Saving Fish From Drowning (57 page)

found. They would wriggle and writhe like moths bursting against their sacks. The fringe of the blankets would brush their unfeeling faces, a sign that sleep this time had no end. And when their breath was the departing breeze, the emerald wings would flap and fly, sounding the bells and singing to the dead, “Go home, go home.”

Loot stood and picked up a bowl of food made with the last of the hoarded spices. The food was passed around the circle, with all taking a pinch, so they could give offerings. Loot cried out: To the Nats, 4 1 2

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who kindly did not give us too much mischief. The refrain chant came back in English.
God is great!
To the Lord of Land and Water, who owns all of nature and let us dwell in it.
God is great!
To the Crop Grandmother, who had no crops to watch, but that was not her fault.
God is great!
And to the Great God in the sky and His son, Lord Jesus, who will welcome us into the Kingdom of Everlasting Rice Fields and bottomless bottles of sweet toddy, which we will drink while watching the greatest dances, puppet dramas, and number-one TV shows.
God is great! God is great!
We will grow strong and then stronger still, so that when our enemies die and try to sneak into our kingdom, we will knock them down and beat their heads, until they are as soft as egg yolks.
God is great! God is great!
We will smash their bones and grind their hearts, until the pieces are like moldy manure.
God is great! God is great!
We will toss this stink into a burning river.
God is great! God is great!
Away they will be swept, boiling and bubbling, screaming and crying, over a cliff and down a firefall into the fang-toothed jaws of Hell, just as the Lord of Nats has foretold.
God is great!

Now our people will be ready to be resurrected as soldiers for the Lord’s Army—
God is great!—
and at last they will return to earth and take back our stolen lands.
God is great!
But before we plant and harvest the fields, we will find the scattered bones of our dear families, mother, father, sister, brother, child, child, baby, baby. We will wrap them tenderly in blankets woven with the secret knots, and as we talk to them, soothe them, we will lay them in the earth—not in a secret place with no name—but on the top of a mountain, with a clear view of the sky.
Amen.

DURING A BREAK in the news, my friends came over to watch the ceremony that the Lajamees were holding. They sat on logs and low stools. Today must be some sort of a holiday, hence the celebration 4 1 3

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with the passing of the bowl, the loud oration and ritual chanting.

Wendy went over to Black Spot. “What’s the occasion?” she asked.

He looked somber. “Day of our death, miss.”

Like the Day of the Dead in Mexico, Wendy thought. “Does

everyone in Myanmar celebrate this holiday?”

“No, miss. This is not holiday-making. This is ready-making for death. Tomorrow, maybe next day, we are dying. We think it is soon.”

Wendy ran back to the group and related what Black Spot had

said. A mass suicide? The eleven Americans had talked about this before, but during the past week the tribe had seemed so cheerful.

What had changed their minds? And here was a scary thought: Did the tribe expect that their guests would join them in the exodus?

They’d have to put a halt to that notion right now.

Bennie went to Black Spot and asked him what he meant by

“ready-making for death.”

“SLORC soldiers are coming,” Black Spot said. “We are already telling you before. When they are finding you, they are finding us.

They are saving you, they are killing us.”

“Oh, come on,” Bennie said, trying to calm his own rattled nerves.

“That won’t happen.”

“Why not?” Black Spot said, and walked away. He went into the woods, where those who had died after coming to No Name Place were now buried. He was feeling very bad for his people. He was ashamed to realize that the boy was not the Reincarnated One. The boy was not the Younger White Brother or the Lord of Nats. And the ten other people were not his disciples or his retinue of soldiers.

They were tourists who had attracted nothing but bad luck. What a disaster Black Spot had brought upon his people.

