Smoking Poppy

by Graham Joyce

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked Charlie. She was still shivering.

  ‘I’m just cold, Dad.’

  I wanted my heart to break. I let her slide to the floor. Someone placed a blanket round her shoulders, another pair of hands gave her a bowl of some evil-looking concoction, which she sipped but which made her cough. I looked up, and the disc of the moon was stupendously low in the sky, moist, dripping with a silvery vernix like that covering a new-born baby. My relief was that which follows the safe delivery of an infant. As I cradled Charlie to me I saw flames leaping in the air from somewhere behind us. It was our hut. The villagers had torched it.

  There was no going back.

  The villagers lit new fires, and began to dance, forming a horseshoe around us, clasping each other at the shoulders, singing loudly, swaying rhythmically.

  It was a party, and it was for us.

  Khiem entered the horseshoe. He was beaming happily, still presiding over events, evidently very satisfied with the way things had gone. He took Rupert Bear from his neck and pressed it into Charlie’s hands. Perhaps the Lord of the Moon had decided to make Charlie whole again.

  Mick produced what was left of the whisky Jack had given us and I took a good hard swallow. It warmed as it went down. If there were demons in the air, they were dispelled after a glug of Scotch whisky. I even poured some on my bloody hand

  ‘Give me some of that,’ Phil said, grabbing the bottle from my grasp and taking a deep swig.

  Some children stepped forward and placed garlands round Charlie’s neck and then round mine, Mick’s and Phil’s. The singing went on. Some of the men queued up for a tug on the whisky. I was happy for the festivities to continue through the night: Charlie was out of her cage. I squeezed her. ‘Are you all right, Charlie? Really?’

  ‘I’m all right. It’s gone. Whatever it was, it’s gone.’

  I looked at the villagers, their faces softly lit by the fires and the burning brands as they danced. I loved the excitement of the children, who were not excluded from any of this strange ritual. I loved the fragrant, syrupy smell of the air streaming from the poppy crops and from the jungle. I looked up at the moon, and felt a moment of delirious happiness. I may have let a pagan prayer of thanks pass my lips. Even in this exotic and alien place, the world was returning to order.

  I took another gulp of whisky, and looked about me. ‘Where’s Mick?’ I said to Phil. ‘Have you seen Mick?’

  ‘No,’ Phil said.

  I scrambled to my feet. Mick was nowhere to be seen in the mêlée. Neither could I see Phoo. The pair of them had vanished.

  37

  The villagers danced in circles around their fires, stamping the red earth. They sang loud and their voices soared in the chilly air of the evening. Some of the men produced bottles of moonshine and proceeded to get very drunk. They made free with the moonshine and though I pretended to take deep swigs from the bottle I needed to keep my head. It was almost an hour before Mick and Phoo turned up again.

  Mick was perspiring heavily. His face was streaked with red dirt. ‘Time to go,’ he said.

  I had a nagging doubt about Phoo. I was still afraid he would betray us, and I was waiting for Jack to appear, smiling psychotically. But we had to go. Mick suggested we slip away one by one to assemble on the jungle path at the edge of the village. Then Charlie wanted to say goodbye to Nabao.

  ‘Not a chance,’ I hissed. ‘She can’t know that we’re going.’

  ‘I have to do it,’ Charlie said. ‘I can’t just vanish on her.’

  Charlie pleaded. Nabao had nursed her through the last few months. In any event we couldn’t all leave together. ‘We’ll be two minutes,’ I said to the others. ‘We’ll see you on the path.’

  Charlie and I found Nabao sitting on the threshold of her hut, smoking her huge tobacco drainpipe. She hadn’t joined in the festivities. On seeing us she put aside her pipe, stood up, and held out her arms to Charlie. She knew exactly what was happening. The thought didn’t comfort me, serving only to make me more paranoid, but I guessed the old woman had intuited what we would do. Charlie embraced her and I saw Nabao’s sugary eyes film over. When they’d finished hugging, Nabao dashed inside her hut to retrieve something, emerging with the Fred Flintstone clock sleeved in its plastic wrapping. She spoke rapidly and tried to push the clock into Charlie’s hands: a parting gift, and probably the most valuable thing she owned.

