Tree of Smoke (82 page)

“I knew about it. And I know the colonel didn’t die.”

“I see. He didn’t die.”

“Fuck no.”

“Do you know that for a fact?”

“Fuck no. But I do know the colonel. He’s doing Plan B.”

“And what’s Plan B?”

“He let himself get captured in ’69, he allowed it, man, as part of a Psy Ops scenario, and whatever that shit led to lies behind the veil, but I can give you this much on stone-ass tablets: he’s still making it just a little bit harder to be a Commie.”

“And that’s Plan B.”

“Set to music.”

“Did he share this plan with you?”

“Shit don’t work if you share it. It’s a one-man show.”

“A one-man show.” The man smiled. “There’s the colonel in a nutshell.”

“What’s in your shed?”

The man said, “You know, he was a captain when I first knew him. Though not officially. Officially he was separated from the service.”

Storm lit another cigarette and snapped his Zippo shut. “Yeah?”

“That’s the way they worked it then. His outfit came as volunteer civilians. America hadn’t actually joined the war against Japan. But the captain had. Some of you Yanks were bombing the Japs long before they struck you at Pearl Harbor.”

“World War Two. The Deuce.”

“For you Yanks that was the best of wars. For me the best of wars was right here in Malaya, ’51 through ’53. We fought the Commies, and we beat them. The colonel was in and out with us all the way along, including Operation Helsby here in the Belum Valley. He and I may have hiked down through this clearing together. May have traipsed through my parlor before it existed. May have done it more than once. I don’t remember. He and I were on the Long Patrol out of Ipoh together—one hundred three days of slime and such. One hundred three days running. That’s when you know a man. If he was alive, I’d be sure of it. Nor would he have to tell me. Not when you know a man.”

Storm nearly believed. “Well, what happened to him?”

“Are you after the legend, or the fact?”

“I’m after the truth, man.”

“I’d venture the truth is in the legend.”

“What about the facts, then?”

“Unavailable. Obscured in legend.”

“How many tunes do you know, motherfucker? Because I’m running out of nickels.”

The man stood up. “Let me take you someplace. Please come along.”

The man led him beside the creek and over the hill to a water hole among a copse of tall trees and much other growth, light coming down among the elephant-ears, cool, damp. In the hole a buffalo had sunk itself, only its nostrils protruding. Storm and his host watched a couple of small children filling four buckets and shouldering them on yokes. They looked terrified. The man spoke to them and they finished their work before departing.

“Over here.”

Just beyond the copse, overlooking the long view of mountains, the man set his foot on a mound and his hand on a waist-high four-by-four-inch post staked before it.

“Here’s the one-man show.”

Storm closed his eyes and felt for the truth. Sensed none. “Never happen.”

“It happens here.”

“Do you know how many jive-ass graves I’ve seen?”

“I couldn’t guess.”

“Fuckers have shown me his bones. I’ve tasted his so-called ashes, man. I’ve cooked his grease in a spoon and run it in my arm. That shit don’t fly. I’m the tester, man. Every beat of my blood tells me he’s alive.”

“I’m told he’s buried in this hole.”

“If this is his grave, then he didn’t die back in ’Nam.”

“Right enough. If this is his grave.”

“Well—is it? When was he buried? Who buried him? Did you bury him?”

“Not I.”

“Who buried him?”

“I don’t know. I’m told he died suddenly without explanation. I’m sorry to say that somebody could have given him poison. That’s one possibility.”

A monstrous falsehood. But who were its perpetrators?

“I met you once in Saigon. In ’67 or ’68.”

“Let’s see. In ’67 or ’68. It’s entirely possible.”

“You’re Pitchfork.”

“I go by many names.”

“Don’t play like that. I met you in Saigon. You’re the colonel’s old buddy. You gave him an egg.”

“An egg?”

“In the prison camp, when he was hungry. You gave him an egg.”

“Did I?”

“He said you did.”

“Well then, I must have done.”

“You look the same. Are you always the same? You don’t get any older? Are you Satan?”

“Now you’re the one playing a game.”

“Don’t show me graves.”

“Then what can I show you?”

Only the living colonel would suffice. The colonel smoking Cubans and up to his old shit.

