Cross Currents

by John Shors

  Lek and Sarai’s home was on the northern side of the restaurant, opposite the bungalows. Their sleeping quarters were only a few feet from the black, jagged boulders that marked the end of the beach. After following a path that climbed above the boulders, Lek sat down on an old teak bench, moving slowly, the bones of his right hip seeming, as usual, to grind against each other. When Sarai sat beside him, he pointed to the roof of one of their bungalows. “See how Patch fixed it?” he asked, speaking softly, which was his custom. “He climbed up there with new thatch and mended it just right.”

  Sarai sighed, her breath leaving her mouth as if she were trying to extinguish a candle. “I have the eyes of a kingfisher, you know. The kingfisher sees a shiny minnow. I see a fixed roof.”

  “He asked me if he could fix it. I didn’t even—”

  “He’s been here for five months. Five. That makes him illegal. What or who is he hiding from?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She started to reply but rubbed her brow instead, sand already on her fingers. “We’re standing on top of a cliff. Do you know that? The wrong step, and down we go.”

  “But we won’t make that step. We—”

  “Down, down, down. We’ve got no money. And our bungalows are falling apart and mostly empty. What would happen if the police found him hiding here, working for us? You’d go to jail, and the children, my mother, and I would . . . We would have to leave for Bangkok. We’d be destitute. Is that what you want?”

  Lek closed his eyes at the thought of such a fate. “No. But . . . but my hip. I can’t work like I used to. I can’t fix roofs or walls or foundations. He’s helping me. All he wants is a room and some food. And he’s nice to the children.”

  “He’s wonderful with the children.”

  “It’s good for them to see a foreigner here, working hard, not just lying on the beach and sleeping. And their English. It’s so amazing. They’re learning for free, and that will help them do whatever they want in life.”

  Laughter emerged from a distant bungalow, and Sarai wondered which of their few residents were up, and what they were doing. “You’re going to turn my hair gray—you know that?”

  “I—”

  “Is that what you want? To age me ten years?”

  “His brother is coming tomorrow. All the way from America. Coming to help him.”

  Sarai shifted on the bench, listening for their baby and their children. “I like Patch. He’s as sweet as sugarcane to all of us. But just because he’s sweet doesn’t mean that bad things can’t happen. If one of our neighbors talks, if the police come, they’ll take you away. Do you understand that? They’ll take you and Patch away together. And then it won’t matter if Suchin and Niran can speak English so well. It won’t matter because their father will be gone.”

  “Shhh. Don’t get upset. You’re more than I can handle when you’re upset.”

  She scowled. “I’m always more than you can handle.”

  “True.”

  “But you’re smart to bring this up now, while I’m still sleepy and open-minded. In a few hours you wouldn’t have a chance. You’d have better luck fishing for elephants.”

  “No one’s going to talk. Everyone likes him. And nobody trusts the police.”

  Somewhere above, a tree frog beeped, its cry a high-pitched sound resembling the horn of a distant motorbike. “You really need him?” Sarai asked, then remembered that she had to buy fresh bananas for her pancakes. She had better get going. While she was at the market, she’d also purchase stalks of lemongrass, tomatoes, onions, eggs, cucumbers, and condensed milk. Everything else she needed to feed her customers and loved ones, she already had.

  As Lek thought about his reply, Sarai studied his face, which was more angular than hers. His features were almost boyish—full lips that seemed to linger in a perpetual smile, a narrow forehead free of worry lines, hair and eyebrows as dark as oil, and shiny cheeks that rarely needed a razor.

  “I need him,” Lek finally replied, “at least until we catch up on all the repairs. Then he can go somewhere else.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “A few more weeks. No more; I promise.”

  Her fingers tightened around his. “I don’t want us to leave here. I’m so afraid of leaving. What would we do?”

  “We’ll—”

  “The children. They’d be broken.”

  “We’ll find a way. We always have. Once the rooms are fixed, we can raise our rates. Raise them by . . . maybe fifty baht a night.”

  “That’s too much. Thirty, maybe.”

