Dogs of the Dawn (Fourth story, until “Voices from Saigon”)

I was in a dream, sleeping on the floor of that big mansion, “Come on Betty, let’s try it, jump…!” Caroline said.

“Good,” Betty said aloud, still in a state of incongruous oblivion, her hand reaching out to grab Caroline’s, as if ready to pounce. It was the first time, she had spent time, quality time with her sister since they were kids, now Caroline was married, she had her son, Langdon, and Betty too.

The crew yelled at Caroline not to jump, and Caroline would not leave Betty, and Betty would not leave Caroline, they planned their trip together, two sisters holding hands, now shoulder to shoulder, they jumped, just like that, they jumped over the edge of the fairy ship, at the last minute, a crewman yelled: “Idiots, they could have killed you”, the ship was a few meters from the dock area, ready to transport a hundred. More or less visitors to Nantucket Island. But the dream was better than the reality, because Betty was hurt in reality, not in the dream, she skinned her left leg when she jumped those few meters, she hung from the rail of the boat, a foolish thing to do, but in the last minute. they did, and a crew member tried to push them, and Caroline hit him as the boat was pulling away, and some people nearby yelled at the crew member, and he was out of sight.

But he didn’t open the boat door, so she did, because they were on the other side, the crew member didn’t help, and if there was anyone watching this happen besides the one who pulled him out. , they were not exposed to being questioned later, about the successes and errors of this. For Betty it was the last deep adventure she and her sister had, and she clung to her like a hungry cat would a dead mouse.

Betty moved restlessly on the living room floor, covered with blankets, it felt like she was flat on the earth, but for some reason the air was cool, she had fallen asleep in her dress and she wanted to dream. more, finish the dream, even if she had to help him, like this: the boat shot through the waters toward Nantucket, now they were inside the big boat waiting room, holding on to chairs as the boat pulled its way across the rough water, looking at the shadow of the boat out the window, and in the glassy water, some young men, looking at them, not warships, but college boys, smiling in a calm floating way, round young eyes, and then Cole jumped into the dream (Caroline’s dead husband), and Caroline said, “I lost my mate,” and Betty scolded her sister right there in the dream, “Silly, fucking fool, you.” I should have shot Vang, been done with this iron gray dilemma he put you in,” and then the quilt tightened over her body as she lay on that flat wooden floor and woke to a house empty of furniture, that had sold in recent months (it was February 1973).

The fire had gone out in the home, and it was pitch dark, she gave little or no thought to her husband in his wheelchair, to their home in New Orleans, only to her sister, if she had succeeded in killing Vang, this might not have happened. have been like that she happened, it is possible that she did not hang herself, which stopped her, that is, she committed suicide instead of catching the culprit. So she thought to herself as she lay there thinking.

She had to sell the house, and the land, she would sell the land in lots, but then what? Christmas had passed, New Year had gone. She then heard the sounds of dogs running through the fields at the back of the house: maybe one is Tabasco, she thought, but she didn’t get up to check. The dogs were chasing the cats, who were chasing the rats, he concludes, trying to get back to his dream world, maybe the rats were trying to corner one of them: everyone howling at each other, rats screeching, and the hounds barking like crazed wild wolves, with rustic voices, and interwoven a weak voice of a dog, perhaps Tabasco. And there was nothing more to do tonight than let the sounds sink into her brain, let the haunting night pour the sounds into her soul.

Betty Hightower, she didn’t make a sound, she just thought about how much fun life was, she was amazed at the way events in her sister’s life turned out. She deserved more out of life, maybe revenge; maybe God would have looked around her, she would have overlooked it, if she had killed Vang, knowing revenge was God’s preference, but he forgives. And she knew the old sayings: revenge destroys both the seeker and the victim. And the best revenge is success, and letting go and moving on in life is better than living with the revenge that consumes you. But all these clever sayings only clutter the brain; she told herself, she belongs to the culprit, she wants you to drown in them, so you don’t go after him or her. They say that heaven will take the bad guys later, or the girls, and so they will have their just reward, their due judgment, on the day of judgment, but we are on earth, and here we do things a little differently, and if we wait for heaven, while on earth, we will have to fill the attic with these criminals, feed them, pamper them, wash their clothes and everything. That’s what she mumbled to herself, that’s what she was thinking.

