A Novel
“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
—Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United Stated
One
The 1978 Chevy Impala turned off Highway 24, east of Oakland California, and into the town of Laurel Valley. Driving the car was a man dressed in army fatigues and jungle boots. The clothes and boots had come from an army-navy store in Oakland, near where the man lived.
The man was five feet eleven inches tall, thinnish but not skinny. He had straw-blond hair that was neither fine nor coarse, lustrous nor dull. His eyes were an unremarkable blue. And at the end of January he didn’t have much of a tan. He was twenty-three years old.
The man let the Chevy roll to a stop in front of 406 Blossom Street. He had lived the first eleven years of his life at number 406.
He looked at the door of the house. His father had painted it green. Now, it was white. Above the door his father had painted the family name—Mattox. Now, the name was gone, and nothing had been painted in its place. People were afraid to identify themselves these days. Even the mailboxes, on those roads that had mailboxes, only had numbers on them.
Leslie Mattox studied the street. It was empty except for an old man puttering around on a lawn at the very end of the block. Leslie knew the old man—Charles Moulin. He and his friends used to call Moulin "Frenchie" because Moulin spoke with an accent. On Halloween they had splattered his windows with shaving cream and had let the air out of his tires.
Leslie, thinking back, decided Moulin had been lucky: They might have spray-painted his house and slashed his tires.
Leslie rolled down the window and took a deep breath. It was warm for January. Seventy degrees, at least. And with the sun pouring in through the windshield, it was hot; Leslie was sweating under the heavy combat jacket.
Leslie looked at each house on the block. Tommy’s house across the street. John’s next door. In between, the laurel bush behind which they had undressed John’s little sister. They had been too young to know what to do, other than look. The bush was larger now, almost a tree.
So this was what it was like to go back home: everything the same, everything different. All his friends gone, only old Moulin left.
Leslie peered through the windshield. What the hell was the old fart doing down there? He couldn’t quite see. Why were old people always fussing?
Leslie remembered his grandmother. She had lived with a dust rag in her hand, her head tilted back so she could focus through the bottom of her bifocals. Whenever he had come to visit, she had followed him from room to room to make sure he didn’t break anything, or steal anything, like a security guard in a department store.
Leslie rolled up the window and got out of the car. Then he laughed.
He laughed because it was going to be so easy. It was always easy if you were ready to die—he had read that somewhere. He took another look around the neighborhood. Moulin was on his hands and knees facing the other direction.
Leslie walked to the back of the Chevy and unlocked the trunk. The smell of gasoline leapt up at him. He picked up a 9mm Ruger pistol and tucked it in his belt. From under a blanket he pulled out an AKM-47 assault rifle.
They were good guns, guns that would get the job done, not jam or fall apart. He had saved for years to buy these guns, putting away ten or twenty dollars each week from his job stocking shelves in a giant drugstore. He was an assistant manager, which meant he supervised two or three teenagers and got paid an extra dollar-fifty an hour. But, really, he did the same work they did, and he would never make much more; he was a high school dropout.
Leslie looked at his house. His old house. He could live to be a hundred, and he would never have the money to buy a house like that. He would live in Oakland all his life.
He pulled the AKM-47 over his shoulder. He had an extra clip for the rifle; the clip held thirty rounds. He stuck it in his belt next to the Ruger. Then he started to fill his pockets with ammunition.
When his pockets were full, he reached into the trunk and took the cap off a bottle filled with gasoline. He crammed a rag into the bottle, lit the end of the rag, and slammed the trunk closed.
A spot of rust grinned up at him from under the blue paint.
With the trunk closed, there wouldn’t be enough air, and the rag would go out.
Leslie opened the trunk. The rag flared. The rag might just suck the gasoline out of the bottle like a lamp. It might not explode at all.
Leslie cursed, and picked up the bottle and flung it under the car. The bottle broke, and the gasoline burst into flames. Leslie leapt back.
Charles Moulin looked up.
By then Leslie had turned and was walking away. As he took a right onto Rolinda, the gas tank on the Chevy went.
Charles Moulin ran to call the fire department.
At the end of Rolinda, Leslie Mattox turned onto Connair. The shouts from the school yard began to reach him. He would make the Stockton massacre look like a Sunday school outing. Only five dead. Leslie Mattox was planning on an even hundred.
A massacre of the innocents.
He remembered the phrase from church, although he wasn’t sure exactly what it meant. He had hated church, stuck inside on a Sunday morning listening to hymns, crammed between older sisters who pinched him.