Over the next hour, there was much talk among my friends. What should they do? These poor folks had been kind to them, had shared their food, their blankets, their clothes. It wasn’t their fault the bridge fell down. One thing was certain: The eleven of them would 4 1 4

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help the tribe. They would tell whoever saved them that tribe people here were not guerrilla rebels. They had no weapons. They were regular folks—all except the twins and their grandmother, poor thing, brain-damaged from all that past violence, thinking she could talk to God. And if the military still caused trouble for their jungle friends, they would use influential contacts in the States. A senator, the mayor, they would figure that out later—the point was, they would help.

Yet what if the SLORC soldiers rushed in and started shooting before asking? What if they shot
them
before they could yell that they were Americans? Would being Americans help them? What if it had the opposite effect?

Two hours after the sun went down, Loot and Bootie stepped onto the tree stump where the spirit of the Crop Grandmother once stood watch over nothing. Loot raised his arms high and shouted in Karen dialect, “Let us pray.” He rocked on his heels, his eyes rolled back, and my friends heard again the mumble of gibberish. Above that came Bootie’s higher-pitched voice leading the people into a chanting refrain:
God is great, God is great.

Loot shouted that the Younger White Brother was not among

them. The boy was merely a mortal, but they did not blame him.

They did not blame the Nats, who made them think that, for they were merely being playful. But now it was time to go find the real Younger Brother in the Kingdom of Everlasting Rice Fields. And before they ate the last supper of life-ending mushrooms, they would pound the drums and sound the horns. They would ready the souls of their bodies, the soul of the eyes, the soul of the mouth, all of them one by one. They would know to be ready, to not dillydally and get left behind. Soon the soldiers would arrive. They would stab them with their bayonets, shoot them with their rifles, but they would already be gone, their bodies empty like the hollow husks of the emerald beetles.

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Souls, be ready!

The men on the inner edge of the circle readied their drums, the bronze one and those made of hide stretched over a wood frame. The women on the other side picked up their instruments: the bamboo flutes and hollowed tree knots carved like spiny frogs. When they trilled the flutes and ran a stick over the frog bumps, the sound was of water trickling over rock, much loved by the Lord of Land and Water, a pleasing song to any god who was listening.

Black Spot brought forth chicken bones, feathers, and a small bag of rice. He placed them next to Bootie, who tossed them bit by bit into the fire. These had been the twins’ divining tools. Best to burn these shaman tools now, lest their enemies use them to trick their souls and send them to the wrong realm or into a weak person’s body.

My friends watched as the tribe’s personal goods were thrown into the fire: worn mats and carved sticks, the woven rattan that covered their meager verandahs when it rained. Bennie regretted seeing a wooden bowl with etchings also sacrificed in this way. The fire burned higher and higher.

“Lord God,” Bootie cried in English above the inferno, “we coming soon. Bo-Cheesus, we coming soon. Heavy Fazzer, we coming soon. In life, we serf You, in dess we serf You. We Your servants, we Your children, we Your sheep. And we Your soldiers, onward marching, we the Lord’s Army. . . .”

Roxanne nudged Dwight. “Did she say ‘Lord’s Army’?” He nodded. “We the Lord’s Army,” she repeated, then rolled the words around on her tongue.
We the Lajamee
. How wrong they had been about so many things. What else had they misunderstood?

The chanting grew louder, and the drums, horns, gourds, and

flutes fell into the rhythm of an excited heart:
Boom-tock, boomtock
. Faster and faster, louder and louder. The repetitious din made it hard to think or move. Bennie was afraid his brain would lock on 4 1 6

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to the repetitive beat and he would have a seizure. The pounding and chanting had become a communal heartbeat.

With a single last bang of the bronze drum, all the souls in No Name Place were jolted out of their bodies, my friends’ souls, too.

Were they dead? Had they been shot? They did not feel wounded.

