Colin Cotterill - Disco for the Departed

In the light of a small orange candle someone had left burning for him on the teacher’s desk, Siri saw a bizarre scene. Five buffalo in the small room were each apparently vying for a position at the front by the blackboard. One creature had leaned against the chalk and been branded with the message Two had already claimed their places of honor and lay on the dirt floor on either side of Siri’s quilt like enormous Dutch wives. All five looked up at him when he entered the classroom and, as far as creatures with no upper teeth are able, they smiled.

Mr. Geung’s eyes opened slowly. There were no sharp edges anywhere. Colors seemed to bleed together. He knew it was morning because a cock was crowing; the sun was throwing out threads of light like a spider building the web of a new day. He’d awakened with the sunrise for most of the mornings of his life, but never here, never like this. This was-what?-not a house because there were no walls-but a roof. People were sleeping around him. He shifted, but one side of him was stiff. He ached numbly as if something heavy had slept on half of his chest. He looked down to see that he was fully dressed-boots and all-to the waist. His upper body was naked except for a long dirty pink bandage that wound tightly around his chest, his neck, and his upper arm. He touched the bandage tentatively, knowing it hadn’t been there before and wondering what it was for. When his fingers reached a place by his left shoulder he winced. Something serious had happened there. He didn’t remember the shot or the blood, only that he had to get to Vientiane to look after the morgue. He sat up.

“Hey, Kum,” he heard. “He’s up.”

One of the bodies sleeping under the roof of the wall-less hut stirred from its place on the ground and came to Geung’s side. It was a man of around Geung’s own height with sun-darkened skin and short spiky hair. Across his shoulder was a belt of bullets. It must have been terribly uncomfortable to sleep on, Geung thought. The man’s voice sounded bruised.

“How you feeling?”

“I… I’m good,” Geung told him.

The man turned his back and yelled across to the colleague who’d spoken first. “He says he’s all right. He can talk.”

“Yeah, some of ‘em do,” came the reply.

Spiky Hair spoke slowly as if Geung were of another species. “I shot you. Do you understand?”

Geung looked at the pink bandage and nodded. His memory was slowly returning.

“I’m sorry,” the man continued. “It was a mistake. I thought you were… Well, no. I didn’t know what you were. I just shot. If I’d known you were… like you are, I would never…”

“Get him to forgive you,” came the floor-bound voice. Slowly, other bodies were beginning to stir.

“I need you to forgive me,” Spiky Hair said. “I can’t afford to lose any more credits. You understand? You could really mess up my karma. Buddha’s pissed enough already that I’ve resorted to thieving. But he was getting used to the idea till you come along. Now I’m back in the shits. You forgiving me would really help get me back in the good books.”

Geung didn’t have a clue as to what the man was talking about. “Who… o… o’re you?” he asked.

Spiky Hair sat beside Geung and sighed. Forgiveness always came at a cost. “I used to be a soldier,” he whispered. “Except I was on the wrong side. Now, I’m… now we’re what they call opportunists. You know? We wait for trucks and convoys that aren’t too seriously guarded and we sort of ask them if they can help us out with a few kip. We were lying in wait in the field when you crept up and spooked me.

You know? I thought you were after us. I didn’t know you were… how you are, honest.”

“C… can I go?”

“Go? Go where?”

“Vientiane.”

“That’s a damned long way.”

“I promised.”

“Look, I’m not sure you’re up to that journey, brother. Although there’s no infection. The bullet wasn’t that big and it went right through you. You hollered like a wild sow when we scrubbed at it with white spirit but I reckon we cleaned it up all right. But you’re going to ache for a while.”

“C… can I g… go?”

Spiky Hair shouted back over his shoulder, “He wants to go.”

“Then let him go.”

“What if he dies on the way?”

“Not your problem. Once he’s out of here, you’re off the hook.”

“Why don’t you just forget all that religious crap?” someone else said. “You’re a bandit. You’ll never get close enough to sniff Nirvana.”

“No. Don’t say that.” Spiky Hair looked desperately at Geung and asked again, “Do you forgive me?”

“Okay.”

“Really? Thanks. That’s big of you.”

To show his gratitude, Spiky Hair put together some rations for Geung and walked a few kilometers with him. The effects of the opium Geung had been sedated with started to wear off and he grimaced with each step. Soon they were picking their way through thick vegetation that teemed with insects and wildlife. Lizards scurried out of their path, and squirrels climbed out of reach.

“Where’s the r… road?” Geung asked.

“Road? You don’t need a road. I thought you people were like dogs, just followed your noses.”

Geung turned to him, bristling. “I… I’m no dog.”

“Okay, take it easy.”

“No dog.” His face turned pink with indignation.

“All right. Gee. I’m sorry. Listen. If you follow the road it’ll add another sixty miles to your trip. Understand? The thing winds all over the place. Just keep the sun on your left shoulder blade in the morning and your right tit in the afternoon. That should put you on a straight line.”

“I’m no dog.”

“I get it. You aren’t really paying attention, are you?”

“Well, I… I’m not.”

They walked on but it was another twenty minutes before Geung forgave Spiky Hair for calling him a dog. Shooting him was one thing. Calling him a dog was another thing completely. By then his guide had come up with a plan to make the instructions clearer. The supplies he’d prepared for Geung were in a cloth shoulder bag on a long strap. As the gunshot wound was on the right, he hooked the bag over Geung’s left shoulder to hang at his right hip. He explained that the sun should climb up the back of the strap in the morning and down the front in the afternoon. He made up a little song that just happened to rhyme: “The sun wakes up and climbs my back / At evening drops into my sack.”

They must have sung it a thousand times by the time they reached the foot of the Kuang Si waterfall. Spiky Hair still wasn’t sure that Geung had grasped the idea, although he certainly knew the song well enough. He filled a canteen from the clear stream and put it in the pack with its stolen food and a supply of opium for when the shoulder started to act up. He made Geung promise not to take all the opium at the same time but Geung reminded him he wasn’t stupid.

“No, of course not,” said Spiky Hair as he turned back and left Geung to his own devices. “Keep to the footpaths,” he said. He had little faith that Geung would make it to Vientiane but it didn’t matter. The bandit had gained enough merit to compensate for that. Even a donkey would have more sense than to set off on a hundred and fifty-mile trek on a day as dry as a dead man’s scrotum.

Panoy made it through the night. Her breath was shallow but her vital signs looked promising. Dtui felt confident enough to leave her for an hour and walk with the doctors to the complex that had once housed the Cuban workers. During the height of the bombing, some two hundred villagers had also spent their days in this network of caves that riddled the large limestone cliffs about a half mile from the hospital. Nowadays only the front section was used for storage and for keeping fodder dry in the rainy season. The rest was deserted.