Halloween In Vietnam "Trick or Treat!" hollered a witch, Cinderella and Dracula at the front door. It was Halloween again and the three dark figures eagerly anticipated large handfuls of some sort of rich and gooey chocolate. My mother opened the door and smiled at their innocent faces, hands outstretched and waiting to grab a Milky Way or a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. She reached into the plastic container cradled in her arms and pulled out a pack of sugar-freegum for each of the little goblins standing in front of her. "Make sure you brush your teeth when you get home so your head doesn’t rot off with all this candy your lugging around," she said as she threw a pack in each of their stashes. As they walked away Cinderella took time to turn around and give my mother the finger. "Little shits," my mother said slamming the door. An alcohol soaked voice, apparently hearing her comment, yelled from the adjoining room "Was that them Gooks that just came over." That pleasant voice was none other than my father’s acquaintance from his days in Vietnam – Bill. Bill, or Meatball as he like to be referred to was a fat, bald-headed waste of a man who spent his days drinking and spent his nights drinking more. His poison was gin and every time he managed to crawl over to our house he’d grab a seat in our living room and prop the gin bottle up in his prosthetic hand, drinking and smoking at regular intervals. "Was that them Vietkong kids that live down the road. Dirty bastards the bunch of em" Meatball slurred again. "No now sit down and relax Bill…It’s just a few kids from the neighborhood" she replied. My father always seemed to disappear for 15 minutes at a time when Bill stopped by – usually claiming he got caught up cleaning something he accidentally knocked over or some other bullshit story. I don’t think he completely enjoyed Bill’s visits. Maybe it was a reminder of those days best forgotten or maybe it was just the fact that Bill was a waste who occasionally enjoyed checking out men when he was having it out with his wife. My father knew what he was like but no one knew better than I did. At my 18th birthday party he spent the night winking and smiling and patting me on the back whenever he got the chance. Since then, I’ve dreamed about tearing that prosthetic hand off him and beating him over the head a few times with it. Luckily he hasn’t winked at me since. The doorbell rang and again the famous words were blurted out – "Trick or Treat!" This time my father answered the door after coming down stairs from one of his cleaner-uppers. Two bed-sheet apparitions stood in front of him with hands out waiting for the good stuff. My father smiled and went for the gum while Meatball staggered his way to the door. He hollered in my father’s general direction, "God damn…It’s the chinks! It’s them Gooks! Forget the gum…you got a grenade?" My father looked at Bill with a blank stare on his face and slowly began to put down the gum. He sat down on the sofa and began staring at the floor with a look of disappointment and slight embarrassment on his face. Bill turned towards the two figures and began hollering some more. "What the hell do you Gooks want? You want something from me? You bastards already have my hand…isn’t that good enough?" As this was going on my mother walked over to the sofa and glared at my father. "Aren’t you going to say something? These are our neighbors and he’s making an ass out of everyone here," she said in an agitated voice. My father’s solemn reply was "What can I do?" By this time Bill’s ranting at the door had attracted the attention of the two tricker-treater’s father. I went to the door and saw the man walking up behind his children and yelling something unfriendly in what must have been Vietnamese. Bill now directed his aggression towards the father. "This is America pal. Speak the language or get the fuck out of the country!" The two tricker-treaters looked back at their father as he began to speak to them in the same angry voice. A moment later they slipped their costumes off to reveal to young boys no older than 12. The boy closest to the door turned to Bill and said, "Why are talking to us like that? We just came for Halloween." The other boy then spoke up and said, "All the other kids in the neighborhood are doing it. We just wanted to have fun too." Bill looked at them through his blood-shot eyes and began to laugh. "Is that what your father’s telling you? That you’re just like all the other kids in the neighborhood?" Bill took a long swig of his gin and glared at the father. "You’re nothing like the people in this neighborhood. You’re shit! The only thing you’re good for is killing people…taking people’s hands and their dignity!" The boys’ father began to speak again in his own language, flailing his arms and pointing at Bill in a rage. "Speak English you bastard," Bill yelled as he grabbed the gin bottle with his good hand and threw it at the man. The bottle nearly hit the man in the head and Bill seemed more enraged than ever. It looked as if he was going to attack the man at any moment so I grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him back in the house. "Let go of me you little prick," he spit at me as he pulled his hand back to take a swing at my face. My father grabbed his hand and threw him up against the wall. "That’s enough…no more of this shit," my father said. Bill looked as if he were about to take a swing at my father but a moment later he just shook his head and headed back in to the other room. My father looked at the man and his sons who were still standing there and said, "I’m sorry…. I’m really sorry." The man gave my father a confused and sad look, patted his two sons on the shoulder, and followed them out of the yard and down the road. My father was staring at the floor with a look of embarrassment and disgust as he closed the door and went into the other room to join Bill. Later that night, after all the tricker-treaters had come and gone and yet another Halloween was a memory, my father sat outside on the picnic table talking to Bill. They were both drinking gin now. My mother had already gone to bed and curiosity getting the best of me, I positioned myself near an open screen window and listened to there conversation. "I hate those damn people!" Bill growled. "I don’t exactly like them myself Bill, but I think what you did tonight was really uncalled for." "What the fuck are you talking about? If you thought it was so bad why didn’t you stop me before I got so pissed I wasted a bottle of gin." "I don’t know." "You know alright. It’s because you hate them. You hate them just as much as I do for what they did to us." "The people that were here tonight had nothing to do with what happened to us tonight. They’re innocent people." "Doesn’t it drive you nuts to live right next to those Gooks. I’d be plotting six hundred ways to kill the bastards if I was in your shoes." "They’re not bad people Bill. They’re quiet and everything. The only thing I hate is the fact that they go through my trash every week looking for returnables. But besides that…" "How can you forget what happened to Frankie. It was the last day of his tour and them Gooks blew him into a million pieces!" "No Bill, I haven’t forgotten" "Good! You should remember how that young Gook kid hit our jeep with that Bazooka. Blew Frankie up so bad pieces of his body were all over us" "I remember," my father replied, his voice trembling. "And you can’t forget about how that damn Bazooka burnt up your entire back and blew my hand clear off. Shit, we were only on tour for 2 months….Frankie died the day he was supposed to go home to his wife and kids!" "I remember." "Well I’ll never forget it. That’s the day my life ended. I’ll never forget what they did!" "Sometimes I feel the same way Bill." Bill got up, shook my father’s hand and hobbled down the road towards his house. My father sat out there for another hour and stared into space. The following year Halloween came and things were different. Bill wasn’t around this time. Two weeks after that crazy night at my house he was found floating in a local canal. He had been disemboweled and his neck had been cut from ear to ear. Two teenage confessed to killing him after he propositioned them for sex at a local park. My father was the only one at his funeral. The Vietnamese family didn’t stop by for tricker-treating this time but my father seemed to be accepting them a little more. It no longer bothered him when they went through our trash for cans. Once he actually waved at the father but he didn’t return the favor. To say that my father grew to accept our Vietnamese neighbors would be a lie. He still harbored certain resentments towards the Vietnamese and what happened in the war but for the first time I think he was beginning to see them for who they really were. Our neighbors.
Copyright © 1997 Gary Donnelly |