Not With a Bang

Epilogue

Prologue

This is a story about sweet vengeance. Not just little, petty revenge but big stuff: justice and perhaps even redemption. So not surprisingly it’s also a story about weapons, especially guns and the weapons that have replaced them, making them obsolete. Most of all it’s a story about men; I mean males, and their relationships with guns. That makes it a love story too.

It quickly becomes clear when reading accounts from that time, and especially from watching the movies and television shows, that, for men of that time, there was absolutely nothing in the world as important and, yes, as beautiful as a gun. Like the image of God creating Adam in the Sistine Chapel, God had Adam, men had guns: the pointing finger of life and death and the embodiment of masculine Will. Who could have imagined that such an important device in the history of mankind could be so quickly and permanently replaced?

Leo, since he was a little child living in a rural section of eastern Massachusetts, was fascinated but also discontented with guns. He was not a hunter. No, Leo’s interest in guns, like many men of that era, can be described as more of an aesthetic appreciation.

As a child, when no one was around, Leo would sneak his father’s 12 gauge Remington side-by-side shotgun out of the upstairs closet and into the basement. It, like all the guns of that era, used the principle of rapidly expanding gases from a chemical explosion to propel various types of projectiles out of cylindrical metal barrels. Leo’s father’s Remington shotgun was an enormous cannon of a gun, as long and heavy as Leo himself, and made with a wooden stock and two barrels that fired shot (hundreds of small metal pellets) from plastic shells, forming a sort of explosive spray which could span significant areas and not require pin-point accuracy. If the reader seeks a live demonstration of this weapon, there are yearly festivals in several areas of the N.U.S. in which The Society of Antique Gun Collectors will fire refurbished shotguns as well as other guns of that period. Watching any action movie of that era is also a good means of seeing these weapons and the extensive damage they could do.

Leo’s father was a responsible and sensible parent so of course he didn’t give young Leo access to any ammunition for the shotgun. This deprivation might have been a disappointment to other boys but it was quite the opposite for Leo. He would sit for hours, snapping the shotgun open and snapping it shut, pointing it at his imaginary picture of some hated schoolmate or teacher and listening to the quiet click, watching them drop, or better, go flying backward against the wall in a spatter of blood just like in the movies. That has to be where it began because Leo only got a chance to fire an actual shell years later. The kick of the gun and the concussion of the blast were not at all satisfying for Leo. They interrupted the meditative state that this ritual of childhood represented for him. He tried archery for a while, but the flying arrow seemed vulgar to him after the ethereal silence and beauty of those invisible blasts.

So while these mechanical propellant guns seemed like such perfect weapons to other men of that era, for Leo at least, their perfection was always ruined by that noise. Now don’t get me wrong, those blasts are fabulous in the old movies. They are shouts of justice in response to the barking of evil criminals. The history of 21st century cinema was the history of that culture’s fantasy to actually fire the guns, not caring about the loud sounds and the fact that the crowd would turn around to stare at the source of that sound. Yet in real life, Leo knew that the flaw that kept guns from being perfect was that blasted sound. Like Adam’s returning touch, it unmistakably identified the source of the pronouncement of Will. The sound of a gun forms a sort of reverse trajectory back to the source of the shot. It is an absurd signal that makes sense in the movies but not in real life: Hey look at me, I’m shooting someone!

Leo’s discovery, like so many of the innovations of history, was equal parts lucky accident and bold foresight. Also like the great inventions of history, its design is both complex and simple: complex in its specific manifestations but simple in its overall conceptual purpose.

It’s hard to do, but remember as you read this that everything here is true. It doesn’t seem possible, but it is.

PART 1

Chapter 1

Leo lived his adult life in the suburbs of rural Massachusetts which was part of an area of the former United States called New England. He and his wife Jill and dog Fenris were typical of scores of other young families in the America of that time. There were no outward signs to indicate that a social revolution would emerge from this man. Though none remain to confirm this, his neighbors undoubtedly would have been shocked to discover that this quiet man was to so drastically change their (and our) lives. Some men exude greatness, strutting out onto the stage of history in frightening splendor; Leo was not one of these men. He was actually fairly small for men of that period, about 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighing 155 pounds. He was, however, in good physical condition with a sinewy, slim build. Later photos showed him with an impressive, bushy mustache nearly hiding his small, thin mouth, and with close-cropped, spiky blonde hair. His eyes were small but intense and his skin was rather pale but healthy and clear. He wore round, wire-framed glasses that seemed to magnify his striking blue eyes, but took them off when he went running around his neighborhood and through the small, sparsely wooded area nearby with his black Labrador retriever Fenris. He rarely spoke to anyone and was known only as the guy who ran. Fenris, on the other hand, was a great favorite of the neighborhood, especially with the children who could be heard chanting Fenry, Fenry and delaying his long-awaited run by stroking his ears and cooing, Good boy, big Fenry, you’re such a good boy.

Fenris had a slightly protruding belly from over pampering but also sported an exceptionally glossy coat and powerful, round thigh muscles like a thoroughbred horse. Once in the woods, he would shake off his suburban dog lethargy and become a fierce hunter, sniffing, halting with attentive pricked ears, and then bounding after the squirrels and the occasional rabbit that always easily eluded his chase. His barks, like the report of a gun, would startle Leo at first with their harshness and ferocity but would soon become somewhat annoying chirps of frustration as Fenris would bound around the bottom of a tree with a cheerfully chattering squirrel in it, or dart around like a disoriented fool after having lost the scent of a rabbit. Still, these ritual runs were adored by both dog and owner and were only suspended on the most rainy or snowy of days.

