Tree of Smoke (81 page)

Mahathir addressed the four. As if he’d broken a paralyzing spell, they approached, gesturing and speaking. “There is a problem,” Mahathir said, “an infestation. They are burdened and tormented by the infestation of a curse. They say if we look we’ll see the teeth marks on their possessions. What is the infestation? One says monkeys, some are saying rodents. They will not say. They are angry because of fear. They will lose everything. They will starve.”

One man came close and spoke only to Mahathir. “He says the priest is waiting in a special place. We can go see him.”

Storm and Mahathir and the boy passed through the collection of dwellings, the entomologist leading along a path to a small clearing where they found three very small hooches and one man in a G-string standing around by himself.

“Another fucker with no clothes.”

“He is the priest, especially hired for this important ceremony. But don’t worry. He is a false priest. He is a charlatan.”

The boy stopped walking some yards from the little savage, who crouched as if about to leap violently into the air, and studied him.

Mahathir put his hand on Storm’s arm. “Stay here. It’s not for us.”

After some seconds the priest relaxed and stood upright again and approached Storm and Mahathir, giving the boy a wide berth. To Storm he held out both his hands as if expecting Storm to take them, but they were filthy with mud.

“Tell him if he wants to shake, he’d better wash up first.”

“They must dig for larvae. Don’t be alarmed. It’s good protein. Better than rice. Rice gives energy, not strength. But it’s a good source of carbohydrate.”

The men by the river had worn burlap over their groins, but the priest’s G-string was woven in a complicated pattern of reds, greens, browns. Mahathir spoke to him at length, interrupting frequently. Plainly the scientist was excited.

“There is a kind of animal,” he told Storm, “a monkey. These people call him sanan. I don’t know what it means. It’s their language. They believe he is a small man, a human being. This sanan is making war against them now. One month ago, I think two month ago at least, almost one thousand of sanan came to this place and they are eating any plants to eat, and the people cannot eat and they had only some rice. And he says also one months ago these one thousand of sanan attacked the village and stole the rice and destroyed their belongings. Also, he says, the sanan bited many people and tore some babies open.” The man spoke. “I don’t know if fatally. He says they came like a typhoon. From every side. Nothing to escape.” The man pointed up the valley while speaking. “He says that a child is missing. The sanan took the child away. Another child was taken, but she was found the next morning alive. I think he is exaggerating. For a visitor they like to make it seem exciting. How could one thousand sanan live together? There’s not enough for sustenance. I know these monkeys. They subsist in a size of two dozen creatures. That’s their limit. This monkey has a white face with a lot of hair on it, white hair. He looks very intelligent, with a cruel expression at all times. He’s not a person. They think sanan is a small human. Well, this man is required to say such things. It’s how he makes a living. These people are superstitious. They will pay him. And even more to the young man.”

Meanwhile the boy stood alone some ways off. The man spoke while regarding him. “He says we must not talk to this boy because he has made a very serious bargain. Also he wants to know about you,” Mahathir told Storm. “He asks if you are a friend of the white man on the other side.”

“What other side.”

“Across the valley.”

“I’m not anybody’s friend.”

“If you go there, you will be in Thailand.”

“Is that a problem?”

“It is another place, that’s all.”

“I’ll stay here tonight.”

“The ceremony is tomorrow. It must come at sunset and finish in darkness.”

“Where’s the kid sleeping?”

“In one of these huts. We can stay too.”

“I could use some food.”

“They have nothing. But there is a store.”

They returned to the village. The sun had passed below the hills opposite. The village vendor had raised his awning and lit a lantern and stood silhouetted in its glow, the president of a few canned goods and packages on two rough shelves. Storm bought a pack of 555s and a bottle of Tiger Beer probably years old, its flaking decal barely legible. It tasted no worse than a fresh one.

“They have gathered together all their ornaments and precious stones, and they put it together with all the rubber they collected for a year, and they came and sold everything in my village where I met you. I saw their headman when he came to sell. That’s how I learned about this boy. He’s going to be paid. This boy will make a lot of money. But he will destroy his soul.”

