End of the Ocean

by Matthew McBride

  “Apa kabar,” someone said, and when he looked at the man before him he knew which life was real.

  Nodding at Sage, he pointed to a metal contraption with rollers that would take his backpack through the x-ray. Sage, with reluctance and great courage, slipped his bag off his shoulder and set it in the tray.

  Walking through a small gate, running his hand through oily hair, standing behind a group of tourists who planned to hike Mount Batur, Sage watched the conveyer belt stop, and the man who watched the screen called a coworker to his side.

  Sage masked the fear he felt at this new development with impatience; letting out a deep breath, he looked to his wrist instinctively for a watch he did not have.

  He waited. Everything slowed down until time could move no slower. He looked at them and they looked at him and when they did he raised his arms, shrugging, like any man would do who had nothing to hide.

  “There some kind of problem, guys?”

  Both men, still looking at Sage, looked back to the screen. Then one man walked off and the conveyor belt started. When his backpack came through Sage had never known a moment that brought more relief than the moment he knew he was free.

  Removing his backpack, setting the tray in a pile of trays, slinging the bag over his shoulder, Sage walked toward freedom. Directly in front of him, on the other side of the wall, he would find Wayne Tender. He’d be waiting in the back of a car with a huge joint burning, and even though Sage had decided he was done with pot part of him was prepared to bend the rules.

  And then someone said, Excuse me, and when he heard those words he knew that it was over, that he would never make it out of there and any hope of seeing her was gone.

  Coming toward him now he saw the man who’d been behind him. For the first time since they’d met, he grinned.

  “Please stop.”

  Two military personnel approached Sage from behind with members of airport security.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Here,” the man said. “Come here,” he demanded, waving Sage toward him as two men put their hands on Sage and he tried to pull free.

  The man in front of him yelled in Balinese and there were arms around his neck for a second time now, as Sage fell to the ground on top of the man below him, who held him tight while a soldier stood above him with a rifle pushed against his chest.

  Two men in military garb took Sage, walking slowly, hands cuffed behind his back, to a small, cramped room, painted white, at the end of a long hall that had, at one time, been bright green. Though that color had faded, what shade remained was covered in dust, and under the dim bulbs that illuminated the floor and walls he could see the contents of his backpack spread before him.

  Sage did not talk. Though he saw his backpack on the table with the toothpaste and the statue, he remained silent, knowing anything he said could be used against him—would be used against him—just like they did back home.

  He knew what he must do. Just bide his time and wait for Wayne. What was he supposed to say, that this was some misunderstanding? Tell the bald man he fucked up good since their government was involved?

  Sage was shaking. He knew that wasn’t true, and that Wayne wasn’t coming. If he hadn’t come for Grady he would not come for him. The best Sage could hope for was that Wayne would send someone, that he would make a bribe. Djoko had a lawyer, he knew a judge.

  They sat him in a chair beside a table that held boxes of papers, his cuffed hands now in front of him. Two men walked in, followed by a tall, thin woman he knew he had seen before.

  She took a seat across from him and he knew where they had met.

  “Do you remember me?”

  He nodded. She was from the prison, though he had no idea why she was there.

  A third man now joined them, all of them talking at once, fast and loud, with many questions.

  “Do you know why you are here?”

  Sage shook his head.

  “No, you do not know?”

  Sage did not say whether he did or whether he didn’t.

  “Is this your bag?”

  Sage decided not to talk.

  The woman answered one of the men behind him who responded with a loud shout.

  She asked him again, “Is this your bag?”

  When Sage failed to answer someone hit him in the head. It rang. When she spoke to him again he could not hear anything.

  “Tell him to uncuff me and try that.”

  She looked at Sage and, speaking quietly, said, “Is that really what you want me to say?”

  “I dunno what you’re talking about. Why am I here?”

  She said something in Indonesian and they laughed.

  “You do not understand,” she said. “This not your country. This not USA.”

  Behind him they laughed again.

  Sage closed his eyes; he did not know what to say.

  She asked him again if that was his bag.

  “What d’you think?” he said. “There’s nothing in it,” he said. “I got robbed, back in Thailand. I was staying at this place called Banana House and someone stole my bag. They took all my shit,” he said, trying to throw his hands around dramatically but they were cuffed. “They left my toothpaste and this statue of Buddha I picked up for my neighbor.”

  “I thought you say you were minister,” she said. “What Christian minister do with statue of Buddha?”

  Sage fumbled. “I …I said I was a deacon—and I bought that for my neighbor. I just told you that. Little Korean guy,” he said, holding his hands three feet off the floor. “He’s always going on and on about him.”

  She translated his words to the group and they all seemed happy.

  “So you admit this your bag?”

  “No,” he said. “I mean, yes—kind of. It was my bag. Once. But then somebody stole it from a café I was at. My friend helped me get it back.”

  “Is that what you want me to say?”

  “It’s the fucking truth, yes. I swear it.”

  Looking him in the eyes, she told him those were bad words to be said by a minister.

  “I said deacon,” he cried. Squeezing his fists tight, he sat there and shook.

  When she translated his words, the crowd laughed.

  “No one believe you.”

  “Why not? I’ve done nothing wrong. Someone stole my clothes, big deal, that’s not a crime. I filed a police report in Thailand. Call the police over there, they’ll tell you. The officer’s name was Ongard Swa …,” he said, trying to remember the name of his alcoholic taxi driver. “Hell, it was Ongard something, that’s all I know.”

  When she translated his latest statement the group seemed amused. Then the big-bodied small-headed man walked in the room and the atmosphere changed.

  Standing before him, fat and tough, he picked up the backpack from the table.

  Holding it up high, the bald man looked at Sage.

  “It heavy.”

  “It was expensive. It’s very well made.”

  “I do not think so.”

  He barked a series of orders and cleared the room until only the two of them remained.

  “What you bring in my country?”

  “Toothpaste.”

  “What else?”

  “A statue of Buddha.”

  The big man across from Sage picked up the statue from the table and, holding Buddha by the feet, smashed the head against the edge of the table and broke it into pieces.

  Staring into the headless Buddha, he said, “What you hide in here?”

  “Nothing.”

  The man tossed the statue back to the table and it broke in half, but as they both could plainly see there was nothing inside but dust.

  Next, the man picked up the toothpaste and unscrewed the lid. He squirted toothpaste on the table as well, squeezing the tube in his wide hand, crushing it until there was nothing l
eft.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” Sage said. “I love it here. This is my second time back. I love it—I love the people, the food.”

  The big man stared him down, narrowing his eyes.

  “I fell in love,” he said. “I came back to see her.”

  “Why you go Thailand?”

  “I dunno,” Sage said. “I just wanted to, I guess. I had to go somewhere, my thirty days were up so I left the country and came back. That’s what I’m supposed to do, right? I don’t understand.”

  “Why you go Thailand?”

  “What? I just told you, I guess I just always wanted to go. It’s beautiful.”

  “Why Thailand? Not Singapore or Malaysia like everyone else.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. I guess I like their curry.”

  “You go Bangkok? Get blowjob from little girl?”

  “Hell no, I’ve never even been to Bangkok.”

  “From little boy?”

  “Jesus. What the hells wrong with you people? I don’t have to talk to you. I wanna lawyer.”

  For the second time he grinned. Shaking his head no, he told Sage he had no rights.

  “Why you go Thailand?”

  “I already told you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “I went to Krabi, to … uh, to Ao Nong? Or something like that. I’ve gotta friend there, Andy. He’s gotta little restaurant business, rents motorbikes. Go head and call him, he’ll tell you we’re friends.”

  The man shook his head no, clapping his hands together loudly in front of Sage’s face to get his attention.

  He asked him again why he went to Thailand and Sage drifted away. To the first time they walked on the beach, when Ratri told him she loved the ocean, that, as a girl, she dreamed an American would come and take her away.

  “Why you go Thailand?” The big man banged his fist on the table, leaning close to Sage.

  “Fuck, man. I already told you. How many times I gotta tell you? I dunno, I dunno, I dunno. I just went, OK.”

  “You go Thailand, bring back drug,” he said, and Sage did not know if it was a question or a statement, but either way he hadn’t.

  “You’re wrong,” he said, almost laughing. “You’re crazy. I don’t even do drugs.”

  Removing a utility knife from his pocket, the bald man unzipped the backpack and began to make cuts, smiling as he did this. When he looked at Sage they each knew the other knew but they owed it to themselves to play the game.

  For Sage, the game was all he had and he would play his hand to the end.

  “Ah,” the bald man said. Shaking his head from side to side, he spoke a few words in Balinese.

  After making cuts, he pulled a hard block, oblong, smashed flat, wrapped in black plastic, from inside the lining.

  Holding it up to the light he asked Sage, “What this?”

  Sage ignored him.

  Once he’d removed four bags, and after holding them under his nose, then up to the light, he, smiling, said, “You foreigner so stupid. Think you come to Bali, smuggle drug.”

  Standing, pushing his chair back, the man left the room, leaving the evidence on the table, but Sage did not see it. He held his head in his hands and he thought about his parents. And how old they’d become in the last few years. He thought about his sister, a flight paramedic, how long since they’d last talked? His brother was almost thirty now, he’d just become a dad.

  To his left, the door opened and the man returned with a large scale that he carried to the table. Looking at Sage, he said, “I will guess one kilo.”

  When he set the first bag on the scale, and after he left the room once more to retrieve an extension cord so he could plug the scale in, that’s what it said: one kilo. Just like he’d predicted, and the other bags each weighed the same.

  “Where you get drug?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “We going to kill you.” Pounding his fist on the table, he said it like he meant it, like he’d be happy to do the work himself.

  Sage panicked.

  “What first thing you see when step off plane,” he said, standing, yelling, “It say death penalty for drug! How many you people can be so stupid? Why not rob bank? You go prison only short time, but not for smuggle drug.”

  “I didn’t smuggle drugs,” Sage said, laughing under his breath.

  Leaning down, the big man said, “Oh, you think it funny? What you think, get shot by fire squad big joke?”

  “It’s not drugs,” he said. “Just …just trust me on this. Listen,” he said, “if I could please just, just …make a phone call? I think maybe I can clear this up.”

  “Phone call?” he yelled. “Phone call. Who you call? What you call lawyer, OK. Your lawyer from America going come see you? You have lawyer here, in Bali? You want call lawyer, can use my phone.”

  Taking it out of his pocket, he said, “I call for you, what number?”

  Sage started to say he didn’t know but then said nothing, because there was nothing else to say. He did not know what to say. Or how much he should tell them. Maybe this was just a test. Wayne promised he would not get caught so they had not gone over this: The what if’s. And now here he was, dealing with this idiot who thought his smuggled diamonds were smuggled drugs and Sage did not know how much he should tell him or if he should tell him anything.

  “Where you get drug?” the man screamed at him. “Who you sell drug to?”

  “They’re not drugs, OK? They’re diamonds, man. Diamonds.”

  Turning his head to the side, the big man said, “Diamond?”

  Sage nodded.

  Perplexed, he said, “You smuggle diamond to my country?”

  “Yes, diamonds—not drugs. You gotta believe me; I would never mess with drugs.”

  He stuck the blade into the hard black plastic. Then, pressing down with his thumb, digging into it, he tore the plastic open and burnt brown powder burst from the package and dumped on the table.

  Sage, stunned, sank into the chair. He knew his life was over. This could not be real.

  “This heroin,” he said. “Much heroin. In Indonesia you get death penalty for this.”

  Sage went to a very dark place for what could have been minutes or what could have been hours, and then he was walking. They led him away, down a series of corridors and hallways, to a large concrete room, where they loaded Sage, still handcuffed, into a long silver van. Then they said they would take him away.

  “To where?” he managed. “Taking me to where?”

  “To a very bad place,” the big man said. “It call Hotel K.”

  ***

  From her small office, across from the medium-sized room where they first met, it took Riris thirteen steps to reach his cell at the end of the hall but it took the other guard fifteen, which Sage attributed to the fact she was taller and her legs were much longer. And, sitting there alone, with iron and concrete between them, even though he could not see her, when he heard her walk toward him he admired her wide lovely stride.

  It had been two days since his arrest. No one had heard of Wayne Tender, and when Sage described the restaurant where he’d met him on Goutama they said it wasn’t there.

  His last shower had been dark and the water had been cold and the clothes he’d put on when he got out were the same clothes he still wore.

  He wanted to die. Today. Just get it over with. How could he have been so fucking stupid? What would they tell his family? Would he ever see them again? Talk to them.

  Sage heard footsteps coming and he could tell they were a man’s. They lacked the sharp click of a woman’s heel, followed by the flat slap of her sole, the echoes of which he now knew better than any sound in the world.

  A man walked up to his cell, dragging a chair behind him, and unlocked it with a key.

  Sage was sitting on the mat they had
given him to sleep on, which he kept as far from his broken squatter toilet as possible, thankful the one indignity he’d been spared was having to share a cell with a crowd.

  He heard the door open. A man walked in. Sage kept his head down. Feet together, arms wrapped around his legs, chin on his knees; he closed his eyes, humming a song his mother used to sing over and over again.

  Vaguely aware of his presence, Sage heard a voice say you look like shit in perfect American English.

  He looked up to the man who stood before him, a total stranger. But there was something about his eyes. There was. Something.

  Sage said, “What’d you say?”

  “I said you look like shit, mate.”

  The man: lean, blond hair with a reddish tint, clean shaven, spoke like he could have been from Texas.

  “Don’t recognize me, Sage?”

  Sage could not speak.

  “Oh, sorry,” the man said, clearing his throat, jumping into a character he no longer resembled. “Don’t ya bloody recognize me, mate? It’s Wayne. Wayne Tender.”

  A moment of profound immobility washed over Sage and he had no idea what to feel.

  “Fuck you,” he whispered. “You’re not real. None of this is real. I’m back home, in a coma …this …this is just a dream.”

  “Is it? Is that what you think, Sage? Well, I can assure you this is bloody real, mate.” He stopped then, laughing at himself, playing the part of Wayne again.

  “Sorry, it’s a habit, I guess. I dunno. Anyway, what’d you think of that accent?” Raising his hand, tilting it from side to side, he said, “Not too bad, eh?”

  Walking around the cell, Wayne said, “I mean, I’d say it had you fooled.”

  Sage was speechless. Utterly unable to communicate, he could not talk or move. He could only sit and listen and try to understand what was happening.

  “OK,” Wayne said, squatting down. “My name’s not Wayne Tender. But I like that name, I do, got ta pick it out myself,” he said.

  “What’s happening?” Sage said.

  “In a minute someone’s gonna come fetch you, take you to see the judge. They’re going to give you the death penalty for trafficking narcotics.”

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “You did.”

  “You cocksucker you set me up … Why’d you do this—why?”