Waldo couldn't believe what he was hearing. He wasn't saying the old lady was a liar or nothing like that, but it just didn't seem right was all.
He was developing a taste for the red stuff. It was tart but sweet at the same time. Mrs. Porn told him it was from some berry he'd never heard of. He'd drunk so much of it he was sweating red stuff. Mrs. Porn went on.
"And it's possible these smugglers learned from their mistakes and stopped making them. Saifon, what exactly is your intention for coming here?"
"I figured I'd go find the old bitch that sold me and …"
"You don't intend to go into Laos?"
"Sure. Why not?" Porn and the quiet guy looked at each other.
"Hmm. Your government appears to be better at hiding the truth than I gave them credit for."
"You mean we ain't at peace?" The old lady creaked to her feet. Waldo stood and give her a hand.
"Thank you, Waldo. Why don't I leave it to Soup to educate you as to what is really happening in our country? I have to go and find something for you. And perhaps we should think about some lunch."
Saifon and Waldo sat silently waiting for old Soup to get boiling. It was like she'd forgot to put him on the gas before she went. Waldo had checked on him a couple of times through the morning to see if he was still breathing. He sure didn't talk much. But once they'd give up on him, he started up.
"You'll have to excuse my English. It's rather poor." Waldo smiled.
"Heck, Mr. Soup. If we excused English like yours, there wouldn't never be no forgiving English like our'n."That got a smile out'a the old guy and set him bubbling. Waldo sure had a knack of bringing out the best in people.
Soup was spilling over by the time he got around to telling 'em exactly what Mr. Nixon was really doing to his country. But I guess I pushed them soup jokes as far as they're gonna go.
40
"Who you talking to, Waldo?"
"Aretha."
"Oh. OK. Sorry. G'night."
"Night."
Saifon was sleeping in the top bunk. Waldo was underneath her, if you know what I mean. They was on the train cluttering up country towards the Lao border.
When you're on a train in Thailand, you think every station you go through is alive. It don't cross your mind that it's only alive 'cause the train's there. At every stop, people ran up to Waldo's window and yelled at him like he was their last hope. He could only guess what they was saying.
"Eat my frigging quails eggs or I'll beat your head in."
"Buy my leaky plastic bag of sickly sweet cordial or my family'll starve to death."
Waldo being who he was found himself in possession of a lot of junk he didn't need as the train chugged its way to the northeast. Kids with nothing worth selling googled their eyes at him and coins somehow levitated out of his pocket and into their hands before he knew it. Orchids that was wrenched from trees an hour before was being waved at his face and he knew they was gonna be dead in another hour but he bought 'em anyway.
Train watchers sat at every station puffing on cheap cigarettes that stained their fingernails brown as the rest of 'em. Their job, that no-one ever asked them to do, was to glare at every passenger, every carriage, and every nut and bolt on the train before it pulled out.
Officials in brown uniforms and blue flip-flops stood at attention holding up their red flags even when their arms was tired and sweat dribbled down their cheeks. Miserable porters with empty push-carts and empty eyes left it to the very last second before they'd believe they didn't have no bags to carry. They watched the train slide out from the platform and wondered what they was gonna do for a drink that night.
But as soon as the train was gone, life on the station was gone too. The sellers went outside to their noodle stalls or their shops. The kids bought gum and candy. The guards put down their flags and wrote a report about how the train had come and went. The watchers got up from their benches and went off to boast to each other about how many nuts and bolts and smiling black faces they'd glared at that day.
Being in Thailand had turned Waldo into a watcher too. He noticed everything, everything that was different and everything that was the same. When the train stopped in Khorat for half an hour he almost didn't make it back on board. Saifon, who was still in her shitty mood shouted at him when she saw what he'd bought.
"What the rather d'you need with six packs of toothpaste, Waldo? We're supposed to be traveling light, remember?" She didn't fluster Waldo none. He held up one of the packs like he'd discovered something magic in the store. Under the brand name was a picture of the blackest minstrel you could ever see, wearing a tall top hat and a jaw-breaking smile.