Leo was one of those men to whom everything mechanical was simple. A born tinkerer, he worked for a large department store as an appliance repairman. He had worked independently for two years but had found the expense of maintaining a parts inventory and van too expensive and unpredictable, so he went to work for Lebert’s which supplied him with everything he needed. Except during the busy holiday seasons, when Leo was assigned a young, temporary worker for the many free installations he had to work on, he worked alone. He was virtually unknown among the other employees but trusted and well liked by his immediate superiors.

As we now know, the helter-skelter rush of technological growth in the 20th century left the vast majority of the population quite ignorant about the machinery upon which they had grown so dependent. However, Leo’s work obviously prepared him for the innovation that he was to help develop. The nature of his work allowed him many hours to hone his already considerable mechanical skills, as well as the numerous tools and materials necessary to design a new product. Unlike the ancient fable of the cobbler’s children, Leo also enjoyed tinkering and fixing things at home. In fact, he anticipated the more diversified and creative projects that he was confronted with at home with more interest than the more repetitive and predictable tasks he was given at work.

This brings us to a consideration of Leo’s home life prior to the extreme changes we know he brought about in the early 21st century. Leo’s wife Jill also played an extremely important historical role. She was considered quite pretty in a somewhat rarefied way. One of those women whose Anglo-Saxon heritage could be traced back to the Mayflower voyagers, she had all those physical characteristics that were considered as definitive of Caucasian beauty. She had short blonde hair that piled out in layers over each ear and across her forehead so that she seemed to have a halo of bristly, golden hair tips that bounced slightly when she walked. Her eyes were pale blue, a shade or two lighter than Leo’s, small and slightly close together which gave her a winsome expression. Her upper lip, which extended ever so slightly past her lower lip, gave her mouth a pouty, almost questioning look. Probably because she had no children, she completely lacked the ampleness of her breeding peers. She was tall but lacked the wiry musculature that Leo had. Instead her knees and elbows and wrists were slender yet remarkably shapeless, not so much marble as dried sea foam. Her ivory complexion was spattered unevenly with freckles that, when viewed closely, were a spectrum of colors from soft grayish yellow to dark brown.

Before and during the early years of their marriage, Jill worked as a secretary doing billing and other tasks at the smaller of two hospitals in the city near her home. This hospital specialized in obstetrics and gynecology and served as a teaching hospital in those specializations for the region. It is the subject of speculation whether, in fact, she chose not to have children, or could not have them. Whatever was the case, she was childless. Jill was born Jill Peters and went to Westgate High School and, later, Susan Farber Secretarial School. Her family was disappointed in her decision to marry Leo for, as was the case in that era, the repair of technological devices was not as respected as those professions involving the manipulation of data about technological devices, in which one could wear nice clothing and avoid dirtying one’s hands. But since Jill was the middle of three daughters and considered the least charismatic of them, her decision was eventually accepted and Leo was subsequently tolerated at the family’s infrequent holiday get-togethers. Neither of them was remembered as being particularly thoughtful, humorous or interesting as far as social conversation was concerned. Both said little to each other or others and receded into quiet, bored silence soon after arriving at any family function. They preferred, instead, their own hobbies and interests.

The neighborhood in which they lived was similarly uninteresting though, by the time Leo took his first steps toward historical importance, it had deteriorated somewhat. What this generally meant in terms of Caucasian, middle-class working neighborhoods at the end of the 20th century was that one or two non-Caucasian residents had moved in. However, this inevitable demographic shift was somewhat less traumatic in their neighborhood than for other surrounding neighborhoods. That is because the families that moved onto Leo’s street, though not Caucasian, were both Asian. Such changes were considered comparatively welcome ones by Caucasian people.

Four houses down from Leo, a young Vietnamese couple moved in named Kieu and Dang Yeak. They had been in the house for several months before Leo noticed Kieu on one of his early morning runs with Fenris. She was peering out from one of the windows watching Leo and Fenris run by. On that day and subsequent days, she would shine a smile at Leo and then wave excitedly like a child. Leo would wave back and, even at that distance, they would interlock their eyes in long, searching gazes. One can never know what it is that attracts one human being to another but in this case we can presume that one of the principal reasons for Leo’s fascination with her was the striking physical difference between Kieu and Jill. Nearly a foot taller, Jill was stately, long of limb and pale, while Kieu was short limbed, voluptuous, and had skin a slightly lighter shade than milk chocolate. Jill’s hair formed a neat wedge that seemed to sit atop her narrow, angular face while Kieu’s hair was a glowing cascade of black around her very round, heart-shaped face. Kieu’s cheekbones were high and lustrous with thin black eyebrows that framed almost black eyes.

Leo had seen Kieu for only a moment that first time, but could think of nothing else on his run. This was unusual because he was not the type of man that lusted after women often. But Kieu seemed to glow; her skin and hair was like the drizzled surface of a ripe plum and her large eyes seemed to form two black tunnels that receded to some mythical place beyond this world. Fenris flushed no squirrels that day and seemed to observe the change in Leo, stopping occasionally to look at him with an annoyed expression. It was only several hours later that Leo began to return to some sense of his normal life. He did not think of her again until that night when he had a peculiar dream.

