The men all agreed and Ohnmar said that as long as the snakes were extinct he would be happy for he hated them more than anything else and they all laughed.
When they had finished eating and finished drinking the beers they took their places again in the truck and the two men with the rifles climbed back into the Daihatsu and they buckled up the coverings and set on their way.
The road at Kyaukme had been splintered by the earthquake and the tarmac rose out at all angles through fallen trees and broken stone. They followed it for some time driving along the shrubby land to the side of the road and weaved back and forth across the lanes to keep from the cracks and at one place the road dropped away entirely exposing the pale brown earth beneath it and a deep crevice into only blackness.
Three men stood by it with their hands on their hips peering inside in dismay or confusion or both and they stepped back and watched in dismay or confusion or both as the truck and the Daihatsu careered along its high edge. They passed small mountains of broken stonework and woodwork and plaster and timber and plastic sheeting and tin roofing showing no resemblance of the homes that were once constructed there. A shiny gold Buddha poked through the top of a shattered pile of teak wood with the sun flicking brightly off its head like a proud drowning captain refusing to go under on the last piece of a sinking ship.
At the top of the ridge, the north side of the road gradually toppled into the creek below and the metal barrier running by its side bent awkwardly through the trees and disappeared off the side of the drop entirely.
The distant horizon was dulling and a fine mist had dropped onto the lowlands.
The drivers slowed and carefully took the truck and the car around the breaks in the tarmac while a group of onlookers helped to guide the wheels from the drop and waved them sideways and forwards and sideways again and then on their way.
The kid watched through the crack in the fabric and pulled a fold of the material to one side to better his view and caught the eye of a small boy standing in the group who were otherwise preoccupied with guiding the truck. The boy tugged at his father’s shirt and pointed at the kid but the man batted him away to carry on with his duty and though the boy persisted at him the man paid him no attention.
The kid ducked back inside the truck and did not open the material again.
The road held together enough for them to pass and they made it down into the valley and away from the destruction of the villages and by the time the little town of Mogok had risen up from the hills, the sky had sunk to a dark amber at the horizon and an eternal black in the heavens.
The air had cooled and there was a breeze coming through the trees. Children played around the tall timber stilts holding up their homes and dogs ran and yapped and worked off the energy they had amassed from hiding in the shade all day.
The lake dominated the landscape. A huge crystal black hole in the centre of the town around which all else was clustered. Tiny lights speckled the town as cooking fires were stoked for the evening and townsfolk quickly went about the business they had been restricted from doing in the heat of the daytime. The value of the night’s cool was being realised and the place had turned nocturnal. On the far side of the lake the great white pagoda of Chan Thar Gyi sat restfully on the hillside surveying the town and its citizens like a protective grandparent.
They stopped the truck behind a row of shanties on a dark sideroad and quickly untied the back of the truck and the airmen and the kid climbed out.
They thanked Ohnmar and offered him money but he declined and when they insisted he took some of it but said he would only take enough to buy his men drinks when they arrived in Mandalay that night. He wished them luck and offered his condolences to them all for not being able to go home to America and the Dutchman corrected him on their nationality one final time and again he just laughed. They wished him luck with his shipment of stones and said they would think of him and thanked all the men again for their help in getting that far then they quickly tied up the truck and set out again into the night.
The airmen and the kid stood for a few moments on that sideroad like lost tourists before setting out on foot down towards the lake.
They found a noodle bar that served them big bowls of food and they drank warm beers and weak coffee and enjoyed it all nonetheless. The owner of the café spoke to them and said that he didn’t get many tourists visiting there and they told him they were trying to get home and he shook his head and said he would pray for them. They found a small guesthouse on the edge of the town where the road wound up the hillside and they paid for a small room with two bunk beds and left their packs there and walked again out into the cooling night. A man sat on a stool outside the doorway drinking from a tin and a dog lay at his feet and it watched them only with its eyes as they left and they nodded to him and said good evening and he nodded back to them without speaking.
They walked through the streets for some time and found the market and withdrew all that they could from a bank machine in the wall of an old post office and bought beers and the American bought a bottle of whiskey and some packs of nuts and cigarettes. They sat on the ground in an area of arid parkland under great trees at the side of the lake and drank the beers and then the whiskey and smoked and talked about their homes as they once were.
The Dutchman told of growing up in Dordrecht and of his father who worked in the shipyard there and his mother who worked in the bakery. He told how when he was young he and his older brother would spend their weekends and summers exploring de Biesbosch, playing in the woods and swimming in the wetlands. They would set out early and take the route out of town towards the river and cross on the roadbridge and through the fields until the fences stopped and the trees thickened and they would play there all day as pirates or warriors or huntsmen and would carve sticks into swords or spears and chase birds and wildlife and each other. Their mother would pack them a lunch of cheese and breads that were left from the week’s baking and would wrap them a Schapenkop cookie and tuck it into a pocket in their bags as a treat.
