The Boat

by NAM LE

  Then, at the end of the afternoon – after five long hours – Truong's small body suddenly unclenched and his breath eased. The lines on his forehead cleared. It seemed, unbelievably, that he had prevailed.

  "It's over," Mai said joyfully. "Chi, the fever has broken."

  Quyen cradled him in her lap, rocking him lightly. "Yes, yes, yes, yes," she sighed, "Sleep, my beloved." His clothes were soaked with sweat. For a fleeting moment, as Mai saw his face unfastened from its distress, the fantasy crossed her mind that he was dead. She shook it off. Quyen's hair fell over her son's face. They both appeared to her strangely now, as if at an increasing remove, as if she were trying to hold them in view through the stained, swaying window of a bus.

  Truong hiccuped, opened his eyes and rasped, "Ma has some water?" With an almost inaudible moan Quyen hunched over and showered his brow with kisses. Outside the evening was falling, the last of the light sallow on his skin. After a while Truong gathered his breath again.

  "Ma will sing to Child?"

  "Sing for the poor child," said the old woman.

  Quyen nodded. She started singing: a Southern lullaby Mai hadn't heard for years, her voice more tender than Mai had imagined it could be.

  Truong shook his head weakly. "No – not that one." He made an effort to swallow. "My favorite song."

  "Your favorite song," repeated Quyen. She bit her lip, frowning, then swung around mutely, strickenly, to Mai.

  Mai reached out to stroke Truong's hair. She said, "But Child must sleep, nha?” She waited for him to completely shut his eyes. Quyen found her hand and held it. Mai cleared her throat, then, surprised to find her voice even lower, hoarser than Quyen's, she started singing:

  I am the vigil moon that sheds you light

  My soul abides within the Thousand Peaks;

  Where drunk with wine and Long-Tuyen sword you seek

  And slaughter all the leopards of the night.

  And in the steps of Gioi Tu, seize Lau-Lan

  And quash the Man-Khe rivers into one.

  You wear the scarlet shadow of the sun:

  And yet your steed is whiter than my palm...

  Abruptly her voice broke off, then she swallowed, picked up the thread of melody again, and sang it through, her voice as hard as Quyen's face was tender, her voice resolute and unwavering, sang it through to the very end.

  The old woman nodded to herself.

  ***

  THE NEXT MORNING – the morning of their thirteenth day – a couple of the fishermen sighted land. A swell of excitement, like a weak current, ran through the boat. People looked at one another as though for the first time.

  "We made it," someone quietly announced, returning from deck. He paused on the companionway, his head silhouetted against the sunlight. In the glare, Mai couldn't make out his face. He said, "We're safe now." The words deep in his throat.

  Quyen and Truong were underneath the stairs. Mai had left them to themselves during the night. Now, with those others strong enough, Mai followed the man above deck. Outside, the dawn sun steeped through her, as though her body were made of paper. Dizziness overwhelmed her when she saw the half-empty deck – had they been so depleted? She thought, with an odd pang, of Truong, his incessant counting. Then she saw the prow, teeming with people, all peering ahead, attitudes stalled in their necks and shoulders. She made her way forward, then spotted, far ahead, the tiny breakers on the reefs, and behind those, the white sand like a bared smile. Birds hanging in midair over the water.

  During the night she had come to her decision. Her thoughts starting always with Truong and ending always with her father, upright in his hospital bed, staring at some invisible situation in front of him. A street with its lights turned off. She came into morning feeling a bone-deep ache through her body. The boat would land – they would all land – Mai would write to her family, and wait for them, and then she would look after Truong as if he were her own child. The decision dissolved within her, rose up with the force of joy. She would tell Quyen. She would look after him, completely, unconditionally, and try not to think about the moment when Quyen might ask her to stop.

  Nearly weightless in her body, Mai descended the companion-way. When she reached the bottom she spun and searched behind the stairs. There they were. The hold awash with low talk.

  "Chi Quyen."

  She was about to call out again when she sensed something amiss. Quyen's back-folded over Truong's sleeping form-it was too stiff. The posture too awkward.

  Mai moved closer. "Chi?" she asked.

  Quyen's crouched torso expanded, took in air. Without turning around she said, "What will I do now?" Her voice brute, flat.

