She Weeps Each Time You're Born (13 page)

After the sampans reached them, Son and his father and the man with one sleeve were the only ones left waiting in the reeds. There wasn't enough room for everyone. Someone whispered that a sampan would be back shortly. Son could feel himself shivering, the snake's pulpy heart somewhere deep inside him. The moon lay on the water like a hole filled with fire. The man with one sleeve was playing a game with his fingers. Even as the others loaded up the sampans and moved across the water, the man kept pressing his fingertips together in different patterns—
thumb to the ear finger, the first to the ring. Son knew the man could do it all night long, could do it all the way across the sea or in the overcrowded cells his father had described where men had to take turns lying down because there was so little room.

His father had fallen asleep again. An's fatigue seemed endless. From across the water in the moonlight Son imagined An might look like something in the heron family, his delicate silhouette as if branched, bones hollow. He held a hand up in front of his father's mouth and waited until he could feel the breath on his palm before lowering it.

Son heard them before he saw them. They were rounding the headlands when they came into view. A string of shadows moved along the path like figures cut from black paper, their voices traveling over the water. A few of them carried torches, the light dancing like little souls. They were still a half mile away, but it didn't matter who they were. If they were a patrol, then they would all be arrested, the ragged men put back in cells where the whole cell had to defecate in a plastic bucket with a hairline crack running the length of it. If they were peasants, they might ask for money in exchange for their silence. Son shook his father. Ba, he said. The man with one sleeve was already wading out into the river. They couldn't wait for the sampan to come ferry them across the water. Son grabbed his father's hand and followed.

Ordinarily the swim wouldn't have been difficult, but the boat was anchored in deep water. The deeper the water, the more unpredictable the current. Son was holding his father's hand when the drop came and the current took them. He felt his father jerked downriver, their hands ripped apart. He could feel the soft earth disappear beneath his feet as the water picked him up. He knew he couldn't cry for help or all would be lost. The trick was to swim upriver. If he swam for the boat itself, the current would bring him up short. The man with one sleeve seemed
to know this. Son could see him swimming for a spot thirty feet upriver of the boat. He began to head for the same spot, but he could hear the sounds of someone fighting for breath. Already ten feet away his father was floundering, his body spinning wildly in the water. There was so much light on the surface of the river, he looked as if he were being spirited away by moonlight.

An disappeared under the water. Son could still see where the tips of his fingers had scratched at the surface. Afterward Son thought this must be how the bird finds the fish through the darkness. What it feels like. No time for thought. How the body takes over. He swam to the spot where the water had closed over An and dove. When he came back up, his father was retching in his arms.

Ba, said Son. His father had taken on a new heaviness. It was all Son could do to keep An's head cradled above water. Together they drifted downstream, the boat growing smaller and smaller. He wondered if the others would raise the anchor and come after them. He knew once they raised anchor they would stop for nothing. He could feel the half-healed cut on his face starting to sting. His father coughed. Please, An sputtered. Leave me. Son held on tighter. I order you to let me go. It was as if someone else were talking in his arms.

Ten minutes passed. Son could have kicked them to shore, but he thought it best to stay in the water. For the second time in less than two weeks it was out of his hands, the Mekong charged with his destiny. If he thought about it, the one thing he'd want more than anything else these past few years had already come true. He was holding his father in his arms, the moonlight surging all around them.

Son lost track of the time. An hour, minutes, weeks passed. They were flotsam in the river, an island of two. A beating heart sailing down a dark throat until it lands where it will.

Later he would tell Rabbit that the stories were true. He could smell it before it surfaced. The animal's breath like night soil, rotten and fetid from the heaps of garbage it ingested, teeth yellow as piss, each one studded in the mouth like a series of nails. Fishermen had cut open crocodiles to find bicycle tires in their stomachs, one with an entire French tea set tarnishing in its guts. Most of the freshwater crocs weren't large enough to take a grown man, though they could take a limb and leave the victim to bleed to death. There was one said to have taken more than fifteen water buffalo in the last two years all up and down the river, though nobody had ever seen it.