Leslie was the youngest of four. Seven years younger than Margaret, eight years younger than Joan. His brother was five years older, and had always been off with his friends.
Leslie hated his brother, a stockbroker who wouldn’t give him a dime. Leslie smiled. But his brother would never be famous.
Leslie slogged forward, the ammunition in the cargo pockets of his pants banging against his legs. Just across from the school yard he stopped behind a tree.
*
The Dale R. Boise Elementary School had been built in 1936 for the children of all those people headed west. In 1952, an extension had been added to accommodate the baby boomers. And in 1964, the entire building had been renovated. A modern playground had been added in 1975.
Leslie watched the kids climbing on the chopped-off telephone poles. It was recess, or gym, or something, and the little fuckers were running around screaming and having a good time. Leslie had hated recess because he had always gotten beaten up during recess. There was just no place to hide on a school yard.
A ball banged against the fence, and a girl ran to get it. Other girls were playing hopscotch and jump rope. Some boys were flipping baseball cards.
The jungle gym. The swings. It was all familiar. Even the kids just standing against the fence doing nothing.
That had been Leslie. Leslie the Hammerhead!
Someone had found out that a mattock was a tool. And since Mattox sounded like mattock, and since a hammer was also a tool, Leslie had become “Hammerhead.”
Leslie the hammerhead shark. Leslie the girl!
They had pulled down his pants to see if he had a dick. They had pulled down his pants when the girls were watching!
The girls had laughed, and run away.
*
They wouldn’t run away this time.
Leslie jogged forward, suddenly afraid the bell might ring, the bell that had been his salvation as a child.
The children standing against the fence doing nothing were the first to get hit. Leslie fired from thirty feet. One pull of the trigger for each child.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Each time Leslie fired, the muzzle jumped. He pulled the barrel down and aimed again. Three for three; he was doing just fine.
The gun cracked, and more children went down. Other children came running. It was Chinese New Year, and everyone wanted to see the firecrackers.
Leslie Mattox stepped through the school-yard gate swinging the gun from side to side. The children fell as before a giant mower.
*
When David Boatman heard the first cracks, he also thought some child had brought firecrackers to school. It happened every once in a while, often coinciding with holidays such as Chinese New Year.
Boatman sighed and shuffled forward. He was tired of reprimanding the little bastards, and if he dawdled, some other teacher might get there first and have to give the lecture about lost fingers and eyes. Boatman stared over the heads of the running children, looking for the miscreant, and saw Leslie Mattox enter the yard. David Boatman grabbed the child nearest to him and fled, screaming for the other children to follow. About eleven children did. Boatman, in the lead, ran for five blocks before the weight of the child he was carrying proved greater than his fear. He gathered his brood and herded them into the backyard of a house.
Susan Daniels had heard the first cracks, too. She was teaching spelling at the time to her third graders. She walked to the open window, looked down, and saw Mattox in the yard pivoting slowly, the children dropping as he fired. Susan Daniels turned calmly to the class and announced a fire drill.
“Turn your desks over on the floor!” she ordered sharply.
Suddenly afraid, the children obeyed.
“Now angle your desks toward the door!”
Twenty-two desks were angled toward the door.
“Now get down behind those desks and don’t you dare move. Not one of you!”
Twenty-two children crouched behind their desks and held their collective breath.
Susan Daniels shoved her own desk up against the door, then walked to the supply closet, where she removed a large hammer from the top shelf. She returned to her desk and crouched down behind it. Susan Daniels believed in God and God’s mercy, but it would be a long day in December before she just stood there and prayed the bullets missed.
As she knelt, Leslie Mattox was finishing up in the yard. The children, at last realizing there was a man shooting at them, were screaming and running away. Most panicked and were trapped by the fence.
Leslie raised the gun to his shoulder, lined up the sights, and fired. When the second clip ran out, he started to reload. And that was when he heard the siren.
*
Dominick Gattuso had been parked on Woodhill Road when the message came in to check out a burning car on Blossom Street. He flipped on the siren and took off. Down Prince, across Rhodes, onto Beaumont. Beaumont was one of four streets that fronted the Dale R. Boise Elementary School. Gattuso always drove past the school if he could, both because he liked to watch the kids playing and because he liked to check on them. His vigilance had once resulted in the arrest of a dope dealer. It made him sick that ten-year-olds were doing dope. And it made him even sicker when the case against the dope dealer got thrown out on a technicality. God bless the courts.
