‘Do you think she really believes it all?’ asked Bunny. ‘The treasure?’
I looked at Sissy before answering. When I spoke it was with my voice lowered.
‘Khin’s a smart lady,’ I said. ‘If she lived anywhere else in the world but Burma she’d be earning a fortune as head of department at some fancy university. She’s fluent in languages that died long before Fred Flintstone learned to drive. But she’s from over there in Burma, and to tell the truth they’ve got nothing much to look forward to or believe in right now. Khin had the balls to bail out. She’s living in a foreign country. If this treasure fantasy gives her just a little bit of pleasure – something to dream of - I’m all for it.’
‘Me too,’ said Sissy.
‘Me too,’ said Arny.
‘Me too,’ said Bunny.
The lights over the distant bridge briefly reflected in a tiny tear at the top of her cheek.
‘Look guys,’ she said, ‘this has been an evening I won’t forget in a while but I’ve got lines to learn before tomorrow. I’m off.’
‘I’ll walk you back,’ Arny said. He’d spent much of the past half hour staring at the starlet. I wondered whether my brother had fallen in love for the first time.
‘No you won’t,’ she said. ‘You’ll take another two muscle pills and get back down there on the deck. You’ve got to be in shape for tomorrow. I’ve checked the script. You get to carry my wounded horse.’
‘Really?’ said Arny.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘But you do need a rest.’
‘Then I insist on sending my trusted man-servant, Sissy,’ I said. My brother leapt to his feet and bowed.
‘It’s only five hundred yards,’ she pleaded.
‘The French were defeated at Dien Piang Phu in five hundred yards,’ Sissy told her and left her with no choice.
‘Then … see you,’ she said.
‘Night,’ we replied.
‘I’m really sorry about your back,’ she said to Arny and bent down to give him a kiss on the cheek.
‘Not a problem,’ he lied, burning red.
‘Say ‘bye’ to Khin for me,’ said Bunny.
‘Will do.’
She looked back briefly before disappearing behind the cabin. It was a look that carried some warmth. The voices faded into the night and there was just me on my recliner, Arny supine on the balcony and the sound of Khin cleaning her teeth with my brush.
Chapter 9
“Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!”
The Truman Show (1998)
It was sometime before dawn when I heard Arny’s voice in the darkness.
‘Jimm? You awake?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Jimm, do you think she likes me?’
‘Everybody likes you, Arny,’ I said. ‘Look at you. You’re gorgeous. Why else would she be here? You really did get to carry her to bed on film. I’m seriously impressed. How’s your back?’
Arny was lying on the floor between the twin beds. Khin had commandeered one. She was snoring rudely. Sissy was in the hammock on the balcony. The pre-dawn cocks were rehearsing.
‘It’s hard to tell,’ said Arny. ‘You spend the night on wood and you’re going to be pretty sore anyway. You’ve just got to distinguish which is the floor agony and which is the post-op agony.’
‘You know what you need?’ I asked.
‘Traction?’
‘A swim in the river.’
It wasn’t a logical idea but it sounded oddly appealing.
‘The sun’s not up yet,’ he said.
‘Does that stop the river being cool and wet? And we aren’t going back to sleep with her grunting over there.’
I threw my pillow at the noisemaker. Khin awoke, not like a woman assaulted by kapok but like a genius who’d just had a profound idea. There may have been a little light bulb in the air above her head.
‘Hey, Khin,’ I said, ‘wanna go for a swim?’
‘I’d be tickled pink,’ she said, drowsily.
‘That’s “yes” right?’
Five minutes later, the amok runners – Sissy included – in nothing but our underwear were mid-stream in front of the cabin watching the sun peer over the mountain. The pull of the current was like an early massage. The tour boats began their journey beyond the bridge downstream so we didn’t have to swim in diesel and chip packets. The water carried a clean chill from the hills and we felt the way Mangrai’s men must have felt five centuries earlier. If we stood facing south west and looked at the tree-covered slopes, the buildings and the overhead cables and riverside beer garden at our backs, this was exactly the view the king would have enjoyed. I imagined him standing in that same mud washing away the dust and blood of battle. For a while I felt that same electric surge of history that had probably flowed through Khin’s blood since she was a young nerd at home in Yangon.