  Mai squatted down. Her heart tripping faster and faster, up into her throat.

  Quyen said, "He didn't."

  She said, "All night. He wouldn't wake up."

  She was wrong, thought Mai. What did she know, thought Mai. When she'd left last night, Truong had been recovering. He'd been fine. He'd been asking Mai, over and over, to sing to him. What could have happened?

  Quyen shifted to one side. He was bundled up in a blanket. The bundle tapered at one end – where his legs must have been. Mai could see no part of him. How could this be the end of it? She wrung the heels of her hands into her eyes, as if the fault lay with them. Then she felt Quyen's face, cool with shock, next to her own, rough and wet and cool against her knuckles, speaking into her ear. At first she recoiled from Quyen's touch. What was she saying? She was asking Mai for help. She was asking Mai to help her carry him. It was time, she said. Time, which had distended every moment on the boat – until there had seemed to be no shape to it – seemed now to snap violently shut, crushing all things into this one task. They were standing – when had they gotten up? – then they were kneeling, facing each other over the length of him. Quyen circumspect in her movements, as though loath to take up any more space than her son now needed. She seemed not to see anything she looked at. Together, the two of them brought the bundle aft, through the shifting, silent crowd, past the derrick-crane, where a group of the strongest men waited. There, the wind turned a corner of the blanket over and revealed the small head, the ash beauty of his face, the new dark slickness of his skin. With a shudder Quyen fell to it and pressed and rubbed her lips against his cheek.

  Anh Phuoc, standing with three other men, waited for Quyen to finish before touching her shoulder.

  He said, to no one in particular, "We'll make land soon." As though this were an order, Mai took Quyen's arm and led her the full span of the boat to the prow. Again, the crowd parted for them. They stood together in silence, the spray moistening their faces as they looked forward, focusing all their sight and thought on that blurry peninsula ahead, that impossible place, so that they would not be forced to behold the men at the back of the boat peeling the blanket off, swinging the small body once, twice, three times before letting go, tossing him as far behind the boat as possible so he would be out of sight when the sharks attacked.

  Acknowledgments

  For their patience, grace, enthusiasm and expertise, my deepest thanks to my editor, Robin Desser, and my agent, Eric Simonoff.

  For their invaluable early support, my thanks to Michael Ray, Brigid Hughes, Yiyun Li, Christina Thompson, Katherine Vaz, Hannah Tinti, and Bradford Morrow.

  My heartfelt thanks to Ashley Capps, Leslie Jamison, David Sarno, Josh Rolnick, Fiona McFarlane, Salvatore Scibona, Danny Khalastchi, Chris Stuck, Ché Frye, Shiv Chandran, Priyanthi Milton, Meredith Rose, Marilynne Robinson, Ethan Canin, Lan Samantha Chang, James Alan McPherson, Margot Livesey, Chris Offutt, Adam Haslett, and Charles D'Ambrosio – friends, teachers, and readers all. Thanks also to Cécile Barendsma, Connie Brothers, Deb West, Maria Campbell, Josh Kendall, and Chris Lamb.

  For their generous support, I am indebted to the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Phillips Exeter Academy, James Michener and the Copernicus Society of America, the MacDowell Colony, and the Corporation of Ya
ddo.

  In memory of Frank Conroy.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Nam Le was born in Vietnam and raised in Australia. He has received the Pushcart Prize, the Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award, and fellowships from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and Phillips Exeter Academy. Currently the fiction editor at the Harvard Review, he has published work in Zoetrope: All-Story, A Public Space, Conjunctions, and One Story, and has been anthologized in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007, Best New American Voices 2009, and The Best Australian Stories 2007. He divides his time between Australia and the United States. This is his first book.

  A NOTE ON THE TYPE

  This book was set in Old Style No. 7. This face is largely based on a series originally cut by the Bruce Foundry in the early 1870s, and that face, in its turn, appears to have followed in all essentials the details of a face designed and cut some years before by the celebrated Edinburgh typefounders Miller & Richard. Old Style No. 7, composed in a page, gives a subdued color and an even texture that make it easily and comfortably readable.

  Composed by Creative Graphics, Allentown, Pennsylvania

  Printing and binding by RRD Harrisonburg,

  Harrisonburg, Virginia

  Designed by M. Kristen Bearse