“He’s not quite dead,” she said. “I’m afraid he might have finally swallowed something that didn’t agree with him. We lose and gain dogs daily but this tyke has found a way into my heart. I don’t think I can bear to watch him die.”
The dams burst as I was carrying the cardboard box to the truck. I hated crying in daylight when everyone can witness my frailties. I put the last few hours of Sticky Rice on the passenger seat and drove like an imbecile into Lang Suan to see Dr. Somboon, the cow specialist.
An hour later I pulled up in front of Mair’s shop. She was in there with her haunting group. They were rearranging shelves and cleaning and throwing out ten-year-old stock. The cassette was playing something called ‘Spirit in the Sky’. It was one of Mair’s oldies but baddies, yet the local ladies were swinging their ample rears in time to the beat. They all seemed very happy. I walked around to the passenger side of the truck and collected my Leo Beer carton.
“What’s in the box?” I heard.
Granddad Jah was sitting under the canopy opposite waiting for traffic to watch. I carried my patient across the road and sat beside him.
“Almost dead dog,” I said.
“Planning on dressing it up, are you?”
That was as close to a joke as I’d heard from the lips of Granddad Jah in many a year and, if the taste was anything to go by, I’d be happy to wait many more for the next.
“Well, he’s not guaranteed death,” I said. I opened up the flaps to show him.
“You sure?”
“I took him to the vet. He didn’t exactly fill me with confidence. He seemed to think ninety percent of puppies in this area die a horrid death from intestinal parasites before they’re six months old. He had a sort of cocktail that worked wonders on calves, he said. He gave this little rag a shot of it, said he should really be on a saline drip but he didn’t have one and, even if he did, he confessed he had trouble finding veins any smaller than a garden hose. He gave me some antibiotics just in case the mite makes it through the afternoon.”
“Since when have you been a rescuer of dogs?”
“Granddad, this is Sticky Rice. He’s a hero. He solved the Wat Feuang Fa mystery. He was the mutt that rescued the camera. He deserves a longer shot at life.”
“Fair enough.”
We sat for a while. It was a really bad day for traffic.
“Granddad Jah?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you see anything of Captain Waew?”
“Who?”
“The detective from Surat.”
“Oh, him. No.”
“You should invite him up. Hang out together.”
Granddad Jah stiffened. For a man who was already eighty percent bone, that took some doing.
“Why should I do that?”
“‘Cause you make such a good team.”
He half turned his head, looked at the box on my lap, then turned back.
“Don’t know what you mean,” he grunted.
“Stolen Milo van, wiped clean, naked gangster padlocked to a bench in a train station. ‘Deserved’ – sa som in animal blood written on his belly. Sound familiar?”
“You don’t think…?”
“Yes, I do. I imagine you were planning to get a confession out of him for the killing of the hippy couple. Then you found out – ”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Then, in fear of his life, he told you it was his own daughter in that VW and that she was very much alive. I imagine you were really disappointed because you both knew what a seedy character he was.”
Granddad searched the horizon and the tops of the trees for traffic.
“Lucky you believed him,” I forged on, “‘cause I dread to think what you might have done to him otherwise. All you were left with was humiliation. So, I think you were lucky.”
A congealed blood-red pick-up truck with a black plastic fish-chest on the back plodded past at forty kilometers an hour, spitting out exhaust and causing its own force field of pollution. I stood up and waited for it to pass. The driver waved. I waved back. Everybody waved down here. I wouldn’t be surprised if husbands waved at their wives when they woke up in the mornings.
“Nice touch though,” I added. “Spelling my name wrong. ‘Jum’ indeed.”
He couldn’t hold back the smile.
“You’re wasted as a girl, Jimm Juree,” he said. “Wasted.”
I took the box down to the beach and wondered whether Sticky would prefer a land or sea burial. I opened the flaps so the sun could get in and looked for evidence of breath. It was scant. I gazed up at the swimming pool sky to see if there were vultures circling overhead. Gogo had picked up on the scent of death and followed me down to the water’s edge. It was true she’d eat anything but surely there were taboos, even for dogs. She stopped three meters away, turned eleven circles and lay on the hot sand with her backside pointed directly at my head.
