Chasing Clay (The DeWitt Agency Files Book 3)

by Lance Charnes

  “It’s cold.”

  “It’s not that bad. You’ll feel better. You’ll smell better, too.”

  I take the hint and plunge in after hauling my bag down from the truck. Savannah’s right—getting clean feels great even at the cost of head-to-toe goosebumps. She lets me share her rock while I towel off. Her hip is warm against mine. I ask, “Where are we?”

  “Well, this is the Nam Ton. We’re less than a mile below Wan Mé-Kin.” Her voice is back to near-normal.

  “That’s not helpful.”

  “Sorry.” She pats my thigh. “They’re going to be looking for us. We need to stay off the road for a while. We can stay here tonight and decide what to do tomorrow.”

  “Why not drive out now, in the dark?”

  “It’s not safe to travel at night.”

  “With them after us, it’s not safe to travel in daytime, either.”

  “For different reasons. Besides, you haven’t found the source for Nam Ton yet.” She pecks my cheek. “We can sleep another night in the truck. It’s cozy, and they won’t think to look for us here. And tomorrow…” she kisses the corner of my mouth “…well, who knows what we’ll find?”

  Chapter 49

  4 DAYS LEFT

  I stumble out of the truck’s cab and stretch several different ways to get all the kinks and stiff spots worked out. We’ve been sleeping in the truck since we crossed into Myanmar. That’s a big no-no—foreigners are allowed to overnight only in certain places, and then only in registered inns or guest houses. There aren’t any of those in the villages we’ve passed through. Nobody’s rousted us yet, but we keep a rotating watch in case our luck runs out. I was on duty when the sun peeked over the mountains to the east.

  The pool looks more inviting in daylight than it did last night. I rinse off my face and run water through my hair to flatten it out. As I look around, I notice some tree trunks a few yards downstream that span the Nam Ton without being obvious about it. Nobody builds those for the hell of it; there must be something worth the hike on the other side.

  I end up on an oblong patch of scrubland surrounded by three abrupt hills on the south, west and north. It’s maybe a hundred yards to a side, hard-packed dirt with spotty grass and scattered stubby bushes. No rocks worth mentioning. Based on what I’ve seen here, it’s certainly big enough to plant. Why isn’t it?

  That’s when I notice the village in the saddle between the south and west hills.

  It’s a narrow line of houses on pilings on either side of the path. It climbs a low rise and disappears around the south hill’s cliff-like slope. A couple smoke plumes from kitchen fires thread their way up from the corrugated iron rooftops. Figures trace the path. A dog barks; he’s either small or a long way away.

  I step off the path and poke around on the scrubland. It’s uneven, pockmarked with slumps and bulges eroded by rain. Something about this feels familiar, like I’ve seen it somewhere before, but not recently.

  Somebody shouts.

  A guy stands about thirty yards from me at the base of the rise leading into the village. A mop of darkish hair, an open long-sleeved check shirt over an undershirt, a dark blue pasu at mid-calf. It’s the rifle slung across his chest that gets my attention, though.

  I raise my right hand. Not quite a wave, but what I hope is a friendly gesture around here and not some obscure blood insult.

  Then I trip and fall flat on my face.

  Not quite: my chest hits the edge of one of those slumps, leaving me staring into a foot-deep hole. The bottom’s still wet from last night’s rain. I’m not looking at that, though. I’m looking at the tip of something hard and white sticking out from the side of the hole, probably washed out (and washed clean) by the rain.

  It’s a potsherd. White with a sliver of cobalt blue.

  The old guy with the rifle—his hair is more salt-and-pepper than mine, so I can call him old—herds me into the village’s edge and deposits me in front of the first house we come to. He barks something at a boy in baggy blue shorts and a worse-for-wear yellow SpongeBob tee; the boy pelts away down Main Street. Then the old guy turns to watch me, cradling his rifle. I get the message: stay put or become target practice.