The women were almost five miles downriver from Cantho when they heard the drone of a small outboard engine. It was another few miles to the spot the doctor had chosen for them to board, a wide-mouthed inlet where the water was deep enough for the boat to draft. From there it would be another mile to the spot with enough shoreline vegetation for the men to hide until they could be ferried on board. As the little motorboat approached, Phuong gripped the sampan's edges. Even in the dusky light, Rabbit could see her knuckles blanching.

They were teenagers, just boys in makeshift uniforms, jackets torn at the elbow. Everyone else was off at the festival. Huyen muttered under her breath. The younger soldiers were the worst, many of them officious and drunk on the little bit of power that came with the uniform. If someone needed to be executed, it was often boy-soldiers who did the killing. His first night in Ba Nuoc, Rabbit's father had told a story about a group of boy-soldiers on the front lines in Cambodia who had stomped a fellow soldier to death for snoring too loudly.

The older boy was working the engine. With his free hand he made a brusque motion in the air. Rabbit could see a few stray
hairs sprouting on his chin. Qui stopped rowing. The boat pulled up alongside. For a spell the two boys sat staring, Qui's beauty like nothing they had ever seen. Then the boy at the engine took charge. Papers, he squeaked. None of them moved. Even though he looked older than the other boy, Rabbit thought he couldn't have been more than fourteen.

Maybe they all should have seen it coming. All day she had been working herself into a quiet rage. Sang smacked the water with her hand. The younger boy jumped. She looked him dead in the eye. Rabbit could feel the heat coming off the girl's skin. This is my wedding night, Sang said, a coldness in her voice. She was a fifteen-year-old girl on the verge of becoming a woman. Even the boys knew they had only just scratched the surface.

There were no men around, no one to save face in front of. The boys wouldn't speak of it later even between themselves. The younger boy averted his eyes. A hundred years of happiness to you, sister, he said. The older boy kept his eyes on the engine. Qui took up the oar. Rabbit looked at Huyen. She could tell the old woman was doing her best not to smile. She wondered what would happen later when Sang realized the truth.

The river croc made its first pass. It was swimming high enough out of the water that Son could see the prehistoric ridges along its back. He imagined it was looking for the spot where it might seize them in its jaws and take them under, never letting go until it had drowned them. Son tried not to look at its yellow eyes. Depending on how far apart the eyes were, you could tell how big the animal was. His uncles said if you looked a river croc in the eye, it could hypnotize you. Some river crocs were said to have been medicine men in previous lives.

The animal slipped under the surface. Son knew it would surface to attack. Once he had seen a small one take a dog in the
death roll. He imagined how this one would take their heads in its mouth and begin rolling its plated body in the water, the sound of their bones breaking audible only to them.

Under the water something brushed his leg. He had never felt anything so cold. Was it the animal or a piece of debris? He began to wonder if it would hurt. Of course it would, the great mouth studded with teeth, and the added agony as the dark water burned his lungs. It was almost too much to consider. If he were all alone, he might try and do like the ancient monks and just will himself to die.

Then something was coming from out of the sky. A shadow crossed the moon. He could hear the flapping of wings. A bird landed on the water just feet away. It was a cormorant. The bird looked colorless, the long serpentine neck weaving from side to side. It seemed to be staring at Son with its bloody eyes. Son wondered if the bird sensed what was under the water. There was a possibility the crocodile might surface for the bird, pulling it under instead. From out of the reeds he could hear someone paddling toward them.

The boat was sitting in the middle of the river. It looked abandoned. The doctor's plan relied on the whole world being at the festival, all eyes on the moon. There hadn't been any attempt to hide it. It was a fishing boat with a small pilothouse, its white paint peeling from the salt and the sun. Qui quickened her pace. Rabbit could feel the sampan surge forward with each stroke. They had to board without anyone seeing. If someone saw them, there would be no lying their way out of it. There would be no shaming two teenaged boys into letting them go.

