Drive-by Saviours

by Chris Benjamin

  The newspaper was maintenance for Bumi’s mind but the novels were a whole new kind of engine, making the encyclopedia obsolete with their slick language and vivid descriptions. It was like reading something Pram had spoken, like a magic transcript of other worlds, places and people’s lives.

  First he learned of a heroic young policeman who fought the communist uprising of the early sixties, rising above the ashes of his childhood poverty, struggling against the excesses of foreign influence, and marrying his childhood sweetheart in the process. The seductive book had Bumi putting himself in the handsome hero’s place, but who would be his childhood sweetheart? He could think only of Alfi, and God would never approve.

  Bumi’s next novel was about a young peasant woman who bettered herself by marrying a distinguished prince, becoming his second wife. Through diligence and meticulous observation she learned her new family’s royal ways and blossomed into her husband’s favourite, earning the first wife’s jealous anger.

  All day while his classmates struggled with vocabulary and grammar, often receiving raps on the knuckles for their failures, Bumi read novels, hour after hour. He soon came to realize that all the novels were similar to the first two. They had two themes: improving one’s social status and keeping Indonesia united, traditional and uninfluenced by foreigners.

  Although the depth of the stories and the fluency of the language remained excellent, Bumi felt he had learned about social climbing and unfettered sovereignty as well as he could. He was ready to move on. He asked Ibu Nova if there were any books at the school about anything else, which earned him a rapping of the knuckles at the front of the class.

  The punishment touched that hard part of his heart belonging to Yusupu and brought a strange mix of longing and the pain of betrayal, which was multiplied by the laughter of his jealous friends. The ones he’d once led in childhood role-play games had turned on him.

  But the physical punishment and the laughter of his cohorts was nothing compared to being made to sit with the others and raise his hand before answering a question. And by ignoring his madly waving hand Ibu Nova assured his eventual non-participation. Bumi instead learned to sit upright with eyes wide and mouth shut while his mind reworked the stories he knew: the novels, the news, Arum’s interpretations, Pram’s war, his uncle’s fishing stories, all into an epic tale of his rise against Ibu Nova’s oppression, and later against Allah Himself, with Alfi standing defiantly by his side staring at clouds as if they held their own significance and God was but an afterthought.

  As the weeks passed and Bumi’s requests to visit Rilaka on their day off went unheeded, the fantasy got bloodier. First Ibu Nova got it in the neck with a fountain pen. Then the communists who tried to make Bumi stupid and ignorant like his classmates were executed with WWII Japanese machine guns. Then, for some reason or other, Yusupu died of a fish spear through his heart. In the end, Bumi always returned to Rilaka and married Alfi, the two became King and Queen of the Island, and people came from all over Indonesia to hear his stories and advice, the end.

  These dreams were the highlight of Bumi’s school life. When class was not in session the boys just wanted to play soccer and the girls just wanted to watch, despite Ibu Nova’s encouragement that they, and Bumi, join the game. Bumi tried to start up some Monsters of the Deep, but it was too island specific and remembering that other life allowed for the surfacing of better-left-buried emotions. Besides that, no one wanted to take orders from a loud-mouthed, know-it-all troublemaker.

  His development into an outcast made escape a real possibility. Instead of planning logistics for fifteen, Bumi had only himself to think about. Within two months his classmates had forgotten all about visiting Rilaka. Their parents never bothered to show their faces at the school residence.

  In the Makassar newspaper Bumi had seen an ad for trips by a great big bus with cushy seats and air-conditioning. The cost of a trip to the mountain district of Tana Toraja was three thousand rupiah and Bumi hadn’t seen or touched money since he’d begun his new existence at school. His best chance, and the only one he could think of, was Arum.

  By getting ‘lost’ during a bus transfer on a class trip to the WWII Museum, Bumi managed to take the ‘wrong’ bus to the market instead, where he quickly found Pram in the old spot behind the street meat. Pram jumped to his feet to embrace the boy with such fervour he lost his balance and projectile-vomited onto the sidewalk. “Bumi!” he cried, wiping puke from the corners of his mouth. “Where have you been?”

