Two dark blue motorbikes with tinny sirens shot across the end of the street behind them unaware of their presence and buzzed off into the town.
The kid watched them pass.
“Not for the first time today, we need to get rid of this car”
At the north tip of Keng Tung they found their location on the map and followed the hot road north up through the teak plantations and into the lowlands. White and tan horned cattle milled by the roadsides and in the fields, their calves laying low and keeping to the shade to escape the early afternoon sun. Off to their left the brown snake of the river ran north into the hills to eventually reconvene with the Mekong as it intersected back through northern Myanmar, and on the far side a service track weaved around with it, allowing farmers to travel their carts and flatbeds between the plantations and homesteads.
As they coasted around a tight righthand bend in the road, a police patrol car passed them in the other direction. They watched it pass without speaking until the kid saw the red twinkle of its brake lights as it slowed and pulled into the side of the road in the distance. The Dutchman dipped the pedal and sped up.
Half a mile on up the road the sound of the siren wailing behind them was the next they heard of it.
“Fuck” muttered the American, slamming his fist against the door.
“Get us off the road” said the kid.
The white Honda police car rounded the bend and came in to view behind them and started to slowly catch the Jeep.
Ahead the road bent sharply to the right and a dirt track forked off to the left down to a farmhouse and the river below.
“Do it” shouted the American, and the Dutchman threw the Jeep across the tarmac and bounced it into the mud in an explosion of dirt and dust. The wheels bounced and the bottles in the back clattered together and the Honda followed behind with its lights flashing but it lost ground on the uneven terrain.
“This track doesn’t go anywhere” called the kid frantically from the backseat.
He was holding the headrests in a desperate attempt to secure himself to his seat as the four wheels bounced and bounded across the dry potholed earth.
They bounced down the track to the farm at the foot of the hill with its tin roof and whitewashed walls and crashed through the open wooden gate which tore from its hinges and they bounced through the chickens and past the old man sitting on the stool watching in disbelief. The Honda had lost yet more ground but it was still coming down the driveway behind them. As the track opened out into the scrubland at the end where the old man’s land met the riverbanks, the Dutchman slowed the Jeep and turned it to face the water. The Honda approached and it was no longer the shiny white it had been on the road above but a dusty brown and the quickest of glimpses of the driver’s face showed a man out of his depth.
The Dutchman smiled across through the open passengerside window and just as it entered the scrubland towards them he pushed the pedal down and accelerated away and bumped the Jeep down the shrubby riverbank and into the water below pushing the vehicle through the current in a brown wake that rose up above the wheels.
The police car stopped in the field behind them and the two officers got out of the car as the Jeep climbed, dripping, from the other side and continued its way up the service track.
Rifleshot rang out but nothing hit its target and as the track turned away to the west the highway they had been on turned away to the east and once again the Jeep had conquered the river.
The last thing the kid saw from the back window was the two officers climbing back into the conquered Honda and turning it around the way it had come.
The track was dusty and white and it wove between the ridges and trenches slowly deeper into the inhospitable canopy of the jungle beyond. The river hugged the edge of the track as the men passed north until it collided into the crossing Mekong in an explosion of thundering sound and a torrent of white waves and brown foam and at that place they followed the new river further into the hills.
They passed through a gathering of shanty huts at the roadside, watched by the silent dark eyes of those who occupied them with at once a suspicion and a disinterest. Two ladies drying bird chilies on a hessian mat stopped and stood and watched them pass and a man riding a wooden cart pulled by two horned oxen stopped his progress on the track and watched and nodded to them as they overtook him in a cloud of dust.
After some time the track was barely passable though it continued to embrace the winding river and at times the edges of the two became one with each other. The road crumbled into the river and the river washed up onto the road and it made the mud underneath slippery so that the American, who had by then assumed driving duty, drove that place with more caution, even with the huge tyres of the Jeep.
The track crossed the river at a tiny bridge held up from the raging current by sunbaked old wooden struts and they were each sure it would not hold the weight of the vehicle with themselves in it and so they unpacked the car of its contents and took everything across separately by foot. By the time they had crossed with their packs and the box of whiskey and the bags of provisions there had amassed a small gathering of people on the edge of the trees who had been working there collecting rubber sap and they laughed and clapped and cheered as the Jeep made it across to the other side. The airmen and the kid smiled and waved to them as they continued their way and the men smiled and retreated again into the trees.
The sun was lower in the sky and the air had cooled, though only slightly, and parakeets flocked overhead. As the track became only mud and rocks along the shoulder of the Mekong, the driving became more unstable and the road became entirely undrivable.
They stopped on the side of the undergrowth, the American behind the wheel with his eyes ahead plotting a route that wasn’t there.
“What are you thinking, friend?” asked his soldier comrade.
He thought for a moment.
“Can we take it through the river?”
