Colin Cotterill - Slash and Burn

The further the trucks drove into the hills, the more the teams began to taste the smoke in the air. Now and then black flakes fluttered past them like charred snow and Siri could feel a growl deep in his throat that he knew would soon turn into a cough. The twenty-minute helicopter ride translated to over an hour on the old trucks. As they climbed into the mountains, deep ruts left over from the heavy rains were gouged along the clay road but the wet season landslides had been cleared. Sawn logs from fallen giants lay to either side of them, awaiting collection. As none of the team members knew the terrain, they had to put their faith in the local knowledge of the truck drivers. When they pulled off the road in the middle of nowhere and announced that this was the starting point of the walk to Ban Hoong, the passengers weren’t in a position to argue.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Siri asked Daeng.

“I swear if you ask me that one more time, Siri, I’ll file for divorce,” she said. “Every day I walk a hundred kilometers from the noodle pot to the tables and back and you say nothing. What’s so different here?”

“Oh, nothing much,” Siri nodded, “unless you count the fast flowing rivers, cliffs, jagged rocks, poisonous spiders, tigers, enemy snipers and unexploded bombs, none of which I noticed last time I was in the noodle shop. And, Daeng, I tell you, I’ve seen it too many times in movies. The injured member of the group lags behind. ‘You go ahead,’ he cries. ‘I’ll catch up with you later.’ But he knows he’s doomed so he uses three of his last four bullets to slow down the pursuing Indians and saves the last one for himself. But they overpower him and cut him to ribbons with hatchets before he has a chance to end his own misery.”

“And you see this happening to me?” Daeng asked, unloading the packs from the truck.

“If it can happen to John Wayne….”

“And he had rheumatism in this film of yours?”

“Rheumatism, arrow wound, it all amounts to the same thing.”

“Have you and Civilai ever calculated how many years of your lives you’ve wasted watching films?”

Siri reached for his broken heart.

“Civilai!” he called to his friend on the next truck. “Daeng thinks we’ve wasted our lives watching films. What should I do?”

“You’re in good shape for an old man,” Civilai shouted. “You’ll always be able to find a new wife.”

“Watch your back, comrade,” Daeng shouted. “We’ll be passing along narrow mountain ledges with sheer drops. I wouldn’t want you to have an accident.”

“Oh, did I hear a threat?” Civilai laughed. “You’ll have to get up very early in the morning to get the better of me, comrade noodle-seller.”

“We’ll see, old man.”

Despite Siri’s warnings and his unspoken concerns about his own health, the hike was comparatively easy. The path was well used and it wound over gentle hills, avoiding some of the higher peaks. Even so, Civilai maintained a safe distance from Madame Daeng. The teams walked in a long single conga line along the narrow trail. Ugly walked at heel beside Siri like a pedigree show dog. The porters carried the heavier bags and the pace was that of a nature hike for elderly ladies rather than a route march. The only sound, apart from the footfalls of heavy boots, came from Judge Haeng who had remembered his fictitious leg injury and now grunted and grumbled and leaned heavily on a tree branch. Siri pointed out to Daeng that a month earlier it had been the other leg causing so much grief. The whole expedition was tired of hearing the judge’s jungle survival story, even as translated by a very sarcastic Auntie Bpoo, today glamorous in a yellow pant suit.

“Can’t we shut him up somehow?” Siri asked.

They were walking through a narrow valley full of odd-looking trees with thick foliage.

“Judge Haeng,” Daeng called from the back of the procession. “Excuse me. Sorry to interrupt.”

The judge looked back over his shoulder.

“What is it, Madame Daeng?” he said. The voices echoed against the karst cliff walls on either side of them.

“You have a reputation of being a man with extensive knowledge of the jungles up here in the north.”

“There are those who would say that I am something of an expert,” he smiled. “A good communist is like a tree. He stands firm but knows how to bend in a strong wind. He is fertile but gladly gives up his nuts to less fortunate creatures. Why do you ask?”

“We were just wondering about these trees we’re passing under right now,” she said. “I haven’t spent much time in the north but I do believe we have something similar in the south. There we call them ngoo dtok .”

Siri noticed that as she spoke his wife was surreptitiously unbuckling her leather belt and sliding it from the lugs of her canvas army trousers. “Would you happen to know if these are the same?” she continued.

“I have heard them called that,” the judge lied. “I won’t bore you with their Latin names or the names attributed by local botanists, but, yes, I believe these are ngoo dtok. ”

“Then it’s just as well we aren’t in the south,” said Daeng, who had just plucked the tree’s name from the air. “Because down in Champasak the ngoo dtok is the home of the infamous drop adder. I hope that isn’t the case here.”

“The what, comrade?”

“The drop adder, Judge. The trees are full of them. They’re deadly venomous snakes camouflaged the colour of branches.” The local porters began to look up at the overhanging foliage with trepidation. “There is no known antidote to their venom. One bite from a drop adder and it’s all over, a long, slow, excruciatingly painful death.”

She had her belt rolled in her hand and was taking aim at Civilai four bodies ahead of her.

“They wait for their prey to walk beneath the tree,” she continued, “and they focus on a vulnerable spot, a neck, a wrist … a bald head. They are remarkably accurate. You step beneath their branch and … hiss!”

She launched her belt into the air where it began to uncurl and came down square on Civilai’s left shoulder-writhing. He shouted his surprise and beat off the fake drop adder, but the porter directly behind him screamed the heavens down. He ran in a blind panic away from the trees and rid himself of the cumbersome packs by tossing them to one side.

The sound of the explosion was amplified in the gully and the force of it blew the escaping porter clean off his feet and into the rocks. Several of those nearest to the blast were knocked backward. Siri and Daeng felt a whoosh of air and, like the others, hung there in a void of shocked silence. Everyone looked around wondering what had happened. All they could see was a charred nest of a crater gouged out of the grass where one pack had hit the ground. The porter, bleeding from the forehead, rolled on to his back and coughed. Dr. Yamaguchi and Dtui went to attend to him. Siri turned to his wife.

“Well done, old girl,” he said.

“It’s never quite had that effect before,” she admitted.

“Will somebody tell me what the hell just happened?” Major Potter called out. Peach’s translation arrived a few seconds later.

“Any idea whose pack that was?” Siri asked.

The porters had merely grabbed all the heavier bags from the trucks to justify a wage so nobody had an immediate answer. The team members looked around for their own bags in order to eliminate whose was missing. It was the major himself who came up empty. He stood with his hands on his head.

“It looks like it was Potter’s bag,” Peach told them.

There was a crowd gathered now around the smoldering hole in the ground. Not a trace remained of whatever had exploded there.