  Bumi was about to explain when the skewer vendor charged at them waving a long, sharp, two-pronged fork hollering, “Away from my customers you sacrilegious bum!”

  Bumi, who was adept at dodging disciplinarians, grabbed and pulled Pram’s hand, running hard. They ran two blocks before realizing the vendor had dropped his pursuit early. Pram puked again. To Bumi’s concerned gaze he responded, “Quick motion is hard on my head, and my stomach.”

  Bumi nodded and Pram added, “Son-of-a-bitch! He’ll tolerate the rats and the roaches but a war vet he attacks.”

  Bumi, uncertain of the appropriate response, asked, “Where’s Arum?”

  “Oh,” Pram answered. “At her usual spot. Not much good hanging out together without you around, except at night of course.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, who would listen to our stories? Who would take Arum’s textiles to sell in the market?”

  “You could tell each other stories. You could sell Arum’s sarongs. You could share the money.”

  Pram laughed at the notion of a store owner buying products from an earless old freak with a puking problem. He told Bumi, “We can’t pay each other to listen to our stories.”

  “You can live off the sarongs,” Bumi said. “Or you can tell your stories to strangers for money.”

  “No adult wants to hear our stories, Bumi, only children. And usually children are broke. Would you like a story now?”

  “I gotta find Arum,” Bumi said, exasperated.

  Pram took him to her. She was sitting on an unfinished sarong shaking a can with a few coins in it. Bumi kneeled beside her and asked if she was sick. She shook her head ‘no.’

  “Sad?” he asked.

  She nodded and without looking up, she asked him, “Where did you go?”

  “School,” he told her.

  “Congratulations.”

  “I hate it.”

  Now she looked up and met his eyes. “But it’s what you wanted,” she reminded him.

  “They took me from home. I can’t see my family anymore.” He couldn’t even begin to explain how his friends no longer liked him.

  “Surely your father is near now.”

  “Not until later. He’s still gathering nets. I have to get back. I ditched a field trip to see you. I’m gonna get caned.”

  Arum flashed him a gummy grin, then looked down to the ground. “Terrible rattan cane. I remember it too well, Bumi.” She looked back up at him. “What are they teaching you?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “First they let me read novels, but when I asked for a novel about something else besides getting rich or fighting wars, Ibu Nova made me learn grammar like the rest.”

  Arum’s gums practically gleamed as her smile grew wider. “I’ve taught you well,” she said. “What you may not know is that Indonesia has some of the finest writers alive, and they all live together in one place now: prison. And their books have all been sent to hell. Now we’re stuck with government-issued trash written by shit-eating hacks who live in the anuses of politicians.”

  In Bumi’s young literal mind this image was disgusting. It burdened him with the guilt of having once enjoyed the work of these minute and hideous beasts. Wishing to pursue neither the image nor its implications any further he said, “The newspaper says there’s a bus to the mountains, costs three thousand rupiah.”<
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  “Ya, it’s true my little beauty. You catch it at the main station.”

  “I was there today! That’s where I ditched them. Ibu, do you have any sarongs I can sell? Please.”

  “Just the one I’m sitting on. I gave up on it when you stopped coming by. It’s a bit dirty.”

  “I need three thousand. That’s five sarongs.”

  Arum pondered the order and scratched her chin. “That’ll take a couple months,” she said. “I’m out of practice now.”

  “No problem. I can wait.”

  “But Bumi, if I spend all my time stitching, and you’re not here to sell them as I finish, I’ll have no income and no time to beg. I’ll starve.”

  Pram nodded behind her. “We were much richer when you were around,” he said.

  “Maybe Pram can share what he earns with you,” Bumi said, his brain scrambling for an escape route from his compounding troubles. “It’s a loan. We can all split the profits.”

