The two old men were silent for a while. A squall had started to gust the rain off the Gulf. Large drops hit the straw roof over the table and the napkins blew away. Mair and Gaew hurried to clear up the dinner things. Captain Waew smiled at Grandad.
"Mitt," he said, "she's a child of your loins right enough."
"I taught her everything she knows," said Grandad.
We had the beginnings of a task force and a downpour.
It was Thursday morning and I had to go to market to scrounge for food. The Pak Nam covered market, once the heart of this metropolis, where lovers met and movies were shown on the weekends, was now a huge dilapidated warehouse of a place with a few stallholders hanging on for dear life. There was no logic behind what fruit and vegetables would be available at any given time. Like the deep-sea catch from the night before, the abundant fresh produce was targeted by the gluttons of Bangkok, whisked away in huge refrigerated trucks before our sleepy heads left the pillow. Like temple dogs, we had our choice of what scraps were left. I often returned home with a sprig of what could conceivably have been weeds and a plastic bag full of something local and covered in dirt.
I'd hardly slept the previous night as I wrestled with the ravages of withdrawal. The beer had sedated me till about two when I sat bolt upright in a cold sweat, like they only do in movies. I reached for my antidepressants, but I'd flushed them all down the toilet. I lay back and relied on the strength of my will to get me through the next four hours. I did a lot of thinking but no sleeping at all. I wondered what effect a rubber toilet plunger might have on submerged pills. I wondered whether Ed's friends were drawing lots to see who'd get me first. I'd listened to the rain that clattered down on my concrete roof all the way till dawn.
I drove home through the pouring rain with our humble food supplies and noticed how the little ditch at the back of our place had become a stream. It was quite picturesque. Now I understood why there was a bridge. Until now it had served no purpose. I could imagine a big-eye-contact-lens Japanese bikini girl standing there with an umbrella. We could make it a tourism feature. Tourists loved features. I parked in front of our burned-out shop and marveled at how the village women had rallied around Mair. The ladies of the co-op were mopping frantically and sorting out the salvageable from the hopeless. Despite the steady rain, Captain Kow was sitting on his motorcycle in a flowing purple plastic poncho. He looked like a morning glory. I needed a seafaring man to explain to me the politics of deep-sea fishing. Kow, the squid-boat captain, seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time in front of our shop selling fish-balls from his motorcycle sidecar. I wondered whether "Captain" was just his first name. I think he was surprised when I walked up to him. If he'd had more teeth, he'd probably have a nice smile. His nose was a little broken, but his eyes were smoky gray, and time and weathering had shaped him a good face.
"Captain Kow," I said, and saluted as was my witty way.
He saluted back, as was his.
"Nice weather for dolphins," he said.
For some reason this made me think of all those creatures that have never experienced dryness. Fancy that, being permanently wet. That in turn made me think of whales washed up on beaches, creatures who obviously associated dryness with death. On our beach we had a lot of fish washed up. They all had that "who put that beach there?" expression. But nobody rushed out with damp blankets and iced water to rescue a mackerel. There were no SAVE THE MACKEREL bumper stickers. My philosophy was that if you were too stupid to realize you were swimming on dry land, it really didn't matter how enormous or endangered you were. Mother Nature has a way of dealing with the dumb. Meanwhile, Captain Kow was yakking on about the weather conditions. Something about rain and two weeks and flash floods. I interrupted him.
"Captain Kow? I was wondering whether I could sit you down sometime and ask you some fishing boat questions." His gray eyes lit up. "It would be an honor," he said. I booked him for ten o'clock in my room.
I was offloading my fruit and vegetables when I felt a presence behind me. I turned to see Noy under a green umbrella. She looked pummeled, all puffy and red-eyed. I loved to see beautiful women in those paparazzi photos taken at the supermarket when they looked just like you and me. Noy was the type who should really stay away from Leo beer. "Pee Jim," she said.
Pee. Older sister. Good. Respect. I liked it.
"Yes?"
There was probably more to that sentence, so I waited.
"I wanted to ask you…about last night."
"Yes?"
"I. . . my mother said I was talking to you…a lot."
"You don't remember?"
"I drank a lot of beer. I'm not used to it."
"I could tell."
"Did I…did I say anything?"
Now perhaps you can see why I was one of the country's top crime reporters. My chance had arrived. "You told me a lot," I said. "About?"
I was getting wet. I took her arm and led her to the plastic awning.
"About everything," I said.
"No." The muscles of her face tensed. "I…I wouldn't have."
"Georgetown. Science. The exam."
She was a white girl. The type of girl sheltered from the harmful rays of the sun from birth. Coated in creams. Barred from garden games. But I swear that white girl dropped through three more shades of white right there in front of me.
"It's not possible," she said.
"Then I must be psychic. Listen, you told me. It doesn't matter. You've landed in the safest place in the country. We all like you and your mother. We want to help. You can stay here as long as you like. What happened in America doesn't bother us. Everything's fixable."
"You don't understand."
It was true. I didn't. I knew the what but not the why. But I wasn't about to tell her that.
