Chapter 12

It’s been eight months since that Christmas day when Don and Lanh skated away from their families on the frozen pond and pledged to spend their lives together. They finished their Junior year in high school with top grades in the class and spent an entire summer together. Lanh grew to love farming and became a valuable hand on the Campbell farm while Don fell in love with working at the restaurant with Lanh’s family, and in their time together they grew as a couple and slowly began exploring each other’s bodies.

“Nhanh lên!” Lanh shouted as she walked alongside Don as he swam. To most people, it sounded like she was shouting “n’yen yen” but in English “Nhanh lên” means “Hurry up!”

As he turned his head to breathe, Don could see her tiny bare feet as she walked alongside him, her high-pitched voice clearly audible to him as he knifed through the water. Halfway down his last length of the pool, she started shrieking, ”Đi đi mau! Đi đi mau!” which translates to “Go! Go! Fast!” This was Don’s cue to give it everything he had.

He poured it on, using all his remaining energy in this last burst of speed, his legs churning the water to foam, his arms pulling him through the water with every erg of strength remaining to him. Lanh’s cries of ”Đi đi mau!” spurred him on to do better, to go faster, to do it for her. And there it was, the final yard! His arm shot forward and struck the pool wall and Lanh yelled TIME! The word echoed in the empty school pool room long after the sounds of Don’s efforts faded.

Gasping deep draughts of air, Don barely had the strength to cling to the end of the pool. He didn’t have the energy to look around and see where the coach was. Instead, he gasped for air, looking up at Lanh, admiring her trim form in her skintight one-piece swimming suit. In turn, Lanh looked at Coach Mach, who looked at his stopwatch and then wrote something on his clipboard.

Don gazed up at Lanh’s figure and admired everything that he saw. When they first met, her figure was so childlike, her legs were pencil thin and her chest was flat with only her expressive nipples to show a hint of what nature had in store for her soon. Almost two years later, her waist had slimmed some, and her hips flared to give a delicate hourglass shape to her overall figure. Her legs, once thin and fragile-looking like matchsticks with knobby knees, became feminine and delightful, and her breasts grew small and firm, perfectly dainty teacups that he madly loved.

Don and Lanh turned 18 that summer, Lanh on June 29th, and Don on August 31st. They threw a party on July 30th, the day between their birthdays, celebrating their 18th birthdays. With the drinking age being 21, the 18th birthday wasn’t as much fun as it once was, but that didn’t stop Kim-ly and Bao from plying Lanh with as much beer as they could. They wanted to see how many Coors Lites it would take to get their tiny sister staggering drunk. The answer was three.

Coach Mach was impressed with the numbers Don turned in, and he respected Lanh too much to tease her with anything but the answer to her unspoken question. He simply smiled at her and nodded his head; Don had just beaten his personal best time.

Lanh squealed and jumped into the pool and slid into Don’s exhausted arms. Coach Mach just shook his head as the young couple hugged. This is something he has not seen in years. High school couples come and go, but these two! It is so rare to see a couple that takes such joy in each other’s accomplishments, Don was there for every debate and debate prep that Lanh had as captain of the debate team, and today Lanh was here for Don’s swim team try-outs.

Even if his top swimmer returned in the autumn with an Olympic medal, they still must try out to make the team. If you don’t like it and you don’t want to try out, the chess team is always looking for new players. Lanh didn’t act like other swimmer’s girlfriends, sitting bored in the bleachers reading a book while their boyfriend swam. Lanh actively coached him, just as she did all last season in their junior year as he recovered from that assault. She coached him all summer long too. As she stood on the stern of the rowboat and shouted encouragement to Don while he swam in the pond, Kim-ly rowed the boat.

“All right you two! Cool it off.” Being seniors and a full year older than his other senior students didn’t get them a pass on their behavior, but being straight-A students, the captain of the debate team, and one of his best swimmers did. Well ... a little bit. He shook his head, knowing what the next question was going to be, and, as usual, it was Lanh who asked it.

“How much did he beat it by?”

