They knew the hunt was already on.
Their party approached the edge of the town and stopped on the hill and parked the Jeep inside an allamanda bush blossoming in big yellow flowers and they set out on foot with their packs, the Dutchman walking ahead. At the clearing was a stream leading into the Mekong below and they waded across slowly.
There were still some lights on down in the town but it was very quiet there. White smoke wisped from stove chimneys and there was music playing somewhere in the sea of red and green and brown tin shack roofs and up to their left the only road out of the town headed away through farmland and into the jungle beyond. A motorscooter and a farm truck arrived together, one behind the other, and they watched as the two vehicle convoy stopped behind a small shanty restaurant and both drivers unloaded some crates from the truck. Three more helicopters buzzed overhead heading in the same direction as the earlier group, flying low and fast with their little lights blinking in the night sky like a thrown handful of fireflies. The kid watched them as they disappeared across the trees and he knew that something big was going on in some place though he could be sure it wasn’t going on in that town.
“Do you think we can meet that road further up?” asked the American.
They surveyed the area from their viewpoint but in the dark is was difficult to make out what lay beyond the town and for all they knew the town may end there or it may just become another town and another or it may run into miles of open country.
Their map showed in rough detail the roads and town names and jungle areas and the elevation of the land of Thailand and of Laos and of part of Vietnam and southern China though it showed Myanmar as a mostly white and uncharted mass with no features at all except for an external border and a handful of main rivers.
The Dutchman regarded it all through squinted eyes.
“Once the town is asleep, let’s go and find out”
The clock on the dashboard of the car had been showing 88:11 for some time after coming out of the water and by the time they returned to the car it had died completely. The three men sat on the side of the stream drinking from a bottle of sangsom and smoking cigarettes and watching little creatures at their business.
When the last of the chimneys had stopped smoking and the final candlelight was extinguished, they rose from where they were dozing in the long grass amongst the trees and retrieved the car from its cover of allamanda and rolled it gently down the hill, being careful not to crash it into trees and rocks as the headlights were turned off. They skirted the edge of the town, pushing through bushes until the front of the Jeep was as covered in shrublife as the terrain itself and it dragged flowers and leaves along with it as it went.
At the foot of the hill a farm track led west to the main road. The place was still and dark and the track wound through the trees underneath the oily black sky and the clicking and chirping of insects was the only thing to be heard there other than the gentle tempered rumble of the straight-6 diesel engine as it gently rolled out of the town.
“We need to get off the road, this is a pretty identifiable car out here” said the kid, again riding in the back, “and we’re missing the entire front grille”
His boots were tied together at the laces and threaded through the handrail on the back of the chassis to dry in the night air.
Once clear of the little town and the one that followed it and once surrounded only by open fields the Dutchman pressed in the accelerator and moved them as quickly as possible away from the area. There was only a single road to follow from east to west and while dusty tracks and farm roads spidered away from it on both sides they had no map to follow and not much fuel in the tank and to risk any such sideroad in the middle of the night would be foolish.
They passed an hour later through the sleeping village of Mong Lin, though none knew its name, and turned north to Monghpyak following a route based on approximate trajectory only and knowing neither where that place was or for what reason they were headed there.
Some time along the road to the south of Poi Mwe, with the kid asleep in the back seat with his head on his rucksack and the American’s chin rested on his chest in the passenger seat next to him, the Dutchman pulled the Jeep into a dry lane on the roadside and killed the engine and dropped almost immediately to sleep with them. The three slept deeply despite their sitting positions and none stirred until the sky had turned silver again in the morning sun.
The American woke first with a jolt which in turn woke the others and spun to the window where his gaze was met square on by the wide beady eyes of a farm goat only a foot from the car. It watched him for a few seconds chewing on something or nothing and turned away, trotting off to continue its morning of searching the dry scrub for food.
The steadily increasing heat of the past few days had begun to dry out the grasses and there had been a fire there at some time and the trees on the ridge were blackened.
Further up the track by a tin barn two men in rough linen trousers and sun hats watched them silently from where they stood.
The Dutchman gathered himself quickly and fired up the Jeep’s engine and turned it on the spot and headed back on to the main road as the men stared after them.
The American lit a cigarette and inhaled the smoke and breathed it through his nose and looked into the mirror as they drove away until the two men had gone from view.
“We stick out like tits on a goddamned boar hog”
With their car abandoned at the side of the road they walked in to Keng Tung on foot and attracted less attention than they had imagined as they pushed through the hive of activity into the bustling markets. The kid used his bank card and withdrew local currency from the machine in the front of a closed bank and the three of them bought lightweight shirts and sun hats and provisions and sat on plastic chairs in front of a café and ordered coffee and sweet sticky rice.
