The scene always played itself out with the same, predictable denouement, his imagination unable to sway - or even influence - the outcome. The dead man’s family listened impassively, without the slightest hint of emotion. In the end, they simply turned and shuffled silently away, leaving Mickey to rot in the purgatory of an inconsolable conscience.
Kicking off his left shoe, Mickey removed the sock, and revealed a jagged, an inch-and-a-half long scar resembling a Rorschach inkblot on the instep.
“How’d that happen?”
“Along with landmines, the VC buried bamboo stakes in the mud and high grass. I caught a punji stick on a routine patrol. Spent the next, three months recuperating at a naval hospital in Yokuska, Japan.” Mickey put his sock back on. “Sometimes, the bastards crapped on the sharpened sticks.”
Mearadey grimaced and looked away. Her sister never flinched.
“Four years after your war ended,” Rasmei said, “the North Vietnamese invaded my homeland and liberated us from Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. I was ten years old. My family fled north along Route 6 to Angkor Wat, then west into Thailand. Five years later, we emigrated to America.” Rasmei shook her head thoughtfully. “Perhaps you have bad feelings toward my people because of your experience during the war.”
Mickey put his shoe and sock back on. “I’m a misanthrope not a racist,” Mickey replied gruffly.
“Then you are just like my father,” she said without explanation and walked out into the warm night air, her addle-brained sister following on her heels.
The next morning after finishing off the last of the six treasure chicken, Mickey sidled over to the Butt’s back yard. Placing a base and top plate side by side, he marked the openings for the doors and window. Less than an hour later, the fourth wall was plumbed and toe nailed in place. “We’ll need half-inch plywood for the floor and roof. About the siding, do you have any preference?”
“Whatever you suggest,” Rasmei replied.
“Texture one-eleven is durable and takes a stain well.”
“Draw up a shopping list. I’ll have it delivered.”
Mickey scratched his crotch and stared at his Chevy, 2-ton pickup truck parked in the driveway. “There are a few small items - joist hangers, hinges, galvanized nails. I’ll swing by Home Depot one night after work.”
“Let me know; I’ll join you.” Before he could mount an intelligible protest, she added, “My father is so pleased with his new shed! I don’t know what we would have done without you.”
On Thursday late in the day, Mickey pulled up in front of the Cambodians’ home and beeped the horn. Rasmei hurried out to the truck. “There’s been a slight change in plans.” As she spoke the front door opened; Mearadey, her father, mother and an elderly woman with a wrinkled face filed onto the front lawn. Rasmei hauled herself up into the cab of the pickup truck and waved at her relatives. “My family will be joining us.”
The entourage piled into a metallic blue Subaru. “I don’t get it,” Mickey grumbled.
“It’s a cultural thing. Cambodians tend to go places and make important decisions as a group.”
Mickey turned the engine over and pulled away from the curbed. Immediately the Subaru inched up behind him. In the rear view mirror he could see the father, staring stiffly straight ahead. “Your old man, ...does he ever smile?”
Rasmei considered the question briefly. “No, not often.”
At the lumber supply store Mickey got a cart and loaded the bottom with 12-foot, pressure treated two-by-fours. The elderly woman with the wrinkled face said something to Rasmei in her native tongue. “She wants to know what the wood is for.”
“The sub floor.”
Rasmei translated. The woman pointed to another pile of lumber and spoke again, favoring the n’s and g’s, in a rubbery, singsong fashion. “She says these boards are less expensive.”
“Perhaps,” Mickey muttered under his breath, “Granny would like to subcontract the project.”
“She’s just trying to be thrifty.”
“Tell her that these boards are stronger and won’t rot as quickly.”
Rasmei translated. The old woman’s wiry, chicken neck bobbed up and down approvingly.
The next aisle over, Mickey found the metal joist hangers, hinges, door latch sets and 2-inch, galvanized nails. Again, the old woman questioned the nails. “Tell her they’re zinc coated to resist rust. That’s why they’re more expensive.” Only Mr. Butt, whose thoughts were engaged elsewhere, appeared less than satisfied with the explanation.
