Arny was rolling his log and I was up in the resort kitchen making breakfast. We both looked up to see Ba Nok, the noodle lady, walking along the sand toward us. In her arms was the body of John draped limp like a long linked chain. Around John’s mouth was foam as if she’d been interrupted cleaning her teeth but, of course, she hadn’t. She was dead. Ba Nok handed over the corpse to me because Arny hadn’t stepped forward to volunteer. She said that she’d found the dog in front of her noodle stand that morning. She said she’d seen our mother sitting with the dogs often so she recognized it. She thought we might like to…
I asked her if she knew who’d poisoned our dog and she said no too quickly. I knew she was lying. I thanked her and turned toward the shop. Mair was standing out the front with her arms folded and her Titanic smile already pasted across her face.
“Mair, I…”
She laughed a little and came to take the body from me.
“There are any number of ways a dog can meet its Master down here,” she said, wiping away the foam with her hand. “A scorpion bite, a falling coconut, drowning, not to mention all sorts of diseases and insect infestations.” I didn’t hear ‘murder’ on her list. “It’s good that she had six months of happiness she hadn’t expected. So, if you’ll excuse us.”
She carried John very respectfully to the rear of the shop and we decided not to follow her. I squeezed Arny’s big hand and left him there with his damp eyes. We hadn’t had breakfast but I got the feeling nobody would be hungry on that morning of mourning so I went for my walk by myself. I almost made it to the far copse of coconut trees before an astounding grief exploded in me. Although I was sitting on a washed up raft of old bamboo it felt as if I was being thrown to the ground, thrashed around in the mouth of a crocodile. I couldn’t understand it. The tears wouldn’t stop. They just wouldn’t. I was pleased for once to be in this desolate place where nobody would pat me on the back and tell me it’ll be all right. I’d cried plenty of times since I was ripped from my twenty-first century but all that water had been for me. Sorrow for me. Pity for me. Poor, poor me. But this was the first time I’d shed tears for somebody else – something else – and I felt ashamed for all the selfish tears I’d wasted. I looked up and sitting a few meters in front of me was Gogo. Time for her walk. Life went on.
♦
When I arrived at Feuang Fa temple on my bicycle I expected the security man to leap out from behind the water urn but he wasn’t there. I’d had to push the bike up the steep incline because the last time I was fit was in 1997: a brief three months of volleyball training I soon came to regret. I took the trail to the left that joined the concrete walkway and noticed that large chunks of the bougainvillea bushes had been ripped out in an apparent act of extreme gardening. I passed the semi-whitewashed wall and came to the nuns’ quarters. My nun was sitting on her front step watching the twenty or so temple dogs. They were politely jostling for places at the large tin tray of rice and sardines she’d laid out for them. I stood back to watch. I saw not one skirmish, heard not one growl. Not one fight to the death over the last fish bone. And I thought of John. I thought nuns were the types who’d run to a crying girl and offer her a handkerchief and a hug but this lady just sat and pretended not to notice I was bawling my eyes out. It was several minutes before I could find my voice and tell her what had happened. She tried to convince me it was John’s karma, fob me off with the likelihood she’d find a better life that would erase the tragedy of this one. I hadn’t really been thinking that far into the future. Someone had murdered our dog. I asked if revenge was still an option in this life. Predictably, she told me the killer would get his comeuppance in some later incarnation but it didn’t make me feel any better. I wanted him to get it here and now so I could watch.
I realized I was giving off too many bad vibrations for a temple and reminded myself why I was there. I inquired as to whether I’d be able to ask the jow a wat a few followup questions. She surprised me with,
“He’s at the central police station in Lang Suan.”
“Whatever for?”
I couldn’t see the old fellow as a flight risk.
“There was an incident last night.”
“What happened?”
“The local hooligan they’d recruited to stand guard over the temple – you met him yesterday – he was attacked.”
“Is he dead?”
I tried to temper my enthusiasm.
“No, but he was knocked unconscious. He’s in the hospital.”
“Do they know who did it?”
“The detectives are pointing their fingers at Abbot Kem. They reasoned he was trying to escape.”
I looked around. There was no wall, no perimeter fence. Anyone wanting to escape could set off in any direction.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Exactly, but they were clearly not in control of the situation here and decided it would be better for all concerned – meaning them – to have the abbot under lock and key.”
“So, who jumped the guard? Was anything stolen?”
“Nothing I could see. But, as you probably noticed on your way up, the flower bed has been vandalized.”
“What did Bangkok’s finest have to say about that?”
“That it was probably the dogs trying to dig up a lizard. They didn’t seem to think it was important.”
“I think I should take a closer look.”
I reached down for my sandals and found just the one. The partner was nowhere to be seen. The nun laughed.
“That would be Sticky Rice,” she said.
“What would?”
“He’s one of our pack. He’s the youngest and the naughtiest. He’s also a kleptomaniac.”
