A Walk in the Thai Sun (a novel) - Chapter 1 by Greg M

Sam Watson peeled the tops back from two plastic cream containers and poured the contents of both into his coffee. This he stirred and then took out a cigarette and lit it. He took two long pulls and then gave his attention back to Jeff. His blond-haired green-eyed son was busy making adjustments to his carry-on bag. His hair was longish and parted down the middle, the two front ends curving inward like pincers whenever he leaned forward.
“You sure you don't want something?” Sam asked.
Jeff looked up. “They'll serve us something within an hour of lift-off and it's included in the airfare. I'll be fine until then.”
“You're too disciplined for your own good.”
Jeff smiled. “On our support level, you have to be.”
“Your father is willing to buy you a coffee and a piece of pie, you know, even at airport prices.”
“I know, Dad. But really I'd rather not, O.K.?”

“I'll bet you didn't even spend any of the money I've sent you the last Christmas.” Sam said.
Jeff said nothing.
“Well, did you?”
“I spent it.”
“On what?”
Jeff studied his father for a moment before answering. “Cassettes,” he said simply.
“Cassettes?”
“Yes.”
“Didn't you tell me you could buy good copies of pop albums for about a buck apiece in the markets over there?” Sam asked.
“Well, yes,” Jeff admitted.
“Now let's see... I sent you three hundred dollars. That means you bought three hundred cassettes?”
“Six, actually.”
Sam drank from his coffee, flicked the excess ash off his cigarette, and sighed. “That money was for you, Jeff,” he said.
Jeff gave his father a weak smile and said nothing.
“There are a lot of Asians here, you know,” Sam said. “At least half a million… maybe even a million. It’s not like you have to go…”
Jeff held up his hand. “I have a call, Dad, a call to work among the people of Thailand in Thailand. I have to go. Otherwise they’d all have to come here to hear the Gospel. Which is easier?”
“The call, ah yes the call…” Sam shook his head slowly. Why was it that his own son was the only person on the planet that made him feel completely helpless? “I’m sorry, Jeff,” he said.
“I’ll miss you too, Dad.”

