Essay on "Fourth Uncle in the Mountain Last Chapter"

Essay 3 pages (1161 words) Sources: 0

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Fourth Uncle in the Mountain

Last Chapter of Fourth Uncle in the Mountain

After Tam left, we waited in the house for two weeks. Thanh had disappeared, which worried everyone. I thought maybe Tam was right to leave. This was craziness.

One night, the eight-year-old boy fell down into the water. We fished him out, but something in the rank liquid infected a sore he had. The infection spread quickly and the boy could hardly breathe after three days. There was a yellow gel oozing out his leg where the cut was. No one was willing to cut him. I tried acupressure on his back to relieve the boy's pain. He died in agony two days later. There were no spells for the dead in my medicine books, so I used one that Fourth Uncle had taught me in the cave. His funeral was undignified. There was no one to pray for the boy once we'd pushed his body off the planks back into the murky depths.

Tam came back before Thanh did. We were surprised to see him. He said that he had narrowly escaped arrest trying to cross back into Vietnam. I was sick when he gave me the little package I'd prepared for Mai. She would be worried where I was. I took the note out of the plastic bag and ripped it up. The shreds of paper followed the boy's bones down into the ripples. Tam grabbed me on the forearm and said not to lose hope. He would try again. I felt like he had betrayed me, but I didn't lose hope for seeing Mai again. I smiled at him. The free country, where I would practice the way of my father, lay before us. To turn back was impossible.

Thanh rowed the boat under the house. We held candles out for him that night as he and the fleeing communist official secured the motor. Thanh didn't know if it would work, but it was the only engine he could find. We waited one more day. One of the neighbors found the boy's body washed up on the bank. Through the slats in the house, we could hear her talk to a Cambodian official. We understood only her finger pointing past the house.

That night we all ate as much rice as we could and took water bottles for the journey. Then we rowed out of the delta and into the ocean by moonlight. We were all lying on the floorboards, covered in plastic with the fishing nets thrown over it.

The boat made it past the checkpoint because the patrolling guards were drunk. Thanh paid them with two gold rings so that we could pass. Out in the open ocean, we could get out from under the tarp and nets. Thanh turned the motor on and we made progress toward Thailand.

My feet shivered as I thought about Mai and my father. I was leaving everything behind. It seemed like I had nothing to leave though, so I wasn't too upset until I remembered my father's house. Why had he given it away to the government? At the time I had accepted his decision. But it seemed selfish. If Mai and I had our own house, I may not have been on that boat. I would have found a way to practice my skills, following my father's bare footsteps no matter how hard the soldiers made me work to subvert their eyes. I thought… READ MORE

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