“Model?”
“Yeah, didn’t you know that?”
He shrugged. “She never said to me she was model. Famous, really?” He laughed.
“Pretty famous, yeah,” I said.
“Oh, then next time I see her I will get her signing!”
“Well, what did you think she did? Why did you say she was important?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I think maybe she works for other country government that give help to Thailand.”
“Well, she doesn’t,” I said.
“So why ask me? You know more better than me.”
“That’s about all I know,” I said. “Can’t you tell me anything else?”
“We trekked together maybe three times and she brought friends.”
“What kind of friends?”
“Girl friends usually.”
“Do you remember their names?”
“Sure. Let’s see, Johanna…”
No surprise there.
“Melody…”
That wily little—
“And another nice girl named Zeeva.”
“Zeeva!” Doreen said.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Yeah. They are bestest friends and we had many good laughing together.”
Doreen and I turned to one another, stunned. Bestest friends, all four of them, and many good laughing together. Looking back I shouldn’t have been so surprised, but I was. It did, after all, make sense. They all strolled into my life at the same time. They had a lot in common. I should have seen it, but I didn’t.
They were good little actresses, I thought. But the revelation raised more questions than it answered. I still didn’t know what was going on, or why, and although I grilled Pu for the next hour, it was clear that he didn’t know either. I asked him whether he knew anything about Anonymous Man, but he didn’t. He said he had never seen the girls with any old man, nor did he ever hear them speak of one.
Another thing of great interest that I learned from him was that Max Stormer and the girl called Aidos accompanied Noriko, Johanna, and Melody on one trek. Pu was obviously fond of them too. Even Vat, who spoke almost no English at all and was amusing himself by poking at the fire, looked up and smiled at the mention of Aidos’ name. “Aidos,” he repeated fondly, and returned to his poking, grinning like an enamored schoolboy.
“There was something very different about those two,” Pu said. “They reminded me of people in the Bible stories my guardian parents told me about when I was boy. He was brave handsome David, and she,” Pu gazed reflectively towards the star-spangled sky, “…was an angel. I could look and look and look at her and never get tired. She was very nice. And she seemed to know more about my mountains than me! Even elephant loved her. Elephant didn’t want her to go and followed us until she went back and spoke to him. It was very funny thing to see.” Pu laughed and shook his head at the memory.
“Aidos,” Vat mooned again, smiling into the fire.
“When was that?” I asked.
“Maybe two years ago.”
Doreen said, “That must have been the same girl Zeeva spoke of, the girl who talked to tigers and taught her to shoot.”
“I would really like to meet her again,” Pu added. “She was very charming.”
Doreen smirked. “I’m sure she was.”
A large bamboo hut erected for trekkers stood twenty yards from the waterfall. Doreen and I wrapped ourselves in the hut’s hole-riddled, woolen blankets and lay side by side on the dirt floor. The night air was surprisingly cold.
Doreen turned to me. “I can’t believe that Zeeva would deceive me like that,” she said, hurt and disappointed. “I thought we were best friends. Do you think she was using me?”
“Yeah, Doreen, she used you.”
“I don’t want to believe it.”
“Believe it,” I said. “She and the others, they’ve been conning us both.”
“But why?”
“I’m sure we’ll find out sooner or later.”
“It’s all so crazy.”
“Crazy,” I repeated. “Let’s go to sleep.”
“She never said anything. All the time we spent together she was always the perfect friend.”
“Yep,” I mumbled.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“She’s good, Doreen. They all are.”
“Good, you mean like a pro?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. They’re pros.”
Doreen continued talking but I had stopped listening. It was the end of a very long day of an even longer week. I fell asleep and dreamed about elephants.
A Pissimist
The following morning Doreen and I bathed under the waterfall as Pu prepared a breakfast of scrambled eggs and chopped onions, toast and coffee. By eight o’clock we were hiking through forests of teak and bamboo. We walked along a small river for an hour and crossed a dozen streams.
At one point we came to a deep gorge. The only way across was an aerial walk on a giant tree that had been chopped down to span the chasm. The girth of the tree was tremendous, but there was nothing to hold on to and a slip meant certain death. Doreen pranced over the abyss as if she were skipping down the center of an empty freeway. I inched across the huge log on my belly like a worm.
We lunched by another waterfall, swam, and continued hiking for the rest of the afternoon. On the way we passed through what Pu said was a Karen village, and then an hour or so later another hill tribe’s village that he said belonged to the Akha. At first glance the two villages looked very similar but Pu pointed out their many differences, the most obvious being the elaborate headdresses that were worn by many of the Akha women.
We strolled into Pu’s Lahu village around dusk and were greeted by smiling, curious faces, and a group of about fifteen children who swarmed around us shouting something that sounded like, “Cheh-sha-la!” Pu tossed Doreen and me each a bag of candy and told us to pass some out. As soon as the kids caught sight of the candy, they swamped us, jumping up and down, trying to grab the bags away from us. We had to hold them over our heads so that the biggest kids wouldn’t run off with all the booty.
