Grandad, There's a Head on the Beach

by Colin Cotterill

  His hand was already kneading the small of my back.

  “Right,” I said. “And look. Here we are blowing up our own shop just to mess with your statistics.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” he said, the sarcasm sliding past him like an oiled eel.

  They set to work, although most of them seemed to have been assigned gawking duty. Chompu was chief interviewer. We sat together on my porch. He led with:

  “Nice one, Jimm.”

  “I know who did it,” I told him.

  “Well, hooray. That makes our jobs just that much easier. Who?”

  “A couple of goons from the SRM. They came to pick up the head nobody’s investigating.”

  “And why would they want to damage your shop?”

  “They were rude cretins with knives. They threatened us.”

  “And did you make a complaint to the police about that threat?”

  I laughed, then he laughed. Reporting a threat to the Pak Nam police would have been like reporting a mosquito bite to the provincial health authority.

  “We chased them off, so I imagine their noses were put out of joint.”

  “How?”

  “How what?”

  “How did you chase them off?”

  “Well, there was me, Arny, Grandad Jah, and Mair. We outnumbered them.”

  “A fearsome foursome indeed. I’m surprised they haven’t already brought out a comic book about you all.”

  “Don’t make fun. We can be pretty frightening. Look at Arny.”

  “Ooh, I have.”

  “Right. If you didn’t know he was a hamster…”

  And talking of animals, out of the corner of my eye I saw Sticky carrying something large and dirty in his mouth. He was heading toward the crime scene. I had a bad feeling about it. I called out to him, but he didn’t exactly know his name yet.

  “Give me a minute,” I said to Chompu. “Go interview Mair.”

  I went after the dog, who looked back over his shoulder and started to run. Running for me was as alien as discipline was to him. But I felt there was a need. I swore I could make out the shape of a handgun wrapped in rag. Sticky was heading straight for the major. He stopped directly in front of him, dropped his booty, and barked proudly. The policeman turned around to find Sticky staring up at him and drooling. Like most southerners, the major was wary of strange dogs. He backed up. Sticky nudged the package closer.

  “Will someone call this mutt off?” said the policeman.

  “Looks like he brought you a present, Major,” said Constable Ma Yai. “Hey, little fellow. What you got there?”

  He bent down to pick up the package, and Sticky snapped at him. Ma Yai recoiled. I arrived at that moment. There’s something slow-motion about me running. I threw myself to my knees and grabbed the gun and the dog. Over the sound of Sticky yapping, the major asked:

  “What is that?”

  “Hairdryer,” I said. “It’s a game we play.”

  I laughed. They laughed. Sticky barked. It was pretty clear the dog had been Eliot Ness in a previous life. It probably really pissed him off that he couldn’t make words anymore.

  * * *

  “You buried it?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was your grand idea for hiding the gun?”

  The police had gone, and I had Grandad Jah cornered in the toilet block. He’d been unclogging a drain. It was a good feeling to be reprimanding him for screwing up. I didn’t get the chance that often. He nodded. His overconfidence had given way to humility at last. All at once he was forty-five kilograms of decaying osteoclasts, and I felt like a bully.

  “Well, consider yourself lucky our local police force can’t tell a magnum from a hairdryer,” I said. “I bet they raid a lot of beauty salons.”

  “Idiots.”

  I knew it was too much to expect an apology from the old man. I sat on the sink and heard a crack. Time to think seriously about that diet. With the monsoons, I’d stopped cycling, and every meal, every flagon of Chilean red, every mini–Mars Bar was setting up home in my hips.

  “So where do you think it’ll go from here?” I asked.

  “The police will bring the two hoodlums in for questioning. They’ll deny they threatened us. They might or might not mention the gun, but my guess is they won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we don’t look like gunslingers, so the police would laugh at ’em. And they don’t have any evidence.”

  “Thanks to me.”

  He ignored that.

