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Authors: Michael Bunker

Digger 1.0 (9 page)

BOOK: Digger 1.0
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Jim smiled, reached forward and took up the
gaudy crystal goblet in front of him from the heavily starched
white tablecloth. It rose above a dizzying and glittering array of
tableware, ready soldiers, waiting for the battle to commence once
the main course arrived.

“Well, I’ll tell you my friend.” He took a
drink. “
I don
’t rightly
know. It’
s just a
guess.

Mr. Vo snorted and smoked.

“You live all alone. No woman. No big family
like all the other Vietnamese,” said Jim flatly.

“Maybe
family die in war,
” shot back Mr. Vo, his face as toneless
as Jim’s voice.

“And the other Vietnamese don’t like you
very much, Mr. Vo. I could tell by the way they play cards with
you. The way they act when you’re around.”

“They don’t like anyone, not even
themselves.”

“You have no money, other than the money you
make at cards. Hence the pay by the week motel you live in.”

“Maybe I’m cheap. Save money in mattress or
better yet, put in Great Western Savings with John Wayne, all
American hero.”

Jim smiled.

“No, Mr.
Vo. I don
’t think any of that’s true. I think you were part
of the 9
th
Viet Cong Division serving at Cu Chi and
eventually Black Mountain. I think somehow you got captured, and
you informed. You told the CIA a lot, maybe more than you needed
to, and they gave you a ride out of the country as a favor because
you knew once the South fell, you were in deep trouble if the
“winners”
ever found you. Or
maybe you were a prisoner of war and, once again when the South
fell, you got yourself on a raft to China and then got here because
one of Ho Chi Minh
’s boys might one day go through all the
captured documents back in Saigon and anyone with your name was
going to get dragged in for some talk. Whatever it was, the boys
back in the card room at The Happy Hour, they tolerate you but they
know you weren’t a colonel or a general like they were, because no
one knows you, knows what you did during the war, which is probably
the worst thing for a Vietnamese living in America right now. They
don’t know anything about you, so you might be that other word they
hate so much. You might be a...”

“Stop it!” whispered Mr. Vo. “Stop it this
very instant. Do not say that word, not ever, in my presence. Do
you understand? In this country, among my people, that word is a
death sentence. Don’t say it.”

Jim leaned forward and tucked
Communist
away.

“All right, then I’ll ask you again, Mr. Vo.
Did you smoke the entire time you were in Vietnam? ‘Cause if you
did, then maybe you were VC and maybe you weren’t. But if there was
a time when you didn’t… a time of about, say, two years, then that
means something. Says a lot about you. See, the VC didn’t smoke
down in the tunnels. One, it was too dangerous. And two, they
needed to smell us coming for them. In the dark, in the black, you
can’t see nothin’ down there. But you sure can smell. You can smell
a frightened to death G.I. who had a cigarette on guard duty the
night before. That was probably real helpful down there in the
dark. So, one more time, did you smoke the whole time you were in
Vietnam? ‘Cause if you didn’t, if there was that two year break I’m
looking for, well, you might just be a very rich man one day, Mr.
Vo. Very rich.”

Mr. Vo lit another cigarette, never taking
his eyes off the strange man from Texas. The man who had beaten him
at cards and then insisted on buying him a nice dinner. The man who
had been apparently following him all week.

“Yes,” said Mr. Vo quietly. “There was a
time in Vietnam when I was not… able to smoke.”

After a moment of silence Jim took up his
wine goblet again. “That was a long time ago, wasn’t it, down in
the tunnels?”

Mr. Vo said nothing.

“I was just visiting,” said Jim swirling and
considering the wine. “But it felt like a prison sentence in hell.
You on the other hand, you lived down there. Knew everything about
the tunnels and how to live underground. How to make ‘em and fill
‘em with traps so that anyone who came looking for you was gonna
die. You knew all about that, Mr. Vo.”

Still nothing from the tiny Asian
dragon-man.

“I’m not with the government, Mr. Vo,” said
Jim, leaning forward and whispering. “I’m just an ex-soldier, like
you, who got the short end of the stick for his efforts. Maybe if
I’d dodged the draft and gone off to Russia or college I coulda
been makin’ money, enough money to have kept my ranch. Maybe if
you’da played your cards right you’d be back in ‘Nam, head of the
party, or some high government job. Whatever, but I’m guessing
you’re a lot like me, Mr. Vo. I’m guessing the American Dream ain’t
workin’ out too well for you right about now.”

