by Pam Houston
I am up front, next to the pilot, Halifax William behind me, a woman from Juneau next to him, our three packs taking up every inch of space in the tail. The pilot turns the plane in a tight circle, we accelerate and lift off, and before he has even pulled in the flaps the first glacier is in front of us, huge and dirty and violent with stretch marks, plunging out of the cloud cover and into the shimmering sun.
Instantly I feel that old surge come back, that seizing of my own life on my own terms. It is such a physical thing, like the time I had my forearm shattered and the nurse came in every four hours on the dot to give me a shot of morphine—that’s how physical—and I look down at the glacier and the ice-ridged peaks that go on forever behind it and say, Remember this remember this remember this the next time you think it’s over, because some man, or some hope, or some life takes away instead of gives. Remember this and get on an airplane, a small one if possible, because it always works.
25. Ban Xang Hai, Laos
My guide Xai and I are standing in the warm mist of a Mekong River morning in the village of Ban Xang Hai, Laos, watching an unusually tall Laotian tend his boiling vats of Lao-Lao, the rice-wine moonshine that has put his village on the map. Monkeys scream in the trees above us, and a gentle-faced woman stands nearby holding a glass I fear is meant for me.
It is slightly after 8 a.m. and in America, that would be a good enough reason to decline politely, but here in Laos, where decorum is far more rigorous—and complicated—than it is in America, I’m pretty sure there isn’t going to be a way out of drinking the pickled Mekong water that is about to come from the steaming, rusted fifty-gallon drum.
I reassure myself that no self-respecting amoeba could possibly live in 80-proof hooch, and quickly down the glass of “white” I am offered. Which gets me another glass, and then a glass of red, which I realize the second it goes down my throat without searing my tonsils, isn’t nearly as strong as the white. I am seized with regret, flooded by premonitions of feverish vomiting in a Laotian health care facility.
I do what any sophisticated world traveler would do and stuff an entire antibacterial wipe into my mouth, and during the tour of the brightly painted temple, suck every drop of juice out of it I can, and swallow.
Outside the temple a beautiful woman is making ferns and bougainvillea and daisy petals out of colored paper. I buy a small bouquet from her and ask if I can take her picture. She says something to Xai and he translates, “She says she should take your picture because you are the beautiful one,” and I can tell by the tone in his voice that he thinks she is mistaken.
Xai is the most formal guide I have ever had in Asia, which is saying a great deal. He had been a monk for three months at eighteen, then he became one again for one day last year when his mother died, so he could carry her body, he says, to the other side. His English is impeccable, except that he says electric city when he means electricity, and comfort table when he means comfortable, and anyone can see why he would think that was correct. At least twice a day he says, “If I am not speaking right you will please graduate me,” but I rarely do.
I’m pretty sure I have managed to eat the antibacterial wipe clandestinely until we are back on the boat heading down river to the magical city of Luang Prabang and Xai says, “Have I told you yet how the Buddha died?”
When I say no, he says, “He was invited to the house of a friend for dinner and they were serving pok.”
“Pok?” I say.
“Pok! Pok!” he says, mildly impatient with me as usual, and he makes an oinking noise in his throat.
“Aha!” I say, and Xai smiles.
“He knew the pok was bad,” Xai says, “knew, even, that it would kill him, but he ate it anyway because it was most important not to offend his hosts.”
“I guess that’s the difference,” I almost say, “between Buddha and me,” but on the off chance that Xai has paid me a compliment, I smile out at the muddy river and nod.
26. Davis, California
When I go to close my Hotmail inbox there is another Hotmail inbox behind it, which I assume is some kind of computing glitch, before I open what seems to be an unopened email that has just come through for me. As I read it, my brain slowly orients itself to the fact that the second Hotmail account belongs to Ethan, who asked to use my office earlier in the day.
Attached to the email I have just opened is an email Ethan sent that morning in which he claims to be sitting in SFO airport, getting ready to fly to Colorado to see me, while at the very next gate, he writes, a flight is boarding passengers bound for Costa Rica. I am so overcome with longing, he writes, I want to leap up from my chair, bound across the aisle, throw myself on the gate agent’s mercy, and beg for a seat on the San Jose-bound plane.
