The Family Recipe

Chapter 37

CHAPTER 37

May 1981, Houston, Texas

In a nondescript courthouse in Texas, an unusual case had gripped both the locals and the state. On May 10, 1981, the trial began—many even placed bets on the outcome, wondering which way the winds would turn. Crowds formed in clusters outside the courthouse, jostling each other, on the off chance they’d be able to listen in. After all, it was a Black female judge presiding, with a Baptist attorney named after a Jewish friend representing the plaintiffs, the Vietnamese fishermen refugees, against the defendants, the Ku Klux Klan. That synopsis alone caused anyone from any side of the dividing line to want to listen in.

In five days, the shrimping season would begin, and everyone held their breaths wondering if they’d ever be able to go back out into those waters again. It was a battle no one had ever seen before. A battle over the Gulf, over shrimp, and the right for both. Perhaps it was also the most American court case that the town had seen in a long time.

Huey sat in the back of the court for four days, his face half-covered in a hat, wearing an ill-fitting suit he had managed to pull from the Salvation Army dumpster—a puke-green color that was three times as large as his frame. Huey sat quietly, listening in as both sides of the courtroom intertwined with each other, people setting aside their differences to claim empty seats. Side by side, shoulder to shoulder, locals, reporters, Klansmen decked in white robes, and Vietnamese families dressed their best to look more American, sat together, faces intense, listening in on testimonies and cross-examinations.

Duc was long gone at this point. Where he had gone, Huey didn’t know or care. He could be on his way to Quebec or perhaps he had worked up the courage to go back west to Orange County. Evelyn also never showed up to court at all, but Huey stopped by to check in on her every day after the trial ended, to see if she needed anything. If she didn’t come to the door, Huey would mow her lawn or leave food out on her front steps, not leaving until he saw her stick out her arm and pull the food inside her house. Neighbors said that she had been consumed by her grief; she couldn’t get out of bed for days, or go to the courthouse. But still, Huey kept watch, as best he could, from a distance.

Huey Ng? was never one to carry hope around. He had lost it a long time ago, back in his childhood home in the south of Vietnam, watching it dissipate forever when he witnessed chaos at such an early age. But as the son of an uneducated fisherman, Huey felt the tiniest iota of hope begin to fill his chest again as he witnessed friends and the Vietnamese fishermen approach the stand, and recount their stories of living in fear, intimidation, and with the threats they received from the Klansmen. Even Huey had to recognize the miracle it took for any Vietnamese to step forward and testify.

On the final day of the trial, Huey settled into his usual corner seat in the last row, far away from anyone. Just as the doors were closing, he saw Evelyn sneak in and someone quickly give up their seat for her. She slowly lowered herself, burdened by the heaviness of her belly. Her face was red, puffy, and raw, and he could tell that she had been crying herself to sleep. She was due any day now, and his guilt compounded. He was consumed not by the idea of Tu?n’s body still somewhere out in the Gulf, but by the fact that Evelyn still didn’t know the truth—that the rumor mill still pointed the blame toward the Klansmen and not at the real truth. That it had been five men on a boat, full of drunken, infallible logic, scared out of their minds that night. And that they had simply forgotten about Tu?n.

Huey turned his head forward, back to the front of the courtroom, where a young Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald sat on the bench, her eyes poring over notes from the previous day. Once the gavel sounded, she cleared her throat and began speaking.

Over the years, members of various Klan organizations have engaged in acts of racial intimidation, harassment, and terrorism…

Huey didn’t remember much after that. He just remembered that as the judge continued speaking, the room erupted into chaos. Translations began from English to Vietnamese and then it quickly reversed. The Klansmen burst into fits of anger, some even removing their white hats, while locals were torn between cheering or booing, depending on which side they were on.

All Huey remembered was when everyone rose from their seats and began congratulating one another, he and Evelyn locked eyes across the courtroom. Her eyes were black and empty, knowing that the justice served today wouldn’t ever take away her pain, because it wasn’t her justice to take. The justice served today, in favor of the Vietnamese fishermen, would not make her life better in any way. Because Tu?n’s body was still out there, and Evelyn would never see him again.

It was all Huey’s fault.

Bodies blended as everyone cried, congratulating one another, thanking the lawyer, thanking the judge. A beautiful mix of English and Vietnamese could be heard from every corner of the room. But all Huey could see was Evelyn, still sitting there, heavily pregnant, and he got up and began making his way toward her. She made no indication for him to stop. He slid onto her bench and sat next to her silently, his hands folded in his lap, respectful. Huey and Evelyn sat side by side as the rest of the world moved on without them.

Months after shrimp season had officially started, the world righted itself. The Gulf had finally lived to see peace again. The waters seemed blue again, instead of red and black. And the locals and the Vietnamese were able to shrimp without any harassment, and as the sun rose and set each day, one could see trawlers of all shapes and sizes off in the distance, swaying side by side.

Huey, whose chest had felt tight for years, even long before coming to Texas, had allowed himself to relax a bit. He saw glimpses of what life would be like, if he just continued living for others, and not for himself. Though Evelyn had only just started inviting him into her life slowly, Huey was grateful. Grateful for a chance to make it up to her, somehow, some way. If Evelyn couldn’t love Huey in a romantic way, it didn’t matter. Huey would still take up arms for her. He would protect her forever.

One night, on his way to Evelyn’s house to help with the newborn baby—a son—he was whistling. He’d been hit with a sudden bout of nostalgia for the days with Duc, the days of bonding over Beatles’ tunes and shitty beer. As he followed the familiar path lined with old palm trees to Evelyn’s house, he thought fondly of the palm trees during his days in Orange County with Duc. He whistled “Yellow Submarine.”

