Uncut wood railings and wide cushioned seats. Sea water lapped against a retaining wall below the porch. A wheel to spin for free drinks. Christmas in Vietnam.
My pool opponent was a British man, stout like a barrel with a shiny round head like a bowling ball where tufts of hair clung to the sides for dear life. He looked like the archetypal history teacher everyone had in high-school. I stood back after we made our introductions while he bent over to eye the table as if to say he wasn’t sure he trusted it. There was little I trusted in Vietnam either. God knows we didn’t deserve their trust.
“We were growing Canola. Acres and acres of it for nearly forty years in northern Britain.”
He spoke without looking at me.
“I think it was Spring when we found it. It had the orange label on it… unmistakable. Agent Orange. One canister of that in the wrong place could take out a city.” He looked at me suddenly, which punctuated the statement with a challenge to disagree with his assertion.
I had done some reading on Agent Orange after I saw so many people with deformities in Saigon. Agent orange is a poison that was used during the war by the US under Kennedy in Southern Vietnam for ‘deforestation’. The code word for the mission was “Operation Ranch Hand.” Millions had been exposed.
“When they finally showed up to the farm to get rid of it, they dug a huge pit, put the canister in it, incinerated it, then they threw in all of their gear, and then they incinerated the incinerator!”
He racked up the balls with an air of studied precision. This was a man who did things right the first time.
“You can see it’s effects everywhere in Nam,” he added before he leaned over and nailed the break so hard the balls crashed into each other in mid air as they dashed around the table.
“And during the war they said ‘it wasn’t poisonous’.”
His eyebrows darted up his head and held fast when he said poisonous. There they waited for my response like soldiers at attention. I agreed that it was an awful situation. Buying a few cards from a deformed woman the day before had relieved some of that guilt but only for a moment. Both the guilt and the relief were undeserved. It wasn’t my fault that Vietnam had happened but what about the current wars? Aren’t we somewhat responsible for our government’s actions?
Tim would say that we are responsible for ourselves first and foremost. If you can’t take control of your own life, how can you be held responsible for others?
Old Tim was a hair past fifty and had been running the family farm without help from his siblings for twenty years. He was a sturdy, dependable man: the kind of guy whose word meant something. He hadn’t left the UK in his whole life because he’d also been responsible for taking care of their bed-ridden mother. She had just passed away and his siblings had come back looking for their inheritance. He’d been forced to sell the farm to appease their greed instead of continuing on with it like he’d hoped to do. Any resentment I detected when he told me this seemed only to be for show. He had dealt with it, and he harbored no guilt of his own.
“My son has been coming here for years to kite surf.” He said as he missed for the first time. Finally it was my turn.
I made my shot and circled the table. There was a dance area and a dj booth across the room where music was playing low. It was still early and we had the place mostly to ourselves.
“Lord knows I’ve bought enough boards to outfit a whole school. Might as well try it for myself. I’ll go tomorrow if I don’t get pissed tonight.” This stopped me. I looked at him to see if he was kidding but there he was with an assured smile on his face. Kite surfing is extremely difficult even for the young and able bodied. I asked him how long he had been in Vietnam.
“I landed in Saigon two weeks ago and stayed there until yesterday. It took me all of two weeks just to get my feet under me. All the trash everywhere, the people, the chaos. Everything was so… different. Culture shock I guess you’d call it.”
Tim was an activist and an environmentalist. His friends made fun of him for picking up trash around his neighborhood to which he would respond. “What? Do you expect the people who tossed it to come pick it up?”
As we finished the game the bar filled up. Dozens of Russians in red shirts with santa hats stood at the bar with their gorgeous counterparts standing back in patient clumps. The lights dimmed and slowly the people who couldn’t resist the pulse of the beat crawled out onto the dance floor. I was one of those people. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Tim still sitting at our table at the far end of the bar sipping his pint. He watched us with a silver smile. The smile said, “It’s never too late.”