  I’m not sure yet how concerned I should be about this. If the guy wanted to kill me, he could’ve done it by the river and not risk getting blood on his nice, clean dirt road. On the other hand, maybe he needs the village chief’s permission to feed me to his pigs. For what it’s worth, I’m not getting an immediate-deadly-intent vibe off him. He’s got that rifle, though.

  Ever since he captured me, I’ve been saying the same thing to him: Pensri Udomprecha. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t killed me yet. But what if this isn’t the right village? What if she’s on the road or back in Thailand?

  That idea doesn’t help my insides unwind.

  My guard keeps glancing up the path. I start doing the same. People stroll around up there in that leisurely way I’ve seen before in the tropics. They don’t come close to me or the guard.

  The houses I can see are all variations on a theme: wood pilings six to eight feet tall, weathered wood-plank walls, unglazed windows, pitched corrugated-iron roofs crusted with rust and moss. Each one has a small yard area surrounded by a fence made of stripped branches. It looks like people live upstairs and black chickens and smallish dark-gray pigs live downstairs. The general smell is wood smoke, semi-decomposing vegetation, wet dirt, wet livestock, and people in touch with their natural essence. In other words, mostly what I’ve smelled for the past few days.

  How likely is it that Savannah would know about that road but not about this village? Not very is how I see it. What did she say last night? Who knows what we’ll find? I found this, whether or not I was meant to. If I wasn’t supposed to, why bring us here?

  I don’t have to worry about keeping myself occupied with all this running through my head. The hard part is to not freak out about it. I’m completely at the villagers’ mercy, the area’s crawling with guys with guns, and I very clearly don’t belong here. There are places in America where this wouldn’t end well.

  My guard’s attention stays on the visible end of the path. A woman and two men slowly pace toward us. They take their time getting here, giving me a chance to make up worst-case scenarios.

  They finally stop next to the guard and look at me like I’m in the ape exhibit at a zoo. The way the guard defers to them makes me think they’re important.

  The woman’s the tallest of the three, though not by much. She wears a seafoam-green long-sleeved tee over a navy longyi checked with a red-and-white geometric pattern. I can’t tell how old she is; she’s obviously not a kid, but what I can see of her hair is completely black, and I can’t tell if the lines in her face are from age or mileage.

  An old man—his thin hair’s completely gray—hangs onto the woman’s left arm. His midnight-blue pasu is tied around his ankles, looking like breeches. The man on the woman’s right is maybe middle-aged, with a well-developed black moustache, a green-and-gray-striped polo, and a black pasu overlaid with a tight gold windowpane plaid. He looks sort of like the older guy minus twenty years or so.

  We stare at each other for a while. I can’t tell if they’re going to invite me to the village feast or make me the main course at it. Looking calm is hard when everything inside you says it’s time to run and see whether the guard really can hit a moving target. I avoid doing that. I probably don’t look like I’m enjoying this.

  I finally say, “Do you speak English?”

  The woman adjusts the ocean-blue scarf she has wrapped like a turban around her head. She pats the old man’s hand, gently pulls her arm away so she can step closer to me, then bends slightly to peer down at me. “Yes, I do. They don’t. What’s your name?” Only a slight accent, otherwise American English.

  It takes me a moment to remember which name I came here under. “Rick Hoskins. Can I stand? I’d like to stretch my legs.”

 
“Of course. Move slowly, though.” She points her chin at the guard. “Sai Mai may worry if you stand suddenly.”

  I’ll avoid that.

  After having been trapped in the truck cab overnight, the enforced inactivity here didn’t do me any favors. The woman watches calmly as I carefully get vertical. Once I straighten up, I see that she’s almost as tall as Savannah. That’s unusual around here.

  She says, “You’ve been asking for me.”

  “You’re Dr. Udomprecha?”

  “Yes. If it’s easier, you may call me Nan Pensri.”

  This can’t be a coincidence. Savannah had to know about this. She had to.

  Pensri’s straight-faced and utterly calm. Her hands haven’t moved since she folded them in front of her hips. I pull the blue-and-white ceramic fragment from my pocket and hand it to her. “You lost something.”

