I was alone in southern Laos. Manyon had crossed the Mekong to Thailand; I was headed back to Phnom Penh for a flight to Saigon and another to the States. Fall semester would be starting soon.
I'd come to an unmarked crossroads and taken the wrong fork. I was lost. All I saw was a narrow road and two walls of jungle that nearly closed out the sky above it. No humans, no peasant huts, not even a blown bridge or an abandoned guard shack. I walked the road. Finally a large building of weathered boards came into view. I stepped onto its high porch, halloed. No answer. The building was open, but no one was around. It seemed there hadn't been anyone around for a long time, though it was clean and in good repair. There was no hint of what the building had been used for. Maybe meetings, maybe classes... I couldn’t tell.
Looking through an open window, I saw the only evidence, besides the building itself, of human presence: a life-size, nicely framed, official portrait of U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson.
No comments:
Post a Comment