She collected her own sandals and walked around to the rear of her hut. I hopped behind her. There, looking smug, was a pudding-shaped pup with the markings of a Jersey cow, one eye black. He did look like a handful of glutinous rice. He had my shoe between his teeth. He yielded it reluctantly with a few yelps, then allowed the nun to squeeze his ear.
“He looks well fed,” I said.
“He eats absolutely everything: tree bark, insects, dirt, Styrofoam, plus a few unmentionables. I have no idea how he digests it all. We didn’t get to your sandal a minute too soon.”
We walked together to the vandalized hedge with the dogs trailing behind. The greenery was only disturbed in the area around the bloodstained path. The dirt wasn’t dug so I didn’t see how anyone could blame the mutts. Someone had just ripped out chunks of bush. The nun was standing over me with an enormous white umbrella that kept the sun off both of us. I was about to stand up when I noticed a cheap transparent plastic cigarette lighter lying in the gully beside the path. It was out of fluid. It probably meant nothing. Junk. A patron at a funeral takes a cigarette break and walks along the path. He runs out of fluid and chucks away the lighter. But it was either some country and western singer or Sherlock Holmes who’d said, “Nothing means nothing.” It’s been my mantra throughout my career so you’d think I’d know who said it. I rescued a black plastic seedling pouch from the flower bed opposite and scooped the lighter into it.
We walked back to my bicycle, the nun and I squashed together beneath the umbrella, her arm around me. An unannounced intimacy had crept up on us.
“Abbot Kem said he’d gone up to the path on Saturday because the dogs were acting up,” I said. “He told me he was afraid they’d come across a cobra.”
“There are a lot around here.”
I looked back at the funereal procession behind us. Only Sticky Rice with a coconut husk in his mouth seemed oblivious to the cross he bore as one of the doomed dogs of the apocalypse.
“This crowd doesn’t strike me as the excitable type,” I confessed.
“It’s hot,” she replied. “None of us has much energy this time of year.”
“So, what would spark a riot?”
The nun smiled and reminded me of Mair for a second. She reached up and lowered the umbrella. S
he folded it and handed it to me.
“Wait a few seconds, then walk after me,” she said and headed off down the path.
It seemed like a weird request but I did as I was told. First one, then another of the dogs at our feet looked at me with the umbrella in my hand. Then at the nun’s back. Then at me again. And suddenly I was in an alligator pit. Fangs and drool and frenzied howls and a sort of group ire that frightened the daylights out of me. I wanted to throw the umbrella down and run but the nun turned and walked to me and took back the weapon. The dogs tucked away their frenzy like cowboys holstering their guns and returned to their languid march.
“They’re very protective of us,” she said.
Five
“I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.”
—GEORGE W. BUSH, GREATER NASHUA, NH, CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, JANUARY 27, 2000
“It was Monday the seventeenth of June, 1978,” Mair began. “The second time I lost my virginity.”
Arny and I looked up from our squid fried rice, our spoons in mid-air. Granddad Jah continued to eat, either because he’d heard it all before, or he hadn’t heard it this time. I wasn’t sure I wanted Mair to continue, not over dinner.
“I was at the temple again today,” I said. It was the first thing that entered my head. I hadn’t planned on sharing news of my discreet investigation but this seemed like a good time.
“His name was Krit,” Mair pressed on.
“Why didn’t you say?” Arny asked. “I could have given you a ride.”
“Because I thought arriving on a bicycle wouldn’t alert anyone. And look at me, I’m already a kilo lighter and I’ve only been riding for a week. A month of this and I’ll be modeling bikinis.”
“He was very good looking,” Mair said.
When we were younger we’d let go of the leash and allow Mair to run wild with her stories. We’d travel with her through her confusing history. Her accounts often fizzled and died without a punchline or a point but we’d encourage her in hope that one day she might mention our father. But she never did.
“Mair, I’m telling a true story here,” I said. “Give me a minute.”
I hoped I’d be able to distract her long enough to forget her second virginity anecdote. I told them about the attack on the guard and the abbot’s arrest and the dogs and the cigarette lighter. Arny listened spellbound as he always had to my stories. Mair waited patiently for a gap. Then, to my surprise, Granddad Jah drank a swallow of water and stared at me, eye to eye like he was about to put a curse on me. Then he said:
“He was looking for something.”
Granddad Jah had spent forty years in the Royal Thai police force and never made it beyond police corporal, traffic division. I’d often considered there were those who were natural policemen, who climbed the ranks and passed exams and landed on a perch that was just a flutter above their ability. Then there were those who had money and could buy their promotions all the way to the top. Then there were people like Granddad Jah who just didn’t have a clue. Like, I really needed advice from a traffic cop.
“Who was?” I asked, just for the rare experience of engaging my grandfather in conversation.
“Abbot Winai’s killer,” he said.
Of course I’d considered this possibility. If this were a crime novel, every reader, even the educationally challenged ones, would have shouted, “HE WAS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING.” Thank you, Granddad.
“Well, if he found what he was looking for we’ll never know what it was,” I said. End of story.
“Maybe they had CCTV cameras,” said Arny, never the most astute of the litter. He had visions of a world where every street, every house, every tree was covered by closed circuit cameras. Every crime could be solved by replaying the tapes – something like England.
