A Long Stay in a Distant Land Page 4

  "Marco Polo?" Melvin asked, staring at Bo's plate.

  Bo began eating.

  Melvin's eyes were fixed on his plate.

  "Stop staring," Esther said.

  "Who are you?" he asked Bo finally. "Who are you?"

  Sparking the Fire

  (1976)

  Today you are an American boy. Before long you will be an American man. It is important to America and to yourself that you become a citizen of fine character, physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

  Matches are OK for starting cooking fires. A campfire deserves better. Add to its romance by lighting it the way Indians and early settlers did it.

  —Official Boy Scout Handbook

  Against Esther's wishes, Melvin enlisted Bo in a Boy Scout troop headed by an old army friend. Even though Bo had never been a Cub Scout, the army friend agreed to allow him into his troop as a favor to Melvin. The army friend promised to teach Bo basic skills that would enable him to survive a week in the woods with only a knife, a mango, and a flashlight. He prescribed a diet filled with more steak and fish to boost Bo from a hundred pounds to at least one-thirty, and a weightlifting program to be implemented as soon as Melvin could get the money together and Esther gave him permission to buy a bench and a set of weights.

  Esther refused permission and also refused to add more steak and fish to the menu, so Melvin began cooking dinners that preceded the ones she prepared. Each night Bo had the option of choosing which dinner he wanted to eat. Each night he chose both, and ate half of what he'd normally eat from each sitting.

  This frustrated Esther because Melvin's dinners mostly came out of a can or a box. Steak and fish he fried until "they were ready," readiness equaling a burnt black.

  "He's a terrible cook," she said. "And why do you eat with a man who doesn't respect your choice of utensils? You don't have to eat both dinners. You can make a choice."

  "It wouldn't be fair to the other person," Bo said.

  Melvin's dinners began at six. Esther's began at seven. For two hours each night, the Lum kitchen was filled with the noise of clanging pots and pans, clanking dishes, and clacking chopsticks being washed, dried, washed again, and dried again.

  This was just the beginning.

  Melvin decided Bo had to learn to start a fire before his first Scout meeting. "A basic skill he needs to know."

  "Are the other boys going to ask him to start a fire for them when they meet?" Esther asked. "Is he going to have to bring them the head of a deer, too?"

  She thought Bo would refuse to go along with Melvin, and she was ready to support her son. "I can tell him you don't want to be a Scout. I can tell him for you."

  "It's okay," Bo said.

  "Why is it okay?"

  "Because I don't think I've ever done anything to make him happy. I've only done things to upset him."

  "You've gone back to chopsticks," she said.

  "Yeah," Bo said. "Less efficient."

  "If you do things to make me happy, that's more than enough," she said.

  "I have to give it a try."

  A week and a half before Bo's first meeting, Melvin came home with a duffel bag and a big smile on his face. From the bag, he pulled out a tan shirt. There was a Scout badge stitched on the left breast pocket.

  "Put it on." He handed Bo the shirt. He pulled out a red neckerchief and wrapped it around Bo's neck. "Fits okay. You're lucky to be a Scout. When I was your age, we didn't have Boy Scouts. We had tongs. I stayed off the streets after six. At night, they ran around collecting protection money from businesses and rumbling with rival tongs.

  "They stabbed each other with knives, beat each other on the head with bricks. My best friend Hung lost his right eye from a broken glass bottle in a rumble down in the Mission District."

  "Sounds like a rough upbringing," Esther said.

  Melvin ignored her.

  "What was the name of the tong in your neighborhood?" Bo asked.

  "The YMCA," Esther said. "By rumbling, he means the YMCA-sponsored track meets in Golden Gate Park."

  Melvin glared at her. "Now you do everything your Scout leader tells you to," he said. "If he tells you to wrestle a mountain lion, you roll up your sleeves and take a deep breath."

  "Why would there be mountain lions?" Esther asked.

  "I'm telling him be prepared," Melvin said. "It's the Scout motto. You wouldn't know."

