Drive-by Saviours

by Chris Benjamin

  YATY HAD NOT GIVEN HER SECOND HUSBAND ANY WARNING THAT she would communicate with the first, but once the conversation was complete she made no efforts to hide the broken promise.

  “Bumi tells me he has a head disease,” she said to Mathias as she helped Bunga untether a buffalo. “He wanted to talk to me about it because he thinks Baharuddin may have inherited this disease.”

  “Sick in the head?” Mathias said. “That’s obvious enough.”

  “I know he was never exactly a normal person,” she said. “He was very obsessed with dirt, and with strangers. It’s hard to explain.”

  “I’ve heard about his black magic, Yaty.”

  “It wasn’t black magic, exactly. It was rituals to protect himself, and his family.”

  “Sounds like black magic to me.”

  “He said he saw a doctor in Canada who gave him pills that helped. The doctor said he had something called obsessive-compulsive disorder. And now he thinks Baharuddin has the same thing.”

  “Go make supper,” Mathias told Bunga.

  “He thinks we should take Baharuddin to a head doctor,” Yaty continued.

  Mathias nodded his head with pursed lips. “No,” he said. “We will take him to the priest tonight.”

  The priest gave Baharuddin a new ritual: prayer. Bunga consulted the closest Imam, who recommended even more frequent and reverent prayer. A spiritual friend of Yaty’s consulted a bara, a Torajan spiritual leader, who said that the boy was probably under a curse, and that if he survived and became well again he was likely gifted himself, and ready for apprenticeship. Mathias, an ardent Christian, refused to take Baharuddin to the bara’s office, which he referred to as the ‘Hocus Locus.’ “We don’t play with spirits in this house,” he said.

  Mathias was slightly less sceptical about Western medicine, but he refused to accept that the boy was really sick. “He’s too much like his father,” he said. “If he prays for guidance he’ll learn to act properly in time. We will all pray together as a family.”

  Within a few weeks their prayers were answered, and for the second time Bumi gave his own thanks to God. Through still puffy lips he told Bunga one night, “Thank God for my influence over Baharuddin, that he is an obedient boy and that he responds to the same medicine I do.”

  Back inside Mathias told Bunga that God answers the prayers of the faithful. “Now if only the boy would stop gaining weight,” Yaty said.

  “Maybe we should get some of those diet pills,” Mathias said.

  AFTER THREE MONTHS OF SHARING HIS PILLS WITH BAHARUDDIN Bumi ran out of medication. For nine months he had practised Doctor Cherian’s behaviour therapy with the same commitment he had once practiced counting and checking rituals. He had learned the logical tricks to counter the obsessive thoughts that pummelled his brain the moment his synaptic guard was down. He was now aware that, theoretically at least, the germs in the dirt were less threatening to him than his own thoughts about them. Literally, if he ignored them they would go away. But it was easier logically than practically. Intuition was a dangerous crutch.

  Fortunately for his sanity he was living in an optimal high-exposure environment, exactly the atmosphere needed to challenge the logic of his obsessions. By their logic, he should be dead in hours without constant hot water purifications, not to mention counting and reciting to protect loved ones, the most important of whom he could observe and scrutinize daily. Bumi rolled around in the dirt each morning and muttered, “Fuck you, Germs. Come and fucking get me if you have any guts.”

  Baharuddin had not had the mental and behavioural training Bumi had. To date no one had mentioned OCD to him. His only advice had come from a priest whose faith he didn’t share. He’d been force-fed pills he didn’t understand, and he’d been denied access to the most exciting and authoritative source of knowledge: the local bara clinic, the old way.

  A combination of prayer and pills drove all his most annoying thoughts away, which freed him to draw his fantastical interpretations of reality. With the pills gone, he became scared again of germs and had persistent guilt that he had done some nebulous and horrible thing, though he couldn’t finger what it was. The best he could do was draw scenes of a small masked figure plunging daggers into shadowy bodies, and when his sister and mother found these they immediately destroyed them before Mathias saw them and thought the boy was demented. And they took his sketch pad away, just for a little while they said.