* * * * *

Ute went out from the police box into the Thai sun. He could al-most feel his skin turning brown as he stood looking down the road. Brown skin was peasant skin, the skin of those who did their labors in the sun, the skin of those who had no future. He put on his hat. Ute was fair, with a wave to his thick black hair and a slight crook in his smile. It made his way with women easy, a bit of good karma.
A 90cc Honda motorcycle with a yellow-helmeted driver was approaching from the north. The combination was instantly recognizable, the young Christian missionary from Canada. He probably owned the only yellow motorcycle helmet in the entire province. He gave Ute a cheery wave as he passed by, on his way, no doubt, to the tiny Christian church in Khoksamrong. Ute had never been there but his friends had told him the church was full of lepers.
There was nothing else of interest on the road, only a song-taow that had stopped by a large mango tree to let off a passenger and her baskets of vegetables. The vehicle, a one-ton truck with two benches in the back and a canvas roof, was one of many that drove down the road at ten-to-fif-teen minute intervals picking up anyone who happened to be waiting. For five baht one could ride to Banmi, the next market town.
Practically everyone in this songtaow, a group of perhaps twenty, had disembarked to allow the woman's four bas-kets of veg-etables to be unloaded. She paid the driver and then turned to arrange her baskets in the shade by the side of the road. She sat beside them, put a plug of betel nut in her mouth, and began chewing, waiting for the next pedi-cab driver to happen by and take her, and her vegetables, to the village.
Ute looked back through the door into the police box. Kwanchai, his partner, was asleep on the bench. Ute sighed. Barring some major crime, the two of them would be off in an hour. It hadn't been much of a day: half a dozen traffic cita-tions and two one-hundred-baht “gifts” from logging trucks bearing illegal tim-ber. He had been doing traffic detail for nearly three months, his reward for challenging the “official version” of what happened when he foiled a gem shop robbery in Banmi a few months earlier. That version had given the credit to Lieutenant Lup Law, his superior, who wasn't even in town at the time.
Ute looked down the road toward the woman and her baskets again. There was a small pickup with a canopy bearing down on her from the oppo-site direction. It seemed to be heading right for her, but at this distance it was probably heat distortion rising from the road. He turned away. A sudden dis-tant screech brought his eyes back to the truck. One of the bas-kets, now empty of its vegetables, was rolling in a spiral towards the middle of the road. The woman was on her feet swear-ing at the driver of the pickup. The driver and a passenger got out of the truck to survey the damage. Ute climbed on his motorcycle.
The passenger shouted at the driver and pointed in Ute's direction. The driver saw Ute and bolted into the trees. The passenger glanced back quickly at the truck, hesitated, and then followed the driver. Ute pulled the motorcycle up beside the woman and shouted for them to stop. Neither man paid any attention and they were soon out of sight.
Ute watched them disappear. It seemed absurd to flee the scene of an accident when the only damage was a spilled basket of vegetables. He looked at the truck idling in the midst of squashes, cucumbers, and tomatoes.
“Did you see what he did?” the woman shouted. “Did you see?”
“Yes, madam, I saw,” Ute answered, still studying the truck.
“Well, aren't you going to chase them?” She asked, practically pushing her face into his. Years of chewing betel nut had reddened her gums, teeth, and lips to the point that her mouth looked like an open sore.
Ute turned away, walked behind the truck, and opened the canopy. In the back of the truck, pressed up against the cab were three full burlap bags.
“I said, Aren't you going to chase them?” the woman persisted.
“No, madam, I'm not.”
“Why not? They almost killed me and look what they did to my vegetables!”
“No backup,” said Ute simply. He crawled into the back of the truck and took out his pocketknife. The bags, he discovered, had two layers, the outer burlap and an inner layer of thick plastic. A small in-cision yielded a white powder. He took a small amount of the powder, rubbed it between his thumb and finger until most of it had fallen away, and then tasted it. A smile spread slowly across his face.
When he backed out of the pickup, he found the woman busy sal-vaging what she could of her vegetables. She did not even look at him as he mounted his motorcycle and started it up. Evidently she had decided that she would get no satisfaction from him. This suited Ute just fine.

“Kwanchai, Kwanchai! Come on wake up! There's something I want to show you!”
Kwanchai slowly sat up on the bench, shielded his eyes, and tried to focus on Ute's back lit form in the doorway. Kwanchai had stocky build, a cheap brush cut, and a thin red mark across his face where it had been in contact with the hard edge of the bench. He began rubbing this. “What's the matter?” he mumbled.
“I had a little fun while you were asleep. Come and take a look.” Ute turned and began walking toward the pickup. Kwanchai followed him out into the sun. Beside the pickup a pedicab driver was now helping an old woman load baskets of vegetables on to his three-wheeled bike. Even from this distance Ute could hear the woman's loud monologue about how useless the police were.
“What's her problem?” Kwanchai asked, catching up.
“The driver of the pickup lost control of his truck and knocked over one of her baskets. I saw the whole thing happen and, as I was riding toward them, the driver and his passenger ran into the woods. Wait until you see what I found in the back of the truck.”
The old woman glared at them as she mounted the pedicab. Ute ignored her but Kwanchai gave her an apologetic smile.
“Come and take a look at this,” Ute said, climbing into the pickup.
“What is it?” Kwanchai asked, peering at the burlap bags in the back of the truck.
“My ticket out of that box,” he said gesturing back down the road. He collected a little of the powder and put it in Kwanchai's palm.
Kwanchai sniffed at the powder. His eyes widened, “How much is there?”
“At least a hundred kilos,” Ute leaned back against the pickup and grinned.
“Don't you think we'd better get after them?” Kwanchai asked.
“On foot through that?” Ute gestured at the thick woods by the side of the road.
“Well...”
“Remember it's two on two and these guys were transporting heroin. They know the laws about that just as well as you do. Do you think they're going to put much value on our lives under the circumstances?”
Kwanchai frowned. “We'd better call in for reinforce-ments.”
Ute shook his head. “No. At least not yet. I want to make sure lots of people know who found this stuff before it gets back to Lup Law. Otherwise he'll take credit for the whole thing. Besides, it’ll take us at least half an hour to get backup out here. Those guys will be in Laos before then.”
Kwanchai looked doubtful and then nodded agreement. “So what do you want to do?”
Ute studied Kwanchai for a moment before answering. His partner had been in the police for seven years longer than he had. He was supposed to be the senior partner, to be in command. Ute smiled to himself. “Well, we'll have to get this truck back to the station, of course. Why don't you do that? The key's in the ignition. Tell them we'll file a report on it later and don't let on what's in the back. Then meet me over at Charlie's.”
Kwanchai considered this and then nodded slowly in agreement.