“Here lies the colonel.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

Pitchfork said, “I tend the grave.”

Whether this served as the colonel’s grave or someone else’s, whether he lived or rotted, his zone remained. And Storm had walked into it.

“I want to see inside that shed.”

They turned from the grave and went back up the hill. The sun hit their faces, but to the east, behind them, clouds formed. Storm said, “Looks like rain.”

“Not this month. Never in the month of April.”

“Show me inside that shed.”

A board laid across wooden stays held shut the outbuilding’s door. Pitchfork tossed down the bolt and stepped backward, drawing the door wide. Storm stepped forward. In the banded light something long and substantial lay across the ground. He couldn’t imagine what. He swallowed involuntarily and audibly. A monster without limbs. He watched its face develop like a photograph and run rapidly through the colonel’s innumerable dissemblances.

Pitchfork swung the door wider.

“What is it?”

“A mahogany log.”

“A log?”

“A mahogany log. I kept a pile of timber here. That’s the last of it. Till I get more.”

Another fake and phony prophet. Another fucked-up revelator.

Storm drew his knife and grabbed the old man in a choke-hold from behind and put the point to the man’s side, between the ribs, over the liver.

“Where’s the colonel?”

“KIA.”

“MIA.”

“No. Deceased.”

He tightened his choke-hold. “Fucker, you will tell me, or I will fuck you up. Who dug that grave?”

“I don’t know.” His voice came out like a frog’s.

“Tell me who, or I will pull your tab.”

“I don’t know who buried him. And when you pull my tab, as you say, I still won’t know.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I got tired of the world.”

“Who are you?”

“Anders Pitchfork.”

“There was a point a long time ago where none of you fuckers could lie to me anymore, because I was the one distributing the lies. Half your shit came out of my ass.”

“He’s dead.”

“Look,” Storm said, his heart breaking, “I’ve gotta get out of this machine.”

Storm released him. Pitchfork sat down heavily in the dirt, clenching and unclenching his hands and not touching his neck.

Storm said, “I suspect you of doing away with him.”

“I’d suspect the same if I were in your position.”

“And what is my position?”

“Unknown.”

After a minute he tried to stand and Storm put his knife away and helped him rise.

“Do you have any idea how deep down that person burned us, man? How very deep down the burn went?”

“No.”

“As deep as hell is hot and dark, brother.”

“Don’t call me brother.”

“Don’t deny me, brother.”

Pitchfork headed for the house and Storm watched him go. He came out carrying a rifle with a short magazine and a skeletal metal stock which he unfolded from under the foregrip as he walked. Ten paces away he stopped.

“I think that’s one of those World War Two machines.”

“I think an M1 Garand. The paratrooper issue. A lot of people died by it.”

“I heard you jumped out of planes.”

“You know?—in the war itself, I only jumped out of one. Captain Sands was flying the thing. My first and last jump in that war. Although I made a few with the Scouts around here in the fifties.” He raised the rifle and engaged the bolt and sighted carefully at Storm from ten feet away. His finger firm on the trigger. “You’ll be going now.”

Storm turned and marched south toward the trail, back the way he’d come.

He’d thought of continuing into Thailand, but fate had turned him around. Somewhere along the odyssey of years he’d negotiated a crossing without acknowledging its keeper or paying its necessary tribute. You don’t recognize these entities for what they are until after the crossing. Until after the dissemblances dissolve.

What could be left, what left undone?

From the trailhead he surveyed the distances he’d ascended this day and witnessed how far he’d come. As it dipped below the clouds the afternoon sun exploded down the valley.

He felt no fatigue. Only strength and heat. He believed he might make it back down before sunset. He hurried. As quickly as he descended, just as quickly the daylight withdrew up the mountain, and he saw his destiny entangled with the sun’s.

He passed into the shadow. The valley rested in a moment neither light nor dark. With the change the animals hushed. They’d begun again, the first chorus of night insects and sunset birdcalls, by the time he reached level earth. Still he saw no column of smoke, no fires ascending from the Roo.

He reached the spot at the river where the False Guides had sent him over in their happy knowledge he’d missed this most important thing. Without removing his shoes he raised his pack high above his head and divided the waters.

