Three days prior, Nang had walked Wichien to the bus station. Diving for tin had gone by the wayside, and diving for pearls had become highly competitive. Wichien had gone without work for quite a spell, but then he landed a job diving for sand used for ceramics. The only downside to his new occupation was that he had to spend a few weeks each month at the bottom of a river in Nakhon Si Thammarat, located on the gulf side of the isthmus, approximately 186 miles from Nam Khem. He never liked leaving, and this time it was especially hard, because Nang had come down with a high fever. With their daughter now eighteen and attending a university in Bangkok, and with their son, Nueng, spending most of his time running around with his friends, Wichien wanted to stay home and take care of her. Nang wouldn’t have minded the pampering, but they needed money. Wichien had promised that this coming year he would finally finish renovating their home. That meant more to her than having company during her illness. She kissed him on the cheek and said good-bye.
Nang retreated to the loft of their house and spent the next two days curled in a ball on the mattress. On Sunday morning, she got tired of the loft, which grew tremendously hot during the day, and decided to go downstairs and lie on the cool tile floor. Despite the construction going on outside and the racket of Burmese laborers grinding ice for the fish coming off the boats, she slept soundly until approximately ten twenty a.m., when she was awoken by the voice of one of her neighbors saying something about a coming tidal wave. Her bones were sore from the fever and the hard tile, and it took her a moment to rise and walk to the door. When she got there, her neighbor was already gone.
A Burmese worker ran past in the direction of the road. Then another, and another. She stepped a little further outside, and she saw that hundreds were fleeing from the beach. She couldn’t see the shore, because several houses blocked her view, but she could feel that something terrible was about to happen. Not wanting to leave the safety of her home, she ran across the tile and climbed the ladder to the loft. She went to the window, and peering out, she saw the wave not far from shore. It was tall, very tall, and it stretched in both directions as far as she could see. Instinctively she began calling out her son’s name, but then she remembered that he had gone up to the market along the highway just before she had gone downstairs to sleep. She tried to decide what to do. She could stay in the loft and hang on to something, but then, out the window, she saw other people emerge from their homes, which were also two stories, and escape toward the road. She began worrying about her home collapsing and trapping her beneath the rubble. She decided to run.
She was back down the ladder and across the room in a matter of seconds, but she paused just outside her front door. An elderly woman who lived next door leaned up against the sidewall of Nang’s house, clutching her hands to her chest and trembling with fright.
“Take me with you,” she said to Nang. “Take me with you.”
Nang took the old lady by the arm and pulled her down an alley. Instinct told her to head as far inland as possible, but when she reached the main road that ran parallel to the beach, she realized she had to rethink her plan. A massive pond made by tin miners decades before lay just on the other side of the road, preventing anyone in the general vicinity from heading farther east. Not sure what else she could do, Nang turned north on the road. Most of the vehicles were well ahead of her, heading for the bend that led up to the highway, but one truck remained, as if it had been waiting for her and the old woman. Nang joined the handful of other people in the back, most of whom were children, and then she reached down and helped the old lady in. A moment later, the driver hit the gas and the back tires spit up a cloud of dirt. They raced forward at a tremendous speed, but soon they slowed down again.
Nang closed her eyes, hoping that when she opened them, she would realize this had all just been a horrible dream brought on by her fever. Screams now came from all around her, and she could hear a strange sound off in the distance. She began to pray. The faces of her parents, both of whom had died years prior, appeared in her mind. She could see the wrinkles on their skin and every other detail of their faces. Never before had she remembered them this clearly. She became convinced that their sprits had somehow joined her. She looked right into her daddy’s eyes and begged him to save her.
The truck came to a sudden stop. Nang knew that they couldn’t have traveled far, and she opened her eyes. They were still close to where she had climbed into the truck, stuck in a traffic jam. Up ahead, a Burmese worker had crashed his motorcycle, and the wreck was blocking the road. People were trying to move him and his bike off to the side so cars could pass, but the terrible sound in the distance was growing louder. They were all going to die unless they started moving again.
A hand landed on Nang’s shoulder. Looking over the side of the truck, she saw a woman she knew holding her two children under one arm. One child couldn’t have been older than eight months, and the other was around three years old. The woman let go of Nang’s shoulder and snatched the eight-month-old up by the arm. She dangled the baby out before her.
“Auntie Nang, take this little one with you,” she cried.
“No, I can’t,” Nang returned. “I don’t even know if I can survive.”
“Please, just take her.”
“I can’t,” Nang repeated, but instinctively she reached her arms out, because it looked like the baby might fall. The woman released the child into her hands and began to run again. Nang, not knowing what else to do, pulled the baby close to her bosom and gazed down into her little black eyes. A fraction of a second later, Nang looked up to see a forty-foot longtail boat coming straight at her, riding on top of a jet-black wave as tall as the buildings around her. She took a deep breath and held the baby as tightly as she could.
