Saving Fish From Drowning (51 page)

They ruminated over what their families and friends back home might be doing to find them. Surely they must have contacted the U.S. Embassy in Myanmar. A search party of American planes was probably doing aerial scans right this minute. My friends did not know that the Myanmar military government limited where the Embassy staff could go searching. And thus, the search was going on only at tourist destinations that the junta wished to showcase, and where Harry Bailley, consummate television star with a mellifluous and persuasive voice, could give his poignant updates.

The mood that night was grimmer than usual. Earlier that

evening, Esmé, in a burst of frustration, cried out: “Are we going to
die
out here?” Only a child could have voiced that taboo question.

Marlena reassured her, but the question hung in the smoky air. They sat quietly, knowing that another exotic illness or a dwindling supply of food could place them on the brink of extinction. Would they indeed die? Each of them imagined the news of their demise.

Wyatt remembered that his mother, who had had breast cancer, pleaded that he stop going on his thrillingly dangerous adventures.

“You risk not just yourself but my heart,” she had said, “and if anything bad happens, it will be a hundred times worse than my cancer 3 6 6

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ever was.” He had laughed off her fears. Now he saw in his mind’s eye his mother staring at his photo:
How could you do this to me?

Moff pictured his former wife raging for his having taken their son on a trip he knew was dangerous. She would try to believe with every inch of her soul that Rupert was still alive, while hoping that he, the husband she divorced for his insensitivity, had been snatched by the hands of fate and had his last breath choked out of him.

Vera remembered the stories of people who refused to believe that their loved one had perished in a plane crash, a sinking boat, or a collapsed mine. The words “no survivors” were only conjecture, and sure enough, days after the funerals had been held by other families more resigned to tragedy, the beliefs of those optimistic people were miraculously fulfilled when the presumed dead came home healthy and no worse for wear other than being famished for good ol’ home cooking. Was it the strength of love that allowed the miracle? How much did her own children truly love her? If they were already mourning her, would that lessen her chances of ever being found?

Heidi was contemplating ways that would enable them to survive.

Perhaps there were other medicines. The Karen grandmothers would know. And they’d better prepare now for rain. She made a list in her head of various situations they should be ready for, and the proper responses. Foremost, if the soldiers came and started firing indiscriminately, would be to run into the jungle and hide. And then she had another thought: Perhaps she and Moff might make another foray into the jungle to find a few secret places.

Bennie was the only one thinking of the future, of going home to a joyful celebration. Before leaving on the Burma Road trip, he and Timothy had agreed to open Christmas gifts after he returned. More than likely, Bennie thought, Timothy had rewrapped his gifts with yellow ribbons—so like him to do that—and perhaps he had added more lavish presents; cashmere would be nice. The store tags would already have been cut off, reflecting Timothy’s certainty that his 3 6 7

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beloved would return. But then he pictured Timothy taking down the tree, paying the bills, and sifting clumps out of the cat-litter box, a chore that had been the source of their most frequent arguments. It was a mundane life they’d led, but even the mundane was precious and he wanted it back.

Out of the blue, Dwight laughed. “Tomorrow I have a teeth-

cleaning appointment. I better call and reschedule.”

Now others remembered unpleasant tasks waiting for them at

home: A car that needed a dent taken out of the fender. Dry cleaning to pick up. Unwashed workout clothes left in a locker at the fitness center, probably mildewed by now. They focused on trivial matters they could most easily give up. All else was unbearable to consider.

Their voices dropped to silence again. The campfire flames illuminated their faces from below, giving their eyes dark hollows. I thought they resembled ghosts, which is ironic for me to say. Many imagine that the dead have the same spooky look, which is nonsense. In reality—and by the very fact that I have consciousness, I have a reality—I have no look other than what I picture myself to be. How strange that I still don’t know the reason for my death, whereas I seem to know all else.

But your thoughts and emotions after death are no different from what they were when you were alive, I suppose. You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.

In the distance, by the jungle’s entertainment center, the shrieks of children mixed with happy, animated chattering. “Numbah one!