After a brief playful attempt to drown Khin we grabbed her arms and waded her back toward the hut. The sun fought its way through the haze and bathed the rooftops in a dingy orange. We felt invigorated, ready for a new day.
Then a bang.
Then a thump.
It was the first thing I felt, like being slapped by a wall of air. It whipped all four of us back into the water. I floundered beneath the surface, disoriented. It was one of the first times I thought I might be about to die. Shock. Panic. Confusion. What in hell? I righted myself and found my feet. Before me the cabin blazed like a July fourth bonfire. I looked behind me. Khin and my brothers stood to their waists in the silver red water, the light from the flames dancing on their skins.
Chapter 10
“I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”
Apocalypse Now. (1979)
The first official police appraisal was that the LP gas tank had been faulty. Each cabin had an eleven-kilogram tank at its rear connected to the shower.
‘This is Thailand’, the officer reminded them, as if that explained away all unnatural disasters. ‘The things are notoriously unstable. They blow up all the time. It’s impossible to regulate all the dealers,’ etcetera.
The resort owner, still in her bright red Chinese pyjamas, had apologized a thousand times to her damp and shaken guests. She brought us unfashionable tracksuits from her husband’s closet and held her hands together permanently, in deference to the money she’d lose if the movie people cancelled. She envisaged her windfall being swept away in a gas tank panic. She personally went from room to room disconnecting the hoses.
It had been circumspect to have Khin removed from the premises before the police turned up. She’d taken herself to the far bank of the river where she hid wrapped in a black plastic garbage bag. Of course she hadn’t been able to dress first as her clothes had been consumed in the fire along with our bags and money and reading material and toiletries. From our vantage point in the bungalow restaurant we could see Khin’s feet protruding from behind a bush. We hoped she wouldn’t catch pneumonia.
The lone policeman had returned to the kiosk to write up his report. The grips and best boys and extras billeted at the Garden Home had caught the seven o’clock movie bus to the location so word of the “accident” soon made its way around the set. The owner was off in search of alternative accommodation for her almost-blown-to-kingdom-come guests. The gardeners were all very respectful of the guests whose karma had put them out of harm’s way. They came by to squeeze the shoulders of the survivors in hope that some of the good fortune might rub off on them.
When all was quiet I whistled for Khin to join us. She was an elegant swimmer and a gaunt practitioner of the breast stroke. We requisitioned a large towel from the housekeeper and wrapped the Burmese in it. Alone with the canteen staff and large mugs of sweet instant coffee we were pensive. It was some time before we could think of anything to say. Four heaped plates of fried rice had appeared in front of us on the small metal card table but we looked at them benumbed.
‘It was an accident,�
� Khin said hopefully.
We nodded.
‘These things blow up all the time.’
We heard a car approaching along the narrow resort pathways. It was a gold SUV with ominous tinted windows and a Thai flag jutting ambassadorially from the fender. It passed us, went as far as the burnt-out cabin then reversed to the restaurant. After a moment of apparent contemplation the passenger door opened and out stepped a uniformed police major. He was perhaps forty and the decorations on his dress shirt suggested he’d won several wars single-handedly. He was tall and thin but his face was wide as if it had been shut in a sandwich press and his features had spread. His hair was military short but receding to a tongue of bristles at the forehead. From the other door stepped a policeman with a camera hanging from his shoulder and a small tape recorder in one hand.
The major approached our table and eyed the four inhabitants. Khin twitched but I gestured for her to calm down. The officer’s eyes settled on Sissy.
‘You’re the ones who escaped the explosion?’ he asked. His voice was husky as if the northern fog had settled in his throat. He spoke unnecessarily loudly suggesting he wanted the staff to hear. Sissy nodded. He wasn’t particularly fond of police. The cameraman snapped our picture. The officer stood erect. His long arms ended in fists. He looked at the four of us, one at a time as if committing our faces to memory.
