Haiku (2 page)

I bowed slightly, having long since accepted Michael’s faith in omens. I never once indicated how this belief refuted his claim that his own gambling was ruled by logic. In our world, contradictions are not confronted, they are absorbed. The same skills used to disable a stranger whose drunkenness induces him to attack also enables a skilled practitioner to restrain a friend who has consumed too much liquor and prevent him from injuring himself.

But this time, I had simply misread Michael’s statement.
He was not relating to this automobile as a guiding sign; it was merely the opening card in the hand he was slowly dealing.

Impressed by this demonstration of Michael’s enhanced ability to practice self-control—formerly, he would routinely blurt out long, rambling accounts from which one could barely extract enough information to respond—I moved my head in a gesture of attentive approval.

“This Rolls drives right out onto the pier,” Michael recounted, switching quite matter-of-factly to the present tense, as if this would help me visualize his narrative, “and then it stops. Out steps a woman, wearing a white fur coat. It was mink, the real thing; I could tell. And she
heaves
something into the water. Something heavy; I could tell by the splash it made.”

“You saw a white Rolls-Royce?” Lamont suddenly spoke for the first time that morning.

Lamont’s life has prepared him to never even
approach
the border of confrontation with Michael. His voice was clogged and raspy, as always, but its tone was as neutral as stone. And as flexible.

“You saw a white Rolls-Royce?” Lamont repeated. “Driven by a woman in a white mink coat? Was she by any chance a white woman?”

“Yes …” Michael said, immediately sensing Lamont’s unvoiced skepticism. “But … but Ranger was there, too. He saw the whole thing.”

“Confirmed!” Ranger snapped out. “Oh three hundred twenty-one. Local plates. Tango, Victor, seven, Echo, Zulu, eight.”

I bowed slightly. Ranger does not possess a watch, but he has demonstrated an uncanny ability to tell time without artificial assistance. In other areas, however, he is less reliable: Ranger sees the same license plate on every vehicle.

“Yeah, I know,” Michael answered Lamont’s arched eyebrows, “but I
was
there, I
did
see it, and, I’m telling you, it
is
worth money.”

“Bunny! Sunny! Honey! Funny!” Target burst out.

We do not ignore Target; he is one of us. But we have learned that any direct response to his verbal explosions throws more wood on a bonfire that, if not fed, will eventually self-extinguish.

“How is it worth … dollars?” Lamont asked Michael, careful not to repeat the word that had triggered Target’s uncontrollable clanging.

“Okay, a Rolls, that’s … cash,” Michael said, showing he had understood Lamont’s warning. “Major-league cash, all by itself. Now you throw in the mink. More of the same, am I right?”

Michael’s “Am I right?” had been his “closer,” a sure indication that he was now paralleling his former life.

“Plenty of people have … dollars,” Lamont said, working hard at maintaining a non-challenging tone. “They walk right past us, every day.”

“When we’re out fishing, sure,” Michael retorted. By “fishing,” he means begging, but that word is not one we use. “But we only fish midtown. Down here, where we
live
, we never see those kind of people.”

“It’s them that don’t see
us,”
Lamont corrected, his own trip-wires having been brushed.

“She
didn’t
see us,” Michael shot back.

I gave Lamont a look of empathy. I know it pains him greatly when his gift for nuanced expression cannot penetrate the concreteness of Michael’s “logic.”

When Lamont is not floridly drunk—he is
always
intoxicated, but that is just his maintenance dose—he is capable of astounding subtlety of language. The first time he told me that he had once been a poet, I had replied that a poet is what a man is, not what he does. That, I believe, was the beginning of the bond between us.

“Had to be a dead drop,” Ranger said, nodding his head knowingly. He was wearing the Army field jacket from which he had meticulously removed all identifying insignia. “Once you’re deep in-country, you can’t have the gooks telling you apart by rank on sight,” he had explained. “They don’t get the name-rank-and-serial-number routine unless they can read it off your dog tag.” I understood this to mean what an American soldier recites when captured—I had heard those same words a lifetime ago.

