The Boat (36 page)

Nearly weightless in her body, Mai descended the companion-way. When she reached the bottom she spun and searched behind the stairs. There they were. The hold awash with low talk.

"Chi Quyen."

She was about to call out again when she sensed something amiss. Quyen's back-folded over Truong's sleeping form-it was too stiff. The posture too awkward.

Mai moved closer. "Chi?" she asked.

Quyen's crouched torso expanded, took in air. Without turning around she said, "What will I do now?" Her voice brute, flat.

Mai squatted down. Her heart tripping faster and faster, up into her throat.

Quyen said, "He didn't."

She said, "All night. He wouldn't wake up."

She was wrong, thought Mai. What did she know, thought Mai. When she'd left last night, Truong had been recovering. He'd been fine. He'd been asking Mai, over and over, to sing to him. What could have happened?

Quyen shifted to one side. He was bundled up in a blanket. The bundle tapered at one end – where his legs must have been. Mai could see no part of him. How could this be the end of it? She wrung the heels of her hands into her eyes, as if the fault lay with them. Then she felt Quyen's face, cool with shock, next to her own, rough and wet and cool against her knuckles, speaking into her ear. At first she recoiled from Quyen's touch. What was she saying? She was asking Mai for help. She was asking Mai to help her carry him. It was time, she said. Time, which had distended every moment on the boat – until there had seemed to be no shape to it – seemed now to snap violently shut, crushing all things into this one task. They were standing – when had they gotten up? – then they were kneeling, facing each other over the length of him. Quyen circumspect in her movements, as though loath to take up any more space than her son now needed. She seemed not to see anything she looked at. Together, the two of them brought the bundle aft, through the shifting, silent crowd, past the derrick-crane, where a group of the strongest men waited. There, the wind turned a corner of the blanket over and revealed the small head, the ash beauty of his face, the new dark slickness of his skin. With a shudder Quyen fell to it and pressed and rubbed her lips against his cheek.

Anh Phuoc, standing with three other men, waited for Quyen to finish before touching her shoulder.

He said, to no one in particular, "We'll make land soon." As though this were an order, Mai took Quyen's arm and led her the full span of the boat to the prow. Again, the crowd parted for them. They stood together in silence, the spray moistening their faces as they looked forward, focusing all their sight and thought on that blurry peninsula ahead, that impossible place, so that they would not be forced to behold the men at the back of the boat peeling the blanket off, swinging the small body once, twice, three times before letting go, tossing him as far behind the boat as possible so he would be out of sight when the sharks attacked.

For their patience, grace, enthusiasm and expertise, my deepest thanks to my editor, Robin Desser, and my agent, Eric Simonoff.

For their invaluable early support, my thanks to Michael Ray, Brigid Hughes, Yiyun Li, Christina Thompson, Katherine Vaz, Hannah Tinti, and Bradford Morrow.

My heartfelt thanks to Ashley Capps, Leslie Jamison, David Sarno, Josh Rolnick, Fiona McFarlane, Salvatore Scibona, Danny Khalastchi, Chris Stuck, Ché Frye, Shiv Chandran, Priyanthi Milton, Meredith Rose, Marilynne Robinson, Ethan Canin, Lan Samantha Chang, James Alan McPherson, Margot Livesey, Chris Offutt, Adam Haslett, and Charles D'Ambrosio – friends, teachers, and readers all. Thanks also to Cécile Barendsma, Connie Brothers, Deb West, Maria Campbell, Josh Kendall, and Chris Lamb.

For their generous support, I am indebted to the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Phillips Exeter Academy, James Michener and the Copernicus Society of America, the MacDowell Colony, and the Corporation of Yaddo.

In memory of Frank Conroy.

Nam Le was born in Vietnam and raised in Australia. He has received the Pushcart Prize, the Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award, and fellowships from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and Phillips Exeter Academy. Currently the fiction editor at the
Harvard Review
, he has published work in
Zoetrope
:
All-Story, A Public Space, Conjunctions
, and
One
Story
, and has been anthologized in
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007, Best New American Voices 2009, and The Best Australian Stories 2007
. He divides his time between Australia and the United States. This is his first book.

This book was set in Old Style No. 7. This face is largely based on a series originally cut by the Bruce Foundry in the early 1870s, and that face, in its turn, appears to have followed in all essentials the details of a face designed and cut some years before by the celebrated Edinburgh typefounders Miller & Richard. Old Style No. 7, composed in a page, gives a subdued color and an even texture that make it easily and comfortably readable.

Composed by Creative Graphics, Allentown, Pennsylvania

Printing and binding by RRD Harrisonburg,

Harrisonburg, Virginia

Designed by M. Kristen Bearse