The Time Keepers

Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

A T NIGHTFALL THE FISHERMAN TELLS HIS DAUGHTER, M AI, to take the little boy to where they fish after sunset.

B?o follows the girl. Her yellow dress is like a lantern in the evening sky.

As they approach the shore, he notices a few small fishing boats already there, but B?o does not see his mother or father.

“Is that our boat?” he asks Mai as he points to the tiny wooden crafts bobbing in the dark water.

“No,” she answers. She giggles as if she is still playing a game.

“Is that our boat?” he asks again, indicating to another one that looks empty anchored closer to the shore.

“No,” she answers again.

Fear washes over him. Neither his mother nor his father nor Anh has come over to meet him, and he wonders if Mai’s father has somehow tricked his parents, taken their gold and separated them from him in the process of this hoax.

“Where is your father?” B?o now begs the little girl. “He promised to help my parents.”

Her face glows in the moonlight. Her eyes are wide and empty. “I don’t know,” she says. “Where is yours?”

B?o has no answer. He last saw his father at sunrise as he headed out, a pole with two baskets balanced on his back. “We are going on a journey,” Chung told him. But he still doesn’t understand why they’ve left him here all alone.

Night falls and the air cools. Two layers on his body, but no blanket for warmth, B?o curls himself tightly into a ball and closes his eyes. Mai has left. He is hungry and imagines a bowl of rice in his hands, counting each grain to make the hours go by more quickly. He tells himself when morning comes, he will convince the captain’s daughter to take him back to their hut. If his mother doesn’t arrive as she promised, he must think of another plan to ensure they are somehow reunited.

An hour later, he hears a rustle in the grass, and B?o sees his mother walking toward him. B?o rushes over and embraces her. She wraps her arms around him and pulls him close. Her warmth flows over him like a blanket. He begins to cry, unable to stifle the emotion that he had fought to control.

“I didn’t think you’d ever come,” he utters through his tears.

She pulls him again closer to her. “Nothing would keep me from you, bé tí.” Minutes later, his aunt emerges from the forest, having followed Linh’s path. She walks toward them.

In the grass, mosquitoes buzz and bite. Now, the three of them united, they wait, frozen as statues.

Soon two more adults appear. Like Linh, they are carrying provisions wrapped in cloth. One person is clasping a carved statue of the Virgin Mary to their breast. Another is carrying kerosene.

They all crouch low, looking out to the water, waiting for a sign that their boat is near.

Lastly, Chung arrives. B?o sees his father approaching through the tall grass, his bamboo pole with its loaded baskets sags across his back. His eyes are lit and flickering in the darkness.

His mother does not move, but B?o can sense her relief. She turns to him and places a finger over her mouth. But her lips are now curled in a smile. She reaches into her blouse and takes out a yellow handkerchief, which she lifts in the air like a small flag. His father lays his pole down in the tall grass and moves toward them. Anh is a few steps behind.

The light flashes like a beacon from the boat before melting into the shadow of the night.

It was the sign they have been waiting for. Slowly they wade into the river toward a small fishing boat. They walk until the water is waist deep. Linh and Chung lift the cloth-tied bundles of food above their heads. B?o stays at his mother’s side, holding on to her pant leg. None of them can swim, and he’s never been so deeply submerged in water before.

Everyone scrambles to try to get on board the boat. The person carrying the statue of the Virgin Mary pushes ahead. The single fisherman, with the light strapped to his head, pulls them each onto the boat, telling them they have all brought too much.

The boat bobs up and down; water laps at its wooden edge.

B?o is lifted on board, then Linh, then Anh. The men are last. They crouch next to the others, shoulder to shoulder, fitted together to occupy nearly every inch of space.

Chung wraps an arm around his son. Between his knees, he safeguards what they have brought for the journey. Linh’s face tips to the moonlight, and Anh watches her sister’s family with longing. The ache inside her is overwhelming. She looks back at the strip of land, the country she has known her whole life and the soil in which her husband is buried beneath, the ancestral shrine she has devoted to her prayers for those she has lost, her husband and their baby. She glances at her own naked ring finger, then her sister’s and Chung’s. She prays that the act of selling their rings won’t bring them bad luck.

Her brother-in-law draws B?o close.

“Is America far?” her nephew asks sweetly. Chung shakes his head. Like the rest of them, he believes America is only a few days’ distance by boat. The other side of the world is just next door.

The captain takes a large tarp and throws it over them so that no one can see he is carrying human cargo.

“It’s only until we get farther from shore and away from the patrols,” Chung whispers to B?o.

Beneath the tarp, huddled together, they struggle to breathe. Their heads are bowed to their knees, the smells of packed bodies and food is stifling. The small motor in the back of the boat putters softly as the captain begins to head into deeper waters, the shoreline fading into the distance.

Hours later, after the tarp has been removed and most of the passengers drift into sleep, the waves get bigger as they approach the mouth of the South China Sea. They will be awakened by the sensation of the boat rocking back and forth. Water slaps against the vessel’s wooden sides, some of it spilling over into the hull.

One of the women has positioned the wooden Virgin Mary at the front of the boat in an effort to create a powerful maidenhead she believes will bring them luck and steer them to safety. But the waves continue to intensify, and the others are panicking as they try to scoop the water out of the boat. The captain calls on her to return to the back.

“I’m going to throw it overboard,” the captain hollers to her, but she remains at the front, holding the statue as the wind whips through her hair and the water crashes at the bow.

“Sit down!” another man cries from the back.

Finally, one of the men stands up and hurtles toward her, rushing to remove the statue that he thinks is causing the boat to become unstable. But his own movements only increase the boat’s instability. As he reaches for the statue, the boat keels to the side.

Anh is cast starboard, pinned to the side between two men, while B?o, Linh, and Chung are thrown into the cold water. Chung, hearing his son’s screams for help, finds his own arms and legs instinctively thrashing and kicking as he searches the dark water to find him. He seizes B?o and drags him to the boat’s edge, focused solely on getting him to safety. The cold water is up to his chin.

But B?o continues to grip his arm.

“Let me go, I need to get your mother,” his father yells now at B?o.

But B?o refuses. The boy’s fingers dig into Chung’s slippery flesh.

“You have to let me go,” he pleads one more time to his son. He then bites B?o’s arm, like an animal determined to be freed.

Chung falls back into the water in search of Linh. The water swallowing both of them into the night.