Say Uncle

by Benjamin Laskin

  I also noted a parking lot just outside the open-aired station and a row of tuk-tuks lined up waiting to pick up the new arrivals. In front of the information booth I saw a tour group of about fifteen camera-snapping Asians. They were taking turns posing stone-faced in front of a sign that read “Chaing Mai,” holding a ‘V’ with their fingers.

  Locals and backpacking tourists mingled and flitted about. Two shaven-headed and robed monks stood talking to each other about twenty feet from the pepper-haired marine. One monk was white and wore glasses. I had seen a number of foreign monks in Bangkok. Sick of the west’s materialism, I supposed, they had gone east to take refuge in the cosmic spirituality of Buddhism.

  As I slowly approached, the man continued to watch me and I saw his head lift slightly as if to look behind me. I figured he was expecting to see his buddy who was still tied up on my bunk. He took his left hand from his coat pocket, exposing something small and black in his palm. He spoke into it briefly and then put his hand back into his pocket.

  I saw two women with backpacks stroll up to the monks, shake their hands and exchange words with them. The monks laughed and then the backpackers waved goodbye and walked to a row of chairs along the opposite track. As I approached the ex-GI, a Thai woman with two screaming kids stopped in front of him. He looked annoyed. The mother bent down, tied one child’s laces, picked the other up in her arm, and hurried off.

  I stepped to within three feet of him, stopped, and let both big backpacks slide from my shoulders to the ground. He was bigger than I first thought. He looked like a circus clown on stilts, especially with his receding hairline and long, stringy strands. He had a thick, upturned nose, which, along with his height, made his two gaping nostrils an unavoidable eyesore. His lips were thick and cracked, and he wore a pirate’s ring in one ear.

  “Andrews?” he said.

  “Who are you?”

  “The journals.”

  “Where’s my sister?”

  “The journals.”

  “I want to see her now,” I said.

  “Later,” he snarled.

  “No, now.”

  He scowled and stepped forward. I stepped back. He eyed the daypack hanging from my hand.

  “Is that them?”

  “Where’s my sister?”

  “Show me the bag.”

  “Show me my sister.”

  He squinted at me. “You’re not alone.”

  “I’m alone.”

  “Don’t fuck with me, kid. You don’t know who you’re messing with.”

  “An asshole,” I spat back.

  He glanced past my shoulder towards the train. I noticed a disconcerted flicker in his eyes.

  “He wasn’t so tough,” I said.

  The man sized me up again and snorted. “Yeah, right. Open the fucking bag.”

  Hesitantly, I unzipped the bag and tipped it so that he could peer inside. He made a movement to reach for the bag but I pulled it away.

  “Show me my sister.”

  “Not good enough,” he said.

  I deliberated and then took the real journal off the top and handed it over to him. He snatched it angrily with his right hand and quickly flipped through the pages. Satisfied, he dropped it into the pocket of his trench coat. He put his hand back out and snapped his fingers twice. “Now the bag,” he ordered.

  “Fuck you. Give me my sister and I’ll give you the bag. That’s the deal.”

  He looked around and then reached into his pocket and pulled out the communicator again. As he mumbled into it I scanned the premises.

  The crowd had thinned and shifted since I had begun talking to him. The group of Asian tourists had moved away from the building and was slowly heading in our direction. The two monks were still together but had drifted closer to us. The two women who were sitting under the tree by the fence rose to their feet and held up a map as a local gave them directions. Two young Thai men about my age had taken up residence by a pillar about ten feet directly behind my foe. They were ogling the two women backpackers.

  People strolled in and out of the entrance gate near the front of the building. Two large men, one white, the other Thai, loitered nearby. They checked their watches, apparently waiting for someone. The contact pocketed his communicator and turned his attention back to me. He said nothing but continued to regard me with disdain.

  “Who are you?” I demanded.

  “I’m no one you want to fuck with. That’s all you need to know.”