  “But everyone’s charging more these days. Ko Phi Phi is no longer a secret.”

  She looked at a group of distant hotels, which were sprawling and several stories high. “Everyone charging more has airconditioning and satellite television and a swimming pool. Is Patch going to build us a pool?”

  “We have the beach,” he replied, his thumb moving against her forefinger. “Those big places, not many are on the beach.”

  “They’re a hundred feet from it.”

  “A hundred feet too many.”

  “For you and me, yes. But for someone who lives in Tokyo or Munich? I don’t think so. They walk farther than that just to go to the bathroom.”

  “It’s better to be closer.”

  Sarai pushed his sandaled foot with hers, knowing that he would always see their bungalows in the best possible light. While his sentimentality moved her, she wished that he would sometimes observe what she did—that the world was overtaking them.

  As his foot pushed back against hers, she wondered how she could bring in more money. Lek would try, and he might succeed, but she needed to earn more, whether through the bungalows or her restaurant or something else. Otherwise they would have to leave the island, where almost all of their ancestors were buried, where they went to school and fell in love. They would leave for Bangkok, and the colors of her life would fade.

  “We have to work harder,” she said. “Somehow we have to work harder.”

  “I know.”

  “The children don’t want to move either. We have to work harder for them.”

  “And we will.”

  “And you think Patch can make that much of a difference? He’s helping you that much?”

  “He is making a difference.”

  A voice emerged from below, the voice of their older daughter. “Then he can stay,” Sarai said, standing up. “For a few more weeks. Until you’ve finished the repairs. But then he has to go. Whatever he’s running from, he’ll have to run somewhere else.”

  “Three weeks. Give us three weeks.”

  She put her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t let the children see your worry. I see it. My mother sees it.”

  “I’ll do better.”

  “Your face . . . I love it more than my own, but it’s still the face of a child, so easy to read. And Suchin and Niran, they need to hear us laugh and see us smile. That’s what we must always do for them.”

  Lek grinned, rising slowly, painfully. “So you still see me as a child? After all these years?”

  “I’ll always see you as a child,” she replied, the corners of her mouth rising, deepening the laugh lines that he so loved. “Why else do you think I married you? For your looks? No. For your money? Definitely not. It’s a good thing for you that I’ve always seen you as a child. Because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here right now. I wouldn’t be thinking about what breakfast you’d like most or about how I’m going to let Patch stay, against my better judgment, because he’ll make your life easier. So thank Buddha for giving you that boyish face. Because without it, your problems would be yours alone. I certainly wouldn’t be sharing them with you.”

  “Thank you, Buddha.”

  “Thank him again. A hundred times. If I were you, I’d thank him every day. That way, he won’t decide to change his mind.”

  DEEP WITHIN THE MIDST OF his dream, Patch’s instincts told him that the newcomer wasn’t to be truste
d. He acted too confident while walking up the stairs that led to the second level. In the backpack slung over his shoulder was supposedly half a kilogram of marijuana—which Patch had already partly paid for, having handed a thick wad of Thai baht to the man’s partner the previous afternoon. This was the local whom Patch trusted. Patch had bought much smaller packs of dope from him on two other occasions, and he’d always been fair, and had restless eyes that seemed to search for police in every nook and cranny.

  The Thai with whom Patch had dealt, as well as the newcomer, wore trousers, tank tops, and sandals. They weren’t big men, but Patch had seen Thai kickboxers at work against one another and knew size didn’t matter. An elbow or a knee thrown by a trained fighter was much more dangerous than a punch swung by some brute who lifted weights from dawn to dusk.

  Patch was between the Thais, and when he reached the landing, he turned to the right, toward his room. He tried to slow his pounding heart with the thought of how much money he’d make reselling the dope. The guesthouse was full of foreigners who liked to roll joints but were afraid to buy from the locals. Patch wasn’t. He’d been in Thailand for six weeks and understood who could and couldn’t be trusted. He’d also tried hard to learn a bit of the language, which seemed to put him in everyone’s good graces.