  “They’ll probably come up with an alibi,” he said, “and technically the police would check it out. But knowing our lot, they’ll probably accept it and apologize to the hooligans for taking up their valuable time.”

  “Not Chompu.”

  “I admit the queer boy does have skills. But we don’t know they’ll assign him to the case.”

  “They don’t have cases, Grandad. What else has happened down here for the past couple of months? They weed the station flowerbeds, use up their petrol allowance by driving round smiling at girls, and set up random barricades to extort money from truck drivers who think seat belts are for sitting on. Oh, and they practice marching. They have to assign it to Chompu. He’s the only one who can spell.”

  “These police don’t know how to deal with hard nuts like those two thugs. There’s only one recourse,” Grandad snarled.

  He cracked his knuckles. It sounded like tiles shuffling on a mah-jong board.

  “Oh, Grandad. No.”

  “There’s only one thing those types understand.”

  “Please.”

  “Street justice.”

  I’d been afraid that might happen. Our own geriatric Judge Dredd had recently formed an alliance with an equally honest and subsequently vilified ex-policeman from the south called Waew. Together, they had wreaked revenge on an evil-doer and got away with it. Vengeance was a drug that made Viagra look like aspirin. I suppose I should have reasoned with him, told him how dangerous it was to be messing with villains like the rat brothers, but Grandad’s well past his use-by date. When you’re beyond seventy, nobody’s really surprised when they find you facedown in your fried rice. Probably better to arrive in nirvana with a slit throat and stories.

  “Whatever,” I said.

  * * *

  I was about to take the truck into Pak Nam in search of the elusive Burmese community that Lieutenant Egg had failed to engage. I’d reversed out of the carport and was crunching my way into first. It’s an old truck. But in my side mirror I saw an excitedly pretty face. I squeaked down the window and said hello to Noy.

  “The coast is clear,” I said.

  Mother and daughter had been hiding out in the woods at the far end of the bay for an hour for no particular reason. None of the police asked whether we had any guests.

  “Jimm, I just wanted … to tell you…”

  She was out of breath. The wind did that to you. Filled you up with so much air you couldn’t get it all out. I’d been expecting a story. They’d had enough time to come up with a good one. I’d thought something like … I don’t know … vengeful husband or boyfriend perhaps. That would have worked. Ours was a matriarchal family, so that would probably have twanged at our heartstrings. But what they conjured up was a disappointment. Noy ran round the front of the truck and put herself in the passenger seat. She was trapped now. There were no handles on the inside.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” she said.

  “Not at all.”

  I switched off the motor, and the truck shimmered to a standstill.

  “I imagine that you and your family are wondering what people like us are doing here,” she said.

  “You’re not on vacation?”

  She giggled.

  “I’m sure you didn’t believe that,” she said.

  “If our prime minister can make spring rolls on national television, nothing would surprise me.”

  “The fact is…” she began.

&
nbsp; I’ve noticed how often people say “the fact is” before launching into fiction.

  “The fact is my father is one of the leading activists against the yellow shirts. You do know about the situation in Bangkok?”

  I guessed nobody had informed her that I’d been an almost prize-winning journalist at a national publication. An army was rising up to oppose the yellow shirts, with the backing of the satellite-dish tsar and his billionaire family.

  “I think I saw something about it on TV,” I said.

  “Well, he … Dad was very vocal against the yellows. We tried to convince him to keep a lid on it, but he’s a very principled man. He spoke up in public accusing the yellow shirts of dragging our democracy into the dirt. He…”

  “Yes?”

  “He received threats. Not against him but against us. His family. They said they’d kill us.”

  “The yellow shirts said that?”

  “Right. As he loves us, and I’m sure you understand why I can’t divulge his name, he sent us away from Bangkok. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we removed the number plates. That’s why we’re avoiding the police. I’m so sorry we couldn’t tell you this. But we still have to be very careful. The yellow shirts can be evil.”

  “Right.”