But before the fucker was released, Gattuso managed to have a chat with the guy, something along the lines of broken legs and crushed nuts if the guy ever somehow found himself in the neighborhood of the school again—and never mind police brutality, a man had to do what he had to do.
Dominick Gattuso glanced into the school yard as he drove past and slammed on his brakes. It took him a second to grasp what he was looking at: At first it seemed it must be some game the kids were playing. A moment later, the tires of the cruiser were burning as Gattuso backed up to the school.
Leslie Mattox looked up, and spotted Gattuso. Leslie popped a clip into the rifle, turned, and ran into the school.
“This is car two-oh-eight,” Gattuso screamed into the mike. “I’m at the Dale R. Boise Elementary School. I got a male with a rifle who just went into the school. There are kids down everywhere. I need backup and a dozen ambulances right this second. I’m going in after him.” Gattuso was already out of the car, his .38 service revolver in his hand. At that moment Officer Mario DeLeon pulled up in his cruiser.
“Let’s go,” Gattuso shouted. “He’s inside.”
The two officers ran for the door.
*
As Leslie Mattox stepped into the school, he found the hall empty. He paused, then headed up the stairs. Mark Sanchez, the history teacher, jumped at him, knocking him to the floor.
Sanchez hadn’t heard the firing until the very end. He had been in the teachers’ lounge grading papers, and had stepped out to go to the bathroom just as Leslie Mattox ran out of bullets. Sanchez had been in Vietnam, and knew the difference between an AK-47 and firecrackers. He had run to the outside door, had seen the young man fifty feet away reloading, had seen the handgun in the man’s belt, and had heard the sirens. Sanchez figured the man would come into the school next, and planned to ambush him when he did.
As Sanchez dropped down on Leslie Mattox, fully planning to choke him to death, Leslie jammed a foot up into the older man’s crotch. The air went out of Sanchez with a whoosh. Leslie rolled to the side, set the muzzle of the AKM-47 against Sanchez’s head, and squeezed off a round. The explosion of blood covered the floor and wall. Leslie turned and raced up the stairs.
Susan Daniels heard the heavy boots coming down the hall and tightened her grip on the hammer. It wasn’t over yet. There had been that long silence when Susan thought the man might have run off. She had nearly gotten up to see what was going on. But Susan Daniels had grown up in Iowa and knew something about the lull in a storm. She had hissed for the class to stay put. Then came the sirens. Then the shot.
Leslie Mattox saw the desk blocking the door. He turned the knob and slammed his shoulder forward. Susan Daniels jumped up, screamed like a banshee, and flung the hammer at Leslie. The window in the door exploded.
Leslie shouted and jumped back, then raised the gun and fired. But by then Susan had shoved the desk back against the door and had ducked down again. Leslie raced down the hall, kicked open another door, and fired into the room.
“Upstairs!” Gattuso whispered, pointing at the stairs.
Mario DeLeon nodded. “I’ll go around.” DeLeon raced down to the other end of the corridor.
Gattuso stepped over Sanchez and padded up the stairs as quickly and as quietly as he could. He peered around the corner. The little turd was facing the other way, reloading again. Gattuso stared at his .38. It would be a long shot, almost a hundred feet. He didn’t want to miss. Gattuso raised the gun, steadied it with his left hand, and breathed out, and slowly, so slowly, squeezed off a round.
Leslie Mattox jumped up and turned.
Gattuso fired again.
Mattox was backing up and firing, the AKM-47 cracking like a whip.
Dominick Gattuso fired all six rounds in his revolver as Mattox turned and slowly fell. The AKM-47 skittered to the side.
Gattuso ran forward, but Mario DeLeon reached Leslie first.
DeLeon had fired three times as Mattox backed past the doors at the top of the stairs. DeLeon had his gun leveled at Leslie’s head, but Leslie wasn’t moving.
Five slugs had hit Mattox. Two had come from DeLeon’s gun, but not the one in the back. Dominick Gattuso would wonder for the rest of his life whether his first shot hit the man.
*
Ninety-six cartridges were found in the school yard and hallways. Miraculously, only seven children and one teacher died. Forty-two children had been wounded.
Three weeks later Dominick Gattuso and Mario DeLeon were given medals for bravery. It was hard to feel good about it.
No one was smiling at the presentation.
Two
In the early hours of Sunday, November 10, 1963, just two weeks before the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Eliot Brod was attacked by two men on the streets of New York City. Eliot was seventeen years old at the time, and the confrontation was something he had been looking for.
