Trouble

  And what was he expecting to find there, anyway?

  Chay added a long piece of wood to the fire. Sparks flew up a few feet, and then died. "The mountain is bigger than I thought," he said.

  Quiet. Henry looked into the darkness.

  "Maybe there was a time when people who lived here thought it was sacred, a place to go when there was trouble." Chay almost whispered.

  "I think it was like that, once," said Henry.

  "It's where I would go, if I was in trouble," said Chay. He looked behind him. "I'd go and wait there. Something would happen. Someone would come." He added another piece to the fire and it flared up. "Probably Mike," he said.

  "Yeah," said Sanborn. "Because he'd have another pile of wood to stack."

  Chay didn't say anything. He found a branch on the ground and peeled off its bark. Then he threw it all into the fire.

  Behind them, the mountain loomed.

  "Tell us about the refugee camps," Henry said.

  Chay looked at him.

  "What do you remember?"

  Chay sat down close to the flames. "Hunger," he said. "I remember hunger. Eating grass. My mother making me eat fish that stank. I remember a soldier taking me when my mother was gone and making me crawl on my hands and knees through a field, and my mother coming after me because he was making me check for land mines. She ran through the field to pick me up. That was the night we left the camp. I remember walking. There were red flowers on the trees. We got to the sea and found a boat with other refugees. Everyone was screaming to get on the boat."

  Chay crossed his legs and spread his arms out over them. He stayed that way a long time. A cold breeze blew down on them from the shadow of Katahdin, and Henry moved closer to the fire.

  "So did you get on the boat?" Sanborn asked.

  Chay nodded. "Yes," he said.

  And suddenly it was all there in Henry's mind, refugees on the shore, leaving everything—like pilgrims setting out to seek strange places that they didn't know much about. Or worse, like the imprisoned Indians below the decks of the Seaflower. A crowd of people scared. All desperate. All afraid.

  Trouble.

  Chay told them as if the story had been writhing inside him like a dark tiger, and he was finally going to release it in the shadow of Katahdin. How they had forced themselves onto the boat. How the boat had left the dock with families split in half, and how some of them swam out until they sank into the water. The ocean red. There was no food onboard, no water, and the engines sputtered and belched smoke and sometimes stopped altogether, and they drifted in the heat and stink of three hundred people crammed together. Some jumped over the side. Some were pushed over the side.

  "We saw a lot of other ships," said Chay, "and we signaled to them." But none of the ships answered, and when the engines finally coughed themselves to death, they drifted with the wind and his mother was crying. Finally, a fishing boat saw them. They tied up, and then they came aboard with guns and axes. They'd take what they wanted in payment for a tow, they said, and the refugees gave them rings, clothing, necklaces, and then the fishermen boarded their own boat again and cut loose, sending bullets and laughter back at them.

  So they drifted, and drifted, and drifted, and if it had not been for a Danish ship that found them and towed them to Hong Kong, they would have drifted until they capsized and drowned, and been glad of it.

  But the Chouans were lucky. They weren't stuck forever in Hong Kong. They were put on a ship to Guam, and then on another ship to San Francisco, America, and they lived in a Presbyterian church basement for four months. They could smell freedom. Then they took a bus all the way to Merton, Massachusetts, and the first morning that Chay woke up there—in another church basement—it had snowed. He had never seen anything like it before. He took his little brother outside, and they let it melt on their faces. And when they breathed, they could see their breath! Like dragons! Only cold.

  "From then to now, there was one rule," said Chay. "Remember you were Cambodian before you were American."

  "So what does that mean?" said Sanborn.

  "It means you speak Cambodian at home. You go to Cambodian markets and not A&P. You honor your ancestors and the Buddha. You send what you can back to those still in Cambodia."

  "And you don't fall in love with American girls," said Henry.

  Chay said nothing.

  "Which is why your father was angry."

  Nothing.

  "Because of Louisa," whispered Henry.

  Chay looked at Henry, and was as still as the mountain behind them.

  "Louisa?" said Sanborn.

