When the light began to fade and the night birds began to chatter and the whine of bugs filled the valley, the small old man shuffled out of the hut and began to walk his trail down to the water.

The trail was clean sand and little round rocks, forgiving on his bare feet, because he had ground out the path after so many years of descending and ascending it. The old man’s lips and neck were wet in the humid air. His breaths were short and stuttered, like his steps.

His thin drab shirt hung open, faded white buttons glinting in the rising darkness, over old khaki shorts. He held his hands up before him as he walked, like a blind man, although he was not blind.

The trail cut back and forth for 200 yard through tall soft grass before it spread onto the sandy margin beside the water. His steps were cautious and pensive on the shallow descent, but his eyes stayed level, as though he was looking into the eyes of someone standing directly across from him.

A toad bellowed somewhere down the shoreline in some brush, and a merciless breeze rose and flushed a hot wave of air over him.

He stopped halfway down his descent and paused.

He had heard the faint, low gurgle of an engine upstream, and it grew stronger.

He stayed where he was, waiting, until the launch approached and slowly passed below him, 50 feet out in the water, a muted hum, lights extinguished, a specter skating past in the shadows.

Once the skiff was far behind him, he wiped his head with his hand, and then began to walk again.

“Hãy đến, con trai của toi!”, he whispered.
(Come, my son- we must get you onto the boat!)

His steps accelerated as much as his balance would allow after he turned a last corner and the slope leveled in the grass and onto the silty shore.

His voice rose as his whisper strained.
“Bạn phải đi nhanh change!”
(You must go quickly!)

And as he stepped out onto the sand beneath the grassline, he fell heavily forward and broke into sobs as he yelled muffled peels face down into the earth.

“Chạy, tôi con trai là hãy chạy nhanh hơn!”
(Run my son- please run faster)

And then like a drunk, his words had no shape or meaning amidst his sobs under the canopy of bug whines and bird clicks and cackles, until they gave way to muffled moans. Soon his body went silent and still on the bank of the quiet river.

An hour later, a slight middle-aged man sprinted down the dark winding trail until he came upon the small body, where he stopped.

“Chú của toi”, he whispered.
(Oh, my uncle).

The young man leaned down and then gently rolled the old man over and stared in the dark at the silver lines under his eyes. He then scooped him up, and carried him back up the familiar path to the hut.