‘I am Major Ketthai of the Fang central command,’ he said. ‘I am very sorry to hear of your inconvenience. We will naturally contact the company that manufactures these tanks and investigate their safety standards. This is a peaceful place but I imagine you’ll want to be returning to where you came from after such an upsetting circumstance. Disasters have a nasty habit of coming in pairs, don’t you find?’
He waited, perhaps for a respectful wai from our group at the table but when none was forthcoming he glared, turned on his heel and waved the cameraman back into the car. He in turn climbed into the back seat and slammed the door. The SUV did a three-point-turn and kicked up gravel as it departed.
We watched it go.
‘Were we just threatened?’ Sissy asked.
‘I guess,’ said I.
We translated the scene for Khin who seemed to miss the underlying menace.
‘Well, that was certainly very civilized of him to come all this way to see if we were well,’ she said.
‘Khin!’ My pitch often climbed when Khin failed to grasp important points. ‘He wasn’t here on a courtesy visit.’
‘Jimm,’ she said, ‘you do have a habit of building dungeons in the air.’
I had no idea what that meant.
‘Maybe,’ said Sissy, ‘but you just met the keeper of the keys.’
‘How so?’
‘We just had a visit from a police major,’ I told her. ‘He’s based in Fang which is about twenty-five minutes away. But, it’s only seven thirty, still half an hour from office hours. So, they’d have to pull the good major out of his bed, get him dressed and drive at full throttle to have him here at this time. Given that our local cop didn’t get here till 6:40 and he didn’t call anyone while he was investigating, I’d say the major wasn’t informed of our little accident by anybody until he was on his way here.’
‘But, that means …’ Khin pondered.
‘It means he knew it was going to happen,’ I said.
‘And, he didn’t bring the camera guy for a team picture of the survivors,’ Sissy added. ‘They came all this way to investigate a death. They wanted pictures of the bodies.’
‘Oh, I say,’ said Khin.
‘For some reason remaining to be seen,’ I said, ‘we’ve upset someone on the police force and we’ve just had our first and second warnings.’
We continued to sit and drink coffee and shake our heads a lot until the sound of a second expensive engine edged its way through the narrow lanes towards us. It was a Lexus GX Utility and it rolled sedately up to the restaurant steps like a lava flow. We feared the worst but when the door opened it was Lizzie, OB’s gofer, who stepped out. She was a short, wild-haired girl of an unguessable age. She jogged over to us with a concerned furrow to her brow.
‘Oh, guys,’ she said. She hugged us in turn, even Khin, whom she’d never met. ‘We were so worried about you. We heard what happened. We’ve all been praying for your safety. Are you okay?’
‘Shouldn’t you be directing a guy directing a movie?’ Sissy asked.
‘The world stops when one of our boys goes down. Leave no man behind. Life, what can I say? It’s so precious.’
I began to understand where all the old clichés went to die.
‘Well, thanks for dropping by,’ I said.
‘You may think there’s nothing to live for now but there’s always a silver lining,’ she said. ‘Here!’
She put a large fat envelope on the table in front of us. We could all smell money.
‘It’s from the contingency fund,’ she said. ‘I know it can’t begin to replace those personal effects and treasures that were taken from you but it should help you get back on your feet till payday.’
‘Gee, thanks,’ I said. I had no intention of doing the, “We couldn’t possibly accept this,” routine.
‘The boss says he doesn’t need you to come in today,’ she said.
‘You’re going to need a new frontiersman shirt,’ I told her. ‘The last one’s kind of melted.’
‘Don’t you worry your sweet head about anything,’ said Lizzie. ‘It’s all taken care of. Gotta go.’
She skipped back to the idling vehicle and was gone. I flipped open the top of the envelope to see a very healthy wad of dollars.
‘Shit,’ said Arny, ‘we should get blown up more often.’
‘Only thing I lost of value was my dear departed’s roach clip,’ Sissy said. ‘You lose anything of value, Jimm?’
‘My cell phone,’ I said. ‘A good pair of Nikes.’
