The Coroner's Lunch (17 page)

The business he’d come to resolve had been shuffled to the side somehow. But he thought that as a respected imposter, he’d eventually get more answers than the captain. He was sitting at the edge of the village under a rustic pavilion with the senior men. They were into the second bottle of the most delicious fruit-flavored rice whisky he’d ever tasted.

“I want to tell you all why I’m here,” he said.

Tshaj interrupted him. “We know why you’re here.”

“You do? Why, then?”

“You’re here for the dying soldiers.”

“That’s true. Can you tell me what killed them?”

“Yes.”

Sweet Auntie Suab arrived at the crucial moment. She was a maker and distributor of amulets and she carried a large collection to the table.

Tshaj was annoyed. “Suab, this is a men’s meeting.”

“I’m so sorry, brother. But this can’t wait until morning.” She dumped the assortment of pendulums and amulets and religious and sacrilegious artifacts on the table in front of Siri and stood back. Siri laughed.

“Oh, God. Don’t tell me I have to wear all these.” The others laughed too.

Suab shook her head. “No, Yeh Ming, only one. I blessed one of them with your spell.”

“Which one?”

“You’ll know.”

“How?”

“It’ll come to you.”

Siri raised his eyebrows and looked down at the thirty-something medallions in front of him. He’d pick the wrong one and perhaps they’d take him more seriously as a coroner. The odds were in his favor. He knew it would dispel the magic of the evening, but perhaps that was a good thing.

He reached across the table for the largest amulet. It was an ugly, dust-covered lump. He felt sure if Suab had blessed an amulet for him, she would have doused it, or anointed it, or at the very least dusted it off. This was easy.

But as he reached across, the ever-dangly button on his shirt cuff became anchored on something. He lifted his arm to find he’d hooked a small black prism on a leather thong. The amulet was so old that any characters or images that had once been etched on it were now rubbed away.

“Yes.” Auntie Suab said with a sigh. “Yes.”

“No, wait. That wasn’t fair. Best out of three?” But it was over.

Suab gathered up the failed medallions and, with a satisfied smile, walked off to leave the men and the blessed amulet to their business.

“That was weird,” Siri conceded.

“Aren’t you going to put it on?” one of the men asked.

“Certainly not. I’m not about to start believing all this nonsense.”

“Then you won’t be pleased to hear how the soldiers died,” said Tshaj.

“Don’t tell me it was voodoo.” He disguised his unease with another giggle, but noticed how Lao Jong and a man so dark Siri could barely see him exchanged a guilty look. Because it was one of his duties as head of the village, Tshaj assumed the role of story-teller. The others refilled the glasses and leaned back in their seats.

“The soldiers came half a year ago. They said they were coming to help us. They said they needed to clear forest land so we’d have somewhere to plant crops to replace our opium.

“We’ve always grown opium. We don’t do much with it ourselves. Use it as medicine sometimes, eat it when there’s no food. But it was our only cash crop for a long time. It was good enough for the French. They bought every kilo we could produce. And the Americans refined it in Vientiane and sold it to their own troops in Saigon.

“But the good People’s Democratic Republic decided it was a terrible thing. They said we have to substitute something else for it. Something healthful. If you ask me, I’d say they just wanted to keep our income down, so there’s no chance of our funding an uprising.

“We’ve been watching the soldiers clear the forests, and we’ve been waiting and waiting to see what substitute crops they were going to plant for us. Hectares and hectares they’ve cleared.”

Siri nodded. “I thought as much. Do you know where they’re selling the timber?”

“Oh, yes,” the dark man said. “It goes through Vietnam and gets shipped off to the enemies of the Chinese, to Formosa.”

“Really? I wonder just how much of those profits is being shared with the government.”

“It doesn’t make any difference to us,” Tshaj said. “If the army gets the profit, or the government gets the profit, it’s all the same to us out here.
We
don’t get anything.”

Lao Jong spoke up from the far end of the long table the Americans had left as their only memento. “The animals are fleeing from the saws, so we have to go further to hunt. Some of our young men are away for weeks at a time, looking for game. The water in our stream is polluted by the silt that’s running down from the hills. But these are just physical problems.”