On the ride home Rasmei said, “That went well.”
“Sure did,” Mickey confirmed and took one last look in the rear view mirror. Rasmei’s mother was sitting in the passenger seat gesturing with her hands and laughing heartily. Her husband, impervious to her bright humor, looked thoroughly morose.
“Mearadey bought a cloth, carpenters apron so she will have a place to put the nails and hold her hammer,” Rasmei said.
“Does she know how to talk?”
“Of course she can. She’s just very shy.”
Mickey shrugged. “She’s never said a thing in my presence.”
On Saturday Mickey showed the girls how to evenly space the metal hangers for the sub floor while he snapped a blue chalk line and, with a 7¼-inch, Makita circular saw, trimmed the flooring to fit. Mearadey swaggered about the yard getting little accomplished but looking radiant with her apron full of annular nails, the hammer slung rakishly from her hip. At one point, she went into the house and returned with a pitcher of ice tea.
“According to Rasmei,” Mickey said, “you’re not a deaf mute.” Still holding the empty drink tray, Mearadey looked perplexed. “Say something.”
“What do you want me to say?” she replied
“That’s more than enough.”
An hour later, he left them with a scroll saw to trim the openings and hang the texture one-eleven. “Next week we’ll work on the roof.”
Mickey went home and took a triple hit of adapin - 150 mg - to calm his nerves and fell asleep watching Three Stooges reruns on the cable channel.
Waking late in the afternoon to the muffled sounds of oriental music, he staggered out of bed and peaked through the living room blinds. The Butt family was having a cookout. Mearadey was mooning over a muscular, boy with shoulder-length hair. Meanwhile, an admiring crowd had gathered around the skeletal shed. They pawed at the rough-cut wood, kicked at the sole plate. A young boy hoisted himself up through the naked window opening and hung upside down like a monkey from the top sill.
In a chaise lounge 50 feet away sat the master of ceremonies, stone-faced Mr. Butt. His wife was moving back and forth among the guests with a tray of drinks. But for the difference in ages, Mrs. Butt and Rasmei could have passed for identical twins. She had the same squat physique - face as flat as a Mekong Delta rice paddy, the broad, ill-defined nose thrown on as an afterthought.
The rear door opened. Rasmei, dressed in dungaree shorts and a plaid blouse emerged with a platter of hors d’oeuvres. A man, fortyish and heavyset with dark-rimmed glasses, immediately approached and began following the girl about the yard like an obedient, well-trained dog.
Mickey went to the hall closet, rummaged around and emerged with his mother’s high-powered, birding binoculars. In the bathroom, he sat on the toilet and lifted the Levolor blind a fraction of an inch. Rasmei and the heavyset man were gone. Vanished. Mrs. Butt was bending down to offer her husband a drink. The lens blurred. Pulling back a half turn on the adjusting knob, husband and wife eased into sharp focus. Mr. Butt accepted a glass of pink liquid and, as the portly, middle-aged woman turned away, his features softened, dissolved like wet, potter’s clay spun on a wheel.
“Damn!” Mickey wrenched the lenses away from his eyes. Had the man smiled - ecstatically, with unrestrained joy - or was his medicated mind playing tricks? Either way, the sight of Mr. Butt showing strong affection was more than he could stomach. Mickey went into the other room. He took
his clothes off, climbed into bed and pulled the covers up over his head.
Later that night, Rasmei appeared with a bag of food. “Where’s your sister?” Mickey asked.
“Went on a date.” She brought the food into the kitchen, placed the bag on the table and began opening the containers. “Shanghai rice cakes,” she pointed to a pale white, doughy dish. On a separate dish she arranged mint, cucumber, fresh lettuce, bean sprouts, noodles, peanut milk and soft rolls.
Mickey sniffed the mild aroma. “I ate something similar in country.”