  Without his sketch pad, Baharuddin felt even more lost, more convinced he’d done something terrible. He confessed to his stepfather’s best friend, a policeman named Edi, that he had committed murder, but that he couldn’t remember who he killed. Edi asked just a few questions and brought Baharuddin home, where he pulled Mathias aside. He whispered but was loud enough for Baharuddin to hear. “I don’t want to cause you alarm,” he said, “but I think the boy needs professional help.”

  Mathias nodded and thanked Edi, saying he should come by for dinner some time.

  BUMI WOKE UP TO THE SOUND OF BAHARUDDIN’S CRIES, AND ONCE again saw red from his blind spot to the bridge of his nose. He rushed to the house, in through the back door, to the family’s sitting room, where Mathias held Baharuddin tight by his scuffed collar.

  Mathias turned to Bumi, red-faced. “You,” he said.

  “Help me, Daddy,” Baharuddin whimpered.

  The two men stared at each other. Bumi’s shoulders heaved. “Let go of my son,” Bumi said.

  “He is no longer your son,” Mathias said. “You left him.”

  “I had little choice thanks to the likes of you,” Bumi said. He noticed for the first time that Yaty, Beti and Bunga stood by in the adjacent kitchen watching the confrontation.

  “Bumi,” Yaty said.

  He did not look at her, only at his enemy.

  “Bumi,” she repeated. “Please don’t do this. Please, why can’t you accept what has happened and leave us alone?”

  He didn’t know how to answer, or where to begin, but he couldn’t leave his son in the lurch again. “I didn’t want to leave you. I was forced away. Tricked. But now I’m back, and I have a right to be a father to my children.” He pointed a finger at Mathias, “He has no right to punish Baharuddin, who has done nothing wrong. I told you he has a medical condition and needs a doctor.”

  “Bumi,” Mathias said. “This is my home, and you have been living off of my hospitality for close to a year now, interfering with our ways. You have been warned once, and if I have to shoot you now no one will hold it against me.”

  “Please just go,” Yaty said.

  Bumi took a moment to glance at her. He saw a beautiful history, love, sympathy, regret and hope, but no tomorrow.

  “I’m his father,” Bumi said to no one in particular, and then to Mathias, “Shoot me then. I won’t let you hit him, as long as I’m alive.”

  As Mathias considered his options, Bunga took the chance to speak. “Dad,” she said.

  Both men answered her, “Yes, Child.”

  “Mr. Mathias,” she clarified, “can’t we just listen to what he has to say?” That was all she dared offer, but as usual she chose her words and her battle well.

  “I love my son,” Bumi said. “And I’ve gotten to know him well. He is not misbehaving. He just needs some help.”

  Mathias pursed his lips and sucked his teeth to show that he was considering Bumi’s words. This was the respect due a fellow man. “We can’t afford that kind of help,” he said.

  “Robadise will help us,” Yaty said.

  Mathias looked down to Baharuddin and said, “We’ll see about all this,” and then at Bumi. “We’ll see. You go ask Robadise. Watch out for your enemies in Makassar.”

  IT TOOK ROBADISE JUST A FEW DAYS WITH BUMI TO BECOME convinced of the effectiveness of the treatment his friend had received. Tied by the binds of famil
y and conscience, and unconfined by religious affiliations, Robadise played peacemaker with a large wad of bills.

  Together Bumi and Robadise found a good psychiatrist and a good behavioural therapist in Makassar. He didn’t have much experience with OCD sufferers, but he was willing to be persuaded for the right price. The behavioural therapist had heard of the exposure with response prevention technique, and agreed to give it a try on Baharuddin. He even threw in a ‘booster session’ for Bumi, to ensure that his compulsions did not return. Robadise still had those kinds of connections, even though he wasn’t the big shot he used to be.

  Once the therapy was set Bumi and Robadise drove to Tana Toraja and picked up Baharuddin, who was coming to live with his uncle and biological father for a while. “You’ve come back to life my brother,” Robadise said as he and Bumi drove the boy to his new old home. “You’re a modern-day Lazarus.”