Their vehicle had spent more time in the water that day already than any other 4x4 may do in its lifetime and it had already proved its ability in conquering the current.
The kid watched the rushing rapids from the window.
He shook his head though nobody was watching.
“It’s way too deep to cross here”
The track ahead wasn’t a track at all but a steep mound of rocks leading up to the trees above and the river below.
“We should take it up there and try to get through the trees and hope the track opens up further down”
The American disagreed.
“It’ll go over them rocks”
The Dutchman shook his head.
“No it won’t”
“Well it ain’t going up that there hill neither”
The Dutchman nodded slowly for he knew the American was right.
He and the kid again got out and emptied the car of the rucksacks and the box of whiskey bottles and the bags of provisions and moved them all onto the dry rocks.
The American leaned out of the open driver’s window and looked back to them.
“Got everythin’?”
The Dutchman saluted informally with two fingers.
The American leaned from the car window and spat and nodded to them and put the Jeep forward up onto the rockpile.
It was at a fortyfive degree angle to the river and they could see the American hanging over to his right as he wrestled with the wheel. Smoke poured from the exhaust and from the bonnet for despite its strength and endurance it was still an old vehicle. The kid and the Dutchman watched from their vantage point on the rocks and saw before the driver did the lower two wheels start to slide away in the wet ground. The rocks below gave way and tumbled downwards to the water and the huge 4x4 rocked sideways as it fell until the car itself was pivoting with the rocks along the very centre of its driveshaft.
It rocked gently in slow motion and the kid and the Dutchman could do little but watch.
The American dipped the accelerator
pedal and smoke filled the air and the engine screamed but the wheels just spun noisily in the air, flicking mud and water backwards and diesel fumes poured out of the exhaust and the car groaned and roared at the same time like a desperate snared beast.
The American kicked open the driver’s door and was trying to heave himself out of the open cab as the weight finally gave and the car rocked over to the side and slid downwards, off the wet rocks and crashed into the roaring river below. The American fell most of the way down with it and leaped and fell from the open door just as it thundered into the roaring Mekong.
He scrambled to the rocks and pulled himself out, turning to see only the right side of the Jeep above the water, bobbing and scraping slowly downriver in the current with its door still open in the air like a useless mast.
Finally their huge metallic steed had succumbed to the mighty power of the one beast that had spared it so mercilessly on two occasions already that very day and the kid knew that they had pushed their luck too far and that this was the price they paid to fate itself.
The American sat dripping on a black rock at the edge of the river.
He wiped the water from his eyes and spat into the river and turned and looked back to where the kid and the Dutchman were still standing helplessly.
“You kept sayin’ we needed to get rid of the car”
The faint glow of fire in the dusky sky signalled the approaching village. The track they walked was not marked on the kid’s map and they had blindly followed it north for the past few hours as it wound into the ever-darkening jungle on the banks of the Mekong. They had split the box of whiskey between them and each carried two of the bottles with some of the other provisions and they had to stop along the route many times in the afternoon sun to cool themselves in the shallows of the river and they were all wet through with sweat and riverwater.
The village there was made up of old rickety shanties and farms at either side of the river with a bridge crossing between the two. Two men watched from a doorway as they approached and nodded their heads to them and the airmen nodded back. At the intersection of the road a gathering of people had started to come to the doorways and to the roadside to see the travellers though they seemed neither surprised nor pleased at their arrival, for while these people lived in jungleland they were not hidden entirely from the reaches of the growing tourism trade. The kid approached a group of men who stood in the front of a building drinking tea and smoking. Two women were darning sheets next to them and stopped when he approached.
“Hello” he offered to them, smiling.
None smiled back but they nodded to him and one said hello to him in English. The kid told them that they were travelling through on foot and that they needed somewhere to stay and a fire to cook on. He couldn’t be sure whether the men could understand and they looked between themselves and spoke in their language and one of them pointed across the village and said something but it couldn’t be understood either. The kid thanked them, though he knew not what for, and went on his way across the yard. The airmen stood behind him on the bank of the brown river, watching.
He crossed the dark square to the openfronted home with a small fire burning inside smelling of cooking meat and spices. Children were playing nearby in the dusk and a dog ran around with them barking at everything and nothing. The old woman rose from her cooking pot when she saw him walking over and he greeted her and told her the same thing that he had told to the men and she nodded and smiled and waved him over to her and he stepped under the aluminium canopy roof, stooping slightly. She poured a ladle of thin broth from her cooking pot into a stoneware bowl and with a second scoop added vegetables to it. She handed it to him and he held it for a moment as it steamed. He thanked her and took a sip and it was hot both in temperature and in the strength of the cooked chilli and he only sipped a small amount from the bowl and nodded his thanks to her.