“Arny, little brother, I – ”
“He didn’t.”
Granddad was getting annoying.
“Didn’t what, Granddad?”
“He didn’t find what he was looking for.”
“What makes you think that?”
“There was a thick cloud cover last night. No moon to see by. He didn’t dare use a torch ‘cause it would have been seen for miles. All he had was his cigarette lighter and he used that till he ran out of fluid. He didn’t find what he was looking for.”
“Granddad Jah” – I tried to filter out the condescension – “the lighter could be anybody’s. It could have been dropped there a month ago.”
“Ha,” said Granddad. “You don’t spend much time in temples, obviously. The novices are out at first light with their long straw brooms and their litter spikes. Then all the widows come with their food donations and they’re on their hands and knees picking up rubbish. And then, just two days ago the place is crawling with detectives looking at a murder scene. Even the idiots they have in the CSD these days would have spotted a lighter. No, girl, the lighter arrived after all that. It was dropped there last night. It belonged to the killer and he’ll be back.”
He took his plate and dropped it in the washing up bowl and left. I was astounded that Granddad knew so many words. That was the most we’d heard him say since before Granny died. And, I’ll give him credit, it wasn’t such a bad point, either.
“Can I finish my story now?” Mair asked.
“Go ahead, Mair,” I said. “But I warn you, Granddad’s was a tough act to follow.”
“His name was Krit,” she said.
“Was that before Dad?” I asked.
“He was very good looking but he was a bastard. He was a lecturer at the university. He got one of his students pregnant and pretended he knew nothing about it. Don’t forget those were the days before DMZ.”
“DNA, Mair.”
“Before any of that. So, there was no evidence. No proof. But I knew the girl and believed her. Krit used to come into our shop and I cornered him one day. I told him I was a virgin and I wanted my first time to be with a real man, not one of the boys on campus. I wanted a man who knew what girls expected.”
There’s something squalid about sitting around the dinner table listening to your mother telling sex stories, but she had a way of making the dirtiest anecdote sound like a fairy tale. Arny and I were twelve again. We smiled at each other and nodded for her to continue.
“I was a little older than his usual taste but I was petite enough to get away with it, particularly in my borrowed CMU uniform. I arranged to meet him late one night at the Little Duck Hotel just in front of campus. I even booked a room. I was already inside when he arrived. I asked him to go and take a shower. By the time he came out I’d turned off the light. He could just see me under the sheet by the light from the bathroom. I told him to turn that off as well. I think he liked the dominant type. I told him I was completely naked and asked him to remove his towel and I heard it drop to the floor. That’s when I screamed. The door flew open, the light came on and three students from the campus photographic club rushed in with their flash cameras and took pictures of me and him running around in our birthday suits in a state of panic. It was such fun.
“For a month, photographs of Professor Krit appeared on telegraph poles and trees all around the campus. Only his head was missing. I have to say that once the raid had taken place, the poor man shriveled to almost nothing, so the photographs were terribly embarrassing. We’d written captions such us, ‘Do you know who this little fellow belongs to?’ and ‘Who is the little boy lecturer chasing this time?’ Of course you only saw parts of me in the photos. I had a very pleasant body back then but that didn’t mean I wanted everyone to see it, did it? As the month progressed, the photos showed more and more of Krit until it was obvious it wouldn’t be long before everyone on campus got to see his face. As we expected, the pregnant student was approached by a third party who agreed that everything would be ‘taken care of’, including a tidy sum in compensation. Once the taking care of was taken care of and the money safely deposited, I could see no reason to play the game anymore.”
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“You stopped putting up the photographs?” Arny guessed.
“Goodness, no. I stopped cutting off the head. It had been a mystery for several weeks, you see? You can’t leave people dangling in mid-air, can you?”
We didn’t care whether it was true or not. Like most of Mair’s stories, we just appreciated it for the piece of art that it was. I was at the sink washing dishes and Mair came up behind me and put her arms round my waist. I loved the feel of her so close. I had to keep reminding myself she was in my bad books.
“That was a very good dinner, child,” she said. “I don’t know where you get all your skills from. Not from me, that’s sure.”
“With fresh produce you can make anything taste good.”
I sounded like an infomercial, but it was true. One of the few good things about living far from civilization was that you got to sample foodstuff before the chemistry lab laid hands on it. A few hours earlier, our dinner had been swimming blissful circles in a largely unpolluted sea, and chillies grew everywhere like weeds. The eggs were still warm from…well, you know where eggs come from. And you’d just reach out the window and grab a papaya. I had a small tented garden that might one day produce vegetables. Once you became self-sufficient you could say with authority where everything on your plate came from. Which couldn’t be said for the plastic container I’d come across in the freezer.
“Mair, what was that stew-like substance I found in the fridge?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” she said, and gave me an ‘oh oh’ moment.
“That murky gray-green melted ice-cream-looking stuff.”
Jimm Juree 01; Killed at the Whim of a Hat Page 8