"I think it's quite evident," I said.
"No, Jimm. This is serious. This isn't a sinking latrine. These are dangerous people. If they found out you were helping us, they could…delete all of you. There'd be no evidence that you ever existed."
I felt a tingle of excitement. I wasn't sure that I had existed for the past year, but this was incredibly dramatic. I took her shaking hand in mine. She was truly terrified.
"Pbook," I said.
"I told you my name?"
"Just that. No surname. No connections to your real life. Your family's identity is still protected. And only I know the truth. I haven't told anybody else. It's just me and you against…them. And I'm a great ally to have."
All she knew about me was that I was a cook in a beaten-up resort at Earth's end. But she was desperate for a friend. She fell against me and took me in her arms and sobbed into my shoulder. In my current condition, even that was a little exciting. But the longer we stood there, the more her anguish seeped into me like a computer virus. It was overwhelming. What could possibly have happened to this poor little bird?
"I like to see girls bonding" came a voice.
I looked up and there was skinny Bigman Beung leaning against a coconut tree with his arms folded. His uniform was drenched. It was some type of archaic police suit. Noy stepped back and wiped her tears with her hands.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"Reminds me of a video I once saw," he said. "Except there was less clothes and more baby oil."
"I asked you what you're doing here."
"You need to ask when I'm clearly dressed in my sanitation department uniform?" he said.
I smiled at Noy.
"We can talk later," I told her. "Tell your mother you really have no reason to leave here."
She returned my smile, collected her umbrella, and headed off into the rain. Bigman Beung observed her bottom.
"Leaving, is she? Such a waste. Still, I can probably return to the image of you two smooching at a later time. Perhaps when I've had a few drinks. Meanwhile, I have an ecological disaster to avert."
"Our latrine?"
"How did you guess?"
"Ooh, I don't know. Tons of
human excrement escaping into the Gulf from our three-seater toilet block? Would that be it?"
"I have a camera. There are grants available. Combination of natural disaster and hazardous waste. Worth a million baht if I take the snaps from just the right angle. You want to come down and pose in front of it?"
"It's underwater."
"You're right. It would be a swimsuit photo shoot."
"No."
"Too bad. Please yourself."
He headed off down to the beach. I called after him.
"Beung."
"Changed your mind?"
"That day I reported the head, who did you phone?"
"The M code?"
"Yes."
"New fellow at the Pak Nam station. He's responsible for all Burmese matters. Lieutenant Egg. He called us village heads to a meeting and told us about the hotline. Any body or body parts washed up on our beaches that we suspect might be Burmese we were to contact him directly."
"What does the M stand for?"
"Maung."
8.
Our Love Is Like a Chip on the Ocean
(from "Rock the Boat" – WALDO HOLMES)
Maung was the generic term the rude Thais used for Burmese. It was like calling all Australians Bruce. It was just another show of disrespect. I sat down with my task force, and the three of us went over everything we thought we knew about the Burmese fishermen. It didn't take long. We needed professional input to understand exactly what was happening out there in the deep Gulf. Ten minutes later, that information arrived. There was a knock on the door. I opened it to the gappy grin of Captain Kow. I noticed Grandad's haunches rise like a mad dog, so it would help to point out at this juncture that Grandad and the squid-boat captain weren't on speaking terms. I have no idea why. Of course, Grandad Jah could count his close friends on one finger, whereas the number of people he irritated would fill the national football stadium. So, whatever had come between them was probably his fault. Captain Kow was a very laid-back type, and most other people seemed to like him. In fact, Grandad was the only one who didn't. Having them together in a small room was going to be a challenge to my refereeing skills.
Over the next half hour, the captain proved that he was every bit as knowledgeable about maritime matters as Grandad Jah was about road transport. That didn't stop Grandad arguing and making nasty comments. But Captain Kow gave no indication of being rattled at all. He rode the interruptions like a man in a rubber dinghy and calmed us all with his soft sing-song voice. I noticed that he directed most of his attention to me, as if we were the only two in the room. He was given perhaps to unnecessary detail, but the gist of his talk was this.
The Gulf of Thailand is 350,000 square kilometers and is 80 meters at its deepest. Until the sixties it was rich in all different types of fish. The local markets were full of cheap anchovies and mackerel. Thence developed the deep-sea trawler industry…instant huge profits leading to overfishing. An average catch of 300 kilograms an hour in 1961 dropped to 50 kilograms in the eighties, 20 today. All that was left was called "trashfish," supplied to the anything-will-do factories. Most affected were crabs, sharks, rays, lobsters, and all the large fish. With the decline of these predators, the trashfish and squids and shrimps-the bottom plankton feeders-increased. Commercial squid-fishing vessels primarily used purse seines-which the captain told us were a type of fine net used to encircle the shoal-or scoop nets. Powerful lights were used to attract the squid to the surface, where they were more easily captured.