“Yes, they’re only physical problems,” Tshaj continued. “We’ve suffered many physical ills over the years and survived. That’s not what frightens us here. It wasn’t physical things that killed your soldiers. As you know well, Yeh Ming, powerful spirits abide in the jungle. [Siri rolled his eyes.] Most are kind, helpful spirits, but there are many malevolent lost souls out there. They leave the bodies of the troubled dead and reside in the trees with the nymphs and the ghosts.”

“A bit like sub-letting, you mean?”

Tshaj ignored the smiling doctor. “When we cut down a tree for our huts, or to make space to plant crops, we ask for permission from the tree spirits. We make offerings, sacrifices sometimes, as our own shaman sees fit. Usually, the spirits will move on without blaming us. After all, we have to live together, share what resources we have. That’s the way it has always been.

“Some of the trees in these parts are as old as the land itself. The spirits have become powerful here. When the soldiers came, they didn’t ask permission. They didn’t show any respect. They didn’t sacrifice a buffalo or consult a shaman. They just started cutting. And they cut and cut and hauled the timber away in trucks. They cut hundreds, thousands of trees.

“Can you imagine? Even the most benevolent spirits have become evil. They all seek revenge.”

“The tree spirits killed the soldiers?” Siri knocked back his liquor and his glass was refilled. “How did they do that, exactly? Lightning?”

“Possession.”

“Oh, come on.”

Toothless Mr. Lao Jong leaned forward onto the table and looked into Siri’s eyes.

“You, of all people, should know about that.”

“I should?”

“Think of your dreams.”

Siri shuddered. “What do you know about my dreams?”

“I know you can’t keep the spirits in any more.”

“I—”

“Mr. Lao Jong is our
Mor Tham
, our spirit medium. He can see. He knows you’re a shaman.”

“I am not.” Lao Jong’s uninvited intrusions were beginning to get as annoying as his gummy smile.

“The dogs know it.”

“What dogs?”

“They all know who you are. They know what lives inside you.”

“The only thing living inside me is nausea. This stuff is making me feel ill.”

“It shouldn’t. It’s all from the forest.”

The crowd of men around Siri was beginning to blur. The alcohol was deceptively strong, and the topic of conversation was giving him the willies. But deep down in his agnostic scientific soul, he wanted all this talk of ghosts and mediums to be true. He wanted there to be something else, something illogical. He’d been confined and restricted by science all his life, and he was prepared to break free.

But this? This was all talk: all superstitious claptrap from a bunch of old drunk village Hmong. They got lucky. Everyone has dreams. The dog comment was just a guess. Basically it was all crap. He stood shakily, excused himself, and asked to be taken to his bed. The whisky was beginning to make him confused. Two of the men came smiling to prop him up from either side and began to lead him off. But before they had gone far, Tshaj called out to him.

“Yeh Ming.” Siri and his props turned back. “I speak a few words, just enough to get by. But no one else at this table tonight speaks Lao.”

That was the last thought to enter Siri’s swimming head. They walked him to the guest hut and laid him down, but he wouldn’t remember any of that. He was unconscious long before.

It shouldn’t have surprised him, given all the talk and the setting and the whisky, but his dream that night was a spectacle.

He was dressed as a Hmong of a thousand years hence. For reasons known only to the Great Dream Director, he was riding Dtui’s bicycle through a fairy-tale jungle. He didn’t see the trees as trees, but rather as the spirits that inhabited them. They twirled together from the roots to high up in the sky. They were kind and welcoming, just as Tshaj had described them. Many were women, beautiful women, whose long hair curled into, and became, the grain of the wood.

It was a happy place; he seemed to know all the spirits, and they liked him. But the bicycle was squeaky and its noise awoke a black boar that had been asleep behind the bushes. Its fangs were still bloody from a kill. The tree spirits called out to Siri, warning him, but he seemed unable to move. The bicycle was locked with rust. Heaven knows why he didn’t get off and run for his life.

The boar charged. He looked up at the spirits but they couldn’t do anything to help. When he looked back, a small woman was standing between him and the boar. She seemed fearless, even when the boar leaped from the ground and soared through the air toward her. Before it could strike, she held up the black amulet in front of its face, and it turned from muscle and fur into a black sheet of burned paper. It floated harmlessly to the ground and crumbled.