Qui rowed around to the far side away from shore. Bats were already wheeling through the air. Then Son's uncles Hai and Duc appeared. Nobody said anything as they got to work. Rabbit
felt herself being lifted over the side. On deck she watched as Hai jumped down into the sampan and lifted Huyen, the old woman light as seed. Sang was standing, her feet planted like pylons. The sampan started to rock. Sit down, Hai hissed. In the fading light Sang's dress shimmered faintly. She stayed standing.

Duc and Hai worked around her, unloading and storing things below deck. Phuong herself carried the clattering sack down into the hold. On board Qui was tugging Rabbit's hand, but Rabbit wanted to watch Sang with her legs and arms akimbo in her red
ao dai
, colossal in her growing fury. Rabbit wondered if Sang had ever really believed she was on the way to her wedding. For a moment Rabbit could feel the girl's loneliness like the pale yellow aura around the moon. Finally Rabbit let herself be led below deck.

If she had stayed, she would have seen the moment when the fire burned out. Sang didn't take the hands reaching out from on deck to pull her up. Her head simply dropped. She stood a long moment in the new light of the world. Then without uttering a cry she reached over and put her hands on the splintery lip of the boat and pulled herself up.

It was a race and they were the prize. The crocodile was still somewhere under the water, its cold blood beating in the darkness. Son could feel his father growing heavier in his arms. He didn't know how much longer he could hold on, though he was prepared to hold on forever. Across the water the sound of someone paddling toward them, each stroke like the ticking of a heart.

It was almost worse this way. When the yellow eyes had been on the surface, Son had felt a terror beyond compare. But now that the eyes had submerged it was incomprehensible. There was no word for it. The idea that one moment you could be floating
in the water and the next all sentience could be ripped from your body. Then Son could see a makeshift raft coming toward them out of the darkness. Ba, Son whispered, shaking his father.

When the raft arrived, a hand swung An up out of the water first. Then Son felt himself being lifted. For a long time An lay heaving, water coming out of his mouth and nose. The man who had rescued them made a whistling sound through his teeth, and the white bird lifted off the river's surface and floated up onto the raft. Lovingly the old man ran a finger down its neck, the tip of his long gray beard brushing the bird. The old man took off his
non la
. Son could see the moon reflected on his hairless head.

Twenty minutes later the raft rounded a bend. The boat was sitting in the middle of the river. It looked empty. Son wondered if the others had been caught. His father lay still. Son didn't know what to say. Everything was out of his hands. Silently the old man rowed up to the boat. Son shook his father. Ba. His father began to stir, his blue eye almost invisible in the moonlight. We're here, he said. Nobody came out to greet them. The man boosted Son up on deck. Before he even had a chance to look for his uncles, the man was already hoisting his father in the air. He turned and helped pull An on board.

Something stirred in the pilothouse. Cautiously Duc and Hai appeared like animals creeping out of the night. There were gasps of amazement. Son could hear his mother crying as one of his uncles carried him below. He could hardly breathe, it was so hot, the air like stagnant water, the whole space a crawlway, the hold no more than three feet at its highest and running the length of the boat. How did you get here, someone asked. A man picked us up in the river, Son said. What did he want, someone asked. Hai came bustling back down the steps. There's no one out there, Hai hissed. Son raced back up the steps. He looked in all directions, but it was true.

O
NCE THEY'D RAISED ANCHOR, THEY MADE IT TO THE OCEAN
in only a few hours. Duc left the motor off and let the currents carry them along. The Harvest Moon was still in the sky by the time they arrived at the sea. Dark cliffs ringed the bay like turrets. For the most part the boat stayed in the middle of the river as far from shore as possible. From time to time the river narrowed. When it did, they passed floating villages, villages much like the one they'd left behind, houses floating on matted river weeds and fifty-gallon drums, each house soundlessly bobbing in the water, the people off celebrating in the city. Only Duc and Hai in the pilothouse could see their good fortune firsthand.