Numbah one!” they chanted, repeating the boast of the ratings for
Darwin’s Fittest
. The show had begun, announced with its characteristic theme music and opening. Bass fiddles rubbed and vibrated in a borborygmus crescendo, lions roared, crocodile jaws snapped, and fragile-necked cranes honked warning.

Bennie stood up, his eyes stinging from the smoke. He secretly 3 6 8

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loved all the reality shows, the awfulness of them—the cruel elimination rounds, the role-switching with calamitous consequences, and the makeovers of people with missing teeth, bad hair, and recessive chins. He glanced toward the television. Oh, why not? Pabulum was better than the conscious pain of despair. He walked over to the happy side of the camp.

In the blackness of the jungle, the screen was bright as a beacon.

He saw the female host of
Darwin’s Fittest
in her same safari hat and dirt-stained khakis of two weeks or so ago. This time, she had artfully applied a swath of mud to her left cheekbone. The two teams of contestants were building canoes, carving them out of balsa wood.

Their clothes were transparent with sweat, which left, as Bennie noted, no bulge or droop or crease unhidden. He could see that the fittest, whose bodies were fat-free specimens of healthy living, were detested by the others, as they should be.

“Are you ready?” the safari-hatted woman said. “Today’s new

challenge . . .” And she told them that holes would be punched into their canoes’ hulls, to simulate an attack by a hippopotamus, and they would have to plug these leaks with any material they could find, hope it held fast, then paddle one hundred meters upstream, where they could obtain the fresh water and food necessary to sustain them for the next three days. “If you don’t make it,” she warned,

“you’re literally and figuratively sunk.” She gave a rundown on the voracious creatures that lay in wait in the waters—rib-crunching crocodiles, flesh-nibbling fish, poisonous swimming snakes, and the most dangerous creature of them all, the people-hating hippos. The camera zoomed in on each contestant’s face, and captured the fast-blinking eyes of the fearful, the pressed lips of the determined, the slack jaws of those who already knew they were doomed.

Bennie empathized with their fears and public humiliation. When they scratched at an itch, he did, too. When they swallowed in hor3 6 9

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ror, he swallowed as well. They looked like prisoners on a chain gang, he thought. I should tell them we are in the same boat and should join forces. He walked closer and then caught himself. What was he doing? This is TV, you dope, it isn’t real. His glazed eyes returned to the screen, and a minute later, his logic flipped once again, so that he was operating under the reasoning of dreams. It’s a reality show, he told himself, and that means it
is
real. The people are real, the boats are real, the holes are real. The only thing that separates their reality from mine is a piece of glass. If I can just get them to see past the screen. . . . He threw his arms in the air, and this sudden action was enough to jolt him out of the delusion. Stop thinking crazy, he chastised himself. But like a person pulled irresistibly toward sleep, he gradually fell back into this semi-dream state. He sent a message with the power of his mind.
Look at me
, please.
God damn
it, look at me! I’m stuck in the jungle, too. Look at me!

I knew how he felt. Since my death, I have been overwhelmed with a frustration that alternates with despair. Imagine it: your consciousness separated from others by an invisible barrier that was erected in the blink of an eye. And now the eye no longer blinks. It never will again.

In Bennie’s porous mind, he was now advising the teams: Tear up your clothes, mix them with mud to make a ball—no, no, not the coconut hair, forget that, and don’t pick up the thatch, it’s not going to bunch up tight enough. You idiots! I’m the leader! You’re supposed to listen to me. . . . His disobedient team had just put their boat into the water, when a news crawl floated along the bottom of the screen: “Special report: More on the mystery of the eleven missing tourists in Myanmar.”

Bennie was amazed that other tourists were in their same predicament. The only difference: eleven instead of twelve. Wait a second.

We
are only eleven. He blinked hard to push out the brain skitter.

Was it merely wishful thinking? A hallucinatory manifestation? He 3 7 0

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ran closer to the TV, blocking everybody’s view. But now the news crawl had disappeared.

