I’m in a boat speeding over smooth crystal clear water in the mid-day sun. I’m on Lake Nacimiento. It is a beautiful day. The sky is bright and distant and the light on the inside of the open boat is a surreal neutral cast on the white leather seats. I’m in the seat behind the driver’s seat facing backwards. My dad is in the back corner, the wind whipping his hair about. He seems happy.
Looking around at the dry landscape and forward across the front of the boat I see that no one is driving. This must be Bill Giese’s boat as he is the only person I know who has a boat, I think to myself. It doesn’t seem too odd that no one is driving. Still, as I look over the side into the clear water I can see the rippled sandy bottom of the lake a bit too close to the surface. I know from experience that it always seems closer than it is, but still, it seems too close.
I decide it would be better if I drove and I get into the driver set and take the controls. I slow us down a bit from full throttle to medium. I look around the windshield and steer us to the darker areas on the water where it is deeper. Soon the darker areas go away and it is getting very shallow. Still, the propeller doesn’t seem to hit bottom. I slow us down a bit more. We have clearly reached the edge of the lake now and the water is inches deep. Still, we continue at speed. Then we are on the sandy dry exposed lake bed devoid of any water. The boat continues at speed. I turn the boat around, only slightly surprised that it still moves over the dry ground at speed and is a little challenging to maneuver. I know I need to get us back to the water. There is now a growing sense of anxiety—I need to keep the momentum going until I can get us back in the water. If I slow down, I will surely be stuck. We are swerving around looking for an entry into the shallow water and hopefully the regular deep water.
We end up driving alongside a dirt road. The road starts to climb up and I’m forced to merge onto it. There are people ahead and some livestock. We speed past a Vietnamese person carrying a large basket on their head. I realize we are in Vietnam. I stay to the left side of the road, out of the way of people and livestock. A bicycle racer passes us, then another, then a group of them and I realize there is bike race going on. I slow the boat to a stop in resignation that we are not going the right way.
We are now quite high up the hill and to my left I can see below us a village and beyond that the lake we are looking for. How did we end up to the right of the village and the frontage road, I wonder? I turn the boat around and head back down the road. This is really embarrassing because we are going the wrong way during the bike race. We need to get off the road as soon as possible. I have to say to myself that I will survive this embarrassing moment and no one knows me in Vietnam anyway.
I can see a path through the village below to the lake. This seems like the fastest way to get back in the water. I memorize the path, knowing I won’t have this vantage point when I get down there. I’m super smart that way.
When we get down to the entrance of the village I can’t remember the path. The entrance is an opening in a rock wall. There is a thin metal gate about waist high. I crawl over it but the path through the rocks splits in a few directions and each path ends at a door, a half door, again about waist high. I choose one and crawl over it and into another small cave room. A young boy comes in from behind me, presumably having taken the same path as I. It occurs to me that this is his home, these are cave-like dwellings. I am worried that he is ignoring me because he’s going to get a weapon and come defend his house. I start to leave, crawling back over the half-door and head for the half-gate. The boy comes out of his house carrying a large piece of fruit the size of a football and a large knife. I get the message that I need to leave and, as quickly as I can, I head back to the entrance. I am crestfallen. I don’t know what to do next. There is another entrance up ahead so I go in there. It feels less like someone’s house, more like common village area. There is no clear open path to anywhere, just lots of rooms of different states of emptiness.
I decide to sit and rest in a room that is painted deep blue—it was painted deep blue decades ago. The floor is cement and sand and it is dark. I need to rest. My wife is with me. The room has a second door that leads to another adjacent room and, presumably, a labyrinth of rooms. I can see that the other room is dark red and orange. An older woman comes and goes between the rooms, a caretaker of sorts. She doesn’t speak to use but, still, she communicates that we can stay here. There is a sense of relief in both my wife and I. But then a series of realizations comes over us. Have we been sleeping, and for how long? Where are our things? I realize that I don’t have my bag, my laptop, any of my things. Meliza starts looking for her bag. It is dark outside but I don’t know what time it is. The caretaker communicates that it is 9:45pm. The realization then comes into focus that we have been wandering around setting our things down and forgetting about them. If we sleep now our things will surely be taken, stollen, by morning. Meliza finds her backpack in a corner of the room and is relieved. None of my things are in the room. I assume they are gone by now and I can’t understand how I could be so thoughtless. I look out the open door to the path outside, into the darkness. I try to console myself by remembering that they are just things, I can replace them. Still, I am emotionally lost, and deeply depressed that I am so absent minded.
Then, standing there in the doorway with my hands in my pockets and my eyes closed, my mind melts and explodes with the thought—where did I leave Bill’s boat?