Among the curious things about the email, are (1) Ethan hasn’t been within fifty miles of SFO in months, and (2) He can’t be going to see me in Colorado because I am here, in Davis, with him, and (3) Like most large airports, SFO has a dedicated international terminal, and any plane going to San Jose would surely leave from it. Also curious is that he wrote the email, not to Fatimah , as one might expect, but to yet another woman, this one in Cleveland, whom, he said, he missed with a profundity he had not felt before, even for the country of Costa Rica.
A quick check into the Sent box on Ethan’s account revealed that he had also, that morning, written to Fatimah saying he didn’t know when he could next see her because in an effort to keep him away from her, I had helped him to secure a yearlong lectureship in “Introduction to Political Thought” at CU Boulder. And while it is true that I had, at his request, secured him a position, it had been only ten weeks long, and in California, and had been finished now for more than a month. To the Romanian he had written that he was flying today, yet again to Denver, but it would be worth it this time because the mayor of Denver was throwing a party to honor his recent fund-raising work toward a high school for the children of illegal immigrants.
I closed his email account and picked up the phone.
“The mayor of Denver?” I said, and he said nothing at all.
After several seconds of silence I said, “It’s really no wonder that some days I can’t tell the difference between my father and George W. Bush.”
We had plans to eat with Fenton the human that night in Berkeley and we kept them. Where Fenton found a Someone Went to Bucharest and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt T-shirt on such short notice I will never know. I sent the mashed potatoes back because they were cold, but they came back even colder. When our waitress asked if my name was Pam I thought it was because I’d given her my credit card, but then I remembered we’d all paid in cash. She said, “I thought so. My boyfriend has, like, a shrine to you.”
“Really?” I said.
She said his name was Peter Sawyer, and I thought Peter Sawyer . . . Peter Sawyer . . . and I knew the news wasn’t good but I couldn’t remember in exactly what way.
“You guys lived together for like two years?” she said, correctly reading the amnesia on my face, and I nodded, yes of course, and she said, “He left you with a note.” And then it all came swirling back, me putting the bag of groceries down on the counter, reading the words, I really did love you, Peter.
Fenton leaned over and said, “Maybe this is the night the shrine gets dismantled,” and kissed my hand, and that reminded me of the time when he and I were eating with Jay at Zuni and I was saying how my best friend from New Jersey had published a book, and Fenton picked up a crayon while I was talking and wrote on the paper tablecloth, I thought I was your best friend.
27. Aspen, Colorado
Duncan is three, tall, and healthy. Doctors still aren’t sure why it took him a year and a half to sit up. Driving up-valley between Basalt and Snowmass on his way to day care, his dad asks him whether he thinks God is a man or a woman. Duncan looks out the window for a minute, watching his hand ride on the air currents that rush past the car.
Duncan’s parents have gotten used to the way he thin
ks about a question before he answers it; they no longer panic that he’s gone deaf or mute or so far into his head he might never come back. I am sitting sideways in the back of the Club Cab, catching a ride with them as far as the ski area, but both boys seem to have forgotten I am here.
“God is spirit,” Duncan says, turning his bright blue matter-of-fact eyes on his dad, who can barely stand to look away, back to the road that curves and curves through the canyon, “but woman . . .” he says, pulling his small arm back inside the cab of the truck and tracing a wide arc from driver’s window to passenger’s window, indicating the canyon walls, the bowl of sky and the entire wide valley in front of them, “woman . . . is everything.”
28. Muong Sing, Laos
Lat speaks English with an Australian accent, because he used to work for a petroleum company a thousand miles into the bush from Adelaide. He says eh and mate and good fun so often it is like he is only kidding. Every time we return to the Land Cruiser he nods approvingly and says, “You are big potato.”
Our driver’s name is Peng. He is Chinese and narcoleptic. He’ll try anything to stay awake, flicking his thumbs hard to either side, pulling hunks of hair out of his scalp, even sucking on lemons, but nothing works, and there are holes in the road big enough to swallow the Toyota right up.