  Charlie refused the clock. She said a few words, and Nabao seemed satisfied. ‘Give me your watch, Dad. I told her that at midday every day I would look at the time and think of her.’ I handed over my wristwatch and Charlie strapped it on. My daughter’s eyes were wet. Nabao smiled. For myself I grabbed Nabao’s hand and I kissed it. Her own face was utterly expressionless.

  ‘Come on, Charlie,’ I said, and we slipped away into the darkness.

  Mick and Phoo were waiting for us on the path. The villagers had removed our belongings from the hut before torching it, and Phoo had already assembled our backpacks for us. ‘Where’s Phil?’ I wanted to know.

  ‘We’re waiting for him,’ Mick said.

  ‘Christ!’

  Almost frantic, I jogged back towards the village and there I saw Phil sitting down, calmly watching the festivities. ‘Today would be good,’ I said.

  ‘Not coming with you,’ Phil said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not coming. Can’t come.’

  This was exactly what I needed. I squatted before him and took his face in my hands. ‘Phil, I apologise for anything I said to hurt you.’

  ‘It’s not about anything you said. I have things to put right here.’

  ‘Phil, I’m sorry for anything I’ve said or done in the past twenty-five years. I’m sorry for being a crap dad. I’m sorry for the time I punched you in the mouth.’

  Phil shook his head. ‘You’re crazy. It’s not about those things. It’s about me and the Lord. Don’t look at me like that! I’m perfectly calm and composed. I’ve been thinking about whether I could make reparation here. Maybe I could help with the refugee organisation we heard about. Yes. You see, I’ve got to make reparation.’

  ‘Phil, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if you come now I’ll go to church with you every Sunday for a year. I can’t leave this place without you. I didn’t come here to find my daughter just to lose my son.’

  I heard Mick thundering up behind us. ‘What the fuck is going on?’

  ‘He says he’s not coming.’

  ‘What a fucking family!’ Mick cried. ‘I don’t believe you! Any of you! What am I doing here with you? Phil, if you don’t come now, how are we going to get Charlie out? Your old man has only got one good hand.’

  Phil looked up directly at Mick, brilliant moonlight starbursting in his eyes.

  ‘Phil, I love you dearly,’ I said, ‘and I can’t leave this place if you won’t come. I’d have to stay here with you.’

  Phil shaped his mouth to say something.

  ‘Right, that does it.’ Mick attacked Phil, grabbing him under his arms and hoisting him over his powerful shoulders. I heard Phil splutter as Mick jogged away with him into the bush. I cast about to see if anyone had seen us, but the villagers were intent on getting drunk and whooping it up.

  When I joined the rest of them, it seemed the matter had been resolved. Phil was coming.

  ‘Get packs!’ Phoo hissed at us, highly agitated.

  Charlie wanted to open her pack to stow her Rupert Bear. When she began picking with the strings Phoo went out of his mind. ‘No time!’ he whined. ‘I no fuck go wiv you! No time!’

  ‘Leave it,’ I said. ‘Pick up your bags. Let’s go.’

  We hoisted our backpacks and followed Phoo along the moonlit trail, half walking, half jogging. Charlie was too weak to keep up under her own steam, so we made progress with Phil and Mick shouldering her along the path. I brought up the rear.

  After a few hundred yards I began to get a bad feeling. There was something distressingly
familiar about the trail we were on. At first I kept my thoughts to myself. Mick, struggling with Charlie up ahead, turned and shot me a look. He recognised it, too. I couldn’t tell if Phil had guessed because he had his head down. We were on the same trail we’d taken the morning we’d buried the body. I had a bad weight in my stomach.

  After a while I halted, and everyone else stopped.

  ‘Why stop?’ Phoo hissed. ‘Come quick now.’

  I couldn’t speak. If I disclosed my misgivings I’d be revealing everything to Phoo. On the other hand I suspected this was an elaborate ploy to lure us to the spot where we’d buried Jack’s nephew. I imagined four new moonlit graves, freshly dug.

  ‘Come on, Danny,’ Mick said gently but firmly.

  I tried to make my eyes tell him what I suspected, but he turned away from me, manhandling Charlie from the waist. I followed. It was agonising. I’d taken Charlie and Phil from the safety of the village to the open jungle. I had a sudden insight into what had happened to Ben, Charlie’s original travelling companion. We had been duped.

