She drove on.
I watched her till she reached the trailer, got out, went to the door and knocked.
Even from here, I could see that the man-silhouette held a handgun when he opened the door for her. Mai and I had both assumed we could reason with her brother. Maybe not.
“You up for a game of hearts?” Lisa said awhile later.
“Sure,” I said.
“Good. Because I’m going to beat you tonight.”
“You sure of that?”
“Uh-huh.”
As usual I won. I thought of letting her win but then realized that she wouldn’t want that. She was too smart and too honorable for that kind of charity.
When she was in her cotton nightie, her mouth cold and spicy from brushing her teeth, she came down and gave me my goodnight kiss.
When Lisa was creaking her way up the stairs, Emmy looked into the TV room and said, “Wondered if I could ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Are you, uh, all right?”
“Aw, honey. My last tests were fine and I feel great. You’ve really got to stop worrying.”
“I don’t mean physically. I mean, you seem preoccupied.”
“Everything’s fine.”
“God, Dad, I love you so much. And I can’t help worrying about you.”
The full-grown woman in the doorway became my quick little daughter again, rushing to me and sitting on my lap and burying her tear-hot face in my neck so I couldn’t see her cry.
We sat that way for a long time and then I started bouncing her on my knee.
She laughed. “I weigh a little more than I used to.”
“Not much.”
“My bottom’s starting to spread a little.”
“Nick seems to like it fine.”
With her arms still around me, she kissed me on the cheek and then gave me another hug. A few minutes later, she left to finish up in the kitchen.
The call came ten minutes after I fell into a fitful sleep. I’d been expecting Mai. I got Nick.
“Robert, I wondered if you could come down to the station.”
“Now? After midnight?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“What’s up?”
“A Vietnamese woman came into the emergency room over at the hospital tonight. Her arm had been broken. The doc got suspicious and gave me a call. I went over and talked to her. She wouldn’t tell me anything at all. Then all of a sudden, she asked if she could see a man named Robert Wilson. You know her, Robert?”
“Yes.”
“Who is she?”
“Her name is Nguyn Mai. She’s visiting people in the area.”
“Which people?”
I hesitated. “Nick, I can’t tell you anything more than Mai has.”
For the first time in our relationship, Nick sounded cold. “I need you to come down here, Robert. Right away.”
Our small town is fortunate enough to have a full-time hospital that doubles as an emergency room.
Mai sat at the end of the long hallway, her arm in a white sling. I sat next to her in a yellow form-curved plastic chair.
“What happened?”
“I was foolish,” she said. “We argued and I tried to take one of his guns from him. We struggled and I fell into the wall and I heard my arm snap.”
“I don’t think Nick believes you.”
“He says he knows you.”
“He goes out with my daughter.”
“Is he a prejudiced man, this Nick?”
“I don’t think so. He’s just a cop who senses that he’s not getting the whole story. Plus you made him very curious when you asked him to call me.”
“I knew no one else.”
“I understand, Mai. I’m just trying to explain Nick’s attitude.”
Nick showed up a few minutes later.
“How’s the arm? Ready for tennis yet?”
Mai obviously appreciated the way Nick was trying to lighten things up. “Not yet,” she said, and smiled like a small shy girl.
“Mind if I borrow your friend a few minutes, Mai?”
She smiled again and shook her head. But there was apprehension in her dark eyes. Would I tell Nick that her brother had taken a shot at me?
In the staff coffee room, I put a lot of sugar and Creamora into my paper cup of coffee. I badly needed to kill the taste.
“You know her in Nam, Robert?”
“No.”
“She just showed up?”
“Pretty much.”
“Any special reason?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Robert, I don’t appreciate lies. Especially from my future father-in-law.”
“She phoned me last night and we talked. Turns out we knew some of the same people in Nam. That’s about all there is to it.”
“Right.”
“Nick, I can handle this. It doesn’t have to involve the law.”
“She got her arm broken.”
“It was an accident.”
“That’s what she says.”
“She’s telling the truth, Nick.”
“The same way you’re telling the truth, Robert?”
In the hall, Nick said, “She seems like a nice woman.”
“She is a nice woman.”
When we reached Mai, Nick said, “Robert here tells me you’re a nice woman. I’m sorry if my questions upset you.”
Mai gave a little half bow of appreciation and good-bye.
In the truck, I turned the heat on. It was 2:00 A.M. of a late August night and it was shivering late October cold.
“Where’s your car?”
“The other side of the building,” Mai said.
“You’d better not drive back to Iowa City tonight.”
“There is a motel?”
After I got her checked in, I pulled the pickup right to her door, Number 17.
Inside, I got the lights on and turned the thermostat up to 80 so it would warm up fast. The room was small and dark. You could hear the ghosts of it crying down the years, a chorus of smiling salesmen and weary vacationers and frantic adulterers.
“I wish I had had better luck with my brother tonight,” Mai said. “For everybody’s sake.”
“Maybe he’ll think about it tonight and be more reasonable in the morning.”
In the glove compartment I found the old .38 Emmy bought when she moved to the farm. Bucolic as rural Iowa was, it was not without its moments of violence, particularly when drug deals were involved. She kept it in the kitchen cabinet, on the top shelf. I had taken it with me when I left tonight.
In the valley, the trailer was a silhouette outlined in moonsilver. I approached in a crouch, the .38 in my right hand. A white-tailed fawn pranced away to my left; and a raccoon or possum rattled reeds in a long waving patch of bluestem grass.
When I reached the elm, I stopped and listened. No sound whatsoever from the Airstream. The propane tanks stood like sentries.
The doorknob was no more difficult to unlock tonight than it had been earlier.
Tonight the trailer smelled of sleep and wine and rust and cigarette smoke. I stood perfectly still listening to the refrigerator vibrate. From the rear of the trailer came the sounds of Dang snoring.
When I stood directly above him, I raised the .38 and pushed it to within two inches of his forehead.
I spoke his name in the stillness.
His eyes opened but at first they seemed to see nothing. He seemed to be in a half-waking state.
But then he grunted and something like a sob exploded in his throat and I said, “If I wanted to, I could kill you right now but I don’t want to. I want you to listen to me.”
In the chill prairie night, the coffee Dang put on smelled very good. We sat at a small table, each drinking from a different 7-Eleven mug.
He was probably ten years younger than me, slender, with graying hair and a long, intelligent face. He wore good American clothes and good American glasses. Whenever he looked at me directly, his eyes narrowed with anger. He was likely flashing back to the frail bloody dead girl in the photo he’d sent me.