Drive-by Saviours

by Chris Benjamin

  Bunga’s explanation sent Eni into a fit of pitiful tragic moaning and wailing, with salty tears that pelted the child with grand-matronly drama. Bunga again squirmed and struggled free from her nenek’s oppressive emotion and ran for the opening door and straight into her father’s arms.

  Scooping her high over his head and down again for one of his patented nose rubs, Bumi took great delight in the sight of brown peanut sauce creating a clown’s mask around Bunga’s lips. “So you finally decided to eat?” he said.

  “I want to go play at the canal,” she said. She squirmed herself free, looking back over her shoulder toward her nenek.

  Bumi frowned to hide his elation. “Okay Child, let’s go play at the canal. You’ve been inside too long anyway. But first I have a few more questions for you, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said. “But please keep it short, I really need to see if Mohammed is waiting for me. He might be.”

  Bumi sat down heavily, allowing his daughter to land unceremoniously in his lap. “He’s not waiting for you, Child,” he told her flatly. “He’s gone.”

  “Gone to Paradise,” Eni said from the kitchen door at the far side of the living room where they sat. “He’ll wait for you there, Child. You’ll see one day. It will be a long wait for him but he will be patient.”

  Bunga rolled her eyes at her father, who rolled his back. “Yes, in heaven,” Bumi shouted so Eni could hear. “Right, Child?”

  “Yes, Daddy, one day.” Then she whispered, “But what if he is waiting for me at the canal, and not in Paradise at all?”

  “Why do you think he’s there, Child?” Bumi whispered back.

  “Because that was our favourite place to play. And last week I was going to meet him there. But then Arun asked me to skip rope so I did that instead. He may still be waiting for me. I should have gone there before.”

  While Bunga agonized, Bumi’s mind identified its latest example of the only anchor he’d ever known in all the world’s confusing plethora of stimuli: a pattern. “So, you and Mohammed liked to play by the canal, hey?”

  “Usually me, him and a few others play there every day, but he was so mad when I didn’t go even though I promised. He wouldn’t even talk to me last week. So I just didn’t bother going since then.”

  “What about the neighbour boy, what’s-his-name?”

  “Ichel?”

  “Ichel. He liked to play by the canal too, ya?”

  “Ya, all the time.”

  “And how about that girl, the one you didn’t like.”

  “When she came to the canal, that was when I usually left,” she said, and quickly added, “God rest her soul.”

  Bumi rolled his head back as far as his neck would allow, opened his mouth and felt most of his blood march into his head. It helped circulate the maelstrom of thoughts and his oldest nemesis: questions. What to tell Robadise, if anything? Could it be just a coincidence? If the canal was a causal factor in the deaths, was Bunga in danger? How could this important source of water for the city turn on a few innocent kids? Damn questions.

  WITH BUNGA SPEAKING AGAIN, THOUGH STILL NOT HER USUAL effusive self, the house expanded slightly, loosened and softened. Yaty could sleep again, Robadise could focus more on finding a culprit, Eni cooked a little less and gossiped a little more, Bunga focused her energies on keeping Baharuddin’s spirits high as he tried in vain to make proper words come out of his mouth. Even Eni’s husband, Nurkin, juggler of a million men’s needs for sensitivity, discretion, stealth and management of discrepancies, relaxed. At home he was a man of few words, and most of what he said pertained to logistical matters and the administration of bathroom time, mealtimes, work schedules and other mundane matters. During the few days after Bunga regained her appetite and tongue, Nurkin was seen to smile on three occasions, one of them when Bumi stepped into a large pothole filled with an unknown, tar-black liquid.

  Only Bumi remained high-strung. He was working out how to find causal factors in the children’s deaths, a logistical challenge since his presence in the house was expected after his long work shift. Robadise dropped incessant hints about clues but Bumi wanted to gather proof or at least some hint of cohesion to his theory before presenting it to his irritable brother and his inherent ‘bullshit detector,’ which all cops feel blessed with even if in some cases it is nothing more than the same prejudices that curse us all.

