A Long Stay in a Distant Land Read online

  "I handed out food to nobody," he said, picking his foot out of the wet stick pile. "I killed no one. I spent most of my time passing through wrecked towns and helping bury dead soldiers and civilians.

  "The only person I shot was Jimmy Zahn, in a firefight. It was hell. The air was filled with dust. Couldn't see my hand in front of my face. I shot him in the thigh. Listened to his body hit the ground. His screams led me to him. I covered his mouth until it was over. Then I helped carry him to the medic, and for the rest of the war he didn't speak to me for shooting him."

  Melvin once claimed to have met General Patton, a soft spoken man who played a mean game of blackjack and who sang a rendition of "Danny Boy" that made him cry every time he replayed it in his mind.

  She didn't know whether he got these details from bad war movies or bad war novels. He might have shot a friend who might have been named Jimmy Zahn, but she'd long since lost faith in what he said.

  She'd always told their sons good stories about him. Stories about him passing out crackers and peanut butter to French children, and defending villages against German tanks with just his machine gun and a picture of her. He should have kept this story to himself.

  If he wanted to disappoint her, she'd fire right back.

  "When you were gone, I fell in love with Francis Saldovar," she said. "I visited his shop as much as possible, even on days I didn't need to buy meat. He smiled whenever I walked into his store. He touched my chest once." It'd been an accident. He'd slipped over a patch of lamb's blood and fallen on her, after which he apologized several dozen times.

  "I remember him," Melvin said. "He died a few years ago. You flew back up to San Francisco for his funeral."

  "Yes."

  "I always thought it was strange for you to go to the funeral of an old butcher," Melvin said. "Was he a good butcher?"

  "A great butcher and a wonderful man. He always gave me special discounts."

  Melvin said nothing.

  "Aren't you upset?" she asked.

  He shook his head. "Francis was a good man. He probably would have been a better husband for you."

  She went inside and shut the glass door behind her. She watched him standing there in the patio, his back to her and his hands in his pockets, staring up at the sky.

  She used to fantasize about marrying Francis because he was there, two blocks away, and she didn't know if Melvin would return. She'd imagined having children with Francis, boys and girls who'd wear aprons and stand on footstools to wrap meat for customers. He had simplified her idea of happiness, and made her believe kindness was a smile and affection thirty-five percent off tenderloin.

  She went to check on Bo. His presence always comforted her. He was seated at his desk reading a chemistry book. He looked up.

  "I'm sorry I put out the fire," she said. "I didn't know starting fires made you happy."

  "You don't know what makes me happy," Bo said. "I don't know what makes you happy. I thought I knew what makes AhBah happy, but starting a fire isn't enough to keep him happy."

  "Then why did you do it?"

  "Have you ever been to Hong Kong?" he asked.

  "No," she said.

  "I think it'd be a fun place to live."

  "They were just stories, what he told you."

  "He exaggerates," Bo said. "It's his way of joking."

  "What would you do in Hong Kong?" she asked.

  "Rent an apartment. Walk the streets. Ride the ferry. Talk to complete strangers."

  "We have streets here."

  "But no people on the streets," he said. "Our streets are made for cars, not walking. All the stores close before eight. Nothing stays open through the night."

  "You don't have to leave this country to live in a big city."

  "It was his city. I'd like to see where he came from."

  "He came from his mother's body," she said.

  He looked at her like she didn't know what she was talking about.

  "You make me happy," she said.

  "I'm your son. That's a matter of fact. I didn't do anything to make you happy."

  "You don't have to do anything," she said.

  "Making someone happy is labor. You earn someone's happiness. You have to work for it."

  "That's not true," she said.

  "Like me making an omelet the way you make it. Dice the tomatoes. Ditto the green peppers and mushrooms. Add pinch­fuls of salt and pepper. Don't use handfuls, and don't just pour all over the place. You're not raining salt here. Pinchfuls." He was quoting her. Verbatim.

