From above them, Uncle Hung said, “They’re following. We can’t outrun them.”
“We can buy a little time,” Uncle Truc said. “Sang’s cutting her hair.”
“Right,” said Uncle Hung. “Here we go.” And the boat sped up, engine groaning and straining.
As Sang hacked her hair, sawing it off in big wads, Mai snaked her hand up over the lip of the boat and threw the clumps of hair overboard. When Sang’s hair was chopped, Mai took the knife and hastily trimmed it closer, into a shaggy boyish cut that looked even worse for having been done in a rush by two people with a knife. Sang slipped Uncle Hung’s extra shirt over her head.
“Will I pass?” asked Sang.
Mai looked at her, considering, her face suddenly serious. No one answered.
Sang pursed her lips. She took the knife and sliced her forehead in a quick gash near the hairline.
It wasn’t a deep or long cut—barely a scratch—but it bled. “Bandage,” she said. Mai took the knife, cut a strip from the bottom of Sang’s shirt, and wrapped it around Sang’s head. The blood still oozed on her face, and her hair stuck up, matted with it. But she looked much less like a girl.
They all crawled into the tent. Sang tucked the necklace into Uncle Hung’s shirt just as shots peppered over the boat.
They all froze. Uncle Hung immediately cut the engine. “That’s it,” he said quietly. “I hope you’re all ready.”
“We are,” said Mai. Her face was calm. But her body was tense, all her muscles flexed.
And they waited in the bottom of the boat for the pirates.
• • •
FIVE THAI PIRATES stepped into a dinghy and headed for Uncle Hung’s boat. When Mai peeked over the edge, she reported that at least two more were standing on the deck of their own boat, machetes in hand.
A drip of blood slid down Sang’s face. She swiped at it, her hand shaking violently. She looked like she was going to be sick. Thanh felt the same way; though he’d heard gunfire all his life, he’d never actually been shot at before.
“You look good,” Mai whispered. “Manly.” Sang glared at her but looked less sick. “I’m serious,” said Mai.
“It’s true,” said Thanh. “You look great. I mean, you look really bad. Like a boy, I mean.”
Mai nodded at him as if he’d said something clever.
The Turtle, who’d been quiet through all the hair-cutting and hiding, had crawled out of the tent and began to cry, banging her curled-up foot on the floor. Uncle Truc shrugged and picked her up. “Tuyet. It’s okay.” He rubbed her back, calling her by her real name. Thanh wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Uncle Truc do that before. “Tuyet, honey. Shhh.”
The pirates yelled something from their boat and laughed. Thanh couldn’t tell what they said, since he didn’t speak Thai, but he guessed that they’d seen the baby and now knew what they’d only suspected until then—that Uncle Truc and Uncle Hung weren’t lost fishermen but refugees—and the pirates got excited, hoping for loot on board.
“Stay sitting,” said Uncle Hung from above, “unless we tell you to move. Stay where you are. We’ll get through this.” Uncle Truc handed the quieted baby back down to Thanh, just inside the tent, and stood tall and lean next to his shorter elder brother, their shoulders—one lopsided and one broad—dark shadows against the blue sky.
• • •
THE PIRATES TOOK almost everything. They took the food and the water and the fuel that the transport captain had given them. They took most of the engine. They took the little money that Uncle Truc and Uncle Hung had saved up for their arrival at the refugee camp and had stored in a jar. They took Thanh’s and Mai’s shiny American quarters, also stored in that jar. They took Uncle Truc’s extra shirt, which had two gold rings sewn into it—though they didn’t know that when they took it. They took the tent poles. The tarp ripped when they tore it off the poles, and they dropped that in the bottom of the boat, laughing. They laughed even harder when they saw Sang, Mai, and Thanh huddled beneath with The Turtle, who started wailing again.
Then one of the pirates gestured at the three men—the two men and Sang, that is, who was thinner but as tall as Uncle Hung. The pirate pointed with his long knife, one, two, three, and motioned taking off a shirt. He wanted their shirts. Sang stood up slowly, her eyes darting to Uncle Truc, her head bent.
Hunched in the bottom of the boat with Mai and the baby, Thanh felt as if he could not breathe. The Turtle, now on his lap, finally fell silent, as if even she understood how serious it all was.