There was a long silence in which Mr. Vo
took three drags of his cigarette, spilling clouds of white smoke
out across the table and into the candlelit gloom of the fine
room.

Jim knew that Vo smoked the cigarettes the
way he did because the man had gone two, maybe three years, down in
the dark without a cigarette. The VC didn’t smoke down there. Now
he smoked with relish and fear, savoring the forbidden as he
incessantly chain smoked. Free of the tunnels.

“No,” whispered Mr. Vo almost to himself.
“It isn’t working out like I thought it might. Suffice it to
say.”

The duck arrived and the waiter began to
carve tableside, on a silver platter, selecting tender cuts and
rewarding them with deft, almost beautiful movements.

Once the waiter was gone, and after a bite
had been taken of the delicious duck, Jim leaned forward and said,
“Well, Mr. Vo, things are about to change for you and me, that is
if you’ll take a drive with me and listen to a little proposition I
have.”

Mr. Vo remained intent on the duck he was
cutting. He was listening. But he said nothing.

Chapter 13

 

 

 

 

Jim checked the rearview mirror as they
merged out onto the big empty of the 405 at nine o’clock that
evening. They drove south with the night, passing sleeping towns
and spreading orange groves and the big rigs pulling through the
night for southern ports. At San Diego they turned left, found the
lonely Highway Eight, and headed out into the emptiness of the
Southwest.

Mr. Vo watched the night pass and smoked,
cracking the window every time he did so. Later, in a diner east of
Tucson as the morning sun turned to high hot afternoon, over thick
club sandwiches and cold beers, Mr. Vo said, “And you hope no one
will ever think of the tunnels.”

Jim put down his sandwich, wiped his mouth
and smiled. “
No Mr. Vo, I
don
’t think they will. America is… let me put it this way.
We don’t think like you do. We’re different. Back in your country,
I’d watch your people. I always felt like you guys were thinkin’
the same thoughts the same way. Knew the same things each other
knew. I guess I would say you understood each other. Better than
our side ever did.”

“We just wanted war to be over,” mumbled Mr.
Vo, fumbling for his lighter. “Whichever side you were on.”

Jim thought for a moment.

“Yeah, I guess there was that. But it’s
somethin’ else, though. Somethin’ more than that. We’re different.
We see things differently. Some guy explained it to me once, back
in the jungle. He said you could show an Asian a picture of a tiger
in the jungle and the Asian would tell you it’s a picture of a
jungle. Right?”

Mr. Vo barely nodded.

“See, that’s not how Americans see things.
If you showed most Americans a picture of a tiger in the jungle,
they’d tell you it was a picture of a tiger. Why? I don’t know why.
We’re just different that way. See things two ways. We see singular
things and assign a value to them. Your people see the whole
picture.”

Mr. Vo shook his head, raised his smoldering
cigarette and drew its smoke into his lungs. He turned his head as
if he was watching the wide nothing of the Arizona desert, and
after a bit, smoke spilled out against the yellowed window of the
diner.

“What that have to do with digging tunnels
in Texas?”

Jim finished his sandwich and said
nothing.

Later, at speed, roaring out into the desert
wastes, the top down, Jim Howard shouted over the hurricane winds
that raced across the white leather of the beautiful old Cadillac.

Diggin
’ tunnels down in
Texas means, Mr. Vo, that we can play outlaw and we might… never
get caught. That’s what it means, Mr. Vo. It means getting away
with robbery.”

Mr. Vo cast a strange look at Jim Howard and
continued to smoke and watch the alien desert and the big wide
nothing that was larger than anything he’d ever seen in a land of
rice and rivers and yellow skies that smelled of jasmine. A place
he knew in his heart he could never go back to again. Ever.

They made Texas that night. Mr. Vo wanted to
stop and buy cigarettes, and Jim asked him to wait for “just a
stretch”.

“In Texas, Mr. Vo, everything’s far away.
We’ll go get some cigarettes after I show you the reason for my
plan, which is just up ahead, off this road here a bit.”

