Somkit coughed and rolled his eyes. “If she runs back to her daddy and you wind up in Banglad prison, then I’ll be mad at you.”
If that happened, Pong would be mad enough at himself for both of them. But something inside him told him that it wasn’t a risk. If Nok had wanted to turn him in, she’d had plenty of chances to do it. He didn’t know why or how, but something about her had changed.
He still didn’t understand what she’d done to get locked up. He’d asked her several times during their escape, but she had barely spoken a word to him. Whatever had happened to her had sealed her shut, like an oyster at low tide.
“It was the right thing to do,” he said to Somkit.
“Yeah, yeah. It’s like I always said: you just can’t —” Somkit coughed again, this time so hard they had to stop walking.
“Are you okay?” asked Pong. “Am I going too fast?”
Somkit shook his head, trying to catch his breath between coughs. “The air . . . it just seems like I can’t get . . . enough . . .”
The air did seem chalky, as if it were full of dust. A breeze blew over them, filling Pong’s nostrils with a scent he hadn’t smelled since he left Tanaburi.
Burning wood.
In the east, where Pong had thought the sun was rising, a black column of smoke rose above the rooftops. That was not the sunrise. It was a fire.
The people along the canals had noticed it, too. Some pointed, horrified, while others hurried indoors, which at least made it easier to get through the streets. Pong tucked one arm around Somkit, who was coughing continuously now, and pulled him down the walkway. Pong kept hoping that they would turn away from the pillowy clouds of smoke, but their path to the Mud House was taking them straight for it.
Around the next corner, they were nearly knocked down by a group of people running in the opposite direction.
Somkit grabbed the arm of one of the women running past. “Auntie Mims!” he gasped. “What’s happening?”
The woman lowered the rag she held over her face. “Somkit! My goodness, what are you doing? You’ve got to get away!”
“Please!” said Somkit, coughing out the words. “Tell me. . . . What . . . happened?”
She looked over her shoulder fearfully. “The Mud House is on fire! Everyone is fleeing for their lives. We’ve got to get away and hide ourselves before the police come!” Auntie Mims took Somkit by the wrist. “Come with us. We have to find a safe house, but I don’t know where to go.” She looked around, frantic and confused. “I was supposed to have more people with me, but I lost track of them!”
Somkit pulled back from her, holding his hand over his face. “But what about . . . Ampai?”
“She’s back there!” said Auntie Mims, nodding in the direction of the Mud House. “She’s helping get everyone out. She told us all to hide!”
“I have to . . . go find her!” said Somkit. He doubled over, gasping for air.
Pong put his hands on Somkit’s shoulders. He had to get his friend out of the smoke. “You go with Auntie Mims,” he told Somkit. “You know everyone at the Mud House, and you can make sure they all get to a safe hiding place. I’ll go find Ampai.”
Somkit shook his head, coughing violently.
“Go on — they need someone to help them!” said Pong, shaking him gently. “We’ll meet up with you at the safe house!”
Finally, Somkit relented. The old woman gave him her rag and they disappeared into the crowd. Pong took the hem of his shirt and covered his face, pushing against the flow of people streaming away from the Mud House.
He arrived to find the alley in chaos. While some people ran past him in a panic, others herded closer. The sight of orange flames flicking out of the third-story windows stopped Pong in his tracks. He felt hypnotized. Billows of smoke poured out, rising and rising, like a black tower building itself into the sky.
The sight had drawn a crowd of onlookers. They kept their distance, forming a half ring around the entrance to Mark’s restaurant. Pong pushed his way past them and ran to the front door.
“Ampai?” he called.
He got halfway across the dining room when someone grabbed onto the back of his collar and yanked him to a stop.
It was Mark. His glasses were streaked with grease and he held a wet rag over his nose.
“What are you doing?” he shouted. “Don’t be a fool! You can’t go in there!”
“But I have to find —”
Pong couldn’t get the words out before his throat closed up. The black smoke hadn’t found its way down to the lower floors yet, but the air tasted gritty and poisonous. It burned Pong’s nose and mouth when he breathed.