Deep sigh. “Two point five seconds.” Lanh’s joyful squeal of surprise nearly pierced the coach’s eardrums, and the echo in the pool room gave him a headache. Then it was silent, dead silent, as Lanh gave her chosen man a sweet, passionate kiss. He looked down at the kissing couple. “HEY! I don’t care if you are eighteen, not in my pool! Go hit the showers.”

“Yes, coach!” called Don as he and Lanh climbed out of the pool and headed for the locker room.

“SEPARATE showers!” called Coach Mach without turning around to see what the couple was up to.

“Yes coach,” called Lanh and she turned around at the boy’s locker room door and headed for the girl’s locker room.

“Lanh! Come see me before you two head out.”

“Yes coach,” called Lanh from the depths of the girl’s locker room.

Coach Mach chuckled as he headed to his office. He was crazy about those kids. At one point they were both one small step from dropping out, running away, becoming addicts, or something even more self-destructive, and at the last moment, they found each other. It was a miracle, a miracle that he wished happened more often. He thought of Don and Lanh as he considered all the troubled and lonely kids in his care and shook his head sadly at the plight of many of his students.

He tossed his clipboard on his desk, sat down, and got back to the mundane life of a high school teacher. Fifteen minutes later, he was filling out his trial line-up when a barely audible tap on the door announced Lanh’s arrival. “Come in,” he said as he removed the document from the old Remington typewriter and reached for the stapler. Without looking up, he said, “Don, can you give us a moment?”

“Yes, coach.”

He looked up to see Lanh and Don standing side by side in front of his desk, holding hands. “Alone?”

“Yes, coach.” Slowly, Don turned and headed for the door. Their hands didn’t part until Don was nearly at the door, their eyes fixed on each other until the door was closed. Lanh turned to face the coach, and she looked utterly heartbroken that he asked Don to leave.

“Please sit Miss Nguyen.” He waited until Lanh primly sat in a chair in front of his desk. He looked at some papers on his desk and said “I’m going to put on my guidance counselor hat for a moment...” as with many small schools, the staff performed double duties, Coach Mach, head of athletics now became Mr. Mach, guidance counselor. “You do know that you will be eligible to graduate in January, right?”

“Yes,” nodded Lanh, and she quickly added, “but I won’t.”

“I uh ... you won’t?” he was stunned. Normally, when a student finds out they’re eligible to graduate early, they make plans to hit the road immediately. “Because of Don?”

“If I go away to college, Don will follow, and he will not graduate. If he does not graduate, he cannot enlist. If he cannot enlist our plans will be ruined. So, I stay more months, he graduates with honors, I graduate with honors, everyone happy.” Her slight accent was becoming more pronounced, showing that she was becoming upset, but Mr. Mach was unaware of that point.

“You don’t mean to tell me that...” he twirled his wedding ring to show that he was afraid they would elope.

“Mister Mach, I have tell my father our plans, it not easy to say no to Vietnamese father. To say no to you is much easy.” Lanh started panicking. The idea of graduating early didn’t sound like a reward or an opportunity. It felt like the world was trying to pry Don out of her arms and separate them. It was a punishment. It’s a good thing Don wasn’t there, thought Lanh, realizing how upset she was. If he heard her talking like this, he would quit the team and storm out of the office with Lanh in tow.

“Ok, good ... relax Miss Nguyen! I just wanted to find out what your intentions are.”

“We intend to...” she paused, then blushed. “It private.”

“Good, keep it that way. I called you in here because I need...”

Ten minutes later, Lanh came out of the coach’s office wearing an official Woodcutters Swim Team polo shirt featuring an embroidered “Grant Valley High School” and the image of Paul Bunyan leaning on his axe on the left breast. She was carrying a clipboard with a stopwatch mounted on the board to make timing the swimmers easier and wearing a silver whistle on a lanyard around her neck. “Impressive!” smiled Don as he reached for the office doorknob.

“Oh, there will be no need for that,” Lanh said as she swatted his hand away from the doorknob. “Coach Mach is on a call. If you have urgent business with the coach, please let me know the details of the matter, and if I cannot resolve your issue, then I will be happy to schedule a meeting between you and the coach.”