  “Jesus is no friend of mine,” Bumi answered.

  “Yep, the old Bumi is back.”

  But he wasn’t really. All he could think about on the ten-hour drive back to Makassar was Yaty’s rejection. He’d begged her to come with them.

  “I can’t go back there, Bumi,” she had said. “That city will never be home for me again. Anyway, I could never leave Beti, nor take him away from his father. And Mathias would never leave Tana Toraja.”

  Bumi swore and spat at the ground as if it were her hypocrisy. His love for her was becoming muddled, his ultimate showdown with his rival had been thwarted and the possibility of family reunification was dimming by the day.

  Once back in Makassar with Baharuddin medicated and in school, therapy and art classes, all courtesy of Uncle Rob, Bumi tried to explain exactly how dead inside he felt to his old brother-in-law. Robadise, an always-surprising source of wisdom, said, “You just have to focus on what you do have, which is a son who needs you, and that’s definitely something to live for.”

  For a blissful month Bumi did just that. Survival was the first priority, and to survive he and Baharuddin travelled incognito, kept a low profile and used aliases. Despite the atmosphere of paranoia, Baharuddin’s rituals slowly went away. Without much to do between appointments with the behavioural therapist, Baharuddin drew. His art remained gloriously dark and his animistic fascinations continued unabated.

  Bumi even took Baharuddin to see a secretive Buginese dukun, a traditional healer. Rodabise gave Bumi the man’s address but warned him to be aware of the watchful eyes of the pious. “If any religious authority finds out this man is a dukun, and that you consulted with him…” Robadise pulled his index finger over his throat.

  The dukun told them that Baharuddin’s art and his obsessions were part and parcel of the same thing, a gift and a curse from the gods. “Every gift must be counter-balanced,” he said from behind his desk, on which rested a half-crafted buffalo skin drum. “These pills may help the boy think straight, but they may also suppress his gift in the long run. Better for him to conduct the ancient rituals rather than the ones he makes up.” For an apprenticeship fee the dukun could train Baharuddin to use his power without it overtaking him.

  “He’s a con artist,” Bumi said as they left the dukun’s metal shack. “He just wants our money.”

  “You sound like Mathias,” Baharuddin said. In his tenth year he was learning to use his words as weapons. “How is he any different from the other doctors?”

  “Their medicine works,” Bumi answered.

  “How do we know the dukun’s won’t?”

  “I don’t,” Bumi said.

  “The pills are making me fat and constipated,” Baharuddin said. “What if the dukun is right and these pills ruin my gift? Then I’ll be fat, constipated and untalented.”

  “Your art is beautiful and so are you, with or without medicine,” Bumi said as they walked home. “You won’t need the medicine forever. That’s why we do the therapy. When the treatment is finished then we can consider your apprenticeship.”

  Just before he saw the police cars, Bumi’s anus and genitals pulsed with a powerful warning sign. He saw Kartiman’s taut-faced scowl, felt the sharp wires poke at him, the jolt of high voltage run through his body. Bumi tensed at the sight of three cop cars in his driveway when there should have been no more than one. Since Robadise had become blacklisted, he never hosted any other cops. Bumi felt his jaw snap sideways, saw Daing’s eleven-year-old frame looming over him.

  “Let’s go,” he told Baharuddin. He pulled the boy’s arm hard away from the house.

  Robadise hadn’t expected his co-workers that day, but they’d heard rumours. He entertained them nervously, invited them to play gaple and have coffee. Their target never showed. Robadise had become used to Bumi living an incognito lifestyle. He was not alarmed when Bumi didn’t show up that day or the next. He was not even surprised the following week when Yaty, Mathias, Bunga and Beti arrived to reclaim Baharuddin, and neither the boy nor Bumi could be found.

  A DOZEN FOR ONE IN CHAPTER 25

  For a time everything would be on hold. Sarah would stay in our house. I would work with Lily’s migrant farmers and write my grandest proposal yet — a million dollars over five years. I would rework Sarah’s business plan in my spare time. This situation was neither easily arranged nor fully satisfactory.