  I could imagine the scene. Auntie Malee, the exporter of traditional coconut cakes, calls together Bert, the brake lining supplier, and Lulu, the barista, and orders a hit on Noy whose father had dared voice what half the country had been complaining about publicly ever since the yellows sauntered into Government House. So the Noys flee. And they head in exactly the wrong direction, south, yellow-shirt central. Come off it, girl.

  “You must be terrified,” I said and put my hand on hers.

  “We are,” she said, looking at a string of beach cabbage that had blown over from the sand and wrapped itself around our wipers. “But when you told us the police were coming, we sensed that you could feel our anguish. We decided we could trust you and wanted you to know the truth.”

  “Well, I appreciate honesty. We all do.”

  “We just wanted you to understand that we’ve done nothing wrong. Nothing illegal. We are victims.”

  “I feel for you, my sister.”

  She took back her hand and placed her palms together. She folded herself low to my left kidney like a scullery maid addressing a royal in a very confined space. She smiled and tried to leave the truck, only to realize there were no handles. I ran round to let her out and watched her walk off toward her cabin. It had been a performance worthy of a raspberry. But one thing was certain. These two were no grifters. They couldn’t act their way out of a prawn cracker packet. It was time to see what dirt Sissi had come up with. The Noys had done something bad. Very, very bad. I wanted to know what it was.

  5.

  All My Jeans Are Filled

  (from “Love Me Tender” — ELVIS PRESLEY)

  It’s hard to describe our nearest town, just as it’s hard to call it a town and keep a straight face. Think of any crossroads you know, then squeeze it to a point where two cars can barely pass one another without slapping wing mirrors. Remove traffic lights and stop signs from your thoughts. Add the chaos of handcarts and sidecars and people walking in the street because the pavement has cars parked on it. Then imagine you’re standing in the middle of the cross. North you’d see a few cramped wooden shops selling nothing anyone would ever need. Likewise to the south. Dead end to the southeast where the road terminates at the river. Too bad if you’re new to the district and travel in that direction at any speed. The Pak Nam Champs Elysées, route 4002, heads west. It’s there you can find the 7-Eleven, the post office, the bank, the market, the district office, and the best darned lady finger banana seller in the country. You cannot, however, find decent cappuccino, pizza, wine, cheese, ice cream, black forest cake, or cherries—all those things that make a civilized society. This was truly a hardship posting for a girl who grew up in a multicultural metropolis.

  I pulled up in front of the old ice factory at the docks. The sound of ice being crushed resounded like strikes at a bowling alley. I’d had to ask directions. The factory was in a cleverly concealed turn-off before the cul-de-sac. When you were driving into town, you could see the harbor from the road bridge. It made a good photograph. The sun glinting off the water as the triumphant fishing vessels returned with their catch. A few tourists stopped there. That and the concrete battleship were our only photogenic spots. But being down here was different altogether. The hastily put together hovels all around me spoke of poverty and disorder and neglect. Temporary accommodation for temporary people. Clunky wooden fishing boats gathered around the concrete piers, two or three abreast, like polite pigs at a feeding trough. On the jetties, people worked. I don’t mean they went through the motions with one eye on the overtime clock. I mean they toiled. They sliced and gutted and bagged and hauled and lugged. There was a different pace to life. An urgency. It was a bit eerie really.

  I stepped out onto the dirt parking lot. There were people all around, but nobody stared. Nobody so much as turned their head. All right, I know I’m no head-turner, but there’s this world standard of inquisitiveness, isn’t there? “Who is this broad-hipped, short-haired stranger?” “What does she want with us?” Down here at the docks, nobody cared. I looked at my hand to see whether I’d become invisible on the drive over.

  There was music playing. Women joking. Men shouting. And I understood not one word. And all at once I knew how Dorothy felt. I wasn’t in Thailand anymore. The Toyota Mighty X had come down in the land of the Munchkins. I was only five minutes’ jaywalk from the town post office, postcode 86150, but I was completely in the wrong country. Nobody had been able to tell me exactly how many Burmese there were around Pak Nam as the majority weren’t registered. But I’d certainly found myself in a hub. I needed a guide. Chompu had given me a name. He said I should ask at the open-air ice works for Aung.