When we finally get to Muong Sing, Lat says, “This region? It is not rich in money but it is very rich in sticky rice.”
I have learned all about sticky rice in the last two weeks and like best to eat it with fresh mango slices at the end of a meal, even though my paranoid guidebook tells me not to eat the mangoes because of cholera. The book also describes dengue fever and malaria and hepatitis A in ways that make me think I am coming down with them all every second, so I have promised myself not to look at the guidebook for a while.
Lat says there used to be sixty-eight minorities in Laos, but last year they did a survey and now there are only forty-seven.
“Where did they go?” I ask him, and he says he doesn’t know.
He can name twenty-four of the tribes without even trying: Aheu, Alak, Arem, Bo, Bru, Chut, Dai, Halang Doan, Hmong Daw, Hmong Njua, Hung, Ir, Jeh, Jeng, Katang, Katu, Khang, Khlor, Khmu, Kuy, Lahu, Lamet, Phutai, and Phatet Lao.
In an opium den in the center of a Khmu village, the father smokes and so does the eldest son, and all the little kids have the same big eyes as children of alcoholics back home.
Lat tells me a story about how the director of his company was working with some Khmu on a project, and they offered him food and he looked down at it and it turned into a snake and after that he was sick for weeks. Then he tells me a story about how a bunch of Danish social workers came over to try to tell the villagers how to use condoms, and they used their thumbs in the demonstration, and when the social workers came back to see if they’d successfully lowered the pregnancy rate they learned that after they left the villagers were putting the condoms right back on their thumbs before they had sex.
Now, speaking as the Danish social worker, Lat says, “No, mate, you put your condom on your cock before you fuck your wife!” and I can tell by the way Lat says it and the look on his face that he has no idea what he is saying to me, that these are just translated words like any others, and I keep my face perfectly neutral and then realize that probably every tourist he has told this story to has kept their face perfectly neutral and that is probably one way wars get started, people keeping their faces perfectly neutral when it would be kinder and braver not to.
In an Iko village there is a Keith Richards look-alike—but Laotian, and Keith Richards from 1974, before he started to look like a Latvian grandmother—who tries to sell us a bag of opium for ten bucks. Then an old woman gets mad at me for taking her photo. When Lat gives her 100 kip she gestures in a manner that says all 100 kip is good for is wiping her ass. I take another picture from the back and she chases us with a gourd full of water down the street.
29. Davis, California
I walk into the house to the smell of beets cooking. We have been officially broken up for exactly one month but Ethan has shown no signs of moving out.
I have never seen Ethan lift a finger in any kitchen, even his own, but tonight there are three of my best pans on the stove, aromatically steaming.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I want you to have a good Valentine’s Day,” he says, beaming. “Look, I have made all of your favorite foods.”
I wonder briefly what act of mercy has allowed me not to notice, until this moment, that today is Valentine’s Day. Dinner assembles itself in my mind based on what is on the counter: beet and arugula salad, lobster risotto, vanilla milkshakes for dessert with red licorice straws.
“Does this mean,” I say, “that you are reconsidering the breakup?”
“Not at all,” he says, still smiling, “I am living in your house. I know how tricky holidays can be for you. I am just trying to be considerate.”
The third time I told Ethan that I was not, after all, willing to be one of a stable full of women, he sighed and said, “No Romanian is worth this . . .”
“He actually said those words,” Cinder asked later, “No Romanian is worth this?”
But trying to convince Ethan to give up the Romanian was a little like insisting a crackhead cut down on his polyunsaturated fats.
Earlier today, at acupuncture, Janine said, “The best way to think of Ethan’s energy is like mistletoe. We have all these nice kissy associations with mistletoe, and even out in nature it doesn’t look that bad, but give it enough time and it will kill the tree.”
She said, “What I want you to do tonight when Ethan comes through the door is just gather all his energy up and hold it right out to him. Attach a beer or a book or something to it to make it more attractive. What kinds of things does he like?”
