ON THE ROAD TO THE GRAND CANYON
A Short Story

Diem and I were classmates in high school. We read about the Grand Canyon in our English text book, we were both so excited we declared that at least once in our lifetimes we'd get to stand on the rim of the Canyon and measure the dimensions of height and breadth of ground and sky.

By the time I was at the university Diem was in jail. She was arrested trying to leave the country by boat. She managed to escape her imprisonment and tried to cross the ocean again and again, until after thirteen failures she succeeded and came to America. I came to America, too, finally. So big a country with so many things to see, I didn't know where or how to start. Diem said: "start with making money. It makes no difference where you go if you have no money."

Diem's been in this country for eighteen years, but she seems to have traveled little distance from her starting point. She got up one morning after I had come to stay with her and announced she was taking some days off after Christmas to take me with her to the Grand Canyon. We traveled by bus with tourists. Diem didn't dare drive day and night through the desert. Desert after desert, first bare hills then bare mountains, mile after mile the bus was swallowed up by the endless silence of that wilderness. The sun sank. The dark night rose up before us. We spent the night at a hotel with a casino.

Diem gave me a hundred dollars to get a Ataste@ of gambling in Las Vegas. I played with careful tactics: five dollars on the red, five dollars on the black side, so that I had a fifty-fifty chance of winning. When a zero turned up, which was not very often, I lost everythingl. My tactics kept me playing at the casino till midnight. In the morning we left with the dawn. The dawn's colors were majestic against the blanket of snow that had fallen in the night. The snow continued to fall lightly through the rest of the day.

The Pine trees stood indifferently on the white mountain slopes; they seemed to be holding fast to their green as if embracing a fate. Diem asked me if I recognized the scene as the one in the Christmas cards we used to send to each other. We dreamed then of angels flying and singing at such places - beautiful green Pine trees standing on the white snow-covered ground. Sensing that Diem's voice was relaxed, I gained courage to look into her eyes. The night before, when I'd returned from the casino, she seemed to be sleeping. I waited till morning to tell here I had lost all the money she gave me. She said: it doesn't matter, forget it, when I gave you the money to gamble I knew that you 'd certainly lose; I even lost more than you. How much? I asked her? A thousand dollars. I was dumbfounded. Though it was her money, I felt deep pagns of sorrw. Still, she told em again and again: it doesn't matter, forget it.

At the Grand Canyon snow was falling. Tourists were restricted to certain area of the grounds. No buses were allowed to run along the rim. There was no climbing or hiking allowed. The trails were closed for heavy snow. The tourists we traveled with shriveled up before the blasts of winds and snow. With them we followed an old man in a dark green uniform and cowboy hat to an observatory; we listened to his explanation of how the greatest canyon in the world had been formed. I stepped back to away from the group to contemplate the realization of a childhood dream. I closed my eyes to take in may feelings. I felt cold. Diem must have felt that I was all right still with her in the realms of the objective world. She turned to the man who was answering a question as to the canyon's greatest depth and as to how many tourists had fallen into such depths. The man apologized that the great spectacle of the canyon was dimmed by the snow.

I knew this might be the one time in my life that I might come to the canyond, how could I let the chance slip by of standing at the edge and looking down into that abyss. Below my feet was the white of the fallen snow, above my head was the white of the snow falling from the sky. I too was covered in snow. The snow flakes flew about me; I floated in their whiteness. Suddenly a man appeared in front of me. He was neither black, nor white. He wore jeans and a shirt. He had no coat. He said AHello@ I returned his greeting. I asked him where he came from. It was a harmless enough question I had asked many times on my trip. Where a person came from seemed an innocuous enough fact. The man replied that he came from nowhere: he was born here. I was embarrassed. He was an Indian; it was something I should have guessed. But an Indian, in the snow on the rim of the Grand Canyon it seemed too much like something out of a book. I didn't know what to do. He told me it was great to come to the Grand Canyon in winter. He came also in the summer to fish. I tried to imagine how long a fishing rod and line would have to be for one to stand on the rim and fish from the river below. He laughed heartily when I shared my thought. A sense of happiness and trust seemed to envelop me; I told him that I came from a far away place, that I had crossed oceans, mountains, cities, and deserts to come here. He showed no sign of familiarity with my homeland. I told him how I had come to the spot a friend from childhood, whom I had not seen for nearly twenty years. For no reason I can explain, I told the man that my friend lost a thousand dollars gambling at the casino the last night. A white couple passed by us, the woman excused herself to say that there was some one who looked exactly like me, looking for a lost friend. There, that was her voice calling for her friend, did I hear it?