Though only a little after ten in the morning, the air was thick with heat and they washed themselves in a fountain outside a bookstore.
Two ladies passed by on bikes and a group of young children ran to them and circled them and ran away again shouting. Flatbed trucks and mules and motorscooters passed in every direction and a chinook passed low overhead with a dog following it along the road, bouncing and barking loudly.
The kid was sitting on the side of the crumbling stone fountain with his pack in his lap flicking through some papers he had been carrying with him from his business which were to be filed back in London. They were yellowed and curled and torn from crossing the river the previous evening and the ink had run. The Dutchman looked across at him as he tried to flatten the papers between his hand and the stone wall.
“You taking those to London?” he nodded at him, smiling just a little.
“Yeah, it’s the whole reason I’m out here. It’s the reports from the conservation centres I was at”
He read the title of one aloud.
“Examination and advice on fourteen significant habitat losses to the Asian elephant including agricultural encroachment and crop-raiding within sixty protected areas”
“They look a bit fucked now don’t they?”
He held them up against the sun.
“Yeah, just a bit”
“You think London cares about them?”
He looked across at the Dutchman wringing the last of the water from his black vest and stuffing it into the pocket of the American’s pack. He looked back at the papers.
“I guess not”
“You guess right friend”
His hands dropped to his lap.
“I think they’ve probably got bigger things to think about now, man. Sorry”
Two motorbikes came past in a cloud of fumes and thick dust.
The kid knew he was right. He sat contemplative for a few moments fiddling with the edge of the papers as though weighing in his head their worth.
He sighed.
The realisation landed on him that with only road and rail at their disposal their journey h
ome would be longer than he could fathom. He didn’t know the size of the country they were in other than that it was bigger by some significant distance than his own and as they had broken into it they would have to continue on their way and break back out again. He had himself said on the bank of the river that this was a decision now out of their hands. The world had in only those six days since the impact become a new place and not he nor anybody else could know whether it would return to how it was before. New things were of importance to them. The market traders of Keng Tung themselves knew that a shift was afoot and the weather around them was changing too. Their new priority was to make it home alive and that only. To get out of that town and to get to the next and to the next and to continue until they reached India and then move to the next place and to go on that way until he was home, if his home still existed.
He balled the papers in his hand and dropped them down to the floor and kicked them on the volley at the Dutchman. They bounced off his arm.
The Dutchman smiled at him.
“So what now?” he asked.
“We need a proper map”
By noon they had found no shop or otherwise which could sell them a map and they spoke no Burmese and didn’t know the word for map anyway so could not ask. At an open stall selling dried tea a white girl sat on a stool with an old Burmese woman hiding from the sun under a cloth canopy and the two drank from little glasses and smoked handrolled cigarettes. She was wearing a shawl around her shoulders and head and looked at first glance like a local woman herself though she was taller and her hair showed flecks of blonde. She watched the kid approach and he caught her gaze and smiled to her. She continued her conversation in Burmese to the woman next to her but kept her eyes on him as we walked to them.
“Morning” he smiled.
She finished what she was saying in Burmese and without taking breath responded with a hello back to him.
She watched him for a moment.
“Tea shopping?” she asked smirking.
He looked down to the sacks of dried leaves.
“Not exactly”
She said nothing.
“We need a map, do you know where I can get hold of one?”
“A map of what?”
She sounded like she may be French but her English was immaculate and almost without accent.
“Of everything. We’re driving west and have no road map”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“How did you get this far without a map?”
He was quick to improvise and wouldn’t be caught out by just anyone.
“We were in a tour group and we’re headed back to Mandalay on account of what’s been going on. We came by bus but we’re driving back”
“You know you can’t fly anywhere don’t you?”
He nodded.
“So why Mandalay?”
Her questions frustrated him. She was clearly on the ball and keen to catch him out and he was wary of her. There was nobody there who could be trusted blindly.
“Do you know where I can get a map?”
She read his tone and rose from her stool. The Burmese woman next to her just watched and smoked.
“Go down to the end” she pointed down the street, “go right and follow the road round where it bends. There’s a place by the indoor market that sells tours and treks, they’ll sell you a map and most likely anything else you need”
He nodded to her.
“Thanks”
She smiled and watched him, her eyes narrowed slightly.
“Hey, be careful”
He nodded to her.