  Sarah, who shared my lack of intuition, failed to grasp the depths of my deceit — but she had her suspicions and fears. “I don’t understand you,” she said on numerous occasions in the months before I left. “How can you so easily and casually plan for our separation? This is what married couples do before they divorce. Why are you so disinterested in working for us to stay together?”

  “We discussed this.”

  “You told me you’d quit your job and work on my plan!”

  I struggled to restrain myself from throwing one of her glass art pieces against the wall because I knew that wouldn’t help her see what I couldn’t explain—the sham that was my entire relationship with her.

  “I told you I wasn’t happy at my job,” I said. “This is the work I want to do—the work that will lead to the work I want to do.”

  “I don’t understand how you can so easily decide to be apart from me, to sleep in a bunk with fifteen other men instead of being there when I wake up, when I fall asleep, touching me and being with me. A month ago you were proposing!”

  The remorse I felt when she told me these things manifested itself as irrational anger. “It’s just for a short time! You know this is my dream.”

  “Since when is farming your dream? You hate farming. You say agriculture is the root of oppression.”

  This statement was a gross oversimplification of drunken philosophy taken completely out of context. She knew me no better than I knew her. I stamped my feet out the front door and went for a run. I had to burn all my excesses somehow.

  I knew she was right about the insensitivity of my absence, but that didn’t make me any less angry. It was her ignorance of the why that angered me. I wanted her to understand that I was too lost in the mundane and minuscule details of our story to understand the overarching plot. I needed the distance as much as I needed the change.

  WHATEVER MY THEORETICAL PROBLEMS WITH FACTORY FARMING, I loved getting my hands dirty, loved using what few muscles I had, loved feeling them strain as I tilled the earth and planted my seeds, knowing some of them would grow.

  Before I left Toronto Lily had enrolled me in a four-week intensive Spanish course, enough to give me the rudiments of verbal communication with the Mexicans. There were twelve of them on the farm and they spent six months of the year as the only brown people in rural Ontario outside the reserves. They competed with each other for economic survival and depended on each other for companionship and shared stories.

  They were paid by the hour, but come harvest time their individual picks were closely monitored—the least productive among
them would not be invited back. Berry picking aged them two years a season as they bent double, all day every day, arthritic fingers seeking small fruit. To be slow meant a season back home, surrounded by loved ones but living in abject poverty, working as hard but for less under local conquistadors who lusted for profit and power.

  Our sympathetic farmer was aware of their plight but he wouldn’t change his system unless every other large landowner did the same. “If I paid these boys what they deserved I’d be priced right out a business,” he told me.

  He was sympathetic to a degree but he was nobody’s fool and, without consulting his pool of cheap labour, he automated his payroll system so he could deposit the men’s cheques into accounts they didn’t have. “It can’t be helped,” he said. “I don’t have time to write out cheques every month anymore. Everything’s got to be automated now.”

  At a time when I should have been writing, I drove a van-load of Mexicans to the local Corporate Interest Banking Company to sign the men up with their first accounts. To a man they lacked Canadian driver’s licenses, health cards, birth certificates or any of the usual acceptable documentation.

  All but Enrique had seasonal work passes and visas. Enrique had lost his work pass and had his visa confiscated by an overzealous Ontario police officer, which for me meant another series of trips to local offices to fill out forms and translate as best I could with my pidgin Spanish.

  Such distractions and the breakdown of my stiffened, rusty, under-used body in the face of an unprecedented degree of physical labour (even at half-time) forced me to request a deadline extension from the Ministry. They granted it because they had already invested the money to support the proposal’s development.

  Despite the hardship of the labour I preferred it to the writing half of my assignment, which was effectively blocked by distractions and the sudden disappearance of my talent for narrative. Just as with Sarah’s business plan, I couldn’t seem to find the thread to tie all the pieces together: Lily’s vision; these men and their families; the conditions of Mexico; the proud if muddled history of unions in Canada; the needs of farmers; and the trap of under-valued food that our culture of dominion has set for those farmers.