The immigrant

[Patrick]

The rain was pouring.

 

It had been raining hard all morning and there was no sign of it letting up anytime soon. The ground was already drenched and the water ran over the ground in riverlets, gathering in deepening puddles in the hollows.

 

The dark mood of the weather was perfect to describe the dark mood in the graveyard.

 

The priest had been the last one to depart, leaving the solitary man alone at the side of the freshly dug grave. He had neither umbrella, nor raincoat and both his hair and clothes were thorougly drenched. But still he stood motionless in the rain, barely taking his eyes off the inscriptions in the marble.

 

It was visibly new compared to the other gravestones nearby, not yet weathered. In a couple years it would take on that appearance that marble gets when exposed to the elements, but it still had that polished look to it.

 

James John Nguyen

April 19, 1984 - September 12, 2008

 

No "loving father", no "beloved husband". There was no family left to remember him. And truth be told, most of those present at his funeral hadn't come because they had been true friends.

 

"Did you know him?"

 

The rain-soaked figure did not reply, but simply continued to stare at the simple gravestone.

 

"Excuse me?" the voice asked again.

 

The voice belonged to Sergeant Simms of the Metropolitan Police Force. She was a veteran of the force, having served nineteen years, starting on the streets and slowly working her way up to detective. And for the last seven years she had been investigating the man whose body now lay six feet under the ground.

 

"I did." She was caught off guard by the answer, suddenly not expecting it after the long silence. "In a weird way I guess I had been his only friend this side of the world."

 

The man turned around, revealing an unshaven face, but still with youth in the eyes. "Officer," he said while tipping an imaginary hat. Raindrops trickled from his hair as he made a slight bow.

 

"Care to share his story?" Sergeant Simms asked.

 

"Buy me a drink and I'll talk all night long. Let's go someplace warm, I'm soaked," the man replied, only with a trace of an accent betraying that he was not a native. On closer inspection he had the characteristic eyes of someone from Eastern Asia.

 

It was over a warm pint of Guinness in a smokey London pub that he started to recount the tale of James John Nguyen, which had started more than twenty four years ago in the jungles of Vietnam.