Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

“I sure do.”

‘Tour friend is waiting.”

“It’s a definite possibility.” He stared at her, searched her face. But he didn’t feel it yet. So much closer, and he didn’t feel it. “I think I’ll change hotels,” he said.

For a dozen miles by the blurred odometer he rode shotgun in a Morris Minor. At a bridge over a river he didn’t know the name of, his driver asked for the fare and put him out, refusing further risk. The bridge’s weather-eaten boards looked rotten. Storm offered more money but the man said, “Can you buy me one new car?”

“Coward. Fuck your mother,” Storm said.

He hitched a ride atop a pile of kindling on a modified pedicab driven by an old man and pulled by an animal that might have been a donkey and might have been a stunted horse. Storm wore cutoff jeans, and the kindling chafed his underthighs. He carried nothing better in his pack, no change of clothes, only his flashlight, knife, and a plastic poncho; and his notebook and Johnny’s map. They stopped at a village two or so miles along, where Storm tried to barter with the old woodman for further assistance, but without any luck. Sapling rubber trees had invaded the roadway ahead, and his woodcart couldn’t pass. Locals came to the doorways of the hooches to stare. A man approached Storm, hesitated just out of reach, and stomped boldly forward one more step to touch the stranger’s arm. People screamed. The man turned away laughing.

Storm didn’t know how far he’d have to walk to reach the border. Less than twenty kilometers, if he read the map correctly.

The old woodman came from behind one of the hooches with a flat-faced, staring young man walking a motorbike. The boy kicked its pedal and straddled it and started off so quickly Storm doubted he expected a passenger, but he leapt on behind him anyway, shouting, “Where you go? Where you go?” It sounded as if the boy said, “The Road.” As they made for the habitation’s edge an old woman, face bursting, shouting and moaning, threw herself into the dirt in front of the bike—the brakes yelped, Storm pitched forward, his lips touched the driver’s hair. The boy stuck his legs out and tried to get around her but she spun like a swimmer, kicking in the dirt, to block his way. Storm lurched from side to side as they rolled over her with each tire in turn and she said, “Hm! Hm!” People in doorways cried out at them—people laughing—a child came out and spit at them. Storm felt the wind string the saliva out along his bare thigh as they accelerated. He clutched at leaves on a tea plant and scoured the spit away as they rounded the bend out of town. The road was red gouged mud. Sometimes a great puddle slowed them as the boy skirted it, sticking out his feet for balance.

Ahead grew mostly rubber trees. A carpet of leaves covered the track there. Light washed down among the trees. The bike thumped twice over a thick snake with brilliant bands. The road narrowed to a trail and they bucked continually over roots, the small engine buzzing like a horn, sounding that insignificant, that drowned amid all this organic life. Three hours, four hours, but they didn’t stop for lunch, or even water. Storm kept low behind the boy’s shoulders as the trail narrowed and slender branches whipped across the boy’s face. The boy wiped continually at his face and his arm came away each time bloodier. He pressed on shouting, weeping. They scraped forward almost entirely in the lowest gear. Storm smelled his rubber shoe sole burning on the tailpipe and repositioned his heels on the struts, but in such a way that they kept slipping off.

By one in the afternoon it was quite dusk in the tall woods and the road was almost impossibly glutted, no more than a path, and then they came into daylight, open spaces, gray elephant grass, emerald rice paddies. Here the path crossed a dry streambed with sheer six-foot walls. The motorbike couldn’t pass.

They dismounted and the boy ran the machine some yards off the path into the high grass and let it fall there on its side, and fell with it himself. He jumped up quickly and came away wiping at his face. Blood spiraled down his forearm where he’d gashed it badly in the tumble. He noticed his injury and smiled at Storm and then suddenly sobbed angrily. Storm took hold of his arm. “Unwrinkle your soul, man. You ain’t dead. Fuck,” he said, “it’s deep.” He untied the bandanna from his brow to bind the wound and had hardly finished knotting its ends when the kid turned to lead the way again. They clambered down one side of the creek and up the other. Storm tried him—”Kid. Kid. I want to give you money, money”—but the boy didn’t answer or pause, and they continued along the dikes of paddies and into a village where everything stirred in the afternoon wind.

On the porch of a wooden home stood a man in brown slacks and a blue shirt, like anyone on the corner of any city. “Welcome to you! Come in for some teatime and I will show you my specimens.”

“We need water.”

“Come into my museum. Please. Come.”

He ushered them into something on the order of a café without chairs, only several tables with big jars standing on them. He lifted a large one, in it a brown insect as long as his forearm, maybe, if it hadn’t been curled like a bracelet and floating in what looked like old piss. “I have quite a collection of insects. This centipede killed a thirteen-yearold boy.”

“What about some water.”

“Do you want me to boil it first? Because you are American.” His eyebrows pulled apart and crashed together as he talked. Bug eyes and fat lips. Big forehead. Except for the fat lips, he resembled one of his specimens.

“Just fill my jug. Please, I mean. I got the shit to fix it with.”

The strange man took Storm’s canteen through the doorway into his kitchen, in which a cot and stove were visible, and immersed it in a galvanized washtub and held it under. Storm followed him, twisted the dripping canteen from his grasp, and dosed it with two tabs. He screwed

shut the lid and shook it. “Fuck, Fm thirsty.” “I believe it, yes,” said the man. They stood among the specimens, and Storm drank off half in a series

of violent swallows and handed the canteen to the kid, who drank briefly, exhaled and inhaled deeply as it came away from his mouth, and grimaced in surprise.

“That’s iodine.” “Yes,” the man said, and spoke in Malay with the kid. “He will not tell me his name. That is his privilege. I am Dr. Ma

hathir. And may I ask your name also?” “Jimmy.” “Jimmy. Yes. You say a bad word a lot, Jimmy. You say ‘shit/ Isn’t this

a bad word?” “I’m a fucking foulmouth. Where do you get these jars, man?” “I am a scientist. An entomologist.” “So you shit big jars out your ass?” “Oh!—these jars. I have twenty-six of them. People sell them to me.

They realize an entomologist requires jars for the specimens. Here is a

scorpion.” “Yeah. How many thirteen-year-olds did he kill?” “The bite isn’t fatal. Only numbing you for a time. Swelling at the

site of the puncture. It’s the largest scorpion to be found in this region.

Therefore, yes, I preserve it.” “Formaldehyde, right?” “Yes. Formaldehyde.” “Is that shit antiseptic?” “Of course.” “Have you got a jug of clean stuff? This guy ripped his arm open.” “Yes, I saw that plainly.” He spoke to the kid, who held out his arm

while gently the scientist unwound the bandanna from the wound. “Nothing to it. We’ll clean the damage, and put some sutures. I can do it.”

“Medical sutures? You have the stuff?” “No. Needle and thread.” “What about Xylocaine?” “No.”

“You better explain that to him, Doc.” They spoke, and the kid continued to seem very upset. “He says he must hide the wound. His body must have no blemish.” “No blemish? Look at his face. He scratched the shit out of it banging