No one said anything about Thanh’s outburst, for which he was both grateful and ashamed. It was like when a toddler peed on the floor in front of important visitors: he’d done something babyish and rude and embarrassing, and for his sake they were trying to ignore it. He wished he could apologize, but he didn’t know how to talk about something that everyone was pretending hadn’t happened.
And it wasn’t as if people were talking about other topics; they saved their words for necessary things. There was not much to do but empty salt water out of the boat. And wait.
As the afternoon wore on, Thanh found it hard to think of anything but his thirst, so much that his brain felt blunt with it. He wanted desperately to drink the water that surrounded and taunted them; but he knew he couldn’t. People died from drinking ocean water. At his turn bailing, he made and remade a mental list of all the things he wanted. First, fresh water for everyone to drink. Second, bandages and antiseptic for Uncle Hung. Third, fuel and a working engine. Fourth, food. Fifth, land. Sixth, a way to erase the terrible things he’d said. Then he shook his head and rearranged: the last thing on the list wasn’t possible. And as for the rest: land alone would do, if they could reach it soon enough. Land would contain everything else.
• • •
UNCLE TRUC slept deeply that night, as did Sang and The Turtle, all at one end of the boat, away from the slow leak. Thanh, knowing that Uncle Truc wouldn’t want to be near him, slept on the other side of the boat, near Uncle Hung and Mai.
Mai stayed up late that night with Uncle Hung, holding his hand and talking softly. Thanh could see them every time he woke, sitting against the night sky, and he could hear their soft murmurs. He thought of the awful things he’d said to Uncle Truc. Mai hadn’t said or done anything to make her adopted uncle hate her. She’d tried her best to help—and to save Uncle Hung.
In the morning, Mai slept. As she woke, the weather turned choppy: a storm was coming. They could see it slowly fill the sky to the east of them, darker and darker.
“You need to sleep more,” croaked Uncle Hung to Mai. “It’s only when you’re sleeping that we get good weather.” She grimaced and nodded; her throat was dry, but she appreciated the joke.
Uncle Truc frowned. “We’re sitting ducks.” His voice scratched like gravel on paint.
“Sitting ducks in a sitting boat,” Uncle Hung said. They would certainly not outrun this storm.
“If it storms,” said Mai, in a froggy imitation of her usual slow, sure voice, “we’ll at least have fresh water. We should cover Uncle Hung with one of the tarp pieces, but the other we can use to collect water.”
“No,” said Uncle Hung in a sharp voice cracked with thirst. “Use both tarps for water. I’ll survive a little rain. And a washing will be good for me. I stink.”
Mai grinned her slow grin, waving her hand in front of her face as if to fan away a bad smell. When her smile started, it was aimed at Uncle Hung, but after it built to a flame, it moved on to Thanh. Startled, Thanh grinned back.
Suddenly he understood why Mai and Uncle Hung seemed like they were related even though they weren’t. They had the same dry sense of humor, even at a time like this, when joking didn’t seem possible.
“Let’s get the tarps set up to collect water,” Uncle Truc said. “It’ll rain any minute.”
When they were ready, everyone was wedged at least partly under a piece of tarp. Around the smaller tarp sat Uncle Truc, Sang, and The Turtle; and around the larger tarp sat Uncle Hung, Mai, and Thanh—all of them (except The Turtle, who sucked her thumb and buried her head in her father’s shoulder) propping up the edges of the tarp with their bodies to collect fresh rain in the oilcloth’s center.
And then the rain came. Hard.
• • •
THE WIND and waves weren’t as bad as the first storm they’d gone through a few days ago, but the rain was worse, pouring for about a day—as far as they could tell. The darkness made it hard to know how much time passed. But Uncle Truc said, about a day. Thanh had lost track of time by this point: was it day six since they left home? Or seven? Seven, he thought. But it didn’t matter anymore what day it was. The journey was endless.
They had to shift the tarps periodically to bail with the rice pot. First, though, they’d drink whatever water had collected in the pot, and they’d reach the pot into the low middle of the two tarps to scoop out more drinking water.
The rainwater was life-giving, and each person took several large gulps. But lying back in the rain, mouth open—so wonderful at the start of the storm—got old really fast. For the first few moments, the rain felt wonderful on Thanh’s parched face and lips and tongue, but within an hour, everyone was soaked and shivering. They rearranged, trying to keep warm: on one side of the boat, Uncle Hung lay carefully wedged between Mai and Uncle Truc. Across from them, propping up their tarp as much as they could, Thanh and Sang huddled around The Turtle.
No one slept, not even the baby.
7
FINALLY, JUST AS Mai dozed off and rolled away from Uncle Hung to lay curled by herself in a sodden puddle, the rain pittered away to nothing. In the slowly growing light, Thanh watched the storm die, amazed at how moody the ocean was, how it changed so quickly. The rivers in the Mekong Delta were never quite this impulsive except in spring floods—even those, however, were something one expected. And now this post-storm stillness didn’t seem normal. But what did he know?
As the sea quieted, Sang and the baby fell asleep, too. Uncle Hung drifted into fitful rest. He seemed to be in less pain now that the squall had ended, but his calm worried Uncle Truc, who peered at him and shook his head.