From the seventies there were various regulations introduced as to when the boats were allowed to go out, what nets they could use, and where the spawning grounds were. Anything over seven meters had to register for a license and pay an annual fee. Currently the big boats weren't allowed out for the first three months of the year, and anything over fourteen meters had to stay beyond the 3,000-meter mark for the rest of the year. But the policing of those waters was poor, and most of the bigger boats ignored the regulations.
"So, in other words, what you're saying is the bigger boats can do whatever they want," said Grandad Jah, if only because he hadn't said anything for ten minutes or so. "So, none of what you told us is helpful."
"It always helps to know what the rules are, so you can tell how far they're being bent," said Captain Kow.
There was a short Q and A on communications, crew numbers, and registration necessities, which Kow handled well. Since the squid-boat captain wasn't a member of our task force, I thanked him for his input and showed him out. On the veranda he touched my arm, smiled as much with his eyes as with his mouth, and set off into the downpour as if he hadn't noticed it was raining. I could visualize him on the deck of his boat, rocking and rolling and hauling in the nets. It was a romantic but thankfully not erotic image.
Back in the room the two old men were engaged in a hushed conversation. They looked up at me like chipmunks caught in a headlight beam. It was a bad sign. I had to rein them in.
"Whatever you're planning, stop," I said.
"It was nothing," said Grandad. "We were just agreeing that those SRM boys would have a lot to tell us if we just put a bit of pressure on them."
"You are not going to torture the rat brothers," I told him.
"It'd save us a lot of time in the end."
"No."
"So what are we supposed to do?" he asked.
"Look," I said. "We know Egg's set up this elaborate system for clearing bodies off the beaches. When he met up with the village headmen, he specified Burmese. Now, why would he do that? He's not selling spare parts. He has the body snatchers take them off to the SRM and stick them in a broom cupboard. There are no investigations. The victims remain nameless. What reason could he have other than protecting the slavers who throw their unwanted Burmese overboard? If it was an accident on a legal boat, the captains would report missing crewmen. They'd have to account for the Burmese they hire legitimately. I think you two should go talk to the Thai boat owners. I don't mean interview them. Just find out where they eat or drink or play pool and get into casual conversations with them. See if you can pick up any rumors about deep-sea vessels. Make a few-"
"You don't need to tell us how to extract information," Grandad Jah snapped.
Right. All those illegal parking interrogations fine-tuned a policeman for situations like this.
"You're right, Grandad. Sorry. I'll find out what I can from the police and take another stab at the Burmese. I think the more I can get them to trust me, the more they'll open up."
Before concluding the proceedings, I decided to tell the two old fellows everything I'd learned about the Noys. I thought all their years of experience might help solve that mystery too. They seemed far more interested in that story than in keeping a few Burmese alive. But they agreed we needed to go ahead with caution so as not to frighten off the two women. The old men grabbed their umbrellas and walked off in the direction of the truck. I gathered my wet-weather gear with a view to taking the motorcycle into Pak Nam. Grandad had reminded me that I was young and could withstand a soaking far better than they could. Pneumonia, you know. I was closing my door when, through a curtain of rain, I spotted Arny in front of his cabin. He was sitting on a deck chair flanked by the dogs.
"Hello, little bro," I said.
"You're up to something," he said.
"I'm always up to something," I reminded him.
"You and Grandad and the old policeman. You're doing something. I want to know what it is."
"Why?"
"Why?"
I jogged across to his cabin, shook my hair dry, and sat on the balcony railing. As always, Gogo turned her rump to me. I don't know what I ever did to that dog.
"Yeah, why?" I said. "Why do you want to know? If I tell you it's nothing, you'll get upset because you'll assume we're lying. If it's something, you'll get upset because…well, because it's something."
"You make me sound like some emotional disaster."
I thought it best not to respond to th
at.
"Is it about the grenade?" he asked.
"Indirectly."
"The head on the beach? The Burmese slaves?"
"Possibly."
"Why won't you tell me?"
I didn't know how to break it to him. Honesty had its good points, but in the wrong hands it could be cruel. I really didn't want fragile Arny involved in all this. Just by looking the way he did, he was likely to get knifed down there by the docks. I went the honesty route.
"Arny, you're a wimp."
To my horror, he burst into tears. It was awful. Even the dogs backed away in embarrassment. Surely I'd insulted him worse than that in all our sibling years together. This was about something else. I knelt down and put my arm around his thick neck.
"Arny?"
"I think…I think she's going to leave me," he said through the tears.
"Gaew?"
"Yeah."
"Don't be ridiculous. You two are great together. You're engaged, aren't you?"
I brushed away his tears with the back of my hand, sorry I didn't have a tissue for his runny nose. He'd waited thirty-two years for this first love. It was a bit late in life for a first dumping to go with it.
"It was…was so right at first," he said. "I loved her. We almost had sex so many times."
"I know you…You what? I thought you said…?"
"We did all the foreplay. She wanted to…you know…but I said no. It has to be just right. You know?"
"Of course."
"But I think…I feel she needs more from me. She wants me to be more of.. ."
"A man."
"Yes."
"She said that?"
"No, but…"
"You feel it."
"Right. She's a big Jackie Chan fan." That threw me.
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