She turned to Siri. He’d expected to see the sweet face of Auntie Suab, but instead it was the same old man’s face with its betel-nut red mouth that had lain dead at the feet of the Vietnamese in his previous dream. (He must have been making a guest appearance.) He ignored Siri and went from tree to tree ripping down the spirits and the nymphs and putting them into a Coca-Cola bottle. Even before the bottle was full, the trees were empty of spirits, and he vanished. All that was left was Siri on his rust-locked bicycle surrounded by trees that were now just wood.

He heard the sound of chewing, and looked back over his shoulder to see that the jungle floor behind him was a vivid green. The color seemed to vibrate as it reflected in his eyes. And as he watched, the carpet of green spread closer and closer to him. And when it was close enough, he could tell that this was a swarm of green caterpillars. He looked back; everything in its path had been destroyed, devoured by the hungry insects.

The bark of the trees around him was stripped away, the leaves were gone in seconds, and slowly the tree trunks were leveled. When there were no more trees, the caterpillars caught sight of Siri. They crawled all over him and Dtui’s bicycle, and just as they’d eaten everything else, they began to chew their way through him as he watched calmly. It tickled. Very soon, Siri could feel himself inside the caterpillars.

A flock of crows swooped down and ate the caterpillars that contained small bits of Siri. Then whales somehow managed to eat the crows. And the whales were swallowed up by volcanoes and suddenly Siri, or at least bits of Siri, was in every creature and every geological feature on Earth. It was one hell of a good finish.

“Yeh Ming.”

Siri knew neither where nor, momentarily, who he was. He looked up to see the pretty face of a girl like a tree nymph looking down at him.

“The elders wish to invite you to breakfast.”

She was speaking Hmong, and he understood. She blushed at his smile and left him alone. He was on the floor of a simple hut on a mattress of straw. He felt immaculate, invincible, and incredibly hungry. When he sat up, he felt something at his neck. It was the black amulet. He didn’t take it off.

The jeep came to pick Siri up after ten. The guards had called through to headquarters earlier and warned them that the doctor was acting oddly. They were afraid he might have been doped. They reported the previous night’s proceedings.

At headquarters, Siri jumped from the jeep like a young man and strode into the hidden commander’s office. The men there looked up at him; he thought he detected some mistrust in their eyes.

When he saw the doctor, Kumsing rose and walked over to him. “Outside.” He took Siri’s arm roughly and led him through the door. When they were far enough away from the building, Kumsing spoke angrily. “All right. Suppose you tell me just what your game is.”

“Well, I used to box.”

“You know what I mean. What exactly have they sent you here to do?”

“They sent me to answer your request for a coroner.”

“And I suppose it’s just a coincidence that you speak fluent Hmong?”

“Given that there’s only one coroner in the country, you’d have to assume yes, it is a coincidence.”

“Why didn’t you see fit to mention it to me?”

“Well, firstly because it’s none of your business. And secondly because I didn’t know.”

Kumsing looked at him in amazement. “Didn’t know? You didn’t know you could speak Hmong? Don’t insult my intelligence, Doctor.”

“I promise you, when I arrived in Saravan, I couldn’t speak a word of it. But I believe there may be a scientific explanation for that.”

“What’s that round your neck?”

“It’s a magic amulet.”

“My men tell me you’ve been here before. The Hmong knew you. You omitted to tell me that, as well.”

“Well, I probably forgot. It was a long time ago. About a thousand years, to be exact. At that time I defeated twenty thousand Annamese with an ox horn. I have to assume it was a rather large one.”

Kumsing’s expression turned from anger to concern. “They haven’t…done anything to you, have they?”

“You mean hypnotized me and turned me into a lunatic? No. I don’t think so. This is the way I’ve always been. It was quite an amazing visit, mind you.”

“Did you get the samples?”

“Their potions? No. They didn’t use any. Captain Kumsing, I suggest you come to your office with me and listen to a most strange tale. Twenty-four hours ago, if someone had told it to me, I would have had them committed to an asylum. But, like me, I think you’ll eventually come to believe that there may be only one way to save your life.”