  He was right. I didn’t want to fuck with him, or even look at him. He was mean, he was ugly, and he was disturbed. He reminded me of a mix between Attila the Hun and Bozo the Clown. I knew I couldn’t win in a stare down so I looked elsewhere.

  The monks gravitated closer. The man assisting the two women backpackers shrugged apologetically and moved off. The women, still holding up the map, walked over to the two Thai men and cut them off as they inched their way closer to where Attila the Bozo and I faced off. I couldn’t make out what the women looked like.

  Then one of them stood aside and I had a clear shot of her. She looked young, maybe eighteen or nineteen. She had large, round eyes, a small mouth and a wild profusion of long, inky black hair. She was slender and athletically built, wearing white shorts, cuffed and pleated, bright white tennis shoes, and a purple sleeveless T-shirt. If the circumstances had been different I might have run over to her, thrown myself at her feet and rolled over like a dog.

  The Asian tour group continued to file closer. Then, behind them, I saw Doreen and one of the kidnappers emerge from inside the building. She was wearing the same clothes I had last seen her in, cutoff jeans and a white T-shirt with ‘Arizona’ printed across it three times in big, blue letters. I had never felt so relieved and almost cried. Thank God she was okay.

  Her captor held her by the elbow with one hand and marched her over with quick, short strides. Over his other arm he carried a folded jacket. I wondered if under the jacket he was pointing a gun at her.

  The danger of the situation quickly dissolved the euphoria I felt in seeing Doreen alive again. I still had to get her out of there, and I didn’t know how I was going to manage that. My adversary seemed temporarily convinced that I had the journals. But the other half of the plan was nowhere in sight. I saw neither Noriko nor Johanna. They told me on the train that they would be there and what had to be done, but that until they saw what they were up against they wouldn’t know how they would do it. Maybe they never made it in time.

  But at least Doreen and I were together again. That was what mattered most to me. I just didn’t want to be separated from her again. I couldn’t bear it.

  “Doreen, are you okay?”

  “Guy!” she cried. “What’s going on? Why are these men—?”

  “Shut up!” Attila barked. Doreen’s escort, a wiry-looking white man with a thick mustache and short, springy brown hair, gave Doreen’s elbow a painful, silence-inducing squeeze. “Now,” Attila said, addressing me with commanding eyes, “you will drop the bag and you will go buy two tickets back to Bangkok. If everything is satisfactory, your sister will be waiting for you when you return. If not, well, she’s fucked.” He grinned and added, “In both senses of the word,” and swiped the air with a pasty white tongue.

  “I’m not going anywhere without my sister.”

  “You listen to me, you scrawny shit,” Attila seethed. “You’ll do as I tell you now, or I’ll kill you both right here.”

  “In front of all these witnesses? Right.”

  “Don’t underestimate me,” he said menacingly.

  “Just let her go and I’ll give you the damn journals. How much simpler can I put it, you moron?”

  He whipped his hand out of his pocket and slapped me across the face. It stung like hell.

  “Guy,” Doreen pleaded. “Do as he says!”

  “No. I’m not leaving you.”

  The Asian tour group was now congregated just a few yards away from us. The leader, a woman wearing a blue hat a
nd uniform and carrying a red flag on a stick, broke away from the others and approached us smiling. The two men cursed under their breath. It was Noriko.

  “’Scuse me,” she said to Doreen with a heavy Japanese accent. “If you doesn’t mind, will you take us picture in front of train, preezu? We berry appreciate.” She was all smiles.

  “Sure,” Doreen said, snapping her arm free from her captor and stepping forward.

  Clownhead grabbed her by the belt loop and yanked her back. “Sorry, lady,” he said, “ask someone else. We’re busy.”

  Noriko feigned incomprehension. “’Scuse me,” she said again. “Only one picture. In front of train. We do berry fast.” She turned to her group and spoke quickly and cheerfully to them in Japanese. They responded with bows and cheers, saying, “Onegai-shimasu” and “Preezu” and “Sank-you berry much!” Noriko reached for Doreen’s hand, and then everything turned to slow motion.