‘You, Khin?’
‘Several pages of notes,’ she said. ‘But most of it is etched on my mind. Oh, and a rather splendid handmade skirt.’
‘They exploded your skirt, Khin?’ Sissy smiled. ‘And you said those things were best Burmese quality.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Regrettably not bomb-proof. Do we actually have any evidence that the explosion was not an accident?’
‘You ever seen a gas container explode, Khin?’ I asked.
‘Not as such. I have heard one or two.’
‘Well, the two usual causes are a faulty valve or exposure to intense heat. Most gas containers explode when there’s a fire in a kitchen and the bottle ruptures. You might get a crack in an old bottle and the leak’s exposed to a spark or a naked flame. Either way, the gas explodes and bursts the container like a Coke tin. There’d be a flash of fire but not enough to engulf our little cabin in flames in two seconds. That would take something containing petroleum or a liquid explosive. You see that hole over there, Khin?’
She turned in her seat to see a hole the size of a bin lid in the side of the wooden restaurant store area. The staff were putting a temporary plywood band aid on it.
‘Heavens,’ said Khin.
‘While we were waiting for the country’s finest to arrive, Sissy and I did a little bit of investigating of our own. My trusty police dog Sissy climbed in through the restaurant hole and came out with this.’
Sissy lifted himself from the seat and pulled out a pancake-shaped version of the gas bottle. He’d been using it as a cushion till the fuss died down.
‘You see,’ I said, ‘gas containers don’t implode, they explode like balloons. What this tells us is that whatever made the bang was beside the LP bottle, not inside it.’
‘Then why are you concealing the evidence under your bottom?’ she asked.
‘You want us to hand it over to the cops?’ Sissy asked. ‘We don’t know what we’ve done wrong yet so we don’t know who the good guys are.’
Khin took a sip of her cold coffee until a thoroughly guilty look appeared on her face.
‘You don’t suppose they were after the treasure, do you?’
We laughed which left our Burmese friend confused.
‘Khin,’ I said. ‘There is no treasure. I mean, not yet anyway. Until you dig the stuff up there is no point in killing you. Know what I mean?’
‘Plus they had no way of knowing you’d be turning up here last night,’ Sissy pointed out. ‘No, for whatever reason, me and Jimm and Arny are somebody’s enemies.’
‘Then what in the devil’s name are you going to do about it?’ asked Khin.
I watched a gang of hill tribe girls gathering at the river’s edge, preparing for their daily assault on tourists. They were decorating one another with their silver finery and practicing their unrelenting hard sell patter out loud.
‘You don’t mind walking around Fang in a bath towel, do you?’ I asked.
‘Certainly not,’ she said. ‘It’s rather like a longyi. They’ll just assume I’m another eccentric Burmese.’
Our Suzuki had been parked at the end of the row of cabins. As the main keys were molten and speeding through outer space somewhere we retrieved the spares from under the rubber mat and headed out of the bungalow complex.
‘One final question,’ Khin said, turning to me in the back seat.
‘Oh, I doubt that but go ahead,’ I said.
‘How, may I ask, did you get to be so au fait with the workings and aerodynamics of the common gas bottle?’
‘Camping,’ I said. ‘I was in the girl guides.’
‘I see.’
For some mysterious reason that answer seemed to satisfy her.
There wasn’t a pair of slacks in the whole of Fang that could cover the distance from Khin’s waist to her ankles. Everything stopped mid-shin and made her look retarded. Her size thirteen feet were horrors they only read about in shoe shop science fiction comics. So Khin had no choice but to buy her travelling wardrobe at the Fang Sporting Goods Emporium – man section. She and Sissy settled on two pairs of shorts apiece and two European soccer club shirts. We all selected from the range of jogging footwear and Arny just squeezed into the largest size of lilac polo shirt in the store and silver cross-trainers with luminous heels. As they didn’t cater for pelicans, Khin resorted to flip flops that left her heels dragging. As for me I went Wimbledon tennis, all white with a visor.
The Amok Runners Page 8