Drive-by Saviours

by Chris Benjamin

  He looked up as he walked through Pearson Airport’s security and frowned at me in resignation or confusion.

  I called Sherry as soon as I was through to the pay phones.

  “What happened with Abdul’s hearing?” I asked.

  “Shit, Mark, welcome back,” she said. “Abdul was denied refugee status. He was deported.”

  SEVEN YEARS BETWEEN BEATINGS IN CHAPTER 22

  A man named moktar mohammad, who resembled the ghost of a notorious child murderer, arrived at the street coincidentally named Jalan Moktar with sweat drenched through the suit he’d purchased for the occasion. A tall man with a thick greying moustache answered the door.

  “Bumi,” the man whispered.

  Moktar looked at the man’s protruding belly and carefully examined his tailor-made silk shirt. “Moktar,” he said, extending his hand.

  Robadise grabbed his hand and pulled him inside. He slammed the door behind him. He issued a backwoods bear hug, lifting Moktar off the ground. “Bumi!” Robadise shouted. “Bumi!” He dropped his guest to the thinly carpeted floor and asked, “Or are you a ghost? You know, if you skipped out on your loan you will soon be a ghost, and so will I.” He laughed from some evil-sounding place inside him.

  Moktar bent over and clutched his knees, gasped for breath. “I’m neither a ghost nor Bumi,” he gasped. “Nor have I skipped out on my loan, at least not on any I’m expected to repay.” He looked up from his knees and thrilled in the furrowed brow of confusion on his brother’s face. He fished his passport from his jacket pocket. “Moktar Mohammad,” he said, extending his hand again with a smile.

  Robadise slapped his hand away. “I wasn’t expecting you yet, Bumi,” he said. “How did you manage to pay your debt so soon?”

  Bumi gave a brief explanation of Sarah’s mother’s loan and asked to see his wife and children.

  “Bumi, have a seat,” Robadise said.

  SOON AFTER BUMI’S COVERT DEPARTURE FROM THE RECORD BOOKS of Indonesia, Suharto’s official opposition party, which had propped his regime for thirty faithful years, criticized some of the president’s policies. The cold war had ended and the U.S. need for a communist-hating dictator in the world’s largest Muslim nation had melted along with it. The United States Congress cut the cash cord to Suharto’s military over the objections of the first President Bush. It didn’t take long for the Indonesian opposition to rediscover its spine. The timing was perfect because American President Slick Willie Clinton was in Jakarta when the opposition confiscated some office buildings. The rioting started while Slick Willie put his arm around General Suharto’s shoulder and whispered a few suggestions into his ear.

  Just days later, Robadise heard a vengeful murmur on the streets of his town. The murmurs went something like, “Well, yes, God and government avenged Bumi, but his wife and children live on as if no evil deed had been done. Why not get into the revolutionary spirit of things and get a little revenge while we’re at it?”

  The lead murmurer was the cop named Kartiman, whose little girl was one of Bumi’s victims. Kartiman was supported by the most successful of Rilaka’s children, Bumi’s old nemesis Daing, whose fish-processing plant had gained favour from the New Order’s local henchmen and reached American markets. Even Bumi’s fellow coffee shop revolutionaries, who felt betrayed and disturbed that an idealist would murder children, were anxious to take revolutionary revenge on Yaty.

  Robadise didn’t think the murmurers were serious until a fellow officer told him otherwise. “Kartiman has never recovered from his loss,” the officer said. “I would hate to see your beautiful sister harmed.”

  That night, almost a year to the day since Bumi’s departure, Robadise stitched together some plans for his seamstress sister. He made a few calls and decided no Muslim would be crazy enough to follow her into the mountainous Christian territory of Tana Toraja in the north. He found her a nice home with a local cop named Mathias, for whom Yaty was a good match. It was an opportunity to marry into another established police family. She was a widow and could re-marry as soon as a full year had passed. Mathias would give her the kind of communal protection even Robadise and his aging father could never guarantee.

  For the sake of her children, she had no choice.

  BUMI SURGED FROM THE HOUSE WITH ROBADISE IN PURSUIT, shouting “Bumi, where are you going?”