  The fire cracked loudly, and more sparks shot into the air and died.

  Back on the road, a car's headlights came along quickly, and then slowed. The car went on, then turned and came back, sweeping its beams in their direction. It stopped and its lights went out. Two doors opened and closed. In the darkness, Henry couldn't tell if anyone was coming toward them or not. He couldn't see anything—but he figured that it wouldn't be hard for whoever got out of the car to see them sitting by the fire.

  "It's probably the guy who owns this field," said Sanborn. "Maybe he thinks we're trespassing or something."

  "We are trespassing," said Henry.

  "Isn't this some sort of state park? We're camping out. That's not the same as trespassing."

  "What's the difference?"

  "It's got something to do with malicious intent."

  "I think it has to do with being on someone else's property, Sanborn."

  Whatever it was, they looked out into the darkness over the field for the Trouble that was coming toward them. Chay did not move at all—until Black Dog suddenly perked up her ears.

  Henry reached up to put his hand on her collar—as two men came into the firelight and stood beside the pile of wood they had gathered.

  One of them held a shotgun over his forearm.

  The other held a broken glass root beer bottle. An Admiral Ames.

  The two fishermen from the Chowder Mug.

  "Hello, hello," the one with the shotgun said cheerfully. "We weren't sure if we'd find you or not."

  22

  CHAY DID NOT MOVE, but Henry, Sanborn, and Black Dog stood up. Henry couldn't take his eyes from the reflection of the red firelight flickering on the long barrel of the shotgun. He held Black Dog's collar tightly.

  "Good thing you said where you were going," said the one with the shotgun.

  "And good thing there's only one road here," said the one with the Admiral Ames bottle: Mack.

  "I guess that would make it easier for someone low on the Darwinian scale," said Sanborn.

  Henry thought that might not have been the best thing to say.

  The man with the bottle swung it slowly toward him. "So smart," he said. "I sure do wish I was as smart as you, kid. But when I was your age, I was heading over to Vietnam to fight for my country against him." He pointed at Chay.

  "No, you weren't," said Sanborn.

  "Sanborn," said Henry quietly. He thought that Sanborn might not understand that they were in trouble here and he wasn't helping.

  "Yeah, Sanborn," said Mack. "Why don't you shut up? We're not here for you."

  "What do you want?" said Henry.

  Mack held the bottle out so that its jagged and splintered shards caught the firelight. "To return this." He turned to Chay. "You dropped it in the parking lot. We think you were going to use it on us, because that's the kind of sneaky trick that a VC pulls. So we thought we'd bring it back to you and see how you like it yourself. ... So how do you like it, gook?"

  At the word, Chay stood, too.

  "Oh, you don't like it. Or is being called a gook what you don't like? Is that it, gook? Because that's what you are. A gook." The man took a step in and held the broken bottle toward Chay. "So what are you going to do about it, gook?"

  "We're not asking for trouble," said Henry.

  "We weren't, either," said the man with the shotgun. "And then a few of them st
arted coming. And no one cared—until they started taking our jobs. You know how many years my family fished out of Gloucester? You know how many?" He jerked the shotgun at Chay. "And then he comes and I'm laid off my boat, and Mack here, too, and they hire ..." He pointed with his chin at Chay. "It's time we handled things ourselves," he said.

  "He's not a fisherman," said Henry.

  "Then we won't cut him up as bad as we did the others," said Mack.

  "He's not even from Vietnam."

  "How do you know?" said Mack. "Were you squatting in a stinking rice paddy watching guys like him shooting at you? Were you there? Did you have a buddy scream for you because he's shot in the belly and you can't get to him because the VC are using him as bait?" He drew up the sleeve of his left arm. Even in the quivering light of the fire, Henry could see the round scars pocked up in a line from wrist to elbow. "Did you ever get shot up?"

  Chay took a step closer. The man with the shotgun leveled it at his chest.

  "The war was in Cambodia, too," Chay said. "Only in Cambodia, it didn't matter which side you were on. They all wanted you dead." He nodded at the two men. "They were like you."

