Chapter 28
CHAPTER 28
April 1981, Seadrift, Texas
The Gulf was soon crowded with anchored boats, no more than a few feet apart.
Though shrimping season was months away, the smell of musty netting and acrid fumes lingered. Music rang out into the night, and raucous laughter and trills from the Klansmen—their friends, family, allies, and local fishermen—began to blend together. It seemed strange to hear the other side celebrating, so carefree, while everyone in the Vietnamese community had been living in abject fear for years. Had it been without context, their joy could have been mistaken for a birthday party, anniversary, or any milestone celebration out on the water. The Vietnamese hadn’t put on any public displays of joy since they were threatened to leave Seabrook-Kemah. Instead, they were busy putting their homes, boats, and businesses up for sale, as the countdown from sixty days felt like a dystopian New Year’s Eve ball drop.
Eddie, Duc, V?nh, and Huey were still huddled quietly on the boat’s floor. No one had yet spotted their little trawler, which swayed gently side to side, and through a stroke of good fortune, managed to evade the moonlight, granting them peace in the shadows. But their one streak of good luck wouldn’t last them forever. Sooner or later, they knew that their trawler would be spotted.
“We need to get out of here,” Eddie whispered as soon as he crawled his way to the center.
“How exactly? Swim back to shore? Walk on water?” Duc whispered back angrily. “Snails are faster than this boat. This piece of shitter is held together by nothing but duct tape and gum.”
Huey turned to V?nh. “How many guns do you have on board?” At the sight of V?nh’s crestfallen face, his own face fell. V?nh held up one finger, then turned it to where the gun was hidden, in a nondescript box under the steering wheel. One gun, five men, and from the sound of it, nearly thirty to fifty of the Klansmen and their friends, a stone’s throw away, and the pitch-black, open Gulf, which could easily conceal a body. No other Vietnamese fishermen were stupid enough to be out this late. No one but the five of them.
Duc pulled himself upright, his breath reeking of alcohol as he attempted to lean against an old barrel, his fear exposed. “What if we just go,” he whispered. “They haven’t spotted us yet. Maybe if we’re fast enough we can get around them.”
“They’re closer to shore, plus they’ll hear us immediately,” Huey snapped, almost revealing how hysterical he’d become. “Even if we did try to go around, we’d run out of gas. There’s only enough to head back the same way we came.” With each new attempt at forming an escape plan, the walls were closing in, and the men resigned themselves to the possibility that they might not make it back to shore alive. It was at this moment when they felt what it was like to be at the end of a fishing hook, waiting to be pierced through.
“Let’s just wait it out then,” Eddie said hopefully, a childlike innocence in his voice, as if they were simply playing a game of tag. “Maybe they’ll head home soon.”
The music began to lower, and someone began shouting over it. Some people chimed in, telling others to shut up or lower the damn music and they can’t hear shit . A man’s deep voice carried toward them, loud, brusque, unflinching. Eddie, Huey, Duc, and V?nh looked at one another, looking for confirmation if anyone knew the identity of the man speaking. The four men shook their heads, and though they didn’t say it out loud, they looked relieved. Because at least they knew who wasn’t speaking—the head of the local Klansman chapter, the Dragon himself, Louis Beam. Hope began to seep in again. Though they had seen photos of the Dragon on flyers around town, they were the few left in the Seabrook-Kemah area to have avoided any run-ins with him. It was the type of luck akin to never catching the flu—they constantly lived in fear of the moment they would run into the Dragon and they would no longer be immune.
But something about the man’s voice still triggered something inside Duc and Huey. They looked at each other, unable to blink as their minds churned through forgotten memories. The voice sounded familiar, but it was a long-forgotten voice, something they had heard once upon a time, in an insignificant blip in their lives. Whoever was speaking still managed to make the hair on all their arms stand up. Even if it wasn’t the Dragon himself, it didn’t mean it wasn’t one of his minions, it was still a voice to help unite the Klansmen and local fishermen who had imparted the sixty-day deadline for the Vietnamese to leave Seadrift.
“Thirty days, gentlemen,” the man’s voice roared. “Thirty days left before the gooks flee like cockroaches into the night and we take back our land, our waters, our livelihood.”
A symphony of cheers, hoots, and clapping erupted. Murmurs of how close they were and well done, boys and keep fighting the good fight and how Saigon Harbor was as dead as Vietnam floated into the night air. They proverbially patted each other’s backs, as if they had all won prizes given by their kindergarten teacher.
“Huey,” Duc whispered urgently, as he suddenly realized who was speaking. His tone, both frightened and yet unsure, waiting for confirmation.
“I’m thinking, hold on,” Huey snapped, as he rubbed his temples, praying to sober up, but the world continued to spin faster and faster.
“ Huey, ” Duc said, almost violently, as he found the courage to look up and confirm. “Look.”
Huey stuck his head out carelessly. In the distance, the man who was rallying the crowd, late into the night, was none other than the old captain they had worked for long ago, on the fishing boat off the coast of Delacroix Island in Louisiana. The same fishing job where Duc and Huey had met each other and kick-started an inseparable friendship. The man with the sunken eyes no longer looked friendly. It’d been five years since that fishing job, and he looked worse for wear. Time and the crushing weight of capitalism hadn’t been kind to him. He looked like every other man in town looking for a punching bag to hit. He looked older and angrier. It was even the same boat that Huey and Duc worked on five years ago. The same captain stood atop that same boat, the Lady Freedom , and began to call out onto the open water for the death of all Vietnamese fishermen who dared stay behind.