"Look, Saifon honey. 'Darkie Toothpaste'. We even got our own brand out here." His smile was every bit as broad as the minstrel's and I guess that was the moment on the trip that got Saifon back on the positive side of the track.
"Waldo, you gotta be the …." They laughed clean through to Burirum.
-o-
Now it was night. The ceiling fan flustered the sleeping car curtains as it circled from one side to the other. Waldo was mighty impressed at how a regular train carriage with seats could turn into a long bunk bed dormitory so easy.
"Sorry, Reet. Where was I? All right. So we have lunch with the old lady and the quiet guy. They sure give their kids weird names here, Reet. We wouldn't of called our kids Porn and Soup. I know that much.
When Mrs. Porn is sure we still planned to go to Laos in spite of it being a danged foolish and dangerous thing to be doing, she gives us some packages and a letter to deliver. The quiet guy, Soup, he turned out to be real knowledgeable. I got the feeling he would of preferred to be coming with us, but there was something stopping him. "Very soon," he told me. We got on real good in the end. You wouldn't believe how interested he was in pool balls. We yakked on all through lunch and most of the afternoon.
Reet, you'd of loved it here. The people are real friendly." He lowered his voice. "Saifon says you can't trust the Thais, but I think the type of life she's had made her suspicious of everyone. I'll love her out of that for you."
The guard had closed and shuttered all the windows before everyone got bedded down so kids at the stations couldn't reach in and grab your valuables. But Waldo bent the rules some and unshuttered and opened his. He was on his side watching the night go by. There wasn't a lot of lights, just the odd yella lamp glow here and there and the headlights of cars in the distance. But the sky. Man, the sky was something else. A billion one-eyed cats was looking down at him. It was so beautiful.
There was smells, too. Nothing smelt like Indiana here. The Thai countryside smelt of temple smoke and bicycle oil, and mouldy dogs and burnt chili. And all them flowers he didn't have names for that Aretha would of liked so much.
This was all a kick, man. It vexed him that he let so many years of his life go down a toilet hole like Mattfield. Why had he left it this late to start living?
"Night, Reet honey."
-o-
The sound of the wheels was New Orleans jazz.
Jelly Roll was keeping time. Waldo was twenty. Aretha was sixteen. They was wearing their matching T-shirts in the middle of winter. They'd took their coats off so Jelly Roll could see what big fans they was.
In the break, Jelly Roll come down and talked to 'em. Waldo said it was cause of the nice embroidering on the shirts, but Aretha had an inkling it was cause the weather had made her nipples big as plums . She was the prettiest thing there, and it's true, Jelly did have a problem keeping his eyes off her chest. By the end of the day the whole coloured orchestra had come to take a look at the stitching.
Waldo couldn't stop talking about how friendly them boys was. They even invited him and Reet back to their lodgings. Aretha didn't want to go for some reason. But all the attention sure had made her frisky. That explains what happened at the back of South Bend terminus.
That wasn't the Aretha he talked to every evening. He talked to the Aretha in her thirties, the one that was sensib
le and loving and rounder. The rounder she got, the less attention other guys paid her. She never cheated on him. Not ever. But her and Waldo got tired of the attention. That's why he fed her up so good. Getting her fat was what got him even fatter. He loved them evenings of listening to all their old music together, getting fat together.
They still talked a lot, him and Aretha. But they never did get around to the thorn in his side. They just talked about the good times. Any little thing could bring back them happy memories. So, the sound of the wheels was New Orleans jazz whether they planned it that way or not.
41
Ubon, at the end of the rail line was a town without no obvious organization. Buildings had been dropped here and there like empty crates out back of a supermarket. But Saifon and Waldo didn't have to stop there long enough to give it no heed. Within thirty minutes they was at the bus depot on a taxi truck waiting to take off to Mukdahan.