Don took Lanh into his arms. They locked eyes, and he smiled down at his lovely little girlfriend. “And what does the team mascot have on my schedule?”

“Team Mascot?” Lanh deftly twisted away and flipped through the papers on her clipboard, “Funny, I can’t find you on the team roster anywhere ... oh wait ... here you are ... you’re listed here under questionable potential...” she grinned and held her clipboard tight to her chest, “It says you’re scheduled to take the official team timekeeper to the Nguyen restaurant to show off her new wardrobe, then you have some hay to put up back at the farm.”

“May I escort the team timekeeper?” he bowed and proffered his left arm to Lanh, who delicately rested her right hand on his arm.

“Please keep my hordes of fans at bay, would you kind sir?” The halls of the school were predictably empty, it was a week before school reopened and soon Don and Lanh were outside and seated in the “Three on the Tree GMC” the old rattling pickup truck Don received for his 18th birthday, rattling their way to Lanh’s family’s Pho restaurant. At the restaurant, her oldest sister Tam was managing while her older brothers Huy and Trung were getting ready for the lunch rush. “Where are má and ba?” asked Lanh.

“They are taking some time off,” answered Tam. “Why do you ... hey! Looking good tôm!” (shrimp) Tam made Lanh spin around so she could see the shirt from all angles. “I’m guessing Coach Mach had his sights on you for a few weeks.”

“Why do you say that Chị?” asked Don, who knew that Coach Mach wanted to ask Lanh to be the team timekeeper for weeks. (Chị is another pronoun being a term for an older sister.)

“Because they would normally get a small men’s or women’s shirt, which on her still fits like a tent, this shirt actually fits her.” Tam rolled the collar so she could see the tag, causing Lanh to twist around and pretend to be choking. “Boy’s small. He’s been planning this for a while.”

“It looks good on her,” said Huy, who knocked his older sister’s hand out of the way, freeing Lanh. He wrapped his arms around her. “How’s my munchkin guppy?”

Lanh struggled to free herself from his grip, complaining the entire time that he was taking unfair advantage of her size until finally she twisted free and walked up to Don and hit him as hard as she could on his aching, exhausted arm. “Ow! What was that for?”

“That was for not coming to my aid while I was being manhandled by those brutes!” she pointed angrily at Tam and Huy.

“Hey!” said Don, holding up his hands in innocence, “that was a family thing, I’m an outsider here.”

“You’re going to be family soon enough,” she said, poking a finger in his chest like he was a truculent child, “my husband is expected to come to my aid.” And with that, she went to her room to change, leaving Don to explain what she had just said to his future in-laws.

“You’re going to be family soon enough?” asked Tam loudly. “Did we miss something here?”

Don found himself surrounded by Tam, Huy, and Trung. Trung was grinning. Huy looked like he was ready to hear the punchline or else start punching, and Tam had a sharp knife in her hand and was aiming it at parts of Don’s body that both he and Lanh want left attached. “We’re just talking about what we plan to do when we get married.”

“WHEN you get married? Did you propose to her?” demanded Huy.

“Not yet...”

“More important, did you ask fathers permission to marry his baby?” growled Tam.

“No, of course not,” Don said to Tam.

“Why not?” demanded Huy.

“Because he’ll say no and then we won’t be able to get married.” Tam brought the knife closer. “BUT, I will ask for his blessing.”

“And what if he says no?” growled Tam.

Don shrugged and grinned at his Roman Catholic friends. “So what? He ain’t the pope.”

Tam smiled, put her arms around Don’s shoulders, and gave him a hug. “You are just what my dorky little sister needs,” she sniffed.

“I like this one,” said Huy. “Much better than that nerd that you picked out.” Tam continued to hug Don, but Huy was staring at a very sharp knife.

Dressed in a long denim skirt and one of Don’s flannel work shirts, Lanh came back into the restaurant part of their home, where she found Don being grilled by her sister and brothers about their plans for the future.

“Where are you going to live?”

“On my farm.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Farm.”

“What is Lanh going to do?”

“Farm.”

“What about children?”

“They can farm too.”

