T Grau - I Am the River

This story is dedicated to Lewis Minor, Gene ONeill, and to the surviving veterans of the war in Southeast Asia who fought and bled under their respective flags and motivations. This story is also dedicated to all those who were lost, those who lost something, and those who were left to wander. May each find their way home.

Special thanks to Paul Minor for the dossier and the plane ticket, and to Steve Berman for providing a secure home for my work. And eternal thanks to Fish for your conversations with the stars; and to Ivy, for the Martinique, and for absolutely everything else that matters in this world.

I need to hide in plain sight, here at the dead center of the world, for just a little while longer. I need to go unseen by everything looking for me, and its a long, distinguished list. Things want me dead that you wouldnt believe.

So here I hide, sitting rail-straight in my chair, crooked spine upright, organs aligned and hands on knees, not moving a muscle as every fiber inside me wants to stand up and scream confessions. I tested the chair before I sat down, because Im always careful, no matter how far gone, and found that it was a creaky chair. That was unfortunate, because I knew that when I sat down Id have to remain still as a statue until my name was called. Dont give away the shake of the hands, the twitch forming in the left corner of my mouth, the side that always took the punch. Any quiver will be misconstrued as something other than what it really is. I need to be invisible, as they mustnt see inside me, and the heavy thing hiding in my right front pocket.

Three hours and forty-two minutes Ive been sitting this way, the picture of patience and desperate camouflage, blending in with the cracks in the wall. The doctor would see me last, because I was an estrangier and demanded the extra scrutiny. A ripening underneath a secret gaze. In the careful game being played, anything outside the norm was made to wait, in hopes that if it was found perfidious, it would eventually disappear.

The air is bad in the waiting room and the lighting worse, with dim illumination provided by a crooked lamp in the corner and a filthy aquarium slowly suffocating a sweet corn goldfish so fat its dorsal fin never drops below the surface of the water. No table. No magazines. Not even a rumor of air conditioning during the hottest monsoon on recordone that inspired the old timers in the street to declare the end of this world and the beginning of another as soon as the earth cooled. Those who wait are made to suffer if they want relief. None of that candy-ass American dreaming for paying customers along Yaowarat Road, because what theyre offering in certain shopfronts and office faades in Bangkoks Chinatown has enjoyed a sellers market since man dropped down from the trees.

I feel the eyes on me like I do everywhere I go no matter where I am, but I dont turn my head to see whos watching, or what. It could be the young woman with three well-behaved children sitting to my left, next to the ancient couple that have looked at each other for so long that theyve remade themselves in each others image. Or the man in the pressed trousers pretending to sleep two chairs to my right. He might be hired muscle, or a government proxy. Usually the same thing. But most of all, I dont want to see the other pair of eyes on me, that have been watching me from the inside the fog that morning at the edge of the jungle, when those two holes opened up for the first time and found me like a blind newborn worming toward its mothers breast. Its followed me ever since. Moving with me by day, coming to me at night. I know theyre watching me now, daring me to turn and see and then lose my shit, just like the first, the second, and the third time I was stupid enough to act against my wiring and look deeply at what no man should ever see. Id learned since then, because my grandmother didnt raise no fool no matter how hard I tried to prove her wrong, and on the fourth time, in that piss alley in Hue where I hid myself away from any new angles for so many days, hoping to die without making the move, I didnt look at the eyes when they found me. I ran instead, and didnt stop until I was two countries away.

But they found me again anyway. Somehow I knew they would.

Right now, if this is right now and not some other time, I focus on the yellowed poster taped crooked to the wall across from me. Its written in Cantonese, like all of the signs down here. No Thai allowed in this lowdown imperialist takeover from the inside out. The ghost of Mao is out to eat the world, one village, one neighborhood, and one sham doctors office at a time. I hear the murmur of water rushing in between the walls. Faintly at first, but the sound grows. I know there arent any pipes in those walls, but there is water. Theres always that water. I narrow my gaze on one particular symbol on the poster, concentrating, trying to stay where I am, held fast by each curve and slash. My body throttles the movement in my muscles, outer shell motionless in this creaky chair, waiting for the walls to erupt, spilling out the water thatll suck me backward into the River, taking me downstream to that other time that I cant escape.

The door to the interior office opens and a high-pitched voice calls out a name in a language I dont recognize. Her intonation sounds fuzzy, a bad radio signal, and sets my mind humming like a hornets nest, drawing strength from the water in the walls. Its going to happen again, I realize, at the worst possible time. Im here for a very important reason, and cant afford to fall back into the River right now. But the buzz, the static spitting from blown-out speakers, always means the same thing. Water pools around my feet, seeping into my shoes. I close my fingers over my knees, as if I can hold myself here in this place. The chair creaks as my leg muscles clench. More eyes find me, a number higher than those sitting with me in the waiting room, and not entirely divided into pairs. Most cant see the water. None of them see my hands.

Not yet, I call out to the River. Im so close.

The buzzing increases, and the water rises. At my ankles now, cold and biting my skin, sending a tongue up my leg. The River never listens, because it has no ears, but its mouth is always open.

A figure passes in front of me, its bulk made black by the River, and my anchoring gaze on the yellow poster is broken. I blink as the lights grow more intense and blank paper bright. Back-in-the-world bright.

The tether flaps

and whips

at my legs

behind

me.

Im in a different waiting room, leaning forward on my knees, hair shorter but head weighed down by the fresh mass of what recently crawled inside it. The weight in my pocket is now gone. My feet are dry, and the sound of the River recedes far behind me. Ive been through this before, and Ive been here before, yet every time is a surprise, as I notice something new, and live through it just a fraction differently each time.