  Esther was bothered by this scene of father standing over son, straightening his uniform, adjusting his neckerchief clasp, and picking lint off his shoulder.

  Bo was her son, not his.

  She flipped through the Scout book Melvin brought home and saw an illustration of boys crouching on all fours tracking rabbit prints in the snow. Another picture showed boys lying face down on a frozen lake, holding hands to form a human chain, pulling out someone who'd fallen in.

  She understood why her husband would be so excited about involving her son in this business. Whereas common sense suggested that one avoid stepping on a frozen lake and following a rabbit in the snow, when there was no good reason to be on a frozen lake and no good reason to follow a rabbit unless you were going to kill it—in which case the sparse meat of a rabbit, especially in winter, did not justify the efforts of several hunters, much less one—Melvin lacked common sense and eschewed it in favor of doing things that made no sense.

  What did Scout activities do but force boys to eat beans cooked in distant dirt holes (when nutritious tofu and rice were always available at home) and hunt little animals that possessed more bone than meat? Such pointless activities reminded her of the Chinese proverb about the man who was so useless he ate himself full of rice and couldn't even produce shit.

  When Esther protested against Bo's involvement with the Boy Scouts, Melvin said, "I let you teach him how to cook."

  "An omelet!" she said.

  "I gave you that one, you give me this one."

  "I've given you more than one," Esther said, remembering how Melvin had encouraged Sonny and Larry to take advantage of lonely widows, talking the boys up about the honor of finding food from outside the home, all that foolishness. It hadn't been until Larry's impending college graduation seven years ago that Melvin finally consented to side with her.

  She'd told Larry that his uncle Phil knew a Dr. Nanda at UCSF who could write a note exempting him from the draft.

  "Why?" Larry had asked. "If I get drafted, I get drafted."

  "You can have a doctor's note," she said. "You know how many people your age would love to have this option?"

  "What will it say?"

  "You don't need to know," she said.

  "I don't want a note saying I have one testicle or boils on my ass. I'm a healthy man, not a cripple."

  "I don't care what you want. You're applying to dental school."

  "Why?" Larry asked.

  "Does every response have to be why? You don't have to challenge my every word. You can accept, once in a while, that I speak from a wiser and more knowledgeable perspective than you. Accept it. Stop asking why. Do what I say.

  "Dental school because medical school would be too difficult for you and you're not clever enough for law school. Dental school because dentistry's a good, consistent paycheck. No matter what happens to the economy, there will always be jobs for doctors, dentists, and funeral directors. You wouldn't be happy working with dead people.

  "And I'm complimenting you here, you have strong hands. A good dentist needs strong hands."

  "No," Larry said.

  "Do you have something against dentistry?" Esther asked. "Give me one good reason why you don't want to be a dentist."

  "I can't think of one right now," Larry said. "Does Dr. Nanda even exist?"

  "Of course," Esther said. "And so does the application. Come by tomorrow to pick it up. I've already typed most of it for you."

  "Where am I applying?" Larry asked.

  "UCLA."

  "Why?"

  She asked Sonny to talk to him.


  "I tried," Sonny said.

  "Did you really? Did you talk to him as if your own life depended on it?"

  "I said, 'Hey man, if you got killed in Vietnam, I'd be really bummed out.'"

  "Convincing." Esther then asked Melvin to talk to him.

  "Maybe we should give him a choice," Melvin said.

  Esther wanted to ask, You really want them to go through what you went through? She didn't know what he'd gone through in his war because he never talked about it. So she said, "Let me tell you what Larry is worth to me. He's worth the thirty-three hours I spent in labor when I screamed my throat sore. Remember? You plugged your ears with toilet paper. You had that luxury.

  "I nursed that boy until my breasts about fell off. He left teeth marks across my shoulders. And to raise him just so he could say with your encouragement, 'Ah-Mah, I'm going out for candy.'"

  Melvin nodded as she spoke. When she finished he said, "I'll tell him to take the note," and she realized that their marriage wasn't a complete disappointment. Faced with the possibility that Larry could get killed in battle, Melvin wanted an alternative, and that was a good enough reason for her to respect him.

