Fiction

Although I hadn’t met him formally, Boyd Nguyen walked just like my dad, Boyd Landers. My parents separated, while I was in the third grade, and later, when I was grown, Mom would say, “Lee, you walk like a Landers.” She didn’t sound too happy when she said it. Mom, Shirley, never could divorce all of him.

I said after dinner one day, “Tell me how he walked, Mom.”

“Okay.” She stopped washing dishes, ran a mental replay tape, looked up and narrated, “Slightly bowed legs, athletic, like an Indian, more on the balls of his feet, less heavy-heeled than most, confident, almost cocky with relaxed, swinging arms. Altogether–like a fingerprint.” She was good.

It was funny that I hadn’t noticed the genetic gait, but following my half brother, who had Dad’s first name and his walk, made it seem conspicuous. Tailing him like a private eye from the nail salon where he worked to the Elm Street Village Apartments with both of us walking that particular way was thirty minutes of self-indulgent curiosity that I allowed myself.

Knowing him was important because I never really knew my Dad. To know another man you must walk a mile in his flip-flops. It probably wasn’t necessary to walk exactly like him as I did. Nguyen didn’t notice. No one did. Sure, Mom would have. Maybe Boyd Nguyen’s Vietnamese mom didn’t give him a head’s up on his inherited gift. Or defect. There’s something else she didn’t give her son–Dads’ last name. That made it harder for me to track him down.

Dad was a civilian employee of the Air Force and was stationed at Tan Son Nhut Air Force Base near Saigon for four years during the war. Dad sent me checks for five hundred dollars every month. I cashed them and sent back currency. He said, “I trade greenbacks in the black market for piaster, way above the established, legal exchange rate, so I can pick up some extra money for retirement. Currency smuggling is very illegal, almost impossible to catch.” But co-conspiring to screw somebody out of something was an ethical burr in my mind. Still, the ten percent commission that I earned helped me smooth it over and pay for graduate school.

Dad got back from Nam, it was the fall of 1975 and we met at the bar of Rick’s Steakhouse, watched football on the TV and had several beers. I watched his pained face in the mirror behind the bar. It relaxed a little by the second brew.

He said, “I’m real sorry about you not getting any more money from our little enterprise. I understand it’s tuff, you know, stopping suddenly a thing that’s good and that you’re used to having.”

“Forget it, Dad.” There was a long silence with him concentrating on his next beer. I watched him gaze into the golden liquid as though it was a window to the past. With a napkin he wiped drops off the cold mug like it was a baby’s mouth. Then, during the third round, he said that while in Saigon he had also picked up a local wife whom his smuggling skills couldn’t get to this country in the chaos of those last days. He called her a wife, but said they didn’t have time to get legally married. Amerasian kids were left behind in droves. If Dad hadn’t let her name and hometown slip out after a four-beer, broken-record refrain, tracking her would have been tough. My memory was imprinted with his tipsy, melancholy ditty: “Tan Nguyen from Gia Dihn took a chance with this Amer-i-ken.” I think he loved her. It was that news or the fifth beer that made me sick. Dad died a month after our meeting, so pumping him for more information was out.

Twenty-three years after that Oktoberfest with my Dad, while watching a Thanksgiving Day, Dallas Cowboys football game, the announcer said, “That tackle was made by Dallas’ great linebacker, Dat Nguyen!” Dad’s maudlin little rhyme popped into my mind and stuck there. Over and over I said, “Tan Nguyen from Gia Dihn took a chance with this Amer-i-ken,” like a sales jingle you just can’t shake. Football made me look for Tan. I found Boyd, too. The internet, military and Catholic aid agencies made finding them possible.

Scratching my tires hard like they had a rash got fingernails and cuticles ragged so I’d have an excuse to go to Nail Attractions in Dallas’ West End. Calling three days ahead and using a fake name to get an appointment with Boyd Nguyen was silly, kinda Nancy. Thank God I didn’t have to talk to him to get it done. Afterward, I called the salon back twice to cancel but hung up both times before they answered. What the hell was the matter with me? How could a yellow-tinted Landers version fill my mind and make my hands sweat so much that he would notice?

Even without the clammy hands he would see something in my face that would fire a burn in his brain like the napalm he might have seen as a child. He had seen those scars on his countrymen. Boyd could be Communist–tempted to shove a metal nail file into one of my big, capitalist, round, blue eyes. Maybe I was crazy to do this to myself and him.

There was always a distance between Dad and me–a vacuum that sucked. Filling it was necessary and was moving up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. When I was little, Dad was “emotionally unavailable” my college Psychology 101 book later suggested. He was cold and unhappy before the separation. I wouldn’t have noticed, but Mom was so warm. The gap grew with the divorce, then the war, the Pacific Ocean and finally his sudden death. There was a hope that crime would tie us closer, but it was just money. Cash doesn’t make good knots. But maybe with the manicurist I was half a brother closer to filling a gap.

I signed in and had to sit in the waiting area of Nail Attractions for ten minutes while Boyd finished a North Dallas, Highland Park-looking lady’s pampered toes. There was enough acetone-smelling finger nail polish remover in the air to give me a buzz. I needed it. Jesus, this was like going for an important job interview.