“You’re a hard bitch to love,” I said.
“I hope you aren’t talking to me.”
Mair had followed me down to the beach. She had a tiny bottle of Yakult in her hand. I saluted a company that could convince half a country it couldn’t live without weak sugared milk and germs.
“No, Mair,” I said. “You’re an easy bitch to love.”
“What’s in the box?” she asked.
“Sticky Rice.”
“Oh, good. I bought some grilled chicken earlier.”
I tipped the box on its side.
“Non-digestible,” I told her.
“Oh, you poor baby,” she said, reaching into the carton and lifting the limp pup onto her lap. There was evidence of very unpleasant secretions on the newspaper he’d been lying on. Despite that, Mair held Sticky to her chest and cooed at him. There was a slight movement that could have been a postmortem muscle spasm, then a definite sigh. I imagined myself as a tiny infant nestled against that same breast, almost dead, blood and vomit in my cot. Who’d have babies?
Gogo predictably walked a wide arc around me and stood close to my mother, glaring at the patient.
“The ladies and I have been talking about setting up a cooperative of home-made produce,” she said. “It’s something I’d been thinking about for quite some time.”
“You had? Then why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you do it?”
“I was waiting.”
“What for?”
“For you all to decide you liked it here.”
“Wait! Who said I liked it?”
“You like it.”
I pointed out to Mair that something unpleasant was leaking down the front of her shirt but she smiled and nodded knowingly.
“And Arny seems happy too,” she said. “And even Father has his moments. I only wish we could convince Sissi to come down. We could be the happy family we used to be.”
I wasn’t sure we’d ever all been happy at the same time.
“I’m not sure Sissi would see the happy side of all this.”
Mair removed the soiled newspaper and put Sticky Rice back in his box.
“The poor fellow can sleep in your room tonight.”
“Inside?”
“Of course, inside. You can’t leave him on the veranda with all the snakes and bats around. They sense frailty.”
We stood and dusted off the sand and I picked up the box. It felt heavier, suddenly, as if Mair had donated him an organ. Perhaps she’d just pumped him full of hope.
“Did I mention Ed came by this morning?” she said. “He asked after you.”
“Really?”
“Yes. He is a sweet boy.”
“He didn’t have his sister with him, by any chance?”
“Which one?”
“He’s only got the one. The gay one.”
“Don’t be silly, child. Ed has three sisters, all happily married. Something like ten children between them. And I have noted that not one of them looks a bit like Ed. A little bit of extra-domestical hanky-panky in their history I wouldn’t be surp – Where
are you going?”
I handed her the box.
“Pump some more hope into this one, will you,” I said. “I’ll be back for him later.”
I left her standing bemused on the beach and strode to the bicycle. Had it been physically possible, flames would have been spewing from my nostrils. I knew Ed’s house. It was just off the road and impossible not to pass on the way to and from our place. In the past, I’d always turned my head away when I got close so as not to seem rude, but today I rode directly down their dirt drive and skidded in front of the open front door. His mother, a large jovial woman with sun-damaged skin, pointed me toward the southern bay.
“He’ll be down with his boat,” she said.
“He’s got a boat? I thought he was a grass cutter.”
“Not much my Ed can’t turn his hand to,” she boasted.
Although there’s probably some nautical expression for it, Ed’s boat was parked on a grass bank about a kilometer down the bay from our place. The craft, a typical, modest five-meter squid boat was upside down on blocks. Ed was planing, or some such woodworking venture. His top was off, and the torso that I’d imagined being ribbed like plates on a rack was, in fact, all muscle. Don’t get me wrong. He wasn’t steak. He was skinny but not bony. The silvery sweat clung to him like dew on a gristly vine. I threw down the bicycle and paced to the boat. He ignored me. I knocked loudly on the far side of the hull. He looked up and had the audacity to smile at me. I put my hands on my waist.
“I have come to tell you that I do not appreciate being lied to,” I said.
“You don’t?”
“No.”
“OK.”
I think he was about to return to his planing.