Waldo never did really get his tongue around all them long place names. It weren't just that you had to remember the name. You had to say it right too. If you raised a sound, like when you ask a question, you plum changed the name of the town. No one had any idea what you was talking about.
No, Waldo had to get by with his English, and with his hands. His hands could pretty much speak any darned language they wanted to. Oh, and he had Saifon. She was still fighting with the driver over how much he could charge Waldo for taking up three seats. The difference come to about two M&Ms, but like Saifon said, it was the principle of the thing.
Waldo watched the boys and the young men waving their arms and shouting at folks coming and going. They was touting for passengers for their own busses. It was like they believed if they flapped hard enough and busted their lungs yelling, someone might just change his mind and go north instead of south; buy a ticket to Bangkok instead of going home.
There was watchers at the bus station too, but they was covered in a layer of dust from all the arriving and departing. And there was this same depressed women in a long skirt with the color bleached out of it. He'd seen her with her tray of charred chicken wings in the capital, at every station they'd come through, and in front of every hotel. He wondered if it was one of them franchises.
The driver lost the battle and Saifon climbed up back. There was a crunch of gears and a stalling of engine, and that delayed their taking off. Restarting it involved some funny business under the hood that et up another three minutes. But that was good news for a guy that turned up late. He called something out to the driver.
To Waldo, he sounded like any other Thai. But when he climbed in and shimmied his backside onto a seat, Waldo was surprised to see a guy a few shades browner than himself, probably hazelnut or mocha coffee. He was a good-looking boy, somewhere between forty and fifty. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt, and had a canvas bag over his shoulder. When he saw Waldo he smiled and held out his hand.
"How do you do, sir." Waldo shook it. He was surprised to see an American way out there in nowhere country.
"You a air steward?" The man laughed.
"No, sir, I'm not. Do you ask that to everyone you meet?"
"Just not used to being a sir, that's all."
"Where you from?"
"Indiana, born and raised. Name's Waldo. Waldo Monk. This is my daughter, Saifon."
"Miss." He wai'd at her. She just nodded back. "You know, I could see the family resemblance right away."
"Tell the truth, me and my wife didn't actually, you know, produce her."
"Waldo, he knows that." Saifon looked away as the truck bounced its way out of all the bus ruts.
"Oh. Right. Right. What are you doing all the way out here, son?"
"I'm a spy."
"You don't say. I guess you ain't a very good one, if you go blurting it out to everyone." Saifon laughed. So did the guy.
"I could try to keep it a secret, I guess. But you and Saifon are probably the only two people on the border who don't know what I do. So it'd be a waste of time. I'm … well, I was the only ex-African in the region. Word of mouth gets around pretty damned fast out here. The name's Wilbur."
They shook hands again.
"Mighty pleased to know you, Wilbur."
"And what do you do, Waldo?"
"I'm, …I was quality control officer at a pool ball factory."
"I see. I won't pry any more. I guess you wouldn't tell me anyway."
"Tell you what, boy?"
"What you do."
"Heck, I told you didn't I?"
"Yes, sir." He gave one of them knowing winks. "And, Saifon. I guess you work in a pool ball factory too, right?"
"Not nearly as long as Waldo."
"Okay."
Wilbur had met all kinds of 'experts' in this or that in his time on the border. Their covers were usually better than this, but he knew when to stop pushing. So, as there weren't much point in asking them about their lives at the 'pool factory', he ended up telling them about his. That pretty much filled up the eight bone-crunching, muscle mauling, spine jarring hours it took for that old truck to get to Mukdahan.
-o-
The CIA had bullied him into accepting this second tour and had him based in Savannakheth, on the Lao side. That happened to be where Saifon and Waldo was headed so they was real interested to know how things was going there.