“Ok, that’s about enough,” said Lanh, wrapping herself around Don’s arm. “We got some farmin’ to do, come on dear.”

As she led Don out of the restaurant, he looked down at her and said, “Why did you do that to me?”

“Do what dear?” she looked up at him, her eyes wide in faux surprise.

“Call me your husband before we get engaged. Are you trying to get me in trouble with your family?”

“Oopsie!” she giggled and covered her mouth with her free hand. “Did I do that? As a lowly team mascot, I’m not capable of being devious, or even smart. I’m simply kawaii.” She emphasized kawaii, the Japanese term for cute, by taking off her glasses and batting her eyelashes.

He opened the truck’s passenger door and boosted her up into the seat. “Every day I find more reasons to love you. Admitting being in a state of kawaii is another.” He leaned in for a kiss and she responded eagerly.

When their lips parted, she gasped, “Let’s get married now. We’re eighteen, we can do it. Let’s elope before school opens up.”

“Our parents will freak.”

“I want a maternity graduation gown,” she said as he got in the driver’s side and started the truck.

“Wait until I have a life insurance policy that will support you and the baby after your mom stabs me to death.”

“Oh, you’re exaggerating,” she said as they rounded a tight curve, scattering gravel. “Dad will shoot you long before mom gets close enough with her knife.”

As they bounced along the country roads to the Campbell farm, Lanh snuggled up to Don, and Don put his arm around her shoulder. His right hand seemed naturally drawn to her breast. As he gently massaged her tit through her shirt, Don thought back to a conversation he had with Dr. Tam Nguyen, Ph.D., psychologist, sister, and black-belt.

Tam had come out to the farm to talk to Lanh. Lanh led her out to the yard, where some hay was stacked up in the shade of a large maple tree. The sisters talked while sitting on a stack of hay bales for a good long time while Don worked in the tractor shed. Lanh had promised Don’s dad Ralph that she’d help the veterinarian with an ailing calf, so she and her sister Tam had to cut their conversation short when Ralph announced, “The veterinarian is here.”

“Clutch!”

Lanh’s shout brought Don back to the here and now. “Sorry,” he said and eased in the clutch so she could shift the column shifter from second to third gear. The best part of an old pickup truck is the bench seat. Lanh can snuggle up next to Don nice and close and he can put his arm around her as he drives, and he can cup her breast. The worst part of an old pickup truck is the manual transmission, which requires two hands to drive the truck. Don and Lanh got around this handicap by having Lanh shift the gears, allowing Don to keep his arm around her. It just takes a little coordination when it comes to the clutch pedal.

“What were you thinking?” she said as she stroked her fingertips up and down the inside of his thigh.

Her fingers caused thrills to rocket through his leg straight to his cock, which caused Don to accidentally utter the most horrible thing any young man could say to his girlfriend at a time like this; he revealed the truth. “Your sister.”

“WHAT?”

“Yesterday I had a conversation with Tam...”

“Stop the truck!”

“No, I’m not stopping the truck, I...”

“You’re holding on to my boob and you’re thinking about my sister? Stop the truck!”

“No, I was thinking about what your sister told me last week when she was at the farm, and I’m not stopping the truck.”

Lanh scooted to the other side of the cab and, leaning against the door, she glared at Don. For his part, he looked like he was getting ready to cry. Serves him right! “What did she say?”

“It doesn’t matter, she was right anyhow.”

“What did she say?”

“Tam told me you were just playing me along and come January you were going to dump me and take off to the cities and go to university there.”

“She did not! That’s not true!”

“You’re right, it’s a lie.”

Lanh was aghast. “Why would you lie to me?”

Don shrugged. “I told you the truth and I’m in trouble. I tell you a lie and I’m in trouble. It doesn’t matter. And maybe you should graduate and go off to the cities, I’m just holding you back.” He pulled up to an intersection and started turning the truck around. “You can do so much better without me.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m thinking I should take you home, I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t want to scare you anymore, and I don’t want to hold you back...”

“Well, you’re scaring me now! Keep going to the farm.”

“But I...”