  Bumi had no time to visit the canal himself and had given Bunga an absolute ban on going there. Some sort of evil was lurking there, and he suspected its form was more bacterial than human. If questions and doubts were his brain’s ultimate nemesis, bacteria were next in line to destroy his body. And if patterns were his genius, practical solutions were his idiocy. So bound to routine and familial duty was Bumi that he could conceive of no way to visit the canal alone, despite a deep, gnawing need to disprove his worst fears about his own guilt. He was left with no choice but to confront Robadise in the study with his theory and no proof. He vainly hoped that Robadise’s shared interest in the pattern would prove Bumi’s innocence to his nagging mind. The reality of Robadise’s mocking response was not a great surprise to Bumi.

  “I expected better from you, Bumi,” Robadise said. “You’ve never been so superstitious before, at least not in that way. Is your faith in humanity that naïve that you think it could not have been a human force behind this evil? Instead you blame the canal. The evil forces of nature, heh? It’s creative and would make a nice story for your kids at night, but this is reality.”

  “But Robadise there is no evidence of murder here — you said so yourself!”

  “There is also no evidence of murder-by-canal, Bumi.”

  “Not murder, but perhaps something in the water. Who knows? Surely it’s worth exploring. Since you’ve got nothing else?”

  Robadise bunched the front of Bumi’s collar into his fist and slowly pulled him close. “I’ve staked my career on this, Bumi,” he said. “I’ve got every cop in the city and then some looking for the murderer. I’m asking you, Brother, for the hundredth time, to put some thought into who might be responsible. Who, Bumi? Not what. For the sake of your children, please use your God-given common sense.” He released him abruptly and left Bumi with Nurkin’s collection of murder mystery novels and his own irritating thoughts.

  “God gave me no common sense,” Bumi told the door. “And for that I can’t forgive Him.” And he prayed for forgiveness.

  IT TOOK A FOURTH DEATH, THIS TIME OF A SIX-YEAR-OLD CHINESE girl, Mei, to break Bumi from his routine. Bunga confirmed that Mei also enjoyed playing at the canal. When asked if there was a specific spot where they met she indicated that behind the amusement park he could find an area shaded by trees where they had placed some discarded cardboard and called it their own Fort Rotterdam. In the late evening Bumi shocked his family by announcing he was going for a solitary ‘constitutional.’

  Bunga’s spot wasn’t hard to find but there was little to see, just a few abandoned old toys and candy wrappers, and the cardboard she’d mentioned. The water looked innocuous enough, no more polluted than the rest of the city, and not likely to cause anything more than the usual diarrhea, which is easily treated among the middle class in a city the size of Makassar. He dared not touch the water directly and decided instead to return with a mason jar and rubber gloves in the night’s wee hours, a time he’d normally waste obsessing over the alarm clock and memories of strangers in the neighbourhood. At least it was a way to keep himself busy, which was the only way to stave off his bullying thoughts.

  Bumi arrived home just after midnight and kissed his sleeping wife before setting the alarm for their usual six o’clock waking time. He would stay awake until two o’clock and then go back to the canal. But he felt nauseous. He exhausted his energies repeatedly tripping to the toilet. He fell into a deep slumber just before two. He woke up cursing the alarm clock
with twice his usual vehemence.

  THERE WAS NOTHING TO BE DONE BUT THE USUAL: GO TO WORK, be a drone, make the sacrifice for the family, hope his daughter wasn’t the next to die with no explanation of who or what was at fault, or if it was his own fault. As he walked to work, carefully avoiding the myriad bumps and cracks in the road and touching every streetlight, stopping every passer-by to collect his or her name and purpose and write them down along with a detailed description of the possible perpetrator, he longed for his old warung friends so he could discuss the child deaths with them. Not that they would have answers, but at least they would provide a place for him to deposit his thoughts. What a waste, he thought, that with the brilliant minds in his own home no one seemed to have the time or energy anymore for proper debate. Maybe when Bunga and Baharuddin got older he could argue with them. If they got older. If he didn’t kill them first, like he had the other children. He prayed for forgiveness again, just in case.

