Lost Girls (29 page)

“Mom, Pa!”

“Hope, where’s Hope?” Hope’s mother shrieks. I cannot look at her.

“Layla?” Jas’s father grabs Layla by the shoulders. Jas’s mother stares in surprise and incomprehension. Layla falls to her knees, holding herself, sobbing. Carly starts crying, “Sandy, Sandy!”

Then Jody lets out a loud wail: “Natalie!”

I say, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Hope… Hope’s gone, too.” And all of us are weeping and weeping.

“We’ve been searching
since the storm, Pumpkin,” Dad told me, stroking my face as our sad party made its way home. They wouldn’t accept that I had perished, Mom said. No one realized that there was a problem for a couple of days, because there had been a terrible incident at the base. One of our F-52 bombers had crash-landed during the hurricane, and the only runway was out of action. The bomber had crashed into other planes.

“There was extensive loss of personnel as well as machines,” Dad said.

(He meant that lots of people had died. I’d almost forgotten that Dad spoke like that.)

“Then we went in search of the boatman, of course,” Mom explained. “But the conditions were dreadful, and his village was flattened in the tropical storm. Eventually, with the help of a translator, we got hold of his son and one of his brothers—they were about to make a search for him. They weren’t even aware that he’d taken you to the island.” Mom kept swallowing hard. There had been three helicopters and a small reconnaissance plane sent out from the base to search for us as soon as they realized that something was wrong, but because there had been some heavy fighting they couldn’t be spared more than once.

“It was like a nightmare,” Mom said. Again and again, Dad had asked permission to take leave so that he could coordinate the search, but all leave had been canceled.

The boatman’s family had to make repairs to their boats, which had suffered severe damage in the storm. They guessed that the boatman’s engine had probably broken down—it wasn’t the first time, apparently—and that he may have drifted. Eventually they began their search.

“On one occasion they thought they saw the flash of a mirror….”

“That would be May’s,” I explained.

“But they didn’t think too much of it, it was so brief,” Mom said. “And they didn’t believe you could be so far from where you were supposed to be.”

Then our fathers were finally given leave of absence and they demanded that the boatmen take them farther out, to the more distant islands. As far as Koh Tabu. They were just giving up hope when Jas’s dad saw through his binoculars the kite soaring high on the same mountain where the boatmen had earlier seen the flash. There was also a whisper of smoke, and then the sudden leaping blue flames. As they got closer to the reef they saw a huge SOS written on the sand, and girls waving.

AUGUST 1974, THAILAND

Following a brief hearing at a coroner’s court in Bangkok, the three deaths were deemed to have been by misadventure. There was a funeral for Natalie at the Catholic church in Utapao, and funerals without bodies for Sandy and Hope. In Sandy’s coffin were her teddy and her neckerchief, and in Hope’s coffin her silver crucifix and chain. We all attended the funeral of the boatman. His family wanted to know everything he had said to us, everything he had done on the fateful voyage. Layla told them he had courageously navigated the boat to an island with
freshwater and had helped us with our camp even though the island was taboo. He had probably lost his life trying to save us. That is what she said. We placed jasmine garlands in the spirit house of his family and gave rice to the local temple monks.

My dad paid to have the outboard motor repaired and gave it to the boatman’s family.

The South Vietnamese surrendered
on April 30, 1975. There was a major evacuation of U.S. personnel from Saigon using helicopters, with F-2 fighters as backup. Dad was involved in that, though he never talks of it. But then, he never talks about his war.

Cambodia was taken over by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, and it was said that more than fifty thousand Buddhist monks were killed.

By then Mom and I were back home in Scotland. As my grandmother kept reminding me, I was much too thin. I was experiencing flashbacks to Hope’s death and still having nightmares all the time. I was scared to go to sleep because of the dreams, and often woke screaming.
Mom encouraged me to read a lot of poetry. I discovered the poems of Ted Hughes and Elizabeth Bishop, and I began attempting to write poetry through the long nights. It was nothing like the love poems I once wrote to Lan Kua. Lan Kua… It wasn’t love, or anything like that. Too much had happened to me. I had changed. Grown up. I didn’t feel like flirting with him when I got back. But when I left Thailand we parted as good friends. I have written to him, but he hasn’t replied. I don’t think his English is good enough, and my Thai certainly isn’t.