He kicked his heel into the dirt where he sat and looked up to the sky.
His parents were now old but not too old to have a life there and though his father had stopped working due to arthritis, his mother still helped at the bakery and they still lived in the same house there and went boating with their friends and with his aunt and uncle. He said that his brother had three children and they had moved to Dresden and that he worked in a corporation there doing something executive and though they still spoke on occasion he had not been to visit him and knew very little of his three nephews and nieces.
He looked at the kid.
“It’s funny the way life does that to you when you get old”
The kid nodded and said that the Dutchman was not old at all and the Dutchman laughed and said he was old enough and that time only went in one direction.
He said that three days after the disaster had happened he had called his mother but the line would not connect and he had called his brother but he did not answer and he had tried some more times over the days that followed but when he called his brother again his line too would not connect either. He said he knew nothing of his family’s safety and worried for them as they lived in a place built on a network of waterways that would surely not withstand flooding such as there had been.
He took a mouthful of whiskey and breathed in through his teeth. He watched forwards to the black lake. The little lights danced on it and silhouetted birds moved at its edge.
The American flicked his cigarette across the ground and it sputtered in orange sparks and sat there glowing for some time before it extinguished itself and he lit another and exhaled the white smoke from his nostrils.
He told them that he was certain he knew what had become of his own parents, but that he knew nothing of his three sisters. He told them of his parents and their small autoshop and garage an hour outside of Wichita Falls Texas. During the great evacuations in the previous weeks they had
packed their truck and taken everything they could up to Bismarck North Dakota where they were told they would be outside of the blast radius, and had taken refuge in the camp inside Bismarck Municipal Airport with thousands of others. Two of his sisters had taken their families and fled to his eldest sister’s house in Greenville South Carolina and had packed themselves into the small house with their children and their husbands and all their belongings and three dogs and a cat to sit-out the impact there.
He had only learned after the impact, as they all had, the underestimations which had been made.
Greenville South Carolina was indeed outside of the blast radius and had escaped much of the initial destruction but the shock waves thundered across the land to the east and the west and brought down heaven and brought up hell. Those on the eastern coast had a chance of survival if they got out within a day or two but storms of dust and rain and debris swallowed the land and all the cities there and brought winds that ripped apart the biggest and safest of refuges. The land tremorred and quaked and split until the mountains themselves broke open and there had followed a great darkness as the electricity went down across the nation and the skies filled with yellow dust and black dust and pestilence and death and rained it all down as far south as the Amazon basin. Whether his sisters were still hiding there or whether they had run he did not know. There was very little use in doing either thing though he hoped they had made the right choice whatever that may have been and he hoped they had made it in time.
He knew that Greenville South Carolina was indeed outside of the blast radius, but he knew that Bismarck North Dakota was not and that, he said looking to the sky, was the fate that had befallen his own parents.
He took a deep breath and turned to the others.
He smiled to the Dutchman and reached across and put his hand on his shoulder. The Dutchman reached up and clasped his hand in his own and nodded to him and nobody spoke.
They sat there together in that silence for some time watching the world around them as the last of the light dripped behind the hills and the speckles of light flicked on the water.
Eventually the kid turned to the Dutchman and spoke.
“So are you trying to get home?”
The Dutchman turned to look at him and smiled.
“I don’t know if I have a home, but I know I don’t live here, and you know you aren’t going home either” he nodded to the American, “so we gotta go someplace”
The kid nodded and took a mouthful of the whiskey.
“Yes we do”
Across the lake the town was starting to calm. The kid thought about the people there. He thought first to himself how lucky they were that they still all had each other and that their families were still united and their homes standing but then he also thought that the heat was killing their crops and their animals and that they had no other place to go or any way of getting there if they did. He knew they may be safe for now in their small world but he knew they would die here.
He thought of his own journey, crossing vast lands to find something that once was and a place that may just be a memory or a shadow or a dream that if he were to think about for too long would disappear entirely.
All three of the travellers had no contact with those who they cared about and none knew what they could expect on their return but for the American who knew that he could never return at all. The kid felt at that time an incredible sadness and felt very alone sitting there on the side of that lake staring into blackness but at the same time he felt a tremendous strength and a determination to overcome what he would, and he was filled with a life he hadn’t known before and he put his hands on both the American and the Dutchman and they finished the whiskey together and swore their allegiance for they had nothing else.
Chapter Six
Mogok to Kaleymyo by road
The Dutchman woke first.