  “To see her of course,” Bumi said. Sweat ran off his forehead, over his cheeks and onto his lips.

  “You don’t even know where the house is,” Robadise said.

  “How big can Tana Toraja be?” Bumi asked.

  “Huge,” Robadise said. “It is several mountains. Anyway you’ll never make it across town. You are still a wanted man. You don’t think anyone actually believes you are dead, do you? If I wasn’t a cop it would be me who was dead for what I pulled. As it is I’m blacklisted. I practically had to go straight because no cop or criminal trusts me anymore.”

  Bumi stopped, chest heaving, but did not turn to face Robadise. It seemed Robadise had been waiting more than seven years to explain what a martyr he’d been.

  “Come on,” Robadise said. “Listen to reason, Brother.”

  Bumi turned on his heel to face the giant shadow that had darkened his psyche for so many years. “Don’t call me that!” he shouted.

  Robadise took a quick step backward and clutched at his heart with both hands as if he had been punched there. “But surely we are still brothers,” he said. “Time can’t have changed that.”

  “Not time,” Bumi said. “Actions. You sold me a pile of useless hope, and you sold my wife the pretence of safety in an inherently dangerous world. I’m surprised you haven’t sold your mother yet.”

  “She resides with God now,” Robadise said.

  “He must have made you a good offer,” Bumi said.

  Robadise stepped forward and broke Bumi’s nose with his fist. He looked down at where Bumi lay and offered him his hand.

  “Come inside,” he said as he pulled Bumi back to his feet.

  Bumi turned and walked away, face as red as the blood trickling from his nose.

  Robadise followed. “I’m sorry I hit you,” he said. “But you can’t speak of one’s mother like that, even if she is your mother-in-law.”

  “She is no longer my mother-in-law,” Bumi said, “because you killed me and my widow re-married.”

  “I didn’t kill you,” Robadise said. “I saved your life. And I must say that ever since you learned Yaty’s fate you’ve looked like much less of a ghost, Mr. Moktar, and much more like the real Bumi. I fear for your safety. If the fathers of Lastri, Ichel, Mohammed and Mei should see you walking so lifelike, with only a bleeding nose for your sins, watch out!”

  With a few more such warnings Robadise convinced Bumi to let him drive him to his widow’s new home.

  “It would seem that my name has never been cleared,” Bumi said as the police car cruised easily through the night-lit streets of Makassar.

  “I tried,” Robadise said. His efforts had not tired until long after Yaty’s retreat to the mountains. He had investigated several other shadier types than Bumi, ones with criminal records. Finding no evidence of foul play and no support for continued investigation, he finally visited the alleged site of the alleged fire that Bumi had suggested as a possible source of the toxins that may have killed the children. He found nothing there, no charred remains anyway, just a factory building in perfect condition.

  “You see?” Bumi said as they approached the city limits.

  Robadise saw nothing.

  “There is nothing in Makassar in perfect condition unless it is new,” Bumi said. “Absolutely new, not yet used at all. That factory was new, replacing the old, the burned down.”

  Robadise had not thought of this. “The problem is,” he said, “once you left, the killing stopped, whi
ch confirmed for most people that you were indeed the killer. The real killer was smart enough to stop then and leave the blood on your name.”

  Bumi shook his head. What kind of serial killer ever stops to avoid being caught? For the record he had died a guilty man and would remain a fugitive ghost. Robadise shifted down as the road eased into its long, winding ascent of the mountainous terrain around Makassar. They would drive through the night with their high beams one of the few sources of illumination among the jagged edges of roadside forest.

  They passed villages of corrugated metal and patches of unhidden clear-cut through which new saplings forced their way to sunlight. Bumi longed for sleep that wouldn’t come. He longed for Yaty and he dreaded the sight of her with this new man of hers. He had fled so that his family might have hope for a future, but a future with whom? This Torajan cop who would share a bed with Yaty, his hands all over the woman who had given him his greatest pleasure and joy and gifts. Bumi thought about every vile cigarette butt, every smudge of peanut sauce, every screaming Chang he had faced in seven barren years, half a world a way. And now, for what?