Eliot was in New York on an overnight trip with a group of high school seniors. They had come to the big city to visit museums and see a play, and, as one teacher alliteratively phrased it, to scrape some small-town smugness off their souls.
The group arrived by chartered bus Saturday in the middle of the morning. Their first stop was the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they spent a numbing three hours touring the galleries. After a trek through ancient Egypt, they ate a quick lunch of hot dogs and soda outside on the steps, then headed downtown to MOMA for two more hours of art. By then even their teacher had museum legs.
A leisurely walk across town brought them to their hotel. They dropped off their overnight bags, washed up, and went to dinner. An hour later, with soy sauce, white rice, and lobster Cantonese swishing in their tummies, they walked down Broadway to the Martinique and saw Six Characters in Search of an Author, a play they were reading in their English class. They were back in their hotel rooms by eleven.
At midnight Eliot slipped out to see the city for himself.
*
Eliot Brod was ten years old the first time he walked into a martial-arts dojo, and two things struck him about the place: It was dark, and it smelled. He also knew that he was scared—everyone there was bigger than he was.
The dojo was run by an elderly Chinese man named Wa Sung. Whether Wa Sung taught karate, or whether he taught kung fu or jujitsu, was anyone’s guess. The sign in the window, with admirable American directness, read simply: LEARN HOW TO FIGHT AND WIN.
Eliot didn't do much winning his first year, or even his second year. But sometime during his third year, Wa Sung's words of wisdom began to sink in, and Eliot began to hold his own. Eliot liked winning. It sure beat losing. As he got better, he practiced more. At thirteen, he was starting to show promise. At fourteen, it was he who people feared.
Seven years after Eliot joined the dojo, he was still one of the smaller students. He was also top dog.
*
As Eliot walked around Manhattan, he wasn’t sure where he was going. He wasn’t even sure exactly what he was doing, or why. He only knew that for all the years he had studied with Wa Sung, he had never been in a fight where his life had truly been in danger. He wanted to know if he would panic. And he wanted to know if what he had learned would really work.
*
The two men were bigger than Eliot was, not a lot bigger, but bigger. One man stopped in front of him; the other man sidled up behind. These men were smiling. They could afford to smile; they were holding knives, and Eliot wasn’t.
“Let’s have your wallet, kid,” the guy in front said. “And let’s have that watch, too.”
The man doing the talking was in his late twenties or early thirties. He was wearing a beat-up black leather jacket and a black longshoreman’s cap, and hadn’t shaved for a while.
Eliot told him to get fucked. The man looked offended.
“What’d you have to say that for, kid? Why’d you have to make it personal? Now, I’ll have to teach you a lesson.”
As the man was finishing up his speech, Eliot threw a whipping roundhouse kick at the man’s head. Ordinarily, a roundhouse kick to the head against a man who is holding a knife is a good way to end up in the girl’s choir. But when someone is in the middle of a speech, his next action is always predictable: He breathes in. And when you’re breathing in, you’re dead on your feet for a fraction of a second.
Eliot’s kick caught the man just under the ear and knocked him cold.
Eliot turned. The second guy was crouched down, his knife low. The man licked his lips and started to creep forward, like a crab.
Eliot took a step back.
The man thrust the knife at him.
Eliot hopped back again. He considered running. That would have been the smartest thing to do.
But Eliot wasn’t really interested in running. He was looking for an initiation. He was seventeen and didn’t really think he could die.
The man lunged in.
Eliot shifted to the left.
The knife followed.
As smoothly as he could, Eliot shifted back to the right and punched at the arm holding the knife. Then he twisted quickly and hit the man in the face.
The man grunted, and slashed at him.
Eliot hopped back.
The man shook his head, then smiled and came in quickly: a low feint; a high feint nearly to Eliot’s face; a downward slash at the belly.
Just before the downward slash, the man paused. It was all the time Eliot needed.
Eliot’s left hand shot out and smacked the wrist, deflecting the blade; half a moment later a snapping front kick crushed the guy’s testicles.
Eliot grabbed the hand holding the knife and pivoted. The man flew forward and landed hard on the concrete. A kick to the ribs broke two of them. Eliot kicked twice more. Each time his foot sank in a little farther.
The man went limp.
Eliot kicked one last time. Why take a chance?
Eliot looked around. The street was empty.
Eliot walked over to the other man and stomped his foot down on the guy’s throat.
It hadn’t been much of a fight, but then perhaps it never was when you won.