  The factory was certainly no place for intelligent conversation. Among the workers the only heated debate was about which horse would race well on the coming weekend, unless you counted the profane arguments his colleagues sometimes had with the machinery. The machines always responded stoically, and remained stubbornly unwilling to operate until a mechanic arrived. In the meantime the craziest person on the shift would be responsible for mercilessly flogging the miscreant robot with a monkey wrench. Sometimes a few whacks would knock loose whatever was jamming the mechanisms and the mechanic could be cancelled. Otherwise betting ensued about what would break first, the wrench, the machine or the guy doing the whacking.

  Bumi had tried befriending some of the managers, who had the job of watching the others work, in the hopes of learning something of interest to add to his information warehouse. He was sharply told to mind his place and get back to work. Often as he was applying his layer of tanning material to the current throughput of belts he’d overhear a conversation between two or more managers, and they were as mundane if not more so than the workers’ horserace predictions. They didn’t dare discuss politics, had no concept of philosophy and only praised Allah in passing when business was good. They talked about productivity levels, which were always below acceptable. They talked of markets, which were always rosy thanks to the good work of General Suharto.

  But on this particular day, a new thing happened. Bumi overheard a fascinating and potentially useful tidbit of information from two managers, which took the form of an argument on tactical responses to a potentially dangerous situation. This situation was more dangerous, or at least more immediate, than the usual outdated machinery, lack of safety equipment, poor air circulation and abundance of toxic chemicals. Most importantly, it had the potential to be very public. The danger related directly to Bumi’s most pressing personal concern.

  “Bad news about that fire at the Bawakaraeng plant, ya?” the first manager said.

  There was a long pause during which Bumi had to force himself to keep working rather than ask the manager what fire he was talking about.

  Finally the second manager answered his colleague. “Ya, but it could have been worse. The fire was quickly extinguished with little damage and hardly any leakage. It was well managed. Didn’t even make the news. There is nothing to be concerned about.”

  “You’re right,” the other said. “It sounds like the Americans may be interested in picking up our new fashion line, heh? Perhaps we’re in for a raise.”

  The conversation was the usual rooster talk from that point on but all Bumi could hear was the phrase “hardly any leakage.” The words rang in his ears like a gunshot. He felt ill. Four children had died mysteriously, all choking like they’d been poisoned, all who liked to play at the same canal that ran through Bawakaraeng where this fire occurred. Yet no one cared enough to look into it.

  Bumi felt a strong urge to violently attack the two managers, for the sake of his children, for the sake of Bunga who at an age when her first memories were forming had lost her playmates and friends and these bastards were unwilling to do more than banter while Robadise stormed the warpath. He convinced himself to stay put as his rage shifted inward. He considered throwing himself into the leather cutting machine. He was no better than these fools. He had suspected the canal and done nothing.

  Worse, his worst suspicions about himself were, in a way, confirmed. He was partially responsible for putting the same toxins that perhaps killed those children into the belt that would hold some rich American’s designer jeans up. He was guilty as suspected.

  He fumed and he raged silently through his shift, his mind in turmoil. When his shift ended Bumi ran home, for once forgetting his rituals, to tell Robadise what he’d heard. He ran straight by the four police vehicles parked outside the house. He ran straight into the broad end of a large policeman’s stick, which he then found pushed against his esophagus, choking him. He was flipped facedown to the kitchen floor. He tasted his own blood as cold metal clamped down on his wrists.

  “What’s going on?” he choked out as best he could.

  He was answered with another stick, this time across the back of his head. The room went black as he was hauled to his feet and he smelled and felt burlap against his face. His legs were rubbery underneath him and he heard voices crying, feminine voices, women and children both. They cried his name.

  FROM TWELVE TO FORTY-THREE IN CHAPTER 12

  Soon after Thanksgiving-Christmas in Ottawa I came down with a bad case of the Drug Resistant Super Bug, or ‘flu’ as everyone else insisted on calling it. Sarah missed the whole thing, the hallucinations and midnight sweats. She was in Halifax visiting a university friend. She called me every night and told me to stop exaggerating. Her suspicions of my psychosomatics were confirmed when she returned home the day after I went back to work, having fully recovered.