  Pensri turns the sherd over in her palm, then lets out the ghost of a smile. “Thank you. The rains always uncover more of these.”

  “So this is where Nam Ton wares come from?”

  The smile gets thinner. “It was once.”

  My quick flash of triumph—finally!—melts away like ice cream would in this weather. Was? “It isn’t anymore?”

  Pensri ducks her head. “I apologize, I’ve been very rude. I haven’t introduced you to my companions.” She points her chin at the old man. “He is Saya Kham, our village chief.” She says a few words to the old man, ending with “Sai Hoskins.” Then she aims her chin at the middle-aged guy. “This is my husband, Sai Htun.”

  I say “mengalaba” to each man. Then I wonder: is this one of those words where if you pronounce it one way, it’s a greeting, but it’s a curse if you pronounce it another way?

  Pensri and the two men pull away for a sidebar, leaving me with the guard. Sai Mai looks like he’s getting bored with this. A small knot of women and children has gathered up the path from us to watch the action. I’ll bet they don’t get many westerners here.

  Where exactly is Savannah now? I may need rescuing.

  After a short conference, Pensri returns and says to me, “Please, come with me.” She says something to the guard that must mean “stay here,” because he doesn’t follow as she leads me away.

  We stop at the edge of the oblong tract by the river. “This is where I found the Nam Ton wares.” Pensri waves across the scrubland. “There were more on the other side of the river, but most of those sites had already been disturbed. Because you’re here, should I assume you’ve read my paper?”

  “You should. Both of them.”

  She turns to me, eyes wide and eyebrows high. “Both? Including the one I never published?”

  “Yeah. Why didn’t you publish the second one?”

  “Things… changed.” She steps off the path, heading for the center of the flat area. “The two kiln sites were there and there. Both had sherd piles and shared a single mound of wasters. As best as I can determine, the old village was where the new village is. The river has changed its course several times over the past eight hundred years. It’s hard to determine what’s been lost.” She stops, faces me. “Why are you here?”

  I’d wondered how long it would take her to ask that. “I wasn’t satisfied with the mystery. Where Nam Ton comes from. You were pretty vague in your papers.”

  “Deliberately so.” Her mouth turns more severe. “The people here have been looting the site for decades. It’s a small miracle there was anything left to discover. I’d wanted to protect the site as much as I could. Obviously, I failed. People like you were able to find it and empty it. Are you alone, or with someone?”

  What’s the right answer? If I say I’m alone, the locals may drag me into the forest and shoot me to keep their secret. If I say I’m with somebody, she’ll want to know who, and where they are. It feels like Door Number Two is a better choice. “There are others.”

  Now her mouth gets really grim. “You came here to take wares home with you? Perhaps sell them?”

  “No. Pure curiosity. I’m one of those people who can’t stand to see a puzzle go unsolved. I can buy all the Nam Ton I want at home—I don’t need to come here to do it.” This seems like a good time to try an experiment. “Does the name ‘James Bandineau’ mean anything to you?”

  “No. Should it?”

  “I dunno. He’s trying to turn Nam Ton into the next big thing in America. Maybe he’s the one you should be mad at.” Try it? Sure. “How about Savannah Kendicott?”

  Was that blink a tell, or something in her eye? “I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

  “Right.” Liar. I nod toward the village. “Do you make pottery here?”

  “Yes, of course. The people work on it during the dry season between planting and harvest. It brings in extra money for the village.” She crosses her arms. “The Nam Ton culture came from a different heritage. These people aren’t its heirs, if that’s what you think. They’re Shan. The Shan have been here since the first century BCE.”

  “I thought the Wa chased the Shan out of this area.”