As Mark dragged him back to the door, he heard a horrifying sound coming from the floors above: the sudden crack of splitting wood.
Mark pulled him out the doorway, into the alley. Pong gulped down the semiclean air. “Where . . . is . . . Ampai?” he gasped.
“Still inside,” said Mark.
“Someone has to . . . get her out!”
“She’ll come.” Mark nodded confidently. “There are still people in there. Once they’re out, she’ll come.”
As he spoke, a cluster of people staggered out of the building. Their faces were shiny and streaked with black. Pong looked past them into the restaurant. A flash of olive green darted back into the kitchen.
“Ampai!” he called.
“She said she’s checking . . . the building,” coughed out a woman who’d escaped. “To look . . . one last time!”
“Someone give me a hand!” called a teenager. He held the arm of an elderly man who stumbled at the doorway.
Pong took the old man’s other arm and helped guide him away from the Mud House. Together, he and the teenager gently set him onto the street.
“Hang on, grandfather,” said Pong as the teenager ran off to find help. “We’re going to get you to a safe place.”
The old man clutched Pong’s arm weakly. “I couldn’t stand up. . . . My legs wouldn’t work,” he wheezed. “I was ready to die, but someone picked me up and carried me down the stairs. . . . I thought it must be a giant, they were so strong!” His eyes watered and he smiled faintly. “It was Ampai. . . . Can you imagine? A little woman like that . . . carrying me like a baby?”
“What happened?” asked Pong. “How did the fire start?”
“I don’t know. We were sleeping,” the man said hoarsely. He gazed up in horror at the flames coming out of the Mud House. “It’s happening all over again. . . . I never thought I would see fire again. . . . Never!”
The teenager came back with two men who helped the old man to his feet and carried him out of the alley.
Pong turned back to the Mud House. The roof was now completely swallowed by the clouds of black smoke. The flames roared higher, leaping from one window to the next. The snap of wood and crash of breaking glass grew louder. As Pong watched the building burn, he thought of the Great Fire. He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to see every building on the East Side engulfed in flames like these.
He wanted to run away, but he couldn’t go until he saw Ampai. If she was doing one last sweep to check for stragglers, she should come out at any moment. He didn’t take his eyes from the door to Mark’s restaurant.
“Finally!” called a woman in the crowd.
“Oh, thank goodness!” shouted another as the rest of the crowd cheered.
Pong craned his neck, looking for the olive-green jacket, but the crowd was cheering something else.
A horn blasted from the canal behind the Mud House, announcing the arrival of two stocky Fire Control Authority boats. Armed with water cannons and massive hoses, they shot thick streams of canal water up into the third-story windows.
The flames danced defiantly, and at first it seemed that the hoses were no match for them. But slowly, the black smoke gave way to gray steam. The fire retreated from the windows.
For a moment, the Fire Control boats caused even more chaos. The wind shifted, a
nd the alley filled with clouds of gritty steam from the doused fires. People ran in all directions, afraid that the police would be the next to arrive on the scene. Through the fog, Pong caught sight of what he’d been waiting for: that flash of dusty green. Ampai’s jacket.
With a wave of relief, he stumbled forward with his arms over his face, searching for the restaurant entrance.
Finally, he spotted Mark kneeling on the ground outside the front door.
“Mark, are you okay?” he said, trying to pull the man to his feet.
Mark looked up at Pong, tears streaming from his eyes.
“What? What is it?” cried Pong.
He looked down and saw the green fabric at Mark’s feet. Mark reached down and gently brushed Ampai’s hair off her face. Pong braced himself for the worst, but she wasn’t burned. Her cheeks were sooty, but otherwise she just looked asleep.
“Ampai!” Pong shouted, shaking her arm. “Let’s get her out of here! Mark, we have to take her to a doctor!”
“No good,” sobbed Mark, shaking his head. “No good — she’s gone. It must have been all the smoke. When I got to her, she was already gone.”
“What?” gasped Pong. “No, she can’t be.” He reached down and took her hand. It was still warm, but limp in his fingers.
