"Bom was taking a pee," said the oldest boy. He was about ten. "She found it."
Bom was half his age. She waved, at Daeng and smiled. Phosy decided that if she'd found a body she was being very relaxed about it. He pushed his way into the bushes before Madame Daeng could take the lead. Only four metres in, he found a mound of branches. He knelt and cleared them carefully. Daeng and the two officers had followed him in and were staring over his shoulders. Even before all the leaves had been removed it was evident what had been hidden there.
Daeng put her hands to her mouth and gasped, "Oh shit. Oh shit." She turned and pushed her way out of the vegetation past the young policemen.
"Isn't that the doctor's Triumph?" said one of them.
The bike lay on its side beneath the broken branches. Its left-side mirror was smashed.
"Yes, it is," Phosy replied, running his finger over a dark stain on the saddle.
"That's not gasoline, is it, sir?"
"No, boy. It's blood."
The happy couple drove towards the honeymoon supper. It was ten p.m., and the interminable wedding ceremony was over. They'd made an awful to-do of it. They'd had the villagers march along the track to the school carrying Phan on one litter and the bride on the other. There was nothing traditional about it. It was some ridiculous idea of the headman. There were lanterns along the route and people singing and ramwong dancing. The school had been done up like the damned presidential palace. Phan could think of better ways for the idiots to waste the little money they had. Visions of the feast kept haunting him: farmers who had nothing else to look forward to fattening up their favourite pigs for strangers to eat, sacrificing their hens' precious eggs. Out comes Mother's best phasin wrapped in tissue paper. Father gets his hair washed in rice water and has a shave for the first time in his worthless life. Teenaged girls experiment with cheap Chinese make-up that turns them into whorish circus performers. Granny, bent double from a lifetime of bowing to the rice stalks, finds a few dance moves to entertain the crowd. And, oh yes, the booze. The deeper you ventured into the countryside, the more reliant the peasants were on rice whisky for a good time. Heaven forbid the thought they might just possibly be able to have fun without being paralyzed with alcohol. And they didn't offer it, they forced it on you. God help the man with cirrhosis of the liver at a village wedding.
He sighed at the thought of it all.
Wei used her teacher's voice to be heard above the growl of the engine.
"What are you thinking about?" Wei asked.
That damned stupid question again. Surely, if a person was thinking something, wasn't it because he chose not to speak it? "Be patient," Phan told himself. He turned to his bride with the same smile that had won her.
"You," he lied. "Imagining what it will be like when we're together."
He reached for the gear knob to drop the old truck into second and, before he realized it, she had leaned forward and squeezed his hand. The fine hairs on his arm bristled and bile rose in his throat. He switched back to third gear, throwing off her hand as if by accident. There certainly wouldn't be any of that. If there was contact it would be when he was good and ready. Nothing would happen until its allotted time.
"Are you nervous?" he yelled to his bride: his possession in the passenger seat. She was only a shadow, but he could tell she was smiling.
"Not really nervous," she shouted. "More excited. If I hadn't had so much to drink I'd be scared to death, I'm sure."
"Really!" he mumbled beneath the angry engine noise. "You don't know yet just how scared you'll be, my little darling."
His mind wandered again. The day hadn't gone the way he'd planned it. He'd killed two men that afternoon. Killing was nothing new to him. It didn't trouble his soul at all, didn't make a dent on his conscience. But it had disoriented him. The sense of control, so important on his wedding days, had been sent into a spin. He'd lost his calm. They'd asked for it. There was no question about that, the imbecile especially. Than had caught him tinkering with the engine, threatening to take parts out and clean them. He'd said the truck would have to stay at the camp overnight. This was Phan's wedding night, for God's sake. Weddings only came around two or three times a year. He wasn't going to let the idiot spoil this day for him. It was easier to kill him than argue about it. He'd slit him with a bayonet. He'd had it coming for a long time. There would be no more discussions over who was in charge of the truck.
But for some reason that didn't make him feel any better and as if he wasn't already disoriented enough, then came the old man: nosy little blighter. He wouldn't shut up with his questions. He saw the blood on Phan's hands so there'd been no choice but to slit him too. Being forced to gut two men on your wedding day had to be a bad omen. It was as if he could feel a warning drape itself across his shoulders. He'd dragged the second body over beside the first, blood and entrails everywhere. He wasn't worried about being caught. They were in bandit territory. All Phan had to do was shrug, "I wasn't there, Comrade. I just drove up to the base and there they were — dead." They'd blame the Hmong. They blamed everything on the Hmong.
He should have been able to get it out of his mind but he'd been irritable all evening. Not even the thought of defiling the woman he owned could settle his mind. He just wanted it over and done with. All through the ceremony he'd been unable to summon his charming self. He was curt and insulting. He'd looked at his wristwatch more times than he'd looked at his bride. If they'd been sober, the guests might have put his mood down to nerves. But nobody seemed to care and it no longer mattered. He had his prize.
An hour on the road and they hadn't passed another vehicle. They were only ten kilometres from the Ban Nahoi turn-off. The moon nudged its way between two large clouds. Soon the rains would come, and all these roads would be impassable, even with a four-wheel drive. He slowed as he approached a withered tree that stretched its desperate branches across the road like the spines of a windblown umbrella. This was his marker. He stopped in the middle of the road. When he turned off the engine the silence hit them like a sigh of relief. Apart from the clicks and hisses of the cooling motor the sounds of nature all around were as soothing as a swim in a warm water stream.
"Why have we stopped?" Wei asked.
"I have a surprise for you," he said. "But I need to prepare everything. Promise me you'll stay here in the truck till it's ready?"
She laughed. "Than, you really are a special man."
It was as if he couldn't pretend any more. Urgency had taken him over.
"Do you promise?"
"Yes, I promise."
He climbed from the cab and ran around to the flatbed. He used the metal stirrup as a step and clambered up. One feature of the old Jiefang army trucks was a fixed tool chest that could be locked. It was nestled up against the back of the cab and had the dimensions of a good-sized coffin. He took out his padlock key, unfastened the lid, and retrieved his holdall. There were other tools of his trade in the chest but this was all he needed for now. He jumped off the truck, called, "Don't go anywhere," and vanished into the undergrowth beside the road.
Wei sat enjoying the buzz of the whisky and the silence and the thrill of being a wife. She'd imagined all the wonders the position might bring into her life. She couldn't believe her luck. This was no ordinary man and this was an extraordinary day. He hadn't really been himself this evening but who could be themselves on such an occasion? Goodness knows she hadn't behaved naturally since she'd first met him.
Ten minutes later her husband was back, running around the front of the truck. He waved at her through the windscreen and climbed into the driver's seat. He seemed so happy.