It was also the same boat on which Duc had made lofty promises to Huey, saying that he was going to be so rich one day, he was going to buy the boat from the captain. All Huey had to do was follow Duc around the country, and they would get there eventually.
Huey quickly shrank back. “What now?” he whispered.
“Let’s wait it out till morning,” Eddie whispered back. “More people will be out by dawn, and the night can shield us until then.” The men agreed and began to settle in for the long night. Huey’s eyes wandered over to where the gun lay hidden. He had promised himself after fleeing Vietnam that he wouldn’t pick up a gun ever again. But America always seemed to have other plans for him. He just kept trading one war for another, in a vicious cycle, over and over again.
And maybe that was all life really was.
Duc, Huey, V?nh, and Eddie huddled side by side, in the dark, their eyes fighting to stay open, but their minds were littered with PTSD from the war. The Heineken began to fully seep into their bloodstreams, and they sat there, grateful to at least be so inebriated that death might not hurt as much if it came knocking for them.
Three hours later, Duc awoke to laughter hovering above him. The four men had passed out sometime in the middle of the night, dogpiled on top of one another, a pack seeking comfort and heat, circling each other to ensure no predators could attack one without the others. After succumbing to the alcohol sinking to the bottom of their bloodstreams, the men managed to finally close their eyes, weightless and free of worry.
“Morning, gentlemen.” A deep voice emerged next to them. “Beautiful out here, isn’t it? Feels like we’re on the edge of the world. God, I love Texas.”
Fully alert, Duc quickly shoved Huey, V?nh, and Eddie awake. Everyone’s eyes slowly began to adjust to the harsh sun that felt like daggers in their eyes, and the four men jumped to their feet. Next to their tiny trawler was the massive Lady Freedom , rocking gently in the Gulf. Its rusted hull was worse than Duc and Huey could remember, and barnacles clung to the side. Both the boat and the captain looked one and the same, like two stray dogs, both in desperate need of rest, food, and shelter.
None of the men dared to make a noise or respond. In the distance, all the other boats had disappeared and only the captain was left with the men on the Lady Freedom. Duc and Huey lowered their gazes, wondering if the old captain recognized them. It’d been five years, but there weren’t that many Vietnamese men who traveled to Delacroix for commercial fishing work. They could feel the captain’s eyes heavy on them, assessing, but after a few tense breaths, their shoulders relaxed slightly. Their faces elicited no memory for the captain, except for the fact that he hated everyone who looked like them.
V?nh made a slow movement toward the tin box under the steering wheel where the gun was, but was hushed by the captain.
“No need for any of that nonsense out here,” he said, a strange smile on his lips. “It’s just us.”
“What do you want?” Duc blurted out. While his face was blank, like all nervous dogs, his knees quaked.
The captain shrugged. He was dressed in military wear, head to toe in a camo print, the type of uniform that indicated that he had also served in the war. But it wasn’t real. The four men knew what the American uniform looked like, more than they would want to know, and though it looked as if the captain belonged in the military, it was nothing more than costume jewelry meant to scare off others. The rest of the crew donned the same camo costume, and they looked like a guerilla group, a flint ready to spark a war.
“I just came over ’cause we wanted to let you know, we saw your friend take a swim, way back over there. He must love swimming in the open water at night, facedown.” The old captain spoke again. “Strange how you all make us out to be the killers, but you all continue to prove time and time again that you’re all the real killers. Look at what happened to Billy Aplin, and now look at your so-called friend. What’d he do, sleep with one of your dirty women?” The rest of the men behind him began to snicker.
“What is he saying?” Eddie asked.
Duc’s face froze. Huey and V?nh suddenly came to the same conclusion together and they both cried out. “Where’s Tu?n?” they asked each other frantically.
Duc, Huey, Eddie, and V?nh looked around, expecting Tu?n to come out of hiding. As the previous night rolled back into their minds, they all remembered Tu?n standing at the helm of the boat, taking a piss, and then all chaos broke loose with a single gunshot into the air.
“He must have fallen overboard,” Eddie gasped. “I—I didn’t… it was so chaotic after the gun went off. We were drunk. He was so drunk.”
“We need to go back,” Huey said in disbelief. “What if he’s still out there?”
The captain still had a grin on his face as he looked out into the open waters. He started up the Lady Freedom and began to steer the boat until it was so close to theirs, the metals began scraping. The captain hovered over them, one leg raised on a platform as he tilted forward, resting his elbows on his knee. “Here’s a tip: Wait till early morning the next day, you can use your nets to dredge up the ground for any dead bodies. Y’all competent seamen, right? It’s just like combing the floor for shrimp. Like searching for your dinner.”
He flicked his cap off at them, and before he sped off into the early-morning hours, they watched in horror as one of his crew members lit up a dirty white rag hanging out of a beer bottle and tossed it onto their deck. The last thing Duc and Huey remembered was how quickly the fire spread—how easy it would be to end it all by throwing themselves into the fire. As they yelled at each other and scrambled for water to put out the fire, they couldn’t stop thinking about Tu?n’s body out there, either floating or sinking to the bottom of the Gulf.
And Huey couldn’t stop thinking about Evelyn, pregnant, waiting patiently for her husband to come home. The more water he tried pouring on the fire, the more it grew, and the more he hated himself.