  Noriko took Doreen’s hand to lead her away. The man with the mustache shoved Noriko back and said, “You heard my friend, get out of here, ya gook.” While his words were still in the air, Noriko whacked him in the mouth with her stick, dislodging the man’s two front teeth. He screamed and blood gushed from between his lips. Doreen leaped to my side.

  The man recovered and sprang at Noriko who jabbed the stick into his throat. He fell to his knees gagging. Clownhead parted his overcoat. An M16 hung at his side. He went for it. Before he could raise it, I snap-kicked him in the nuts with my steel-toed hiking boot. He buckled and I charged, tackling him face first to the ground. All my pent-up rage and frustration raced up my spine and burst like a fireball in my head. I grabbed him by his big ears and started banging his face into the cement, cursing.

  Doreen screamed, “Guy, let’s get out of here!” I dropped the bloody face and looked up. Ten feet to my left stood the two monks, their hands under their robes. In front of me were the Thai men who had been standing a little ways behind the now unconscious man that I was sitting on. One man pushed down the map that the backpacker had been holding up in front of his face. A look of shock and fear came over him, like that of a man caught goofing off on the job. He smacked his partner on the shoulder to get his attention and both drew guns.

  “Oh shit.” I leaped to my feet. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a passing blur, turned to look, and saw two Uzis go skidding across the ground, followed by both monks and Max Stormer on top of them.

  The monks struggled to get to their feet but were hampered by their robes. Max, on his knees, slugged the white one in the face, breaking his glasses. Blood squirted from his nose. The other jumped on Max’s back, grabbing him around the neck in a chokehold.

  Max pulled down on his elbow and twisted, throwing the monk onto his back. The monk drew a knife from under his robe and slashed. Max dodged. The monk scrambled to his feet and lunged at Max with the knife. Max parried, grasped the man’s wrist, twisted and sidestepped behind him, jamming the blade into the phony monk’s ass. The man screamed and Max threw him down.

  When I looked again at the two Thais who had drawn their guns on me, they were both flat on their backs, unconscious. The two backpackers kicked their guns aside. The other girl was Johanna.

  “Guy!” Noriko said. “Run! There’s a tuk-tuk waiting for you just outside the gate. It’ll take you somewhere safe. Hurry!”

  Doreen and I snatched up our packs and dashed towards the gate. The two men loitering near the information desk watched us coming. When we got close they pulled out guns and pointed them at us.

  “Packs!” I yelled, and we chucked our backpacks at them, hitting them broadside. Two shots rang out. I heard the unmistakable roar of a tuk-tuk in full throttle, looked up, and saw one charging right through the station towards us in reverse. It rammed into the two men from behind slamming them to the ground. The tuk-tuk screeched to a halt and the driver yelled, “Get in!”

  We leaped over the groaning bodies, grabbed our packs, and hurled ourselves into the tuk-tuk. It roared off, sped around a corner nearly tipping us back out, and raced away, sirens and whistles behind us.

  Doreen and I fumbled and clawed ourselves into a secure sitting position. We turned to one another, hearts pounding, our faces flushed with fear and disbelief. Doreen threw her arms around me and squeezed me tight.

  “Oh, Guy,” she cried, “I’m so scared!”

  I rocked her in my arms. “It’s okay. We’re okay now.”

  “Who were all those people, Guy? I don’t understand.”

  “It’s a long story, and I don’t understand it either.”

  “Let’s go home, Guy. Let’s just go home.”

  “I’d like to, Doreen, but—”

  “But what?”

  I took her hand and sat back and closed my eyes. “I don’t think we have much say in what’s going on. We’re being used.”

  “By who?”

  “Anonymous Man, I think.”

  “Well, who is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What does he want?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  “Guy, this is crazy!”

  “I know. I know.”

  “Look at your face,” she said, touching it.

  “Ow!”

  “What did they do to you?”