  Except for the crackling of the fire, everything was silent beneath Katahdin. Not even the wind rustled her long tresses. Black Dog whined once, and was still.

  Chay reached up and drew off Franklin's rugby shirt, and Henry saw for the first time the long welts that lay across his back. New welts. In the firelight, they blazed red.

  Even in the middle of Trouble, Henry wondered where they came from. Because of Louisa? Because Chay could dare to love—and be loved by—an American girl?

  Chay threw the shirt to Henry. "Henry, Sanborn," he said, "go. Go far away."

  Henry looked at the two men, holding their bottle and shotgun toward Chay.

  If you build your house far enough away from Trouble, then Trouble will never find you, Henry's father had said.

  He was wrong, Henry thought.

  You have to live where Trouble is.

  He bent down to pick up Franklin's shirt, which had fallen by the fire. He let go of Black Dog's collar. He reached for one of the branches, a thick one, burning at one end. He stood. He drew his arm back.

  "Hey," said Mack.

  All that took about half a second.

  In the next half second, Chay turned and saw what Henry was doing.

  Black Dog leaped in front of Chay.

  Sanborn reached down to the fire for another burning branch.

  And with a cry that sounded like something out of Savage Cove, Henry threw his branch, end over end, at Mack, who held up his pocked arm but missed the branch as it hurtled into his chest and face, sparks flying all around him.

  He dropped the broken bottle.

  Then the man with the shotgun held up his arm to avoid the branch that Sanborn threw.

  He wheeled the shotgun around.

  And pulled the trigger with his eyes closed against the sparks that dashed around his face.

  And slammed fourteen white-hot pellets along the lines of Henry's exposed rib cage—his arm still held high from his throw.

  Henry felt himself blown back and down. At first he thought it was the sound of the gun that was still booming in his ears. But that was only for a moment. Every nerve in his right side carried the piercing heat that tore at him. He tried to scream, but the pellets and the fall together had shocked the air entirely out of him and he gasped as though someone was holding a forearm against his throat. He gasped to draw some air back in, but there didn't seem to be enough.

  Suddenly, Chay and Sanborn were over him, and he could see their eyes opened into wide circles. They looked almost funny, like clowns, their eyes were open so wide. Like something you'd see in a cartoon. "I think I got shot," Henry finally said.

  Chay had Franklin's shirt again and was pressing it against Henry's side. "Don't get it bloody," Henry said. Then he threw up. With every retch, he thought his whole body was being torn to pieces.

  All this time, the man with the shotgun stood transfixed, the smoke still coming in a wisp from the gun barrel. "I didn't mean anything," he said. "I didn't mean anything. We were just going to scare him. That's all."

  Henry, between waves of raw pain, thought they had done that just fine.

  Chay took Sanborn's hand and pressed it against Franklin's rugby shirt. Then, quickly, he stood up, knocked down the shotgun, and had his hands up around the man's throat. "Give me the keys!" he yelled. Lying on the ground, Henry was astonished. He didn't think that Chay had ever yelled in his whole life.

  "What?" said the man.

  "The keys!" Chay screamed. "Give me the keys to your car!"

  Henry watched as the drama acted out, with the fire as the footlights and the invisible dark Katahdin as the backdrop. Everything seemed to be playing in slow motion and someone needed to adjust the focus, until he remembered that you don't need to adjust the focus at a play. He tried to blink his eyes, but his eyelids went down and came back up very slowly. He thought that if he tried it again, they might not come back up and he would miss the play. And he didn't want to miss the play, because here's the part where the second bad guy—Mack—is sneaking around behind the first good guy—Chay—who is holding the first bad guy—the one who dropped the shotgun—and trying to get the keys out of his pocket. From far away, Henry heard the second good guy—Sanborn, who was sitting next to him and probably getting Franklin's shirt all bloody—holler something out. But he was too late. The second good guy is always too late, Henry thought. Because the second bad guy had picked up the fallen bottle and swiped it against the first good guy's back and left a staff of new, sharp, bright red lines.

