We had just finished bathing under the heat on the clean see-through puddles on this side of shore.
The canoe leader took a tiny, long dry brown twig and scratched on the summer sand at dawn. It was a beach under some shrubs.
"Once you are on the road, you walk to the right like here," he told my father and the other five adult males in our group as he pointed the tip of the twig to the sand marks.
The road was on the Thai side of the Mekong. They were standing on the Laos side of the river. The rest of us were hiding in the shrubs farther out of the sands. We were under cover, even though there was no need to be. There had been no other foot-prints around for a whole spring up to the summer time. No Commie soldier was going to see us. We had even bathed earlier in the day there. No one else around this lonely shore. But it was still a cautious move to hide.
"Walk up to a small town here and then take the first road to your left over here. That leads directly to the camp over here."
The Thai canoe leader had circled and stretched lines on the sands as he pointed out each spot to travel to.
"It's a new refugee camp. They just built it not too long ago and most things are still fresh-looking.
"Carry your farm tools and those chickens in that basket, too," he continued. "If people ask you, just tell them you came from the farm. A lot of people walk from the farm everyday. Just walk like them.
"Once you hit camp, don't take the road to the left here. There's a guarded gate there. The security guards won't let you go in.
"Travel to the right of this branched road and go into the camp from behind."
Ban Vinai it was. Yet we weren't there or in it.
A Thai farmer on the side of that road happened to employ a Hmong couple from that camp.
"I know your relatives," said the man after talking to my elders. "I can go fetch them...let me use my own money. They don't accept yours here."
Two hours later a songtheo arrived with the relatives we had lost the last three years, Old Friend. The elders hugged and cried on one another's shoulders just on the side of the pebbled dirt road. I was just staring at our silver bars on the ground--the ones the Thai officers had just opened up and left there for another errand somewhere.
At that time, the officers asked how we crossed the Mekong. The three canoe guys had left the night before, shortly after canoeing us over.
"Some fishermen came there and we asked them to bring us over," my maternal grandfather said.
Smugglers they would be deemed.
"Can you describe their features?" one asked.
"No, it was late and dark and we couldn't see them clearly," maternal grandpa went on.
He was a former litigator back in our abandoned town near Long Cheng.
"When did you cross the river?" the officer asked.
"When it drizzled," grandpa said after a pause.
"Oh," said another officer. "Then they couldn't possibly see that well. It was already eleven o'clock."
That's why the officers left us there. They said they were coming back after an errand. But they didn't get to because our relatives had arrived and songtheo'ed us to Ban Vinai already.
The elders cried just like Mai, you and I would if we were to see one another again. It felt like they had died and returned to life or something. Like a long time of missing one another, which was it was. Amidst tears and sobs, the elders were saying, "I didn't think I'd see you ever again. Can this be real? It sounds like a dream, a waking from death." Didn't I just say that?
I didn't cry. I didn't feel their emotions. But now that I'm farther away, I somehow shed tears as I think about it.