  I couldn’t think of a way out as Phoo led us to the cadaver. The scene of the scrambled burial loomed closer and closer, and at each step I was ready for Jack and his men to jump out from behind every bush. I saw the flitting shadows of opium bandits behind every tree; I heard them skitter beyond every shrub.

  Phil dropped back, leaving Mick to struggle with Charlie. ‘Do you see where he’s leading us?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I can’t do this. Really I can’t.’

  ‘Coincidence, Phil. It has to be coincidence. We’ve got to keep up.’

  We reached the burial spot and Phoo seemed to slow and fiddle with his belt. Phil stole a glance at the covered grave, and I did too. Behind the leafy mound a grey figure moved in the moon shadow.

  An animal, fleet in the moonlight, nothing more.

  We passed the spot without event, and Phoo directed us along a smaller path descending the side of a ravine. We were already breathing heavily, making slow progress down the steep ravine, though the huge moon floodlit the jungle affording good visibility. Even so I slipped from the path, but Phil’s sharp reflex action caught me by the shirt and tugged me back.

  After almost an hour I heard water rushing from below. We’d arrived at the river. A bamboo raft awaited us. Identical to the one on which Mick, Phil and I had journeyed with Bhun and Coconut, it was rigged with a stout tripod to keep our packs dry. Phoo immediately busied himself with lashing the packs on to the tripod. I looked around uneasily, certain that Jack and his cohorts were about to spring. The moon made the swift-flowing water ripple like a bolt of silk. Everywhere else the jungle was still.

  ‘So far so good, pal,’ Mick said.

  ‘Will that raft take all of us?’

  ‘He seems to think so.’

  ‘Shoes!’ Phoo said after fiddling with the packs. We took off our shoes, and he laced them over the packs at the top of the tripod. ‘We go!’

  There were poles for each of us. Phoo said he wanted Mick to take up the rear position. Charlie slotted in between Phoo and myself, with Phil in front of Mick. We pushed off, gliding sweetly into the middle of the jade-green, moonlit river. The brisk current took us in and we made steady speed. The river was faster here than when we’d come with Coconut and Bhun, but wider, too, and less strewn with obstacles. Phoo made motions to right or left when he wanted us to punt to either side; otherwise he was piloting from the front.

  ‘How long?’ I shouted to Phoo once we were properly underway.

  ‘Five, six hours,’ he said.

  It was a long time to spend on a raft with your feet washed by cold, snake-infested water, but I felt exhilarated to be moving, and overwhelming relief in putting the village behind us. What’s more, I’d got a full cargo of passengers, a complete inventory. But I also felt small and vulnerable, a straw riding the flow.

  The river continued to move us at a sprightly pace, and though the water lapped across our feet, the bamboo raft gliding just under the surface seemed remarkably easy to control. Phoo twitched his pole against the riverbed to correct the drift, occasionally holding up his arm to indicate for us to help.

  Pretty soon Charlie got tired on her feet. There was nothing for it but for her to kneel in the water, gripping the tripod. The green river wound through miles of ghostly verdant jungle and we proceeded in silence. On the steep-sided banks at either side, miraculously spindly trees rose above the upper canopy of the jungle. A midnight mist smoked the leafy canopy itself. We drifted by herds of water buffalo bedded down in the mud for the night. We also passed small settlements where no one stirred; we could have been ghosts in their dreams.

  In places we shot through gaps between smooth, white boulders where the water foamed like churning milk, and where the bamboo underside scraped alarmingly. But the raft stayed secure. For two hours we journeyed in an ethereal silence, each of us mesmerised by the alien splendour of the moonlit river, the raft stately in its progress. Then we reached some treacherous rocks. Without warning Phoo leapt into the water, guiding the raft by hand around the rocks. Mick and I had to do the same to help him. Eventually everyone got wet, half floating, half portering the raft across the boulders, until we got beyond the rocks and the white water. It jolted us from the trance of the river. Charlie was with us in flight, battling to do her share. Another herd of water buffalo wallowed and snorted at us from the muddy bank.

  We got back on course, drifting a little slower now. I dipped my pole in the water and then heard a tiny sob behind me. I turned to see Phil squatting, and weeping. ‘Phil!’ I laid down my pole. ‘What is it, Phil?’