  “Then you won’t have enough for your escape.”

  “Then we need ten sarongs.”

  Arum shook her head sadly at the boy’s desperation. “There’s one more thing, Small Child. I didn’t want to tell you. But I had to sell the materials I had. A nice young housewife bought them from me. It was a tough week. A tough month.”

  Bumi placed his forehead in her lap so she could stroke his hair. For a moment he thought he would cry to her, like he had once before, but then some lonesome synapse off in the corner of his brain finally got over its shyness and put forth an idea: Yusupu! Yusupu.

  Bumi’s whole head popped up so he could say, “I’ll get the money from my dad. I’ll borrow cash for materials and we can pay him back.”

  Arum and Pram knew nothing of Yusupu other than his strength, stature and skill as a fisher and as a man, so to them it was a simple and logical plan. To Bumi it was the height of desperation and risk. He’d made his decision: he’d rather die than go back to school.

  THE FIRST RISK WAS NOT RENDEZVOUSING WITH HIS CLASS AT THE museum. Bumi dared hope no one would notice his absence. To meet Yusupu, however, would require waiting until early afternoon, by which time the class would be on their way back to school. If he was really lucky, which he didn’t seem to be lately, he’d beat them there. He’d claim that he got lost and decided the safest thing was to backtrack to the school. But if he got back to school after the others he’d have to convince Ibu Nova that he got hopelessly lost and spent hours wandering through Makassar.

  The second risk was Yusupu. Yusupu’s share of Bumi’s heart had frozen. While Alfi played on his mind in daydreams and night-dreams, and Win’s gentle words and touches came to him at the most useful times, Yusupu had barely registered on his mind or soul since he’d left Rilaka. And now, to beg the man for money.

  He spent the morning storytelling—this time sharing stories of school with his street friends. Just after midday he meandered over to the fish vendors. Yusupu was in his usual spot, speaking broken, slurred Indonesian with a young purchaser, haggling over a single fillet that was to be the young man’s supper. “Great fish, good price!” Bumi heard Yusupu shout.

  “A great cut of fish deserves a great price,” the young man said.

  Yusupu repeated, “Great fish! Good price!” He looked ancient, like he’d doubled in age in only two months. That frozen part of Bumi’s heart melted a little. How could he approach this poor old man, this confused, frustrated, broken-down dog, for help? It should have been the other way around. Still his legs urged him forward to the blanket upon which lay the day’s catch.

  “That’s okay,” the young man said as he disentangled himself from Yusupu’s flustered ministrations. “Maybe I’ll have chicken instead.”

  “Fish is higher in protein and lower in fat,” Bumi said from behind the man, who turned, surprised, and faced the boy.

  “His price is too high,” the man said. “He won’t negotiate.”

  Yusupu stared at Bumi, mouth agape, as if he were seeing a loved one’s ghost, uncertain whether to rejoice or run.

  “He don’t understand your smooth talk,” Bumi told the man, slipping into his market slang. “When you say great fish deserves a great price, he don’t understand the difference.”

  “Maybe he should learn better Indonesian,” the man said.

  “Maybe you should learn better Buginese.”

  “But I’m from Java, what do I need with Buginese?”

  “It would help you buy fish.”

  “Well, I don’t want it that badly.”

  “You’re almost drooling. You said it was great.”

  “That was just a line.”

  “Well Sir, when you haggle, telling the seller his product is great won’t help you get a good price.” There was a bratty and devious part of Bumi that enjoyed goading and baiting his less formidable opponents, and intimidating bearish buyers.

  “Perhaps for the uneducated haggling works better than negotiation,” the man said. “But not for me.”

  “Oh, you’re an educated man?”

  “I’m a teacher,” he said.

  “Then you’ll appreciate my father’s work to send me to school. It’s very expensive, but he always says ‘only the best for my boy.’”

  Yusupu smiled but said nothing.

  “So, what school do you go to then?”