She smiled but said nothing more to him and watched him as he left to find his companions who he had left arguing with each other over the haggling price of local whiskey.
The Jeep was scorching hot where it sat in the noontime sun. It was coated in a layer of dust that gave it the appearance of having been baked itself and when the American opened the doors he recoiled from the heat inside. They tossed the bought goods into the back alongside their packs, six bottles of whiskey in a cardboard box, some plastic bags of food and two gallons of water.
The kid climbed into the back seat and opened up the map they had bought in the tourist office and began to study it and the Dutchman climbed into the driving seat and the American had just opened the passenger door when two uniformed police officers appeared beside him from nowhere and spoke to him in Burmese.
He stopped in his tracks beside the car.
“Hello sir”
They spoke again to him. Both were armed with carbine rifles.
The American looked around him. There were plenty of people around but none were paying them any attention or were perhaps ignoring the situation to as not to involve themselves in any way. He motioned to the officers with one finger and reached inside and pulled out his own military identification card from his bag and presented it to them.
The younger of the two officers took it, regarded it for the briefest of moments and handed it straight back to him.
“What do they want” called the Dutchman from inside the car.
The older officer glanced inside.
The American didn’t take his eyes from them.
“I don’t know, I don’t think it can be good. Start the engine”
The Dutchman turned the key and the Jeep coughed to life. The officers took objection to this and the older one immediately moved to the open passenger door and shouted inside at the Dutchman to turn it back off.
The younger officer removed the small radio from the clip on his belt and spoke into it and it crackled and a voice spoke back. The older officer was still waving at the Dutchman to turn the engine off and the Dutchman was pretending he didn’t understand and was speaking in Dutch. The younger of the two put one hand up on the American’s shoulder to turn him around to face the car and let the rifle swing from his grip on its strap and started to remove the handcuffs from his belt.
The American watched him over his shoulder.
He glanced forward at the Dutchman sitting behind the wheel and the kid sitting in the back. His eyes were narrowed and focussed.
The kid fastened his seatbelt.
The older officer started to step up to the passenger side and reach for the rifle hanging from his shoulder and in a single movement the American spun to face him and brought up his leading elbow so that it connected with the younger officers cheek on its way around. He buckled in pain as the soldier followed through with a trailing right hand that put the young police officer to the floor. The older policeman jumped down and swung up his weapon as the American lurched forward at him, trapping him between himself and the open Jeep door.
The Dutchman hit the throttle and they skidded away with the American hanging on to the doorframe and the police officer dragging along with them. After a few yards he fell down into the dust and the American swung himself inside and heaved the door closed. Two rifle shots rang out and both bullets hit the back of the car but within seconds there was nothing behind them as they tore up the road between scrambling pedestrians and cattle.
“Keep driving” the American shouted as they reached the top of the hill, “they’re behind us somewhere”
“You hit a cop man” the Dutchman cried.
“You really hit him too” said the kid from the back, “and they were shooting at us, you know that?”
“What could I have done? They were fixin’ to arrest us right there. What the hell good would that have done?”
The Dutchman shook his head.
“That’s not cool man, now what the hell we gonna do?”
He threw the Jeep into a corner and it skidded across the dusty surface. A man on a bike swerved away from them and nearly fell.
“I don’t even know where I’m going here” he shouted.
They raced up the hill.
“A couple of years back two reporters were jailed for three years for trespassing into this country without permits and lying to police about it” the D
utchman said, “not only did we come in without permits, we stole a boat and tied up its captain and then…”
“And then you floored a policeman” the kid finished, “If we weren’t going to jail before then you just made damn sure of it now”
The American ignored them.
“Find us a road out of here”
The kid fumbled the folded road map open. He looked at it for a moment.
“I don’t even know where we are”
The buildings blurred past the window as the Dutchman roared through the busy streets, dodging between obstacles in front of him.
“Keng something”, he offered “it was on that sign we passed”
The kid looked at the map for another moment.
“Keng Tung?”
“I reckon so, yeah”
“Ok good, then I’ve got it here” he said focussing on the map.
He looked around from the speeding car but there was no way for him to tell where in the town they were in order to find a road out of there and as they sped past the ends of streets he tried to catch a view of any road names but there were either none positioned or they were travelling too fast for him to see them.
“Head north”
They did not know their position in the town but the kid and the airmen knew enough from their training to discern rough geographical directions and times using the sun and the stars at only a glance and judging by the angle and direction of the shadows on the road the Dutchman threw the Jeep into a right turn and started heading away from the town towards the green wooded hills in the distance.
Where Men Once Walked Page 5