Lady Liberty

 

Like many staunch patriots, Lady Liberty’s origins were on foreign shores.  In fact, he was a refugee, a product of the Vietnamese diaspora.  

Perfume River, Fargo’s best Vietnamese restaurant, began in a strip mall on a cold, windy boulevard near the freight yards.  Squeezed between a nail emporium operated by the proprietor’s aunt and a used bookstore specializing in fifty-cent paperback Westerns and Harlequin romance novels, the joint was modest, cheap, and popular with students.  The University was two miles away, but Fargo is a city that must be navigated by automobile, and, so, college kids patronized the place and, indeed, made it profitable.  The owner expanded his dining room into the fingernail styling storefront after first fumigating the place with industrial-sized fans to eliminate the odors of nail acrylic and acetone.  Nonetheless, patrons sometimes complained about the faint fruity smell of esters tainting the air.  

The fingernail business migrated to the neighborhood near the freeway, humble strips of storefronts satellite to the big mall with its anchor department stores and atriums decorated with tap-water fountains jetting up over big concrete tubs and hip-high planters clogged with dwarf rubber trees and exotic orchids.  After a couple years, Perfume River opened a larger restaurant in a building previously occupied by a franchise, all-you-can-eat steakhouse.  (People have big appetites in North Dakota and, without portion control, the steakhouse was literally eaten into bankruptcy.)  Mr. Nguyen, inspired by the fountains and pools in the Mall, built an ornate reception area in his restaurant.  A mural painted on the wall depicted famous beauty spots in Vietnam, landscapes shaggy with tuberous-looking stony mountains and islets adorned with fragile pagodas shaped a little like vertical centipedes pushing up into a cerulean-blue sky.  A small pump powered a tiny river that flowed in a figure-eight within a plastic trough simulating river-rocks.  Visitors met the hostess at her station flanked by two fierce lion dogs purchased from a lawn ornament factory on the freeway near the south gates of the Air Force base.  An arched bridge led over the gush of water stirring between planters full of miniature fiddle-leaf ficus trees, spider plants, and calathea with white and green striped leaves.  And, the plashing stream, shaped like the sign for infinity, was bright with koi dancing in the silvery water.  

One of those koi, a calico about nine-inches long, was colored red, white, and blue.  No one paid any attention to this goldfish, one of about a dozen in the loop of running water, until one night, when a little girl led by her father over the modest arch of the footbridge, looked down and exclaimed: “Daddy, that fish looks like a flag!.”  The little girl was holding souvenir chop-sticks and a little bag of fortune cookies for her mother – her parents were divorced – and she peered down into the water at the brightly colored fish gliding along the sluice of artificial creek below.  “She’s a living flag,” the child said. Her older brother agreed with her that the gold fish was colored like the American flag and a lieutenant from the Base, wearing his military fatigues, made a mock salute in the direction of the fish as he exited the restaurant.  Other diners, as they left the place after their meals, paused to look at the calico koi.  Mr. Nguyen came from his office to see what the people were gawking at and announced: “Yes, she is a patriotic fish.  We call her ‘Lady Liberty’.”

As it happened, Lady Liberty was a fresh addition to Perfume River’s stock of ornamental koi.  Mr. Nguyen’s brother-in-law, Mr. Tran, owned a successful landscaping business in North Carolina and maintained several ponds on his premises stocked with koi.  Sometimes, customers for whom he had created water features ordered a few of those gold fish to enliven their little ponds and lagoons.  Mr. Nguyen had loaned some money to his brother-in-law a few years earlier and so the landscaper owed him a favor.  When Perfume River’s flagship restaurant was opened in the bankrupt steakhouse building, Mr. Nguyen acquired six koi from the Mall where the gold fish were breeding at an alarming pace.  But there was something wrong with the water and fish’s mouths turned white and rotted and, soon enough, the creatures were belly-up in the stream.  Then, Mr. Tran supplied a tub full of koi, hardier fish it was thought, a nephew driving them cross country in a covered plastic bathtub in the back of his pickup.  Water was hard in Fargo with a distinct chemical taste, sulphur-flavored chlorine, and half the gold fish died before the water-chemistry could be brought to an equilibrium adequate to support the koi.  At first, the fish later later known as Lady Liberty was ailing, shocked by the insalubrious water, and, for a week, the koi’s swim-bladders were affected so that the creature paddled spastically on its side, flat as a flounder.  But Mr. Nguyen improved his water quality, performing chemical testing and titrating his stream for pH, and the fish rallied and, even, flourished after this initial crisis.  

