Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

She spied the mayor and two others walking down the thoroughfare of packed mud and shallow puddles, the mayor in his white sport shirt like a muumuu over his vast belly, one of the men with him pointing a long spear toward the clouds, the other one smoking a cigarette, and instantly she knew.

“Oh, my gosh,” she said, and cried, “Mayor Luis! Mayor!” She stood up, and so did Skip Sands. In her left hand she held his white handkerchief, on which she’d been sitting. The men turned and

headed toward them. “She is here, she is here,” the mayor said. They seemed to bring the dusk on as they came. The end of the cigarette flared in the dark. “Kathy,” the mayor said, “it’s very sad.”

She couldn’t remember, at this moment, whether she’d ever really harbored any hope. Mayor Luis seemed to be speaking to Skip: “I’m very sad to be the one. But unfortunately I am still the mayor.” The mayor held out the ring, and in order to take it in her fingers,

she dropped the American’s white handkerchief. “Kathy, we are all very sad tonight.” “I can’t see if it’s inscribed.” “The inscription is there. I have such sadness bringing you this evi

dence.” “So that’s it, then.” “Yes,” Luis said. She held Timothy’s ring in her hand. “Now what? What do I do with

this?” She put it on her right index finger. “I’ll let you folks go on,” Skip said. “No, don’t go.” She had hold of his hand. “It’s truly a tragedy,” he said. “Come, Kathy,” the mayor said. “Skip will pay his sympathies later.” The mayor’s younger companion tossed his cigarette into a puddle.

“We have accomplished a long journey for you.”

Now they had to be paid. Who paid? “Am I the one who gives you the fifty pesos?” she said. Nobody answered. “And do you have, did you bring, isn’t there more?” She turned to the old man with the spear, but his face was blank, he had no English.

“Yes. We have Timmy’s physical remains at my house,” the mayor said. “My wife is beside them, keeping a silent vigil until I bring you. Yes, Kathy, our Timmy is deceased. It’s time to mourn.”

Sands walked by Mrs. Jones’s house three or four times before he saw a light on inside. By then it was past eleven at night, but here people took long siestas and stayed up till all hours.

He mounted the steps and came under her porch light, a neon ring speckled with tiny insects. Through the window he saw her standing in the middle of her parlor looking lost. From her hand dangled a bottle by its neck.

Apparently she was able to see him, too. “Would you like a cigar?”

she said. “What?” he said. “Would you like a cigar?” A perfectly simple question he couldn’t answer. “I’m having a sip or two tonight.” He had to step back as she pushed the door open and came to sit on

the porch railing. She wasn’t steady, and he expected her to fall off into

the dark. “I want you to taste this.” “What is it?” “It’s brandy.” “I don’t care for the hard stuff.” “It’s rice brandy.” “Rice?” “It’s rice brandy. It’s … rice brandy.” “Are you feeling—” He stopped. What a stupid way to begin. Her

husband was dead. “No.” “No?” “I’m not.” “You’re-” “I’m not feeling.” “Mrs. Jones,” he said. “No, don’t go,” she said. “I asked you don’t go before, and you just

left. Listen, don’t worry, I knew all along he wouldn’t make it. That’s why I grabbed your hand that time in the restaurant. I knew it was hopeless. It’s hopeless, so why don’t we all just—go to bed.”

“Jesus,” he said. “I don’t mean right now. Yes, I mean right now. Shut up, Kathy.

You’re drunk.” “You’d better get something in your stomach.” “I have some pork, if it hasn’t turned.” “You’d better have a meal, don’t you think?”

“And rolls.”

“Rolls would probably—” He stopped. He’d meant to say they might absorb some of the brandy, but it was hot, his neck was painfully sunburned, and what was the point of discussing the absorbent qualities of various foods?

“What is it, young man?”

“I’m living without air-conditioning.”

She eyed him closely. She appeared more crazy than drunk.

She said, “I’m sorry to hear about your husband.”

“What?”

Her blouse was half unbuttoned, split slightly almost to her navel. Surprising tiny blue flowers patterned her bra. Sweat dripped down her belly. He himself had a hurtful irritating skin rash from his armpits to his nipples. He wanted ice against his flesh. He wished it would snow.

Mrs. Jones said, “If you come in and have some brandy, I’ll eat some food. It’s air-conditioned.”

The air conditioner was in the bedroom, and they went to bed and made some kind of love. Throughout, he felt awkward. No. Ugly. He got her hands off him immediately afterward, dressed, and walked back to the hotel with the remorse blackening his brain, gumming it up like dirty grease. A new widow, and on the very day she got the news … She, on the other hand, had afterward seemed unashamed, and not so drunk. She’d only seemed angry at her husband for being dead.

He walked by her house the next night but saw no light inside. He tried knocking and got no answer. Any louder and he’d wake the neighbors. He left.

The dry season hadn’t come yet, but it didn’t rain. Immediately after each sunset a lid of clouds pressed the heat down on Damulog and crushed the blossoms and forced its way inside everybody’s head. Slowly the whole town sipped rum. Romy, the young survey engineer, started a fistfight with some Muslims in the Sunshine Eatery and they beat him up out in the square, but nobody even left the tables to watch.

On Saturday night striped wasps and small dragonflies coated the fluorescent tube in the Eatery. Mating energetically, they dropped down onto the plates. One gang after another alighted on this community, crawled all over the illumination, and then was seen no more. Mayor Luis hunted up Sands in the café. His Sabbath over, he looked for company.

“I am going to save you from the same thing every night,” Luis told him, and took him for dinner to his wood and brick home with its strange linoleum floor. They ate spicy pork adobo and they drank painit, a native coffee. And Old Castle Liquor—not Scotch, not Bourbon, just Liquor. With Romy keeping to the hotel, hiding his bruises from the public, Skip had only the mayor for laughs. What of Kathy Jones? “She left to Manila on Tuesday morning,” the mayor said. “She is going to accompany her husband’s remains to the airport.”

The news struck him a blow. “She’s left for good?”

“She will meet her father-in-law, and he will take the remains to the United States.” “She’s not going back with him?” “In fact she is only going to put her husband’s bones on the plane,

then she’s coming back to Damulog. She will not proceed all the way to the United States because of her dedication.”

Next day he went with Mayor Luis and a load of fourinch iron pipe in a multicolored right-hand-drive Isuzu cargo truck to the site of the future waterworks, where a large concrete filtering station stood in a big field. It was plain to see the pipe-laying project was barely off the starting line. Mayor Luis also envisioned a stadium here someday. He paced off the perimeters of guesthouses and ball fields and a swimming pool in the midst of this empty plain of elephant grass, gesturing with his small hands.

The rain held off through the third straight night. Driven from their sweltering homes, people lay out on the basketball court, the only concrete surface in Damulog, looking up at the closed, flat, black heavens, hardly conversing, waiting for dawn.