The unfairness of this absorbed Carver so much he did not notice the rapid marshaling of storm clouds until the sky grumbled. For a few seconds scattered drops of rain pinged off his forehead. Then came the deluge. Rain glued his clothing to his body, water sluicing down the back of his collar and soaking into his hiking boots. He stopped walking, unsure of whether to keep heading for the blacktop road or turn back to the demining site. The ribbon of earthen road was now the texture of peanut butter, and he sank millimeter by millimeter into its stickiness as the monsoon’s onslaught continued. This was why he hadn’t wanted to visit this country, a land of bad omens and misfortune so severe he wanted nothing more to do with it than fly over it. But Claire had brought him back to this red earth, and he wasn’t about to run to her for help, even if he could. He slogged toward the blacktop, not a human being or an animal in sight, the dull green fields flanking him on either side. It was the middle of the afternoon, but twilight had descended with the storm clouds.
In the distance, behind him, a car honked. He lowered his head and kept walking, the downpour so intense he feared drowning if he looked up to the sky. He heard the car’s old engine as it got closer, choking like a cat coughing up a hairball. With light from the high beams scattered on the raindrops falling before him, he decided that instead of ignoring them, he should raise his head in defiance. He stopped and turned, but somehow he misjudged this simple step, his right foot trapped by mud clutching at his ankle. With the high beams in his eyes, blinding him, he made another misstep, this time with his left foot, the toe coming down straight into the mud, the leg locking at the knee and his body pitching forward into the path of the car. The mud was wet and cold against his belly and face, its odor and taste evoking the soil in the distant yard of his childhood, the one where he had so often lain prone on the earth and played soldier.
It was Legaspi who helped him to his feet and into the idling Land Cruiser, Claire hovering over them with an umbrella. They put him in the backseat, shivering, Michiko using the silk scarf she had bought yesterday to wipe the mud from his eyes and face.
“We all thought you just went to sit in the car, Jimmy,” she said. Legaspi started driving toward the blacktop. “What got into you?”
“I’m sixty-eight, damn it.” Carver sneezed. “I’m old but I’m not dead.”
“You’re sixty-nine.”
He was going to argue as she scrubbed at the mud around his ears, but then he realized Michiko was right. Even his own years were elusive, time ruthlessly thinning out the once-dense herd of his memories. In the rearview mirror, he saw Legaspi looking at him, and when Legaspi spoke, his voice was not unkind.
“Where did you think you were going, Mr. Carver?” When Legaspi turned on the stereo, the title track from Giant Steps was playing. “You don’t even know where you are.”
By that evening, fever had seized Carver. The dream he hadn’t recounted to Legaspi came back to him in his hospital room, where he floated on his back in a black stream, his face emerging every now and again to catch glimpses of his fellow patients in the three other beds, silver-haired, aging men, tended by crowds of relatives who chattered loudly and carried bowls and other things wrapped in towels. He smelled rice porridge, a medicine whose scent was bitter, the wet dog odor of very old people. When he was submerged in the black water, images flitted by like strange illuminated fish from the canyons of the ocean. The only ones he could clearly recall later were manifested in the dream, where he had woken to find himself a passenger in a darkened airliner. Everyone else was asleep and the portholes were closed. For some reason he knew that no one was piloting the plane, and he rose and made his way forward, his skills needed. All the dozens of passengers were Asian, their eyes closed, among them the street kids and Claire’s students and Tom and Jerry. Strapped to the flight attendant’s jump seat by the cockpit was their tour guide from Angkor Wat, the one who had pointed to a bridge flanked by the headless statues of deities and said, in a vaguely accusatory tone, “Foreigners took the heads.” Fear clutched at Carver, but when he opened the cockpit door, all he saw were the cockpit windows peering out onto the starless river of night, the empty pilot’s seat waiting for him.
“Dad.”
Claire was kneeling by his bedside in the dark room.
“Dad, did you say something?”
“Thirsty.”
She unsealed a bottle of water and poured him a cup, holding it to his lips with one hand while propping his head with the other. He drank too eagerly and water dribbled over his lip and onto his gown. Claire lowered his head to the pillow and then wiped his chin with a napkin.
“Michiko?”
“She’s at the hotel,” Claire said softly. “She’s been here every day, but she can’t stay here at night. The floor’s too hard for her to sleep on.”
“How long?”
“Three days. You’ve had a bad fever. You have pneumonia. You have to rest, okay?” Claire sighed. “You are so stubborn. Why did you go walking by yourself?”
He shifted his weight on the mattress, where a lump of foam had worked its way under the small of his back. “I’m a fool?”
“That’s true.”
“Claire.”
“Yes?”