Lady Liberty was a pretty fish.  His dorsal fin was colored cream-white with flares of blue and he had a tripartite “peacock” tail, each lobe a different hue and, indeed, red, white, and blue like a perpetually animate pennant.  The koi’s operculum (that is, the wedges of bone between eye and gill) were spotted white and blue on one side with red petal-shaped colors dispersed in white on the opposing side.  The fish had a lithe torpedo-shaped body, also speckled with red and blue against a pale background of white scales.  His mouth was rimmed with a metallic-looking silver color.  The fish was intelligent and kept time like a clock, reliably lifting his mouth to the surface of the ornamental stream, when feedings were scheduled.  When people gaped at the fish, open-mouthed with wonder, the fish gaped at them as well with dark, perfectly circular eyes and O-shaped lips that seemed to pout and blow kisses. 

At first, Lady Liberty was good for business.  A reporter from the local paper profiled the fish for the Sunday lifestyle supplement and people came to Perfume River to see the koi.  But not everyone entering the lobby ate in the dining room and there were a fair share of gawkers.  Mr. Nguyen told the hostess to impose a one-drink minimum at the bar for those who simply wanted to gaze on Lady Liberty.  Some of the kids interested in scrutinizing the fish were underage and this led to awkward incidents.  Mr. Nguyen thought it was inhospitable to expel potential patrons from his business, but, sometimes, this was necessary.  And, some of the guests drinking at the bar over-indulged.  So there was trouble. 

On election night, a couple of patrons, giddy with Mai Tais staggered out to the infinity river and, one of them spilled, a drink in koi pond.  A serviceman from the Base interpreted this conduct as disrespectful and unpatriotic.  He seized the rude man by the lapels and demanded that he apologize to Lady Liberty and salute her as well.  The drunk guest refused and, because people were on-edge over the election, insults were exchanged and a crowd of rowdy patrons adjourned to the parking lot to exchange punches.  The night was cold and sleet was falling and so the fight was ineffectual.  But, nonetheless, there were some black eyes and bloody noses and, so, the cops had to be called.  The airman from the base was picked up at the Law Enforcement Center by military police and a report was made to the serviceman’s commanding officer.  When the affray was investigated by the police, some of the bus-boys and prep cooks who had witnessed the riot were hesitant to cooperate.  This reticence led to additional inquiries and certain illegal practices with respect to immigration laws were alleged against Mr. Nguyen’s enterprise.  These difficulties soured him on the fish – it seemed that Lady Liberty was more trouble than he was worth.

The Public Relations Officer at the Base came to Mr. Nguyen’s rescue.  He had learned about the flag-colored koi from reading reports as to the fracas at the Vietnamese restaurant.  With hs girlfriend, the PR Officer dined at Perfume River and, then, after an excellent meal of Pho with spring rolls and noodles, asked to meet the owner.  The PR man said that there had been some consideration about banning servicemen from dining at the restaurant – just “a word to the wise” he said – but that the Upper Brass at the Base were also interested in acquiring Lady Liberty, perhaps as a mascot and for recruiting purposes, and that the Air Force would pay good money for the fish.  Mr. Nguyen expressed interest. “How much?” he asked.  

“We buy widgets out there and screwdrivers for five-thousand a piece,” the PR Officer said.  “I’m pretty sure we can do business with you.”

A week later, a van from the Base arrived with two corporals and they took possession of Lady Liberty, ladling the famous fish out of the figure-eight loop of the artificial stream.  The gold fish was taken to the base and installed in a large 80 gallon tank equipped with two albino crayfish and an undersea palace modeled after a structure featured in Disney’s Little Mermaid with a flock on neons and tetras to keep the colorful koi company.  This aquarium made a pretty display in the Officer’s Club on the frontage road next to the Base’s main gate.  Two NCO Technical Sergeants were assigned as support personnel for Lady Liberty.  It was one of these airmen, who first discovered Lady Liberty’s gender.

As it happened, Lady Liberty’s aquarium was placed against a wall where there was an electric baseboard heater.  When temperatures outdoor plummeted (and it gets very cold in Fargo), the baseboard heater, operated by thermostat, engaged to warm the floor and lower parts of the room.  Heat from this appliance raised the water temperature where Lady Liberty was patriotically disporting himself.  Technical Sergeant Hernandez observed that Lady Liberty had developed a rash of white pimples on her (or his) gills.  This concerned the conscientious airman and, so, he did some research and discovered that the pimples, in fact, were goldfish breeding tubercules.  When the water in the tank warmed, this triggered a spawning response from Lady Liberty.  The tubercules, in fact, were full of spermatozoa – Lady Liberty wasn’t a lady at all, but, rather, a male koi.  (Since there was no female in the aquarium, the sperm was wasted, enveloping the fish in a cloud of misty-white ejaculate.)