  Her hands flailed as she told me of a new friend she made in Halifax: Lily. Lily lived in Toronto but was at a conference on Canada’s refugee hearing process. They met at a fair trade coffee shop on Barrington Street. Sarah told Lily stories about the workers who grew and picked the coffee they were ordering, not knowing that the father of this fair-skinned girl was one of the real-life workers in question. Fortunately Sarah’s version was not so far from his experiences. That was in Nicaragua, before the revolution in which Lily’s father and mother, a Canadian gringa, both fought. Sarah decided that Lily should meet me, what with my experience counselling refugees.

  The night we had Lily over Sarah spent several hours making her famous spinach and ricotta lasagne while I tried to move the new bathroom floor from its six-month sublet in our basement into its permanent home under our feet and around our toilet. The fancy carved radish adornments topped the lasagne as I swept gyprock sawdust under the floor-mat and the doorbell rang.

  “That’s her,” Sarah squealed. She was like a schoolgirl hosting one of the popular kids.

  Sarah had easily befriended most of my friends and ditched the more vacuous of the modelling scene. This was her first chance since we’d met to be the conductor of a more intellectual, maybe even political, chemistry. She ran full-tilt from kitchen to front, stopped abruptly, did a little booty shake, and pulled open the door. “Lily!” she cried, as if surprised, and hugged her new friend.

  I stood in my spackled overalls, just outside the bathroom door at the end of the hall. I first saw Lily’s face over the shoulder of my partner and it struck me like a dull axe. She was pretty, with sharp European features and white skin accentuated by thick dark hair and large brown eyes, but that wasn’t how I saw her. I saw her in incandescent charcoal. She wore an evil cartoon smile underneath a salon job hairdo that came in straight fat needles. They pointed out the most striking features of her face: high cheekbones, faraway dream-weary eyes, cavernous dimples and a jutting chin. Worlds collided in her face and it represented, to me, all of humanity’s recent intermingling globalization, our attempts to shrink-w
rap the world and develop super-everything from diseases to drugs to highways. Her smile was easy and it made me dizzy. I shook her hand too vigorously and said I’d heard a million good things, pulled a one-eighty on my heel, marched to the living room and dropped myself onto the couch.

  We made small talk over brandy and Sarah got to the point during the main course, suggesting that perhaps I could do a feature on Lily’s work with the refugee centre in an upcoming issue of the social workers’ newsletter. I nodded my agreement.

  Lily was more measured. “What would be the focus, me or the refugee centre?” she asked. “And also who are your readers?”

  I explained that the readers were professional social workers and that in my column I usually tried to find some interesting or innovative approach to the issues they faced. Settlement for new immigrants is a hot issue in Toronto so I was certain that we could do a popular story about her work, but of course it helps readability if there is some personal information about the people doing the work—the human interest angle.

  “What about the refugees themselves, aren’t they interesting enough?” she asked.

  “Sure they are,” I said. “Go ahead, tell us all about them.”

  “You need to see the refugee centre for yourself,” she said. “Come next week.” She forked a piece of lasagne into her mouth. Case closed.

  A TYPICAL TORONTO BUNGALOW, LILY’S REFUGEE CENTRE ALSO served as the home of Lily’s parents, Gwen and Jose Luis, who everybody called Jose ever since he became a Canadian citizen in 1996. They welcomed me and invited me to join the family, staff, volunteers and clients for lunch. There was an incredible warmth and openness to the house, and Jose explained that for refugee claimants Canada can be a very unwelcoming place while they await their hearings and are without any useful status. Furthermore, he explained, most of their clients are from Latino countries, and they are used to eating meals communally at work, and engaging with people warmly and openly. The lunch was simple but exotic to me: corn tortillas, beans, rice, a little grated cheese and salsa, all made by Lily. It was delicious.