The Three Big Mistakes

The wind grew anxious that afternoon.

It picked up speed to whisper in my father’s ear.

It’s time to wake up now. It was the first sleep he’d had in three days — if you could call it that; it was more like a stressful state of unconsciousness. When he woke, he regretted ever going to sleep. Bac Truong had taken over the wheel so that my father could rest. In that time, he had unknowingly steered the boat back in the direction of Vietnam. My father did not sleep again. The blunder added another day to the huge amount of time already wasted in taking the most inefficient route.