He could still feel a vaguely sore spot on his tongue where he had been pricked by the wind-blown melaleuca leaf when he had opened the front door of his house and discovered the doll lying on the porch.
Holding the steering wheel with only his left hand, he pressed his right hand to his thigh. He had no difficulty locating the spot where the pin with the black enamel head had pierced his flesh.
Two wounds. Both small but clearly symbolic.
Now, Tommy cruised Spyglass Drive, piloting the Cor-vette along ridges stippled with million-dollar houses that overlooked Newport Beach, past graceful California -pepper trees thrashing in the wind, and his thoughts were as chaotic as his driving was aimless. Cold drowning tides of rain came off the black Pacific and, although the torrents couldn’t touch him now, they seemed to wash confidence and reason out of him, leaving him limp with doubt and feverish with superstitious speculations.
He wanted to go to his parents’ cosy house in Huntington Beach, take refuge in the bosom of his family. His mother was the person most likely to believe his story. Mothers were required by law – not the law of men, but natural law – to be able to discern the truth when their children told it to them, to be quick to defend them against the disbelief of others. If he stared directly into his mother’s eyes and explained about the devil doll, she would know that he was not lying. Then he would no longer be alone in his terror.
His mother would convince his father that the threat, although outlandish, was real, whereupon his father would convince Tommy’s two brothers and his sister. Then there would be six of them – an entire family -standing against the unnatural power that had sent the hateful mini-kin to him. Together they could triumph as they had triumphed so long ago against the communists in Vietnam and against the Thai pirates on the South China Sea.
But instead of turning the Corvette toward Huntington Beach, Tommy swung left on El Capitan and drove higher into the night and the storm. He wove from street to street across Spyglass Hill, past the houses of strangers who would never in this lifetime believe him if he rang their doorbells and told them his incredible story.
He was reluctant to go to his parents for fear that he had put too much emotional distance between them and himself to warrant the unconditional acceptance that they once would have given him. He might babble out the story of the devil doll only to see his mother’s face pinch with disapproval and hear her say, You drink whiskey like your silly detective?
No whiskey, Mom.
I smell whiskey.
I had one beer.
One beer, soon whiskey.
I don’t like whiskey.
You carry guns in every pocket- One gun, Mom.
-drive car like crazy maniac, chase blondes- No blondes.
-drink whiskey like it only tea, then surprised when see demons and dragons- No dragons, Mom.
-demons and ghosts- No ghosts, Mom.
-demons, dragons, ghosts. You better come home to stay, Tuong.
Tommy.
Better start living right way, Tuong.
Tommy.
Better stop drinking whiskey like tough guy, stop trying always to be so American, too American.
Tommy groaned aloud in misery.
Still letting the imaginary conversation play out in his head, he cautiously steered the Corvette around an immense branch from a coral tree that had blown down in the storm and blocked half the street.
He decided not to go home to Huntington Beach, because he was afraid that, once he got there, he would find that it wasn’t really home any more. Then, having discovered that he didn’t belong in the Phan house in quite the way that he had once belonged, and not being able to return to his own mini-kin-haunted house in Irvine, what place would he be able to call home? Nowhere. He would be homeless in a deeper sense than were those vagrants who wandered the streets with all their worldly goods in a shopping cart.
That was a discovery he was not yet prepared to make even if he had to deal with the mini-kin alone.