Colin Cotterill - Curse of the Pogo Stick

She turned her back on them and reached into a drawer. When she turned around she was holding a rusty fish gutter in her gnarled hand.

“Now, who’s first?”

Dr. Siri had become very fond of his captors as they sang and joked and prepared for the burial of Mrs. Zhong. Given the amount of preparation involved and the serious absence of men who normally bore the brunt of the heavy work, it was reluctantly decided that the search for weak-minded Assistant Haeng would have to wait till late afternoon, perhaps even the following day. Siri was concerned for the life of his boss but there was nothing he could do. He knew his own lab assistant, Mr. Geung, had survived several nights alone in the jungle, but Mr. Geung was only mentally handicapped. He wasn’t a high-court judge, a man trained to interpret and assess and deliberate. Haeng had nothing practical in his arsenal. Every dictum in the world lined up one after the next wouldn’t stop a man from being eaten by a tiger. Geung would climb a tree. Even down to the last gulp, Haeng would be citing how unconstitutional it was to consume a government official. Heavens, the man had even managed to run away from his own soldiers. If he’d survived these last few days, Siri would be astonished. But death? That’s life.

And death was the business of the morning. Much of that business was dedicated to shaking off the evil spirits that, given free access, would have made off with Auntie

Zhong’s soul as soon as look at it. With the dark forces milling around the front door of the house like annoying press photographers, the girls surreptitiously cut a hole in the side wall and sneaked her out on a stretcher. The four bearers were dressed as men in hopes the gods wouldn’t notice the digression from tradition. They bore down the hill at a cracking pace, Siri hot on their heels, hard-pressed to keep up.

The transvestite stretcher bearers would jog off in one direction, giving the impression they were heading directly for the grave. Then, Nhia, the head pallbearer, would shout, “Left” or “Right” in a basso voice and the team would suddenly change direction. In soccer, this tactic was known as “throwing a dummy.” Any pursuing spirit not fooled back at the house would be going so fast that the change of tack would hopefully send it careening on down the hillside like a puppy on waxed parquet. Just to make sure, the tactic was repeated six or seven times before they finally headed west-the ultimate direction of every burial.

By the time he’d worked out this ruse, Siri was so out of breath he sat on the hillside and watched the entourage zigzag down the hill. With a little common sense he was able to work out their final destination and arrived there at roughly the same time as Auntie Zhong. Dia was there playing the departing dirge on a geng. She performed with such skill her manly face assumed an air of divine beauty. The other women stood around in their finest costumes, each wearing a tiara of silver coins. A buffalo was tethered to a post near the grave and Elder Long crouched, raiding the divining horns in a large Christmas Special Hershey Bar jar. As soon as the body arrived and was lowered onto a temporary platform, he emptied the horns onto the ground. Their positioning would tell the assembled guests whether Auntie Zhong accepted the buffalo as a parting gift. As it was too dangerous to travel between villages at this time, the assembled guests amounted to the women, Siri, and a few goats.

Eight times Long cast the horns and eight times his wife rejected the buffalo. He walked over to the body, which was dressed in its very best costume-a pleated skirt that had taken six months to weave, dye, and embroider, a skirt that would be worn only once.

“You old bat,” he said playfully. “Cantankerous to the last. It’s all we have. You know I’d love to sacrifice you a whole herd of cattle but we’re at the end of the livestock. Perhaps you’d like us to bring your father over and offer him to the gods?”

Siri turned to Bao. “Her father?”

“The white dog,” she said. “It arrived in the village one day. Hmong women are naturally suspicious of strange dogs but Zhong was certain the animal was her dead father returned from heaven. He’d been cruel to dogs all his life so she believed the gods had punished him like this. From that day till her death she spoiled the animal rotten.”

On the ninth cast of the horns, the old lady relented and the buffalo was condemned to death. Chia walked over to Siri carrying an enormous ax and handed it to him. His heart stopped. Siri, for all his faults, could not kill. Since he’d become so well acquainted with the afterlife, he’d found it impossible-mosquitoes and small underfoot insects not included-to take a life. He couldn’t even bring himself to strangle a chicken or allow a fish to drown in air. But he was the only male guest and the heavens and the middle earth were counting on him to make Zhong’s transition complete. He looked at the proud old beast. He really didn’t want to be haunted for all eternity by a vengeful buffalo.

With the ax behind his back, he walked to the tethered animal, who chomped happily on the fresh grass around her hooves. She was probably thinking what a pleasant day out this was-music, a show, and a meal. She couldn’t wait to tell the pigs when she got back. Siri knew he had no choice. He prayed to the ancestors for a way out but nothing was immediately forthcoming. So he lofted his ax and stood before the buffalo, who suddenly realized all eyes were on her. With a beard of grass hanging from her mouth she looked up at the old man in front of her. In his hand she saw the hoisted ax and, through whatever process an ox makes connections to past events, something seemed to register in her slow brain. And when she realized what was about to happen, her heart, already heavy with hay, gave out. She keeled to one side, took one more chew of her grass, and passed away. To Elder Long it was confirmation. One more miracle. Yeh Ming had felled a buffalo with his mind. He became even more convinced that the trouble that haunted their village could be cured.

The interment that followed went according to plan.

Yer, playing a pipe, and Phia, carrying a burning brand, led the bearers to the grave site. When the pipe ceased its lament, all the women screamed, laughed, and ran as fast as they could back to the hut, leaving Long and Siri alone with the body.

“What happened?” Siri asked.

“Women aren’t allowed to see what happens next,” Long told him. “How’s your back?”

The two old men lifted Zhong’s stretcher and carried her to an open coffin embedded in the ground. They laid her inside, broke up the bier, and put it on top of the body. While Siri burned incense and set light to the spirit papers, Long fired an arrow from a consecrated crossbow across his dead wife. He said the final prayers, they put the lid on the coffin, and covered it with earth. Siri was feeling appropriately solemn until Long smiled and slapped him on the back.

“One down, three more to go,” he said. “Let’s hope the others outlast me.”

“The other what?”

“I’m married to three more of those girls, Yeh Ming. I only wish I had the energy and the years to enjoy them all.”

Siri laughed. “I assume Auntie Zhong knew about that.”

“It was her idea. She would have had me marry all of them but the rest share our surname. They’d lost their men. I was the only bull left in the herd. Zhong was only too pleased at the thought of having me out of her nest for a few nights a week. But I wouldn’t go. Refused point-blank. Not while she was alive. We’d been together fifty years. Fifty years, Yeh Ming. You can’t suddenly be unfaithful after all that time, can you now?”

Siri dwelled for a moment on his lifetime marriage to Boua. He’d felt the same way.