Lieutenant Lup Law made one last attempt to give his atten-tion to the pile of papers in front of him and then took out a cigar-ette and lit it. He placed the cigarette into the right-hand side of his mouth directly below two nearly parallel scars on his lower cheek, souvenirs from a dog attack when he was very young. He puffed on the cigarette for a few moments, then looked at the papers again. He fingered the new amulet around his neck. It was supposed to bring him luck.
“Lieutenant, sir?”
Lup Law released the amulet and looked over at Kwanchai stand-ing in the doorway. The officer bowed to him in a very self-depreciating way.
“What can I do for you, Kwanchai?” Lup Law asked.
“I have something I think you'd better come and take a look at, Sir,” Kwanchai said quietly.
“Really? What's that?”
Kwanchai's eyes seemed to search the wall for hidden menace. “I...I think you'd better just come and look, Sir,” he stam-mered.
Lup Law studied Kwanchai carefully. “All right. Where are we going?”
“Just down to the parking lot, Sir.”
“The parking lot?”
“Yes, Sir.”
Lup Law gestured for Kwanchai to lead the way and then followed the young officer down the back stairs that led to the parking lot.

“...and when they saw me coming toward them on the motor-cycle, they just ran into the woods,” Ute laughed. It was a long loud laugh fueled by too much drink. He had just spent two hours at Charlie’s telling and retelling the story. “So I thought to myself, why are they running from me when all they've done is knock over a basket of vegetables? The worst thing that could happen is that they would get a reprimand and a small fine. Hardly worth abandoning a truck for... So instead of giving chase, I decided to see what was in the truck.” He shook his head. “There's got to be a hundred kilos of heroin in there, Sir.”
“And where is it now?” Lup Law asked.
“It's still in the truck, and that's parked outside.”
“You just left a hundred kilos of heroin in a truck?”
“Well, Sir... It's only been there for a few minutes,” Ute lied. “And I didn't want to disturb anything in case you wanted to check for prints and things like that.”
Lup Law stood up. “Come on, then. Let's go take a look.”

It was now late afternoon and the midday heat was just beginning to dissipate. A few police officers had gathered under a shelter next to the station to smoke cigarettes and socialize. They watched Ute as he led the lieutenant across the parking lot.
“Is this it?” the lieutenant asked as he approached the truck.
“Yes. The stuff is in three bags in the back,” Ute said confidently.
Lup Law gave Ute a long sideways look before opening the back of the truck. He then opened the canopy and crawled in without hesitation. Ute looked across the parking lot at the men under the shelter. One of them gave him a little wave.
“Are you sure this is the right truck?” the lieutenant said from inside the canopy.
“Yes. Why?”
The lieutenant crawled out of the back of the truck and began dusting off his knees. “The bags are full of cement,” he said as he began walking back to the station.

