Her memory hovered around them. The boy often sat with his face turned toward the sea, the pole forgotten in his hands. The first time I saw him cry, his father scolded him and he had to set down the pole and wipe his eyes with both hands. The other time it happened, Son merely looked over and watched until the boy recovered himself. Then Son started speaking. His tone was even and gentle, whatever he was saying.
I tell you all this because I saw a love there that was circumstantial and yet more real because of it. In another life, had they not lost the woman they both loved, they would not have tried at all.
For as long as an hour, we’d watch them as the trees swayed above us. Once or twice, the boy glanced up in our direction. If he saw us, he made no mention of it to his father.
It was around this time that I started having nightmares of us back on the boat, except it was just the two of us and we were drifting on the ocean, sitting under moonlight by the stern until we heard something crawling up the side of the boat, and finally a wet hand reached over the gunwale.
I also had dreams of you drowning in the nearby well or eaten by rats in the night, or your body washing up on the beach after a terrible storm. Strangely, in the dreams of us on the boat, you were always alive, and in the dreams of us on the island, you were either dead or missing.
Not coincidentally, it was also around this time that you began going off on your own. We shared our hut with seven people, and I would come back from an errand or wake up from a nap and find that you had disappeared without anyone noticing.
The first time it happened, I was frantic, those dreams of you inflaming my worst fears until I finally found you at the chapel watching people pray. I scolded and spanked you. It did no good. You continued your daily excursions into other people’s huts, peeking through the windows of the sick bay, exploring the cemetery on the hill. At sunset one evening, I found you sitting on the beach looking seaward as metal skiffs shimmered on the horizon.
It made no sense. You were hardly five years old but had no fear of being on your own, of getting lost or hurt, of me punishing you. Each time I found you, I seized your arm and shook you and even threatened you, only to have you look up crossly at me as though I had interrupted something important. I began to wonder if you weren’t trying to escape me, or punish me for whatever it was I had done or hidden from you in my heart.
I finally asked you why you were doing this. I did not expect a real answer.
We were inside our hut, and you peered at the empty doorway and murmured to yourself, I was looking for Father.
A voice awoke me one night. I sat up and found everyone in the hut sound asleep.
You were snoring beside me. I had started tying rope from my ankle to yours, to alert me if you ever wandered away at night. I untied it and stepped outside to listen again for the voice.
I walked barefoot around the camp, beneath clear skies and a full moon. Rats the size of cats squeaked along the empty pathways. I heard a few faint voices from nearby huts, though none that sounded like the one that had awoken me. I was aware that I was following a sound from the depths of sleep, yet I felt compelled to hear it again, as if mute and searching for my own voice, and I continued walking until I found myself outside the camp, headed slowly in the direction of the beach.
The sea was calm that night, lapping the empty shore and washing cool and soft over my ankles. I let the swirling sand bury my feet and looked out into the night, past the lonesome jetty, at the gray moonlit waters. Vietnam was somewhere out there. It might as well have been the moon.
A sound drifted toward me, like someone slowly paddling a boat. It was hours past curfew, so I thought at first that a patrol boat had spotted me. But all I saw was a dark figure about twenty meters out in the water, moving parallel to the shore. I started down the beach to get a closer look without wading in any deeper. I made out her long tangled hair, her white blouse drenched and clinging to her skin. The sea was up to her waist, and she was taking one long, slow stride after the other, dragging herself through the water with her head bowed, searching for something in the shallows.
She had not yet noticed me.
Are you okay? I called out to her. She brushed her hands across the surface of the water as though parting curtains.
I called her a second time. She turned around with a start.
Her long face was unmistakable, that howling still there in the stark eyes that regarded me now with outrage and eagerness. She began dragging herself toward me, rising out of the water with her small gray breasts visible beneath the translucent blouse and its neckline ripped and her hair dripping over those outraged eyes. And I saw again in my mind that flash of her head and arms, frozen forever in midair, when she stepped off the gunwale and plunged into the sea.
I wanted to run away, but my feet were planted in the sand.
She stopped about five meters from me. Have you seen my son? she said.
No, I said immediately. I wanted to tell her that he was alive and safe and probably asleep on the floating hospital moored somewhere out there in the darkness, but I was afraid she might make me take her there.
He’s just a little boy, she continued and shook her head. She gestured around her. I can’t seem to find him anywhere out here. Where could he be if he’s not out here?
How did you lose him?
She peered down the shore and said, It feels like forever ago. She started wading away, the water slashing her knees. But then she turned back around. She looked at me carefully. Are you sure you don’t know where he is?
I felt my heart beating again. I have no idea, I told her. I’m sure he’s okay.
Her face turned hard. She said, I don’t care if he’s okay. I left the world because of him and now I find he’s not here with me like he’s supposed to be? Tell me, is that fair?
I shook my head.
She waded away again, this time toward the rocky end of the shore.
What will you do if you find him? I called after her.
She looked over her shoulder, still moving, and said, I’m taking him with me. What else?
My feet shifted finally in the sand and I took a step forward. Wherever she was headed, her son would not be there. Yet I felt compelled to follow her, to see what she would do if she ever did find him. She seemed both terrible and beautiful in the moonlight.
I made the sign of the cross and watched her figure fade slowly into the night until all that was left was the distant sound of sloshing water.
You fell ill with the flu the next day. I brought you to the sick bay and they gave you medicine, but your fever got worse. You spent two days lying on your cardboard pallet, hardly eating a thing. Each time you awoke from a nap, you started crying for your father. No matter how I tried to soothe you, you kept mewling his name.