“And you lied to me,” I said. “You told me you had a sister who didn’t like the company of men.”
“I know.”
“But you don’t.”
“Nope.”
“So why did you tell me you did?”
“Because you were rude.”
I was stunned.
“Ha. So, how was I rude, exactly?”
“When someone comes to visit down here, you don’t treat them like a servant. You don’t keep them waiting or snap at them. You show manners.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, excuse me for not knowing I was in the good manners capital of the country.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank…? What for?”
“Your apology.”
“I did not…I…” I could feel my aplomb slipping. “And, while we’re on the subject, don’t you think you might be considered rude in some circles for making fun of lesbians?”
“No. I don’t know any lesbians.”
“Really?”
“Hmm.”
“Why on earth would one who wasn’t one, pretend to be…one?”
“To keep men off.”
“Is that so?”
“Hmm.”
I was tangled in a net I hadn’t seen myself stepping into. I suddenly wished his boat had been seaworthy and that he’d been out ahoying in the depths of the Gulf. Then I might have had more time to compose myself. I could have jousted with him with the cool head of a seasoned journalist. Instead I said, “I hate you, Ed.” And he repulsed my thrust with a gorgeous smile. I retreated to my bicycle and untangled it from the tall weeds. Once it was finally upright and I was ready to ride elegantly away, I looked back at him. He was leaning against the naked wood of the boat watching me.
“One last question,” I said.
“Shoot.”
“Why did you really come to see me that day?”
“I was going to tell you I like the way you look. I was planning to invite you for lunch.”
“Ha!” I said, pedaling frantically to get up the grass slope without having to dismount. “Little chance of that.”
A victory, at last. I had swung Narsil, the sword of Aragon, one last time and wounded the beast in the heart. Yet, when I looked at the blade, the blood I saw there was all mine.
Eighteen
“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”
—GEORGE W. BUSH, FLORENCE, SOUTH CAROLINA, JANUARY II, 2000
Three weeks had passed. The deckchair insurgents were repainting and decorating Government House in sunshine and mimosa tones. They’d planted rice in the ornamental ponds. They were not fooled by the subterfuge of replacing the drinking buddy of the wicked satellite dish czar with the czar’s brother-in-law. So they dug themselves in and began evening classes in the art of producing Ping-Pong ball smoke bombs. The country trembled at their awesome power.
The monsoons weren’t far away, but nobody knew when they’d arrive. Captain Kow said the locals could no longer predict the weather. He said there’d been a time when every fisherman could read the signs: when the crabs left the sand, how high the beetles built their nests on the trees, when the terns migrated. But now they’d all listen to the radio like the city folk. The world was messed up. And if there were storms coming, the sea wasn’t giving anything away. It was almost impossible that such a vast body of water could be so polite. I could hear the hushed whispers of the embarrassed tide arriving and departing on the fine gravel. “I’m here, shhh.”
“No, I’m over here, shhh.” Then a long empty pause before the next whispers. I admired the vastness of the scene all around me and remained in awe that I could make out the join where sea met sky. You never actually saw the horizon in Chiang Mai. You thought you did, then one day the dirty air would clear and there’d be a hulking great range of mountains looming up in front of you. But in Maprao with the Gulf stretching deceptively away from you, you knew that line – the one you had to stretch your neck to see all of, left and right – that was the edge of the world. You could sit on your back balcony and watch a hurricane pass over Cambodia, see giant cruise ships shrivel to nothing, view the creamy pink sunrise a whole continent away.
Something had changed inside me. I began to understand why everyone within a twenty-kilometer radius was an idiot. It was for the same reason that you could live in a condominium room for years and not know that your next door neighbor was stacking body parts in his refrigerator. Ignorance breeds ignorance. If you want the world to be as narrow as your mind, you can make it so. I’d assumed I was superior to everyone in Maprao so I hadn’t seen a need to confirm my status by actually talking to people. The odd thing was, once you got to know them you realized there was more common sense around you than in a whole city full of educated but suffocating people. Certainly more than in a barrel-load of monkey politicians. Living their lives wasn’t desperation for the Mapraoans, it was a sensible choice for a very proud people.