Leo was on call to repair a washing machine, but he had no tools and, in fact, was wearing only a pair of swim trunks. He was on a tiny island in the middle of a fairly small but fast flowing river. The only thing on the island was a house that looked like the small, ramshackle wood cabins built when the North American wilderness was first settled by Caucasians. He could not remember how he got on the island for there was no bridge, no boat, and no means of getting there. He was not wet so he didn’t swim. He approached the house and knocked, not at all self-conscious about his appearance but concerned about his lack of tools. There was no answer so he pushed open the door and saw, standing in the middle of the dark hovel, a rusty, dented washing machine. When he approached it he noticed that there was no hook-up, no water lines, no electrical outlet, and yet the machine looked very used. He lifted the lid and looked inside. It was filled with filthy, rancid clothing and grimy brown water. He dropped the lid in disgust and stepped back. The machine now had bulged on the bottom as though it was made of soft plastic. Somehow knowing what would happen next, Leo watched the bottom of the machine burst out and spill its putrid contents in all directions across the dirt floor of the cabin. However, now the water was murky with blood and the clothing appeared to have chunks of flesh mixed with it. Before the gooey mess could touch his bare feet, he ran from the small house.

Once outside he breathed a sigh of relief to be out of those cloying surroundings and noticed that the sky was now very overcast and dark with black, fast-moving thunderclouds. He now took a good look at his surroundings; he had not noticed their strangeness before. The island itself had no trees or bushes of any kind; it was more like a shoal or peninsula except that it was covered with a lush green lawn. The river was flowing rapidly but surged past on both sides with no white caps, rapids, or swirling shallows. The dark gray water just moved by like a conveyor belt. Every now and then, the river water would wash up over the edges of the island, threatening to engulf it and carry the rickety building and Leo away.

Suddenly Leo saw dolphins periodically popping their heads and backs up through the gray, solid road of water as they swam by the island. These dolphins were a beautiful brown color, made more beautiful by the luster of water on their bodies. He watched hypnotized for a while and was startled when one of the dolphins jumped out of the water and slid on its belly across the green lawn of the island, coming to rest on a narrow jetty that pointed downstream in the center of the channel. Leo walked over and, for a moment, considered helping the dolphin back into the water, but when he saw her eye (he knew at that moment that it was a female) gazing up at him with a look of serenity and omniscience, he knew that she had intended to come up onto the island. There was now a steady roaring, a hollow, reverberating drone that, rather than causing him annoyance, began to mesmerize Leo until he acted without self-consciousness. He laid down next to her, pressing his body against hers and throwing his arm over her taut, glassy smooth skin. She was warm and dry, and he was not surprised when he could understand her. There were squeaks and a chattering somewhere in his head a long way off, muffled as though coming from another room on another level. They were communicating telepathically and his mind felt oceanic, transcendent, flowing and bubbling in an upright fountain, a streaming geyser with outer fringes frayed and evaporating. She rolled over onto her side languidly, as though they both were softly tossed on a sea swell, and Leo looked down at her body for the first time. The skin on her belly was hanging loosely and he could see a long slit running diagonally down almost the full length of her underside. There was no blood or open wound visible and Leo was not shocked or disturbed by this. In fact, he pulled a section of the skin away revealing muscles and tendons underneath but looking more like a detailed anatomical chart instead of a flayed, bloody animal. Looking at him intently with a sudden vulnerability, the dolphin then, with a coy human gesture that should have made no sense considering her physiology, pulled the skin closed, like a woman closing her shirt, covering her breasts. There was no sense of pain for either of them. On the contrary, he began to feel himself getting very aroused. The strange viscous, gray-blue water, more like light oil than water with its complete absence of foam or bubbles, was now flowing around his feet and legs. It, like her body, was warm and felt dry like a warm breeze, rather than a wet stream. He was naked now and entered her, undulating his back like a dolphin, only going in and out an inch or two. When she showed no signs of resistance or fear he rolled on top, holding himself up over her body on his outstretched arms and pushing in and out more forcefully, gliding the full length with each pelvic thrust. There was very little friction and her complete passivity and staring eye made the experience less than satisfying for Leo, but he kept going, his head clouded over by the hollow roaring around him. Very abruptly, Leo’s unself-conscious daze, along with the droning noise, dissipated and he became horrifyingly aware of what he was doing. Before he woke, he remembered her eye looking at him with a tired, tolerant boredom.

When he awoke, the sun had just come up and a cool breeze was nudging an edge of the curtain in the window by the bed. Leo looked over at Jill but she wasn’t there. He sprang up and realized that Fenris was gone too. As he began to pull on a sweatshirt that was hanging on the closet doorknob, he pushed his quickly softening erection down and headed for the stairs.

As he entered the kitchen and approached the back door he stopped, seeing it standing open. The clock on the stove said that it was 6:37. He thought about guns, about how if a burglar or rapist or murderer was in the house, he couldn’t even protect his home. Leo didn’t own a gun at that time, but he knew that even if he did, and even if he was to use it to defend his home, the loud sound would be heard throughout the neighborhood; police would be called, questions would be asked. HE would be investigated. The officials would find something in the criminal’s past; some excuse would surface that would make their violence justifiable while his was an overreaction. For a brief moment he was just angry and frustrated but then came the epiphany that would forever change the world. It’s so strange how history-altering insights are arrived at in the most mundane of circumstances. No one, not even Leo, could have guessed how that morning would lead to a new era. I am not sure of the precise date of this revelation. Some say the entire anecdote is a fable.