When he finished he said, “Mr. Smith,” and motioned me to his table. I put down the Cosmo magazine that I was pretending to read while I watched him do the HP’s pedicure. The magazine was hard to get rid of, it stuck to my moist hands. There was only one other guy in the shop getting a manicure and he didn’t look gay. Then I saw what he was reading. Cosmopolitan. He was slipping off his loafers for a pedicure. “Fuchsia pink, please,” I heard him say. He didn’t lisp at all.

Boyd was young enough to be my kid, maybe twenty-something, spiked black hair, half a head shorter than my six feet and fifty pounds lighter than my two hundred. He said, “My name is Boyd Nguyen, pronounced ‘Win’ like the opposite of ‘lose’.” He smiled and arranged his supplies. He didn’t have much of an accent—like what, I expected funny “Rs” for “Ls” and Pidgin English? “Nguyen is as common in Vietnam as Smith is here. But my first name, Boyd, is unusual back there.” He looked at my hands. “Your nails are a mess. Want me to fix them up, Mr. Smith?”

“Yes. Please, call me Lee. From Vietnam? Your English is good.”

“My father was an American and my mother insisted I learn both languages because she wanted me to come here.”

“My father was in Viet Nam, also. He died years ago.”

“In Viet Nam?”

“No, here. Stroke.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. I nodded and smiled when he looked up at me. We were quiet while he smoothed my nails. The rhythmic rasping of the file swelled in the silence. His touch was firm and fast as if he’d done this a million times. This was absurd; I’d just told my brother that his father was dead.

“How and why did you want to come here?”

“It’s a long story.” Boyd was shaking his head like the memories were tough to revisit.

“I have time. It’s interesting. My Dad used to talk about Viet Nam. He loved it.”

“You sure?” I nodded. His story required a big breath and he let it out slowly with a sigh. “Mixed-blood kids don’t have much of a future in a Communist-dominated country. They look at us as traitors. My mother hates commies, too.” He put my fingers to soak in a thick, slimy solution of “Liquid Lilacs with Coconut.” Boyd had a puzzled look on his face and asked, “Have you been here before?”

“This is my first time to ever have a manicure.”

“You look so familiar. What made you decide to get one?”

“Curiosity.”

“Well, what do you think?”

“You’re doing a good job and it’s relaxing.” He was pushing my cuticles back with a little spoon-looking thing. I had an urge to grab the spoon and taste the “Liquid Lilacs with Coconut” dessert. “Tell me about how you got to the States? Was it hard?”

“Very hard. My Mom had two jobs for four years to save the five thousand dollars to get me to the Philippines, but the boat owner stole her money and he left without me. It took her another four years of sacrifice, but she got me to Manila eight years ago, and I worked my way here. Two years in the U.S. now.”

“Have you been back or seen your Mom?”

“No, but that will soon change because I almost have enough money to bribe the right officials and bring her here. The manager lets me sleep at night in this shop on a cot in the back room, so I save that rent money.”

“I thought you lived at the Elm Street Village Apartments?”

“No. My manager, Silvia, lives there. He stopped, put my hand down and looked up at me. “How did you know?”

I couldn’t look at him, dug out my checkbook and said, “How much do I owe you?”

“Seventeen-fifty, but I’m not….” I wrote a check for seventeen dollars and fifty cents plus a four thousand dollar tip and handed it to him with my driver’s license. He studied the check and my license, staring at one, and then the other for what seemed like a long time. I watched his spiky head slowly rise up until his eyes met mine. He changed color and with a different voice he said, “Landers. Not Smith. Lee Boyd Landers. Who….”

“Your brother.” I put a very well-manicured hand out to the small, Asian ghost of our dad and did a little bow. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“I thought you looked….” Boyd’s mouth hung open and he put his hand in mine. My hands were warm now. His had felt warm and sure before, but now they were cold and trembling. Boyd looked at the check, the license and my face. “This amount of money….” He shook his head and his hand clawed at the air as if for a word.

Words were hard to come by. There came into my mind the image of a mason working–mortar, brick, mortar, brick, mortar, brick in a running bond; there came into my mind the image of a train linking with coal-cars; there came into my mind the image of a nurseryman filling a hole in the black earth with the root-ball of a silver leaf maple sapling and tamping down the rich soil.

Finally, I said, “It came from Viet Nam and our Dad. It should go back there for this.”

I told Mom the whole story. When Tan got to Dallas, Mom insisted on Boyd and Tan staying at her house until they got situated. Tan protested that they would be an imposition. Shirley had Boyd convince his mom that there would be loss of face if they did not stay. Tan understood and made us all Vietnamese Lotus green tea that Boyd had found for her at the Asian Market. The next morning, the four of us were standing on Mom’s front porch finishing cups of tea when Boyd had to go to work.

He said, “See you guys later.” With Mom and me watching that particular walk, he went to his car parked at the curb. Her hand tightened on mine, and I knew what she was thinking. Boyd pulled away and waved. Shirley turned, faced me and gave me a hard hug. I didn’t know Mom was that strong. She was good.