  He sighed, like she did when she was frustrated with Sonny, Larry, and Melvin. "I haven't done a thing to make you happy," he said.

  "Making someone happy isn't a job."

  "You don't know what makes me happy," he said.

  "Then tell me."

  "I'm going to that first Scout meeting."

  "That'll make you happy?"

  "That'll make him less unhappy," Bo said. "I don't know what makes that man happy, either."

  Deliverance at Yosemite

  (1976)

  A heat wave set in the second week of July, baking most of Orange County in hundred-plus-degree weather. However, Bo refused to come out of his locked room. Each evening he remained inside, his electric fan set on high, the whir audible through the door. Each evening Melvin was slumped on the sofa in the living room, wearing just boxer shorts, his pale torso reflecting the blue glow from the TV. Each evening Esther sat on the patio fanning herself with the newspaper, hoping Bo would come outside and chat with her.

  Inside, Bo read history books detailing the rise and fall of dynasties and empires, Asian and European. This wasn't required reading because he wasn't taking summer school. He was reading for fun, and whenever she'd clean his room, she would inevitably find a thick text bookmarked to a page recounting the bloody crusades of twelfth-century English knights or the massive fleets of the Mongolian empire.

  The first week of July Bo had reluctantly, and at Melvin's request for brotherly bonding, followed Sonny and Larry to Huntington Beach. There they threw Bo, against his permission, into the ocean.

  Bo had walked through the front door dripping wet and mumbling curses at his brothers.

  Sonny and Larry remained on the porch, apprehension on their faces as Esther demanded an explanation.

  "The ocean's so big," Sonny explained, "and he's so small."

  "It seemed like fun at the time," Larry said. "He was shouting."

  "He was probably shouting for you to put him down."

  "They could have been shouts of joy and anticipation," Sonny said.

  "You're terrible brothers," she said.

  Their hands were stuffed in the pockets of their shorts.

  "Irresponsible. Disloyal. Uncaring."

  Melvin came up from behind her. "You two want to come in?"

  She turned and glared at him.

  "Maybe not," Melvin said.

  "Yeah," Sonny said. "We should get going."

  She slammed the door shut as Sonny and Larry walked back to Sonny's car. "Your idea," she said to Melvin.

  "Give them time to sort it out themselves," he said. "Brothers do this sort of thing to each other."

  "What if he drowned?"

  "They wouldn't have let him drown," he said.

  "Your fault." She went to Bo's door and knocked. The fan was whirring loudly inside the room. "Bo."

  "I'm busy."

  "What're you doing?"

  "Drying off."

  "I scolded your brothers."

  He opened the door, standing in a dry pair of shorts and a dry white T-shirt. His wet clothes were draped over the back of his chair, which was positioned right in front of the whirring fan. "You shouldn't have."

  "I thought I should say something," she said.

  "It's none of your business," he said, frustration in his voice. "Leave it alone."

  "Leave what alone?"

  "My brothers and I." Bo ran a hand through his wet hair. "It's our busine
ss."

  "They were wrong," she repeated.

  "I know. I was there."

  "I'm just trying to help."

  "I don't need it."

  "Okay," she said.

  "Okay," he said. Then he shut the door.

  She stood waiting for him to open it again, but he didn't. Finally she turned and walked back out to the living room.

  The price tag initially intimidated Esther. In addition, Christmas was five months away and Bo's birthday had been a month prior. After staring at it through the Sears display window for half an hour, she made her decision. She really had no excuse, but in the hope of gaining her son's affection, she was willing to pay the price.

  When Melvin saw it, he asked, "You know how much two hundred fifty dollars is?"

  "Two hundred fifty dollars."

  "For some fancy useless machine," he said.

  "It's a gift."

  "When's the last time you spent this much money on Sonny or Larry?"

  Esther didn't answer.

  "When's the last time you bought them a gift for no reason?" he asked.

  "They have Helen and Mirla to buy them gifts."

  Melvin shook his head, let out a long exasperated breath, and went to the bathroom.