Leo walked to one of the kitchen counters, opened it and quietly pulled out one of the largest knives he could find, resolving at that moment, if he should survive, to invent a completely silent weapon that could be used to protect him from both criminals and from the criminal justice system. He very slowly approached the door and looked out. Jill was standing at the foot of the cement steps leading onto the backyard patio and Fenris was squatting, like a girl dog, peeing in small, quick jets while sniffing the air. Jill was in her long, flowered, cotton nightgown with nothing on underneath and as the breeze picked up, the cloth would press into the curves of her hips and the crevice of her lower back and rear, outlining her long waist like a sheath of glimmering rainwater. Leo smiled and she turned around, calling to Fenris in a husky voice and extending her arm in a lazy gesture, enwrapping the air as if she could pull the dog and the surrounding air together into her arms and into the house. He smiled because the cold morning air had brought her small nipples standing out hard against the nearly transparent fabric. As she started up the stairs, her leisurely soft movements were suddenly replaced by a single convulsion of instinctive fear as she, for the first time, saw Leo standing with a large knife in his hand. She took one step down off the stairs and brought her arms up across her breasts in what, to Leo, was one of the most erotic gestures he had ever seen her make. When she realized a second later that it was Leo and not a stranger, she relaxed, sighed, and walked back up the stairs grinning.

The animal severity of her former movements gone, she walked past Leo, looked down at the knife and said, What’s that for? but continued on through the kitchen not really expecting an answer. Fenris too glanced up at him quizzically and then followed her up the stairs.

He thought of running after her, pushing her down onto the bed, pulling her nightgown up around her waist and making love to her, but he had to go to the bathroom so he did that instead.

*  *  *

On the very next day, Leo resolved to do whatever was necessary to procure or create a silent gun. Leo’s obsession arose out of a simple, logical desire to circumvent the laws of that era: laws that had come to increasingly favor the perpetuators of crime rather than the victims. Yet, Leo was not a political man. He initially saw such a weapon only as a means by which he could gain a personal advantage in a social climate where paranoia had become sensible and the descent into chaos that was to come was anticipated with excitement by many of the tired, frustrated and angry citizens of the old United States.

Initially, Leo’s attempts at creating a silent gun were merely rather crude versions of existing technology. Without any revolutionary technology at his disposal, and lacking any paradigm shifting ideas for new technological forms, Leo began with the contemporary technology of 20th century pistol silencers. His first act of vengeance, in fact, involved one of these older guns, but his end goal was far more pure in its conception. He imagined a weapon that could kill at a distance but produced no sound and could not be traced in any way to a particular source. Such a weapon would, in a sense, complete the slow but steady progress in the evolution of human weaponry from extremely personal, intimate forms of killing, to more and more anonymous means of exacting death at a distance. The prototype device he would eventually discover would delegate guns, as the term was understood in the last century, to the realm of historical relics. Our current emjee is a considerable advancement of the device Leo discovered and a result of several technological improvements. Leo did not come up with the name either. While the word emjee arose from the acronym M.G., the use of the word gun in this case is one of those anachronistic expressions dragged along to describe a very different technology, like the word type used after the invention of the computer in the last century. The original weapon produced by Leo has not survived though a model, based on educated speculation, can be seen in the special display at the National Museum. There is a popular myth that the actual relic exists somewhere in New America, but such a belief sounds suspiciously like those futile searches for the Holy Grail, or pieces of the True Cross.

However, before any of this happened, Leo began, logically enough, by purchasing a small caliber hand gun, an elaborate bureaucratic process at that time requiring an extended waiting period, background check, and even a firearms safety test. This pistol purchase was clearly documented, though it too no longer exists. In the years before Leo purchased his first gun, government regulations on the purchase of firearms had been steadily tightening in response to the proliferation of gun-related crimes. The citizen’s response to this increase in violent crime was similar to that of their government to the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation in the prior era, purchasing more and better weapons. Of course, the government could not see the irony in their increasing crack down on the citizen’s paranoia when they were involved in a more global version of the same logic.

Anyway, Leo’s first gun was an inexpensive but sturdy .22 caliber pistol with a 6-inch barrel. Much smaller than the shotgun of his youth, it fired the smallest standard size bullet of the era with an accuracy only surpassed by rifles. The term rifle describes both another type of long barreled gun in that era, and a process by which guns that fired single bullets were made more accurate. Rifling referred to cutting internal spiral grooves into the interior of a gun’s barrel that would make the bullet spin, increasing its accuracy and range. He purchased a pistol that was described as semi-automatic, instead of the even more ancient revolver design still being manufactured at that time, because the owner of the gun store indicated to him the advantage of a nine-shot clip over the six-shot revolver. Both designs at that time offered what was considered to be an exceptional feature, the ability to fire all the bullets in the gun without reloading or pressing any mechanisms other than the trigger.

When Leo went in to pick up the gun after the two week waiting period and background check, the transaction started off quite routinely. The gun shop owner seemed impatient to move on to what Leo gathered was a regular customer named Bill further down the counter from him, taking the disassembled pieces of a large modified assault rifle, one of the many imitations of the standard issue military M16A, out of an expensive, padded, hard-shell case he had carried into the store. In contrast to Leo’s .22 pistol, this weapon used a standard 30 round magazine that fired in either three shot bursts or could be modified, though it was illegal at that time, to fire in the truly automatic or machine gun mode, discharging all the bullets (5.56 x 45mm rounds) in a steady stream at a rate of 700 to 900 rpm with the single depression of the trigger. This rapid-fire capability was achieved by the use of a charging handle, pulled back before firing. New bullets were rapidly reloaded into the breech by a clever system that involved channeling a small amount of the propellant gas through a vent about two-thirds of the way down the barrel, back through a stainless-steel tube mounted on top of the barrel to strike the front of the bolt which would cause the head of the bolt to cam open, unlocking it and allowing a hooked piece of steel to eject the empty cartridge and, returning to position, pull another bullet from the clip and drive it into the breech.