“Did you see that?” he cried.

Loot ordered Bennie to get out of the way. No one in the tribe had read the words at the bottom, not even Black Spot, who could pick out one letter at a time with great effort. These English words had run across the bottom of the screen as fast as a beetle when you overturned its home.

The crawl came back, slithering like a neon snake. “Special report: More on the mystery of the eleven missing tourists in Myanmar.”

Bennie gasped. “Hey, guys!” he yelled. “Get over here, quick!

We’re going to be on TV!”

“What’s he imagining now?” Dwight said softly. They had been taken in by other fantasies of Bennie’s. Claims that the bridge was up (which it indeed had been when Black Spot went for more supplies).

Shouts that he saw people on the other side of the rift (which he indeed had, when Black Spot and Grease returned). And now he was saying they were on
Darwin’s Fittest
? Poor Bennie, ever since his seizure, he had been coming apart, they concluded. They tried to humor him, and they also feared the possibility that others among them would go insane.

Bennie shouted to them again. “The news,” he gasped. “We’re on the news!”

“Your turn,” Moff told Roxanne, and she sighed and went to Bennie to put to rest this latest false hope. If they didn’t, he would not stop. But a few seconds later she yelled back, “Get over here! Quick!”

They nearly fell over one another to reach the television.

“Look!” Bennie shouted, dancing up and down. “I told you so.”

An anchor for an Australian network was saying that new footage about the Missing Eleven had just been received. My friends stared hard at the screen. But what came on next was a letdown. A travel piece on Egypt or something. A figure was climbing to the top of a 3 7 1

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pyramid. He was scanning more of these pyramids, which stretched out toward the horizon. The camera zoomed in on a well-groomed man with dark hair and silver temples. He looked uncannily familiar.

“Harry!” Marlena shrieked.

“The aching splendor,” Harry was now saying in a dreamy voice.

He looked off into the distance toward a panorama of more than two thousand domes and spires. “To see such stoic magnificence”—and he turned to the camera—“reminds me of my brave friends. Once they are found, and I know that will be soon, I shall bring them here to glorious Bagan, where we can enjoy the sunrises and sunsets together.”

Heidi laughed and then squealed. “He’s talking about us! We’re going back!” Moff gave her a happy squeeze.

“Omigod!” Wendy blubbered. “We’re saved! We’re going home!”

“Turn it up,” Moff said calmly, belying his nervous anticipation.

Dwight grabbed the remote control from Loot’s hands. The people of No Name Place wondered what had made the Younger White

Brother’s friends so excited. Only Black Spot suspected, and the knot in his stomach tightened. Had they offended a Nat? Why did they need to endure so many trials?

“We have some very, very good news,” the Missing Eleven heard Harry say in his best television voice of authority. A cheer went up among my friends. High fives were exchanged. Bennie was already thinking about hugging Timothy, taking a luxurious bath, then plopping into their plumped-up bed. The camera panned out to show Harry speaking to a Burmese reporter. “Our search team,” Harry said, “has a new lead, a promising one, in Mandalay. It seems that a craftsman of papier-mâché marionettes saw something suspicious, as did two monks. They all reported seeing a tall gentleman with long hair tied back in a ponytail and wearing khaki short pants, and with him were a young Eurasian boy and girl. The marionette maker said he spotted them at the top of Mandalay Hill, and the monks glimpsed them later that same day at Mahamuni Pagoda.”

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The Burmese reporter cut in: “This man with a ponytail, this is a description of your friend, isn’t it?”

“Correct,” Harry was seen answering with authority. “That could very well be Mark Moffett and his son, Rupert, along with Esmé, the daughter of my fiancée, Marlena Chu, who is also missing.” Four photos flashed up.

“That’s me!” Esmé cried, and then instantly she pouted, saying, “I
hate
that picture.”

Moff stamped his foot. “Shit! You blasted idiot, Harry! I’m here in bloody nowhere, not in Mandalay.”

“Fiancée,”
Marlena whispered to herself.