They turned off the county road, the big
headlights rolling across wind shifting plains of grass in the
night and a sudden barbed wire fence dotted by old weathered posts.
Then they were in the chalk of the road that led out to his Dad’s
old place.

What was left of the barn was boarded up and
empty. To Jim it looked wounded. Like a thing that had been hurt so
badly it might never live again.

“I never shoulda gone,” said Jim, and heard
himself above the night winds that seemed to thunder and roll
across the grassy plains, buffeting everything from their clothes
to the old boards that creaked and groaned.

They left the car and walked out into the
headlights that rested on the sagging sides of old clapboard.

“The only reason we ever found your tunnels,
Mr. Vo,” yelled Jim. “Found ‘em back in your country, was because
the Australians found ‘em first. Didn’t occur to us that you guys
would just tunnel under a battlefield. I don’t know why. Just
didn’t. So for a long time, as you well know, you could move around
whenever and wherever you wanted. You could choose when and where
to shoot at us when it was good for you to do such.”

Silence.

“Yes,” said Mr. Vo, fidgeting and feeling
more talkative without his cigarette. “For a long time it was very
safe for us down there in the dark.”

“Well Mr. Vo, that’s what I was thinking
too. You see, this was my home. It is my home. Bank took it away
from me and now I want it back. I busted my hump for years after
the war, down in the gulf trying to make the mortgage and pay the
back taxes. But see, the game was stacked against me. Big bunch of
ranchers banded together with some corporation called Allied
Growing Concern. They’re buyin’ up all the land in the Basin.
Wasn’t no way in hell I was gonna keep this land as far as they
were concerned. They were all in on it together. Local government,
the land commissioner, Wall Street, all of ‘em makin’ a buck on my
land.” Silence. The wind grew and pitched, and somewhere within the
ruins it found a scream. “This land’s been in my family since Texas
was its own country. Did you know that, Mr. Vo.? Did you know Texas
was once its own country before America? It’s the only state that
ever was.”

“So what that have to do with tunnels?”

Jim watched the old place. Watched all the
memories come in and out of its doors. The Fourth of Julys. The
winters. The funerals. The children. Dogs he remembered following
him everywhere.

Where did they all go?
he asked
himself again.
Where do they all go?

“I’m gonna build tunnels and take back
what’s mine, Mr. Vo. I’m gonna steal from them what they stole from
me. I’m gonna rob banks and steal equipment and do whatever I can
to take their money away from them. And maybe one day, if I get
enough, I’ll buy this back.”

“You going to become a cowboy?” asked Mr.
Vo. “Like the wild west days and John Wayne?”

Silence. The wind. The night. The big Texas
starry sky.

“I always was a cowboy, Mr. Vo. Since I was
a kid, I rode horses and worked this ranch alongside my dad. I’ll
die a cowboy, no matter what. Same as if I’d never made it out of
those tunnels back in your country.”

Jim Howard turned toward Mr. Vo.

“No, Mr. Vo. Now I’m gonna turn outlaw. Like
Jesse James and Pancho Villa did. Y’know them ol’ boys, Mr. Vo? I’m
gonna make war on my enemies ‘til I have what’s mine again.” He
paused for effect. “And then some.”

Mr. Vo walked back to the Cadillac, opened
the door and slid into the passenger seat. Jim took one last look
at the old place and walked back to the Caddy.

Behind the wheel, he muttered, “Alright,
let’s go get you some cigarettes.”

They found a gas station that was like an
island of bright white hot light being drowned in a sea of darkness
and wind. It was still open and Jim parked next to the pumps.

Mr. Vo went in alone as Jim topped off the
Caddy, listening to the guzzle, thump, and ding of each devoured
gallon.

That was dumb, Howard, Jim thought. Real
dumb. What if he tells someone later? He don’t seem like he wants
to play outlaw. No, he don’t seem that way at all.

A few minutes later, Mr. Vo came out tapping
a fresh pack of cigarettes. He wore a big black Stetson cowboy hat
he’d purchased inside. He slid into the Cadillac and closed the
door.

Jim finished filling the Caddy and paid.

As they drove away, Mr. Vo said, “Outlaws
all wear black hats, right Mr. Texas?”

Jim smiled to himself and then chuckled a
bit because he couldn’t help it.

BOOK: Digger 1.0
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