In actuality, the gun store owner had suggested this particular pistol to Leo not because it was a good choice in pistols but because he had been unable to get rid of .22 caliber guns for some time since customers, considering the difficulty in getting handguns in the state where Leo resided, were interested only in the largest caliber, most powerful handguns and rifles made at that time. The owner’s name was Paul and he had been a marine but now had unfashionably long, gray-streaked hair. His hands seemed much too large for his short, squat build and his belly stuck out in a symmetrical bulge over his waist, as though his belt was too tight and had pinched all the flesh in his hips and buttocks into an even roll resting on top of his pants. Yet most remarkable were Paul’s eyes, glazed over permanently with a miserable cynicism.

Leo was filling out more paperwork on the gun purchase when he casually asked the bored looking storeowner if he could look at the silencers he had for sale. Both Paul and Bill froze for a moment and then shot knowing glances and smirks at each other. Paul had a strange, deadened look to his eyes and face, a permanent indifference that, for a moment, was transformed into a strange sort of stupefied pain. For a second, he had almost believed that Leo was making fun of him. It took only a second for him to realize that the question was asked out of complete ignorance on Leo’s part and then his smile was like that of a high school bully who mistook a freshman’s profanity as directed at him. Leo looked up from his writing to see that Paul was now staring at him with a large grin but squinted, threatening eyes. Bill slowly returned to fumbling, now nervously, with his military assault rifle while the owner began to tuck in his shirt, though it didn’t need tucking in. Leo realized he had said something wrong but wisely elected to say nothing else.

A silencer? Paul seemed poised to say something else but stopped. He sighed and leaned toward Leo ever so slightly. He again glanced at Bill and then said, as though speaking to a deaf person who had to read his lips.

Bud, silencers are illegal in this state. The formerly stifling atmosphere seemed to clear with these words and Paul and Bill now began a rapid flurry of exclamations.

Lookin’ to kill the wife, eh? Bill said.

No, he thinks he’s in the CIA.

OK, so long as he’s not a fuckin’ terrorist. The owner’s eyes then narrowed and his smile disappeared. It was strange for Leo to have someone talk about him while looking at him. This had not happened since he was about six years old.

Or maybe he’s a cop, seeing if we’re stupid enough to openly refer to illegal accessories with customers. Paul said too loudly.

Maybe he’d like to see some weapon’s grade plutonium too! Bill toned in. The owner smiled, and then frowned again.

Listen, bud, we don’t sell silencers, or machine guns, or armor piercers… Paul said each noun with added emphasis and very slowly just in case he was being recorded. OK, bud?

Paul began to turn away and then, seeing the blank look on Leo’s face and realizing his over-reaction he said more quietly and evenly, You want me to get you a nice box of mini-mags with that, or are you looking for cop-killers in a .22 caliber, too?

Both Paul and Bill laughed artificial laughs and stopped at the same instant. Leo remained quiet. Paul walked over to another counter, reached under it and pulled out a small rectangular plastic box with neatly arranged rows of glistening, copper colored bullets set in individual tiny holes and returned, setting it on the counter.

They’re on sale. he commented as he rang them up. Leo looked down and saw that the box said caution: range 1 mile on it.

When Paul had bagged his gun and box of ammunition he said to Leo’s back as he left the store, You be careful with that now.

Bill added, It makes a loud sound when you pull the trigger.

As the door was closing Paul finished, That’s if you use the bullets. Leo could hear hearty guffaws as he walked away.

The humiliation only really registered a moment later. Part of Leo wanted to load the gun and go back in and shoot them both but when he thought about the incredibly large and powerful guns in the store he realized how truly stupid that idea was. His little gun seemed pathetic next to Bill’s weapon. Still, Leo felt a certain strange power walking down the street with a gun in his hand. Let’s see, he had nine shots without reloading. That meant he could kill nine people with just the small piece of metal in that bag. If a mugger, or a youth gang attacked him he could now retaliate. However, there was also the realization that the sound would bring the authorities running. But imagine, he thought, if this was completely silent. I could hide it under my coat or in my sleeve and kill any passerby across the street. In a crowd like the one he was in now, there would be no way of knowing who did it. They would just drop and everybody would crowd around, but there would be absolutely no way of telling which of the people on the street took the shot. Leo quickened his pace with a new determination and excitement.

Chapter 2

As we leave Leo for the time being, the completely true and remarkable story of Dang Yeak and his young Vietnamese bride must be told. Of course, Leo knew nothing of Kieu or her husband’s history when they first met. Had he known, his emotions would have evolved more quickly into the noble rage of vengeance. Instead, it must be stressed that Leo’s desire for the beautiful young Kieu was no more or less noble than the fierce, aching passions that propelled the monster Yeak from one angry day to the next. Dang Yeak was a jealous man and a truly fierce man. Born of a whore, he was a monster from the start. That is where we must start, at the beginning, with the remarkable story of how these two citizens of chaos survived, met, and came to this country.

The only remembrance Dang Yeak had of his mother was the story she had told him of his birth. The only time in her life she had become pregnant she explained to him that it was a fortunate accident. She had mistakenly trod on the big toe of God’s footprint. Then God sent a beautiful voiced swallow that left a glowing egg, the exact color of the full moon, in a basket on her windowsill. The egg glowed so brightly that it kept her awake at night, so one night she ate the egg and he grew in her belly. When she gave birth it was completely effortless and the oxen, sheep, and other beasts in the village would take turns holding and nursing him. She drew him a picture one night that showed him tiny enough to cling to the fluffy breast of a swallow as it wrapped a wing around him and fed him a fat worm. He had kept the picture for many years but lost it when he came to America. Being fed on this complex soup of many different animals’ milk and food instead of just his mother’s milk, made him, according to his mother, more powerful than any other human and invulnerable to injury. The integration of all those animal proteins, unfiltered by a human mother’s body, gave him animal strength, animal passions, and an animal’s will to survive.

