Fourth Uncle in the Mountain

Fourth Uncle in the Mountain

Last Chapter of Fourth Uncle in the Mountain

After Tam left, we waited in the house for two weeks. Thanh had disappeared, which worried everyone. I thought maybe Tam was right to leave. This was craziness.

One night, the eight-year-old boy fell down into the water. We fished him out, but something in the rank liquid infected a sore he had. The infection spread quickly and the boy could hardly breathe after three days. There was a yellow gel oozing out his leg where the cut was. No one was willing to cut him. I tried acupressure on his back to relieve the boy's pain. He died in agony two days later. There were no spells for the dead in my medicine books, so I used one that Fourth Uncle had taught me in the cave. His funeral was undignified. There was no one to pray for the boy once we'd pushed his body off the planks back into the murky depths.

Tam came back before Thanh did. We were surprised to see him. He said that he had narrowly escaped arrest trying to cross back into Vietnam. I was sick when he gave me the little package I'd prepared for Mai. She would be worried where I was. I took the note out of the plastic bag and ripped it up. The shreds of paper followed the boy's bones down into the ripples. Tam grabbed me on the forearm and said not to lose hope. He would try again. I felt like he had betrayed me, but I didn't lose hope for seeing Mai again. I smiled at him. The free country, where I would practice the way of my father, lay before us. To turn back was impossible.

Thanh rowed the boat under the house. We held candles out for him that night as he and the fleeing communist official secured the motor. Thanh didn't know if it would work, but it was the only engine he could find. We waited one more day. One of the neighbors found the boy's body washed up on the bank. Through the slats in the house, we could hear her talk to a Cambodian official. We understood only her finger pointing past the house.

That night we all ate as much rice as we could and took water bottles for the journey. Then we rowed out of the delta and into the ocean by moonlight. We were all lying on the floorboards, covered in plastic with the fishing nets thrown over it.

The boat made it past the checkpoint because the patrolling guards were drunk. Thanh paid them with two gold rings so that we could pass. Out in the open ocean, we could get out from under the tarp and nets. Thanh turned the motor on and we made progress toward Thailand.

My feet shivered as I thought about Mai and my father. I was leaving everything behind. It seemed like I had nothing to leave though, so I wasn't too upset until I remembered my father's house. Why had he given it away to the government? At the time I had accepted his decision. But it seemed selfish. If Mai and I had our own house, I may not have been on that boat. I would have found a way to practice my skills, following my father's bare footsteps no matter how hard the soldiers made me work to subvert their eyes. I thought about how I would find a new cave wherever we landed. It didn't matter that I'd not know the Thai language. I no longer wanted to speak to anyone. I never had.

Three days later, the motor conked out. No gas. We floated south in the current, or so we thought. All the mountains and land had vanished. Thanh said he had made a mistake and didn't know where we were now. Once in a while we would see a ship, but we could never row to it. We didn't think we should. That was the same day our fresh water ran out. The smell of salt was unbearable afterwards. All of us knew that we should have been on the Thai island by now. We rowed desperately, but this made us thirsty. One of the women passed out from dehydration. Then another. And another. It was probably two days, I couldn't tell, when I saw the grim image. A black woman, as beautiful as the pearl goddess Vin, surfing in the wave crests. She was hissing melodically, and smiling, circling the drifting boat. I was going in and out of unconsciousness, rocking with the waves. She told me to prepare a spell for everyone. I knew what that meant. With the little strength left, I laughed in her face. My stomach was cramping up already. I felt a little insane. She vanished as our greatest fear emerged from the horizon.

As I propped myself up for one last view of the sea, I heard an engine. I turned and saw a small speck coming. When the boat arrived, three of us were already dead. Two were freshly shot as they beckoned to the boat. One had died of thirst. Thanh and I were the only ones left conscious. He raised his hands like a prayer, gesturing to the men on the deck. One of the pirates leaning over the hull railing, shot him in the chest. Gritting past my horror, I wondered what they cared about. We had nothing to steal. What senseless killing. I thought I'd fled the land to be free of this sickness, but somehow it had followed me into the ocean. I could not walk barefoot on the ocean to heal people, could I? A different pirate, greasy, chewing beetle nut in a red mouth, looked at me. I stood up, my arms out like a cross. He yelled something to his partner. I would walk on water. I would heal. I stepped over the side and began to sink.