Here was life, at its rawest, she felt, shocked indignation inside her head, building up as the hounds chased the cats and the cats chased the rats, and the sounds penetrated Betty’s brain.

Here was a girl named Vang, six thousand miles away, who brought misery to an entire family, altered the course of their lives, something no one expected, for fear of Caroline and Betty-Betty, who was still shocked and outraged by her. something like this. she was tolerable without revenge.

Said Betty, speaking aloud, looking at the ceiling, listening to the hounds, “You’ve got to finish what you started, clean up someone else’s mess,” and she was thinking of the boat trip to Nantucket, “We’ll jump off the dock together, one again,” he whispered to the wall. Then she heard the sound of a dog, it sounded like Tabasco, it sounded like the rats were rounding it up, and their barking and their squealing, and she heard the noise outside the back door, and she ran with a gun that she had found in the house. , and she ran to the door and opened it, and rats as big as fat cats stared at her as they tried to drag Tabasco away from the door, pulling at his meat. And she shot the rats, five bullets, leaving one for Tabasco; he was brutally torn to pieces.

Then he closed the door and said with a whiff of revenge: “I bought them for you, Tabasco! And now for Vang.”

bound for Saigon

At dawn, he went to the neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Stanley, asked if he could borrow, or would he help, Amos, the black man who befriended old Josh, all those years. He himself was 79 years old, but he had the vitality of a forty-year-old. Mrs Stanley saw him in the pen, called to him, when she approached it was more muddy than usual, and held out her forearm for Mrs Betty Hightower to shake, instead of her muddy hands, and she did. She knew him from before, but not very well.

“Mrs. Stanley has agreed with me, if she agrees with you, to loan you out to watch over Abernathy Farm while I’m away. You’ll be paid the same, and if you do both guarding and farm work for Mrs . . . Stanley , you decide, you will earn double”.

Well, the deal was done and Betty Hightower was on her plane in Saigon.

Morning in Saigon

Still with notes, she’d made in Fayetteville, about the location of Vang’s property in Saigon, notes she’d gotten from Caroline, when they’d talked about going to Saigon, she took them out of her bag, went through them, went on her way. they drove, and they drove to a rickety shack of a house, not a house in the sense of a house that she was used to, it was close to the US Military Air Base. you could hear the jets and helicopters and planes of propeller taking off And there she was, like an immovable pillar, a figure in stone, and again she took her notes from her bag and looked through them along with a photo of Vang, it was the house, she confirmed it and the door was slightly open, she approached, she looked around, turned around to see if any faces were looking at her, there was no one around, no one that mattered, everyone whizzed by in cars and wagons and motorcycles. She went back through her purse, her knife, a four-inch knife that was there, one that Jason (her husband) used to fish, to clean fish. He took the knife out of his bag, held it in his hand, and entered the owner’s house, once in the house, all the noises from outside stopped, the horns of the cars and buses, the tires of the motorcycles in the sidewalk, children, noisy children on buses and fair voices in general, noise in general, city noise, the kind that nobody pays attention to, everything seemed to have stopped. He entered the kitchen, it seemed to be the main room of the house, and then into a bedroom, three beds, it was cold in there, a cold emptiness, it got into his veins, it made his blood run cold, and he left just as abruptly as he went in, and back he was in the kitchen, and then in the second bedroom.

She passed a shadow, a shadow slumped in a corner, but she didn’t answer, and when she reappeared, in the little light that filtered under the curtained window, she saw that it was a body, in a fetal position, a corpse, not a corpse. . movement, she had to be dead, she realized quickly: she looked closer, she was a woman dead as wax. She was covered in pus and sores, especially around her lips, legs, eyes “Vang”, she said, “it has to be her…!” and it was so terrifying, such a sudden shock, so horrible, without concentration or plan, that she caught her breath, ran out of the house and up a deserted street, no cars, no people walking, just three young people, and she cried, not because of Vang, but because of herself, she was so ugly, she was scared out of the house, up that hill, away from everyone, then three men grabbed her, lifted her skirts off her slim ankles, put a cloth over her mouth She put her hands up to silence her, and she knew it was true, she would not survive the ordeal, they had knives and her hands were empty, just the strap of her bag around her shoulder, and it was ripped from her, the Once she held the knife, she must have fallen when she saw Vang, but she wasn’t looking for him, she was calm now, ready to believe.