His face grew broad with a high smooth forehead, a flattened, wide nose, and bulging, intense eyes. His mouth, nose and eyebrows broke his face into three straight furrows: permanent stony waves in a brown puddle. His hair was not straight like Kieu’s but dull, with a slightly wavy, curly texture.

His memories of childhood consisted primarily of two things: watching his mother’s seemingly endless primal scenes with every imaginable type, color and shape of man until he was deemed too old to be in the room and was sent into the streets. There he would bully and beat the other boys, some even several years older, until he emerged as the dominant in a haggard league of submissive followers. The other thing he remembered was a result of the war fought there by the O.U.S. during the 1960’s and 1970’s. He had been born a generation after the war and he and the other boys felt cheated and angry at this cruel fate, so they created mini-war scenarios in the fields around the town. One day, one of the children he was playing with was unfortunate enough to step on a Claymore mine left over from that earlier war. The 700 steel balls embedded in the one and a half pounds of C4 plastic explosive in this sophisticated fragmentation mine were delivered in a concentrated 60% arc at a soldier’s legs, making it a weapon designed to demoralize rather than necessarily kill troops. It had a slightly more dramatic effect on the small boy however, blowing his legs in two different directions, and leaving him effectively cut in half but conscious for several seconds, lying on the stump of his lower body. The other boys ran away but Dang Yeak watched him die, plopping forward like a sack. Driven by his animal will he circled cautiously around to look into the cavern of the boy’s torso, a mysterious secret of nature to a curious seven year old. The jumbled shredded organs emerging from the round casket of the body did not horrify him. He moved in closer to try to make sense of the bizarre new information. The boy had not been a friend so he felt no pity, only a stubborn awe holding his eyes on the forbidden sight, feeling that if he looked away for even an instant, and then looked back, the scene would change. He felt as if he should take something, a memento of this strange indoctrination to remind him later. As it turned out, the image would sink into the back of his eyes and dry there for his entire life. He came closer, awkwardly stepping into the pool of body fluid surrounding the body. The boy had no jewelry, no distinctive clothing. Then Dang Yeak remembered that one of the boy’s toenails was black. He left the torso and began to search urgently for the boy’s legs, but the only pieces of his body he could find were unidentifiable. Then, in his peripheral vision, he saw two old men in black approaching slowly in the direction of the body. For a reason he couldn’t understand, he ran away, the tears beginning to come not so much for the boy, or for the ache in his eyes at the remaining sight, but for his inability to find the token that would have given the event a meaning. When he got home he sat for a long time behind his apartment building, crying occasionally in convulsive hiccups, staring at the ground between his feet.

Then he got an inspired idea. He picked up a chunk of mortar and brick and placed his foot on the edge of the curbing. He aimed carefully and brought the brick down quickly onto his little toe. His intention was to permanently blacken his toenail as the other boy had, but instead the brick smashed his two smallest toes flat. Eventually, Dang Yeak would have to have them amputated but for several years after that, these two toes would hang like tiny broken wings on his sandals. He didn’t cry after that because it seemed like the right thing to do. These events only seemed to prepare Dang Yeak for the difficult road he would eventually travel to Old America.

Phan Thi Kieu had a far different set of experiences in her upbringing. Though not affluent by American standards, she was the only daughter of one of the most powerful and wealthy men in the region of Vietnam where she was born. Her two brothers and father protected and pampered her. She was dressed like a small princess and began to genuinely believe that she was blessed and destined to escape the poverty surrounding her by the sheer elegance of the persona her family had created for her. Younger by several years than Dang Yeak, she had no interest in her elders’ memories of the war. Also, the fact that her father had been a Communist sympathizer and sheltered several political figures meant that her family was spared much of the hardship after the war.

As she blossomed into a young woman of robust, sensual beauty, she inspired such a tidal wave of interest in both the boys and the men of the town that her father felt it necessary to limit the field of her suitors by demanding some special and extraordinarily difficult test to assure their worthiness. Kieu’s father thought long and hard but finally came up with what he felt was the perfect test. It would require not only courage, dexterity and strength but also a Zen quiet and abandonment of ego that would assure that Kieu’s husband would be a true hero. All the villagers waited in rapt anticipation when Kieu’s father began to build an elaborate structure in the front yard of their large home.

He built a sturdy chicken coop with three sides covered by thin wooden slats but with the fourth side open. On the side opposite the open side there was a small square hole formed by two slats running vertically and two heavy pieces of wood nailed across them horizontally. On the open side he planted a thick wooden stake in the ground with a neat circular hole cut into it near the top, making it look like a giant sewing needle. Through the square hole in the box and the hole in the wooden stake he slipped a metal shaft, an axle from a farm wagon that had long ago been left to rot in a field. Then into the box he put some hay, a small dented pan with some water in it, and finally, his best and most beautiful chicken Fi Tu Sho. On one end of the axle, the part that passed through the square hole in the box, he put a short crank arm. On the other, the part that passed through the giant needle, he mounted a wagon wheel that he had saved from the same ruined wagon. The spokes in the wheel were thin but numerous, set about two inches apart.

As he finally tapped in the cotter pin to hold the wheel onto the axle, the town’s people were all gathered around, whispering to each other and speculating on the function this strange device would serve in his daughter’s nuptial contest.