“Money?” I said. And we both cracked up.
It is the next morning, walking Fenton the dog, when I notice I am so tired I can hardly put one foot in front of the other. For a second I think I might faint, and I try to use my voice-activated dialing system, and then the woman who lives in my cell phone says, “Did you say, Ethan cell?” with some whole new tone in her voice.
I picture the men from the City of Davis who finally came last winter, too late, I thought, to cut the mistletoe out of the big oak in front of my cottage, cut the tree, in the process, almost back to nothing, but then how in the spring the tree leafed out just fine, a little spindly-limbed maybe, but healthy just the same.
In therapy last month, Patrick said: “The average rat will push a lever between ten and fifteen times in hopes of getting a pellet, but if you give me three days with that rat and a bunch of intermittent reinforcement, I can teach the same rat to push for a pellet two hundred and twenty-five times.”
I put the phone back in my pocket and just like that the heaviness runs off me like water, and I whistle for Fenton the dog and pick up my step.
30. Atigun Pass, Alaska
The photographers are out in spite of the weather, so it is just me and Joe, the mule handler, huddled in the soggy VE-24. I am doing basically every single thing the tags on both my Svea stove sack and my tent tell me not to do, trying to dry out the inside of the tent with an open-flame white gas stove while holding it in my hands, and Joe is telling Mathilda stories.
It rained the whole way up the Dalton Highway to Cold Foot, rained the whole two-day walk into base camp along the Chandalar Shelf. By day six we all had our feet in plastic bags, mold growing between our toes, and not one piece of dry clothing among us.
Only Mathilda seems unfazed by the constant rain that beats down on her. Joe has brought no food for her and I watch out the tent door as she stands near the rising riverbank with her front legs hobbled and long ears twitching, pulling tiny willow shoots out of the ground and eating them all the way down to their roots.
Joe is one of those guys Alaska is full of, doe-eyed and methodical, with both the loyalty and the logic of a Labrador ret
riever. The kind of guy who would give you his car—permanently—if you asked for it in just the right way.
The little stove is making a happy humming sound in the tent, drying a little circle in the oversaturated ceiling. We are both wearing thick damp long johns, everything else too soaked to bring inside. Then the hum turns into a rumble and the rumble turns into a roar, and I can tell by the look on Joe’s face that he is hearing it too.
Our waterlogged brains kick into gear simultaneously and we leap for the tent door just in time to see a huge wall of mud descending upon us. It is more than a football field wide and three feet deep at its tongue, maybe deeper higher up. It is roughly the consistency of cookie dough, carrying rocks as big as Volkswagens in its flow.
“Holy shit,” Joe yells. “Grab your boots and make a run for it.” And we do, stumbling with our laces untied along the leading edge of the mud toward the lateral moraine—the hundred-foot-high ridge of humped-up earth and rock the glacier left behind along the edge of the valley.
We reach the moraine out of breath but just ahead of the mud, having managed to grab only our ponchos. We turn to watch as the mud engulfs our tent, our packs, what is left of our kitchen supplies, and three spare tripods; watch as it carries them, with a kind of absolute authority, to the river. It is there our eyes fall upon Mathilda, now almost belly deep in mud, still with the same Zen expression on her face she always wears.
“I gotta get my mule!” Joe says, and that is all, before he leaps down into the thick mud which is hitting him at hip level, and he drags his legs, one at a time, back across the valley toward Mathilda. The mud, I can see, is getting deeper, and moving faster now, hitting Joe mid chest a couple of times and throwing Mathilda off balance, and she starts braying, softly but plaintively, from the river’s edge.
Time slows down the way it always does when death is lurking behind the next bad decision, and I watch Joe take what seems like forever to climb up on one of the now-in-motion car-sized rocks, and then jump from it to another, and another after that. Every so often he misjudges the movement of the rock and either misses entirely, slips off right after he lands, or stands helplessly while the rock he has chosen sinks into the mud underneath him, leaving him sputtering and spitting up from the muck, his form barely recognizable as that of a human being.