A holiday somewhere quiet was prescribed by my doctor.

OCTOBER 1975, SUTHERLAND, SCOTLAND

Staying with my grandparents. They’re stuffing me with porridge every morning. I’m writing bad poetry. Walking lots. Today Grandpa’s taking me fishing.

The air is clean and cold and smells of heather and freshly cut peat, and the sky is a pale robin’s-egg blue scratched with cirrus clouds the color of orange peel. A weak sun shines. The only sound is of loch water lapping against the sides of the boat, and the swish of a red kite high above. Clouds of midges skim the water and a fish
rises, kisses the surface, and leaves circles within circles. The low sun hits the raised edges of the ripples and turns them the color of blood.

My grandpa rows the little boat along smoothly. His eyes read the peaty water all the time, searching for the best place to fish, looking for signs on the surface to tell him what goes on beneath. He stops and we drift with the breeze. The far blue hills have a mist around them, like fire smoke. We are the only people on the water, and there are no fishermen on the banks. It is a lonely place, infinitely peaceful.

“Look, do ye see that?” He points at an osprey rising from the loch, water dripping from a large trout it holds in its talons. “Watch now. The osprey has a reversible front toe, and it can turn the fish so that its head points in the direction of flight. It does that to reduce drag. A canny bird, right enough. Aye, and a bird with odd tastes.”

“What do you mean, Grandpa?” This is the kind of information with which I can impress Jas if she ever comes to stay. I’d love to see her again.

“Well, Angus, the gamekeeper hereabouts, said he found a child’s teddy bear and a tartan rug in one osprey nest.”

“What a considerate parent!” I say, and we laugh. But the mention of a toy bear brings a bloody teddy bear to my mind, and Sandy’s smashed head.

Grandpa unfolds the cloth around his ancient fly rod.
The fine split bamboo takes me straight back to the island. Even here, so far away, there are so many reminders. I have to concentrate on breathing slowly. An insect lands on my wrist, folding and unfolding its pearly peacock wings. I think of the peacock-eye tail feather I have folded into my journal, and a piece of the kite with a few of Pirsig’s words:
Things are better now. You can sort of tell these things.

My illustrated journal is the only souvenir of that time, apart from the gift from the monk—the tiger claw on a string, which I still wear. I haven’t shown the journal to anyone. The diary of events, neglect, and actions of the thirty-one days we spent on Koh Tabu have not been revealed. The curved-up body of the insect tapers to whisks of long curved tail. Its front legs are speckled, its protruding eyes colored violet. I look away and look back. It’s gone.

“Grandpa, can I tell you something?”

“You can tell me anything, child.”

“You aren’t to tell anyone else.”

I tell him about the gentle giant monk, with his misshapen face and no tongue, and about how he saved my life. I tell him about the tame tiger, and how I have kept them secret from everyone all this time.

He is twisting the sections of bamboo pole together and fixing the lead and ferrule.

“You did right to say nothing, lassie. The poor fella
and his beast are best let be.” We sit in companionable silence, watching the water. The osprey hovers and swoops, legs first, at the far end of the loch.

“Perhaps he has already been captured by the Khmer Rouge and killed,” I say quietly. “Or been ill and died.”

“Perhaps, but how would you like to remember him, Bonnie?” Grandpa asks.

“Oh… laughing and clapping his hands, watching as the big tiger swims out powerfully. She held her head out of the water, keeping her whiskers dry.”

Grandpa smiles at me and nods.

If the monk does die, I wonder if he’ll be reincarnated as a tiger,
I think to myself. But I don’t say it out loud.

I want to tell Grandpa about my other anxieties, things I haven’t told anyone—about Hope’s death, and Natalie’s; about Jas’s dad and Layla Campbell—but I can’t, not yet. Last I heard, Jas’s family went back to the USA, along with all the other Utapao Americans I had known; I haven’t heard from her lately. We don’t have that much to say to each other. I think, like me, she wants to forget our time on the island, and I expect she has other friends now. But you never know; we might meet again one day.