Mai spread her hands out on the floor, crouching as if she were going to spring. Or maybe—was she scared? Her face was clear as always, but her eyes sharpened as she watched.
The pirate gestured once more.
Uncle Hung stepped forward, a true big brother. “You’ve taken everything we have,” he said loudly and slowly, hands held out in front of him. “Leave us now.” Uncle Truc stepped to his side, so that they both stood in front of Sang, and nodded. Sang stood tall behind them, her head now raised to see the pirates, the blood still oozing from her forehead. Her face, in profile to Thanh, looked so strong and beautiful—even grimy and bloody, even exhausted and starved—he wondered how the pirates could not see that she was a woman.
Uncle Hung said again, louder, “Go.”
The pirates may not have understood his words, but they knew what he meant. The one who’d demanded the shirts narrowed his eyes to slits. Quick as quick his hand shot out, a knife flashed.
And he stabbed Uncle Hung in the stomach.
Uncle Hung stood very still, gasped, and slowly brought his hand to his side.
Mai leapt up with a wordless yell. But before she could attack, Sang pushed her down, hard, and she landed with a thump next to Thanh.
The pirate with the knife turned toward Sang—who raised her hands slowly, as if he were arresting her. Even more slowly she brought her hands to her neck and fished out the Buddha necklace, showing the man, then pressed her hands together and sank to her knees. She was praying—or pretending to. Thanh didn’t know which.
The pirate who’d stabbed Uncle Hung wiped his knife off on his pants for several minutes before putting it away, his eyes flicking to Sang and the necklace. The other pirates turned away and spit uneasily out to sea. They didn’t demand the shirts again; it was as if the Buddha made them change their minds. Maybe they weren’t as bad as some. They got back in their dinghy with their loot.
But the pirate who’d demanded the shirts was still angry. He stopped before he got into the dinghy, pulled a pistol out of his belt, and shot once into Uncle Hung’s boat. Not at the people. Just at the boat, near where Thanh and Mai and The Turtle huddled, where the tent had been. Screaming, The Turtle covered her ears and hid her face. The pirates left, their dinghy motoring back to their fishing boat, laughing and talking as they went.
Uncle Hung’s boat, a hole in its bottom, slowly began to fill with water.
Uncle Hung himself swayed, his hand pressed to his side, his shirt blooming red like an opening flower.
5
EVERYONE AROUND Thanh moved in jerky slow motion, like a movie caught in a film projector at the wrong speed. Thanh could hear nothing but a roaring in his head, as if his ears were filled with water. He shook his head, back and forth, to empty the water out. But he still couldn’t hear.
Wordlessly, Mai stuttered over to Uncle Hung, her adopted uncle, and took his free hand, the one that wasn’t pressed into his side. He wrapped his arm around her and leaned, but she couldn’t hold him up. Slowly they sank to the bench beside the gutted motor.
Churning away on the gray water, the pirates’ dinghy reached their boat.
Sang’s mouth moved. She pulled off Uncle Hung’s extra shirt, and Uncle Truc tore it into strips and bound some of the strips around Uncle Hung’s side where the blood came out.
The pirate s
hip pulled its dinghy aboard.
While Uncle Truc and Mai helped Uncle Hung, Sang ran to the middle of the boat. With her hands as scoops, she bailed the water that streamed in through the bullet hole. Her mouth moved again, and her face turned toward Thanh. But he couldn’t hear her. There was no sound.
The pirate ship began to move away. It grew smaller and smaller, sliding toward the horizon.
Then, screaming: The Turtle. Thanh was still holding her. She screamed and screamed, right in his ear, and all the sound came rushing back.
Uncle Hung moaned, clutching his side. Mai murmured something to him. The baby screamed again. Thanh put her down, and she scooted to the middle of the boat, where she paddled her hands in the incoming water.
Sang spoke. “Help me.” She looked angry more than anything else. “Thanh. Help me.” Her eyes were fierce with unshed tears.
Thanh’s head swung back and forth, back and forth, between Uncle Hung (with Mai and Uncle Truc still bandaging him) and Sang. Nothing made sense. Sang said again, louder, “Thanh.”
He threw himself to the bottom of the boat and scooped handfuls of water as fast as he could, flailing. One handful hit Sang in the face. Most others didn’t make it over the lip of the boat. The Turtle shrieked. The water came in faster than they could scoop it out.