They felt bigger and lighter. They seemed to see themselves, not their physical bodies, but their own thoughts and truths, as if there were a mind mirror that could reflect such things. They all had those mirrors. Now that they were outside their bodies, they could hear without the distortions of ears, speak without the tangle of tongues, see without the blinders of experience. They were open portals to many minds, and the minds flew into the soul, and the soul was contained in the minds of everyone. They knew this was not normal, and yet it was natural. They struggled for words to describe what they felt, that they were every thought they had ever had and those of others, an open repository containing bright particles and endless strands, microscopic stars and infinite trajectories, endless constellations that were holograms within holograms within themselves, the invisible as visible, the impossible as obvious, the greatest knowledge now effortlessly known, and the greatest knowledge was love. Just love.

And I knew this, too.

“Amen,” Loot said.

With another jolt, my friends instantly returned to their separate bodies, separate minds, separate hearts, leaving them one among many and no longer many in one. They looked around, at one another, at Loot and Bootie, waiting to see if the sensation would burst through again. But the experience began to fade as dreams do, despite their trying to resurrect it or grasp at it as if at motes of dust.

They had their senses back, yet never had they felt less sensible.

The light from the television flickered. They walked over and sat on the rattan and bamboo stools, waiting for the morning news from New York. Among themselves they slowly began to talk. Had they 4 1 7

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just experienced a religious ecstasy? Had they glimpsed the edge before death? Maybe you got the same effect when you’d gone without eating or sleeping for days. . . . They guessed at it until they lost it.

And yet, without their knowing, some change had already taken fragile root. Some part of their souls had broken free.

THAT NIGHT, the first of four miracles occurred. Or five, depending on how you look at it.

The first revealed itself when my friends were standing in front of the television. “Our top story this morning,” said the anchor on Global News Network, “a videotape has been found, belonging to one of the eleven tourists missing in Myanmar, showing us exactly what happened after they were last seen. Belinda Merkin is with us, live in Bangkok. Belinda, can you tell us how this tape came into your possession?”

Belinda was standing at the night market in Bangkok. “Ed, as you know, we’ve been working underground in Burma, finding credible leads and following them into the secret recesses of a country that exists behind a veil of secrecy. And because Burma is ruled by a repressive regime, we have to protect the identity of our sources. Let’s just say a birdie dropped it from the sky and into our hands.” She held up a bogus camcorder tape, the real contents having been copied onto the disc and sent to GNN headquarters from Bangkok via a high-speed digital link.

“Your life must have been in danger, too, wasn’t it, Belinda?”

“Well, Ed, let me just say, I’m glad to be in Bangkok, with Burma behind me. But what’s more important now are the missing Americans. And within this tape are important clues. It is a home video shot by one of the missing, Roxanne Scarangello. . . .”

“What!” Roxanne yelped. “That can’t be.”

“And now,” said the anchor, “we’re going to show you at home ex4 1 8

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actly what the tape captured. Viewer discretion is advised. Some of the scenes are disturbing and not suitable for children. . . .”

Once the tape had been shown, Roxanne ran to retrieve her backpack. “It’s gone! It’s gone!” she shouted, loud enough to catch Black Spot’s attention. She stood there with her camcorder, its cartridge holder open and empty. Black Spot walked over to hear what was being discussed.

The visitors were chattering wildly. With the bridge down, there was no way the reporter could have sneaked in and stolen the tape.

And no one in this camp could have taken it to the local post office to mail to GNN. “Maybe a bird really did find the tape,” Bennie said.

“Crows are known to take all kinds of things to line their nests. How else would you explain it?”

Black Spot held his arms outstretched. “It is miracle,” he said.

My friends considered the possibility. The release of their souls only moments earlier had opened them to the mysterious and

inexplicable.

“However it got to them,” Roxanne said, “I’m worried about

where the tape leaves off. Rupert was delirious, Moff was out of his mind—”

“I don’t think it shows that at all,” Moff said, careful not to look at his son. “You can tell in the tape that I was exhausted.”

The group analyzed whether it might look to outside viewers elsewhere that everyone had died. Would the search still go on in Rangoon? They hoped not. Would searchers come to the jungle, to the mountains around the lake?

“There’s a lot of jungle,” Heidi said, and then added: “But maybe another miracle will happen.”