“It’s like that all over, man.”

Storm drank his beer quickly and in the last light the three made their way back to the priest’s domain and they retired to the hooches, Mahathir and the priest each alone, while Storm and the boy shared the third. They lay in hammocks while pungent embers smoked in a stone hibachi beneath them to fend off malaria. Storm soaked his bandanna in river water and covered his face to filter the fumes.

All night the boy’s weeping ruined his rest. At dawn he left for the other side.

Three men showed him where to cross the river at a narrow place. One waded in up to his waist, laughing, arms raised, to demonstrate its depth. Storm believed the other two wanted to show him an alternate crossing as well, but as the path up the mountainside opposite was visible from here, he waved and bowed and showed his middle finger, bared his feet, and forged across through a slow current with shoes and socks held high in one hand and his pack in the other. At the opposite bank he tossed his gear onto land and followed it ashore and examined his legs for leeches and found none. The men hooted encouragement while he tied his laces and as he climbed the path and until he was out of sight watched him possessively, as if they’d fashioned him and sent him forth.

High cumulus clouds in a rare blue sky. He still had the morning shade from the mountain. He went quickly. After an hour the sun topped the ridge across the valley. The glare crept swiftly down over the terrain ahead and at last assaulted him, stunned him with its weight. The path went sidehill, the grade was easy, but the mountainside itself was too steep for trees. Wherever shade came from taller scrub he stopped in it to absorb the breeze coming steadily down the Belum Valley.

The path took him north until in the heights it rounded a point and turned south, the mountainside now on the east, shading him, and he stopped to sit and drink. He’d reached a vast crab’s claw through which he could see the journey ahead, the path curving westerly and then northerly, keeping level until it headed straight north over the mountain-top. On the other side, Thailand.

In the absence of further hardship, he could conclude that the encounters and negotiations of these last few days had been enough, that he faced only physical terrain and had already come into the province of whatever god had him now. It occured to him all this might have been easier—a road, even public transit—from the Thailand side. But then he wouldn’t have paid entrance.

In twenty minutes he’d rounded the rim and climbed over the northern ridge to overlook a two-acre saddle of ground between a pair of small hills. Higher mountains in the distance. Below him, a tin-roofed wooden house and a small barn or shed. A narrow creek descended the western rise and cut behind the house and down over the saddle’s lip. Stunted chickens jerked along among the stilts of the house getting at food. Storm heard a goat bleating not far off.

He headed for the creek. Looking for a place he might fall and put his mouth in it, he followed the water around the clearing’s edge. Twenty meters from the two buildings he stopped. Out front of the larger one, under its thatched awning, in such a breeze as to keep the mosquitoes down, a white man sat on a bench resting his back against the wooden wall.

Storm approached, and the man raised a limp hand in greeting. He wore a light blue sports shirt, gray pants freshly washed and pressed, and rope sandals. Thin, with a fringe of silver hair surrounding a sunburned baldness. One leg crossed over his knee.

“Yow, Bwana.”

“Good afternoon. Such welcome as we can muster is yours.”

“Are you British?”

“I am, in fact.”

“You need one of those British bwana helmets.”

“A pith helmet? I have two. Can I offer you one?”

“Why aren’t you wearing one?”

“No need. I’m enjoying a bit of shade.”

“What else are you doing?”

The man shrugged.

Storm said, “I hiked up from the village—The Roo.”

“Ah, yes. A gentle people.”

“Who.”

“The Roo.”

“Yeah. Right on.”

“They don’t eat their neighbors. Or shrink their heads.”

“They don’t. I dig that about them. Are you by yourself?”

“At the moment.”

“Who else lives here?”

The man uncrossed his legs, placed his hands on either side of him, and sat up stiff-armed, his shoulders hunched. “I’ve had some lunch, but you must be hungry.”

“I’m on a fast.”

“Then I’m thinking you might like some tea.”

“You got ice?”

“No. It’s the temperature of the creek. Which is fairly cool. It comes from higher country to the northwest.”

“Aren’t you gonna ask me who I am?”

“Who are you?”