  I walked up to a big-boned woman whose face was caked in yellow-brown paste. I’d seen it a lot, but I’d never actually understood the concept. You splatter the gunk all over yourself as protection from the sun. The sun, as we all know, ages us prematurely and makes us unattractive and therefore unmarriageable. But I doubted that the effects of that nasty old sun would have been noticed much before our thirtieth birthday. And by then we should have been wed. After twenty-two, the odds started to stack up against us. So why, I ask, would you want to spend your most alluring years plastered in a vomit-colored death mask? It’s like those poor Muslim girls who have to squeeze all their sexuality into a two-by-eight-centimeter eye-letterbox slot of opportunity. I’d tried that “if you’re a nice person, men will find you attractive” routine, and I’m afraid it gives men far too much credit. They want something to show their mates. You have to have at least one selling point. I have my lips, which Mair often reminds me are sensual. The Burmese throwing huge blocks of ice in a crusher had breasts. They drew attention from her face. I know it’s a little catty of me to say this, but perhaps, in her case, the powder mask did her a favor.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I’m looking for Mr. Aung.”

  She didn’t so much as look up. I rechecked my invisibility. I was there.

  “Mr. Aung?” I said.

  I didn’t want to be ignored again, so I put my hand on the next ice block on the conveyor. I tried for eye contact. She shrugged and looked away.

  “Do you speak Thai?” I asked. The ice blocks were jamming up behind me and my hand was getting an ice ache, but I wasn’t about to give in.

  “Do … you…?”

  “No speak,” she said.

  Good. Contact.

  “Mr.… Aung.”

  She pointed toward the nearest dock.

  “Two … one … seven … one,” I think was what she said.

  “Two one seven one?”

  She nodded. I thanked her and tried to leave, but my hand was stuck to the ice block. I may have screamed a little. Meeting Mr. Aung with a
chunk of ice clutched to my chest would have made a bad first impression. Obviously I wasn’t the first person to stick myself to a giant ice-cube because she had a plastic bottle of lukewarm water beside her that she sprinkled on my hand, and like magic, I was released.

  I presumed 2171 was the number of a boat. They each had four digits in white paint at the front. The front of the boat is either the bow or the galley. I never did remember boating vocabulary. I knew you had to pass an oncoming ship to the starboard, but I didn’t know whether that was left or right. Fortunately, I’d never have to learn it because I had no intention of being on the sea in any kind of vessel whatsoever. At high school I sat out swimming lessons because Mair had knitted me a swimsuit. I kid you not. Hand knitted. It was like a suit of armor. If I’d so much as stepped in the water, I’d have sunk like a rock. I did eventually learn to swim, but that had led to a number of other traumatic experiences in water. So I gave it up, and as a non-swimmer I fully intended to be a non-boat passenger.

  I asked the nearest Burmese if there were any Thais around. He said yes, then walked off. At the same high school where I didn’t learn to swim, I also didn’t learn to speak Burmese. They had a very small part-time elective course. Instead, I went on to intensive English, memorized hundreds of pop songs, joined a student exchange to Australia, watched a lifetime of American movies, and fell in love with Clint Eastwood. And what good did that do me? Here in Maprao, even my Thai was a mystery. Southern Thai dialect was like listening to sausages popping on a grill, and now I learned there are more people here speaking Burmese than standard Thai. I was a minority.

  “Can I help you?” came a voice.

  I turned to see a dark-skinned man in shorts. Only shorts. His torso was decorated with grease smears, but that was a body without a gram of fat. A worker’s body. On top of it was an untidy head; hair sheared and uncombed, a wispy haphazard beard, a recent scar dividing his left shoulder in two. But, my word, he was adorable. His smile went straight to my womb.

  “I’m Aung,” he said.

  He put down his spanner and wai’d me. I wai’d him back.