Flying Man nodded his head and danced two steps, shaking all his feathers. “Bobbylon all over now. Time nex’ planet now — planet Israh-el!”
Mr. Cheung saw that Grandmother Wright’s forehead was veiled with perspiration. He wished he could wipe it away, but all he had was the rag he’d already used to clean his mouthpiece. The town behind them was desolate, he was sure not a soul remained there. Still, he felt bad about bringing her here into the elements. He hoped his grandmother would be able to survive this experience.
Grandmother was remembering the flight from Vietnam, and the crash that ended it.
When the helicopter crashed into the sea the Lieutenant was the first, of those who surfaced, to go down, because he hadn’t taken his shoes off soon enough — he’d wanted to protect his feet from sharks. He’d exhausted himself trying to stay afloat with his feet in canvas combat boots with heavy soles. By sundown he’d gone under and untied the laces and let them go, willing at that point to lose his shoes, and his feet, if necessary, to live another minute, to draw a few more breaths. But it was too late to get any strength back, and before sundown he’d begun slipping under the waves, coming up coughing, moving his arms and legs around as eventually Marie had done at the end — not to swim, but to find a purchase, the solid place that was certain to be around here somewhere — and going down more and more often, until the new energy of panic was exhausted and he slipped away and didn’t come up. They saw him surface face-down some meters off, and Marie saw the body only as something she might grapple with to help her stay afloat, but she didn’t have the strength to go after it. He’d wasted his energy trying to keep his shoes — but it wasn’t his pair of shoes, or his fear of sharks, that killed him. He died because he wasn’t saved.
He’d been bent on improving his chances, and he’d almost gotten out a life jacket as they’d crashed — as soon as Captain Minh spoke to him and smacked the faces of the helicopter’s dials and instruments with alarm, the Lieutenant had turned in his seat and managed to move people off the service locker, ordering them at gunpoint to squeeze themselves impossibly against the others as he stood up, and Marie knew she had to move or he would shoot her, so she did her best to crush the bones of the people behind her to give him room. He had the locker’s lid raised ten centimeters and one hand caught in its open mouth and touching a canvas life jacket, his revolver in the other hand, when the craft descended, very slowly, to the water’s surface.
They were raised once by a wave, and Marie was beginning to wonder how long they would float here before they were rescued or starved to death, when Captain Minh leapt from the door, which now, only two seconds after their touching down, was filling with water. Marie waited, while her heart beat twice, for the people between her and the door to jump also, and then she clawed and broke her way through them and into a sea which was suddenly up to the level of her throat.
She swam away, and when she turned around, treading water, the helicopter was gone.
Upturned heads floated around her in a green waste. Between the blasts of wind rolling over it, there wasn’t a sound but the water. The shock of being here was no greater than the shock of being defiled by this filthy secret, the noises the ocean made all alone in the middle of itself. Its infinitesimal salt bubbles hissed and breathed, and the surface water turned over and licked along itself and coughed softly.
Under these circumstances the China Sea looked like nothing. Here was the difference between something big — as seen from the craft, horizon to horizon — and something enormous, engulfing, mind-erasing, seen only in series, swell after swell, too absolutely filled with itself to admit any mercy, to know its name or take any thought. It was as if, having found herself all wet, she’d taken an astonished breath to say, “Look what happened!” but was stalled in the astonishment and couldn’t exclaim, or even exhale.
In a moment another head popped up streaming with water, eyes closed, black hair plastered to the scalp, and drew a deep breath, like a baby being born. She didn’t know this one — but it was the Lieutenant, unrecognizable, somehow, having lost not only his beret, but also his rank, his name, his personality. The Lieutenant had no life preserver, and no revolver.
Her skirt and blouse were heavy. She let herself go under while she tore her blouse open, kicked upward, broke the surface, went under as she took off the blouse, thrust to the surface, lost the world of air while she pulled at the button on the side of her skirt and yanked the garment down over her hips, and came back to the possibility of breathing again as she loosed her knees from its girth and kicked it from her ankles. She didn’t think. She only wanted a place to stand, rest, and eat and drink the air.
She kept her head up among the other heads, losing and regaining sight of them when a swell lifted and dropped her.
At first they all treaded water, not caring how the exertion drained them. Within a few minutes Marie was more tired than she’d ever been, and then she didn’t think anymore, except to wish she could lie down.
Captain Minh was the first to go over on his back. The others did so right away. It gave them a style of rest, more breath, and more time; and though it exposed their backs to a huge world of liquid and somehow, therefore, wracked their nerves, it took their eyes off a sea higher than themselves and showed them something bigger-the sky.
The sky was a major discovery, holding an element of hope that charged among them and got them talking. Marie said some things in English, and then in French, just to be heard. The others answered importantly, with interest, though no answers were required of questions like “What time is it?” and they asked each other questions of their own—“Where do you think we are?”—in French, and said other things in Vietnamese, and gave opinions and looked at the sky. Captain Minh organized an effort to stay together, getting the others to take off their clothes and link themselves like a chain by clutching shirtsleeves or pantlegs. The Lieutenant wouldn’t contribute his pants because he didn’t want to take off his shoes. Some of the others warned him against this, in French, and Captain Minh argued with him in Vietnamese. The Lieutenant, already breathless, shouted, “Fack you, body boy!”
The talk gave over to the work of breathing, and they were voiceless now except to gulp air or clear their throats. Marie answered the others only briefly, and asked only, “Ou etes vous?” and occasionally turned her head, looking for anyone. People talked only to locate themselves among others, and now it appeared they were nine. The center of the group were a man and his wife, who called to each other often and said, Marie supposed, “Here I am!” and “I see you!” Because these two signaled themselves the most, the others took them as markers in the ocean and stayed near, keeping their chain of laundry slack so as not to have to fight each other’s drift. Marie used the man and woman angrily, let them do the work of crying out, and saved her own strength for keeping her face turned away from the swells that broke over her head if she didn’t lift it slightly out of their heaving approach.
The effort this kind of floating required wasn’t too great, but her neck ached and soon the back of her skull felt flat and numb and her spine burned, all from the repeated task of lifting her head. The surface that had seemed so black and heavy from above, whose motion had seemed so blubbery and incidental, now proved active, populous, and resourceful, throwing up generations of fingers that clawed her face, worms that raced across her nose and mouth and choked her, small whirling mouths that swallowed and abandoned her hair. It was windy. The whitecaps that had seemed so widely separated now came relentlessly, their froth blasted by small gusts into rainbows. Their mist strangled her. Her lips were chapped and raw with salt, her eyes stung, and before long her face hurt as if she’d been beaten. She began to cry. She’d already passed the point of thinking that she might swim until she got out of here to continue the business of life, and had come to the point where she swam because it was, in fact, life’s business, the thing to be carried on until she died.