by Paul Yoon
He thinks now that it must have been Prany who taught him and Noi how to build a fire. Prany was often the one who ventured across the hill as though it were a palace he wanted to know. Coming back with some new knowledge of how to wash their clothes better or a new stray that had joined the pack or showing off a toy he had bartered for with shoelaces. Two spinning tops. A light wooden airplane the size of a forearm that seemed to fly forever. They had lost it on the same day as it glided down the river. He remembers that.
It is time to go. Alisak picks up the gift, closes up the shop, and walks. He goes the long way, as he often does, taking the trail that follows the slope down behind the hillside houses, passing arrows on posts that point to other towns, and the occasional red-and-white square of paint on the wall to indicate the trail. The morning grows clearer. The wind catches his necktie, and he stops to adjust it beside the stone ledge he likes to sit on to watch the movies the town has begun to show every Midsummer on the bay. The darkening ocean always visible around the story on the portable screen that is large enough so that Alisak can watch from a distance. The music of a romance reaching him. Isabel and her father blinking a flashlight up at him to try to get him to come down.
Forever he will marvel that he has now known this family for longer than anyone in his life. That it was the two of them who were across the dimly lit lobby as he entered the guesthouse for the first time, unsure of the days ahead, the days that had already gone. A father handing him a key and a child no taller than the height of the reception desk, asking if he played cards.
Which is what the woman named Khit mentioned as she stepped into the shop that day so many years ago. How she had just played cards with a child before finding him. And how it was funny that he had left one hill to settle down in another. And then she told him why she was there, her words and the names of people he had once known quickly unspooling like the thread connected to a kite, as Alisak tried to grasp all that she was saying, and then did.
He wonders, wherever Khit is now, whether she thinks of him anymore, the way he sometimes thinks of her, thinks of the time they spent together and their conversation. The way he will sit by the table among the bicycles and listen to what is around him as though she never left. As though she is forever leaving for him a small piece of paper that she thought belonged to Prany—she wasn’t sure, but she had kept it, had made sure to keep it, in case it did belong to him.
And he wonders whether there will come a time when he forgets that he placed that piece of paper in his nightstand drawer, in a pencil case he has never once opened after that day. And whether the forgetting will ever bother him.
He thinks he might, just once, stand this year, clink his glass, and say some words at the birthday party.
Cars are now pulling into the guesthouse below. Alisak recognizes the last one and knows he should hurry down the trail; he had wanted to be there before she arrived.
But he doesn’t hurry. He holds Isabel’s gift with both hands, and as he looks across at the far, bright southern towns along the water, there is that hilltop again—the sound of animals and the river moving below, and the matchbook they keep throwing into the night. Three children fighting sleep so that they can catch the last moments of a small pocket of fire.
Acknowledgments
All facts and figures in the author’s note were taken from Joshua Kurlantzick’s A Great Place to Have a War (Simon & Schuster, 2017); the websites of the BBC and the Mines Advisory Group; and a 2016 speech made by President Barack Obama in Vientiane in which he acknowledged America’s role in the war and committed further support in safely removing, and disposing of, the UXOs that still remain buried throughout the country.
I have significantly altered the geography of Laos and the time line of the war—in particular, the bombings on the Plain of Jars—to suit the purposes of the story. Although the town of Phonsavan exists, the one here is entirely a fiction. As is the area around the Canigou in southern France where I placed “the Vineyard.”
The paragraph on pages 101–102 on “natural resources” and “self-sufficiency” is a combination of an October 24, 1976, New York Times article, “Laos after the Takeover,” by David A. Andelman, and a paragraph from Grant Evans’s The Politics of Ritual and Remembrance: Laos Since 1975 (University of Hawai’i Press, 1998). The descriptions of the billboards at the bus station are based on photographs in the same Evans book. The dialogue about “Party and Government” on page 102 is a recollection from a camp survivor, Thongthip Rathanavilai, from Evans’s A Short History of Laos: The Land in Between (Allen & Unwin, 2002). The paragraph about “optimism” on page 76 is from the same book. The mention of Laos being a “domino” on page 155 is a quote from President Dwight D. Eisenhower. I am also indebted to Vatthana Pholsena’s Post-war Laos: The Politics of Culture, History, and Identity (Cornell University Press, 2006) and the poems of Mai Der Vang.
The centaur Khit refers to is Nessus. The statue is not in Perpignan but in the Tuileries Garden in Paris. The image of the movie playing on the bay on page 253 was inspired by a section in an essay by Ralph Sneeden, “Blaenavon,” published in The Common.
* * *
I want to thank the National Endowment for the Arts for their support during the writing of this book. My deepest thanks also to Alexander Maksik, Colombe Schneck, Stefan Schaefer, and everyone at the Can Cab residency in Spain, where I wrote parts of this book. I would like to thank as well Arthur and Sarah Evans, Chris and Deirdre Caldarone, and all the Crooked Laners in that corner of Massachusetts where I was given time and a room of my own.
Thank you especially and always to Ralph and Gwen Sneeden, who are family to me.
Thank you again to Christopher Lin. And again to Christopher Beha and everyone at Harper’s Magazine, where a portion of this book was first published.
For their kindness, enthusiasm, and dedication, I am again indebted to everyone at Simon & Schuster, most especially Zachary Knoll, Kayley Hoffman, Carly Loman, Amanda Lang, Elizabeth Breeden, and Jonathan Karp.
Marion Duvert, Simon Toop, David Kambhu, Lilly Sandberg, and Griffin Irvine at the Clegg Agency: exquisite minds, grace, and fire.
Marysue: everlasting gratitude for your faith, guidance, friendship, and brilliant light.
Bill: my beloved friend, mentor, brother, fierce wonder.
Laura: to this great, vast journey with you.
More from the Author
The Mountain
Snow Hunters
About the Author
© PETER YOON
Paul Yoon is the author of two story collections, Once the Shore, which was a New York Times Notable Book, and The Mountain, which was a National Public Radio Best Book of the Year. His novel Snow Hunters won the Young Lions Fiction Award. A recipient of fellowships from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers and the National Endowment for the Arts, he lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife, the fiction writer Laura van den Berg, and their dog, Oscar.
SimonandSchuster.com
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Paul-Yoon
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ALSO BY PAUL YOON
The Mountain
Snow Hunters
Once the Shore
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, charac
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Copyright © 2020 by Paul Yoon
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