The Reckoning

Maybe two more days go by. His limbs grow heavier, heavy like the earth. He listens to the river. Occasionally someone touches his eyes with a twig. That and the rain, like flies he can’t kill. He is losing his mind.

Then one day, or night, a man speaks to him in English. “Are you awake or asleep?” he says. His voice is close to the soldier’s ear.

The soldier thinks it must be a dream. He hears men murmuring nearby. “Hello?” he calls.

“Look at you,” the voice says, clearly shocked. “How has this happened?”

The young soldier fills with hope. “Thank God,” he says. He would reach for the man’s hand, but can’t lift his arms. “I prayed. Who are you?”

“A passenger, like you. They sent for me. I came to help.” He sounds like a Frenchman. He could be a colonial, maybe a doctor or a priest.

“Can you save me?”

“I will do what is possible. But time is short. You must tell me everything.”

Like holy confession. A priest, he decides. The soldier calms himself. He has to play this right. “Whatever you want, Father. I’m blind. My arms are like stone. I’m eating dirt. What’s happening to me?”

There is a pause. “Let us talk.”

“Something’s wrong with my eyes, Father.”

“Yes, your eyes. Can you see?”

“Not really.”

“Something, surely.”

“Nothing real. Only a dream, the same one. I’m in the forest again. There are giant heads, and spires with monkeys. I need medicine, Father. Can you get me to the Americans? They’ll pay you.”

The stranger evades his plea. Not good. Whose side is he on? “Where did you come from?” the stranger asks.

“Chicago, Father. America.”

“Yes.” The man is patient with him. His voice is kind. “You mentioned a city, where this curse began.”

A curse, exactly. That’s what this was. “You mean the ruins?”

A silence, then, “You found the city?” The ruins excite him. He seems to know them, or of them.

“On a mountain, Father. Right when we needed it. An old place surrounded by walls. Wild, you know, unreal.”

“The wars have not injured it?”

“It’s untouched, like a thousand years ago. There was no sign of anybody. It was empty.”

More silence. The man asks, “Do you remember the way?”

What way? Water flowing into water? But this could be his ticket home. “Absolutely. I can show you once I’m better.”

“And the rest of your men?”

The soldier could deny their existence. He could hide them. But now he has mentioned “we,” and he is desperate. “They’re still there, all of them. I told them to come with me. But they chose a fool over me. We followed him onto the mountain. He led us wrong, then told us to stay. So he died for his sins. And the rest of them will, too.”

His interrogator is quiet a minute. He doesn’t ask how many Americans are left, nor their unit or any military information. His only interest seems to be the ruins.

“Ame damnee,” the man finally murmurs.

The American has no idea what that means. “Yeah,” he says, “like that.”

“Fallen angels,” the priest says. “And yet you escaped.”

The soldier grows wary. “I warned them. We were coming apart at the seams. Everyone was afraid. We were lost. There were voices at night. No one knew who to trust or what to do. It was every man for himself. Finally, I left to get help. They won’t last long up there. I followed the water. The water brought me here.”

“Are they fossilizing as well?”

The young soldier can’t cut through the accent. “What?”

“Your eyes,” the priest says.

The soldier grows quiet. “What about them?”

“You have not touched them?”

A hand hoists his heavy wrist and guides his fingers to his face. He feels the familiar shape of his cheekbones and forehead, but avoids his eyes. He doesn’t want to know.

“Touch them,” the voice says.

“My eyes?”

“I, too, am maimed,” the priest tells him. Mayhem-ed, it sounds. “There was a bomb. This was a year ago. For a time, I could not bear to see what was left of my body. But at last it was necessary. I had to touch the wounds. Do you understand? We must accept our fate.”

The soldier feels his dead eyes. “Oh lord, help me.” The lids are peeled back in wide round circles. His eyes are as hard as polished jade. He knows from the ruins what they look like, the green jade eyes. They don’t belong in his face.

His hand is returned to his side. It settles upon the mud, like an anchor. His fingers sink into the earth.

“Father? Don’t leave me.”

“I’m here.”

“What will happen to me?”

“The people are afraid. They want you to go away.”

“Put me on the river. I’ll go. Far away.”

“I will put you on the river,” the man promises.

Relief floods the soldier. Even blind, he has a chance. “Thank you, Father. Tell them thank you.”

“Don’t come back to their village, that’s all they want. Put this place out of your mind.”

“I swear.”

“But remember the city. It is punishing you. I think you must return to there someday.”

Not in a million years. “Yes, Father.”

Then the soldier hears a sound he knows too well, the drawing of a knife. It is done softly, but there is no mistaking the linear hiss. The murmurs stop in the distance. “What are you doing, Father?” he whispers.

“Releasing you,” the voice answers, “so that you can finish your journey.”

The soldier’s heart thunders in his chest. He waits for a tug at his ankle, for the vine tether to be cut. Instead a hand grips his forehead. His throat is bared.

From the start, he knew this was no priest. But he couldn’t help but hope. He still can’t. “Forgive me, Father,” he says. “I was only trying to go home.”

“Be brave.” The voice is kind. “The dream goes on.”

1.

CAMBODIA, 2000

She arrived on the remains of a big American deuce-and-a-half left over from the Vietnam War, its black and olive camouflage peeling. Rust gored its flanks. The beast had no brakes, or if it did, the driver—plastered with burn scars and missing three fingers—had some superstition against touching them. They began their halt a mile out, a matter of patient downshifting and calculation.

“Here?” Molly had to shout her disbelief over the engine noise.

The driver shook his head, not here. He gestured farther ahead.

Through the cracked windshield, the land lay flat and checkered with rice paddies. The mop-topped sugar palms bent at wacky angles and the far-off villages perched on tall, skinny stilts reminded her of the illustrations in a Dr. Seuss book. In every direction, the horizon melted into haze and heat mirages.

Molly thought there must be some mistake. There was no sign of a dig or a camp. And it was so hot. The heat drove at her. It disowned her. She shoved back at it, trying to belong.