Goodbye, Vietnam by Gloria Whelan Read Free Book Online Page B

take my eyes off the small shape bobbing in the water. Each time my eyes blinked the shape seemed to get smaller. Then the drift of the boat changed, and for a while we moved close enough to the wreckage so that we could hear the man’s cries. Then the boat changed course again, and the wreckage with the clinging figure became a speck on the sea. Kim and I were holding each other’s hands. I think it was because we couldn’t reach out to the man that we held on to each other.
    A small rasping noise came from the cabin and grew louder. The boat began vibrating, and in a minute it was plowing through the sea toward the distant speck. Captain Muoi grumbled good-naturedly about the extra fuel and the lost time the rescue would cost, but even he was excited. We were all quiet, thankful that it had not been our boat that had been wrecked. It might have been us out there alone on the sea.
    “What could have caused the wreck?” Kim asked. “There haven’t been any storms.”
    And why only one person? I wondered. Where were all the others?
    As the boat drew close, we were shocked to see that it was a boy, not much older than Kim and I. The boy was staring at our boat at though it might be a vision that would suddenly disappear, leaving him all alone again.
    My father cast a rope overboard, calling to the boy to tie it around his waist, but the boy was either afraid to let go of the bit of wreckage to which he was clinging or he did not understand what my father said, for he only continued to stare at us with blank eyes.
    A second rope was tied around my father and he was lowered into the water. I closed my eyes. Thesea was so large I didn’t trust it. My father began to swim toward the boy. When my father reached the boy and began to circle his waist with a rope, the boy suddenly let go of the wreckage and threw his arms around my father, nearly strangling him. They both disappeared below the water. I heard my mother cry out.
    A moment later they bobbed to the surface, a tangle of arms and rope. The boy was flailing out at my father, who was trying to get the rope around him. I clutched at Kim, nearly as scared as the boy. My father finally got an arm loose and slapped the boy’s face so hard we heard the sound of it on the boat. The boy went limp and my father slipped the rope around him and began to swim back to the boat, an arm slung around the boy’s body.
    Hands reached over the side to haul at the ropes. The boy was hoisted into the boat, followed by my father, who climbed aboard panting and spitting water but proud of his catch. He laid the boy onto a mat.
    Everyone pushed close to get a look at him. Kim’s mother pleaded with them to keep back. The boy was shaking with fear. Bac si Hong ran practiced hands over the trembling boy and turned to the captain.“There are no bones broken, but he’s badly sunburned and in shock. He’s also suffering from dehydration.”
    Anh and Thant were sent to beg dry clothes for the boy. My mother handed him a cup from our ration of water. “Not too much at one time,” Kim’s mother cautioned.
    Captain Muoi wanted to question the boy, but Kim’s mother said “No!” in so strong a voice that the captain retreated without another word. At last the boy fell asleep, but it was a restless sleep. Several times during the night he woke the whole boat with screams that sounded as if ten thousand devils were after him. We didn’t dare think about what nightmares he was having—or worse, that they might not be nightmares at all but memories.

8
    I was awake early the next morning. The first thing I did was to look for the boy to be sure I hadn’t dreamed his rescue. He lay curled up on a mat, his arms crossed over his chest, his legs bent at the knees and pressed against his body as though he were trying to curl up into the smallest shape possible so that nothing could get at him. His face was badly sunburned, but even so, I thought his high cheekbones and the curve of his mouth