Since then Eliot had killed quite a number of people. It was what he did for a living.
*
Eliot Brod lived on a dirt road in rural New England, a couple of hours from Boston and New York, and three or four hours from the ski resorts of northern Vermont. He had a wife, a daughter, and a dog; and he owned his own home. His wife, Alison Wilson, was a self-employed graphic artist. She went to work during the day; he stayed home and took care of the kid. A house husband. A modern man, though now that his daughter spent most of the day at school, being a modern man was no big deal.
Two nights a week Eliot worked as a cook in a restaurant. He did this for two reasons: First, he liked to cook; and second, it kept his friends from asking too many questions about how he paid his bills.
And on those occasions when Eliot was on a job and was gone for a few weeks (this usually happened once or twice a year, though it had been over two years, now, since he’d had a job), his absence was explained to their friends—if they even asked—as leftover youthful restlessness. At forty-two Eliot could still get away with that.
*
Eliot was five feet nine inches tall, weighed 150 pounds, had plain brown hair, brown eyes, and a face right out of Average American magazine.
Like countless other members of his generation, Eliot exercised regularly. Every other day he ran six miles, and twice a week he biked to the main post office in Springfield, Massachusetts, sixty miles round trip. Eliot had a P.O. box in Springfield, but not much ever came there except junk mail.
When Eliot first rented the P.O. box, nine years before, he sent out half a dozen postcards requesting a variety of catalogs, all in the name of Michael Smith. The catalogs had come. And then more catalogs had come. Then even more catalogs. Like a chain letter. He had initiated this deluge so that the one legitimate letter he occasionally received wouldn’t look out of place. Even the most asleep postal employee couldn’t help but be curious about a box that received only one letter every year or two.
This letter looked little different from the rest of Eliot’s mail. It was also addressed to Michael Smith, the name and address on a printed label. Perhaps the only thing noteworthy was that the envelope bore a first-class stamp.
Inside the envelope was most often an ad for some vacation paradise, or a free gift, or some other offer too good to be refused. But for Eliot, what set this particular piece of junk mail apart was the line of numbers at the bottom of the ad. These numbers were a code that contained the name and phone number of the person who wished to hire him.
The Springfield P.O. box was one of three systems Eliot had worked out by which he could be contacted.
*
On January 25, about the time that Dominick Gattuso was taking aim at the middle of Leslie Mattox’s back, Eliot Brod was nearing the end of his six-mile run. There were two more houses before his own. He passed them and sprinted the final hundred yards to his driveway. His wife was at work. His daughter was in school. His dog, a huge black monster named White Fang, was hiding under a bush ready to attack. White Fang weighed 120 pounds and loved everyone.
Eliot waited until the beast was launched, then stepped easily to the side. White Fang started to backpedal furiously, and Eliot couldn’t help but wonder what the dog was thinking, five feet up in the air and rotating slowly in the wrong direction.
He had bought the dog to protect his wife and daughter, and to guard his earthly goods. But White Fang was only slightly more vigilant than a stone, and hadn’t shown the least interest in defending his masters or their property.
Eliot patted him on the head and stepped into the house. It was time to start thinking about dinner. A nice dinner, so his wife would be in a good mood after dinner—maybe grilled chicken breasts, finished off in a pan with herbs and mushrooms, and a splash of wine. They could finish the wine with dessert, after his daughter was in bed. A nice dessert. Something rich—maybe a silky custard covered with praline. And then a sip of cognac. And then who could tell?
Three
The television flashed: two men talking, a clip from a movie, laughter.
Tran Van Duong raised the teacup to his lips and took a sip of tea. It was bitter, so bitter it seemed to bite the tip of his tongue. He barely noticed. In the week since his daughter Loan had been gunned down by that young madman, he had noticed very little, not the narcissus blooming, not the first daffodil.
Tran stared at the television, at Berns Hanson, host of Today in the Bay, without seeing him, seeing only the flashing light of the screen. The flashing changed, the lights and darks more rapid, more intense. A commercial. The Extinguisher: a new weekly drama; or, maybe an ad for a new product, an antismoke device for smokers.
Tran reached for the pack of Lucky Strikes on the table next to him. Americans spent too much time worrying about their health.
Shots rang out, and Charles Bronson scuttled across the screen. Or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Tran got them confused. U.S. patriots looking for POWs in Vietnam. Still, after fifteen years. Sylvester Pony, or something. Tweety Bird. His daughter had liked that cartoon. Tran had been appalled at the violence.