She went to the refrigerator, cracked open a beer and placed it on the table next to him. “Bee Boong,” she indicated the second container, “is a traditional Vietnamese dish.” Rasmei surveyed the room. Empty beer cans, four and five deep now, fanned out the length of the counter; a week’s worth of Brandenburg Gazette newspapers littered the floor near the back door. “The pigs in my former village had cleaner personal habits.”
“Yes, but could they build a storage shed?”
She grinned but then, just as quickly, the humor faded. “We had a barbecue today and a man asked me to marry him.” Rasmei tossed the words out in an offhand manner. “For the third time.”
Mickey rubbed the rim of the bottle, sipping at the foam. “I assume you refused on both, previous occasions.” Rasmei responded with a hollow smile. “Why did you compare me to your father the other day?” he asked.
She sat down across from him and removed a beer can from the arm of a chair. Liquid had seeped through the finish to the porous wood below and leaving another soiled ring. “You’re both so mistrustful.”
“Which tells me nothing,” Mickey said.
The sun had set, all the color - reds, blues, yellows and grainy purples - washed out of the evening sky. Through the open window, they could hear the screams and catcalls of the neighbor’s children, cannonballing off the deck of their above-ground pool. With the light almost completely gone, the mother begged them, for the hundredth time, to come in for the night. Her request precipitated a fresh outburst of hoots and jeers sending small bodies catapulting into the darkened water. Rasmei glanced at Mickey and looked away. “And you’re both so angry.”
Sunday they installed windows. Because it was only a storage shed, there was no reason to insulate the rough openings. Mearadey was gone - quit without notice. Off somewhere with the new boyfriend. Rasmei had discarded her clumsy, wooden hammer for Mickey’s steel-shanked Estwing with the 13-inch throw. By now she had learned to let the weighty tool do the work, the power coming from the shoulder rather than her slender wrist.
Whack. Whack. Whack. With three, arcing blows, she set the finished nails flush against the coarse wood. “On the world news last night they reported more fighting in my homeland. People fleeing north to the Tai border.”
Mickey was fastening the decorative trim to the left door panel with sheet rock screws. He bent down and positioned the screw gun over the head of a black screw. There was a whirring burst of noise and the decorative white-trimmed pine tightened neatly against the plywood panel. “The bastards can’t leave well enough alone.”
They hung the other door, installed the latch and stood back to admire the roofless building. “For the crosspiece,” Mickey pointed to an imaginary midpoint where the newly-formed doors came together, “we’ll go up a couple of feet with scrap lumber, then run a transverse beam. That’ll provide enough pitch.”
They cut 12 roof joists, angling the near ends to butt up against the crossbeam while the rear bedded comfortably in a notch on the top sill. “What about Mr. Persistence?” Mickey asked. Rasmei looked at him with a dull expression. “The fellow who wants to marry you, … over and over again.”
“Not my type,” she said without further elaboration.
Mickey removed his tool belt and threw it aside. “That’s enough for today.” He started to collect the smaller tools throwing them into the toolbox. “We’ll cover the roof and lay shingles next weekend and your shed will be finished.
For two weeks running it rained throughout the weekend. The shed’s bare walls and flooring soaked up the moisture and dried out only to be drenched again. A relentless, unforgiving drizzle was beating down on the roofless shed. The structure reminded Mickey of a fetus, a half-formed, embryo which, in less than a month’s time, would come to full term. The Butt family, he mused, would store their riding lawnmower and gardening supplies, their bicycles, wheelbarrow and god-knows what else in the spacious, new shed. With every tool and trinket, they would become less like their fratricidal countrymen and more like ordinary Americans. Whatever the hell that meant!
“What should we do about the shed?” Rasmei’s voice on the phone sounded pinched, worried.
It was eight am. Now, even on the off days when she wasn’t bringing over the little white boxes, the house smelled like a Chinese noodle factory. “How’d you get my number?”
“You’re in the book.”
He could hear the oriental inflection - the clipped and brittle precision of English spoken as a second language - in the disembodied voice. “The plywood’s held together with waterproof glue. Rain won’t affect anything.”
After an uncomfortable pause, she said, “What are you doing?”
Mickey was standing barefoot in his underwear. “Now?”