“Remains to be seen.”

The man smiled. His eyes looked tired.

He rose, and Storm followed him over to the creek, where the man bent to grasp an end of rope and hauled out a large glass jar in a macramé sweater. “Our tea may taste a bit flat. I boil it thirty minutes. Come into the house and we’ll put you right.”

Storm went as far as the porch. He stood at the door and watched. The place had a wooden floor planed smooth. Big wing-shutters propped open by struts at either end of the room let in the breeze and light. He saw an open kitchen, where the man poured the tea into two large glasses, and the door to what might have been a bedroom. As soon as he heard the sound of the liquid Storm’s feet took him inside. “Good glasses,” the man said. “Not old jars.” Storm drank it all rapidly. Without a word his host took the glass from him and refilled it. He sipped his own and put his hand on a small refrigerator by the sink. “No propane today. Somebody’s got to bring it over from town on a horse.”

“Where’s town?

“About ten kilometers north.”

“We’re in Thailand.”

“Yes indeed. Slightly.”

Storm had finished his tea.

“We’d better keep the jar handy for you.”

“What’s your function here? What’s your role?”

He hefted the jug by its rope. “I keep out of the way of things.” He stood with his glass and his jar beside the door. “Take a chair onto the porch, won’t you?” He waited for Storm to precede him out again and then sat on the bench and crossed his leg over his knee while Storm positioned the chair so all its feet rested on boards rather than in cracks and removed his pack and sat down to dig in it for his smoking materials. Storm was determined to outwait him. He smoked a mangled cigarette and observed the chickens as they foraged mechanically.

“I think I will ask for your name again, if you don’t mind.”

“Sergeant J. S. Storm. Staff sergeant. Used to be.”

“Do you prefer to be called Sarge?”

“No. Do you prefer to be called a spook?”

“I’m not in the Intelligence service.”

Storm waited.

“Perhaps once.”

“What outfit are you working for?”

“Allied Chemical Solutions. I’m happily retired.”

“Solutions like, We solve the problems? Or solutions like, We dissolve fuckers in acid?”

“Solutions to problems, yes. But the pun was appreciated amongst us, Sergeant, never fear.”

“You worked for the Company?”

“The CIA? No. Allied’s entirely private.”

“When did you come here?”

“A couple of years ago at least. Let me see. In June maybe. Just at the beginning of the rains. Yes. About the first of June.”

“How’s Saigon?”

“I haven’t traveled as much as some. I’d like to visit there one day.”

“Bullshit, motherfucker.”

“I hear they’re opening a Coca-Cola plant up north. Hanoi.”

Storm snapped the end of his cigarette into the yard. “Are you telling me you ran some kind of ops up in North Vietnam?”

The man squinted at him and sipped from his glass.

“What could’ve been going on up north? Some kind of listening post. Is that what you’ve got here too? The same operation
x
years down the line?”

“Hm,” the man said.

“What’s the situation, man?”

The man leaned forward with hunched shoulders. He seemed not so much uncomfortable as pensive.

“You know who I’m here for.”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“The colonel.”

The man sat back and cocked his head. “Which colonel?”

“Colonel F.X., old maestro. Colonel Sands.”

His host took a drink. In his movements, the thinness of his fingers on the glass, the frailness of skin covering his jumping Adam’s apple as he swallowed, he actually seemed quite elderly. “Sergeant, I can’t remember when I’ve had a white visitor before. So you’re quite unusual here. But I think your manner of approach would seem out of place anywhere. May I ask: Were you a friend of the colonel?”

“We were very tight.”

“A friend, I mean to say, and not a foe.”

“Roger. ‘Who goes there.’ ‘Friend.’”

“Cheers, then.”

“Where is he?”

“The colonel is unfortunately deceased.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Yes, it’s true. Long ago. Somebody should have told you before you made such an effort.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I can’t offer to change your thinking. But it’s true the colonel has died.”

“That’s what they said years ago. His wife was getting widow’s benefits in Boston, meanwhile he was known to be living here, operating around these parts.”

“I didn’t know about this.”