  “Oh, I’m not going to school yet, or I’d be there now, wouldn’t I?” Bumi said, anticipating a trap. “My father is saving money so I can go next year, so I can overcome my humble roots and poverty.”

  Yusupu smiled, trying to look humble and poor. The boy was on his game with no signs of rust.

  “So, what insultingly low price are you offering for this great fish?” Bumi asked.

  “Well, I haven’t made an offer yet. I was waiting for him to give me a better price.”

  “Another haggling hint, Sir. You have to make a counter-offer. He won’t counter his own offer for you. Don’t they haggle in Java?”

  “Of course they do! Well, you are a smart young man, aren’t you? His price was five hundred, but I’ll pay no more than three hundred.”

  It was all too easy. Two hundred was the cut off point. If you got more than that for a fish, well, Yusupu would eat and drink plenty that night. Or Bumi would get his materials.

  “Four hundred!” shouted Yusupu, getting back into the spirit of the game.

  “Well, alright,” said the teacher.

  Bumi knew the man was being kind, offering a nice gesture for the sake of his education and the man’s sense of being a good person. Yusupu was ecstatic and danced upon the man’s departure. Whether it was for his sake or the extra rupiah Bumi wasn’t sure.

  “Bumi! Why haven’t you been home?” Yusupu asked when his jig was complete.

  “They won’t let us, Daddy. No one is ever available to take us to the dock on Friday, and they won’t let us go by ourselves. I end up at the stupid mosque when I should be visiting home. I had to sneak away today just to see you. I’ll be caned when I return.”

  This angered Yusupu. No one had the right to harm his boy.

  “Bumi, I wish I could take you home, but they would find you and we’d all be punished for preventing Indonesia’s development.”

  “I know, Daddy. You can’t take me back.” Bumi paused for a deep breath, the kind you inhale from outer space. “Daddy, I need money. For my escape.” He cringed at the impending blow, but it didn’t come.

  “Escape?” asked Yusupu. “To where?”

  “Tana Toraja.”

  “I can’t afford that, Son.”

  “All I need is fifteen thousand rupiah, enough to buy some materials for my friend Arum. She’ll use it to make some sarongs and I’ll sell them for a good price. We’ll share the profits and I can pay you back.” The w
ords rushed out like the noises of a scared animal and Bumi couldn’t stop them or tailor his explanation. It was too blunt.

  Again Bumi cringed as Yusupu’s hand moved from his side, but he merely reached into his pocket and pulled out three five-thousand-rupiah notes, a small fortune, handed them crumpled to Bumi and said, “Will you come back again, Son?”

  “Yes,” Bumi affirmed. “To pay you back. My love to Mommy and Alfi.” He kissed his father and ran, unable to stand another moment with this strange old man who had replaced his audaciously dangerous father.

  AFTER LEAVING ARUM WITH THE MATERIALS HE’D PURCHASED, Bumi ran from the central market through two different back alleys and up onto the main road, past a bewildered policeman and down a street full of hawkers, all the way to the bus terminal where he plopped empty-breathed directly into the backseat of a minibus. From his seat he watched the road unfold, ignoring the communal conversation of his fellow passengers. He could think only of the danger ahead, the pain of punishment.

  For once Bumi was lucky. He beat the rest of his class back to the school, and reported immediately to the Headmaster, Pak Wayan, to explain that he’d gotten separated from the class, wandered around the open-air main bus depot for a few confusing and frightening hours, then decided to catch a bus back to the school. The headmaster stared blank-faced at him across the desk before dismissing the boy with a wave of his hand, showing Bumi his long nails as if to say, ‘My brain is far too important to deal with dirty things like you today.’

  Bumi scurried from Wayan’s office with due deference and remorse, not for his lies but for his insignificance, for wasting such a one’s time. He found his bunk and began writing a letter to his family in the hopes that someone in the city could one day read it to them, maybe Arum. The letter began: “I have found the secret to surviving school life: play dumb.” And so he did for a long, long time.