He closed his eyes and saw his wife and daughter, his first wife and his first daughter, saw them as they looked the day they left to visit his in-laws in Saigon. His wife and daughter had flown from Qui Nhon, where he was based and where they were all living, to Tan Son Nhut Air Base.
*
Tran had been a translator for most of the Vietnam War, attached to the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division. His job had been to assist American interviewers when Vietnamese civilians came and complained about atrocities committed by American soldiers.
Tran didn’t understand why the Americans insisted on investigating atrocities they themselves committed. Nor did he understand why Americans were concerned with atrocities committed during war. What did they think war was?
*
The television flashed, and Berns Hanson was back.
Tran stared at the man for a moment, then stubbed out his cigarette and took another sip of tea. So bitter, like the vegetables that grew in his California garden.
Tran glanced out the window, and noticed for the first time the narcissus, and the single daffodil. The daffodils were Loan’s favorite flower, and now she wouldn’t see them bloom.
It was in Saigon, in 1960, that Tran met his first wife. She had come to learn English at the school where he taught. Everyone wanted to learn English. The Americans were beginning to invade Saigon in numbers, and English was the key to taking their dollars.
After several weeks of sidelong glances and shy smiles, Tran spoke to her. A week later they had their first date, and within a month they were in love. His luck: She was the daughter of wealthy landholders.
A year after they met, they were married. Nine months later a daughter was born.
*
In 1960 the war against the Viet Cong wasn’t going well. President Kennedy, following Eisenhower’s lead, sent in more advisers. Then President Johnson sent in even more advisers. Finally, in 1965, the year that Tran was drafted, General Westmoreland brought in the marines. Tran, because he spoke English, was assigned to an American unit. Through the influence of his in-laws he was based in Saigon.
But in 1967 Nguyen Van Thieu was “elected” president, and Tran’s in-laws found themselves on the wrong side of the ballot box. Tran was transferred north. His wife and daughter went with him.
Around New Year’s word came that his mother-in-law had passed away. His wife and daughter returned to Saigon. They planned to stay three weeks, until the Tet truce. But that year there was no truce during Tet.
At first, Tran was not concerned about his wife. Her father’s house was like a fortress. And, except for some minor skirmishing, most of the fighting in Saigon was in Cholon, the Chinese ghetto. His wife was miles from there. Still, as the days passed and Tran heard nothing, he couldn’t help but worry a little.
One week after the fighting had begun, Tran received the news from his father-in-law. His wife and daughter had been killed by a mortar explosion a short distance from their house. The streets had been quiet for two days, and his wife had taken his daughter to buy ice cream.
Tran was broken. He sat at his desk and wouldn't speak to anyone.
His American friends, eager to find out what they could for him, radioed their III Corps counterparts for details. Several weeks later the report came back: not one but half a dozen mortars had fallen, and they had not been hostile rounds.
“It’s a shitty war,” his friends said.
A war in which all Tran did was file reports of rape and murder, reports that were never acted on. America. A society obsessed with reports and statistics: the number of VC killed each day, the number of U.S. dead. Highway deaths on holiday weekends. The number of people at a demonstration. In America people had violent confrontations disputing the number of protesters who had attended a peace march.
*
Tran looked around his living room. There was nothing from Vietnam, just the teacup he was holding. It was all he had brought; that, and the stones.
A year and a half after the death of his wife and daughter, his father-in-law was killed during a political purge. When the will was read, Tran found himself a wealthy man. His wife had had two brothers, but one had been killed in combat, and the other had died in a traffic accident. Tran had always thought his father-in-law would leave his wealth to a cousin, but the man had left it to him. He did not know why.
Tran sold everything. The market was still high, buoyed by the dollars the Americans were pouring into the country. The panic that would ensue as the American pullout became real hadn’t yet begun.
For two days Tran walked around Saigon wondering what to do with the mountain of cash he had amassed until, passing a jeweler’s, he decided to buy gemstones.
*
In 1969 the Americans began withdrawing. Two years later the economy of South Vietnam was on the verge of collapse. And by the following year the economy had collapsed. Everything had to be imported, even rice; but the dollars to pay for those imports were gone. People were desperate for money, and Tran, with his gemstones, found himself in the unique position of having money. He converted several of the stones to cash, and began to bribe his way out of the country.
It took him eight months to get an exit visa, a piece of paper nearly impossible to obtain. An American soldier he had known agreed to act as his sponsor in the United States. It was November 1972, and Tran was thirty-seven years old.