  The hallway, illuminated by sporadic, naked lightbulbs, stretched far into the distance. The cement floor was blue, the walls pitted and stained. Music, laughter, and the sounds of bodies merging and moving seeped through the wooden doors Patch passed. Reaching into his pocket, he removed a key, thanked the men for meeting him, and approached the brass padlock that secured his room.

  Inside, the room’s lone window was open, revealing Bangkok’s Khao San Road. One story below, Patch glimpsed the usual assortment of backpackers, vendors, taxis, and chaos before he pulled the curtains shut. Turning around, he saw that the Thai he trusted was locking the door behind him.

  “Do you want a Coke?” Patch asked, moving toward a battered minirefrigerator that hummed and groaned like a car dying on the roadside. “I’ve also got some beer. The least I can do is buy you a—”

  “You get money?” the Thai asked in broken English, sweat glistening on his forehead.

  Patch nodded, wishing that the man didn’t seem so tense. After walking into the bathroom, Patch lifted the porcelain lid of the water tank behind the toilet and pulled out a Ziploc bag containing two thousand baht, roughly sixty dollars. “Do you have the weed?” he replied. He felt cornered in the bathroom, and stepped to the side of his sagging bed.

  The unfamiliar face smiled, revealing a silver tooth. Suddenly Patch wished the door weren’t locked. He started to repeat his question when his supplier pulled a shiny badge from his pocket. “You make big mistake,” the Thai said as his accomplice removed a small gun from inside his pants, near his crotch. The gun darted toward Patch the way a cobra might strike. Instinctively, he batted it aside, and a bullet thudded into the ceiling. The man shouted in Thai, twisting in Patch’s direction, the gun once again rising and aiming. With Patch’s free hand, he punched the Thai hard in the face, his fist striking the other man’s upper lip and nose. Blood sprayed on the Thai’s tank top and he fell away, dropping the gun. Patch kicked it as the man’s partner rushed forward, his hands open, slamming like small axes into Patch’s shoulders, aiming for his neck. Stumbling backward, Patch could do little to defend himself other than avoid a crippling blow. “You die tonight!” the Thai shouted, his fury more frightening to Patch than the gun. “You die now!”

  Patch partially warded off a few more blows, felt the window behind him, and leaned back. Suddenly he was falling, spinning, hitting a canopy and tumbling to the ground, landing on his hands and knees. The sidewalk bustled with backpackers, who turned in his direction. The cop put his head out the window and started yelling and pointing. Hands reached for Patch, seeming to claw at him. He beat them aside, fueled by his panic and a strength he’d never known.

  Within seconds he was running, pushing people away, bursting through their outstretched arms. He saw an alley to his right and turned, bounding forward like some sort of animal on the savanna. To his horror, the men who pursued him suddenly metamorphosed into lions. They neared him, their fangs agape, their claws ripping his skin. He heard their snarls, heard the tearing of his flesh.

  “No!” Patch shouted, leaping out of bed, becoming entangled in his mosquito net as he fell to the floor. The lions and alley disappeared, replaced by the familiar thatch walls of his bungalow. Dripping sweat, Patch lay on the floor, his fists balled, his eyes tearing. He trembled, recalling the dream, a replay of what had actually happened to him five months earlier. He remembered running down the alley, the two thousand baht still in his hand, twisting through a labyrinth of buildings and warehouses until the cries of his pursuers were overcome by the beating of his heart.

  Patch glanced at the ceiling, worried that he’d pulled the mosquito net from its moorings. Fortunately, he hadn’t. Rising to his knees and then to his feet, he stepped out from under the net and put on a T-shirt and some shorts, feeling a need to get outside. The light of dawn had come and gone, replaced by an amber blanket that seemed to have been draped over Ko Phi Phi. Trying to take deep and measured breaths, Patch moved toward the beach, eyeing his surroundings, grateful that such beauty would help pull him from his misery.