  Melvin invited Larry for lunch and a talk. He asked the boy to follow her plan.

  "Dr. Nanda really agreed to write the note?" Larry asked.

  "Of course." Esther showed him a copy of the typed letter.

  A smile crept onto his face as he read. "Tell him don't send it."

  "Why?"

  "I didn't get drafted," Larry said. "Sonny said you wouldn't actually go to the trouble of finding a real letter from a real doctor. We bet on it. Ten bucks. I was betting on you." He sounded as if she should take pride in his faith in her, which was worth no more than ten dollars!

  She was furious. If she could've articulated complete sentences, she'd have said, Of course I would have found a letter for you. You're my son. You're also a gullible fool. Who do you think you are?

  Melvin went to the garage and returned with a rolled-up newspaper.

  "You really love me," Larry said to them. "Wow."

  "Love. You?" was all she could manage before Melvin whacked Larry hard on the side of the head.

  "Ow!"

  "Get out!" Melvin smacked him on the head again and chased him out of the house. Esther would always be proud of her husband for this act. To her, it was one of his greatest moments.

  They refused to see or talk to Sonny and Larry for three months, and when Larry decided to attend UCLA's School of Dentistry, she believed it was to pacify their anger.

  In rare form, Sonny followed his older brother by enrolling in UCLA's M.B.A. program, which he dropped out of halfway through. Now twenty-six and employed at Wells Fargo, he visited on weekends to do his laundry and eat free meals. On discovering Bo's involvement with the Boy Scouts, he saluted him and asked, "What's the difference between a good log and a bad one? You prefer refried beans or green ones?"

  Esther pulled Sonny into her room. "Say one more word to him," she said, "even look at him strangely and you'll be doing your laundry somewhere else."

  "Jesus, Ah-Mah."

  "Stop picking on him."

  "Fine."

  Bo's first fire-making lesson began with Melvin placing a piece of cloth at the end of a stick. He lit the cloth with a match and then tossed it into a coffee can to snuff out the flame. Bo watched silently.

  "What are you doing?" Esther asked.

  "Charring the cloth," Melvin said.

  "Why?" she asked.

  "It'll catch the sparks that Bo will make. It'll burn easier after it's charred."

  "You just lit it with a match. If you didn't put out the fire, you would have fire."

  "Yeah," he said.

  "Can't Bo just light a match?" she asked.

  Melvin ignored her. He handed Bo a piece of steel and a piece of flint. Then he draped the charred cloth over a collection of twigs and sticks arranged in a square in the middle of the concrete patio floor. "Strike the steel against the flint. Yes, down in that direction so the sparks fly onto the cloth."

  "You just lit the cloth with a match," Esther said.

  "Be quiet."

  "You have many more matches."

  "Go inside," Melvin said. "This is a private lesson."

  "Bo wants me to stay," Esther said. She looked at the boy, who looked at the tools in his hands.

  "Bo needs you to go inside," Melvin said.

  "Bo, can I stay and watch?"

  Bo nodded, then looked at Melvin, who shook his head.

  "Nope," Melvin said.

  "Bo said yes."

  "Bo, tell her you can't light a fire with her watching you."

  "I can."

  "There," Esther said.

  "No, you can't." Melvin growled.

  "Ah-Mah, please go inside."

  "I want to cheer you on."

  "She wants to cheer me on," Bo said.

  "You don't start a fire with someone cheering you on," Melvin said. "You do it because it means the difference between life and death, between surviving the night's cold or hypothermia."

  "Then I might need to learn this survival skill, too," she said.

  "Did I stand over your shoulder when you were teaching him how to make an omelet?" Melvin asked.

  "I wouldn't have minded," she said. "You could have used the lesson."

  "Go inside."

  He and Bo waited. Bo looked nervous and Esther didn't want him to be. She wanted him to side with her without reluctance or fear. "You are more of a child than he is, Melvin." She went in and slammed the glass door shut.

