Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

Johnny snapped his fingers once, and each bat shivered slightly where it clung—the collective noise like that of a locomotive charging past. The blast died quickly, but the darkness seemed to resonate now with a certain life.

“Look where they scratched the rocks. The natives.” Storm examined a few barely discernible markings in the circle of the flashlight’s glare, nothing he could make sense of. Johnny moved his light among the vague symbols and asked, “What

does it say?” “What? I don’t know.” “I thought you knew. Maybe you know about these people from your

university.” Storm laughed. It came out of him like a shot, and the bats roared again. He clutched his light in his armpit and wiped slick goo from his

palms along the backs of his pants legs. “What is this shit?” “Yes. It’s the guano. From the bats.” “Goddamn. How far do these caves go?” “This is the only cave. We can go out the other side.” “Fuck me. You mean there’s an easier way?” “Only to go out. We have to drop out a small hole, but it’s easier than

going back. Very easy to drop. But you can’t climb inside that way. It’s

too slippery.” “Well, fuck, man, let’s go.” “This way.” Johnny moved ahead of him very slowly toward an emptiness that soon produced out of itself a wall, and next a hole in the wall

somewhat larger than the one they’d come in by. “Me first,” Storm said. They only had to duck their heads to stay moving now, but the foot

ing was almost impossible. Storm saw no bats in the passage, though their shit was everywhere.

Johnny’s light wavered and tumbled to the floor. Storm took two careful steps backward and retrieved it and found Johnny on his back and dropped the instrument beside him.

“I can’t see you,” Johnny said.

Storm unsnapped the knife from his belt and shone his own light on it. “Can you see this, fucker?” He crouched and raised the hem of Johnny’s T-shirt with the knifepoint.

“What are you doing?” He trained the beam on Johnny’s face and Johnny squinted and

looked away. “I want to know what you’re doing.” “I’m going to carve some fat off your belly.” “What are you doing! You act crazy!” In the chamber down the tun

nel the bats roared.

“I’m going to skin you bit by bit. I’m going to throw the pieces in a pile there, and you can watch the monkeys eat the pieces. Meanwhile, the ants are eating you.”

“You’re crazy!” “Assume I’m not.” “Money! Money! I can get you!” “You said you know Benęt.” “Yes, it’s bad to be executed. But you have to see it was a badness of

fate that put him there. It was a terrible position.” “Welcome to the position.” “But I have nothing to do with that!” “Let’s get back to your current position.” Johnny talked a little in Chinese, and then sounded as if he were an

swering himself. “Okay. I know. I know what you want.” “Then give it to me.” “This—please listen—this was not because of me, sir. Please under

stand.” “You’re gonna talk to me.”

“Let me shine my light.”

“Keep that thing off me.”

“Just to the side.” Johnny shone his light on the wall. He raised his head and searched very carefully for some sign of a future in Storm’s face. “Can I please say one thing to you? We are all one family.”

“Johnny. Where’s the colonel?”

“Oh, for the love of God, the colonel. Yes. Tell me what you want. He’s not far. Only in Thailand, across the border. You can go straight there by the trails. Let’s go back to the town, and I’ll get you sorted out. Whoever takes the rubber trail to those villages in the Belum Valley, he can find the colonel easily. Anyone knows that.”

Storm backed off two paces and sheathed his knife. “Get up.”

“I can get up. I can do it easily!” He rose with a lightheartedness Storm recognized from having survived, himself, when he thought the Coast Guard would murder him. Johnny led the way another forty meters to a brilliant hole in the floor.

Storm dropped his flashlight through the opening and followed it, feet first, and dropped two meters down into the daytime. Johnny’s feet dangled above him and he gripped the leg of the fat man’s shorts as he lowered himself until his arms were stretched full length above his head, his hands gripping rock, and let himself fall. He smiled stupidly and shook his head.

Storm said, “Let’s go.”

He stayed close to Johnny while they made their way around the mountain and back to the place where they’d taken lunch. “Here we are!” Johnny said. “You see?” he said as if in demonstration of an important truth.

“I need a map.”

“Of course! Of course! I have maps at my hotel.”

“What’s in your pack?”

“Of course! I forgot I have a map in my pack!” He squatted and tore open the flap and hauled out his baggies of grub, a blue poncho, a three-meter swatch of colorful fabric which unrolled around him and which he explained was his blanket, and handed Storm a ragged map folded all wrong. “Unfortunately the writing is Malay. But you just want to take the rubber trail and speak to the headmen along the way. Someone will guide you.”

Storm spread the map out on the ground. “Show me.” “We will go back to town. Tomorrow you can hire a car to this place.

Then it’s no more road. The motorcycle can take you.” “Is this the Thai border?” “Yes, but here is the village you will go to.” “I don’t see a village.” “It’s there. I can’t make a mark. There’s no pen.” Storm did his best to get the map into compact dimensions and

jammed it into his own pack. “Let’s go.”

They shouldered their packs and walked. Climbing the hill they didn’t speak. It wasn’t as far uphill this way as it had seemed coming out. Storm dogged him while they passed along the ridge, and preceded him going down the other side. Even on the downhill side Johnny breathed heavily and had nothing to say.

When they’d reached the trail along the river, he seemed more certain of his position. “You gave me a concern! But we’re getting along now.”

“Not if you fucked me.” “Of course I don’t do that. We’re friends.” “Bullshit.” “I believe it! We are friends!” In a place where the muddy river ran level with its banks they stopped

to wash the guano away. “I won’t run off,” Johnny said, wading out. “So you can trust me. Anyway it’s too far to the other side. And there —I see a crocodile.”

Immediately he launched out. Storm watched him flounder the hundred feet across the water. He hit a deep spot and flailed at the current, taking buoyant leaps sideways downstream, finding his footing at last and grappling with the vegetation and hauling himself out to rest on all fours, drenched and shrunken, raising his head, gasping for breath, lowering it again. He didn’t look back at Storm.

Storm watched for only a few seconds, then turned and hurried down the trail to meet the boatman before Johnny did.

All the while he hiked downriver he asked himself: Why did I mention the colonel before he did? I gave him his cue. He might have sent me chasing anything.

He sat on the straw tatami at Johnny’s hotel taking off a sock stained brown with his own blood. He’d daubed the leech bites with river mud, but he’d missed one.

Johnny’s old woman came around the corner of the hall stirring up

the dust with a three-foot broom. “Ah! You back!” “Ain’t it the truth.” “Where is my husband?” “Still with his friends in the jungle.” “Then Johnny he staying another longer maybe?” “Yeah. Like that.”

“I get you a car tomorrow morning. You got some friend in Thailand?”