Some part of Ranger is always in-country. He is able to move between two worlds with such fluidity because he never remains totally in either. His mind has learned to instantaneously convert anything his senses cannot otherwise explain … or accept. This is not so much delusional as it is adaptive—a self-taught skill.

Whenever he is hospitalized, Ranger regards himself as a prisoner of war. Because he responds correctly to “time,
place, and person” questions as if reciting name, rank, and serial number, he is usually released rather quickly. He considers escape to be a POW’s duty, and believes he has achieved his release by duping his captors.

This same capacity allows Ranger to perceive me as Hmong, a Cambodian warrior tribe he holds in the highest esteem. For Ranger, “gook” has no racial connotation; it is a synonym for “enemy.”

“Dead
drop? You mean, like when you dump a body in the river?” Brewster stammered excitedly. He is the youngest of us, and extremely prone to inappropriate arousal, especially whenever he has traded his medication for paperback books. Brewster knows he should not do this, but his need to grow his collection is as overpowering as Michael’s gambling.

“No,” Ranger said solemnly. He is never surprised by a display of civilian ignorance, and always eager to explain his world to those who have never visited it. “A dead drop is a place where you leave messages, so you can pass intel without an actual meet. The VC used them, too. We always searched for ’em like bears after honeycomb.”

If it occurred to anyone present that retrieval of a message from the harbor waters would be extremely difficult—and hardly circumspect—nobody said so aloud.

I was grateful for this. When his tales are met with skepticism, Michael retreats. Ranger does not. The last time an account of his exploits had been laughed at by a stranger we had allowed to share the warmth of our oil-drum fireplace, I had been forced to intervene before Ranger could conclude his demonstration of sentry-removal techniques.

“She was getting rid of something,” Michael said, slight fissures beginning to show in the eggshell of his self-control. “Whatever it was, it has to be worth heavy bucks to
somebody
, am I right?”

“It would take a team of Navy SEALs to—”

“No, no, no,” Michael interrupted Lamont. “We don’t have to actually retrieve whatever she tossed in there. All we have to do is let her know
we
know, see?”

“Blackmail!” Brewster exclaimed, awed at the very thought. Such crimes apparently occur frequently in the books he collects.

“Slackmail! Crackmail! Hackmail! Trackmail!” Target muttered.

His last clang resonated within me. Unless reined in, our clan would splinter, each wandering off into the territory to which he was most accustomed—the territory I have been trying to help each of them decide to leave.

“Why have you told me this?” I asked Michael.

“Come on, Ho,” he said. “Who else would I tell? We need you to make this work.”

In Michael’s obsessed and possessed consciousness, there is no room for morality. His mind is capable of highly complex thoughts, but all his thinking is reserved for the computation of odds. He has been waiting for that one bet he cannot lose, that “mortal lock,” for many years. With each change of season, his connection to reality more closely resembles a frayed wire.

It was through listening that I knew a “mortal lock” in Michael’s language meant an outcome literally outside the possibility of failure. A “mortal lock” is well beyond a mere “sure thing.” The word “mortal” carries the weight of the term—the “lock” is a death-grip.

The unenlightened often confuse insanity with stupidity. Many of us down here see things not visible to others. Some of those, like Ranger’s recurring license-plate number, are images, not insights. But Michael’s recounting of events was no “vision.” He and Ranger
had
seen the car. They
had
seen the woman throw something in the water. And Michael knows that his once-legendary ability to “smell money” in any situation has not totally deserted him.

So they all turn to me. For wisdom and guidance. As many once did.

My name is not Ho. I entered this world without a name. I had no more need of a name than I had of a title.

It was Ranger who named me. I encountered him within several weeks of beginning my walk. Typically, I would hover about the fringes of one group or another. Not seeking admission, but looking for … I did not know what. One night, a man walked up to a group standing around aimlessly, waiting for darkness to blanket the city before seeking places to sleep in safety. I watched as, one by one, each person within the group detached himself.

“How come you aren’t pulling out?” the man I later came to know as Ranger asked me.

“I am still trying to understand why the others departed,” I replied.

