Lum Loc

Lum Loc is the resourceful intermediary who receives Conrad Hensley in Chamblee and helps him begin life under an assumed identity. He offers a place among a Vietnamese community, supplies documents in another man’s name, and insists that Conrad find work rather than remain indefinitely as a guest.

Arrival in Chamblee

Lum Loc meets Conrad at the airport baggage claim, recognizing him by his Hi-Gro baseball cap. He drives him in his pickup truck to Meadow Lark Terrace, a two-story stucco apartment building in Chamblee, just outside Atlanta. On the way, the talkative Lum uses broken English and jokes that Chamblee should be called Saigon West, while the community is also known as Chambodia.

Lum brings Conrad into a cramped apartment crowded with Vietnamese residents of different ages. The room is being used not only as a place to live but as a temporary refuge: Lum explains that he has to deal with all these people, as well as Conrad. The setting establishes the practical, collective character of his assistance. Conrad has somewhere to sleep, but he has entered a community with its own demands and arrangements, not a private sanctuary.

An Assumed Identity

Outside the building, Lum takes a collection of small paper bags from his backpack and finds the one marked with Conrad’s name. From it he produces a Social Security card and a Georgia driver’s license bearing the name Cornelius Alonzo DeCasi; the license carries Conrad’s photograph. He also gives Conrad a Michigan birth certificate for Cornelius Alonzo DeCasi, born in 1977 to Margaret Stuart DeCasi and Demetrio Giovanni de Bari DeCasi.

Lum distinguishes the authentic birth certificate from the identity he has assembled around it. He tells Conrad that the certificate is real, that Cornelius Alonzo DeCasi died in 1982, and that he has no death certificate. He does not explain how the documents were obtained, brushing aside Conrad’s question. His assistance is effective but deliberately incomplete: Conrad receives enough to assume another name, while Lum keeps the operation’s workings to himself.

Help with Conditions

For Lum, providing a place to stay and documents is part of a larger arrangement that ends in employment. He tells Conrad that the other residents must remain inside the building until he gives them identification and they get jobs; they cannot spend their time walking around Chambodia doing nothing. Conrad is different because he is American and already has identification, but Lum applies the same expectation to him: he must get a job, because that is Lum’s way.

When Conrad asks what the work involves, Lum describes an assembly line at a chicken-processing operation. Workers spend the day slaughtering chickens, removing their entrails, plucking them, or cutting them into parts. Lum acknowledges that the work is hard and very smelly, but presents it as the necessary next step after his help. His role thus combines hospitality with discipline: he gives Conrad a way to move forward, then makes clear that shelter cannot become a permanent substitute for work.