Nothing irrevocable had begun. On the ground in the vicinity of the tall pyre scores of candles flickered in the upturned halves of coconut husks. The villagers wore colorful, clean apparel and seemed busy with nonessential tasks, in and out of the hooches, keeping the moments cool, clapping in a slow rhythm, but only some of them, handing the rhythm from this pair to that pair of hands, no one committed yet, the thing only beginning to build. Maybe they saw him. Maybe they decided they didn’t. The priest stood next to the pyre wearing a headdress, his hair done in coils and feathers, holding a soft-drink bottle in both hands and talking to Mahathir. The boy stood both with them and apart from them.

Mahathir watched Storm come along the river’s edge and raised his hand. The priest seemed unperturbed, but Mahathir didn’t like this. “The ceremony is quite soon,” he said.

Storm said, “I can feel it.”

“You did not go to Thailand. Why? Why didn’t you stay with your friend?”

“If you don’t know, I can’t tell you.”

“But, Jimmy, it’s not a good idea for you. This man has something to do. I am a scientist, so of course I can observe. But for you it’s not a good idea.”

The boy stood rigid, face pulled tight, breathing hard. None of the Roo looked at him.

The females had begun to assemble, younger ones and tiny girls sheathed in sarongs, wearing lipstick and rouge, beads strung in their hair. Small boys stood behind them, feet stuck to their spots but shoulders working, vibrating all over with excitement and childhood. So happy to be alive in their bodies, jumping around in their slave suits. Sodomizers of the True Thing.

“Doesn’t he have a special outfit? Where’s his costume?”

“He will have no clothes. He will be naked.”

“No, he won’t.”

Storm took up the rhythm, first inside himself, and then bringing his hands together loudly, and louder. They all watched him, neither approving nor disapproving. Mahathir gestured as if to silence him.

Storm stepped up beside the boy and raised his challenge.

“I AM THE TRUE COMPENSATOR!”

The clapping went on, but he had their attention.

“I AM THE TRUE COMPENSATOR!” He put his hands to his sides and bowed his head.

The priest spoke with Mahathir.

Storm raised his face. “Tell him I’m the one. This kid’s an imposter.”

“I will not tell him.”

“Tell the kid, then.”

“I cannot.”

“Man, it’s no good if he’s doing it for money. You’ve gotta do it for the thing, man, the thing. You need a reason, you need to be sent by the signs and messages.”

The priest spoke urgently to Mahathir, but Mahathir kept silent.

“You want to take this man’s place?”

“It’s not the kid’s place. It’s mine. I was sent.” He spoke directly to the priest. “This motherfucker doesn’t know what he’s doing. I know what I’m doing. I know where it fits, I know what’s real.”

“I cannot say this to him. I don’t know what will happen. We might get killed.”

“They’re a gentle people, man. Gentle, right?”

“Do you understand what you’re doing? No.”

“I’m getting this poor kid off the hook.”

“No. You don’t understand this.”

“I thought you were a Muslim. Do you believe this jive?”

“Here in this area, where the trees are so tall, where the vehicles cannot come, where no one comes, this area is quite different. God is dealing with them differently in this area.”

“Yeah—I get that, man. I just wondered if you did.”

The priest spoke most emphatically. Now Mahathir replied at length, and the priest listened with his head bowed, nodding his head, interrupting at intervals.

The priest spoke briefly to the boy, who listened without protest, and Storm understood the sham would be revealed.

“Kid, you came into this business without settling certain things inside yourself.”

“He is doing this to save his family.”

“He gets the money. Tell him that. He gets the money. Hey, man, the money’s yours. I’m not trying to step on anybody’s game.”

Mahathir spoke with the boy. The boy stepped backward several paces, turned, and pushed through the circle of females and the circle of young boys and stood beyond.

Mahathir said, “I knew this. I’m not superstitious. But it’s not unusual to see the future. Many people see it. It happens. I saw your future. I tried to tell you.”

The priest stood beside him and cried out in a strangled language and placed his hand on Storm’s head.

The clapping ceased. An old woman moaned. Storm raised his arms high and shouted, “I AM THE COMPENSATOR, MOTHERFUCKERS. I AM THE COMPENSATOR.”