  He longed to wash his hands and he realized he hadn’t taken his medicine in forty-eight hours. He pulled his only possession from his pocket, took one of the 360 precious pills from the small plastic container and popped it into his mouth.

  Robadise held out an empty palm.

  Bumi didn’t yet know if his medicine could be found in Indonesia, and he was in no mood to share or to explain this particular candy. He ignored the hand, closed the container and put it back in his pocket.

  “Did Canada teach you not to share?” Robadise said.

  “Medicine,” Bumi said.

  Robadise eyed him briefly, swerved slightly, corrected the steering wheel and said nothing more.

  When they stopped for gas, breakfast and cigarettes for Robadise, Bumi saw a childhood vision come to life: heaven’s mist cooling brightly patterned houses with thatched roofs shaped as buffalo horns, high on wooden piles all around the corner store. The fronts were adorned with real buffalo horns, which Bumi recalled came from the buffalo slaughtered during funerals, which would carry the deceased through the afterlife. The richer the family, the more they slaughtered and the more decorated their front door. How barbaric that had seemed to the young Bumi, before he had delivered half-authentic Indonesian food past Eglinton’s homeless to Rosedale mansions.

  After a quick breakfast of rice and fish—how good that real Indonesian food tasted—Robadise took Bumi directly to the house where Yaty, Bunga and Baharuddin lived with the cop named Mathias. During the short ride Robadise cautioned him.

  “Listen,” Robadise said. “Let me handle things. Officially she is his wife now. They are his family.”

  Bumi nodded and listened like a dead man.

  “If I talk to Mathias nicely,” Robadise said, “I’m sure he’d be happy to discuss our unique situation. He’s a reasonable man. You just keep smiling and let me work it out with him.”

  Bumi nodded again. He sat in the cruiser while Robadise approached the house. Bumi was surprised that the structure Robadise approached was a squared, tin-roofed building. It was surrounded by the buffalo buildings, which he later learned were known as lumbung, or alang in Torajanese, and served only for special occasions or to store rice. Mathias’s wealth was demonstrated by the fact that his little complex of home and fancy rice barns was isolated from the clusters of slightly smaller houses down the road. Mathias’s rice barns were colourful with the same curved roofs as their neighbours. Bumi counted more than fifty sets of buffalo horns adorning the front side of one structure. Surrounding the buildings was a lush, neon green grass.

  Bumi watched on anxiously as the door opened. A girl tentatively approached the threshold. On seeing Robadise a smile took hold of her face and she wrapped her arms around him with a cry of “Uncle!” in a high, smooth voice.

  Bumi pushed the door open in a spastic convulsion and ran from the car with his limbs shaking. Hardly able to control his body he approached the child in a heavy gait that resembled a forced march to some island exile.

  Robadise caught Bumi’s approach with an astute peripheral eye and pulled away from his embrace with Bunga. He shifted his body to block Bumi with his broad back.

  Bumi’s head pounded like an electrified metronome when he saw a moustachioed man come to the door with a warm smile on his face to shake hands with Robadise. “Bunga!” Bumi shouted. Her name dripped from his mouth like too much maple syrup. Its stickiness muffled and slurred his speech.

  The child looked past her uncle as the other man’s hands tightened on her shoulders.

  Robadise stuttered half an introduction before Bumi saw the recognition in his daughter’s eyes.

  “Daddy?” she whispered, as if afraid of the name. She sprinted to him and jumped into his arms, pressing her face against his.

  “Bunga,” he whispered. His shoulders heaved as Robadise and the half-introduced Mathias watched on long-faced. “You’re so big,” Bumi said. He held her so that her feet dangled a few inches off the ground.

  “That’s all you can say?” she whispered into his ear.

  “And so beautiful,” he said.

  She laughed. “Thanks, Dad,” she said. She pulled away from him and smiled shyly.

  Bumi had dreamed of a smaller version of that smile. Seeing it again, everything else disappeared for what seemed a long while, until Robadise coughed and completed his introduction.

  Bumi shook Mathias’s hand with the bone-crushing force of a hungry predator, just as the Changs had taught him, Canadian style. Mathias pulled his limp hand back and shook it three times. He pursed his lips and glared at the giggling Bunga.