  Looking to his right, Patch studied the limestone cliff that rose five hundred feet straight above the turquoise bay. The side of the cliff was partly covered in green foliage but was otherwise a slate gray. On the other side of the curving, half-moon beach, about a mile away, a similar cliff soared above the white sand and emerald waters. Between the two wonders of stone, palm trees swayed in a low stretch of connecting land. The sound of miniature waves lapping at the shore was all he heard.

  Stepping into the warm water, Patch continued to breathe deeply, thinking about his prospects. He’d spent most of his two thousand baht fleeing to Ko Phi Phi. The rest of his money, as well as his passport, credit cards, and clothes, had been left behind with the police. Without his passport, he had no legal way of leaving the country without alerting the authorities. And so he had only two choices—he could turn himself in and be charged with assaulting a police officer and likely spend a year in a Thai prison, or he could try to sneak out of the country.

  For five months, Patch had been hiding in Ko Phi Phi, trying to formulate a plan. He didn’t want to turn himself in, but escaping Thailand presented a series of problems so severe that thinking about them often sent him hurrying off for a swim. In the water, his problems seemed to flee, at least to an arm’s length away, to a place where they were manageable.

  During the first few weeks of his time on the island, he’d borrowed money from fellow travelers and kept a low profile. Then he’d been lucky enough to start doing odd jobs for the Thai family who owned a group of dilapidated bungalows at the far end of the beach. In return, they fed him, let him stay in their smallest bungalow, and didn’t ask questions.

  As long as he kept Lek and Sarai happy, Patch had reasoned, he could stay and develop a plan. He could avoid the police. So he’d worked hard, helping whenever possible, and taking the initiative to fix whatever needed fixing.

  Mulling over how a coconut had fallen the previous day and damaged a roof, Patch looked up, studying the trees above the bungalows. One tree had a cluster of green coconuts and leaned over the path that ran between all the bungalows and the restaurant. Though made of sand, the path was lined with piles of brown bricks that Lek had asked Patch to use to pave it. Patch wanted to begin work on the path right away, but he worried about the coconuts, which often fell during storms. Afraid that someone would get hurt, he walked toward the tree and was pleased to see that it didn’t rise straight up, but was curved like a giant longbow.

  Patch had watched local children climb such trees and knew, in theory, how to get from the ground to where the coconuts hung. He put his bare feet on either side of the trunk, reached
around the tree as if he were hugging it, and pulled up with his hands while pushing down with his feet. The bark scraped against his thighs and forearms, but he smiled as he lurched higher. His progress reminded him of the inchworms he’d watched as a child. He climbed about as fast, lifting his hands, then feet, hugging the tree. Though his exposed skin continued to get scraped, he climbed until he reached the long, knifelike fronds and the nest of coconuts, about thirty feet off the ground. Holding on to one of the fronds, Patch hoisted himself on top of the tree, resting on the other fronds and the coconuts.

  “What are you doing up there, you crazy man?”

  Patch looked down through the fronds and spied Suchin. The daughter of Lek and Sarai, Suchin was eight years old, with a round, pleasing face like her mother’s and long hair that she wore in a braided ponytail. Her hair was pulled far enough back to reveal her pierced ears, which held her first pair of earrings—matching yellow seahorses. She was almost always smiling, seemingly proud of her adult front teeth. Though Patch was used to seeing Suchin in her school uniform, since it was Saturday she wore a faded blue Hello Kitty T-shirt and black shorts.

  “Be careful, Patch,” she added, moving directly beneath him, her English nearly flawless. “You’ll fall on your head. And you don’t want to do that any more than you already have.”

  “You be careful. I’m going to drop these coconuts.”

  “Good. Then Mother can sell their milk.”

  “Could you please step back?”

  Suchin did as he asked, watching as he twisted off one of the highest coconuts. Her brother, Niran, appeared, eating a handful of sticky rice. A year younger than Suchin, he had straight black hair and was small for his age. As usual, at least when he wasn’t in school, Niran went shirtless and carried a bamboo pole with a net on one end. “What’s Patch doing?” he asked in Thai, plucking the last few grains of rice from his fingers.