“No, a week from Tuesday.”
Her pokerfaced brusqueness stood him back on his heels. No one ever called much before noon; the clattering telephone had jolted him out of a comatose fog. “Nothing. I’m talking to you.”
“Why do you dress like every day is Halloween?”
Mickey took a deep breath; for a brief moment, he considered hanging up the phone, peeing his brains out, and going back to bed. “In Vietnam I was a lowly grunt. Spent three years in light infantry. Mortars mostly. Short range, high trajectory crap. For 36 months I slaughtered people at a polite distance.” Mickey paused just long enough for her to tell him to shut up. He cracked his knuckles and farted. “Putting the war behind me has become like a quest for the Holy Grail.”
“Holy what?”
His kidneys were beginning to ache with backpressure from a swollen bladder. “The cup used by Christ during the Last Supper.”
There was no reply. “The punji stick,” he offered, as though speaking in cryptic code. “I get poked and shit on overseas then come home to more of the same. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Tomorrow, if the rain ends, I will teach you how to cut and lay shingles. If the restaurant business ever goes bust, you can always earn a living as a roofer.”
“Well, goodbye.” She hung up.
Sunday afternoon Mickey’s sister dropped by unannounced. He was in the bedroom hanging wallpaper, all the furniture pushed against the far wall. “Ten years you never lift a finger to fix anything, and now you’re doing major renovations?”
Mickey dampened a sponge in a pail of clear water and dabbed at a loose seam. “Do you like the pattern?”
Two walls were done in a garish metallic plum with mint stripes. Karla ran a hand over the textured paper. “Very classy.”
Mickey rolled a precut sheet with the paste side facing out and went into the bathroom. He wet the paper in the tub, boxing the ends toward the middle. “You wouldn’t believe what this stuff costs retail.”
She followed him back into the bedroom. Mickey stood on a step ladder and raised the sheet into place while his sister unfurled it from below. “A contractor I know got the bid to renovate 25 rooms at the Ramada Inn.” Mickey slid the wet paper over an eighth of an inch closing the seam. Grabbing a short bristle brush, he began smoothing out the air bubbles and excess paste, working from the center in sweeping strokes. “The guy never was much good with a pencil and paper. Miscalculated two rooms over.”
Mickey knelt down to trim the bulge around an electrical box. “You’re papering the house with leftovers from a motel?” Karla said.
Mickey waved a utility knife in the a
ir. “The Ramada Inn’s a 4-star joint; they don’t scrimp on materials.” He ran a crimping wheel along the baseboard and peeled back the excess. Reaching for the brush again, he tapped the bottom edge neatly into place. “Did you see the living room?”
Karla went back into the living room and reexamined the paper, a floral motif offset by a rococo border. “Swanky, very elegant,” she confirmed. “If I didn’t know any better, I might think you were experiencing a midlife crisis ... or in love.”
Mickey ran his tape measure across the length of the far wall marking the bare plaster every 21 inches. Seven more sheets and, except for the mismatched furniture, there would be no appreciable difference between his frumpy bedroom and a 75 dollar-a-night suite at the Ramada Inn!
“Those Cambodian girls sure proved you wrong,” Karla said. She was standing by the window, staring into the rain-soaked neighbor’s yard.
Mickey was on his knees. He placed a framing square flush against the side of a fresh roll and trimmed straight across with the razor. “Yeah well, who knows. The first good winter storm, the shed might still blow over.”
He retracted the blade back into the knife and joined her by the window. A relentless downpour was punishing the roofless shed. “Two million,” Mickey muttered.
“How’s that?”
“One fifth of the Cambodian population. Two million men, women and children. That’s how many people the Khmer Rouge killed in four, shitty years.” He touched his finger to the misted window and traced a circle then split the middle with a curved line into yin-yang symbols. “No hostile, invading enemy. No civil war. Just a bunch of genocidal gooks killing each other for no good reason.”
Karla stared at her brother in mild surprise. “I didn’t know you cared?”
“It’s no skin off my ass if they slaughter two or twenty million.