“I’m okay,” Uncle Hung said. “Take care of the boat.”
Uncle Truc brought Sang the empty rice pot, which had been kicked under the tarp and missed by the pirates. While Sang bailed with the pot—now with more to show for her work—Uncle Truc inspected the hole and clicked his tongue in disgust. “Well, we’ll have to patch it.” He rocked back on his heels and looked around the ship pensively. “But with what?” He glanced at Thanh, then away.
Thanh stopped bailing. His handfuls weren’t doing any good.
“I still have my knife,” Mai said. She slid it out from her waistband, where it had been hidden. “Saved a bit of the food, too.” She pointed at The Turtle. Uncle Truc reached into the baby’s clothing and pulled out a little sack that contained a few handfuls of dry rice. He gave his daughter a hug and lifted her out of the incoming water, then put her back down, as there was nowhere else for her to go.
“The rice was all I could grab,” Mai said.
“Good girl,” said Uncle Truc. “You always have your wits with you.”
Mai shrugged, as if what she’d done was obvious and expected. “Too bad they took the water jugs.”
“Thanh,” Uncle Truc said.
Thanh hadn’t saved anything from the pirates. He hadn’t even thought of it.
“Plug this hole for a few minutes,” Uncle Truc said, gesturing to the bottom of the boat, “while Mai and I figure out a more permanent fix.”
He turned away, Mai following, and walked toward the front of the boat—as if there might be something there.
Thanh didn’t move. Plug the hole—with what? And how would that help, anyway? They had nothing left—no motor, no food, no water. Uncle Hung had been stabbed. What did the hole in the boat matter? They were going to die. He stared at it, watched the water pour in.
“With your hand,” Sang said, bailing. “Or foot. Or sit on it. Just keep out the water. Try.” Her words were impatient, as if she thought Thanh didn’t want to help.
And that idea—that he didn’t want to help—suddenly made something inside him burst open. He wanted to help; he always wanted to help. But his help never helped anything. “Try? Why should I?”
Uncle Truc and Mai turned and stared at him, Mai’s face confused, Uncle Truc’s stern. Then their expressions folded, like sheets of paper, smaller and smaller, until finally they closed into an emotion that Thanh could put in his pocket and carry around: disappointment. Again.
No. Thanh grabbed the rice pot from Sang. It was undamaged, and somehow that made him furious. What right did the rice pot have to be whole and unharmed? There was a hole in the boat, a hole in Uncle Hung. A chasm in himself that he could feel growing and growing. His arm, of its own volition, whipped the rice pot away, and his voice yelled. “Try? What is the point?”
The rice pot flew through the air in a high arc and landed on the water nearby, floating like a little boat.
As soon as the pot hit the water, Mai dove out of the boat after it, retrieved it, and returned to the boat, where Uncle Truc hauled her and the pot back in, dripping. Neither said anything to him.
“Thanh.” Sang spoke through gritted teeth. “Plug the hole.”
“Why?” Thanh said. He wasn’t inside his own body. Someone else was talking, making his mouth move. What that someone else was saying, though, made a lot of sense. “We’re all going to die. Why should we fix the hole?”
“We’re not going to die,” Uncle Truc said loudly. “Not today.”
Thanh whipped to face Uncle Truc, his own adopted uncle, his neighbor, his father’s good friend. “Why did you bring us on this boat? We’d be better off back home! Why’d you take us out here to kill us?”
“THANH!” screamed Sang.
Startled, The Turtle wailed. Sang hugged her.
Ignoring Thanh and Sang, Mai studied the hole in the bottom of the boat. She pressed her sturdy knee into the bullet hole, peered down at it, and then raised her thumb to Uncle Truc. Around her knee, water seeped. But she’d slowed down the influx.
The hole wasn’t fixed, though. Nothing was fixed. Thanh’s hateful words floated in the air.
Uncle Truc flushed. His hands formed fists and his knuckles whitened.
Thanh knew that the person in his body spoke wrongly. It wasn’t fair to blame Uncle Truc for what had happened. Uncle Truc had never promised a safe journey. In fact, he’d wanted to leave Thanh at home, unharmed, with his own wife and children. Sang had only brought him along because she thought he needed taking care of.
