Minh lit a smoke. “What I wanted to do here in Little Saigon was see this little refugee community have a chance at fitting in. I wanted to keep the gangs in check and to make the people feel free to live and do their business. And I wanted the department to let me recruit some young Vietnamese men to help accomplish that.”
Minh handed Frye three personnel request forms, each describing police department positions now open. They called for Vietnamese men and women with good English language skills, two years of education, and a desire to uphold the law.
“Congratulations.”
Minh studied him. “When the FBI let Bennett walk into an ambush up in the desert, I decided they were covering up. You wouldn’t happen to know what, would you?”
“No.”
“You ever see him?”
“Who?”
“Thach.”
“Far as I know, he’s under house-arrest in Hanoi.”
Minh looked at him doubtfully, then stood. “Thanks.”
Frye shook his hand and walked out.
Lucia Parsons spent a well-chronicled week in Hanoi. Negotiations fell apart, then came back together; impasse was reached, then surmounted; the Vietnamese walked away from the bargaining table twice, and so did she. The final deal was struck. Unspecified amounts of “reconstruction aid” were reportedly agreed upon. House Bill 88231 passed overwhelmingly by both houses in an emergency session. The men would be freed in a “phased release,” News analysts speculated that diplomatic concessions to Hanoi were in the balance, though just what they were, no one was sure. Hanoi hinted that withdrawal from Kampuchea was inevitable. Administration spokesmen remained enthused, mum.
That Friday, an air force jet from Honolulu scraped down at Orange County John Wayne Airport, which people felt was either appropriate or ironic, depending on their political bent.
Frye, wearing his new press pass, worked his way through the vast crowd and managed to get close to the ramp leading off the plane. A red carpet had been laid from the steps to a roped-off section of the runway, where the president of the United States waited amidst very heavy security.
Beside that was another area for VIPs. Frye scanned the dignitaries and spotted Cristobel’s golden head of hair. He waited while the air force jet taxied into place and the crowd began cheering.
A moment later, the first POW came down the stairs. He was a thin, slow-moving man whose alien gaze suggested a lifetime spent on another planet. He wore a crisp, tan uniform. He was alone. He saluted the president and waved to the roaring crowd. Lucia joined him and the president. She sported a gray suit and hat, and she stood as straight-backed and impressively as any of the color guard. She shook hands with the frail man, then with the president, who took her hand and raised it to the crowd. The applause was robust.
Two men in dark suits escorted Cristobel toward the man. He looked long at her, then opened his arms, and stepped forward.
Cristobel and Mike Strauss hugged a good long time. Frye watched the sun bounce off her shoulders while Mike’s hands clutched her back. The crowd roared even louder.
No one else got off the plane. Lucia explained that afternoon on TV that the POWs — twenty-seven in all — would be released one per week if the United States continued in good faith to abide by Hanoi’s conditions. Said conditions were not so much explained as simply referred to.
Frye listened to Mike Strauss’s speech. He said, “I thank you. I thank God. I never forgot you. If I could explain how it feels to be back on American soil, I would try, but I’m afraid I couldn’t do it. Thank you all for never forgetting us.” Then he faltered, and his face broke into a smile. He and Cristobel disappeared into a waiting limousine.
Frye watched all this with a sense of abstraction and unreality, the same feeling that had been with him since Huong Lam had walked into the hangar in Mojave. He was there, but not there, mind and body somehow separate, a tenant in himself. He cut out early and missed the president’s address. Frye hated crowds.
A day before the Masters Invitational started, a south swell rose from Mexico. Frye stood on shore and struggled into the orange vest. He was number four. He picked a seventy-inch thruster and ground on a fresh layer of MegaWax. Just after sunrise his heat was called and the other five surfers hit the water. Frye watched the big gray waves rolling in beneath a purple blanket of clouds. The crowd was a good one, even this early. Amazing, he thought, that people want to watch this.
Even more amazing was the arrival of Edison and Hyla. Frye was about to head out when he heard his name called and turned to see his father. Edison was holding tight to Hyla’s hand, hustling her across the damp morning sand, an arm raised in greeting, his gray hair wild and long. Even from this distance, thought Frye, he looks so much older.
“Gonna win, Chuck?” he panted.
“I’ll try.”
“Get first, or I wasted my time and gas.”
“Oh, Ed.” Hyla smiled. Frye detected a hint of genuine happiness in it.
Bill Antioch was there, pissed that Frye had missed the surf movie of which he was the star and had failed again to stimulate retail sales interest in the Mega line. Shelly Morris clung to his arm, drawn to stern businessman Bill.
The heat went by quickly, as they always do: scrambling for position on the waves that look like point-getters, trying to keep the stupid vests from riding up and choking you. Frye stayed to the outside in hopes of getting a big one. Finally he did, a magnificent six-foot right all to himself. He played it out, a little conservatively, rising to the top to snap off the lip, charging down for a turn at the bottom, then a long quick streak with his fingers on the flank of the wave. When it sectioned, he hung on and broke through, riding out the last of it, crouching in a tiny tube exactly his size. He could hear the applause as he paddled back out.
About halfway through, he kind of forgot what he was doing. The sun had peeked out to spray its rays through a cloud wall in the east: the kind of scene you get on complimentary bank calendars with a line from the national anthem under it. Frye decided that this was certainly a good time to count blessings, and he did. So many of them right up there on shore, he thought, watching this silly stuff. He looked back and saw Cristobel standing with Edison and Hyla now, her hair a golden patch against the gray sand. As he sat on his board and scanned the horizon for the next set, he realized that he wasn’t afraid anymore, that the old terror had simply fallen away. Making room for new ones, he thought. Stronger in the broken places. Count that as a blessing, too.
Something inside him was big and fragile, huge and tender, and he could feel it right on the edge of exploding, on the verge of spontaneous combustion. A flutter, a shifting of things, a long moment of waiting. Then a feeling that there was new territory out there, a world of things beyond what he had felt before and what had gone before. You close your eyes and jump, he thought, grab for anything that might apply on the long way down.
He sat on his board and waited. He looked back to shore again.
And something else kept trying to get through to him, something that Bennett had taught him in a thousand ways but never quite managed to learn himself, something about forgetting what’s gone and holding for dear life onto what’s left. If you’re one of the lucky left standing, it’s the least you can do. Forget the losses; exaggerate the wins. Maybe not exactly how Benny would have put it. There will be time to think it through. Time. We’ve all got some of that left, thank God. That’s all there is, between the living and the dead. I’ll see you soon enough, sweet sister Debbie. You too, Benny. Sorry, I’m just not in a hurry to get there right now.