I was a celebrity for a while. We had three national TV stations down here interviewing me about my role in solving the abbot’s killing. The event might have slipped by unnoticed but for the bizarre demise of Mika Mikata. The self-filmed video of her suicide was on automatic feed to her Web site, and its popularity on YouTube was unprecedented. Mikata had no intention of being taken alive. With her chest-mounted cameras and her spectacular orange hat, she was dispatched by jet-propelled hang-glider to the top platform of the Tokyo Tower, the world’s tallest orange structure. There, she gave a heartrending but virtually incomprehensible speech and flung herself over the parapet. Viewers were able to make out the strains of ‘Killing Me Softly’, in Japanese, as she somersaulted through the air. But, as both the still and video cameras were destroyed as she bounced off the overhanging observation deck, her actual death was not recorded, which would have been a major disappointment to her fans. However, live coverage or not, Mika Mikata’s death had been as colorful as her murders.
My articles on the investigation and subsequent discovery of the killer were very well received. I even had a spread in Matichon Weekly magazine. I had offers of full-time positions I would have been a fool to pass up. I received personal calls from managing editors at newspapers that made the M
ail look like a rag. Oh, I considered them. I had sleepless nights. On numerous occasions, I dialed all but the last digit of their phone numbers. But…well, we had a business to run. Our sleeping province, momentarily awoken with a kiss from the angel of death, had decided to press the snooze button and go back to sleep again. I spent less time scouring the newspapers and more time gutting mackerel. With the absence of intrigue, I was able to put more time and effort into our resort. The shop attendance had rocketed to an average of seven customers per day. With Gaew’s help, Arny had almost doubled the room occupancy from one per five-day period to one-point-seven by the simple addition of a sign: LAST BED AND FOOD FOR 100 KMS. It wasn’t exactly true, or rather it was an outright lie, but any travelers silly enough to find themselves on these back roads late at night were unlikely to sue us later. Arny had also written to Lonely Planet for inclusion in their 2010 edition. It was a bit like me writing to Mr. Pulitzer asking if I might put my name on his list, but I admired my brother’s spirit.
And me? I cooked. I began what one day might be called a garden. And I fed the dogs. Yes, that was a plural. Sticky Rice pulled through. He woke up one day like a born-again canine with the kick of a small cow and has hardly dared to go back into that sleep world since. I assume my ankle was the first thing he saw when he came around because he follows it so closely I have to wipe snot off my leg after each trip through the yard. It’s rather pathetic but endearing and, I confess, I might have found myself cuddling him from time to time but only while he’s in rehab. Gogo continues to glare at me with disdain and maintains her orbit.
What else have I been doing? Nothing, I suppose. Oh, yes. I did come up with a solution for the mystery of the interred VW. The world would never hear of it and the story didn’t even warrant a follow-up in Thai Rat. Readers have short attention spans and the effort of retelling the tale was beyond the editors. But my inner diva has started to write it into a screenplay for Clint. It’ll be a sensation. Although the police had given up on the case, I was determined to keep it alive. I’d done all the flow charts and brainstorms and reviewed all the evidence and I found myself up against a brick wall. There was only one thing I knew for sure: that the couple in the interred VW were not the couple who had been asked to give evidence against Tan Sugit. There was, however, a very impressive list of things I didn’t know. I didn’t know where the first VW had disappeared to after its brief stay in the police parking lot, who rented the second VW and where they went, how evil Auntie Chainawat was involved and why she sold that strip of land to Old Mel, how the VW got itself buried, or anything else. Because, to tell the truth, at that stage I knew nothing. I can’t say it didn’t worry me but I’d literally run out of avenues to pursue. Sissi had searched the Internet and delved into the private briefs of one or two senior policemen but she’d come up with nothing relevant. I could have left it there, I suppose, but for the memory of the driver and his girlfriend sitting calmly in their seats. There were families somewhere ever wondering what had become of their loved ones. What about their spirits? I know. It doesn’t sound like me, does it? But all that hanging around in temples…well, something has to rub off.
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