Chapter 22
CHAPTER 22
March 1981, Seabrook-Kemah, Texas
Forty-five minutes south of central Houston, out on Clear Lake Creek, the pier was swarming with families and couples milling about, enjoying the bright blue waters. Children ran down the pier steps, much to the chagrin of their parents, who chased after them, screaming, ice cream melting down the cone and all over their hands. Jessica! I said stop right now! Tony, you get your tiny butt back here right now!
It was the middle of March, and spring always brought hope.
Little did they understand how dire the situation had become between the Vietnamese fishermen and the locals.
Everyone on shore saw the boat coming down Clear Lake Creek before it even appeared on the horizon. Some Vietnamese families who were on the pier that day swear they saw the hanging man effigy first before they saw the hull of the boat or any of the white robes. From far away, the white robes could have been mistaken for either white flags or sheets drying in the wind. Either way, they were expecting something a bit more innocuous than what was to come.
Decades later, men would still bolt upright in the middle of the night, sweating from nightmares of the images of the effigy hanging high from the steel beam, which resembled a Vietnamese man.
Chú B?o, who was there that day, with his wife and three daughters, was the first to realize that the incoming boat was not a friend, but foe. He had thought the hanging effigy was real. Shell-shocked, he prayed it wasn’t any of his brothers, uncles, or friends swinging from the beam, their legs dangling, a noose tight around their neck. For a split second, he even prayed it wasn’t his father, even though his father was long dead. Who was the man they had? That could easily have been him. How lucky he was that it wasn’t him.
But then he heard the laughter rising from the boat, a guttural choir, and he quickly realized they were laughing at him. At all of them. They were laughing and pointing at everyone’s shocked expressions. Standing on the shore, their mouths gaping open, their hands covering their mouths in shock. The effigy was a corporeal threat to every Vietnamese left in southeast Texas, a warning of what was to come if they all didn’t pack up their lives and move soon. Chú B?o covered his daughters’ eyes as best he could, but he didn’t have enough hands to cover all his daughters’ and his wife’s eyes. He decided right then and there that the minute they got back home, he’d shut down their restaurant and head west to Orange County.
Much to the shock of residents between Seabrook and Kemah, the calm waters were interrupted when a trawler appeared carrying local fishermen and half a dozen Klansmen decked out in their signature white robes. The two groups, proverbially hand in hand, a sign of unity for a growing movement for what was to come if they didn’t get their way. At the helm of the boat stood Louis Beam, the Grand Dragon of the Texas Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, reiterating the threat he had made over Valentine’s Day. This time, he shouted it again to make sure everyone heard, his voice carried downwind, from Seabrook to Kemah and everyone along the Texas coast: The Vietnamese fisherman have sixty days to leave town before the start of shrimping season in May; otherwise there’ll be hell to pay.
They shouted, cheered, and toasted one another; their vulgarity against the breezy backdrop of mid-March chilled the onlookers.
“Ba?” Chú B?o’s youngest daughter asked. She pointed to the effigy. “Why does that look like you? Do you think it’s a present for you?”
Chú B?o didn’t know how to answer her. All he could do was keep covering her eyes.
A crowd had formed now, half of them began nodding their heads vigorously, vocalizing their agreement proudly. The other side, silent, horrified. How was this humanity? An off-duty reporter, who happened to be there on that fateful day, took out his camera in a rush and snapped the one photo that would forever be cemented in Texas history.
The dirty Vietnamese fishermen have to go.
They’re stealing jobs away from local fishermen whose families have been in the Gulf Coast for generations.
They’re responsible for Billy Joe Aplin’s death.
They don’t know the rules of the waters.
They overfished.
Since when did the pier become Saigon Harbor?
Why did they come here?
Off to the side, hidden behind an old ice cream stand, Huey watched in horror as the scene unfolded before him. All his fears from before had now come to fruition. Regret tasted bitter in his mouth, and a million different life paths swirled through his mind. Sixty days? They had sixty days to leave town forever. He watched as the Klansmen waved shotguns in the air. How strange, what freedom meant in this country, how only certain people could wave guns with abandon without repercussions, even though everyone was allowed to own them.
Who would come to their aid now? Huey’s faith in the system was gone. Why did Duc take him here? To this shit place? They had to leave. Immediately. But a twinge of sadness crossed his mind. He thought of Evelyn’s quiet smile in the moment. Perhaps it was comforting, or perhaps he knew he was going to miss that smile once they left town. But she would never be his. It was quite baffling to Huey, who, in that moment, couldn’t stop thinking about Evelyn, instead of his own survival.