Uncle Truc nodded good morning to Thanh—the only two awake—and gathered the tarps into two sacks to temporarily hold the water they’d collected while Thanh cleared the ocean water out from the bottom of the boat. When he was done, Uncle Truc filled the rice pot with rainwater from the tarps. The rice pot was full almost to the brim, but after that the fresh water would be gone. They would wait to drink it, Uncle Truc said, until they had to bail the boat again—which would be later that day.
Thanh nodded and slumped against the side of the boat, his clothes wet and clammy and the sun warm on his face. He felt tired, like he could sleep forever, and sluggish. But not hungry—as if he’d moved through hunger into something else.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Finally the words came out. “For what I said before.”
“Forget it.” Uncle Truc folded the tarp in half and half and half again, squeezing a few more drops of fresh water into the rice pot.
“I didn’t mean any of it.”
Uncle Truc nodded but did not look up from his work. “Already forgotten.”
“But—”
“Not something we need to discuss further. We all say things we don’t mean sometimes. You had your day yesterday. It’s done.” Uncle Truc unfolded the tarp, apparently deciding he’d gotten all the water out of it he could, and draped it over Uncle Hung to keep the sun off his face. Then he sat near his brother, groaning a little as he slid to the floor. “My wife is a smart lady.”
Thanh nodded.
“She always says, we’ll let the past be the past, and forgive each other for words spoken in anger.” He closed his eyes. “We’re good, you and I. Now let me rest a bit.”
• • •
WHEN THE TURTLE WOKE, Thanh gave her a little water. She didn’t want to play or babble; she just wanted to be held. Thanh picked her up before she could crawl back to Sang and disturb her sleep. Sang’s hair flopped all over her head in a scraggly mess, and the gash on her forehead had scabbed in her hairline, but The Turtle still knew who she was and wanted her.
Before the baby could complain or cry, Thanh snuggled her onto his lap and whispered, “I’ll tell you a story, okay?” She half smiled; she’d heard a lot of his stories in her short life, and even though she couldn’t p
ossibly understand all the words, she always seemed to be listening. Before they’d left Vietnam, he had told her a story almost every night while her mother made supper. “You want one about a turtle?” She usually liked those, and there were turtles in a lot of stories.
The baby flicked her hands open and shut and pointed at the sky. She wanted a star story, or maybe a sky story. Thanh was never sure about her hand motions, so he usually just picked something. She never complained.
“Should I tell you about an airplane?” he said, thinking of something his father had told him. His mouth was dry—but not as bad as before the rainwater. He could tell a story. “My dad was a pilot for the Vietnamese air force before the communists defeated them. He was a hero, just like your dad.” She smiled and flicked her hands open and closed. “Your dad wasn’t a pilot; he was a soldier. But still a hero.” She nodded almost as if she understood.
Across from them, Uncle Truc’s eyes were closed, but his face twitched. Maybe he was listening, too.
“That’s right,” Thanh continued. “My dad flew planes. He told me about the men who invented the first successful planes, and that’s the story I’ll tell you today.
“Once there were two brothers, named Orville and Wilbur.” His mouth twisted around the strange American names. “They were bicyclists and bike repairmen. And they wanted to fly. The plane they built was light and open—like a bike. It was—almost a kite, and one man could pilot it, lying on his stomach.”
The baby flicked her hands again. Thanh always had to keep stories short for her, or she lost interest.
“They took the glider plane to a place called Kitty Hawk.” Thanh loved names, and this name was one of the best. His dad had told him that it meant “cat” and “falcon”—which in Vietnamese would sound very odd together, but apparently in English sounded correct. And when he’d finally read the story in one of his dad’s books, sure enough: Kitty Hawk was the name.
“Orville and Wilbur’s dad said fine; they could invent planes and fly them, but only if they didn’t fly together. One of the brothers had to be on the ground all the time—that way if the plane crashed, old Mr. Wright wouldn’t lose both his sons at once. And that’s good thinking,” he added to the baby.
“Kind of like us,” Mai said, and Thanh looked over his shoulder to see her awake and sitting directly behind him. She slid down next to him. “Like us on this boat. Like how only part of each family went, so that if people died, it wouldn’t be the whole family at once. There would be some survivors.” Then, seeing his face, she said, “We’ll survive. Don’t worry.” But her scratchy dry voice sounded—for once— unsure. “Why did you and your sister both come?” she asked. “Why not just one of you?”
He glanced at Uncle Truc, but the exhausted man now appeared to be sleeping for real. “Uncle Truc wanted Sang to come, to take care of this one”—he held The Turtle’s hands up and clapped them, and she smiled—“and to help him. Sang wouldn’t go without me.”
“She really loves you.” Mai sounded almost sad.
He shook his head no. “I mean, Sang does love me. But the reason she didn’t leave me behind is that she didn’t trust me to stay alive without her. I’m . . .” He paused, thinking about his words. “I’m not very trustworthy. I daydream, and I’m not good at anything.”
“You’re good at telling stories. The baby likes it, and so do I.”
“That’s not anything special.”
“It is. You just need to find a job someday that will let you tell stories.”
