Quan Barry - She Weeps Each Time You're Born

An disappeared under the water. Son could still see where the tips of his fingers had scratched at the surface. Afterward Son thought this must be how the bird finds the fish through the darkness. What it feels like. No time for thought. How the body takes over. He swam to the spot where the water had closed over An and dove. When he came back up, his father was retching in his arms.

Ba, said Son. His father had taken on a new heaviness. It was all Son could do to keep An’s head cradled above water. Together they drifted downstream, the boat growing smaller and smaller. He wondered if the others would raise the anchor and come after them. He knew once they raised anchor they would stop for nothing. He could feel the half-healed cut on his face starting to sting. His father coughed. Please, An sputtered. Leave me. Son held on tighter. I order you to let me go. It was as if someone else were talking in his arms.

Ten minutes passed. Son could have kicked them to shore, but he thought it best to stay in the water. For the second time in less than two weeks it was out of his hands, the Mekong charged with his destiny. If he thought about it, the one thing he’d want more than anything else these past few years had already come true. He was holding his father in his arms, the moonlight surging all around them.

Son lost track of the time. An hour, minutes, weeks passed. They were flotsam in the river, an island of two. A beating heart sailing down a dark throat until it lands where it will.

Later he would tell Rabbit that the stories were true. He could smell it before it surfaced. The animal’s breath like night soil, rotten and fetid from the heaps of garbage it ingested, teeth yellow as piss, each one studded in the mouth like a series of nails. Fishermen had cut open crocodiles to find bicycle tires in their stomachs, one with an entire French tea set tarnishing in its guts. Most of the freshwater crocs weren’t large enough to take a grown man, though they could take a limb and leave the victim to bleed to death. There was one said to have taken more than fifteen water buffalo in the last two years all up and down the river, though nobody had ever seen it.

The women were almost five miles downriver from Cantho when they heard the drone of a small outboard engine. It was another few miles to the spot the doctor had chosen for them to board, a wide-mouthed inlet where the water was deep enough for the boat to draft. From there it would be another mile to the spot with enough shoreline vegetation for the men to hide until they could be ferried on board. As the little motorboat approached, Phuong gripped the sampan’s edges. Even in the dusky light, Rabbit could see her knuckles blanching.

They were teenagers, just boys in makeshift uniforms, jackets torn at the elbow. Everyone else was off at the festival. Huyen muttered under her breath. The younger soldiers were the worst, many of them officious and drunk on the little bit of power that came with the uniform. If someone needed to be executed, it was often boy-soldiers who did the killing. His first night in Ba Nuoc, Rabbit’s father had told a story about a group of boy-soldiers on the front lines in Cambodia who had stomped a fellow soldier to death for snoring too loudly.

The older boy was working the engine. With his free hand he made a brusque motion in the air. Rabbit could see a few stray hairs sprouting on his chin. Qui stopped rowing. The boat pulled up alongside. For a spell the two boys sat staring, Qui’s beauty like nothing they had ever seen. Then the boy at the engine took charge. Papers, he squeaked. None of them moved. Even though he looked older than the other boy, Rabbit thought he couldn’t have been more than fourteen.

Maybe they all should have seen it coming. All day she had been working herself into a quiet rage. Sang smacked the water with her hand. The younger boy jumped. She looked him dead in the eye. Rabbit could feel the heat coming off the girl’s skin. This is my wedding night, Sang said, a coldness in her voice. She was a fifteen-year-old girl on the verge of becoming a woman. Even the boys knew they had only just scratched the surface.

There were no men around, no one to save face in front of. The boys wouldn’t speak of it later even between themselves. The younger boy averted his eyes. A hundred years of happiness to you, sister, he said. The older boy kept his eyes on the engine. Qui took up the oar. Rabbit looked at Huyen. She could tell the old woman was doing her best not to smile. She wondered what would happen later when Sang realized the truth.

The river croc made its first pass. It was swimming high enough out of the water that Son could see the prehistoric ridges along its back. He imagined it was looking for the spot where it might seize them in its jaws and take them under, never letting go until it had drowned them. Son tried not to look at its yellow eyes. Depending on how far apart the eyes were, you could tell how big the animal was. His uncles said if you looked a river croc in the eye, it could hypnotize you. Some river crocs were said to have been medicine men in previous lives.

The animal slipped under the surface. Son knew it would surface to attack. Once he had seen a small one take a dog in the death roll. He imagined how this one would take their heads in its mouth and begin rolling its plated body in the water, the sound of their bones breaking audible only to them.

Under the water something brushed his leg. He had never felt anything so cold. Was it the animal or a piece of debris? He began to wonder if it would hurt. Of course it would, the great mouth studded with teeth, and the added agony as the dark water burned his lungs. It was almost too much to consider. If he were all alone, he might try and do like the ancient monks and just will himself to die.

Then something was coming from out of the sky. A shadow crossed the moon. He could hear the flapping of wings. A bird landed on the water just feet away. It was a cormorant. The bird looked colorless, the long serpentine neck weaving from side to side. It seemed to be staring at Son with its bloody eyes. Son wondered if the bird sensed what was under the water. There was a possibility the crocodile might surface for the bird, pulling it under instead. From out of the reeds he could hear someone paddling toward them.

The boat was sitting in the middle of the river. It looked abandoned. The doctor’s plan relied on the whole world being at the festival, all eyes on the moon. There hadn’t been any attempt to hide it. It was a fishing boat with a small pilothouse, its white paint peeling from the salt and the sun. Qui quickened her pace. Rabbit could feel the sampan surge forward with each stroke. They had to board without anyone seeing. If someone saw them, there would be no lying their way out of it. There would be no shaming two teenaged boys into letting them go.

Qui rowed around to the far side away from shore. Bats were already wheeling through the air. Then Son’s uncles Hai and Duc appeared. Nobody said anything as they got to work. Rabbit felt herself being lifted over the side. On deck she watched as Hai jumped down into the sampan and lifted Huyen, the old woman light as seed. Sang was standing, her feet planted like pylons. The sampan started to rock. Sit down, Hai hissed. In the fading light Sang’s dress shimmered faintly. She stayed standing.

Duc and Hai worked around her, unloading and storing things below deck. Phuong herself carried the clattering sack down into the hold. On board Qui was tugging Rabbit’s hand, but Rabbit wanted to watch Sang with her legs and arms akimbo in her red ao dai , colossal in her growing fury. Rabbit wondered if Sang had ever really believed she was on the way to her wedding. For a moment Rabbit could feel the girl’s loneliness like the pale yellow aura around the moon. Finally Rabbit let herself be led below deck.