“Oh, Ampai . . .” he whispered.
Two officers from the Fire Control Authority stomped toward them. “Sir, is there anyone else inside the building?” one asked Mark.
Mark looked up at him, dazed. He shook his head. “No. She got them all out. Every person. She was the last one out.”
Pong folded his other hand around Ampai’s fingers. Her sleeve fell back, revealing her bare wrist. The red bracelet that Father Cham had given her so many years ago, the one that matched Pong’s own, was gone. He shut his eyes and remembered her smiling at him and telling him with a wink what her blessing from the old monk had been: May your courage never falter.
“He was right,” whispered Pong. “It never did.”
The warehouse was too warm. Sandalwood fans flick-flacked in front of sweaty faces, barely stirring the hot air. Pong guessed there must be more than two hundred people crammed in with them.
Mark stood at the front of the big, open room. Beads of sweat rolled off his forehead and onto the bridge of his nose, making his glasses slip down.
“Poor Mark,” Pong whispered to Somkit. “He looks like he’s so nervous, he’s about to throw up.”
“Yeah, he doesn’t do so well at talking in front of a big group,” said Somkit flatly. “That’s what Ampai was so good at.”
Now Pong wished he hadn’t said anything. Somkit sat with his knees drawn up to his chest, with the same faraway look on his face that he’d worn for the past day and a half. At least he was talking now. Somkit hadn’t spoken a word when he found out about Ampai. Pong wanted to reach out and pat him on the shoulder, or pinch his arm, or do something, anything, to break through that wall of silence. But he knew Somkit would only shrink away, back inside himself.
Mark raised his hands, and after a minute, the chatter settled down. He swallowed and cleared his throat a couple times. “Friends, friends . . . please give me your attention. I want to start by thanking you for getting here tonight. I know there are many more of us who were afraid to leave their safe houses for this meeting.”
After the fire, the people of the Mud House had scattered across the city. Pong and Somkit had been hiding in Mark’s sister’s apartment, squeezed in with her parents and four children. The police had searched the Mud House neighborhood for the residents, but they had no idea that Ampai had built up such a wide network of safe houses, or that she had friends all over the province. For anyone who needed help, her name had become a key that would unlock doors and hearts up and down the river.
The Governor had ruled Ampai a criminal, guilty of the most severe crime: starting a fire. Reports said that the blaze had begun in her office, in the early hours of the morning, and that the medicines and chemicals that she stored there caused it to burn quickly out of control. But no one on the East Side believed for a moment that Ampai had anything to do with the fire. It must have been an accident.
But Pong wondered about Yai and Yord, the only other people at the Mud House who had access to Ampai’s office. The two men had disappeared after the fire and not come back. Could Yord have started it? But why would he do such a thing?
Mark adjusted his glasses and continued. “I went back and forth on whether we should meet at all, but I felt that we must come together, if only to pay our respects to our dear sister.”
There was a forlorn murmur in the crowd, and many people bowed toward the makeshift memorial at the front of the room. A strand of tiny Violet orbs hung over a charcoal portrait of Ampai. Bouquets of flowers and a dish of tangerines flanked the drawing.
“First, we must take care of some important business, and quickly, too,” said Mark. “Now, I am no replacement for the leadership of Ampai, and I’m in no way trying to take over —”
“You’re a good man, Mark!” shouted someone in the room.
“Yes, her right-hand man!” said another.
Mark nodded solemnly. “I served her as best I could to the very end. And now I feel that it’s my responsibility to determine how we will go on without her. As you all know, she had many plans that should have come to light in the next few days, starting with the march on the Giant’s Bridge tomorrow night. But now we must ask ourselves: What do we do? Do we carry on, or do we abandon those plans?”
“Abandon them?” called a shocked voice from the crowd. “After all her work? How could we?”
A woman with a baby slung over her chest in a fabric sling stood up. “She wouldn’t want us to do it now. Ampai cared about the march, but she cared about us even more. It’s too dangerous to put ourselves out there. Even speaking her name out loud right now is a risk.”