Technical Sergeant Hernandez sent an email to his commanding officer and reported that Lady Liberty was, in fact, a male gold fish.  There was some anxious consultation among senior Brass and it was decided that the koi’s gender should be classified. 

“We are going to consider Lady Liberty ‘female’ notwithstanding her biological gender,” a memo advised.  “This is strictly confidential.”

There was some debate as to whether new transgender-friendly policies adapted by government mandate might be at issue with respect to Lady Liberty’s sex assignment.  However, ultimately, it was determined that pronouns applicable to Lady Liberty would be “she and her.”

Technical Sergeants Hernandez and Obala acquired a water thermometer and monitored tank temperature.  They reduced the temperature in the aquarium by three degrees and Lady Liberty stopped ejaculating.  During the cold season, Lady Liberty remained in her tank in the Officer’s Club.  Once, when the men at the bar were watching a football game, the national anthem was played on the TV set.  Several of the officers approached the tank singing the words of the patriotic song and they saluted Lady Liberty.  She seemed to bow gracefully to them.

When the Winter had passed and Spring come, Technial Sergeant Obala was ordered to transport the goldfish to various promotional events.  The fish appeared at recruiting fairs and, on the fourth of July, Lady Liberty rode a float in the parade, her tank atop a metal dais shaped like a Tomahawk missile warhead.  A video camera was trained on Lady Liberty and flashed her image on a large screen overlooking the aquarium on its martial plinth so that the parade-goers lining the streets could admire her. 

In September, when schools were back in session, Lady Liberty was assigned duty at a ROTC recruiting event on campus.  Technical Sergeant Obala set up Lady Liberty’s tank, a bright teardrop-shaped globe next to a folding table where Master Sergeant (Line Recruiter) Gayle Johnson was seated with her clipboard, application forms, and brochures.  To the right of the Air Force Recruiting station, there was a booth operated by the Campus Republicans.  The Muslim Student Association was situated to the left of Lady Liberty’s post.  Across the aisle, the NDCA (North Dakota Chess Association) was hosting a speed chess tournament.   After confirming water temperature and the integrity of Lady Liberty’s globe, TS Obala drove across town to have lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant about which he had heard excellent things. 

Mid-afternoon, one of the Campus Republicans, a fat youth carrying a copy of Atlas Shrugged, slipped and fell in front of the Air Force Recruiting display.  When Line Recruiter Gayle Johnson hastened to  assist him, she discovered a puddle of water pooled beneath Lady Liberty.  Apparently, the fish’s tank had developed a hairline fracture and water was leaking.  The corpulent young Republican said that he had injured his back.  As Line Recruiter Gayle Johnson was apologizing to him –she was a very attractive woman who looked not only sharp but sexy in her uniform– two other Campus Republicans used their cell-phones to take pictures of the water leaked onto the tile floor.  

Msgt Gayle Johnson excused herself and went into the ladies’ room where she called Technical Sergeant Obala.  “Your fucking fish is leaking,” she said.  “We’ve had an incident.”

“An incident?” TSgt Obala asked.  

“There’s water coming out of the tank and some idiot just fell down,” MSgt Gayle Johnson said.

Technical Sergeant Obala called for his check, paid for lunch, and hurried back on Campus.

By this time, Lady Liberty was sprawled sideways at the bottom of the half-empty globe.  Her colors looked limp and forlorn.  A janitor with mop and bucket was swabbing up the water.

Sergeant Obala was perplexed.  He knew that the local water was heavily chlorinated, but thought that a cupful of bad water would be better than no water at all.  The Line Recruiter didn’t have a glass or cup at her table, nor did the Campus Republicans.  The Chess Club had a couple of mugs, but they were full of some suspicious liquid that smelled like Irish Coffee (and, in fact, things had become pretty giddy at Speed Chess match) and so they couldn’t help. However, the Muslim Student Association was handing out free bottles of AquaFina water and the young woman wearing a headscarf was happy to donate two flasks to Officer Obala.  He thanked the young woman, poured the water into tank where Lady Liberty was ailing and, then, called Technical Sergeant Hernandez.  He asked Hernandez to bring another globe for the fish, filled with suitably treated water.  

