Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
When the rain first began to fall, soft as tears, our travelers had
long since dispersed themselves like sheep on a sparse range. Each
had gone off to stake his or her own unique experience. Roxanne had
led the way uphill for Dwight and Heidi. Wyatt and Wendy sprinted
down the shadier paths for a bit of smooching and pawing. Marlena
and Esmé accepted Harry’s invitation to search for wildlife and the
fabled pine with limbs as gnarled as an old man’s arthritic joints.
Bennie and Vera wandered downward, taking the path of least resis­
tance gravity-wise as they passionately discussed the building of the
new Asian Art Museum and the various ways to blend innovation
with tradition. Moff and Rupert jogged away, the younger lad soon
being two turns ahead of his father, at which point he was seized
with a desire to hoist his limber self up a steep face of rock, at the
top of which was a grotto surrounded by a stone relief. He scrambled
across scree, stepped over a low roped fence, and began to climb. At
the bottom was a sign in Chinese that read: “Forbidden to Enter!
Danger!”
Soon water was filling the rocky crevices of the canyon, and as the
rain came down more ferociously, a distinctive wind-whirring and
rock-tocking sound reverberated. It was like an orchestra of stone
bells, the Chinese version of an aeolian harp. To hear it, you would
think this was how the mountain had received its name; but in fact,
the name came from a stony formation at the top that resembles a
bell. It’s quite prosaic. In any case, the sounds rang loud as a bell,
loud enough to dampen the shouts of people to one another.
“Rupert!” Moff cried out. No answer.
“Which way?” Marlena shouted to Harry, who was peering up and
then down the path. Her words fell to the floor of the canyon, un­
heard along with the cries of ten thousand others lost over the ages.
In short order, the paths had become too tricky to traverse. So
everyone did what was most natural, what people over the last twelve
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