Killed at the Whim of a Hat

Seventeen

I got an early phone call from Dtor, my friend in Chiang Mai. The urban anarchists were still occupying our Government House. They’d been there for nine days already. They had their fold-up beach chairs and had diverted their magazine subscriptions to their new temporary address. They’d even rented a bank of Portaloos. They’d set up their futons and ordered in pizza while the police stood outside wondering why they had to make do with cold fried rice and a quick wee against the back wall. Anarchy was one of the fastest-growing middle-class hobbies. It had already overtaken Pilates and tai chi. I’d seen the photos: middle-aged women in stretch trousers and sensible tops giving the finger. Let’s see them try that in Burma. Anywhere else and you’d expect them to have been mowed down in a hail of machine-gun fire, beaten with batons, dragged screaming by their orthopedic shoes. This is our Government House, damn it. Our seat of power.

Who do they think they are? I didn’t vote for these people. But when you’ve got friends in high places, you know you aren’t scheduled for a police massacre. You take your best iPod with you without fear it might get bumped in a skirmish. You know the authorities won’t dare hurt you. You have power at your back, influence whose name dare not be spoken. So you settle down to your sudoku and send e-mails on your BlackBerry telling old schoolfriends that you’re on an insurgency at the moment and the reunion might have to be put off for a week or two.

But, of course, Pak Nam cared nothing of all that. It had squid. That was the extent of its concerns. The events at Wat Feuang Fa had blown through my life like a monsoon and when the squall died down, I was still standing, albeit windswept and crusted in salt. After all that had happened, I imagined that the busybodies might have crept back under their rocks and left Abbot Kem and Sister Bia to whatever it was they certainly weren’t doing. But a new complaint was lodged and a second IA abbot was on his way. For my own peace of mind, I needed to know what was motivating this monastic stubborn streak.

When I arrived at the temple, the nun was painting the other side of the wall and all the grass around it. She had a yarmulke of white at the back of her scalp.

“I see incarceration didn’t do a thing for your painting skills,” I said.

She turned to find me in very much the same position as when I’d first met her. She smiled and returned to her task.

“Some people never learn,” she said.

“So I hear.”

“Did Abbot Kem come back?”

“He didn’t ever leave. He has a cave up there, over the crest. He goes there sometimes to consider.”

That made sense. I couldn’t really imagine him charging off to Bangkok to rescue his maiden. The nun put the long buffalo-tail brush in the can. It fell out, splattering her ankles before coming to rest in a white puddle at her feet. She laughed and left it there.

“It has a life of its own,” she said. “How could I ever hope to tame it?”

She started off along the path, stopping briefly once to see if I was following. I hadn’t arrived with a plan, no questionnaire, no tactics. If she didn’t want to talk to me, I was prepared for that. I’d say goodbye and good luck and leave her alone to her secrets. But it was as if she’d been waiting for me. We sat on her porch and looked up at the sky. It was one of those days when you thought perhaps mother nature got her color ideas from looking at upmarket swimming pools.

“If only I could paint like that,” she said. Unexpectedly, she looked me straight in the eye. I felt a peculiar pang of love for her. “The young policeman told me my freedom is largely due to you.”

“There were a few of us, but I don’t mind taking credit on their behalf.”

She nodded, which I took to mean ‘thank you’.

“There was something in his heart,” she leaped in with no preview or warning. “He wasn’t good looking or strong, not even a great scholar. But there was something in his heart that I could feel. I was thirteen or fourteen, passing through all those obstacle courses that teenagers have to suffer, not understanding my place on the planet. I began to ask him questions about life. Not even, ‘Why are we here?’ questions. Just small curiosities. ‘Do you think trees feel pain?”

“Do ants wish they could be independent?’ That silly level. But he always had an answer that made me think, and it always made sense to me. He cheered me up.

“And, as I grew older, I began to depend on him and his answers. We were friends, of course, by then, but he became the type of friend that is a part of you. I can’t call what I felt for him ‘love’, not in a physical sense. It was more like a wonderful peace to have him in my life. Perhaps my spirit was in love with his. Then he entered the monkhood. I wasn’t at all surprised. I knew he needed guidance to help him make sense of all the feelings we’d discussed. When he left I felt so terribly empty, not of the person but of the message. I knew that I was ready to search for myself. I was ready to accept a life of piety and modesty.

“We remained in contact through friends. We didn’t meet for many years but we were in one another’s hearts. I always knew that. And then, to my surprise, I learned that I had a tumor in my brain. It was called a GBM and it was inoperable. It wasn’t devastating news because we will all move along into the next life eventually, but I mentioned it in passing in a letter to Abbot Kem. To my surprise, he invited me here to spend my remaining time with an old friend. So I came. And I wait. It’s started.

You’ve already noticed my wonderful coordination. It won’t be long before my mind follows my painting skill. I won’t know which end of the brush to hold or what color is white.

“He and Abbot Winai spent many hours discussing me. I suppose I should have been flattered to have two such eminent men invest so much time in me. Their final decision, made on the day of the murder, was that I should stay. So, here I am.”

Two? Perhaps three large chunks of wood had become embedded in my chest. I could neither breathe nor cry. I had to saw a way through them with sighs before I could speak. Nothing profound fitted at that moment.

“What was the answer to the ant question?” I asked. “Do they want to be independent? It’s something I think about too.”

She laughed.

“He told me to be patient. Eventually I’d be an ant and I could answer the question for myself.”

The tears came slow as candle wax. I’d become a regular crybaby since my move from Chiang Mai. I was embarrassed for myself and in a hurry to leave. But before I could get away she opened the door to her hut and gestured me inside.

“I was hoping you could do me one more small favor,” she said.

In a cardboard box at the foot of her cot was a white bundle of fur, still as an ermine mitten. She put in her hand and lifted carefully. It was Sticky Rice, as limp as a hand puppet.

“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.