She offered him nothing more and no bed, nor did she suggest where he could find one, but when the airmen appeared a few minutes later she gave them all the broth and sat with them smiling while they ate and drank from one of the whiskey bottles. The creases around her eyes tightened and relaxed again as she laughed with them though they were sure she didn’t know what they were saying. The children came over and took their supper and ate it rapidly as though the heat of the broth and the heat of the chilli was not there and ran away again to play as before.
They sat that night under the canopy in the front of the old lady’s home and others came and spoke to them and some shook their hands and then they all left again as they had come. They let the townsmen drink their whiskey and smoke their cigarettes and the men in turn brought them food as the night passed.
They slept on their packs in the open and were bitten from head to toe by the insects there and the following morning the woman had already gone from her house though her door was left wide open. A young boy brought them coffee in glasses and bowls of rice cooked in nut oil and fruit and sat staring at them while they ate until his mother appeared and called him away.
The kid sat sipping his coffee and studying the map with its sincere lack of any detail.
A squat man in his middle age with black trousers and a long wooden walkingstaff approached them and took off his hat.
“Where do you travel?” he asked.
The kid rose.
“West”
The man thought about this.
“West” he said, to himself.
“India” the kid offered.
“You have no car” he said flatly.
“No, no car”
“No horse”
“No nothing. We are on foot”
The man thought.
He looked at the three of them and slowly wiped the side of his beard with his thumb and then looked at his thumb and wiped it on his trouser leg.
“You are going to India by foot?”
The kid smiled dryly and shrugged.
“Well I hope not the whole way”
The man just watched them.
“Do you know where we would find a car to buy?” the Dutchman called from where he was sitting.
The man looked over to him.
“No. In Mandalay”
“A bike?”
The man watched the Dutchman for a moment.
“You have money?”
They all nodded.
“Mong Hsu” he said looking at the map.
They looked at each other.
The kid reached over and took the map and opened it out on the table. The man placed his thin finger down on the paper. The kid looked to where it was pressed in an open space of white on the map.
“I go here in one day”
“By car?”
“By foot. With horse”
The kid nodded slowly and looked at the Dutchman and at the American and the American shrugged and nodded too.
“Go here and you take road to Mandalay. You buy car in Mandalay”
The kid knew they couldn’t go to Mandalay in their current situation and that they should stay away from all roads as much as possible and they discussed this for only the briefest of moments and agreed that they should pass over the mountains instead.
“In Mong Hsu you can take bike and I have friend will show you road west”
They nodded in agreement and the man told them he would be leaving the following morning at first light and to meet them at the river on the edge of the town.
They thanked him and he nodded to them and looked across the canopy of the lady’s home and looked back at the men and nodded once more and left.
Chapter Four
Wang Singpin across the mountains passes to the Thanlyin River at Mong Hsu
They passed that day doing nothing at all and sitting in the sun and the townsfolk brought them tea and rice and fruit and they slept again in the open and woke before the sun was up on the following day and gathered their belongings of which they had little. When they arrived at their meeting point at the top o
f the village the sky was slowly turning pink and it was calm and wild pigs were drinking from the river. The man’s pony was standing kicking the dirt under its feet, snorting, his pack tied to its back but with no saddle. Six large white goats were tethered to each other by a length of rope and buckled onto the hitch of the horse’s bridle.
The man said little to them beyond his greeting and didn’t ask if they were ready to leave, though they were, and he jolted the horse forward. It trotted away and as the rope tightened it pulled with it the goats, one at a time, into line behind and they scuttled quickly forwards together and then established a pace at which to walk.
He whistled sharply through his teeth and two thin fit Pariah hounds joined him from where they had been sitting in the long grass and they too fell in line and the party headed north along the river.
The sky on the horizon was turning pink. They passed through rugged farmland and left the riverside after the first hour and turned into the mountains and took a pass to the west. They walked through the day stopping briefly at intervals to rest in the shade of trees and by the afternoon their clothes were dripping with sweat and they made a fire in a spot where fires had been made before and perhaps by the man himself on previous journeys. He untied the goats from the pony and tied them again to a tree in a patch of grass for them to eat, which they did, and he watered the horse from his canteen.
On the second day they left again at sunrise and the terrain became steeper as they navigated further uphill and by noon the land was baked hard and the shade of the trees was no cooler than the air in the open.
They stopped at a thin stream cascading down through the hot rock and the dogs drank as though they had not ever drank before and the men filled their canteens and passed around some food and were soon on their way again, the goats pulled along behind the horse, stepping and skipping and hopping over the loose ground.
As the sun started to go down again the kid’s legs were burning and while neither of the airmen complained, it was clear they too wished to stop and the only one who wasn’t buckled over was the man himself though he was older than them all. When the kid asked him where they would sleep that night he looked at them all with narrowed eyes and did not respond.
Where Men Once Walked Page 6