  They turned their backs to her and hunched together. Melvin began giving Bo instructions. His right hand wavered inches from his son's back, like he was a pastor giving his boy a benediction, blessing the sticks and praying for a good fire.

  Bo began striking the steel against the flint.

  Each night Esther watched as Melvin gathered tinder and kindling sticks and arranged them in a square crisscross, over which he spread the cloth, freshly charred and ready to receive the sparks that would ignite the flames he longed to see.

  For half an hour, Bo would scratch the flint with the steel, producing only a screeching sound that echoed the cries of the crickets who lived on the other side of the fence, and who were probably annoyed at the men trying to ruin their black night with heat and light.

  Every five minutes, Bo put his tools down and Melvin helped stretch the boy's arms and back. Bo often asked Melvin about growing up in Hong Kong.

  Melvin was seven when he moved to San Francisco with his parents, but he spoke of his birthplace with such vividness that one might have believed the man had spent a lifetime there. "The roaches in Kowloon are big as your forearm. They suck human blood."

  "I don't think roaches suck blood," Bo said.

  "Maybe, maybe not. But they were everywhere."

  "What was the shopping like?"

  "On the streets of Hong Kong, you can buy meatballs for lunch, get your shoes shined, and have a suit made. You can order a bowl of rice porridge at two in the morning. Shops and restaurants stay open through the night, which is perfect for a vampire like you."

  "It'd be nice to visit," Bo said.

  At session's end, he would watch quietly as Melvin gave the flint several hard strikes. The cloth would catch and a small flame flicker from the center of the stick pile.

  Esther watched her son, dressed in his uniform, learning an obsolete skill. What were matches for? Lighters? Bo had been such an articulate proponent of efficiency and technological advance in his argument for the fork and spoon.

  Two nights before his first Scout meeting, Bo had success.

  "Come, flames!" Melvin shouted. He was crouched next to Bo and rocking on the balls of his feet.

  Bo's head was bowed low, his back to her.

  "There!"

  She slid the glass door open. "Bo, you have homework."

  "Quiet. He's almost got it."

  She approache
d and walked around the stick pile to face them. Bo's neckerchief clasp glinted in the moonlight like one of Melvin's brass shell casings.

  It started as a tiny spark, something one would have imagined harmless and incapable of producing anything. But it was the spark that caught, and Melvin and Bo whooped it into a small fire.

  The twigs began to crackle.

  Melvin and Bo didn't notice Esther as she went to pick up the garden hose behind them. They were slapping each other on the back when she turned on the spigot. They were fanning the flames when she approached. Only when they noticed her standing above them did she press the trigger and extinguish the fire with a powerful jet of water.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Melvin asked.

  But it'd already been done.

  "Why did you do that?" Bo asked. "You shouldn't have done that." He looked at the soggy pile and then at her. Then he walked into the house.

  Melvin stood. It was cold and dark. He nudged the wet sticks and they sloshed under his foot. "You could have let him enjoy it a little longer."

  "You were enjoying it, too," she said.

  "You could have let us enjoy it a bit more."

  "It's not safe to have a fire burning in the middle of a patio."

  Melvin exhaled. She could see his breath. "It's dangerous," she said. "He could have been burned."

  Melvin chuckled. The chuckle extended into laughter and the laughter grew loud.

  "Don't make fun of me," she said.

  "Did you see the size of that fire?" Melvin asked. "It couldn't have burned a hair off my ass."

  "Mr. War Hero doesn't care if he gets hurt, that's fine. I have to watch out for my son's safety."

  "War hero was your idea," he said. "You're the one who kept telling the boys I shot Nazis and freed France."

  "I wanted them to think well of their father."

  "You don't care what they think of me. The worse the better."

  Melvin's eagerness to leave for France had made her feel miserable and lonely after his departure, more so than if he'd left reluctantly. If he'd been mowing down Nazis with his machine gun, liberating villages, and feeding starving French children, she'd have understood why he left and she wouldn't have felt as if the time spent worrying for his life had been wasted.