| Muller | Hitchhiking Vietnam
Page 34 |
The earth steamed with the first heavy drops of afternoon rain, like an overheated skillet doused in cold water. An old woman walked back and forth along the covered porch next door, calling "chi-chi-chi-chiiiie!" to urge the ducklings to safety. As the heavens burst open the earth separated itself into layers - a thin sheet of rising dust from the pounding rain on parched ground, then the mist ascending slowly in wisps and tendrils, to be beaten down by the approaching downpour that swept across the paddy like a great, gray curtain.
Its steady drumbeat drowned out the thump of passing engines in the canal and the shrill laughter of children splashing through puddles. It ran down the brittle thatch, dropped into bamboo gutters and cascaded with the sound of harps into the earthenware urns that squatted along one wall. It fell solidly into the pond, sending fish and struggling bugs together to the murky bottom.
The land slowly turned to glutinous mud. Ragged cracks in the earth filled with water, softened, then disappeared under a gurgling layer of soupy runoff. The children came inside, stained to their armpits with diluted earth. I stood just inside the fringe of thatch and watched the water run in beaded threads from the roof to the ground, and looked beyond to the vague, gray land. When I turned back inside the insistent sound of moving water settled over nearby conversations like a blanket, until it seemed I was standing in silence for the first time since I'd arrived in this overcrowded land.