Thanh sighed. “Right.”
The Turtle hit Thanh’s chest and grunted for more.
He clapped her hands together again. “Want to hear what the little brother, Orville, did after they got the plane working? He took his daddy up in the air. His dad was ancient by then, the age of a great-grandfather.” The Turtle giggled. “He was eighty-two,” he added to Mai, who nodded. “Orville helped his dad climb into the plane, and they took off. They flew for seven whole minutes.”
“That’s all?” said Mai.
“Seven minutes must have seemed like forever when you’d never gone up in a plane. When no one had gone up. When planes were still something miraculous and unbelievable. If you could be a bird for seven minutes, wouldn’t it seem like—like magic?”
Mai nodded, eyes wide. The Turtle flapped her hands in her own private bird sign.
“So he took his ancient father into the air, and they flew under the puffy clouds and through the blue sky and past the birds, who were shocked to see this monstrous machine. And do you know what the old man said?”
Thanh paused, but Mai and the baby didn’t answer. They just stared at him, spellbound. This was the best part of storytelling—bringing the listener in to the specialness of whatever the story was, getting them to live it.
“Orville’s father said only one thing while he was up in the sky, being flown by his son on a plane not much better than a kite. He said, Higher, Orville, higher! And Orville knew then that his dad was impressed, that his dad thought what he’d done was something wonderful.”
He patted the baby’s back. “That’s the end of the story.”
After a pause, Mai said softly, “Your dad died in the war, didn’t he?”
“After. In a camp.”
“He would be proud of you, too. Just like the brothers’ dad was. I’m sure of it.”
Thanh shook his head. Mai didn’t know his dad; she was just trying to be nice. His dad hadn’t been proud of him. The notepaper folded and refolded in Thanh’s mind.
“We don’t all have to be good at the same things.” Mai paused. “I’m sorry I called you knucklehead.”
“When?”
“Every time. Even the times I didn’t say it out loud.” She took his hand, and he realized it was the first time she’d touched him since her bone-cracking handshake when they’d met. This time, her hand was soft. And warm. And he thought about how she was all alone, without even a sister or brother for company. And he thought that here, at the end of their world, maybe he could be something for Mai—something like a brother. He held her hand.
Sang’s voice rose from the bottom of the boat. “Why’d you let me sleep?” She rubbed her eyes and then her head, her face opening in surprise at the feel of the short shaggy hair. It would take some getting used to.
“We were letting you take a vacation,” said Mai, sliding her hand, grimy and battered, off Thanh’s. “On a cruise ship.”
Sang grimaced. “It was really calm there for a few hours.”
But it was bumpy now. Thanh hadn’t noticed, but the change must have happened recently. Before Mai had started talking to him, the ocean was serene and still. When she was still sleeping.
“It’s true. Every time you sleep, the water calms down,” Thanh said.
“Me?” said Sang, startled.
“No—Mai. When she sleeps, it’s calm, and when she wakes up, it’s choppy. Uncle Hung said it earlier.”
“Well, he was kidding.” Sang reached for The Turtle, who scooted toward her and crawled into her lap. She bent her head over the baby and cooed to her.
Mai poked Thanh’s side. “What? You think I have some kind of . . . magical power over the waves? A superpower, but only when I’m asleep?” There was a smile in her voice.
She made it sound crazy. And maybe it was.
He poked her in return. “I’m just . . . seeing a connection.”
“Makes a great story,” said Mai. Then, maybe realizing she sounded rude, she added, “How about this: next time it gets bad, I’ll try to fall asleep and we’ll see if it helps. Okay? An experiment. Prove your theory right or wrong.”
Thanh nodded and grinned at her. She wasn’t a bad person at all. In fact, she was pretty great sometimes. “It’s a deal.”
Uncle Hung woke, groaning a little across the boat. “Choppy water all of a sudden.�
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Thanh raised his eyebrows at Mai. Her face lit into a slow smile.
“I hate to say it,” said Uncle Truc, yawning—how long had he been awake?—“but we need to bail again, so . . .” He frowned pensively at the rice pot. “We might as well drink it now as later.”
They drank the fresh water, even Uncle Hung, who could barely sit tall enough to drink. As they drank, the sea grew rockier. Thanh didn’t say anything. But when he glanced at Mai, she gestured to the waves and then to herself and shrugged, one eyebrow cocked. Thanh grimaced. Sure, it was crazy to suggest that Mai’s sleeping calmed the waves, and on her waking the harsher weather returned. But there were facts: every time the water stilled, Mai had been sleeping. Every time.
And there was no doubt that the water had become suddenly choppy, and the little boat now bobbed in a way that made Uncle Hung hold his side and groan.
Well, at least it wasn’t storming.
• • •
WHEN ALL the fresh water was drunk and the boat emptied of seawater, they rested. There was nothing else to do. People dozed in and out of sleep.
At one point, Thanh woke up to find Uncle Truc watching him, his lined face gentle. “With your hair all rumpled like that, and the dirt—you look the spitting image of your dad at twelve.”
“I do?” He couldn’t picture his dad any other age than grown-up.
A Crack in the Sea Page 15
