Wednesday 12 July 2017

Life in the Bayou; (or something like that)

As it stood, Ngo didn't have his solitude for long in the swamp as along came Molly Coddle and her welcoming party to Twinbrook. Ngo was smitten with Molly and talked to her. Perhaps she would be the one to kickstart his legacy...

The first night he dumpster-dove and then went to take a spongebath and head for the diner to grab a bite to eat.

Morning had him going out to fish in the swamp nearby his home as well as talking to Molly on the phone as much as possible.

Life for Ngo managed to translate into a series of bicycle trips around Twinbrook always either dumpster diving or buying a book to read and talking on the phone to Molly to keep her in the loop and he thought that he was getting somewhere with Molly.

Until he received news that kicked him in the teeth. She was pursuing a guy by the name of Phoenix Prudence.

He was no great shakes in looks, but that hurt. So he put all his effort into amassing his dive-finds and selling them off, bicycling, and meeting new people.

Of course there were a few schmucks along the way...

...who got Ngo's fist in their face especially when they chose to make fun of his nation-origin.

But one could see that being along in the swamp was starting to wear on Ngo. Home back in Viet Nam had family...out here he was alone with no-one to talk to and one could only watch so much TV or listen to world music on the stereo. He was starting to re-develop teh thousand-yard stare that was so familiar to him back in the war.

Max Racket was the next person to get in the face of the "little gook boy...". That was a taunt that Ngo took violent exception to. He'd met these type of people in the war and he gave these animals the beating they rightfully deserved. He knocked Max Racket's lights out. However considering Max Racket's notoriety in shady dealings in Twinbrook, Ngo decided that it would be best if he made himself scarce.

And he wondered if there was a life for him in Twinbrook or whether he would have to seek his luck elsewhere. The Rackets were well-known in Twinbrook and their reputation was notorious, with the exception of the lawman Dudley Racket who had miraculously escaped the criminal net of his family. He was the only good Racket in town and Ngo knew that he could potentially trust Dudley if it came down to an all-out feud with the rest of his family.

So thus Ngo's life in the swamp was a never-ending rotation of dumpster-diving, cycling to and fro and going to the bookstore to grab a skills book to read.

Would he actually find love in the swamp? or even in the town of Twinbrook? It wasn't looking good at this point.

Tuesday 11 July 2017

The Ngo Odyssey (A Twinbrook Prettacy)

Ngo Phuc Dong, an ex-NVA sapper turned intelligence agent for the US Forces, fished quietly in his new little abode in the bayou of Twinbrook. The swampy area reminded him of his former hometown of Ca Mau in the Mekong Delta. The humidity was the same, the smell of the swamp and the vegetation all bore a similarity to home, but Ca Mau was no longer his home...he was now in Twinbrook...a strange place...away from the people he knew...amongst the people whom he fought against...and beside...after he turned on his own people. That home, like his previous life, was lost to him. And he had to make a new life for himself. But longings for home, for the memory of the smells and tastes of Gỏi cuốn and Ca Kho To wafting in the air around him, brought him to a state of melancholy. But he shook it off, Ngo was not about to let depression make his lot in life more difficult. He would find someone in Twinbrook and start his life over again.

His new home reminded him of the house in which he grew up in, a home near the water on stilts. Watching the water for snakes (the Asian banded krait and other venomous species. According to Major Whiley, United States Army, the only venomous snake in the bayou he had to worry about was the cottonmouth or the water moccasin and they would give him fair warning with the display of their wide open mouth which was stark-white telling him to not come any closer. The asian venomous snakes would give him no such warning.

Could he make a life here and be able to die in this new country having fathered a family that he could be proud of? At least he hoped so.