding up.

“You’re right. He did. He did almost kill you. But you know, he’s sorry,” Hattie says. “He was worried you did something wrong. And he was worried that because of you the police were going to find out about Sophy’s having broken probation, and about the possible 51A on him in your old town.”

“If he’s so sorry, why don’t he say so?” Sarun scratches in under his collar with a chopstick. “If he’s so sorry, why don’t he come tell me how he knows I’m innocent? If he’s so sorry, why don’t he come tell me how he knows he beat me up for nothing? He beat me up when that cop had nothing on me, and now he can’t even say he’s sorry. You know why?” Sarun gestures with the chopstick. “Because he is crazed. That’s why. You know what he said when you first showed up? He said you were Khmer Krom.”

“Is that Vietnamese Cambodian?”

“Yeah. Or a
k’maoch
. He thought you were a
k’maoch.
” He looks back at the screen; he’s watching some sort of police drama.

Hattie sighs. “Your father should tell you how wrong he was. He should. He should apologize for overreacting, and for almost killing you. But he’s not well, Sarun.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not so well, either, thanks to he almost fucking killed me. Like you said. And why should he get off scot-free, tell me? While I’m on the spit for something I had nothing to fucking do with?” Sarun’s eyes flash with challenge; he wields the chopstick like a baton.

Hattie plucks it out of his hand. “That is an excellent question.” She stashes the chopstick down under her thigh and turns the TV off altogether.

“Hey,” he protests.

“Did anyone ask you about this in the hospital?”

“About what.”

“About what happened to you.”

“Someone did, yeah.”

He stares at his reflection. In the blank screen his brace looks bigger and brighter than any other part of him.

“And what did you say?” “I said I never saw my assailant.”

“So you covered up for your father.”

“I didn’t like the asshole they sent.”

“You covered up for him. First you let him do it and then you covered up for him.”

He looks out the window as if there might be something new to see, and not just the same old trees. His skin gleams except for the crater that is his scar.

“Why’d you never hit him back?”

He puts his hand out for the chopstick; and when she returns it to him, says, “He’s old. I could’ve killed him.” He sticks the chopstick back down his neck brace.

“You showed forbearance but then he almost killed you.”

“He’s not even my real fucking father, all right? I fucking hate him but he’s what I’ve fucking got.” Sarun grinds his jaw. “I probably would’ve died in that fucking camp if it wasn’t for him, but now I’ve done as much as I’m going to for that asshole. Because first he saved me but then he almost killed me. Like you said.”

“Did they ask about 911 being called to your place before? At the hospital?”

“Yeah.”

“And you said?”

“I said that was different. An unrelated incident.”

“And they believed you?”

He gives a half-shrug, a little calmer. “Knowing him, he probably wishes I’d turned him in. Knowing him, he probably wants to be locked up.”

“He wants to kill himself, Sarun.”

Sarun taps the chopstick on his knee, holding it loosely, like a drumstick. “People were freaked out by the van, weren’t they,” he says, finally. “They thought it was, like, a gangmobile.”

“Well, it was a gangmobile, wasn’t it? I mean, it had your gang in it, and it didn’t just drive around. It kind of snuck in and out of town.”

“So my old man wouldn’t flip.”

“Well, that attracted attention. Forget about thieves and arsonists—some people thought you were terrorists.”

“Terrorists!” Sarun leans back theatrically. “You mean those salamis with the mad hair?”

Hattie nods.

“You got to be shitting me.” He makes a twirling motion with the chopstick. “That is
muy loco
.”

“Well, that’s what people thought.”

“And now you think the old man wants to kill himself.”

“I do.”

“That is
muy loco
, too.”

“The word I’d use is ‘sad,’ ” says Hattie. “It’s
muy
sad.”

Sarun purses his mouth up and puts out his hand, wanting the remote control. His hand, though, is cupped and uninsistent, like a monk’s.

H
is gang friends come visit. It is strange to see the white van drive down to the trailer and park in the open; and how strange, too, to finally behold its occupants. Hattie counts seven of them. Who knows if this is the whole gang or just a contingent, but they’re mostly dressed in black like Lennie Dow the bone picker, with black hair; and all of them are short, and keep their hands in their pockets. Are they armed? Hattie can’t help but wonder, even as she recalls Josh’s fourth-grade winter assembly and how every single boy did stand there on the bleachers with his hands in his pockets, too. It could mean exactly nothing. None of these boys has blond hair the way Sarun used to, but most of them have gone either super-long or super-short—some of them super-short with super-long strands—no Confucian moderation, extremity is all. Oversize jackets and sweatshirts; pant legs that puddle at the bottom like Gift’s; baseball hats facing to the back or side—most of them with do-rags under them, but not all. Tattoos. Gold chains and earrings like Sarun’s but also big rings on some of their fingers and, of course, earbuds. Unlike Lennie Dow, though, they not only remove their buds as they enter the trailer, but shut their MP3 players off, besides—a mannerly bunch. In fact, they enter so respectfully—so swaggeringly shyly—that Sarun has to wave at them to take off their jackets. They take off their sneakers, too, and repeatedly refuse Mum’s offer of snacks; she has to offer three times before they finally accept a bag of chips. To the extent that they look at Sophy at all, it is furtively. Still, Sophy quickly disappears. Mum slides Hattie a plate of vegetables to chop as if this is Hattie’s job; they work side by side in the kitchen, keeping watch as the boys settle in. The living room is too small, and there aren’t enough seats, but never mind. Some lean against the wall; others sprawl on the floor. They sniff the air—the marijuana—laughing when Sarun explains, some of them openly, with a
ha-ha
, others guardedly, with a
heh-heh
. One of them covers his mouth, like a girl; none of them sits straight. Instead they relax and sprawl—engaging, Lee would say, in
a little male splay display
.

These gangs, Hattie knows, are not just social clubs. Sophy has told her how they steal computer chips out of video parlors; they deal drugs and steal cars, too, and now they’re trafficking in bear parts. Sophy has told Hattie, what’s more, about what’s involved in getting jumped in—initiated—the beating up for guys, the serial sex for girls. And how prickly the gang members are—how easily disrespected. How quick to retaliate, how violent. Hattie knows all this. She knows that even their own Sarun has “wet” people before; Mum is right to be concerned.