Other Earths (collection)

We arrived at our stopping point in early morning, when drifts of whitish fog lay over all, ghosting the forest of prows and masts emerging from the water and the wreckage of crushed and capsized hulls spilling over the shore as if a tsunami had driven them to ruin. The majority (like the Undine) were adorned with painted eyes to drive away evil spirits, and these could be seen peering at us through the gauzy cover, seeming to blink as the fog thickened and thinned—it was an eerie and disconcerting sight, its effect amplified by the funereal silence that held sway, accented by the slop of the tide against the houseboat, an unsavory sound that reminded me in its erratic rhythm of an injured cur licking a wound. The people we had talked to along the canals would surely have told us of this obstruction, and it followed, then, that Phu Tho, this Phu Tho, must be a singular place designed to mark journey’s end for every Thomas Cradle (excepting those who failed to complete their journeys), and that in other Phu Thos, life went on as always, the canal busy with its usual traffic, and that I was, despite Lan’s presence, for all intents and purposes, alone.

I packed a rucksack with a change of clothes, protein bars, water, the gun, binoculars, a coiled length of rope, the Colt, a first-aid kit, an English-Vietnamese pocket dictionary, repellent, and my dog-eared copy of Cradle Two’s novel, thinking that his ruminations about the tea forest might be of value. Lan was waiting on deck, dour as ever; before I could instruct him, he said, “I stay here three days. Then I go. Bring police.” Phu Tho spooked him, though you couldn’t have determined this from his expression. I felt oddly sentimental about leaving him behind, and as I began my trek to shore, negotiating a path of slippery, tilted decks and slick hulls, tightroping along submerged railings, I speculated about his past and why he had stuck it out with me. I decided that it must have to do with habits cultivated during the Vietnam conflict—he may have been an army scout or ARVN and thus had developed a love-hate relationship with Americans. Before long, however, the exigencies of the crossing demanded my full attention. Twice I had to retrace my steps and seek a new route, and once, when I was up to my neck in water, I nudged something soft, and a bloated, eyeless face emerged from the murk and bobbed to the surface. I kicked the body away in revulsion, but I had the impression that the face had belonged to a man of about my size and weight. This was more than a graveyard for boats. I imagined that many more Cradles might be asleep in that deep.

A third of the way to shore, I stopped to rest atop the roof of a sunken launch. The sun was high, showing intermittently between leaden clouds; the fog had burned off, and though the heat was intense, I was grateful for it. I felt a chill that could not be explained by my immersion in water. The stillness and the silence, the corpse I had disturbed, the regatta of dead ships, looking more ruinous absent its ghostly dress and stretching, I saw now, for miles along the canal, a veritable boat holocaust: It was such a surreal scene, its scope so tremendous, I quailed before it; yet as always something drove me on. I was around fifty, sixty yards from shore, taking another rest, when music kicked in from one of the houses. It carried faintly across the water, but I could make out Little Richard telling Miss Molly it was all right to ball. The song finished, and after an interval, Sly Stone’s “Everyday People” began to play. That sunny jingle served to heighten Phu Tho’s desolate air. I wiped sweat from my eyes and scanned the houses, trying to find the source of the music. No people, no dogs or pigs or chickens. Banana fronds lifted in a breeze, but no movement otherwise. I took a look through my binoculars. On the fa¸ade of a pale green house was a mural like the one I’d seen in Stung Treng, and again in Phnom Penh, depicting a yellowish, many-chambered form. The next song was Neal Diamond’s “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon.” Whoever was selecting the music had begun to piss me off.