SMOKING UNFILTERED CAMELS triggered a yearning in Kai that lingered long after the last cigarette. Whether a yearning for someone he had lost or something he never had, he could not say.
“How was I found?” he asked Lee yet again.
“I found you curled up in the ruins of a burning village,” Lee repeated. “I dropped the things I carried, placed you in my duffle bag, and walked away.”
“Westward?”
“Along a great winding river with many tributaries.”
Kai confided in Vinnie, and they set out before daybreak with two gourds of moonshine they promised Cook Cu they would barter. They traveled eastward. When they came to a great river that bent northward, they followed it into the Central Highlands.
“We crossed the border!” Vinnie picked up the pace.
“It’s still one jungle.” Kai trailed behind, clearing the underbrush with his machete and marking the path for their return.
They walked uphill along the watercourse through the evergreen forest without seeing another human. Clouds floated through treetops like filmy white cloths. In the late afternoon, they reached a savanna-like plateau and came upon a clearing. The clouds were now at their feet. The barren area was cultivated but not fenced in. Undeveloped fruit trees, bushes, and vines formed a perimeter. Wildflowers, medicinal herbs, and root vegetables grew in a field adjacent to the river. They picked and ate red berries from a vine they did not recognize. They washed their faces and drank the cool water. They heard birds and a distinct high-pitched whistling beyond the field.
“Wild dogs on the hunt,” Kai said.
The boys trotted upstream toward the whistling. Where the river widened into a lake surrounded by flat boulders and young pines, they saw a group of scantily clad children. The children were washing their clothes on the boulders. Some were cleaning vegetables, and others were fishing with bamboo poles and nets, all the while twittering like birds.
Kai and Vinnie hid behind the pines. When an elfin girl passed near them, they could almost touch her long flowing hair. She smelled of pomelo flowers and sandalwood. Kai sucked in his breath and Vinnie slipped out a low wolf whistle. The girl turned. They ducked behind the pines but continued to watch through the gaps.
“Sweet Jesus,” Vinnie breathed.
When the girl took several steps in their direction, the boys froze. Her downcast gaze made her look as if she were sleeping. She tilted her head, turned an ear toward them, and listened for a moment before rejoining the children.
“Vin, she didn’t see us, did she?”
“No. Sleeping Beauty can’t see with them eyes.”
They watched the children from behind the pines. As the sun crimsoned in the western sky, the children left the lake, chirping like a flock of birds. Some dragged themselves over the ground, others helped a few along, and the rest carried baskets of the things washed or caught in the water. They traveled close to the riverside with the girl at the lead, now and then whistling.
“Wild dogs?” Vinnie looked at Kai.
“That’s the whistling of a wild dog.”
Leaving the shore, the children continued through the pine forest.
“Let’s see where they’re going,” Kai said.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Something’s in the water . . . in the soil.” Vinnie’s voice was quiet. He suddenly stuck a finger down his throat and forced himself to gag. His stomach convulsed violently for what seemed like a long time until he threw up a foamy red berry mush. Wiping his mouth, he said weakly, “Let’s get back.”
“No,” Kai said.
“You’re one of them, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“You’re one of them,” Vinnie said again. “That night I shot into the bush, everyone thought I was trigger-happy, but when I saw you, I thought I saw a . . . a . . . I don’t know what I saw. Let’s go.”
Kai seemed not to hear.
Night came.
They followed the flickering yellow light in the direction the children had disappeared. They cut through the dark forest, crossed a hilly open field, and entered a young bamboo grove. They found a footpath leading to a fence and a thatched longhouse with square windows through which the light shone.
“Wait here,” Kai said.
Before Vinnie could stop him, Kai jumped the fence and vanished into the stretch of darkness with a gourd of moonshine. Appearing outside a lit window, Kai paused and then slipped through the bright light. Vinnie watched for move ments and listened for a commotion inside the house but only became more aware of the wind rustling through the pine forest, the river rushing over stones, and nocturnal animals grunting in the distance.
He was startled by a sudden burst of sounds in unison, followed by back and forth calls from different directions. He could not tell whether they were human or animal. He thought they came from inside the shelter. He waited, enclosed in the night. He wanted to make a run for the square of light but froze when he heard hissing near his ear. Trembling, he slowly turned toward the sinister sound.
Kai was standing beside him, grinning like an imp and shaking a bamboo tube filled with sand. “I traded the moonshine!”
When they trekked back to the campground under the starlit sky, Kai asked Vinnie why he had called the girl Sleeping Beauty.
“If a true love kissed her, she’d wake up, and they’d live happily ever after.” Vinnie looked at Kai. “Are you true love?”
They did not talk about their outing again until Lee pressed them.
“It’s like a ranch in the middle of nowhere with only children,” Vinnie reported. “Kai snuck through the window and stole their serpent.”
“I traded the moonshine.” Kai shook the brightly painted bamboo tube he had been carrying around camp. Vinnie thought it sounded like a hissing serpent from the abyss; for Kai, the sound of sand in the bamboo echoed like falling rain and rejuvenated his spirit.
“What did you see?” Lee asked. “Did anyone see you?”
“There was a woman without hair like Cook Cu, and all the children were—”
“Not normal,” Vinnie said.
“They helped one another,” Kai said. “The right hand helped the left.”
“You could be a ranch hand.” Vinnie peered at Kai. “Twittering and charred-face, you’d fit right in at the Helping Hands Ranch.”
Lee was of the same mind with Vinnie that the boys should not eat, drink, or swim in the water, no matter how hungry, thirsty, or hot they were. He made them promise to observe only from afar. Vinnie suspected something was in the water and soil, but Lee was certain the area was poisoned, recalling the nightmarish rain from the C-123s that turned the forest a sick yellow. He could not convince the boys not to go back to the lake, nor could he bring himself to cross the border with them. He had taught Kai all he could about surviving the jungle. There seemed nothing more he could do. Sho ga nai, his father would have said.
Each time the boys returned, Lee would sigh with relief. He listened to the tunes of nature they picked up from the children: the shrill cries of the black-shanked douc, the songs of the golden-winged laughingthrush, the hiss of the water monitor, and the rustling wind through a young pine forest. He listened in anticipation of a sea change.