“I’m a fucking psycho,” he said, as if by way of explanation.

“Ah.”

“You’re not scared,” he said, moving quite close to me.

“I am not,” I acknowledged.

He peered closely at my face for several long moments. “I know you?” he finally asked.

“I do not believe so.”

Several more minutes passed in silence.

“I got a good place to hole up,” he said. “Plenty of room for you, if you want.”

We spent the next several days in each other’s company, exchanging very few words, sharing whatever we managed to scrounge.

One night, we approached a group together. Some left at once, but several remained, falling into place behind a tall, slender black man. As if following some protocol, Ranger proffered two tins of what is called “canned heat.” This is a significant offering, because there are many uses for such.

The black man accepted the tins, extended his right hand, and said, “Lamont.”

“Ranger. And this is my partner, Ho Chi Minh.”

“Ho, okay?” Lamont asked, extending his hand.

“Hai!”
I agreed.

When Ranger and I departed that night, Lamont came with us.

I understood Ranger had meant to confer respect by the name he had assigned me. Ranger considered Ho Chi Minh to have been a master strategist and a most formidable leader of men. So I did not question the name I had been given, nor did I question how a Hmong tribesman such as he believed me to be might have come by a Vietnamese name.

In our world, a man may acquire a name in many ways. In the generic tribe outsiders call “The Homeless,” there are both volunteers and conscripts. But this is not the French Foreign Legion; there is no ceremony where a man is allowed to choose the name by which he shall henceforth be known. Some have names thrust upon them, usually as a reflection of their habitual conduct … such as the one now known simply as “Forty.” Originally he had been dubbed “Forty Fathoms,” in tribute to his ability to plunge to the floor of Dumpsters in his daily search for … whatever he seeks.

Forty’s name had been shortened over time. Not as a rock is reduced by eons of river-flow, but more as though the rock had been deliberately honed to a knife-edge. Little is wasted in a world where some live on the discards of others. Lengthy names are unwieldy here, especially for those who have never disclosed their own in full.

Thus, over time, I became “Ho.”

Lamont knows I am Japanese. He also knows the difference between irony and meanness of spirit. Whenever Ranger is present, Lamont’s favorite response to anything I might say is,
“Hai
, Ho!”

I live among the dispossessed and disenfranchised. But, unlike others of my tribe, I have not descended as a result of damage done to me. The wounds that drove me to these depths were all self-inflicted.

The year of my birth was 1928. My mother earned her living in the only manner available to her. Whoever planted his seed within her was never known to me, just as I would never be known to him.

As a very small child, I was apprenticed to a temple. I am certain my mother did this because she wished better opportunities for me than she herself could hope to provide. For this, I honor her, always.

Her last words to me were “Do your best, my only son!” I clung to those words, and tried with all my spirit to be true to them. As I grew, I learned their deeper meaning. I was my mother’s only son because she would never have another.

My mother did not abandon me. Our life was a tiny raft, adrift in a sea of sharks, with few provisions. My mother dove into that deadly water so that I might be rescued. She intended that the temple become my father—a wise, strong, honorable teacher. And, most of all, my protector.

I was not yet fourteen years of age when the Emperor’s fleet of falcons descended upon America’s exposed clump of field mice. Even inside the temple, the vibrations were felt. Our
monastic isolation, once highly honored, would no longer be tolerated. With the blessing—in truth, the command—of my teachers, I left the temple to become a soldier.

That command cemented a truth that had been forming in my mind for years—the temple was never the father my mother had so devoutly believed it to be.

But I did not attain the deeper knowledge of the temple’s fraudulence until the Vietnam War. I watched as monks incinerated themselves to send their message that the killing must stop, much as the courageous monks stand today against the criminals who starve their own people in Tibet and Burma. The courage of such humble men shames the world.

I remember watching those human torches shining the light of truth. My eyes hazed with tears. I saw then that the temple in which I had been raised had not been worthy of my mother’s trust. To spare themselves the fire that lights the Way, the monks of my temple had sacrificed me to those who had abandoned it.