Technical Sergeant Hernandez went to a pet store and bought a gold fish bowl with small aerator.  Then, he stopped at a big box store and purchased a couple gallons of distilled water.  Unfortunately, the store manager had decided in improve his enterprise’s profit manager by filling up jugs labeled “Distilled Water” with water from the tap.  Technical Sergeant Hernandez hurried to the Campus and found Lady Liberty in obvious distress, her mouth open and gulping as if for air and her long peacock tails limp and wan.  The injured koi was lifted from the leaking globe and gently slid into the new globe recharged with “Distilled Water” that was, in fact, chlorinated hard (iron-rich) water from the city water system.  

Some passers-by gathered around the new globe where Lady Liberty seemed to revive.  She unfurled herself proudly, Old Glory shimmering above the Rockets Red Glare, but, then, began to twitch and convulse.  The flag twisted around itself, gills spasming, and fins flailing, and, then, the patriotic koi rolled belly-up.

One of the Campus Republicans, waving a cell-phone with which he was taking pictures, sputtered: “I saw it all.  I’ve got pictures.  The Muslim Association murdered that fish.”

The girl in the head scarf was indignant.  “Are you crazy?” she asked.

“I saw it.  I have pictures,” the Campus Republican said.  “These fucking terrorists put poison in Lady Liberty’s fish bowl.”

“That’s a lie,” the girl in the head scarf said.

“Are you calling me a liar?” the Campus Republican cried.

One of the inebriated nerds in the Chess Club came to the rescue of the Muslim young woman.  He shouted: “Back off!” and pushed the Campus Republican away from the table.  But there was still a puddle of water on the floor, the old, damaged globe still leaking, and the Chess Club ambassador skidded backward, falling in the center of four boards where players were playing speed chess.  Pawns and rooks and knights flew into the air and, then, scattered across the floor.  The other Chess Club members jumped over their table and seized the Campus Republican.  He swung his fists at the Chess Club members.  The Muslim girl screamed.

“We’re staying out of this,” Master Sergeant and Line Recruiter Gayle Johnson cried.  Some more punches were thrown and a Republican staggering away from the fray smashed into the gold fish bowl where Lady Liberty was dying.  Glass broke on the floor and famous fish sprawled on the tiles, flopping weakly among the wet shards.

Lady Liberty was too large to be flushed down the toilet.  Technical Sergeant Hernandez cradled the dying fish in his arms.  Later, he wrapped Lady Liberty in some newspapers and put the fish in a garbage dumpster on the base.  And, thus, perished the patriotic fish known as Lady Liberty.

          

 

Two Scorpions

 

In Cathay’s far west, beyond the snowy mountains, a vast brown desert the size of several kingdoms stretches from horizon to horizon.  Sometimes, the waste of hot pebbles and soot-colored dust is crossed by caravans of men leading patient, plodding camels.  But mostly, it is only the winds, hot as a furnace, that traverse the barren terrain.  The desert is the home of the scorpion and these poisonous little creatures hide under every stone and within every arid crack in the boulders piled on hilltops there.

Monks have made an oasis around a spring from which water seeps.  The oasis is lush with willows and desert cottonwood, trees crowded around several ponds created by the religious order.  Canals irrigate fields where pistachio nuts, poppies, and pomegranates are grown.  The monks wear white linen fashioned from cotton that they raise near a warm marsh where white heron stalk about spearing frogs with their long beaks.  The holy men live in dwellings quarried into the hillsides and, in stone alcoves, ancient statues of the Buddha are covered in shadow and, sometimes, even wear a garland of living bats around their brows.  A pagoda made from stone as white as porcelain casts its pale reflection on the lagoon in the oasis.  Several of the pools near the pagoda are “ponds of mercy” – this means that the water is filled with bright gold and silver fish that the monks feed daily and that they protect against birds that might otherwise feed on these swarms of colorful, inquisitive fish.  

Sometimes, amber-colored scorpions with heavy black stings scuttle into the brush and grass in the oasis seeking prey.  The scorpions move swiftly on their eight crooked legs and hold small creatures in their pincers to stab them to death with their agile, arched stings.  The scorpions are very fierce and, if they can’t catch beetles or small mice, they eat one another.

One day, as it is said, a scorpion ventured to the edge of a “pond of mercy” and saw the fish thronging in the crystal water.  The scorpion scented some crickets living in a hollow log on the other side of the pool.  Scorpions can’t swim – their articulated bodies are too heavy for that and their diamond-shaped stings are hard and dense as stone.  The scorpion ventured to the edge of the pond, looking wistfully across the water to the crickets sporting in the rotten wood.  A bullfrog, playing in the pond, swam to the shore and, then, squirted itself up on the pebbles at the edge of the pool.