Ethnocentric and ignorant, I half-expected the children to resemble the bloated-bellied, vacant-eyed, fly-encased children of various African countries that I had seen on TV. Thankfully, however, these kids looked as healthy and happy as any child I had seen back home. It occurred to me then that there is a big difference between poverty and privation; between having no money and having no hope.
Pu led us to a vacant bamboo hut at the edge of the little village that sat on wooden posts about three feet off the ground. Beneath the hut wallowed a couple of fat hogs, and nearby two or three chickens pecked at the ground.
Doreen and I put down our packs and Pu told us that we could wash up at the village well, which wasn’t a well but a bamboo hose that ran like a small aqueduct from an undetectable source outside the village’s perimeter. The fresh water flowed continuously so I figured them wealthy in at least one important respect.
When we finished washing the layers of dust from our bodies and returned to the hut, Pu was already hard at work preparing dinner. We offered to help but he wouldn’t have it. Vat must have sensed the fear, or was it panic, in Pu’s eyes at the prospect of us messing with his menu. He ran to his bamboo pack, dug out two warm beers and stuffed them in our hands. He pointed to the entrance of the hut and gesticulated that we have a seat, relax, and take in the rustic surroundings. Doreen and I exchanged amused smiles and did as we were asked.
Darkness came quickly as the sun slid out of sight behind a distant peak, the temperature dropping along with it. The kids who had been congregating around the hut returned to their families, and Doreen and I were left alone with the pigs and chickens.
We could see nearly the entire village from our stoop. I counted fifteen large huts, a few sheltered woodpiles, and a small corral. The ground was naked dirt with no grass or trees or shrubs, cris
scrossed with well-worn paths. I saw no signs, no paper, no writing, no glass or metal anywhere, and the only color I saw was varying shades of brown. Doreen and I sipped our beers, breathed deeply the clean mountain air, and put our ears to the stillness.
Uncomfortable with prolonged silence, I broke it and asked Doreen what she was thinking.
“I feel like I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole and landed in the pages of National Geographic.”
“Me too.”
“Back home, did you ever try to imagine how life might be in a place like this?”
“No,” I said frankly.
“Me neither. But it’s strange to think that for the past two hundred years while America has been busy working, trading, fighting, industrializing, striving to be the techno-giant that it has become, life for these people has remained pretty much the same. Do you think that’s so bad?”
“Bad? Do you mean do I pity them? No. Do I envy them? No. Do I think that Americans are any happier than the Lahu for all that we have? No. It doesn’t do any good to compare the two. It’s the same planet, same species, but two completely different worlds.”
“I know, but I feel bad…”
“For them?”
“For them and for us. Us for the innocence we can never regain, and them for the innocence they’re destined to lose. The twenty-first century is going to slam into these people like a tsunami.”
“Hey now,” I protested. “Must I remind you that I’m the pessimist in the family? Get back on your side where you belong. Besides, you don’t know that for a fact. You can’t go writing people off like that. It’s…I don’t know, wrong. To doom them in theory is not much different than dooming them in practice. I think that it’s the exceptions, not the rules, that inevitably determine our fates.”
Doreen took my hand and held it on her lap. “Guy, Guy, Guy,” she said, shaking her head and smiling.
“What, what, what?”
“Little brother, you’re no pessimist.”
“Shut up, I am too.”
“No, you’re not. You’re an optimist whose glass is half full of piss.”
“A pissimist?”
Doreen groaned and shoved me off my stoop.
Batteries Not Included
The following morning, just after breakfast, Pu abruptly announced that he and Vat were leaving, and that Doreen and I weren’t going with them.
“What do you mean you’re leaving?” I said. “You can’t leave. What about us?”
“You will be fine,” Pu said. “The Lahu will take care of you. I have another trek to do.”
“Well, when are you gonna be back?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Doreen said, appalled. “What are we supposed to do, just sit around and wait? For what? This is ridiculous.”
“Yeah, Pu,” I said. “We’re not your prisoners, are we?”
Pu laughed. “No. You are guests of the Lahu.”
“Thanks for the hospitality,” Doreen said, “but we want to get out of here. We want to go home.”
“It’s not safe for you to leave yet. Miss Noriko said—”
“I don’t care what Miss Noriko said,” Doreen growled. “She’s not our mother. Get us out of here, Pu.”
“Pu,” I said. “What exactly did Noriko tell you?”
“She said you should stay with the Lahu until she come get you or send message.”
“What kind of message?”
“She didn’t say.”
“How much longer do you think we’ll have to stay?” Doreen asked.
Pu shrugged and shook his head. “Don’t know. Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters,” Doreen said, trying to keep her temper. “I’ve got a life to live, you know?”
Pu swung his arm in a broad arc, offering her the entire mountain. “What do you call this?”
“A mistake,” Doreen answered. “I didn’t choose this. My life is something I decide, something I make.”
Pu thought that very amusing. He said, “Everything you do has, what you say…?”
“Consequence?” I said.
“Yes! Consequence…I like this word. Good sound. You do something, anything, and you get consequence. Maybe not consequence you want, but you always get. So maybe you did not plan to be here with the Lahu, but all your decidings and doings and all their consequence brought you here.”