The wave crashed down, pinning her to the bed of the truck. Completely submerged under water, Nang saw something dark, which she assumed was the longtail boat, pass over her. That was the last thing she saw before the world around her became too painful and confusing to watch. She shut her eyes. Her mind instructed her to fight, but she didn’t know how, so she lay there, frozen. The metal beneath her began to shake and tremble as the truck got pushed across the road. It ran into something solid and stopped, but then whatever it had run into broke to pieces, and the truck started moving again. Her heart and mind raced.
In what seemed like an hour but was probably closer to a minute, she noticed the chaos begin to dwindle. The truck began to slow, as did the water rushing past her. She slowly opened her eyes. Water still engulfed her, but the surface had come considerably down. Pushing off with one hand, fighting the current for balance, she stood up in the truck’s bed. Her head broke the surface.
After she took a massive breath, the first thing she noticed was that nearly all of the people who had been in the truck with her were now gone. There had been five or six children, as well as a number of old people. The only ones who remained were a young boy and girl, both around six years of age, and the elderly woman Nang had led up to the road. The children had a hard time keeping their heads above the water. Before Nang could reach out and help them, she felt something wriggling against her bosom. She remembered the baby she still held in her right arm.
She pulled the baby girl from the water and held her above her head. The girl’s lips had turned blue, her breath gurgled, and her eyes had rolled back into her head. Nang began to scream for someone to help her, but when she looked around, she saw no one in a position to help. The entire village was submersed. Buildings had fallen down, boats had washed ashore, and dozens of motionless bodies floated everywhere. She knew that screaming would do no good, but she couldn’t stop. Someone had to still be alive. There had to be someone who could help her and this little girl. Her eyes continued to dance from the left to the right for several minutes, but then she heard it again—that same noise began to grow in the distance. Another wave was coming, and it sounded bigger than the last.
With the water level having dropped to her chest, Nang brought the baby down so she could look into her face. “I am so sorry,” she said, crying hysterically. “I can’t help you. I am so sorry.”
Leaning over, Nang lowered her hands until the baby’s body touched the water. She could hear the baby’s lungs struggling for breath, see her little hands and feet thrashing for life, but there was nothing Nang could do. Screaming and crying at the same time, she let the baby go. The water carried her for a few yards, and then the tiny body disappeared beneath the surface. For a few seconds, Nang gazed at the spot where the baby had vanished, knowing that now even if she somehow survived this, she would never sleep another night. Then she spun just in time to see a second wave, this one forty feet in height, barreling down upon her. Not wanting to get pulled away from the truck, she ducked beneath the water so she could lie down in the bed.
The wave picked up the truck and threw it into the side of a building. The walls collapsed and the roof fell down on top of the truck. For a moment, all Nang could see were nails and wood, but then water flooded over her again, lifting the roof higher above the truck bed and taking it partially away. Nang was in great pain, but she didn’t know which part of her body had been injured. Her only thought now was making it to the surface. Just like before, she needed to wait until the world around her slowed. She tried to be patient, but it was taking much longer than last time. Eventually panic took over and she began to flail her arms and legs. She got to where she could stand, but that was as far up as her body would go. It felt as if her feet were stuck to the bed of the truck. She lifted her left leg, and it came up just fine. Then she tried lifting her right leg, but it wouldn’t move. She realized now that the pain she felt came from her right calf. Something sharp and heavy must have pierced through it, because she couldn’t lift it even one inch. From this position, she couldn’t get her head above the water to take a breath. Realizing that she would drown if she remained locked in her current position for another minute, she tried to tear her leg free despite the tremendous pain.
As she was on the verge of inhaling a breath of water, Nang’s head broke the surface. Her leg was still stuck, but the water level had gone down. Only seconds after she took a huge gulp of air, however, her head was suddenly pulled back beneath the water. She could feel hands grabbing at her, and at first she thought demons were trying to take her life. Then, beneath the surface, she saw the faces of the old woman and the two children who had been in the truck with her. None of them had reached the surface yet, and they grabbed at her clothes in an attempt to climb up her body. On instinct, she began to push them away, certain they would drown her. When Nang fought her way back to the surface, she couldn’t see them anywhere. All she could see was the roof of the house hanging over one end of the truck and water in every direction. Most of the buildings that had survived the first wave had been pummeled by the second. The village was gone.
It all became too much. Instead of trying to free her leg so she could climb up something tall or swim to safety, she just dog-paddled in place with her hands and her one usable leg to keep her head above water. A considerable amount of time passed, though she wouldn’t be able to remember how much. The only thing she was certain of was that she heard the third wave coming. This time she couldn’t bring herself to dive back under and hide in the truck bed. She couldn’t do anything but continue to dog-paddle and shut her eyes. Without the truck’s metal cocoon, however, the third wave ripped her away from the vehicle and whatever had speared her leg. As her body tumbled around and bounced off cars and chunks of cement, she tried swimming to the surface but hadn’t the slightest clue in which direction to go. She could see the faces of her parents again, and now she called out to them with all her heart. She begged them to help her. As her body continued to rebound off sharp and dull objects, and after what seemed like ten minutes had passed, she became certain that she was already dead and gave up. No longer needing her arms to swim, she placed her palms together and prayed to Buddha.
