For my Father
“when you got nothing, you got nothing to lose” Bob Dylan
I was 9 i.e. first bike and first romance.
Not everything was rosy now that I look back to that time. The neighborhood bully destroyed my innocence if not for my father’s swift intervention.
We called him “Cu Lon” (to this day, I still do not know his real name) to differentiate him from another of the same name “Cu Nho”. Cu Lon (Big Dick) fittingly was son of a Colonel who lived in a two-stories house – Army-issued Jeep parked out front. Cu Nho, on the other hand, was son of a male mobile nurse. It’s not Small Dick that this story is about. It’s Big Dick’s and Big Daddy’s.
Cu Lon was used to getting his way: a slick motorbike, the best girl – my first love – and plenty of brand cigarettes. He hung out with the right crowd, older guys. Cu Lon, in short, was a poster child, ripe to show off his derivative power: richer, stronger and in the know.
Despite his grander in size and status , we fought on one of the unavoidable occasions . The trigger I can not now recall. I remembered I stood my ground and kept standing back up after repeatedly got beaten up, and told to stay down. He wanted submission, wanted me to be broken.
Before anyone knew what happened, I ran into the house – in a trance – and back I came out with a machete. (drama happened in that serpentine alley almost hourly, if not daily). It must have been a divine intervention. My Dad happened to be back from work and was locking up his bike when he saw his youngest in blood, sweat and tears.
Vietnam was hot, people hungry and tired. After 1954 the country had been partitioned at the 17th parallel, much like Korea today, having to build a refugee life in the slum of Ban Co, then Saigon.
At least 20 kids formed a mob that followed us to the Colonel’s house, situated at the end of the alley. No one wanted to miss the show. My Dad with chain in one hand and me on the other, while I was still holding my weapon of personal defense.
Together we marched in front of the eager crowd. You should have seen the lay-out of this neighborhood, whose entrance opened up with two long winding tombs. On occasion, my cousin who lived next to the tombs would show movies from work, turning the open space into an outdoor cinema – my childhood Cinema Paradiso (Netflix night), transforming a dark alley into a dreamscape.
Back to the century’s confrontation.
With unmatched intensity, my Dad demanded to see the Colonel. RIGHT NOW! The Army’s driver/gatekeeper hurried back to fetch his boss who was strapping his Colt 45 over his T-shirt to receive us, an unwanted and unannounced throng. Meanwhile I was scared out of my wit, seeing the situation escalated way out of hand.
Yet justice demanded this. And my father played the anti-hero in this real-life drama.
He said in unmistaken tone to a slightly intimidated and flabbergasted Colonel:
“Your son is bigger yet he beat my son bloody-nose. From here on out, when this happens again, I will give the same sh** right back in your face so you know how my son feels”.
Not a pin drop. The crowd fell silent. If someone were to light a match, the high-octane atmosphere would have exploded.
Indeed, what transpired after that flew by like a thin veil. All I knew was, from then on out, at times, when Cu Lon and I spotted each other, he still threatened me with his clenched fist, but only from a safe distance. Remote bullying. No further physical fights had ever broken out between us. He simply couldn’t afford the consequences: dragging the two hot-blooded bulls into a lock-horn.
My father, a discharged Artillery man, must have meant every word (and body language) that day.
At last, we had some peace during war-time.
I was crying throughout the incident. Tears of rage, of having to live an underdog life (Northern refugees were not quite accepted and integrated throughout my childhood) in a shabby slum well-known for its trash dump and ill-exposed tombs. Worst of all, of not having running water (I had to hook up a long running hose between my cousin’s house and mine every other day to get our subsistence and get all dirty).
My rage also ran deep because I had to pick up broken pieces of porcelain from the floor, every time my parents had an argument over meals. (It wasn’t illegal for men in Vietnam before that time to practice polygamy, as long as you can afford it.) Somehow, overtime, this madness has turned into melody, and my guitar my guard. That world was closing fast on us, like the pace of the Northern advancing army stepping on the fallen geographic dominoes.
The US 34th Congress was much slower. When finally acted, it voted against a needed aid package to the South Vietnam Army (among whom was the Colonel, the alley bully’s father in this story).
Despite my father’s shortcomings, I looked up to him and did all I could for him, from giving him a back rub over siesta to shinning his shoes (he turned out to be salesman/collector for VN Airlines).
Time heals everything, and turns rage into rhythm, misery miracle, terror-father protector father. Years later, when I came back to visit the old neighborhood, I couldn’t help noticing it has shrunk (people expanded their balcony to the max, creating an almost enclosed dome). I asked about Cu Lon and learned he had died of an overdose cutting short his privileged life, while my father out-survived the neighborhood bully (his heart gave on a Winchester night. He was 94).
My father and I wanted to beat the odds. Against the dysfunctional genes, dysfunctional families and society (including war). For me, it’s an adrenaline surge each time I recall this incident.
My father always faced aggression with overwhelming response (he threw a knife that hit the door frame during the night to scare away a neighborhood thief). Once for all.
Thanks to him, my life’s trajectory was deflected and redirected from its downward spiral (kids were drafted, deformed and died). I grew up draft-deferred like “private Ryan” with family members already in the service. Humanity wants to preserve its “seed” for future reproduction. This I did well.
But don’t misperceive my penchant for people-pleasing: I wouldn’t guarantee how I might react when coming home from stressful sales work, seeing my child all bloody-nose with machete in hand.
All I know was my father shined briefly that day and still lives on in me today.
Thang Nguyen 555 