The big American was lying flat out on his stomach on the bottom of the other bunk next to him, and the kid up on the top bunk above his own. He stepped out and opened the rickety wooden door to the world outside wearing only his black combat trousers and walked out into the still, quiet heat and stood with his eyes closed for a few moments as the morning sun soaked into his skin and pushed the whiskey out from every pore. A little car rattled past with woven baskets tied to the roof with thin twine overflowing with household items and full of people perhaps making their getaway. A solitary crow glided slowly overhead squawking loudly and that was all that was to be heard there. Across the street two men watched him from behind their wooden shutters. He watched them back for a moment and they retreated and he stepped backwards out of the sun into the shadow of the thin canopy and cracked the knuckles on each hand and stretched his arms and went back inside.
As the three of them walked down the hill with their packs towards the centre of the town, a rolling canopy of black clouds was ominously creeping over the hilltops at the horizon to the west. They passed by a sprawling open flower market abandoned and littered with a carpet of dead petals and leaves and woven baskets and plastic crates filled with dead stems, dried out entirely in the heat and on a table at the end even the display of cacti had baked. Stalls along the roadside sold garlic and chillies and yet more dead flowers. The American bought a pair of cheap sunglasses and the kid bought a light poncho of linen and the airmen laughed at him for doing so and mocked him when he wore it.
“At least it’s stopping me getting as sunburned as you two red idiots” he quipped as they walked and they laughed again.
Thunder crackled in the distance like the balling of old paper and the dogs barked at it. At the foot of the hill a small white office advertised itself as a travel agent and they knocked on the door as it was locked and they looked inside and knocked again and the Dutchman knocked on the window and eventually a round man in a blue shirt came and unlocked the door and stared at them with a look of frustration and confusion.
The thunder boomed above them with such ferocity that every person in the street jumped and flinched and a wind built up as the pressure changed around them and the dogs barked at it again and ran in circles in the street.
“Can you help us please?” asked the kid.
He shook his head and tried to push the door closed.
“Closed” said the man, tapping a sign on the door that none of them could read.
“We need to get to the border, can you help?”
The man shook his head and pushed the door and the American placed his foot just inside the frame so it could close no further.
The wind was swelling and a plastic chair and table outside a café blew over and skidded into the road.
“Is there a railway here?”
The man screwed up his face at them.
“A train?” he asked again.
The man pushed the door forcefully and it bounced off the American’s boot and the man frowned and pushed it again.
“Please. Can we take a bus?” the kid continued, his desperation growing and audible in his voice.
The man looked up and down the street, seemingly worried.
He eyed both airmen.
“No bus. Ever thing closed”
Another deafening crack of thunder echoed through the streets and the buildings shook and the pressure finally broke and rain drops started to thud down onto the scorched earth.
They dropped, huge and visible, into the red dust, each in its own microcosmic explosion.
“You can take car. No driver”
In the street two men stood in the rain with their arms outstretched, shouting and laughing together. Women hurried from every doorway with pots and pans and buckets and washing bowls and dustbins and bags and cups and things that didn’t even hold water and stood them out to collect the rain. A flock of brightly coloured birds swirled overhead and ducked away into the trees.
“Perfect” the kid nodded, “where is it?”
The man looked up and then down the road and waved them inside.
He led them
through his little office displaying faded posters advertised walking tours to the ruby mines and photos of festival scenes with the words Tour Yangon emblazoned across them in yellow text. The business was not open and it looked like it may never have been and things were turned over and dusty and broken and there could not have been anyone in that place for some time wanting to tour the country. The lights were off as he guided them through the back room and out of the screen door at the rear of the building and out into the courtyard, covered with a plastic sheet roof. The huge thundering raindrops rattled the sheeting on its fixings and water poured from its edges and through the gap over the fence they saw yet more people collecting rainwater and there was more commotion and noise at that time than they had seen since they began.
The man walked them across the little square courtyard littered with debris to two parked blue Toyota sedans and a white Honda estate. The cars were thick with dust and dirt and rust and one of the Toyotas had a front wheel missing and someone had written something in the dust on the side of the Honda.
The man nodded to them.
They all looked at each other.
“Do they run?” asked the American, stepping forward to the cars.
“Very good” the man replied, nodding, “no driver”
“We don’t need no driver, just the car”
“Very good” he said again.
The American wiped his hand through the dust on the side window of the Toyota and looked inside.
“Which one runs best?”
The kid and the Dutchman were looking at the other two cars.
“All very good” the man offered.
“Well this one only has three wheels” the Dutchman offered, kicking lightly at the exposed axle.
Where Men Once Walked Page 9