Almost instantly, she felt what she would later describe as an invisible hand lift her toward the surface. Her chest struck something solid. Whatever she had hit was round and tall and allowed her to get her arms firmly around it. She stayed in that position for thirty seconds, not daring to move. A voice whispered to her. It sounded like her voice.
“You need to climb up this tree. You need to climb up now!”
Nang opened her eyes. It was a coconut tree, but she was still well below the surface. With water rushing around her, trying to pull her away, she climbed arm over arm, leg over leg, until her head came above water. She took a breath and then another. All she could see was the bark of the coconut tree. She looked up; the top of the tree wasn’t that far off, which meant that the water line was still at fifteen or twenty feet. Climbing the rest of the way seemed impossible. If her hands or feet slipped, she would fall back into the water and get carried away. She had no courage to do anything other than cling to the spot where she was.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a car go past her. She grew afraid that something would strike her in the back. She craned her head around and then let out a scream. A barrage of boats and large chunks of buildings came straight for her. If one of those objects hit her, it would either crush her against the tree or knock her back into the water. She looked back up, whimpering. To climb the tree was her only option. She remembered that she was no stranger to climbing coconut trees. When Wichien had gotten shot, she had climbed thousands of coconut trees to pay the hospital bills. She told herself that this was the last thing she had to do before she was safe. The thought gave her courage, and she began to climb again, arm over arm, leg over leg, until she reached the lip of the bushy head at the top. She carefully worked her way over the coconut clusters, eventually grabbing a concave branch and pulling herself the rest of the way up. Flopping down on the spiky leaves, she lay, trembling, as ants swarmed over her body. When she caught her breath and gathered a little strength, she sat up.
Her body had been dragged beneath the water more than thirty yards from the road. Directly below her she could hear the oot, oot, oot of pigs drowning in the water. She could see chickens and dogs struggling to stay afloat. She could see people who had latched on to pieces of wood and refrigerator doors go drifting by. She could hear what sounded like a thousand children calling out for their parents and a thousand parents calling out for their children. Everywhere, people cried out for help.
Three coconut trees stood before her, lined up in a row perpendicular to the beach. Halfway up the tree directly in front of her, Nang saw the elderly neighbor she had helped into the truck clinging to the trunk just above the waterline. The woman screamed. She saw an aluminum roof coming right for her, the corner of which would shortly saw her body in two. Nang’s eyes snapped away for a moment to track down a voice that had risen above everything else. Standing on the roof of a two-story house, she saw the elderly woman’s middle-aged daughter.
“Mama, you have to climb up!” the daughter shouted hysterically. “You have to climb up now!”
Nang looked back down at her neighbor, praying she would find the strength to follow her daughter’s advice. The old woman lifted an arm as if she planned to climb, but then she brought it back down and continued to cling to the trunk at the waterline. The old woman began to scream louder now, as did the daughter. Nang, who could clearly see what would happen, grabbed the sides of her head and began to scream as well. The old woman looked one last time over her shoulder at the advancing roof, now only a few yards away, and then let go of the tree. Her body disappeared beneath the surface, but then she popped back up and began to flail her arms. A moment later, the roof struck the tree, clung for a second, and then rolled off to the same side where the old woman had been carried. Nang shouted for the old woman to swim away, get away from the roof, but she had no strength left to do anything other than keep herself above water. In a few seconds, the roof swept over the woman. Nang expected that the roof would wash by and then the woman would pop back to the surface, but that’s not what happened. The roof sank. It had stayed afloat for god knew how long, only to sink the moment it had a life in its belly. In a matter of seconds, there was no sign of either the roof or the old woman.
Nang could hear her neighbor’s daughter crying hysterically. She could still hear the oot, oot, oot of pigs drowning in the water and children screaming for their mothers. All she could see was death. She became convinced that everything happening was the work of evil spirits seeking some sort of revenge. Those were the thoughts that were with her when she saw a fourth and final wave coming toward shore. She couldn’t take it anymore and turned her eyes down. The moment she did this, she noticed two things at once: The water had taken all her clothes, and she had a massive hole in her calf. With adrenaline shooting through her body, she had forgotten that she was injured, but now the pain returned to her at once. Inside the massive gash, she could see bone and, around the edges, shredded flesh and muscle. Blood surrounded her, dripping from the branches on which she sat. Feeling her head begin to spin, she latched on to the surrounding leaves. A moment later, she lost consciousness.