  “Nothing’s broken. I’ll be okay.”

  Doreen said, “We’ll go to the police.”

  “And tell them what?”

  “I don’t know,” she whined. “Then we’ll go to the embassy. The embassy has to help us.”

  “No, I don’t think that would be a good idea either.”

  “Guy, there’s something you’re not telling me. You sound like you want to be here, like you’re enjoying this.”

  “You see my face. Do you think I enjoy being a punching bag?”

  “Then what is it?”

  Doreen was right. I didn’t want to leave. Not yet, anyway. I knew it was crazy, and all my instincts of self-preservation raised their shrill voices to persuade me to leave, but another voice, a whisper, calm and commanding, said…

  “Kismet.”

  “What?” Doreen said.

  “Fate.” I said.

  “I know what it means. Why are you saying it?”

  “Because I think this might have as much to do with me as it does with him.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s just a feeling,” I said. “I’ve had it ever since I got that first journal. Anonymous Man is trying to tell me something.”

  “Then why couldn’t he just call you or email you like a normal human being? Why put our lives in danger? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “And where is this guy taking us?”

  Doreen leaned forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder.

  “Hey, you speak English?”

  The driver turned and smiled. He pinched his thumb and forefinger together. “A little,” he said.

  “What’s your name?” Doreen asked.

  “Pu.”

  “My name is Doreen.”

  “I know.”

  Doreen looked at me and I shrugged. I was getting used to it.

  “Where are you taking us, Pu?”

  He pointed towards a range of mountains in the distance. “There.”

  “What’s there?”

  “The Lahu.”

  “The who hu?”

  “Lahu,” he laughed. “A hill tribe people. You be safe there.”

  “But we don’t want to go to Lahu-land,” Doreen said.

  “No?” he said, disappointed.

  “No, we do not.”

  “Why? It is good place. Good people. I am Lahu.”

  “I’m sure it is,” Doreen said. “And that you are too, which is why you will let us off at the next town so that we can go home.”

  “I can’t do that,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because Miss Noriko gave me two hundred dollars to take you
on trek. That is my job. I am trek guide.”

  “Who paid you?”

  “Noriko,” I said. “The Japanese model I met back home. She was also the tour guide back at the train station who knocked that guy’s teeth out.”

  “What? I don’t believe this! Why—? Never mind,” she said, exasperated. “Pu, we’ll give you three hundred dollars to let us off at the next town.”

  “Sorry, no can do.”

  “Why not? Of course you can.”

  He eyed us through his rear-view mirror. “Kismet?” he said.

  Part Three

  If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.

  —Buddhist Proverb

  Guy’s Analogy of the Cave

  “Ungawa!” I hollered. “Ungawa!”

  “Guy,” Doreen called from behind. “What are you doing?” She was laughing.

  “Me, Tarzan. You, Jane,” I said, and then yodeled at the top of my lungs, “Aaaahh-aaaahh-aaaaahh!”

  “You nuts.”

  I had never been on an elephant before either, but there I was, a good seven feet off the ground, my knees tucked behind the huge beast’s flapping ears, lumbering over the mountains of Thailand.

  My animal was a 27-year-old bull named Thong Dee. Doreen’s was a thirty-five-year-old female named Sook. We picked up the elephants at the Maekok Elephant Camp where we had arrived after a two-hour longtail boat trip. Doreen was still pretty upset. She wanted to go home and couldn’t understand why I didn’t. Instead of arguing with her I let the river and the sky and the countryside with its green, hump-shaped mountains do the explaining for me. I snatched a branch from an overhanging tree and gave Thong Dee a playful swat. “Ungawa!” So immense and thick-skinned was the magnificent beast I don’t think he felt a thing.

  I had seen elephants at the zoo, but other than the size of the pies they dropped, I wasn’t particularly impressed. They just stood in one place, ate hay, and looked kinda fake. After three hours behind the ears of one, however, I developed a new and profound respect for the creature—for all creatures, really.