  “They tried. This village managed to stay. It’s out of the way and not very wealthy, so I suppose the Wa had no reason to bother with it.” Pensri looks me over coolly, like I’m a worm she found crawling over an artifact she’s just dug up. “You’ve solved your mystery, Mr. Hoskins. I’m afraid you’re too late if you want more than a set of coordinates. The Nam Ton culture is gone from here. If you leave now, you and your travel companions should reach the Thai border before dark. It’s not safe to travel at night.” She passes me the sherd. “Take this as a souvenir. It would be a shame to go home empty-handed. Goodbye, Mr. Hoskins.”

  Chapter 50

  Savannah’s on her rock, dangling her feet in the pool, by the time I get back to our camp. Her long cotton dress is the color of dusty green olives and is wrinkled from having been rinsed out in the rain a couple times. Only four of its twelve buttons are fastened. She says, “Where’d you go?”

  I’ve had enough time to get mad about her conning me about Pensri’s village, so I don’t answer right away. “Across the river.”

  “Find anything?”

  You know damn well. “A village.” Pause. “Dr. Udomprecha.”

  She continues brushing out her hair. She’s using a brush instead of her nit comb; I guess she’s not infested. “How is she?”

  “Chilly.”

  “I don’t doubt it. She doesn’t know you.”

  “I’ll bet she knows you.” That comes out like an accusation, just as I intended.

  “Of course she does.” Savannah lobs her brush into her open duffle, stretches, yawns. “I don’t remember you leaving the truck.”

  “You were still asleep.” I cross my arms and give her what I hope reads as a stern look. “You knew all the time where she is. Ever since we started this.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you didn’t bother to tell me.”

  “I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone.” She slides off the rock and pads toward me barefoot. I push her away when she stretches to kiss me. “Are you mad at me?”

  “What do you think?” That sounds just as hard as I meant it to. “You wasted my time. We could’ve come here on the first day, but no—you have me running around here for three days, knowing we weren’t anywhere near this place.”

  She backs up a step and hugs herself. “I knew you’d work it out eventually. You’d be proud of yourself—which you should be—and I’d’ve kept my promise. Everyone wins.”

  “Everyone. Wins.” I have to count to thirty to keep from saying the first four things that rumble into my head. “This your idea of a game?”

  “What? No.” Sigh. “Darling… I’m sorry I’ve made you mad, but… well, I’ve known Pensri a lot longer than I’ve known you, and I made her a promise, and I don’t like to break those if I can help–”

  “But it’s okay to lie to me and everybody else, right?”

  She drops back
another step. “It’s for a good cause.”

  “For fuck’s sake!” I pace a small circle to let the steam leak out my ears. My better nature’s holding on by its hangnails.

  Savannah watches me finish a couple orbits before she starts undoing the last of her buttons. “Come on, let’s go for a swim. You’ll feel bet—”

  “No. Holding your head underwater would make me feel better.”

  She winces, then refastens the buttons she’d undone plus a couple extras. “What happens now?” Her tone is cautious. “Are you going to spank me? Make me walk home? Fire me? Break up with me? You found the village. You won. Now we can go back to Thailand and have a lot nicer time than we’ve been having here.”

  “Not so fast.” I give her the condensed version of what Pensri told me.

  “Do you believe her?”

  “No. If Nam Ton wares aren’t coming from here, where’s Jim getting his? You said they’re not like anything else here.”

  “True.” She takes a wary step toward me and pauses, like she wants to see if I’ll try to drown her. “Maybe they’re not as unique as we thought. Why would she lie to you?”

  “Easy—to make me go away. She thinks I’m gonna go home and tell the world I found this place. If I think the well’s dry, I might be her last uninvited guest.”

  “You may be right.” She chews on her lower lip while she watches me closely. “Darling… will you hurt me if I come closer?”

  Will I? That head of steam I’d built up has mostly vented by now. Talking rationally made me remember that I’ve never been physically violent with a woman. “No.”

  “Good.” She steps to me and gentles her palm onto my chest. “We can’t leave. The Was’ll still be looking for us. So we should go to the village together. Pensri will protect us. She owes me.”

  “She… why? Who is she to you?”

  Savannah stares at the second button on my camp shirt for a long time. “Remember Lawan? My Thai nanny?”