  When Bo saw it, he said nothing. He ran his hands over the box, looking at the sides and back. He picked it up and scoured every inch of the box's surface, his mouth open.

  "A Marantz Superscope," he said finally. He cut open the box with a pair of scissors and lifted the machine out. "It's pretty heavy."

  "But small and portable. You can carry it around with you when you want to go outside."

  "Outside," he said, a look of wonder in his eyes.

  In the following weeks Bo took his portable tape player with him wherever he went. It was, as Esther had said, small. But it was also, as Bo had said, heavy at about ten pounds, a gray steel box with tiny levers on the top and an ejectable cassette tray, into which Bo would slide blank tapes to record all the noises that filled his world. Afternoons he lugged it outside, sometimes with both hands. Nights, he lugged it back into his room.

  Dinner for Melvin had always been a solemn activity reserved for eating and silence, but whenever Bo brought the Superscope to the dinner table, Melvin would speak to it like it was a child in need of amusement. While Esther and Bo were busy eating, Melvin would every now and then turn his head to the Super-scope seated next to him and say things like "It's so hot I can fry noodles on my ass." Then he'd play back the recording and laugh. "Did you hear that?" he'd ask.

  Bo brought it out to the front yard and let it record singing birds and passing traffic while he read his history books. For hours he would lay his head on a rolled-up sleeping bag and read or sleep while the Superscope recorded. Watching him next to the machine, Esther felt at peace, at least until Melvin decided to organize the first annual Lum weekend camping trip at Yosemite National Park (for the Lum men only).

  Sonny had just proposed to Mirla, and Melvin wanted to get in one outing with his sons before Sonny was, in Melvin's words, whipped.

  To Esther's surprise, Bo didn't resist the idea of the trip. "It's the last time we'll be together before Sonny gets whipped," he said.

  Esther disliked Bo's use of Melvin's phrase. "You never spent time with your brothers before," she said.

  "That's why this'll be the last time." There was again frustration in Bo's voice. He showed his impatience with her more these days. Whenever she'd stop by his room before going to bed, he'd look at the ceiling, look at the wall, look at his feet, yawn, and rub his eyes. He'd make every signal he could without actually saying the words, Please leave.

  "You can bring the Superscope with you," she suggested. It was impractical to bring on a camping trip. It was too heavy, particularly if hiking was involved. Besides, would the machine even be capable of picking up any radio stations in the middle of the woods?

  But it was her gift and she wanted it to go with him. Maybe he could record things Melvin, Sonny, and Larry didn't want her to hear, things that would give her a new perspective on these Lum men.

  Bo looked at it. "I guess I can bring some music tapes. It'll kill time."

  Thursday evening the men, dressed in khaki shorts, flannel shirts, and fishing hats, threw their sleeping bags and backpacks into Melvin's station wagon. Bo, in an oversized fishing vest and jeans, carried the Superscope with him into the backseat.

  "We're off," Melvin said to Esther, who stood on the driveway looking at her sons in the car. "It's only a couple days."

  "I know," she said.

  "I'm surprised you didn't raise a fuss," he said.

  "Bo wanted to go," she said. "What can I say?"

  Melvin's lips began to curve upward; a victor's smug smile. She hated having to regard him as a competitor for Bo's affection.

  "It's only a couple days," Esther said, then turned around.

  "Aren't you going to kiss me good-bye?" Melvin asked as she walked back into the house and shut the door behind her.

  Inside Esther grew nervous. Bo was now going to be alone with his brothers and Melvin for an entire weekend. What would become of him? What kind of pranks would they pull on her youngest son?

  The men returned Sunday afternoon, their faces red with sunburn, and faint smiles all around. Esther felt like she'd missed a good party.

  "You have fun?" she asked Melvin. He nodded, then walked into their bedroom and crashed onto their bed. Soon he was snoring into his dirt-covered fishing hat.

  She took his hat off and tossed it in their bathroom sink.

  She went to Bo's room and asked, "You have fun?"