“Yeah?” Doreen said, “And what if Guy and I decide to go with you?”
Pu smiled. “That’s not your decidings. That’s Pu’s decidings.”
“Guy,” Doreen demanded, “talk sense to this…Pu.”
“If he doesn’t want to take us with him, we can’t make him.”
Doreen shot me the stink eye.
Pu waved. “K’aw-eh-ve,” he said. “Goodbye. I hope we meet again.” He signaled to Vat that it was time to go, and then turned and left us standing in the middle of the village.
“Bye, Pu! Bye, Vat!” I called out after them. “Thanks for everything!”
They both waved and disappeared down the hill.
Doreen smacked me on the shoulder. “You’re thanking him?”
“He’s a nice guy.”
“No, he’s not,” she snapped. “He’s one of them.”
“Them who?”
“Them! The people who are screwing up our lives.”
“I don’t know, Doreen. My life was pretty screwed up before any of this ever happened.”
“Stop it, Guy. What are we gonna do now?”
I looked around. There wasn’t a damn thing to do in that village. The phrase—Nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live here—came quickly to mind.
I noticed a group of kids watching us with curiosity. One boy held up what looked like a big wooden top and waved to me to come over. I saw the children playing with the toy since we first arrived. One boy would wrap a string around the top and throw it so that it would spin on the ground. Then another boy would throw his top and try to knock the other’s away, his own top spinning in its place. It looked difficult, but they were pretty good at it.
“C’mon,” I said. “Let’s play with the kids.”
“I don’t want to play with the kids. I want to get out of here.”
“We will, Doreen, but let’s not be rude. We’ll play for a little while and then—”
“We leave, right?”
“On our own?”
“How hard could it be?” she said. “I’m sure any one of those trails we’ve seen lead eventually to a Thai village somewhere. Bangkok isn’t the only way out of this country, you know. I was looking at the guidebook yesterday and there are a lot of different ways we could go. I think we can keep from being caught. One day’s hike, two max, and we’ll be on our way.”
“You really think so?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“We could just wait to hear from Noriko.”
“Guy, get it through your head. None of these people are on our side. Add it up. You said yourself that they were just using us.”
“I know, but—”
“All we’ve got to do is get home. Dad will know what to do. He knows people. He can…Guy, are you listening to me?”
“Doreen, you read the journals. Aren’t you the least bit curious?”
“No, I’m not. Not anymore.”
“Come on. Yeah you are. Mr. A is trying to tell us something, and it’s got to be important, otherwise why would he go to so much trouble?”
“We’re the ones going through all the trouble, Guy, not him. I say if he has something to say, let him say it to our faces.”
“Maybe he can’t. You know, like what we talked about the other day.”
“Well then, that’s his problem, not ours. We don’t owe him a damn thing. If we’re gonna get out of this mess, now is our chance.”
I looked again at the children. The boy with the top was still waving to us to come over and play. “All right,” I said, “we’ll go.”
&nb
sp; “Good.”
“But first, let’s go play with the kids. Just for a few minutes, okay?”
“You go. I’ll pack our things.”
I strolled over to where the kids were gathered. There were five boys and five girls. None of them looked over ten years old. Two of the girls, who could have been no more than six or seven, carried young babies. The infants were wrapped in cloth and slung around the little girls’ shoulders.
Two boys proceeded to demonstrate their techniques, and after a few throws the eldest handed me his top. My first throw sent the top skidding on the dirt and into some bushes, scaring up a couple of chickens. That earned me a round of laughter. One of the girls retrieved it for me, and I tried again. This time I missed the ground completely and smacked a fat hog in the butt. The children thought me quite the comedian. I apologized to the hog, wiped off the mud, wound, and threw again. Bingo! The children cheered, and then one of the boys let his top fly and struck mine, sending it sprawling. “Nice shot!” I said, and chased after my top. Doreen sat amused on the step of our hut and watched me play for another thirty minutes.
“Hey, Doreen,” I said, as we shouldered our packs. “Don’t you think that this game would go over big with kids back home?”
“No.”
“Why not? It’s fun.”
“Because there’s no battery or touchscreen. You ready?”
We didn’t know the customary way for saying goodbye in Lahu so we waved, we bowed, and we smiled a lot. A Lahu man ran up to us and tried to convince us to stay. We couldn’t understand a word he said, but there was urgency in his voice that Doreen insisted we ignore, so we just kept waving, bowing, smiling, and saying thank you. Finally, Doreen grabbed my elbow and we walked away. I hoped that we didn’t hurt the Lahu’s feelings but there wasn’t much I could do about it. Doreen was adamant about leaving and I had no case for convincing her otherwise.
We had walked only a short distance when the eldest of the boys I had been playing with caught up to us. He chattered something in Lahu and then handed me a book. I didn’t have to open it to know that it was another journal; only this one was twice as thick as the others. I asked him where he got it, but he couldn’t understand me. It was obvious that he wanted us to return to the village, but we ignored his pleas, shook his hand, smiled, and waved so long.
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