Swishing around in his stomach as he stepped on board the plane to Hawaii were fifteen gemstones thickly coated with beeswax. Two days later, in a hotel in San Francisco, Tran shit the stones out into the bathtub. Those stones would help establish him in his new home.
*
Berns Hanson blathered on.
Outside, the morning was clear and cool.
Tran stared at the bare hills that towered above his house, bright green in the sun. Ribs of dark oaks marked the gullies.
Tran had been living in the hills of Laurel Valley for five years, and still the view amazed him. To Loan it had just been home; she had been excited the century plants at the bottom of the driveway were going to bloom.
In early 1973, after a brief tour of the United States, Tran settled in the Chinatown section of San Francisco. His American friends lived where it would have been difficult for him to find work or fit in. He had few skills. He had the gems, but he was unsure where best to invest them. So he took a job as a cook.
He worked as a cook for two years, then bought his own restaurant, on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland. He sold two diamonds, a ruby, and an emerald to make the down payment.
Tran’s House of Flowers was an instant success. The food was hot and spicy, the vegetables crisp, the sauces distinct. Amid the sea of muddy Cantonese restaurants, the House of Flowers stood out. And there was no aching jaw at the end of the meal.
Every morning Tran set out fresh flowers, a different flower on each table. And at the end of the meal, as his guests left, there was a gift for each lady: a delicate silk blossom.
Tran kept the books himself, partly because he didn’t trust anyone else, but mostly so he could lift a few dollars from the day’s receipts. Once a month he put the cash in a safe-deposit box in the bank.
*
Five years after the opening of his restaurant a woman came to work for him. She was bright, pretty, and had an infectious laugh. She was also Vietnamese. Six months later they were married, nearly twenty years to the day after his first marriage. Again a daughter was born, Loan.
Four years later, Tran and his family moved to Laurel Valley so Loan could grow up in the country. Tran sold his restaurant and opened a new House of Flowers in Walnut Creek. Again the restaurant was a success. Everything Tran did was a success.
A year before his marriage, with the price of diamonds going through the roof, Tran sold his remaining stones and invested in real estate. His timing was astounding. By 1987 the value of his holdings had increased to such a degree that he was able to sell off two properties and pay off all his mortgages.
But 1987 was also the year his wife suddenly developed a swelling in her abdomen. Eight months later she was dead. Tran was stunned. This was America, the land of medical miracles: bypass surgery, chemotherapy. But the doctors had been unable to do a thing.
Every morning Tran walked his daughter to the school bus.
Why did Mommy die?
Tran did not know.
Was Mommy happy?
He didn’t know that, either.
Was Mommy all alone?
After a month the questions slowed; and after a year, Loan rarely mentioned her mother. It was frightening how quickly the young healed and forgot.
Every morning Tran walked his daughter to the school bus, half a mile down the road. It was his pleasure. And then, just a month earlier, his daughter decided she was old enough to walk alone. Tran imagined the other children teased her, always escorted by her father. They struck a compromise. His daughter had a friend a few houses up the road; the two girls would walk together.
Loan. She had only known a few words of Vietnamese, endearments.
*
The television flashed.
Berns Hanson: resplendent in a three-piece charcoal suit, a picture of health and concern and responsibility, a youngish man. And an older man next to him: George Herbert Brenden.
A word had caught Tran’s attention: AK-47. Brenden was there to be interviewed. He was a spokesman for the National Association of Gun Owners, NAGO. Tran turned up the volume.
“ ... and wasn’t it the AK-47 that was used against our boys in Vietnam?”
“That’s right, Berns. The AK-47.”
Berns Hanson raised his chin. “Well, why do we need the gun that killed so many of our young men—the enemy’s gun—available in this country as a ‘sporting weapon’? A gun that’s being used to kill our children again.”
Tran turned the volume up another notch. He wondered whether Berns Hanson even had children.
George Herbert Brenden crossed his legs. “You might as well ask why we need Toyotas or Mercedes, Berns.”
“But why these guns at all, George? Assault rifles aren’t used for hunting, or for self-defense.”
Brenden leaned forward. “Berns, do you know what the most devastating close-range weapon is?”
Berns Hanson shook his head.
“It’s a shotgun, an ordinary shotgun. If that guy Purdy, or that guy Mattox, had been using a shotgun, there would have been five times as many dead kids. It’s not the weapon, Berns. It’s the guy who picks up the weapon.”