Kieu’s father turned to them and in his best, booming voice told them the conditions of the contest for his daughter’s hand. Any prospective suitor of his daughter would have to remove the bird from the cage through the spokes of the wheel without harming the bird in any way. When a man had brought him his prize chicken, unhurt, he could have Kieu for his bride. The old man then turned to make his way back to his house, but before he did, two men he had hired took their positions at the box. One of them, an old man with no front teeth but a full head of glorious, long hair took his place at the crank and began turning it in slow deliberate spirals, as if he knew he would be there for a long time. The other, a Viet Cong veteran with a long ugly scar running down the entire length of his right leg, took his place beside the box with a rifle. He was there to ensure that there would be no foul play or cheating, and the town’s people knew he had a very bad temper. He sat on a small box with his wounded leg sticking straight out in front of him, the barrel of the gun resting between his big toe and middle toe.

Several of the handsomest young men in the community circled around the apparatus and, as if seeing some new species of animal never seen before, silently gawked while their minds worked and worked. After nearly two hours, one of them, an employee at the local post office, put his hand out almost dreamily and let the spokes flutter across his fingernails, tip-tip-tip, and then withdrew his hand. He looked at the others and they looked at him. Almost as if choreographed to some silent piece of music, they all stood up together and walked off, just as the long shadows of the late afternoon had begun to turn to a hazy dusk. Looking out her window, Kieu began to sob and sniffle softly.

Five days went by. The old man died from the stress of turning the wheel and had been replaced by increasingly shorter shifts of children paid a token fee by Kieu’s father. All involved were growing annoyed at the futility of continuing the process and Kieu’s father had just decided to dismantle the coop and consign his daughter to life in a nunnery when a young handsome man no one had ever seen in the town before approached the cage and kneeled down before it.

He sat an entire morning like that, staring at the wheel’s somewhat erratic rotation. Two small, conical piles of sawdust had accumulated beneath the coop. After five days, the friction of the axle had ground the holes in the box and post into elliptical shapes and the axle now flopped about and squeaked embarrassingly when turned. Word of the young man’s presence had spread through town and a large group again assembled at Kieu’s house. What happened that day has since become one of the most famous tales to come out of Indochina.

The young man, whose name no one could pronounce because it sounded exactly like the sound of a waterfall, sat there nearly the whole day. Then, just when it seemed to the townspeople that he too would be turned away by the difficulty of the task, he did a remarkable thing. He waited for a lull in the day when everyone had fallen asleep in the coolness of the late afternoon. Fi Tu Sho had been watching the young man distrustfully, twitching and grumbling occasionally. The young man had been staring at the bird as if he could draw the bird through the spokes by will alone. The guard and the child cranking the wheel seemed to be hypnotized, their mouths hanging open like the pupils of two unblinking eyes staring back into the young man’s face. Kieu too was staring out the window at the spectacle. This undeserved rapture from his employees disturbed and angered her father who decided to end the contest immediately and send the strange young man on his way. He was making his way down the walkway and had just inhaled to make his pronouncement when the young man’s plan unfolded.

He had been, as I have said, kneeling a meter or so in front of the cage staring through the wheel the entire afternoon when he suddenly brought his hands together and clapped loudly while, at the same time, making a shrill squawk; unmistakably a chicken’s squawk, so accurate a mimicry in fact that there are those who, to this day, deny that he had made the sound. However, that is foolish modern cynicism for the young man had spent years learning the languages of beasts and when word had finally reached him of this contest he set out immediately, knowing that it was his destiny, and his alone, to perform this feat.

Kieu’s father stopped immediately and all the town’s people who had been dozing snapped to alertness and watched as Fi Tu Sho began to flap wildly around the cage. The chicken then clung with his feet and beak to the spokes of the wheel as it turned around. The weight of the bird now made the already unstable apparatus begin to tilt and lurch in squeaky convulsions with every rotation. The young boy consigned to crank the wheel had stepped back, unable to control the violent whirling of the crank as the entire chicken coop fell over in a crunch that finally silenced the annoying twang of the wheel.

As the structure landed on its side, the wheel dropped off the spindle and, with Fi Tu Sho still clenching the spokes and clucking angrily, the wheel rolled down the incline of the sloping land beside Kieu’s house and, gaining speed, started to head directly for the largest tree in Kieu’s yard, an ancient and majestic giant named Lo. Kieu’s father grasped his gray, straggly beard and pulled hard in frustration and horror as Fi Tu Sho and the wheel hurtled toward the tree trunk.

What happened then some would deem luck, but it was unquestionably a miracle. Lo’s great body was so old, and his root system and branches extended so far that his prodigious canopy of leaves formed a smooth curving, semi-circular arch. To everyone’s surprise, the wheel did not shatter against the tree but sped along one of the largest roots, ascending the sloping curve of the tree’s trunk to the first great branch where it was shot into the air back towards the amazed crowd, the terrified chicken still clinging to the airborne wheel. Everyone scattered from the path of this strange projectile except the handsome young man with the name like the sound of a waterfall. Instead he extended his arms skyward.

Kieu’s father watched him dumbfounded as the wheel began to descend in a long arc directly over him, the chicken still riding on top. At that moment, when the wheel was only two meters or so above his head, the spoke which Fi Tu Sho had been clutching broke free. This brought about a rapid chain reaction in which the wheel fractured in mid air, with fragments of wood swirling like snow down upon the young man. The rim of the wheel dropped over his head like a ring slipped onto a slender finger and Fi Tu Sho fell into his outstretched hands still holding the remnant of a spoke in his beak. Then, matter of factly, the young man stepped over the wheel and carried the somewhat dizzy but intact chicken to Kieu’s father, setting him into his hands.

