“Bunch of jerks,” he mumbles. “Most are leaving anyhow.”
She can’t believe what he’s saying. “But I don’t want to go. I want to stay here—with you.”
This thought seems to overwhelm him. “Didn’t you see this?” he shouts, grabbing loops of film and thrusting them toward her. “Of course you did. Everyone saw it!”
It’s too much. Backing away, she escapes to the living room, hoping he’ll follow. On the couch, she weeps and wills unconsciousness. It’s cold, she should get a blanket from the closet, but she has no energy to move. Her thoughts buck against her exhaustion until at some point she starts awake and realizes he’s standing over her. Through the window is the blue bruise of the pre-dawn.
“I’m sorry.” His lips touch her cheek. “It’ll be all right. Come up to bed.”
“Don’t leave,” she says.
“I won’t,” he tells her. “I promise, I won’t go anywhere.”
In their room, he’s the only one who sleeps. Maybe it won’t be so bad. A few days of teasing, perhaps a few weeks. Dimitri will be the worst; he’ll never let it go. To hell with him. He and Rhea will leave soon anyhow. And what of Wale? He couldn’t really have gone to Laos. He’ll be back tomorrow—and even if he isn’t, so what? He and Brid were never really close, except in some toxic, mutually degrading way. Maggie wonders how many women there have been for him since Pauline was born.
Her shoulders and hips work themselves into the bed, casting a mould of her body in the mattress. The ticking from the alarm clock maddens her.
At sunrise, she goes to the playroom, where the un-spooled film still lies spread out like skein-work. She winds it back onto its reel, trimming the torn ends and taping them together. Once she’s finished, she can’t help herself; she places the film in the editor and finds the beginning of the scene, then plays it back. Eventually Fletcher enters the frame, removing underwear and socks before lying on the bed. She watches, telling herself she’s finding the end so she can cut out the whole sequence. When she reaches it, though, a tremendous fatigue comes over her and she returns to their room. For an hour she sleeps beside him, until nausea awakens her and she hurries to the bathroom, making it just in time.
A few inches of fetid water at the bottom of the pit prevent Gordon and Yia Pao from sitting down, forcing them to lean against the muddy walls when they want a rest from standing. Gordon’s beard is a tangle, and his skin is clean only in rivulets where sweat has washed away the earth. Yia Pao is worse. There are scabbing cuts all across his face and a gash on his forehead that won’t stop bleeding. In his arms he holds Xang, the baby’s clothes so stained as to have lost their former colour altogether. The little boy’s skin is jaundiced, his face covered in mosquito bites. Gordon yells in a rasping voice for the guards to come, while Yia Pao takes a piece of banana into his mouth and chews it, then removes a bit of the mush with his fingers and tenderly feeds it to his son.
“They must be dead,” says Gordon. “I’m going to do it.”
“Wait a little longer,” says Yia Pao.
“They’re gone. It’s been a day.”
“It could be a test,” replies Yia Pao. “They could be waiting up there to beat us.”
Gordon looks at his companion’s forehead. “They haven’t needed excuses for that.” He squints up toward the edge of the pit. “If we wait any longer, we’ll be too weak.”
“I’m already too weak,” says Yia Pao. “It could be miles to a village.”
“They must get their supplies from someplace close,” Gordon observes. “What if they don’t come back? Xang needs milk.”
“He won’t get it from the jungle,” says Yia Pao. But he holds Xang out toward the other man. “Take him. Take him and go.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” replies Gordon. “You’re coming too.”
“You’ll move more quickly without me.”
Gordon doesn’t budge, so Yia Pao pulls the baby back to his chest and offers a forefinger for Xang to suck on. “I want him to live. There are no more men in my family. My father, all my brothers, my cousins are gone. Xang’s the only one left.”
“You’re left too.”
“You don’t understand, Gordon. I wasn’t a good husband. I wish to be a good father.”
“You were a fine husband,” says Gordon. “You loved your wife, didn’t you?”
Yia Pao nods. “But when I returned from Vientiane to marry her, I had been to school, I had lived in the city. I thought myself better than her or my parents. I laughed at things she said. Then a bomb struck the village and took her.”
“Yia Pao—” Gordon begins, but he isn’t listening. Moisture beads and falls from the tip of his nose.
“Gordon, it was the work of your God. He was teaching me a lesson.”
Gordon is about to say something but only purses his lips.
“I didn’t learn the lesson right away,” says Yia Pao, “so the next bomb took my parents too. God is a stubborn teacher.” He lifts his head and stares at the white scar on Gordon’s neck. “Is it really from a war?”
Gordon flinches and averts his gaze, staring into the pool of water at his feet. A moment later he reaches up to put his hand on a thick black root protruding from the earth just above his head. With the toe of his boot, he begins to kick into the wall of the pit. Once he has created a secure foothold, he hoists himself and starts to kick another. Yia Pao watches him rise. The only sounds are Gordon’s grunts as he labours toward the top, struggling to keep hold of the slick walls, and a rain of muddy earth falling into the water at Yia Pao’s feet. At last Gordon reaches the edge of the pit and lifts himself from view.
Yia Pao rocks the baby and stays silent. After a time, a shadow passes over his face. Then a length of nylon rope tumbles into the pit with a towel tied at the end to form a sling.
“I don’t see them anywhere,” says Gordon from above. “But they left the fire going. We have to hurry. Send Xang first, and then I’ll pull you up.”
The afternoon sun lords over the farm. A pair of jackrabbits grazing on the front lawn dart across the grass as Maggie returns from her walk. She has gone all the way to Virgil and tramped every street in the village without really taking in anything. She told Fletcher she would be an hour; it’s been over two, but she doesn’t care. She needed the time alone.
From the wrecking yard comes the rumble of heavy machinery and the screech of rent metal. Ahead of her, near the porch, Lambchop and Karl sit in a red Alfa-Romeo convertible looking impatient. As she approaches them, Fletcher steps out onto the porch with a pair of suitcases in his hands.
“Where were you?” he calls out. “You missed lunch.”
“I told you, a walk,” she replies, still focused on the suitcases. “What’s going on?”
“Karl and Lambchop are heading out.”
“Those suitcases are yours, aren’t they?”
Suddenly his attention is caught by a line of crows on a telephone wire near the road.
“I’ll come back soon,” he tells her. He says it like an apology.
Maggie stops in place. In her peripheral vision, she apprehends Lambchop and Karl easing out of the car, then disappearing around the corner of the house. Fletcher descends the porch stairs and walks over to her before setting down the cases.
“You were going to leave without telling me?” she says.
“No, of course not—”
“What were you going to do? Phone from Niagara Falls? From Boston?”
Fletcher refuses to look her way. “I want you to come with me. You could go back to school, start teaching again—”
She kicks at the ground and feels pain shoot through her toe. “Fletcher, you can’t do this. You can’t try running off and then ask me to join you.”