Their old trawler had burned so that it was unsalvageable; it’d be the Devil’s work to bring it back to life. Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise, a chance to burn their friendship as well, before Duc brought Huey to the end of the world.

As Huey walked the half-constructed dirt road, his shoes made no sound against the soft mud. The woods were unusually quiet, and not even the cicadas were out. Only Huey’s whistling indicated that he was the only sentient creature out there, roaming the night. Evelyn’s dilapidated house soon appeared, next to a row of mobile homes with crooked blinds. Huey had begun studying for law school every night, and often came over to Evelyn’s to learn in peace. Just like at court, they sat side by side, while Evelyn knitted and Huey pored over his books. She would cook them dinner. It was a friendship of sorts, a bond between two people grieving in their own different ways. Huey grieved the loss of Duc’s friendship, the only family he had ever known in America. And Evelyn grieved the loss of her son’s father, forever lost to the Gulf.

Through the half-open shutters on the windows, Huey saw Evelyn pace back and forth, carrying the baby in her arms, cradling his head against her chest, and Huey felt that pang of guilt again. Tu?n’s ghost hovered close by, watching his every move.

As he got closer to the house, a chill ran through him as another voice creeped out of the woods and began harmonizing with his whistling. They were both now at the bridge of the song. Huey stopped walking, and the other whistler stopped as well.

“Who’s there?” Huey called out.

“Is that how you greet an old friend?”

Huey’s body turned cold. The same familiar deep voice that woke them up the morning after the fateful night Tu?n died, the same deep voice that greeted him when Huey walked onto a commercial fishing boat down in Delacroix Island, and the same deep voice that laughed at them when they realized that Tu?n had died. The old captain emerged from the woods, the moonlight casting a glow across his face, revealing it to be more haggard than the last time they had met. He was emaciated, the bags under his eyes had expanded, and the smell of alcohol emitting from him instantly hit Huey’s nostrils. Life had been cruel to him, and Huey immediately knew that the old captain was looking to hurt him. Cursed men often become cruel men.

“You got a nice wife and kid. Didn’t take you for a father. Didn’t seem to have it in you.”

Huey’s face turned white, his eyes quickly darting to where Evelyn was in the window, ignorant and blissful of what lay beyond her front door.

“She’s not my wife,” Huey said lamely, unsure what to do next. “She’s just a friend. I help them sometimes. That’s not my son.”

The old captain laughed. “Still spoken like someone willing to protect them, no matter what. You know my father was an evil son of a bitch. He was tough, hard on us. Hard on my mother. He was also a drunk.”

Huey didn’t try sympathizing because no matter what he said, he knew the man wouldn’t believe him. “What do you want?”

The captain took a giant step forward, and in the glow of the light, Huey could see a flash of a gun in his holster. “You know you’re on the Klan hit list, right? I saw your name on it,” he slurred.

Huey cocked his head to the side and raised his hands up in a placating way, taking a step back from the captain. “I don’t know what you’re talking about or what that Klan list is for, but I don’t want any trouble. Whatever you think I did, I didn’t do it.”

The captain reached down below his belt, gripping what Huey now saw was the sheath of a knife. “Are you not Huey Ng?? Did you not help bring evidence to the case?”

“I barely helped—” Huey started helplessly. “I just talked to people, it’s just testimonies, nothing more—”

Nothing Huey said was getting through. The alcohol wafting from the old man grew stronger with each forward step—a mix of cheap whiskey and beer for the colder nights.

“You’re on the list,” the man kept repeating, his incoherence slipping through. Two different liquors mixed together could ruin any man’s spirit. “You’re on the list. You and your family. You’re on the list—”

Huey began to beg. “Please, you don’t understand, she’s not my wife, that’s not my son, I’m not—” He cast a quick glance again at Evelyn in the window. He was nothing more than just a friend, a helping hand for her to get on her feet. That was all he would ever be, and that was what he was okay being. The scales of love had never been balanced in his favor anyway. Perhaps this was the closest he could come to it.

“You’re on the list,” the captain continued repeating, slurring. “The kill list.”

“Anh,” a familiar voice called out from behind him. “It’s going to be okay. I’m here now.”

Before Huey even turned around, he had already forgiven him. He looked at Duc, his one family member and friend in America. Sheepish and apologetic, Duc crawled out of the woods, hands also raised, attempting to pacify the intoxicated captain.

“That’s my wife actually,” Duc called out, his hands still raised. “Not Huey’s. You got it all wrong. That’s my wife and my son. Huey just comes by from time to time.”

“Your family? That’s your family?” the captain repeated slowly, his breath foul, as he shifted his hand away from the head of his knife, and instead to his flask, hidden behind his jacket.

“Yes, they’re my family,” Duc whispered, nodding at Huey to play along. “I had nothing to do with that trial, I skipped town. I’m—I’m a coward, you know.”

“Your family,” the captain repeated again, staring at Duc.

“My family.” Duc nodded.

“Yes, that’s his family,” Huey managed to say. “Please, leave them alone. Just go after me, okay? It was all me. All those testimonies, it was me, I was the one who helped. Not Duc. I have no family.”

“Okay.” The captain closed his eyes, pulled out the flask, and took a long swig. He stared at Huey one last time, studying him intensely. “Okay.”

The captain memorized him—Huey’s floppy black hair that looked like it could recede later on in life, his dark brown eyes, the smattering of birthmarks that lined his face, the ill-fitting suit he wore. “When you least expect me, you’ll meet yours one day. And when you turn around, it’ll be too late. Understand?”

“I understand,” Huey said, with finality. He continued to let the captain study him as Duc silently slipped toward the house, where Evelyn and the baby were, to stand guard at the front door. Huey felt his chest loosen again, knowing that no matter what happened to him, Evelyn and Jude would always be safe with Duc watching over them.