Berns Hanson laughed. “Come on, George. You rifle guys have been saying that for twenty years. Look at the statistics: a few handfuls of firearm deaths in most countries, ten thousand in the U.S.A.”
Brenden nodded. “It’s a trade-off, Berns. No doubt about it. But I’ll tell you, there aren’t too many countries where an individual’s rights are protected as well as in the U.S.A. And that protection is a package: the Constitution. It’s lasted for over two hundred years. And the right of citizens to keep and bear arms is part of that package.”
“Any sort of arms, George?”
“That’s what the Constitution says, Berns—‘the right of the people to keep and bear arms.’”
“A bazooka, George? A tank?”
Brenden smiled indulgently. “Now, Berns, you know most of us don’t even have room for that extra car. Where would we put a tank?”
Tran sighed.
“And consider this, Berns: If guns were outlawed, only the military and the police would have guns. Does that sound a little like our neighbors to the south? Is that what we want?”
Tran wondered why total strangers addressed each other by their first names. He found the practice condescending.
An ad for orange juice popped up on the screen: smiling children, smiling mother, happy family music. Loan had liked orange juice. Orange juice, and bacon and eggs. An American.
The orange juice was replaced in rapid succession by coffee, lawn fertilizer, and a car. The car happened to be the same-model car Tran owned.
And then Berns Hanson was back, smiling at the audience and announcing his guest again. He turned to George Herbert Brenden.
“Isn’t it a fact, George, that it’s just too easy to buy a gun in America?”
Brenden nodded. “You’re certainly right there, Berns. A criminal can walk down any street in any city in this country and buy any gun he wants.”
Berns Hanson crossed his legs. “I had in mind the ease with which someone like Purdy could legally buy an assault rifle.”
Tran closed his eyes. The Stockton massacre had been too close, just an hour away. When he had heard about it on the radio, it had made him giddy: a tragedy that had happened to someone else this time, not him.
And then, little more than a week later, the copycat shooting. And this time it was his tragedy.
George Brenden pointed his finger at Berns Hanson. “That Purdy fellow should have been in jail, Berns. He had a history of arrests. Not one of you media people ever talk about how the criminal-justice system failed, only about how easy it is to get a gun. It’s as if you’ve given up on locking up criminals. NAGO is in favor of a mandatory jail sentence for the criminal use of a firearm. No exceptions. No excuses. No plea bargaining.”
Berns Hanson was ready. “And who’s going to pay for all the new jails we’ll need, George?”
George Brenden laughed. It was a pleasant laugh, and Tran thought the man was probably a good neighbor, the sort of person who kept an eye out when your kids were on the street.
“I’d help pay for those jails, Berns. Would you? Would you give some of your million-dollar salary to lock up a criminal who one day might rape your daughter or sell her drugs?” Brenden pointed at the camera. “I don’t think the folks out there would mind paying for those jails.”
Tran nodded. He would be happy to write a check.
George Brenden looked down at his hands; they were folded in his lap. “You know, Berns, you look at TV today, and all you see is guns and violence, killing and car wrecks. Solve your problems with a gun. That’s what our children are learning.” He shook his head. “When I was growing up, a gun wasn’t something to be proud of; marksmanship was something to be proud of. We need to get hold of our kids. We need to teach them what’s right and what’s wrong, at home and in school. I’d like to see gun education right there next to sex education. Let’s not pretend this stuff doesn't exist. Let’s teach our kids. What sort of legacy is ignorance?”
Tran turned off the television. It hissed and popped for a minute and then was silent. He could hear the birds outside, and the distant hum of cars on the freeway.
He had done a great many things in his life, some pleasant, some not so pleasant, many of which, as a child, he would never have imagined he would do. But now, at fifty-four, with maybe another twenty or thirty years before him, his life promised nothing; all he had ever cared about had been taken from him. It was the violence of America that had done this. It had taken his child. Both his children.
And George Herbert Brenden still defended that violence. And he did it well, convincingly; one couldn’t help but agree with what he said, even though what he said was madness. A messenger who was the message.
Tran lit a cigarette. Well, he would make the messenger think twice about his message. He would offer back a little violence to the country that had become his home.
Tran sat back and began to plan his revenge, and realized he didn’t know where to start. He had never done anything violent, not even in the army. He didn’t imagine he could just walk up to Brenden and plunge a knife into his chest. Probably, the man carried a gun.
Tran drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. He would have to find someone to help him. Someone who did know about violence.