He stays silent awhile, and for the first time with him today she feels awkward. It’s as if her words are floating between them, material things he’s inspecting for their stress points and defects. She doesn’t like it.
“Do I prefer it on my own?” he says. “I don’t know. It goes with living here.”
A motion across the kitchen catches her eye. The cat has licked its plate clean and lazily walks away, stretching its legs one by one.
“You told me you were learning to be alone,” she says to George Ray.
“Yes. It’s a long lesson.”
“Has it been so bad, all these years?”
He shrugs. “At the Beaudoin farm there were a dozen men. I was almost never on my own.”
“Wouldn’t you rather be with them?”
For this question he needs no time to consider the answer. “Sometimes on Saturday nights I still go with them to St. Catharines, watch them drink and get chatty-chatty with the girls. That’s enough for me. My wife worries about Canadian women, but it’s living with a lot of men that ruins you.” At the mention of his wife she thinks she detects an uneasiness, as if he has suddenly remembered where he’s standing.
From the other side of the room comes a retching sound. Elliot, né John-John, is hunched over, neck outstretched. He brings up a stream of undigested liver. George Ray makes a face like it’s to be expected.
“He did the same this morning.”
“Poor thing,” she says. “Maybe it’s because he’s vegetarian.”
George Ray gives her a quizzical look, then goes over to pick him up. Elliot seems unconcerned by what has just transpired, and he tolerates the attention only a few seconds before pushing himself away. George Ray sets him down and retrieves a rag from the sink to clean up the mess.
“Too much throwing up today,” he says.
He feeds her rice with peas, her stomach handling it better than she feared. After dinner he goes back to the barracks and the cat mews at the door to be let out. She’s tempted to keep him inside; what if he should disappear again? There’s no litter box in the house, though, so reluctantly she opens the door and watches him trot off, tracing the perimeter of the backyard by slinking next to hedges and fences until he reaches the barracks. Eventually the door opens, and perhaps it’s only her imagination, but as the cat’s admitted, it looks as though George Ray steals a glance to see if anyone else is there too.
Abandoned by both of them, she thinks of calling Gran. It’s too late in the evening for that now. When she tries to read, her mind keeps drifting to the barracks. What does he do out there with his evenings? For her own part, she’s still only halfway through Middlemarch, and she can barely keep her eyes focused. The lines turn to caravans stretched across the white desert of the page. What kind of marriage must it be for George Ray and his wife, sleeping so far apart for months every year? What would he say if Maggie told him she was pregnant? She forces her attention back to the page.
Finally she gives up and turns on the television to let the ions flow over her. The familiar intonations of reporters and news anchors on the U.S. channels are a solace, though all they have to tell her is bad news. No wonder the people up here have their little left-wing haven with its free health care and its pacifism; every night they can study the States on TV and learn what not to do.
She watches until they play the national anthem. When she turns off the set, its picture condenses into a white pearl occupying the centre of blackness. In contrast with the departed TV studios, the house seems shabby, a hodgepodge, poorly lit. She staggers upstairs but can’t sleep. The walls creak, and something scurries across the roof. Finally she decides the only thing left for her is to seduce herself. She thinks of Fletcher and, at the end, of George Ray.
In the morning, she has forgotten about it until Fletcher calls. Then it returns and shames her into silence. When he asks how she’s doing, she says she’s fine. Sounding tired, he explains that things have gotten complicated, that he needs another two weeks in Boston. Reluctantly she acquiesces, thinking it will serve as some kind of expiation for her. Before he hangs up, she says she loves him. It may just be the bad connection that produces a slight delay before he says he loves her too.
Yia Pao carries the baby as he and Gordon follow muddy paths up and down the side of the valley. Sawtoothed mountains loom on either side while monkeys scream from the trees. Rain drums on the foliage overhead, striking them in fat, heavy drops, and orange worms stretch across the trail, their spiny backs slick with slime. Gordon flicks them out of the way with a long stick. Whenever he and Yia Pao reach an open place, he searches the sky.
“No one’s looking for us, Gordon,” says Yia Pao.
“But we still might flag down a plane.”
“We need to keep going, or it will be Sal and his men who find us.”
The rain lessens, then stops, and a thick fog settles in, reducing visibility to a few feet. Eventually they arrive at a clearing where the trees are shattered, trunks snapped in two and branches flung everywhere, the ground pocked by craters filled with water. Tadpoles wriggle at the borders of the pools. Leading the way, Gordon trips over a jutting length of metal. It’s the tail of a jet. The wreckage is spread across the clearing and covered in vines.
“This is a bad place,” murmurs Yia Pao. “A ghost place.”
Gordon gazes into the fog. From somewhere in the jungle comes the deep-throated call of a bird.
“It isn’t Christian to believe in ghosts,” he says.
“Have you never seen your wife’s ghost?” asks Yia Pao. “Mine visits me often.” His tone suggests the visits aren’t happy ones.
Gordon takes a few more steps through the blasted clearing. “Not her ghost. She used to come in dreams. She’d plead with me to die too.”
“Gordon, I’m sorry.” They pause beside a crater, and Yia Pao soothes Xang in Hmong.
“I told her I couldn’t because we had a daughter,” says Gordon. “My wife wouldn’t give up, so I started to take sleeping pills at night. They made her go away for a while.”
“Did she bring you to Laos?” asks Yia Pao. “Did you come here to die?”
Gordon frowns and doesn’t respond. “I leaned too hard on Maggie,” he says after a time. “She went to college and it nearly finished me.” A few seconds later, he brightens. “That’s the thing about God. You can lean on Him as much as you want.”
Yia Pao turns to survey the plane’s wreckage, the shredded trees and torn earth. He passes Xang to Gordon and bends to massage his own calves. “Is God in this place? I would like to lean on Him now.”
As if in answer, there’s a low whine that grows louder, and the men raise their eyes. The jungle reveals only a small area of sky, so that the plane is almost right above them before they see it, bright white, propeller driven, flying low. Gordon shouts at it but is drowned out by the engines. A moment later the plane has passed out of sight. The men listen as its roar fades.
“He didn’t see us,” says Gordon dolefully.
“Wait,” says Yia Pao.
The noise from the engine grows louder again. Yia Pao pulls off his shirt and whirls it above his head. The baby is crying, but Gordon whoops.
When the plane reappears, it’s even lower than before. The men are yelling and waving for it. Then there’s a clap of thunder. The earth falls away. A tidal wave of mud carries them across the clearing, while a ball of flame roils over the treetops.
Lying on his side with Xang still in his hands, Gordon tries to shield him from the debris showering on them. The air fills with a dirty, suffocating smoke. The baby starts to cough, but when Gordon gains his feet, the smoke grows thicker and he falls to the ground again.