“Brother frog,” the scorpion said, “will you ferry me across this water to those crickets that I hear chirping on the other side of the pond?”  

The frog kept his distance from the scorpion.  Such creatures, the frog knew, are unpredictable and impulsive.

“No,” the bullfrog said, “I’m afraid of your venomous sting.  If I were to let you ride on my back, I fear you would sting me to death.”

“Nonsense,” the scorpion said, courteously gesturing with his crab-like pincers.  “Why would I sting you?  My sting is deadly and, if I stabbed you in the middle of the pond, we would both sink into the water and drown among those dim-witted goldfish.”

“I suppose that’s true,” the bullfrog said.  He ventured a little closer to the scorpion.

“Come,” the scorpion said.  “Let me climb onto your back and, then, you can swim across the water to where those crickets are playing.”

“You won’t sting me?” the frog asked.

“No, that would just result in both of us dying,” the scorpion reassured the frog.

So the frog inched a little closer to the scorpion and, then, flinching a bit as he felt the creature’s sharp claws on his back, allowed the scorpion to grip him along his spine.  Then, the frog set forth, kicking his powerful legs against the water, and propelling himself, and the scorpion on his back, across the pond.

The gold fish looked up in wonder to see the scorpion, pincers like the horns of a bull and the deadly crooked staff of the arachnid’s sting, flying across the water on the green back of the bullfrog.

In the middle of the pond, the scorpion reared up and thrust the dagger of his sting into the frog’s emerald side.  The frog gasped and rolled over.  The gold fish, witnessing the murder, fled to the sides of the pool.

“Why did you sting me?” the frog cried.

“It is my nature,” the scorpion said.

The dying frog twitched and the scorpion was flung by that convulsion into the water.  He sank like a stone and perished at the bottom of the pool.  Unaware of the deadly peril from which they had been spared, the crickets sang and danced in their rotten log.

A few days later, another scorpion ventured to the edge of the pond.  An old monk with a novice was feeding grains of rice to the goldfish.  

The scorpion and looked down and saw another arachnid just like himself sitting at the bottom of the pond.  Although the water seemed dangerous to him, the scorpion wondered about his fellow creature who seemed to be enjoying the pebbles and small feathery sea-weed amidst the schools of bright gold fish.  

“Perhaps, that fellow down there is fat with gold fish that he spears and eats,” the scorpion said to himself.  And, so, with tiny mincing steps, the scorpion ventured into the sunny pool of water.  But the stone ledges at the edge of the pond were slick and the scorpion’s little clawed feet couldn’t grip the rounded pebbles and, so, the creature slid into the water and began to sink.  

The old monk, turning from the hungry goldfish, saw the scorpion drowning..  He reached into the pool, and, taking the scorpion, in the palm of his hand, lifted it up out of the water.  But it is the nature of a scorpion to sting and, so, the arachnid plunged his sting into the monk’s thumb.  The sting of a scorpion is painful, much more sharp than that of a wasp, and the monk, crying out, dropped the scorpion into the pond.  Again, the arachnid, helplessly flailing at the water with his pincers, sank into the pond.  The monk bent forward again and, once more, took hold of the scorpion, seizing him by his jointed back.  But, again, the scorpion couldn’t resist stinging the monk and, so, once more, he fell into the water and began to settle down to the bottom of the pond.

The monk’s hand was bloodied by his encounters with scorpion’s sting.  A flush of fever made the monk’s breath come short and he felt clammy, cold chills running up and down his spine.  But, again, he bent toward the drowning scorpion.

The novice monk, stepping forward, restrained the monk, holding back his hand.  

“Don’t you see,” the boy said, “it is the nature of the scorpion to sting you?”

“But it is my nature,” the monk replied, “to save.”

“I don’t understand,” the novice monk said.

“It is human nature to care for others, even scorpions, and to endeavor to save them,” the old monk said.

The novice pulled up a large lily-pad anchored in the bottom of the “pond of mercy.”  Then, he scooped the scorpion up out of bottom of the pool so that the creature rested on lily-pad.  The boy, then, used a twig to prod the raft of the lily-pad and its passenger to the edge of the pool.  Without showing any gratitude at all, the scorpion darted onto dry land and hid among the stones and grass at the edge of the pool.  The brilliantly colored goldfish bobbed again to the surface, hungrily opening their mouths of the specks of rice thrown down to them.