“So we won’t use her name,” said a teenage girl. “Don’t forget, the march was never about Ampai. It was about the children’s jail. That ‘reform center,’ as the Governor likes to call it. What happens to me, or my brothers and sisters, if that thing gets built?”
“It’ll get built anyway,” said a man, standing up on the other side of the room. “Think about it. If a march was all it took to stop the Governor and his rich friends, someone would’ve done it already!”
Worried murmurs passed through the crowd, and dozens of heads nodded in agreement.
A burly man in a sleeveless shirt stood up near the front of the room. When he turned around, Pong recognized him as the dockworker Kla. His booming voice hushed the room.
“I’m gonna be there on that bridge. Ampai saved my wife’s life when no one else would help us. According to the Governor, we brought her sickness upon ourselves just because we were poor. But Ampai believed we weren’t bad people . . .” His words trailed off, but then he squared his muscled shoulders. “But this isn’t just about her. And it’s not just about the children’s prison, either. It’s more than that. I’m marching ’cause it’s time we stand up and say we won’t be treated this way. We deserve respect, no matter what side of the river we live on. No matter what color orbs swing over our heads!”
A cluster of brawny men stood up near him. “And all the dockworkers feel the same!” one called. “We’ll be next to Kla on the bridge, every one of us!”
“Hear, hear!” shouted the others.
“Please, please!” called Mark, struggling to be heard over the clamor. “Please, everyone, sit down and be quiet or we’ll never get anything done!”
The warehouse settled into an agitated whisper.
A man with a scar over his cheek and an educated accent stood up. “My friends, there is something we should think about. I, too, believe in what Ampai was trying to do. But I will remind you of her plan — her entire plan.” The whole room seemed to lean toward him. “I’m sure that Ampai told you what she told me. She knew that it wouldn’t be enough to march against the Governor. We
had to have some sort of advantage over him. Ampai told me that she had a secret strategy that she’d reveal at this meeting. She promised me that when the people of Chattana saw it, they would immediately join her side and abandon the Governor. But I’ve talked to everyone who worked with her. She didn’t tell anyone what this secret weapon was — if she ever actually had it in the first place.”
The room was quiet. People looked down into their laps. Even the dockworkers had no response to this.
“The point of the march was to inspire the whole city to join us,” said the educated man. “But we can’t do that simply by marching. It sounds like a noble and brave thing, but without some plan to back it up, it leads nowhere.”
“The guy’s right,” said another member of the crowd. “The Governor is too powerful. The people are either afraid of him or in awe of him. And don’t forget: we need him. Without the Governor, this city goes dark. After what I saw at the Mud House, there’s no way we’re going back to using fire.”
In the crowd, more people were agreeing with the educated man. They all murmured the same thing: the Governor was too powerful. This was too dangerous.
Pong’s eyes traveled around the room at the faces going slack and resigned. He looked up at Ampai’s portrait. All her hard work, what she’d given her life for, was turning to smoke. Is this how a dream died? On the lips of reasonable people?
Pong nudged Somkit, who had drifted a thousand miles away. “Hey,” he whispered. “Didn’t Ampai tell anybody else about your sun orbs?”
“What does it matter?” mumbled Somkit. “They’re all destroyed now anyway. All that work, burned to ashes or melted. I should’ve known. Nothing in this city changes, and it never will.”
Pong was shocked to hear those words come out of his friend’s mouth. “You don’t actually believe that,” he whispered.
Somkit bent lower, curling in on himself. “What do you know about what I believe?”
Pong grabbed his friend’s arm and shook him, hard. If he’d had an oar, he would’ve whacked Somkit over the head with it. “You have to snap out of it! I know you’re sad.” Before Somkit could respond, he added, “More than sad. Heartbroken. So am I. What happened to Ampai was the worst thing that’s ever happened, and maybe you’ll never get over it, and maybe I’ll never get over it, either, but right now you can’t just sit here. Come on, Somkit.” Pong shook him again, more gently this time. “I know you. And this isn’t you. Ampai wouldn’t want you to be like this.”
A Wish in the Dark Page 18