Making his way boldly up the walkway, he entered the house to bring forth his bride. The townspeople were cheering and laughing with giddy joy when the young hero emerged with Kieu clinging to his arm, surveying the somewhat chaotic scene with wide-eyed awe. Kieu’s father remained silent and stony-faced as his daughter was led away from her childhood home with only the clothes on her back.

As it turned out, Kieu’s father made some efforts to find his daughter, using his influence and power to attempt to discover which town the couple had settled in, but was never able to. His second wife, Kieu’s stepmother, continually urged him on, filling his old head with her repeated objections to the young man’s methods for winning the contest. To her it was clear that he did not actually reach through the wheel to grasp the bird, and the entire contest must be retried at once with suitors other than the impertinent young man. Even as several years passed with no word of his daughter, Kieu’s father never became completely reconciled to the outcome of the famous contest and, to his dying day, felt bitterly betrayed.

*  *  *

The young couple did not go far. Returning to the outskirts of the town the young hero had come from, the two settled into a tiny cooperative farm with the young man’s brother Chan, a simpleton who, though he doted on her, Kieu found annoying. Unfortunately, Kieu found several things about her new life style annoying. Accustomed to a more affluent upbringing, she missed her nice clothing and pretty jewelry. And accustomed to a populated setting, she especially missed the considerable attention she had received since the onset of puberty.

But without a doubt, the thing that bothered Kieu the most was the size of her husband’s penis. It was very small. Of course, she did not know this at first because, taken as a virgin, she had nothing to which she could compare her new husband’s endowment. But one day she chanced to see Chan naked and was perplexed and irritated by the fact that, unaroused, his was nearly twice the size of her husband’s when aroused.

She had heard whispered tales from her school friends of how men had their way with girls, throwing them down on the ground, forcing their legs apart and putting their big things in. She had heard how it hurt at first but then filled you up and felt so wondrously good that, sometimes, the stroking of the man’s penis would send shivery pulsations up your spine and make you so wet and hot that you would literally burn inside. However, sex with her husband had never been like that. He had been almost maddeningly gentle and unhurried. His caresses and kisses had made her flood and writhe but when the moment came the penetration felt like - well, not like she expected. At first she assumed that the girls had been wrong, that they had been making up a fantasy and she could expect no more than what she was getting. But seeing Chan that day created a relentless curiosity in her, and it proved to be a turning point in her very young marriage. It was incomprehensible to her that she should grow old like this, wasting her considerable erotic charms on a man whose penis was so small.

Kieu began to go into town often. On these trips, her husband insisted, for her own safety, that she be accompanied by Chan who generally followed several feet behind her, saying nothing, looking at the ground, scuffling his feet and raising a small cloud of dust behind them. She did not go with the conscious desire to seek out other men and other experiences but being in the busier pulse of the town’s activity helped to lessen the boredom and discontentment that had now crept into her mind and soul. A woman in such a state of mind proves to be a magnet for other men, and Kieu’s loveliness soon became apparent to all.

As fate would have it, this was the town in which Dang Yeak had grown up and where he now worked as a road laborer. When he saw her, he did not at first recognize her as the same young woman from the contest. Instead, his reaction was more in keeping with the reaction most men had when seeing Kieu. When he asked about her, the remarkable story unfolded and the strange sight of this stunning woman with a smiling idiot trudging behind her made more sense.

Her somewhat less pampered, rural life had only helped to make her more beautiful for she had lost all traces of adolescent pudginess and the increased time that she spent outdoors in her garden seemed to make her skin almost sparkle with a chocolate butter sheen. While no longer dressed in the finer, stylish clothing she had once worn, the simple, sometimes ill-fitting frocks she now wore draped her body in some urgent, unexpected ways that made Dang Yeak ache. Kieu found the effect she had on men intoxicating; she felt powerful and vital when she felt men’s eyes frustratingly searching her. This was in striking contrast to the pathetic, puppy dog adoration with which her new husband and retarded brother regarded her. She felt, at times, like slapping her husband’s face when he would clasp her hand across the table and stare at her face. The often brazen ogling of the other men in town, on the other hand, was something she wanted to bathe in; and without a doubt, Dang Yeak’s stare was the most brazen of all. It seemed almost magical to Kieu for, in his look alone, she could feel a difference from the other men. Here was desire that was utterly uncomplicated and completely honest. Indeed, by the third or fourth time Yeak had seen her, he had resolved to take her in precisely the way Kieu’s schoolgirl friends had imagined.

The major obstacle to realizing his goal, Yeak knew, was the high regard everyone had for the kind young hero. The men in town, except for Yeak, would inevitably complete their appraisal of Kieu’s charms with a sigh: an acquiescence to what they acknowledged was a well-deserved treasure for a good and honest man. With this high regard for her husband, none of the men were inclined to approach her. Yet such restraint was not a part of Dang Yeak’s personality. One day, he resolved to follow her back from town and try to observe an opportunity to steal her away from the hero and his idiot brother.

Keeping well behind them, he trailed them back to their farm and then hid himself among some trees at the edge of the clearing by her farm and watched as she entered their small house and closed the door. Chan, after watching her go in, made his way toward his brother who was tearing weeds from the furrows in a field of green peas behind the house. Dang Yeak watched them exchange a few words and then saw Chan return back to the house where he approached a fenced area. There he unlatched a gate in the fence and out scurried a small furry animal. It was a stray puppy that Chan had found on the outskirts of