  He shook his head. I glanced at Mick but he didn’t want to make eye contact with me either. He pushed hard on his pole, training his eyes on the riverbank. I squatted before Phil and took hold of his hands. He gazed at me, his eyes full of tears. ‘I’m in hell, Dad. You can go home but what about me? I’ve put myself in the darkest quarter of hell. You’re clean, but there’s blood on my head.’

  The truth dawned on me. How could I have missed it? How could I have been so stupid? All that time when Phil was in torment in the poppy fields. I looked up at Mick for confirmation and Mick, seeing what I’d worked out for myself, gave me the briefest of nods.

  ‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘Phil, oh God. I never knew.’

  There was a brief cry of alarm from Phoo at the front of the raft. We were approaching another stretch of white water, and suddenly everyone had stopped punting. I stood, picked up my pole, dipped it in the water and, despite the gash in my hand, pushed hard. We all did. We guided ourselves neatly between the smooth boulders in an S curve, and when I glanced round again Phil was back on his feet, pushing on his pole with a grim determination.

  At a later point in the journey we passed another settlement where a dozen rafts were drawn up on the bank and where two natives sat around a small fire. They stared at us in astonishment, but Phoo made no attempt to communicate. ‘Hmong,’ he whispered as we drifted past the staring men.

  I wondered if all the people along this stretch of the river were in Jack’s pocket. ‘Do they have cellphones?’ I asked.

  Phoo cackled an answer. ‘Oooooooh! No cellphone for Hmong!’

  He seemed much more relaxed now. The greater the distance we put between Jack and ourselves the more I felt we might succeed; but relaxed was something I wasn’t going to feel until we’d at least reached Chiang Mai. The drifting seemed endless, and the state of our nerves made the operation exhausting. After four or five hours the sky began to whiten, and we found ourselves in the grey light of a false dawn.

  We started to pass individual natives up and about their business. Riverside activity increased. Natives smiled or stared at us, or more frequently ignored us. The jungle ahead began to blush pink and then the sun came up, boiling and rosy, flooding the river with red light.

  Further downriver we saw more activity. It was a military camp. Thai army. Phoo became very tense. One armed s
oldier stood on the riverbank, watching us float towards him. He shouted something and his words echoed in the pink dawn mist, skimming across the river like a flat stone.

  ‘Bad!’ Phoo steered towards the bank. ‘You tell him I tourist guide,’ he said over his shoulder.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He Jack man. Jack pay Thai army here. Army have cellphone.’

  We banked the raft, and climbed off, grateful at least for a chance to relieve the punting posture we’d had to endure for the last five hours or so. The soldier seemed puzzled and suspicious. His comrades were busy striking camp some way off, though they appeared less interested in us than he was. He asked Phoo a lot of questions, and Phoo, extremely tense, replied mostly in monosyllables.

  The soldier turned to us. ‘What you do here?’

  ‘Trekking,’ I said jovially. ‘Tourists.’

  ‘Trekking? No trek! No trek here!’

  ‘Yes,’ I offered with desperate brightness. ‘Best trek in Thailand! No tourists! Beautiful.’

  The soldier barked at Phoo, who kept his eyes averted. ‘No trek!’ he said again to me.

  Then I remembered I had a receipt in my wallet, written out by Panda Travel after we’d negotiated the services of guides on our way in. I made a big show of taking out the receipt and presenting it to the soldier as if it was a warrant signed by the King of Siam. ‘Panda Travel!’ I said.

  He obviously couldn’t read the English, in which the docket was made out, but he pretended he could, squinting at the details and checking the Chiang Mai address, which was at least printed in Thai. ‘Chiang Mai!’ I added helpfully.

  ‘Chiang Mai?’

  ‘Yes, Chiang Mai. Panda Travel.’

  ‘Panda Travel!’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I wondered how long we could spend repeating each other.

  ‘Ask him,’ Mick suggested to Phoo, ‘if he can sell us a few cigarettes.’

  Phoo did so and the soldier laughed. He produced a packet of local brand and Mick peeled off a banknote from his wad. Charlie, Mick and I each took a snout and we smoked them, theatrically it seemed, as if the soldier had just saved our lives. The soldier laughed again. Mick bought the packet from him, and the large bill was expertly trousered.