Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING
On weekends, Moff took her to the Laguna Seca Raceway, near
the bamboo farm. The cars shrieked and her heart boomed, nearly
shooting out of her chest. She loved the sensation, the release of ter­
ror. She would close her eyes and listen to the cycle of the deafening
and diminishing whine. Approach and retreat, dread and thrill, a
rhythm that repeated, that didn’t stop. The racers were hurtling at
the speed of love, on the verge of leaving the track and colliding into
her. But they always held to the course, and she did, too, safe from
disaster, lap after lap. Whenever the old dread rose and threatened to
consume her, she recalled that she had already been through what
she had prepared for. She had survived the jungle. She had also en­
rolled in a paramedics training course, the first of many she would
need to take, because one day, she would jump into a van and zoom
toward disaster, and that would be her choice.
Moff, on the other hand, was becoming more cautious. He had
never been the worrying kind of dad. But he had agonized over Ru­
pert’s near death. The camera had not lied. When his son was shak­
ing hard enough to break Moff’s teeth and crack his skull, he knew
that the terrors of remorse would deepen and widen, encompassing
the rest of him, consuming his heart with baby teeth. In dreams, he
saw it happening, like the camcorder tape he had watched, rewinding,
replaying, trying again and again to save his son, then failing, each
time failing. When he told Heidi about this recurring nightmare, she
said, “I know.” That was exactly what he needed to hear. She knew
that his fear almost wasn’t enough. He would worry. He would al­
ways be watching for ways in which he needed to be more careful.
A LTHOUGH RUPERT had acted annoyed to be treated like a god, he
now fantasized about the Younger White Brother and the Lord of
Nats. He played an anime version of himself in these two roles.
Sometimes he became a tree, or a bird or a rock. Other times he wore
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