The Touch

Ba Thuy Nguyen

Ba was used to Phemus' barking. The old dog had been skittish of late, baying at the slightest thing, waking the Missus and the Boy at all hours of the night. So Ba had taken him to his quarters over the garage where the howls would not disturb the household.

And where Ba could judge their import.

He had ignored the intermittent noise for the past hour as he concentrated on the pile of Immigration and Naturalization forms before him. He had met the residency requirement, and had decided he wanted to become an American citizen. Eventually he would have to take a test on the history and government of his new country, but first there were forms to fill out. Many forms. Tonight he was concentrating on form N400, the most important. The Missus had written out some of the entries for him on a separate sheet of paper and he was laboriously copying the English characters into the blanks. Later he would practice signing his name in English, another requirement for naturalization.

Phemus' barking suddenly changed. It was louder and carried a different note. A note much like it had carried when Dr. Bulmer had stopped by earlier.

Ba slipped from his chair and padded to where the dog stood with both front paws on the windowsill and howled again at the night.

Ba had learned over the years that Phemus was not to be underestimated. True, he was a pest at times, raising alarms at each passing rabbit or vagrant cat, but Ba had come to appreciate the old dog's keen ears and nose, and his remaining eye seemed to have compensated for its brother's loss by becoming twice as sharp. Ba had attuned himself to Phemus' alarms, and this particular pitch and tone, especially with the dog's fur on end at his nape and his low back, usually meant a human trespasser.

He crouched at the window with the dog and scanned the yard. He saw nothing. Phemus licked his face and barked again.

As Ba stood and pulled on his overalls, he wondered if it might be the same fellow he had chased away three nights ago. That had been easy: He had merely spoken from behind a bush and then stepped into view. That had been enough. The would-be thief had been so startled that he had tripped over his own feet in his haste to get away. Ba imagined that most of these sneak thieves were anxious to avoid any confrontation. They wanted to break in silently, take anything of value they could carry in their sack, then slink off unseen into the night.

But Ba also knew that he could not count on that. Among the jackals there might hide a few wolves with ready fangs. They were not hard to handle as long as one was prepared for them.

He knelt before his dresser and pulled open the bottom drawer. Beneath the neatly folded pairs of work pants lay a fully loaded U.S. Army .45 automatic pistol and a standard issue bayonet. Touching them loosed a flood of memories of home, and of how both had stood him well in the long sail from his village across the South China Sea. Fighting the winds and currents had been hard enough, but there had been the added danger of the pirates who preyed on the boats, boarding them repeatedly, robbing the refugees, raping the women, killing any who resisted. Ba remembered his gut-wrenching fear the first time they swarmed aboard his tiny boat: fear that there were too many of them, that they would overpower him and he would fail Nhung Thi and his friends. But he had met their attack with his own, fighting with a ferocity he had never dreamed he possessed, using every combat skill he knew and inventing new ones. The Americans had taught him well how to fight, and many unsuspecting pirates became food for the sharks that took to following Ba's boat.

And just as he had protected his family, friends, and fellow villagers then, Ba was determined to protect the Missus and the Boy now. They were all he had in the world. Nhung Thi was dead, his village was long gone, his friends either dead or scattered all over America. He owed the Missus a huge debt. She had aided him and his ailing Nhung Thi when life had looked the blackest: an unknown woman, appearing out of nowhere in Manila, saying she was the Sergeant's wife and offering help. Ba would never forget that. She still thought she was taking care of Ba, but he knew it was the other way around. For years now he had watched over her. Nothing would harm her or the Boy as long as he drew breath.

Ba picked up the bayonet and withdrew it from its scabbard. The blade was dark and dull except for the gentle curve of bright steel where he kept it honed to a fine edge. This old and silent friend would do, just in case. Not the gun. After all, the purpose of going out into the yard was to keep the Missus and the Boy from being disturbed.

He pulled on a dark sweater, slipped the naked blade through a loop in his overalls, and reached for the doorknob. Phemus was there in a flash, his nose to the door crack, growling.

Ba knelt down beside the animal.

"You'd die for her, too, wouldn't you, dog?" he said in his village dialect.

He remembered the day the Missus had found Phemus as if it were yesterday. He had been driving her back from the city and had taken a local route to avoid a tie-up on the Long Island Expressway. Suddenly the Missus had called to him to stop. As he pulled into the curb he saw why: A group of four boys in their early teens was chasing a limping, emaciated dog down the sidewalk, pelting it with rocks as it fled before them. Suddenly it stumbled and they were upon it, shouting as they surrounded it and kicked it repeatedly.

Before Ba knew it, the Missus was out of the car and running toward the group. She reached them just as one of the boys raised a heavy stone high over his head, ready to smash it down on the weak, exhausted creature. The Missus charged in and hurled him aside with a violent shove. The boy lost his balance and fell, but immediately leaped up at her, his fists raised, rage in his face. But Ba was approaching then. He looked at the boy and wished him death for even so much as considering the idea of striking the Missus. The boy must have read something of that wish in Ba's face, for he spun and ran. His friends quickly followed on his heels.

The Missus hovered over the panting dog and gently stroked the ridges of his heaving ribs. She picked him up and turned toward the car. Ba offered to take the dog for her but she told him to drive directly to the vet's.

In his mind's eye he could still see her in the rearview mirror, sitting in the back seat with the dog on her lap, unmindful of the blood that oozed onto her expensive dress and the velvet upholstery. The dog had the strength to lick her hand once and she had smiled.

On the way to the veterinary clinic, she had told him of people who moved away and simply abandoned their pets, leaving a faithful animal sitting at the back door of an empty house, waiting for days to be let in. Finally, when hunger and thirst got to be too much, the creature would take to th streets, ill-equipped to fend for itself after a lifetime as a house pet.

At the vet's they learned that the dog had a broken rear leg, three broken ribs, and a left eye that had been punctured by a stick.

Better to kill a dog and eat it rather than treat it so, Ba had thought.

The dog's bones healed, but the eye was permanently damaged. The Missus named him Polyphemus—a name Ba did not understand—and he had been a member of the household for five years.

"Not tonight," Ba told the dog as it tried to follow him out the door. "You've too gentle a heart. It might betray you."

He closed the door on Phemus' whines and barks and made his way down to the garage and out the side door to the grounds.

A half-moon was rising over the water. Ba kept to the shadows of the ground-brushing willows along the rim of the property until he could duck across a small area of lawn to the foundation plantings around the house. Quickly and quietly, he made his way through the shrubbery.

He found them on the west side. They already had one of the casement windows pried open and one of the pair was supporting the other as he climbed in.

Ba spoke from behind a rhododendron.

"The Missus does not want you here. Leave!"

The one up at the window dropped down and faced the spot where Ba was hiding. Ba recognized him then as the one he had frightened away the other night.

"It's the gook again!" the shorter one said. Two knives suddenly gleamed in the moonlight.

"Get him!"