But as much as he wanted to, Thanh couldn’t take his words back. The person inside him who’d yelled wouldn’t apologize. Thanh saw Sang’s anguished face, and he tried to get back in his body and say the words. But everything in his face felt stiff, and instead of I’m sorry, the words that came out were, “I wish I was home.” He said it as much to Sang as to Uncle Truc.
And then he was—suddenly—back inside his body, wet and cold, and everything was all wrong, and he wished he was a little boy again with his parents, not a twelve-year-old who was supposed to be nearly grown-up and capable of doing things and instead messed everything up. He wished his mother were here, or his father.
He wished he weren’t a disappointment.
Sang turned away from him and bailed. The Turtle, silent again, shivered in the water.
Uncle Truc had been breathing deeply. The redness in his face faded. When he spoke, his voice was tight with all the things he wasn’t saying.
“Mai, help me. Thanh, plug the hole. Sang, keep scooping.”
Mai stood up, glancing quickly at Thanh and then away. As Mai and Uncle Truc started scouring the boat, Thanh bent and squeezed his fingers into the bullet hole. The water shot out to the sides, the way a faucet shoots water when you block the opening with your thumb. Sang, soaked with the sudden shower, paused and glared. Thanh couldn’t push hard enough with his hand to cut off the water. He knelt; his knee, knobbier than Mai’s, didn’t stop the water, which pooled into the boat. “It’s not working,” Sang said.
“I know,” Thanh said. This world, this entire world and everything in it, was awful. He turned and sat, as hard as he could, on the hole. He sat in the puddle his sister was draining; if he shifted he could feel a trickle of seawater, but mostly her work lowered the water level, which meant that his butt was keeping the ocean out.
The boat wasn’t going to sink, not yet, anyway.
Thanh looked across the boat to Uncle Hung, who slouched next to the gutted engine, ashen, hand on his wounded side, watching Thanh with a thoughtful look on his face. They st
ared into each other’s eyes, and Uncle Hung nodded once but did not smile.
The others moved with purpose. Sang bailed methodically. Mai and Uncle Truc catalogued what little they had left, looking for a fix for the boat, shaking their heads and murmuring to each other about the stripped engine, the rice pot, and one empty dented water container they’d found, like the rice pot hidden under the ripped tarp. The Turtle silently slapped at the shrinking puddle at the bottom of the boat.
Slowly, Uncle Hung slid off the bench and eased himself to the floor, holding his side, breathing carefully.
“Uncle Hung?” Thanh said.
Mai ran over to her uncle, face grim, but he waved her away. “I’m not dying yet. I’ll let you know if I do.”
She turned back, taking only a fraction of a moment to narrow her eyes at Thanh before starting a low conversation with Uncle Truc while gesturing at his sandaled feet.
Thanh, sitting on the hole in the boat, thought, This is not the story I want to tell. This is a terrible story.
I am a terrible person.
6
IN THE END, they used one of Uncle Truc’s sandals to fix the hole. It was better than nothing. The sandal’s sole was rubber and easily cut to fit the hole, into which it was wedged as tightly as possible. On top of that patch they placed the rest of the sandal and the (empty and dented, but not broken) water container, filled with ocean water to weight it. The leak still seeped, but with occasional draining with the rice pot, they could get by. Now that no one had to run the engine or refill the fuel tank, it was easy to take turns at bailing duty.
When The Turtle wasn’t in her father’s arms, she was back in a sling on Sang’s hip—Uncle Truc contributed his shirt for that purpose. She cried the first night from hunger and thirst, but now, late in the second day after the pirates, she’d stopped crying and just hiccupped and buried her face in her father’s or Sang’s shoulder. Her lips cracked from the sun and heat.
Uncle Hung was weak. There was no denying how serious his injury was. The morning after the pirates, Uncle Truc removed his elder brother’s shirt-bandage and replaced it with a new one. The wound was still oozing blood—more if Uncle Hung tried to move—and there was no way to clean it. So Uncle Truc bound it back up, hoping that the firmness of the bandage would help. They just had to believe that Uncle Hung’s body could heal itself—without food or water. Mai made a shade for him by draping the biggest piece of ripped tarp over the broken engine he sat beside; everyone took turns sitting with him to take a break from the relentless sun. Every now and then the tarp would flop onto their heads and someone would readjust it to keep the sun off Uncle Hung as much as possible.
A Crack in the Sea Page 14