  He smiled and nodded, the pocket of his fishing vest stuffed with cassette tapes.

  "Good," she said. She waited a moment while he stared at the Superscope on his desk.

  "I'll let you get back to whatever you were doing." She turned and left the room, closing the door behind her.

  The summer came to an end and soon school started. Bo entered his sophomore year of high school changed. He smiled more. He met friends. He didn't stay cooped up in his room all day and night, and though Esther knew she should be happy at this turn of events, she was afraid that he was changing too drastically, too quickly.

  Bo was someone who used to lose sleep nights before his own birthday parties; he often requested the invitation list be trimmed down to just the immediate family, and the parties—quiet except for the clinks of glasses filled with soda and the slurps of men pigging out on cake and chips—felt more like wakes.

  She had misjudged him, had missed the signs of his slow evolution from homebound introvert to personable, easygoing extrovert.

  While cleaning his room one afternoon, she discovered the cassette tapes in his top desk drawer. They were marked by the dates of the weekend camping trip in Yosemite.

  She put the first tape in the Superscope and pushed play. She would spend three afternoons listening while Bo was at school. Each time after she finished, she would rewind the tape completely, slip it back into its plastic case, and return it to the drawer.

  July 23rd

  "This is kind of like Deliverance" Larry said. He was breathing heavily. There were the sounds of dry twigs crackling, of heavy steps thudding. They were hiking.

  "Like Deliverance?" Sonny said. "This is Deliverance. Four guys in the woods."

  "What's this deliverance talk?" Melvin asked. "Is that some thing from the Bible?" He added with a laugh, "When did you guys turn Christian?"

  "It's a book about four men who vacation in the woods," Larry said.

  "Yeah, what happens?" Melvin asked.

  "One of them gets ass-raped by a wild, hairy mountain man," Sonny said, then added, "Fuck," with shock and urgency in his voice, like it had actually happened to a friend of his.

  A long pause. A crunch of dead leaves. An uneasy silence.

  Bo hadn't spoken and Esther's heart froze with concern for her youngest son, who must at this point have been petrified.

&nbs
p; "Let's get one thing straight," Melvin said. "This is a story. Right?"

  "I don't think it's fiction," Sonny said.

  "Yeah, I remember finding it in the nonfiction area of the library," Larry said.

  "What were you doing in a library?" Melvin asked.

  Larry didn't answer.

  "Nobody's going to get ass-raped by a mountain man," Melvin said. "I didn't fight in World War II just to come home and get porked by some crazy bushman."

  A burst of laughter from Sonny and Larry.

  "What?" Melvin said.

  "You said bushman," Sonny said.

  "You don't have to worry, Ah-Bah," Larry said. "Bo's the pretty one here."

  "Shut up," Bo said.

  "You shut up," Larry said.

  "Stop," Melvin said. "We're a family. We have to stick together."

  "Good thing I brought this," Sonny said. There was the sound of a hand tapping something hard, and Esther knew it was Sonny's knife, a large, dangerous weapon he'd bought in Tijuana. "Nobody's porking me in the ass," he said with the reassurance of someone carrying a foot-long knife.

  The sound of footsteps and heavy breathing resumed. Grunts every so often. The long march. Upward? Down a hill? It was hard to tell. The only sound Esther could clearly identify was that of exhaustion.

  "That looks like a good spot," Melvin said. "You doing okay?"

  "Yeah," Bo said.

  "Watch your cornhole, Bo!" Sonny shouted, his voice distant. He and Larry had probably gone ahead.

  "You want me to carry that?" Melvin asked.

  "I'm all right," Bo said.

  "It's too heavy."

  "I'm fine," Bo said.

  "He's fine," Esther said.

  A pause.

  "That's what I like about you," Melvin said. "You know that's heavy. I know that's heavy. But you haven't complained. Not one word."

  "I'm too tired to complain," Bo said.

  "Fair enough. Then keep up."

  July 24th

  The sound of leaves crackling, bushes rustling.