Lanh scooted close and lay down on the bench seat with her head in his lap. “Take me to OUR home.”

A few minutes later, they rattled into the Campbell farmyard, known to Lanh as OUR home. “You start putting that hay up and I’ll be there in a few minutes, I have to make sure Poppa is ready for his date,” and Lanh ran to the house. Don’s father was taking Sandy Petersen, the church secretary and pianist, out to dinner, Don and Lanh volunteered to insure all the farm chores would be taken care of so he and Sandy could have a nice dinner in town and maybe catch a movie.

Inside the house, Lanh went straight to the kitchen and picked up the receiver on the kitchen wall phone and called the restaurant. “Trung? Put on Tam ... no ... no ... I don’t care, put her on or you get to tell ba that I’m not coming home ... I’ll wait...” she paced back and forth in the kitchen until her sister picked up the phone. “Tam? What did you say to my Donovan last week?”

There was a full hay wagon in the big barn’s hayloft and Don got to work unloading the hay, bale by bale, and stacking them neatly in the barn. Fueled by anger and self-loathing, Don hoisted each square bale on to the enormous stack, one after another. He berated himself for even thinking that he’d ever be good enough for someone as wise and as beautiful as Lanh. She’d be so much better off without him. She could find a man who had a future, a professional that could buy her a big, beautiful house, not some farmer who could only offer her hard work and cow shit. Fueled by anger and self-loathing, he peeled off his shirt and soon was covered in sweat and dust. Before he realized it, the wagon was empty. He grabbed the towbar and pulled the wagon by hand out of the hayloft onto the earth ramp that the tractor uses to get up to the hayloft.

By that time, he had his mind made up. It would be better if he broke up with her now. She could head on to university and get the degree she’s been talking about. And him? A few years in the military to get over her, then home. It would be better for her that way; she wouldn’t be chained to a loser that she fears. Then again, this is a farm. There are always industrial accidents on a farm. Both Lanh and the USAF would be better off with one less Minnesota farm boy to worry about...

“Hey,” Lanh’s soft voice broke through his haze of self-loathing. He turned and there she was, walking toward him through the hayloft.

“Lanh, I’ve been thinking, it’s not fair to you that I...” suddenly her tiny hand covered his mouth.

“Yên tĩnh, be quiet,” she moved her hand and kissed his lips softly, then put her hand back on his mouth. “I talk to Tam, as shrink doctor she sucks.” Lanh was clearly upset; her English was the worse he’s ever heard. “I not afraid of you, not afraid of ... Stanley,” she gently caressed his cock and balls through his jeans, Stanley is the nickname she gave his cock. “That is where our babies will come from.” Then slowly she said, “I am afraid of me.”

Don gently took her hand away from his mouth and kissed it, then said, “Lanh, no. You’re beautiful, smart, sweet, and loving, you should be at Northwestern getting your degree, not following around attached to a loser and milking cows.”

“I like milk!” she insisted, which was true. Since her first taste of fresh, whole milk, she’s become a fanatic about the stuff. She’s even put on weight, something she was never able to do before. “I like cows, and I love you, you’re NOT a loser. But you should be with a big girl, with wide hips and a fat ass who can have babies so easy, like Tam or Kim-ly...”

Don almost laughed. Tam and Kim-ly were both larger than Lanh, but fat? Not even close. “I don’t want your sister, I love you...”

“Shhh!” She put a slender finger to his lips. “You say you don’t want to scare me, but you’re scaring me now. Living without you scares me. I just don’t want to disappoint you.”

“You could never disappoint me...”

“What if I can’t have babies? What if my hips too skinny? What if my eggs don’t work? What if I can’t make you happy in bed?” Lanh was terrified of being barren, she knew from far too many doctors’ visits that she can’t trust her body, being born prematurely it’s a sure-fire bet that she was going to have trouble with some systems in her body. Her doctors were worried about her heart, but her worries go lower.

“You can adopt, there are millions of babies that want a home, or foster, or you can babysit for your fat ass sisters. But if you marry me, kids or not, you’re just going to end up on a stinky ol’ farm, working hard all day, every day. We will never have anything nice...”