The Son of Every Man

Chapter 9.4

A day and a half passed. The outlook gradually became more grim. They hadn't spotted a single other vessel since the fabled sighting by the driver. With nothing else to do, several men heaved the outboard motor onto the deck and began dismantling it. The boy got close enough to see a gaping, broken-out hole in its iron casing. "I've never seen anything like it before," said one man. "Highly improbable—look the piston is fine. There's no reason it should have happened." The man's wife scowled at him and asked: "What does probability matter when it's already come to pass?"

Some rags were soaked in motor oil and lit aflame. A few men practiced a technique of collecting the black, billowing smoke under a suspended tarp, releasing it in careful bursts in order to signal S.O.S. The boy watched as they concluded, nodding confidently to one another, assuring each other they would be ready when the time came.

The past two meals he had eaten contained no fish—only a thin soup of waterlogged rice. He longed for another miracle sardine, even scouring the water at night until doing so became torture and he forced himself to believe it never happened.

The young woman's path to recovery was fraught. She continued to bleed until the boy worried she would run out. He tended to her every fluctuation in mood, carefully tuning his senses to her changing states of wellness. He walked a self-conscious line between doting to the point of irritation, and backing off—though doing so made him fear missing some crucial sign of her deteriorating condition.

She was not subject to the food rations imposed on all the others, but she imposed them on herself. She did not want to take more than her fair share. The nurse told her to eat more, otherwise she would die. She did so with great reluctance. On the sixth night, she became very ill, and the boy whispered to himself a soothing reassurance just in case, by dawn, she was gone. But the next morning she was still alive, pale but reporting that her symptoms had eased. To the boy, she still looked very unwell, but he smiled encouragingly.

It was now the seventh day. The hot weather had gradually, mercifully given way to cooler temperatures. At nights, he shivered, but he was glad to. A constant breeze bore them in God knows which direction. Three teenaged boy teetered on the rail, high up on the bow, and just as one of the mothers scolded them and yelled for them to get down, the oldest teen shouted that he saw another boat.

People who had long acted cavalier, as though they were not waiting in desperation for such a sighting, quickly abandoned their pretenses and also their manners, rudely pressing through the crowd to get a better view from the edge. The boy had not suspected such pent up expectation until he witnessed its release.

"He's right!" shouted a stout man in a faded blue t-shirt. "It's not far."

Many pointed in the direction of the small boat as if helping others to spot it. In fact, it was impossible to miss the black, draped outlines making up its distant form.

The oil-soaked rags were fetched and the signal was prepared, but it was not needed. To everyone's delight and also disbelief, the mysterious black boat made a roaring sound as it motored toward them. It must not have occurred to anyone to be fearful. Perhaps there was no sense in fearing the only thing that might save them.

As the boat drew near, the faces of the several men aboard it sprang into focus. Fuel to the motor was cut and the boat became silent as their own as it came up in a rush of water only ten feet away. The boy felt their boat begin rocking in all the wake.

The water settled and strange voices began to rise above it. "Thai!" shouted the man in the blue shirt. "They're Thai."

Many uncertain glances were exchanged at this point. They had all heard the news stories, directly or indirectly.

"What's the matter with this boat?" asked one of the men near the bow. Apparently he knew they were Vietnamese and he spoke the language well. His lanky frame rose and fell as the two boats rocked out of sync with one another.

"The motor is shot," replied the driver from the second day. "Hole through the block. There's no way to fix it without a new casing."

The lanky man paused. His angular features shifted in consideration. "We have an extra motor, perfect for this boat. We will give it to you if you allow some of your women to come with us. They can come back when we are through."

Because of something that had happened in his village a year earlier at the hands of soldiers from the North, the boy knew immediately what was insinuated, and roughly what the men would do to the women.

The man in the blue shirt spun around to face them all, shocked and even scandalized by the proposition. The boy hadn't realized it, but each of the several preceding days, which felt easily transposable to months, carried a certain positive energy. Each person had succeeded so thoroughly in treating the next with dignity, that few could have even imagined the alternative. But now, this new event crashed into what he and surely many others had taken for granted as a safe and supportive time.

The man turned slowly back to face the Thai boat. He shook his head. "No," he said. "We do not agree to those terms."

Naively, for a few seconds, the boy believed these words would arrest the exchange.

The men on the Thai boat stood eerily still and silent.

"Please," the man in the blue shirt implored, "consider giving us the engine in good faith. We cannot accept the trade you have proposed."

Maybe the shaking doubt in the man's voice foretold what was about to happen, but the boy, shrewd for his age about such matters, realized the Thai men would take what they wanted regardless. He even suspected there had been no spare engine in the first place.

Seconds later, several of the men on the Thai boat took out large guns. The loud engine started and the boat charged forward, crashing against their own, causing it to shudder and rock violently, knocking several people from their feet. Everyone backed away from the guns, toward the far side of the boat. In all their fear and shock, they took care not to trample those who had fallen.

With no defenses, they stood frozen as the Thai men stitched the two vessels together with rope. And then, guns pointed chaotically by some, machetes at the waists of the rest, the men began to board their boat.

The boy thought of no one else except for the young woman. He was incapable of broader reasoning. He threw himself over her and did not move. The men were shouting amongst themselves, voices clanging unintelligibly like metal against metal. He hoped that by some miracle she would be overlooked. But soon the moment arrived. One of the voices became suddenly clear as it switched to his own language, heavily accented: "Move." He didn't.

He knew what was to come before it happened, because he recognized the sound of a blade unsheathing. It fell hard against his back, half bludgeoning, half slicing. But it fell only once. Before feeling any pain, he twisted around to see the man gripping the machete, face stricken, held back by his cohorts. All the terror and lunacy of the moment did not obscure the staggering impossibility of the sight. She would be spared.

;-;

There is a source of light that resides above the front porches and stoops of many residences of the world. Some people turn it on for a limited time in the evening, but a special kind of person keeps it lit all night. The light is a signal that means a stranger is welcome. It assumes the best of every person who might pass by, without fear or judgment...without knowing anything about them at all.

Though the boy could not have known, his journey was far from over that day. Circumstances much worse, in many respects, would later befall him and the other souls on the boat. He would survive in part due to luck, in part because he held out hope for something like that light. He would never give up on his version of an illuminated doorway along a very dark road. He would stay alive because, day after day, the truth of one day reaching it remained burning in his heart. He believed, with a healthy dose of desperation, that this salvation would soon come...if only he could hold on from one moment, to the next, and the next—

;-;