Man, that boy could talk. The CIA, he told 'em, was like a big old lobster pot. It wasn't that easy to find, neither. But once it was there in front of you, you had to be one hell of a dumb lobster to climb in. 'Cause if you had any brain at all, you'd know there weren't no way you was gonna get out of the thing. You know that but you crawl in anyways.
It seems the lobster people got in touch with Wilbur when he was serving in the military. He'd been one smart brother in school and went on to college and all. The army was pleased to have him but not too clear why he chose them over some of the fancy companies that was courting him.
Wilbur didn't fancy corporate life too much, or the people that lived it. And he was hankering after a family, and he felt the kind of girl he was after would go for an action man over a suite. He liked women with spunk. He figured in the army he'd meet the kind of gal you don't run into at a company cocktail party.
He went up through the ranks like some hot-assed rocket and he had enough glitter on his chest to dazzle any gal. Mary walked up to him at a Christmas ball. She was wearing a pink dress and he'd seen that dress and the pretty nut brown lady inside it a hundred times in his dreams. I guess she'd seen him too, 'cause she just said, "What kept you?"
He smiled and said, "Sorry. I wasn't sure where you were."
And that was that. Saifon kinda lost interest about this time and her mind wandered. But Waldo was a sucker for a love story whether it was bull or not. He noticed something about the way Wilbur talked about his wife, but he didn't see it as his place to mention it.
Wilbur and Mary got married a month later and before they knew it, they had themselves three children. That was kinda it. He had the family he'd dreamed of, was already a full major, and his army career was all up. He would of been the envy of any man. That's when he lost his mind.
It was one day after a racket ball tournament he'd just won. He was all sweaty and on his way to the shower when this old guy in a suit comes up to him and puts his hand on Wilbur's arm.
"Hi, Wilbur," he said. "you getting enough?"
"Enough what?" he asked, but he knew he was getting hit on. He didn't have nothing against fruits but he didn't like it when they tried to drag him into the basket with 'em.
"Out'a life."
Wilbur knew exactly what the guy meant and he was just gonna get rough with him when he pulls out this brochure. A friggin brochure. Can you believe it? He was recruiting for the CIA and he had this glossy colored leaflet that showed all these perfect people with their thirty-two teeth having fun as CIA operatives. There they was in tracksuits vaulting over eight-foot high walls. There they was in glasses in the classroom learning nuclear bomb defusing skil
ls. There they was seeing the world; riding camels, boating down the Amazon, parachuting into pretty scenery without a trace of ack ack.
"You know why I agreed?" Wilbur asked Waldo. Saifon by this stage was already asleep against the shoulder of the fat lady beside her. Waldo didn't know. "I agreed because all but one of them perfect people was white, and that one black guy didn't look real. It was like they cut and pasted him in later. His head looked too small."
So that was why Wilbur joined the CIA, because some guy's head was too small. I guess there are worse reasons. And that's why Wilbur was here on the Thai/Lao border coordinating an unofficial war. Because America wasn't really at war in Laos, Wilbur wasn't really there. If he got in trouble, the Pentagon'd deny all knowledge of him. So he'd gone from being a decorated hero to being an invisible one. I guess that's why he did so much talking. Being invisible can make a guy lonely.
This laid-back spying attitude wasn't exactly what Waldo expected from the CIA. He thought those guys wouldn't give nothing away, not even if their toenails was pulled out one by one. It was night when the truck dragged itself into Mukdahan, and by then, Saifon and Waldo knew the entire blueprint for the secret war. Every last two million dollar bomb of it.
Wilbur went off to one of the CIA's secret locations in Mukdahan, but he give Waldo the address and phone number, just in case they got in trouble.
Mukdahan weren't much of a town if you compared it with some world famous city like South Bend. The two main streets that sat vertical to the river was pretty much it. There wasn't a hope in hell of finding anyone that spoke English. Most of the shop signs, them that could be bothered to put one up at all, was written in Thai.
Pool and its Role in Asian Communism Page 10