I heard something like the sound of the horn calling out over the fields at dusk in my home village echo from the cliffs on the other side of the Grand Canyon. Then Diem approached on the snow-covered trail. She said the group were waiting for me on the bus and that everyone was annoyed with me, especially the driver. I hurried with her back to the bus. Our guide said he was on the point of reporting my disappearance to the police. None of the tourists spoke or showed any emotion. Diem and I said nothing, either. Diem offered to pay for the driver's lunch when we stopped late. We sat at the same table, I told him I was terribly sorry for being late. Diem, speaking in Vietnamese told me not to mind, that Americans were generous, the problem was considered solved, so I should forget it.

The road back from the Grand Canyon ran again through the desert. I fell asleep, dreaming I was still floating like the snow above the whiteness of the canyon. I dreamed that I had gambled and lost everything. I cried to Diem that I'd lost. Diem was just a murky figure with a voice that sounded like a horn echoing from a far Cliffside far away. She told me she was lost too, even more than I was. But added: It doesn't matter, forget it.

Coming home Diem retrieved a heap of mail from her mailbox; much of what she retrieved were business letters or bills, many were ads. There were full pages ads in newspapers. Diem cut out the coupons and marked where there was a big after-the- holiday sale. She drove us to the supermarket; we drove back with a mountain of goods, so many that I thought she had no need to shop for at least the next three years. I picked up a few souvenirs, also in sales, to take as gifts for my relatives and friends when I returned home.

That evening as we were having dinner and watching TV, we heard of the economic crisis ravaging Southeast Asia. Worried and bewildered faces appeared on the screen for a few seconds. Diem asked what I planned to do when I returned home. I said I didn't know. I used to teach at a private school, contracts were signed every term. If I could get a new contract, I'd continue teaching; if not, I didn't know what I'd do. I had no plans.

Diem said the American economy was on the rise and that it wasn't hard to find a job that would pay in cash. She suggested that I stay with her for a year or two, working hard to save a thousand dollars to bring home.

She said: Think of money, you're getting older.

I said what we planned was what we planned, who knew what might happen in a years time, I couldn't control things beyond my reach. Besides, I wasn't used to life here. Here, I always felt like a stranger.

Diem said: you live a whole life in this world and you are nothing more that a stranger. Well, forget it. Is Ms. Thai. still living in the old apartment? Diem then asked about Chau, Tu, and the other teachers and friends we knew. The next day we talked of all the people that we knew. Sometimes in the middle of the conversation, Diem would mention some one she had not heard of in decades.

The night before I was to leave for home, Diem made a long list of names. By each name she wrote a number, 50 or 100. She said: Just remember who, don't show them this list or some might wonder why they had a 50 and others had a 100 by their names. I don't have all that much. You needn't do that, they all manage to live well. I told her.

Diem continued to count out the money: I didn't say they didn't live OK, she said I should have asked you to bring gifts to their children, but your luggage is already overweight. Besides, those souvenirs are of no use. The Southeast Asian economy was going down, you don't have all that much confidence in your voice when try and tell me that the hardest time is past. It's always better to have dollars in your pocket.

Diem wrapped the green backs she'd just taken from the bank and gave them to me. As she was cooking soup, she happened to think of Mr. Muoi, who had driven the school bus which took her from home to school and back for six years. She took back the list, changed a number 100 to a 50, then added: Mr. Muoi 50.

I wished she had not lost a thousand dollars at the casino. If we had not gambled. If we had not gone to the Grand Canyon. Now we had made it. And we had gambled and lost. OK. It's over. Forget it. I walked through the security checkpoint at the airport. They didn't detect any explosives on me. I picked up my luggage and looked back at Diem. She was standing there on the other side. Her mouth was shapeless, her nose swollen, tears were falling down her cheeks.