Publisher's note: There are some Vietnamese words in this ebook. You may need to select the 'Publisher Defaults' option on your device for these to display properly.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
YMAA Publication Center, Inc. Main Office PO Box 480 Wolfeboro, NH 03894 800-669-8892 • www.ymaa.com • [email protected]
Paperback edition 978-1-59439-226-9
Ebook edition 978-1-59439-246-7
© 2011 Loren W. Christensen
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Editor: Leslie Takao
Cover Design: Axie Breen
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Publisher’s Cataloging in Publication
Christensen, Loren W.
Dukkha, the suffering : an eye for an eye / Loren W. Christensen. -- Wolfeboro, NH : YMAA Publication Center, c2012.
p. ; cm.
ISBN: 978-1-59439-226-9 (pbk.) ; 978-1-59439-246-7 (ebk.)
“A Sam Reeves martial arts thriller.”
Summary: Detective Sam Reeves is a martial arts instructor and a solid policeofficer with the Portland P.D. When he is forced to take a life in the line of duty, he struggles to recuperate psychologically and spiritually. Then, it happens again. With a series of interlocked events of violence, Sam’s life spirals into a dreadful new direction.--Publisher.
1. Reeves, Sam (Fictitious character)--Fiction. 2. Police shootings--Oregon--Portland--Psychological aspects--Fiction. 3. Police--Job stress--Oregon--Portland--Fiction. 4. Police psychology--Fiction. 5. Martial arts schools--Oregon--Portland--Fiction. 6. Martial arts fiction. 7. Mystery fiction. I. Title.
PS3603.H73 D85 2012 2012951860
813/.6--dc23 1212
Dukkha: a Pali term that corresponds to such English words as pain, discontent, unhappiness, sorrow, affliction, anxiety, discomfort, anguish, stress, misery, and frustration.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Old Gravedigger Quang had never seen anything quite so extraordinary in all his seventy-five years living in Saigon, now Hồ Chí Minh City, and he had seen some strange occurrences working in the graveyard for the past forty years, unworldly sights that made his body shiver and his heart pound. He would never tell anyone about those things and he certainly would never tell anyone about what he saw this afternoon, especially his drinking buddies, the other old soldiers at the noodle stand where they drank themselves to oblivion each night. No, they would just laugh and say that his war memories had finally driven him điên cái đầu.
Yes, the war did make him a little crazy; no one could experience those years of horror and not be. In the gravedigger’s mind, a little crazy was a good thing. It gave him courage to face the Việt cộng every night in his dreams and defy the ghosts that visited him in the graveyard. Yes, his head might not be right but he knows that what he saw today was real, and it nearly stopped his old heart.
Over the years, Old Gravedigger Quang had watched the Chinese master, Shen Lang Rui, a white-goateed man in his late seventies, whenever he came to teach his student, the one named Le.
The gravedigger had his doubts that that was really the man’s name, one so common to his people. There were villagers who thought he might be Vietnamese with Caucasian features, or perhaps half Vietnamese, half French. He looked American to the gravedigger who fought alongside them so many years ago. Still, the man’s mannerisms and his demeanor were Vietnamese, and his mastery of the language was flawless.
The gravedigger guessed that Shen Lang Rui and Le had been master and student for at least twenty years, which is how long they had been training their kung fu in his graveyard, over at the north end where there is cool shade beneath the fruit trees. He never tired of watching the two, their fluidity, their power, and especially their unbelievable speed.
As a boy, Old Gravedigger Quang had trained in the martial art style of Vovinam with a master whose prowess was renowned. As skilled as his teacher was, it paled in comparison to Shen Lang Rui and the man named Le.
The two did not mind that he watched; they would often smile at him and wave a greeting. The master moved slowly when he demonstrated movements to Le, but the few times the old man did move fast, the gravedigger could hardly catch his breath. Le’s skill was amazing, too, and though it was not yet at the level of the master, it was clear that it would be soon.
As often as the two men had dazzled the old gravedigger, what he saw today was beyond his comprehension. It sent him straight to the roadside noodle stand earlier than usual to buy his first of many cups of rice wine.
His nightly routine was to drink until the decades-old sounds of the bombs and the screams of men muffled in his skull. Then he would struggle to his feet and stagger home. Not tonight, though. Tonight he would drink until he became unconscious and fell off his stool. Tomorrow? He might not go to the graveyard to dig tomorrow, or the next day, either.
The incredible thing he witnessed happened late this afternoon. If he did tell anyone, they would argue that shadows and the late sun streaking through the trees played tricks on his eyes. They would be wrong. There was no question about what he saw, a sight more soul shaking than those incoming Communist rockets so many years ago. He could explain the rockets; what he saw today, he could not.
Shen Lang Rui and Le had been meeting under the trees all week. This afternoon, it appeared that the master, in accented Vietnamese, was pushing Le to move faster and faster. To Old Gravedigger Quang, Le was moving extraordinarily fast already. His quick hands would snap out and back like the crack of a whip; still the old master looked dissatisfied.
From fifteen meters away, the gravedigger could only hear bits and pieces of their conversation, words like, “too slow,” “engage your thoughts,” and something about “the fourth level,” whatever that meant.
Then Shen Lang Rui walked over to an old urn, a black