  Henry tried to blink again, and he was right—it was hard to get his eyelids back up. And when he finally did, he saw that he had missed something. Chay was kneeling beside him, stiff and twisted. And both the bad guys were gone. But Henry could still smell the metallic smoke of the shotgun. And though the pain in his side was getting sharper, he decided that the nauseating ache that was pressing in through his whole chest was a whole lot worse.

  "Henry," Sanborn was saying. "Henry."

  It took a little while for Henry to shift his head so he was facing Sanborn.

  "We've got to get him some help," he heard Sanborn say. Henry felt him pull away Franklin's rugby shirt from his side. "He's bleeding a lot."

  Chay nodded.

  Why aren't they talking to me anymore? thought Henry. He tried to sit up, and wasn't sure if Sanborn was holding him down or if something heavy was lying on top of his chest—like Chay's unchromed pickup.

  Then Chay was standing up and the play started again: He said something to Black Dog—something not in English—and Black Dog looked at him as though she understood, and then they disappeared together into the dark wings.

  Suddenly, all the lighting changed for the next scene. Henry, his head on the ground, tried to keep his eyes open because it was done so well, with all the smooth rhythm of a perfectly synchronized crew team. It began with a spotlight that backlit Katahdin, starting with a soft glow and then growing whiter until the rim of the mountain was burning with the white light. And then the spotlight tilted up even more, and then more and more, quickly, rising in a huge, impossibly huge ball above the mountain and dropping its light all down the front of Katahdin, settling silvery gossamer folds between the ridges, the trees, the stones, so that everything on the mountain shivered into wakefulness and threw shadows that shrank back as the spotlight rose higher, then higher, so that now its light folded down even to their campsite, and then came across Henry and Sanborn, so that Henry could see everything with perfect clarity.

  "Sanborn," he said.

  "You should be quiet, Henry."

  "Thanks, Mom."

  "Shut up, Henry."

  "Sanborn, did you know that you have this huge zit on your nose? It's throwing a shadow."

  "Thanks for pointing that out, Henry."

  "Maybe we should call some book of world
records."

  "You know, the only reason I'm not smashing your face into the ground right now is that I'm holding your insides from spilling out."

  "Don't get Franklin's shirt bloody."

  "Sure, Henry."

  Henry turned back to the spotlight. It had changed its color to the lightest yellow. I wonder how they did that, Henry thought. He watched the drapery on the mountain change color, too—all except for Katahdin's rim, etched with dark precision against the starry sky.

  "Henry, do you think you could hold this shirt against your side? No—with your other hand."

  Henry felt himself moving—slowly.

  "Good job."

  "Thanks, Coach. I gave it all I have."

  Sanborn went over to the woodpile and drew out some more branches. He loaded them onto the low flames, and they quickly caught, the little branches snapping into flame and sparkling up into the sky. He went back again and loaded the fire once more. Then he went to his pack and found the water bottle, brought it to Henry, and held up his head—and let it down again when Henry screamed.

  "Okay, okay," he said. "That wasn't exactly the right thing to do."

  Sanborn tried tipping the water bottle to Henry's lips, and Henry tried to turn his head to catch some without his body shrieking. But he decided that he would do better just by staying still—absolutely still. Maybe he'd concentrate on the flames that were crackling merrily, as if nothing at all was wrong in the world and he didn't have a shotgun blast buried in his ribs.

  The spotlight drew higher—and dimmer. Maybe it's running out of batteries, Henry thought.

  Whatever the reason, as the spotlight dimmed, the air grew colder and Henry's legs began to shiver a little. Sanborn brought one of the sleeping bags over and laid it on top of him. But Henry still felt his legs shivering, even though he was starting to sweat, too. "Sanborn," he said, "we could try that water again."

  They did, and Sanborn managed to get a little into Henry's mouth. When Henry swallowed, he could feel the ripple of pain follow the water all the way down his esophagus. He threw it all up again, and whatever else was left in his stomach, and by the time he was finished, he was crying.