The Boat People

At Whit's End, a boy named Ricky Chang, whose family has recently moved to Odyssey, is getting ready to record the very first episode of Family Tree, a new kids' radio program Connie has created where children research their family history and tell it as a story. Mr. Whittaker, just back from a trip, meets Ricky and notices the old ring the boy has brought along as part of his story. It is a graduation ring from Raleigh High School in North Carolina, decorated with a unicorn. Ricky explains that it is a family heirloom, passed down from his great-grandmother, who received it from a soldier and smuggled it out of Vietnam. His family is Chinese, but they settled in South Vietnam long ago and fled as "boat people" after the war. Whit seems oddly shaken by the ring, and while Ricky heads to the studio, Whit quietly slips out for a walk to the park.

In the studio, Ricky begins his story. His great-grandmother Lee was a tough, wealthy businesswoman who owned a rice farm and processing plant with five hundred workers. His grandfather Tuan ran the business, and his grandmother Linh raised the children. But when the communists took over South Vietnam in 1975, everything was seized at gunpoint, and the family was forced onto a tiny farm in the Mekong Delta with no electricity or running water. Ricky's father, Vin, was born there, followed by twin boys, making eight children in all.

The story comes to life in scenes from the past. As the family slowly starves, Lee urges Tuan to escape while the government is temporarily letting people leave. Tuan wants to wait for better times, but Linh, who grew up poor in China, insists their children will have no future under communism. "We will die if we stay," she warns. When Tuan suggests splitting up and sending some family members ahead to earn money, Linh refuses to hear of it: the whole family will stay together, and the whole family will leave Vietnam. Even Lee is impressed by her spunk.

Escaping by land is impossible, with the Chinese border closed, mass killings in Cambodia, and minefields in Laos, so the family must go by sea. But the corrupt government demands enormous fees for every adult and child, controls all the boats and fuel, expects bribes at every turn, and requires the family to sign away everything they own with no chance of ever returning. Lee sells off her treasured jewelry to pay for it all, keeping back only a few pieces. "And of course, I'll never give up the ring," she declares.

The night before the journey, Linh wakes from a vivid dream. She stood in a crowded marketplace when suddenly everyone fell down dead, including her whole family. Then a man in a white robe, with long brown hair and a beard, walked among the bodies, pointing at people who then rose back to life. He pointed at her, and after she prayed, he raised her husband and children too. Tuan wonders if it was Buddha or an ancestor, but Linh knows it was neither. She believes the dream means the family will be all right, and she shares one more surprise: she is expecting another baby.

At the docks the next morning, the family is horrified to find that their boat, the Heavong, whose name means "Hope," is built for a hundred people but will carry three hundred. With typhoon season coming, there is no time to wait, so they squeeze aboard. Only a day out to sea, a boat appears on the horizon: Thai pirates, headed straight for them.

Back in Odyssey, Renee finds Whit sitting at the town's war memorial. He admits that Ricky's story has stirred up old, buried memories, and he points to a name carved on the monument: Jerry Whittaker, his oldest son. Then he reveals why the ring startled him so. He has seen it before, on his own finger. "The ring is mine," he says, leaving the rest of the story, and the fate of the Chang family, for another day.