  Under her stepfather’s gaze Bunga became silent and looked to the ground for solace. She behaved as a young woman should, remaining silent so the men could talk.

  Bumi apologized to Mathias and explained that the handshake is a contact sport in Canada. He turned to his daughter and stared at her again in disbelief. “You’re practically grown up,” he said. “You must be taller than your mother.”

  “A little,” she said. She scratched the dirt with her bare feet.

  Robadise invited himself in and Bumi and Bunga followed, with Mathias at the rear. “Make some tea,” he said to Bunga.

  The inside of the house was much smaller than their house in Makassar, but larger than Bumi’s childhood abode. It was sparsely decorated with a picture of a white serene Jesus on the wooden back wall. They sat in cushy chairs in the main room and drank sweet tea.

  “Yaty’s in the market,” Mathias told Robadise. “With Baharuddin and Beti.”

  Robadise nodded and took a deep breath.

  “So, what brings you?” Mathias said.

  “Who is Beti?” Bumi blurted before Robadise could answer.

  “My son,” Mathias said. “Bunga and Baharuddin’s brother.”

  Bunga looked up from her teacup at Bumi and mouthed the word ‘half’ at him as Robadise launched into his version of diplomacy.

  Bumi mouthed back to Bunga, ‘how old?’

  She put down her tea and held up five fingers. Unlike Bumi’s children, Beti was born into a dictatorless Indonesia. Even with Bunga’s shy smile cast reassuringly upon him, Bumi burned with jealousy and hatred for this Mathias.

  Robadise started with what seemed to Bumi an excessive amount of small talk. His words produced vague sweeping images of a hero’s return, despite his having no knowledge of the details of Bumi’s seven years abroad, or his unexpected return. Robadise made no mention of the circumstances of his former brother-in-law’s departure, his death or his destination. He talked and the others slurped until their tea was gone, and a little while longer than that, until a small boy tore crying through the front door and into Mathias’s lap.

  Mathias drop
ped his empty teacup to the floor and cooed at the child, stroking his hair and asking him what was wrong.

  “They had no durian at the market,” a voice from Bumi’s past said.

  Bumi turned to see Yaty in the doorway, and the shadow of a slumped figure behind her skirt.

  “Bumi,” she said, wide-mouthed. She dropped her groceries to the floor.

  Robadise rose quickly to his feet, hugged his non-responsive sister, and picked up her bags.

  Bumi finally rose on wooden legs and Yaty fled from the house with Robadise in pursuit. Baharuddin stood alone in the doorframe and picked his nose.

  Bumi approached the boy slowly and crouched until their eyes were level. “Do you know who I am?” Bumi asked.

  “Of course he doesn’t,” Mathias’s voice boomed from behind Bumi as Baharuddin removed his finger from his nose and slowly nodded his head.

  “Daddy,” he said.

  Bumi nodded and the tears returned.

  “Don’t cry, Daddy,” Baharuddin said.

  “It’s only because I’m so happy to see you again,” Bumi said.

  “They said you were gone.”

  Bumi glanced back at Mathias, who smiled weakly over Beti’s still-heaving shoulders. “I was,” he said to his son, the former toddler. “Now I’m back.”

  “Forever?”

  “For good,” Bumi assured. “Can I give you a hug?”

  Baharuddin nodded and Bumi scooped him up. He squeezed as if clinging to life, kissed his boy on the cheek and turned to face Mathias. He held Baharuddin with one arm and stretched out the other for Bunga, who joined the embrace. Bumi held them and Mathias’s gaze until Mathias took Beti into the kitchen. Bumi kneeled without letting go of his children, buried his face between their cheeks and cried softly.

  YATY TOOK ROBADISE FOR A WALK ON A FOOTPATH NEAR THE house. It was his first visit since he dropped her there six years earlier.

  The Sunday sun had chased the mountain mist high and left Yaty’s mid-level valley a day-glow green. Still it was cool and Robadise shivered slightly as he took her hand. “You’re not used to mountain air,” she said. They walked through a farmer’s rice terraces, watched a buffalo wallow in the mud and said nothing for some time.