“You’ve a wonderful way with words, Bonnie,” Grandpa interrupts my thoughts.

One day, perhaps I’ll let him read my journal.

I have no idea where Layla Campbell is. I said nothing against her at the coroner’s hearing. None of us did.

I wasn’t exactly blameless, after all. I’ve had many months to dwell on my own faults.

I want to tell Grandpa that I killed Hope, or that I feel responsible for her death. And that I seriously considered deliberately letting Layla Campbell drown. And I had always thought I was so special, so clever, a good person. I thought I had Quality. But I can’t tell him or anyone about these things, not yet.

“See that, Bonnie?” He points at a fish rising at small intervals at the same place, about twenty feet away, barely disturbing the surface, occasionally baring its back fin and tail. “That’s a grand fish. There’s been a mayfly hatch today. Watch now.”

I watch carefully.

“This is called dapping,” Grandpa says, as the line curves silently and straightens over his head. “I use a large single dry fly, and the hook has no barb. That way the fish won’t suffer. Do you see, lassie, how I try to let nothing but the fly touch the water?”

He ties his own flies. There’s an old wooden box of them on the seat next to him, all sewn together or tied by thick fingers that look as if they could have no finesse or dexterity.

On walks he gathers small feathers, fur, sheep’s wool
caught on wire, and at home he’ll rummage in Grandma’s sewing basket for colored wools and silks, even glittery ribbon—anything that might make an interesting-ooking fly with which to fascinate a trout. None of them look like real mayflies or damsels or anything the fish might usually eat; instead they are fanciful inventions, like exotic insects never found on a Scottish loch—more like insects from Koh Tabu.

The springy rod moves gracefully in Grandpa’s large hands; I watch him stop it at ten o’clock, two o’clock, letting the line out then flicking his wrist; the dark water lapping; the osprey calling; a stiff breeze blurring the heather.

“It’s more than just fishing, is fly-fishing, Bonnie. It’s being in the middle of things that matter—wilderness like this, part of nature. Nothing like it. Blessed by the wild. Like your friend the Buddhist monk.”

I watch as a fat fish swirls and disturbs the surface and decides to take Grandpa’s fly. He strikes and plays the huge fish, fighting it, reeling it in, the thin rod bent almost double, and then letting it run, pulling gently on the line until it’s taut, allowing it to run again, until the big old fish gradually slows its dashes. I cannot watch as it thrashes in desperation, succumbing to exhaustion. My heart is pounding. Grandpa looks exhausted.

“Have the landing net steady now. That’s it. Ah! Beauty!” It is much too heavy for me to hold. Grandpa takes it from
me and removes the hook from its mouth. The huge trout is golden yellow with black and brown spots, like a leopard, and its skin holds a thousand rainbows. Its sad, turned-down mouth gasps mutely. There are two other hooks buried in its lips, grown over by transparent flesh, and colored broken lines, like a straggly beard. It has been caught on a hook before. It has a history of battles fought and won.

Grandpa tells me to dip my hands into the loch and gives me the fish to cradle in the net, his large hands cupped around mine.

“You must never touch a trout with dry hands, you know, lassie; no, always wet your hands thoroughly.”

“Why, Grandpa?”

“It’s very easy to damage their protective mucus coating, you see, and then they become sick and die.”

Another piece of information for Jas.

The trout looks but doesn’t see me, its eyes staring and alien. It does not understand what it’s seeing in this waterless universe. My eyes fill with tears and all I see is rainbow. Like in the poem by Elizabeth Bishop that Mom read to me the other night: “… until everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!”

“There, you can let him go now, to catch a real mayfly.”

I lean over the gunwales of the boat, dipping my arms in as far as I can, and let the fish go into the flow of the
current. We sit quietly, watching as the elderly warrior swishes his tail and hurries away, our wet hands next to each other on the seat.

His large hand and my small one leave dark imprints on the pale wood.

Welcome

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight