The Amok Runners

by Colin Cotterill

When the news reached Khin we detected a flicker of a smile on her lips.

  ‘How much is he paying?’ she asked.

  We groaned but Boon thought it was a fair question. He took the notepad from the bedside table and wrote a figure.

  ‘It won’t be a Hollywood advance,’ he said. ‘I don’t normally get to stay in places like this. But it should be enough to keep her in noodles.’

  He passed the paper to Khin who managed an authentic Rangoon smile – the type that once lit up the streets of the Burmese capital before the gloom of oppression descended. She flashed the figure in our direction and we yelped with delight and wrestled the big embarrassed sack of bones down onto the bed and ruffled her well-combed hair.

  It was 1AM by the time the amok runners left Boon’s room. We’d woken Khin, still ruffled, five minutes earlier. We had the Thursday morning off because the next shoot would be at night. As we neared the lobby, I remembered my cloth shoulder bag and told the others I’d see them in the car park. Boon answered the door without his shirt.

  ‘Sorry, forgot my bag,’ I said. I walked past the director and into the room. ‘How’s your hand doing?’

  ‘Good, I think. I’ll let you know for certain when the whisky wears off.’

  I hooked the bag strap over my shoulder and stood in the middle of the room.

  ‘It wasn’t the door,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your hand. It wasn’t the door. The bathroom door slides shut. It was a knife, and a pretty sharp one. Maybe even a razor.’

  Boon let out a smile that had nothing to do with happiness. ‘I don’t …’

  ‘I’d bet one of them held you and the other one cut, one finger at a time,’ I said. ‘Backs of the knuckles, not much meat. Most people would be surprised how much it hurts when you run a blade over the bone. Aches like buggery.’

  Boon and I locked gazes, neither speaking for a good twenty seconds. I broke the deadlock.

  ‘If you need a friend,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Or want to talk.’

  ‘I appreciate it – really.’

  ‘I’m not kidding.’

  ‘I know.’

  We walked to the door and Boon held it open for me.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘See ya.’

  ‘Jimm? How do you know so much about pain?’

  ‘I work on the crime desk. People love to tell us how much things hurt.’

  Chapter 4

  “Rough business, this movie business. I'm gonna have to go back to loan-sharking just to take a rest.”

  Get Shorty. (1995)

  A kom fy is a poor man’s hot air balloon. It’s about the size of a fat lady’s muumuu. It comprises a white tissue paper cylinder with a closed top. At the bottom on a cross-hatch of sticks or a wire frame, burns a small wick. The flame warms the air inside until the creature slowly ghosts into the night and floats like a shimmering jellyfish on obliging currents of air. In November, during the Loi Gratong festival, they turn the sky over Chiang Mai into a mystical planetarium of gently floating stars. Of course they also endanger flights into Chiang Mai airport and burn down people’s houses but everyone agrees it’s worth it for that inner-warmth, that meditative calm that comes from lying on your back and allowing your soul to swim amongst them.

  It would have taken a most perverse screenwriter on holiday to envisage the lovely kom fy as a weapon of mass destruction. But that’s exactly what happened. ‘What if?’ someone had asked, ‘What if you attach small bags – pig’s bladders, perhaps, filled with the sixteenth century equivalent of Agent Orange? The flame burns down to the string that harnesses the bag to the kom fy and releases a deadly rain of toxic panic. The Burmese below, intoxicated by the magic lanterns flying above their heads, feel the light patter of rain. In seconds it burns through their faces into their brains and leaves them running amok. There we have it.

  They could add the lethal water bombs digitally but a computer could never emulate the majestic rise of a flock of kom fy at night. The filming location was a hillside behind the new Night Safari – one more peccadillo of the recently ousted prime-minister. The land had been slated for an elephant park and other sideshows in the premier’s mega-plan to turn the quaint city into a Disneyland for the world’s tourists. The vacuum of power following his ouster was a small blessing for the film makers. They were able to make small corrupt deals locally rather than enormously corrupt deals institutionally. The elephant parkland was ideal for this scene and the district headman even offered to remove the unsightly trees for a modest fee. Boon decided to keep the greenery.

  Thousands of kom fy had been assembled and lit. It was a splendid sight and great cinema. When they launched the huge flotilla it was as if the luminous shell of the mountain had broken loose and set off in search of heaven. It was a moment that not one person present would be likely to forget. The Thai crew and extras secretly attached their blessings and dreams to a balloon. On film it would look spectacular but only those who felt their hearts rise with the kom fy could appreciate its all-powerful karma. Boon had visualized it – documented it. All agreed it would be his crowning achievement. If only the kom fy had not been on a mission of destruction. If only the launching had been a symbol of hope, it could have been one of cinema’s most poignant moments.

  Sissy and I cried as we watched the mountain rise into the sky.

  But Friday was the day the spirit of the desecrated kom fy ceremony began to wreak its revenge. Everything had gone so well that week. Khin left for Pa Sang that morning. She planned to visit the temples around the area but wasn’t about to destroy the stupas brick by ancient brick. Her intention was to recover her treasure academically. She would tick off the clues one by one and arrive there logically – not with a pick or a shovel but with a key – a cognitive key crafted of her own brilliance.

  She still carried a letter from Chiang Mai University: ‘The bearer of this document is Ms. Khin Thein Aye. She is conducting important historical research in collaboration with this university and the dean of the faculty of humanities requests your cooperation in allowing her access to historical manuscripts and artifacts in your possession.’ It was signed and stamped and carried all the stuffy authority of a Thai University letter.

  Khin could have said all this herself; one word at a time over a period of a day. She spoke, last count, six regional dialects and read another six languages. But there was something about her aversion to Thai tones and the frustration she’d encountered trying to get people to understand her in Thailand that suggested she’d reached ‘full’ on the language tank gauge.

  The American armada was due to land the following day. Perhaps that was why an even gloomier smog than usual descended upon the north of Thailand. It clouded moods and eclipsed the last of the sunny dispositions. There is a Thai word – sanook. It doesn’t have an exact English counterpart. It encompasses a number of states; fun, relaxation of rules, enjoyment – but none of these terms really hit it. It’s better described by its absences; of pressure, of control, of inhibition; and when the heavies arrived from Hollywood that weekend, all those negatives made landfall with them. Movie-making became work. The atmosphere became denser and harder to breathe in.

  The big guns took over the Dhara Dhevi and booked it for ten days. OB, the director, had a suite. Oliver Benjamin was currently on a roll. Everything he touched turned to butts on seats. Four consecutive hits and no sign of letting up. He could choose his projects and ask however the hell much he wanted – and get it. The producers knew they’d recoup it. The roses hadn’t always smelled so sweet in OB’s forty-year career so he was strolling and taking the moments to savor the bouquet.

  Dan “the teeth” Jensen had a suite. He arrived with his crew, manager, makeup, personal trainer, voice coach, publicist, sexily slutty female ‘friend’, and someone to carry the shih tzu. There might have been a gofer too and a couple of hangers-on but the awe-struck receptionist lost count. If a studi
o took on Dan Jensen they took on his baggage. It was in the contract. He was worth it. Just by taking off his shirt in a movie he could add fourteen million to the take. There were those who believed he could act but it was his unruly ash blond hair and perfect dentures that got him through most scenes.

  Bunny Savage had a suite. The entourage that rode her particular fame was smaller; manager, publicist, makeup, and a Jewish bodyguard, Gus, built like the Wailing Wall. Savage was newly hot. She’d rocketed to stardom on the back of a TV sitcom and the fact she had a figure to melt granite. She’d probably learn to ride the studios some day but right now she was a steal at fifteen million for ten days location and another month of studio work back in California. The bellboy tripped over his tongue showing her to the room.

  There were other actors, producers, the assistant director, the line director, the head cinematographer and so, ad infinitum. Well-heeled Thais and mere millionaires had no chance of fighting their way into the Dhara Dhevi for the next ten days. Hollywood set up its beach head during the day while Sissy, our team and I used up the last of our sanook. Boon had been with us in the morning for a few mop-up sitting-around-doing-culturally-appropriate-things shots. The afternoon was close-ups of glaring eyes, hands on swords, sandaled feet trudging through rice fields, muscles glistening with sweat – a whole picture board of just-in-case inserts for OB to choose from. Boon had left his head cameraman to take care of these and driven off into the city for some important appointment – we assumed with OB. Before he left he’d asked us about Khin’s progress and wished us all well.

  The first week unit sat around looking at the digital version of the day’s shoots, applauding themselves and Boon’s vision. During the day, more and more intruders had trampled over our sanook. Stateside experts had strolled onto the set and made unwanted suggestions to the Thai film team. Observers had begun to gather like the ominous birds in the Hitchcock thriller. It was the end of the party. From now on the amok runners would blend in, be heads in crowds, drilled battlefield troops, or bodies. If we hadn’t been identifiable in a close up by now we knew we never would be. Two thousand new extras were being recruited over the weekend by a different agency. The machine had arrived and we weren’t even cogs any more.

  As we were walking away from the final showing, a large man in a sweat-stained brown shirt and a Greg Norman monogrammed straw hat approached us. He ignored me and Sissy and put his hand on Arny’s shoulder. The man didn’t introduce himself.

  ‘How’d you like to make yourself another five hundred baht a day, boy?’ he asked.

  ‘Does it involve him touching you in intimate places?’ I asked, knowing Arny was too soft and sweet to make such a crack.

  The man thought for a second then a stunned expression fell across his face.

  ‘Hell, no! What’d you think I am? Hell, no. I’m a Christian. I have a wife and three beautiful children. Shit.’

  He spoke with such alarm in his voice that I knew for sure the guy had a desire, innate or otherwise, to be touched in intimate places by another man. I let it ride.

  ‘Then what are you offering?’ I asked.

  ‘What are you, his agent?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m his sister,’ I said. ‘What do you want him for?’

  ‘Stand in. Know what that is?’

  ‘Yup,’ said Sissy.

  ‘What’s a stand in?’ Arny asked.

  The sweaty man’s eyebrows sprang toward his hairline. I guessed he hadn’t expected the locals to have minds.

  ‘You find a guy the same size as one of the actors,’ Sissy explained in English, ‘and have him stand around so the cameras can set up. Sometimes they shoot your back or film you from a distance so the star can have more time back in his trailer snorting coke.’

  ‘Hey. We don’t have any of that on our movies,’ said the sweaty guy.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Arny.

  ‘It sure beats third row from the back,’ I told him.

  ‘Not really,’ said Sissy. ‘I did it for Tom Berenger in the Sniper movie. It wasn’t a lot of fun. You’re on your own.’

  ‘I’d sooner be back there with you guys,’ said Arny.

  ‘There aren’t any ‘you guys’ after this weekend,’ I reminded him. ‘Khin’s off chasing her crackpot treasure and me and Sissy will be drowned in a sea of black hair. You’d be somebody up here. Do it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Arny. ‘I don’t know.’ He turned to the sweaty guy. ‘Who’d I be standing in for?’

  ‘Dan Jensen,’ said the guy.

  ‘He’ll do it,’ Sissy told him. ‘And, yes, I’m his agent.’

  Chapter 5

  “It happens to everybody, horses, dogs, men. Nobody gets out of life alive.”

  Hud (1965)

  I arrived at Khin’s house just as the sun began to roll over the back of the mountain and the dog chorus howled the end of another day. The trees all around held off most of the sun but it was still hot as Hades inside that big glass-doored people aquarium. I’d been staying with Khin for a week just to get away from the shop and Mair’s nuttiness and granddad Ja’s bad moods. At thirty-three I was too old to still be living at home but I couldn’t afford to live by myself. I’d tried marriage and that didn’t work, probably because I’d gone at it as a form of escape. Sissy had her own place and I’d stay with him when the family got to me. Even with its lack of privacy, Khin’s house provided me with a retreat. Families are awful things.

  I rolled three inappropriately small T-shirts and a spare pair of jeans and put them in my pack. Two pairs of panties, shorts, bras, socks and running shoes and I was all set. The next day we’d be off ‘on location’. Left to my own devices I probably wouldn’t have chosen Fang to get away to, but for reasons none of the amok runners could fathom that’s where the bulk of the movie was to be shot. It was the wild north – some pretty scenery but politically and socially out of control.

  I was changing into something more conducive to lounging when I found the fliers the LA people had handed out that afternoon. I lit a mosquito coil, placed it under the beach recliner and turned on the outside light. The first sheet was a press handout with a synopsis of the movie. Everyone knew it was a rip off of ‘The Last Samurai’. Americans loved the idea of sending their boys off to mend broken countries in the developing world. I read it aloud in my James Earl Jones voice.

  ‘SIAM. It is the year 1560 and the sovereign of the Siamese kingdom of Lanna faces a lamentable end for his people at the hands of the cruel and vengeful Burmese hordes.’

  I smiled and sipped a tonic water, imagining Khin’s reaction.

  ‘A prolonged fifty-year war against the invaders has left the Thai monarch low on resources and hope. In desperation he writes to his old friend, Lee, in the free world and explains his plight. (Lee?) Lee has fought beside the brave frontiersmen taming the savage continent of America. He has earned the trust and friendship of their leader, Andrew Axeman, the son of an English Lord unjustly banished to the Americas. Upon hearing Lee’s story, and valuing brotherhood above all, Axeman sets off with his band of fearless fusiliers to rescue Siam from tyranny.

  Although Axeman earns the respect of the Lanna monarch and wins the love of a beautiful Shan princess, will his brand of forest warfare, taught to him by his father on their family estate in Suffolk, be enough to outsmart the powerful Burmese army?

  This true story plucked from the cobwebs of time tells of a man who traveled to the far corners of the earth to ensure the triumph of good over evil; an unsung hero of America’s distant past. This is a story of everything that makes our nation great, of wisdom, of determination, of …’

  I was feeling too nauseous to read on. I let out a helpless simian screech. A gibbon up on the slopes replied. There was so much wrong with the hand-out I couldn’t even begin to lambast it. Expecting worse, I scanned the second sheet. It was a cast list with colour photos – the type you might find in a theatre programme. The pictures d
eliberately homed in on the parts of the celebrity you were supposed to admire. OB, the director, shot from above so you saw mostly cranium. Seventy something and good-looking. A big, grey skull. The brain of the operation.

  Then there was Jensen, Andrew Axeman himself. A third of the picture was smile. The hint of a bare shoulder intimating that the rest of him might be naked. Heaven help us. But I had to admit to a little shudder of lust. Then there was the director’s muse, the Savage rabbit, the babe. Bunny wore a low-cut V-neck cashmere sweater. Her focal points nestled in there nicely. Nice face, misleadingly pensive. I doubted much thought went through that pretty head.

  Next face down was King Maeku, the Thai monarch-under-siege, played, of course, by Yasue Kuro, a samurai movie star gone inter. Thai, Japanese – same difference to Edna in South Chicago. His exotic mail-slot eyes glared handsomely from the photo. Thai King Mongkut had been played with varying degrees of incredulity by a Russian, Yul Brynner, and a Chinese, Yun-Fat Chow, so why not a Japanese? Heaven forbid Hollywood might cast a Thai in the role. Given the lust for celebrity they’d probably ask Tiger Woods. Casting was all about popularity and little to do with acting ability. There had been talk of Paris Hilton playing the Shan princess but Bunny Savage’s dark Italian features made her a more credible Asian.

  Of the other eight or so main stars there was one Thai. Just one. He was Chucheep Ongsagul, recognized by the royal household as a National Artist in the field of the performing arts. He had a fifty-year career on stage and in films. At the bottom of the cast list was his name, misspelled, and his role: a villager.

  More distant dogs barked long before I heard the engine of the Caribbean throb up to the house. A few minutes later, Sissy was standing beside the recliner.

  ‘Hello bro,’ I said. ‘You seen these yet?’