Run Me to Earth

In 1969 in Laos during the Laotian Civil War, Alisak and brother and sister Prany and Noi are homeless teenage orphans who have been friends since childhood. The three orphans are spotted sleeping by a river by a nurse who recruits them to work for a hospital overlooking the Plain of Jars. It is a makeshift field hospital housed in an abandoned farmhouse that was formerly ran as a tobacco plantation owned by a French tycoon known as the Tobacco Captain, who has since gone missing. The three orphans work as orderlies in the hospital and couriers, delivering medical supplies on motorbikes left by the Tobacco Captain. They driver over hazardous terrain into the town of Phonsavan, risking the threat of aerial bombings and unexploded cluster bombs. They form a friendship with Vang, the French doctor who runs the hospital. They wonder where they will go once the hospital is evacuated, speculating either Thailand or France. The brother of the Tobacco Captain, a country doctor, offers to sponsor the three orphans into France. Vang later announces the return of American planes and the hospital is evacuated. While riding on their motorbikes toward the helicopter, they are separated. Alisak is sent to Perpignan in Southern France. He is driven by a Thai women named Karawek. They arrive at "the Vineyard" where Alisak is greeted by the Tobacco Captain's brother, who he learns is named Yves. He later meets a woman named Marta, who works at "the Vineyard".

Auntie last saw Prany and Vang four years prior in a camp before it was raided and burned. Auntie and Vang were childhood friends growing up in Vientiane, Laos. Prany and Vang were captured by the Pathet Lao four years ago. Touby tells Auntie that Prany and Vang are in a prison in the northeast close to Vietnam, where they share a cell and are tortured by "the interrogator" and two other men. Prany has lost the use of one of his hands. When Vang and Prany came to her camp, they rarely spoke to each other. Auntie remembers when Vang told her that despite pleas from the helicopter, Prany had turned and went back for them. When Vang tried to speak of Noi, he began to weep.

Prany and Vang are released after seven years in the reeducation center. When they are released, Prany and Vang plot revenge on "the interrogator" and kill him. Prany later meets Khit, and together they travel to the old farmhouse hospital. Prany takes a doctor's coat and puts it on, finding an old piece of paper with a circle written on it. He puts it back in the pocket, knowing it "belonged only there, in a private memory." He is met by Auntie, who he tells to bring Khit to Thailand instead of himself. Prany gives his envelope of money to Auntie, who believes Prany will be caught for his actions but agrees to take Khit. Prany makes Khit promise to remember the name "Alisak". He takes off the doctor's coat and puts it on Khit. He later realizes he left the piece of paper in the pocket of the coat.

Noi remembers working for "the Frenchman"–the Tobacco Captain–in his kitchen and cleaning up after parties in his house. Vang tells Noi that they are leaving that night for France. The four of them–Alisak, Prany, Vang and Noi–ride towards the helicopters on motorbike, with a nurse traveling with Noi on her bike. Noi swerves hard and goes over a bump while riding fast. She searches for Alisak then finds him looking back at her with an expression which Noi views as "the greatest gift, like something wonderful and old, as though, like some unrecognized promise, they had been given a chance, all of them together, to become old." Noi lets go of the handlebars and the nurse leans into her, screaming. For Noi, "it was, just then, in all that sudden, immense quiet, enough."

Khit travels to Perpignan, where she meets Marta. She tells Marta that she spent two years in Thailand at Auntie's camp. Auntie convinced a couple to pretend that Khit was their daughter, and they moved to Jackson Heights, Queens in New York City before moving to Poughkeepsie, New York. Khit learns that Prany and Vang were charged with the murder of the interrogator and executed. Marta tells Khit that Alisak may be in Sa Tuna, Spain. Khit travels to Spain, where she meets Isabel. With a seventeen-year-old piece of paper in her pocket, she walks to Alisak's shop and ring's the bell by the door.

Alisak thinks of Prany and Noi and the hilltop where they built their first successful fire. Alisak, sixty-six years old, is working at a bicycle and moped shop in northeastern Spain. He is going to a birthday party for the father of Isabel, whose uncle Alisak used to work with. He thinks of Khit, who came to his shop years ago and gave him a piece of paper she believed belonged to Prany. As Alisak arrives at the party and looks along the bright seaside towns, he is reminded once again of the hilltop, the sound of animals, the river moving below and the "three children fighting sleep so that they can catch the last moments of a small pocket of fire."