* * * * *

Sam Watson felt for the keys in his coat pocket. Their edges were sharp, mildly irritating to his hands. They were made the previous day at the locksmith's, the third time he'd lost his keys in less than a year. He wondered why he found it so easy, these days, to think about such trivial things while working.
The photographer was busy snapping the girl’s body from a variety of angles. Sam could see her nose had broken and long enough before her death to allow some swelling to occur. Dried blood flaked from her lips and chin, and the angle of her left thumb told Sam it was dislo-cated or perhaps broken. Puncture marks were on both arms, partially hidden by long greasy black hair, hair that was matted with blood from the top of her head. She was fourteen, maybe fifteen. He stud-ied the face again: familiar somehow, but he couldn't place it.
Sam looked around for a weapon but there was nothing obvious. He shuffled his feet and felt one of them kick something, a cardboard box from a donut place. It was only one of several such containers that littered the floor of the room, surrounding the old mattress where they had found the girl. The only other piece of furniture was a wooden chair freshly painted bright yellow. On this were a few pieces of clothing and an old Radio Shack ghetto blaster. Sam popped this open and pulled out a cassette. This too was Radio Shack, with the words “Cowboy Junkies” hand-written on the label. He replaced it, closed the machine and looked around the room again.
The only new paint in the place was on the chair. The pale yellow walls were mottled with mold and the window was cracked. The main doorframe was bent and the area around the lock showed evidence of numerous past attempts at prying the door open. These days a good shove was all that was needed. Like many of the rooms in the hotels of Vancouver's eastside, what was inside would nor-mally have little need of security. This was the subsistence zone. You had to be pretty desperate to steal anything found here, but then desperation was the defining characteristic of the area.
“Do you know her?” asked a voice behind him.
Sam glanced over his shoulder at Collins, who had just entered the room. Collins was nearly twenty-five years Sam's junior, a college cop recently promoted to lieutenant “No,” Sam said simply. He lit a cigarette. “This was all we found when we got here. One of the other residents called in and complained about someone screaming and a lot of banging and crashing in the next room. We found the door to the room wide open and her lying there dressed only in a T-shirt. There was paraphernalia all over the place. Tony is next door talking to the guy who called.”
The two men stood aside as the paramedics placed the body on a stretcher and covered it. They watched silently as the paramedics carried her past them and into the hall.
“Just think, Watson, only three more months of this stuff.”
“Just think, Collins, you've got another twenty-five years of it, ”Sam said. “If you make it.”
“I'll make it.”
Sam studied Collins. The lieutenant was in his early thirties, but he'd been with the force nearly eight years. He was thor-oughly cop, both in his attitude and his social life. “Yeah, you probably will,” Sam said. He stepped into the hall and took one last look at the girl. As he did the covering slipped off her face. Then he knew.
“What's wrong?” Collins asked. “You look like you've just seen a ghost.”
“The daughter of a ghost,” Sam said almost inaudibly.
“What?”
Sam nodded toward the receeding stretcher. “Her name was Nicki. She was the daughter of a hooker I used to know back when they were all working Davies Street. Nicki was only four or five the last time I saw her. I guess that's why I didn't recognize her right a way.”
“The daughter of a hooker?”
“Yeah, a hooker,” Sam said. “Same one they found in the dump-ster down on Homer a year ago last June.” Her name was Sandy, he added mentally, and she was one of my few indiscretions as a cop. The kid was sleeping right in the room.
“Well, at least they got the guy,” Collins said.
“Didn't help the kid, did it?”
Collins said nothing.
In the silence Sam took his keys out of his pocket and looked at them. They all worked despite the fact that they looked nothing like the originals.
“New keys,” said Collins matter-of-factly.
“Oh, you’re good,” Sam said stuffing the keys back into his pocket.

* * * * *

Ute was no longer a person. His personhood had been given up when he entered the monastery six months earlier. He was now a phra, a monk, and he was counted with the Buddha statues, the amulets and other sacred things of Buddhism. He was a sacred object, a holy “it.”
He walked down the street, eighth in a line of twelve monks, carrying food bowls in the early morning. As a Buddhist monk, he had a right to food, to walk down the streets and alleys at dawn, and receive offerings of rice, fruit, and vegetables. A woman put a spoonful of rice in his bowl. He did not thank her or even look at her. He was simply fulfilling a function, acting as the means by which the woman earned good karma, and she understood that.
Ute tried to keep his eyes on the back of the monk in front of him. He was supposed to be dispassionate, to be unaffected by what went on around him. When the people looked at him, they were supposed to see a being walking along the road to enlightenment, but whenever his eyes strayed and he saw his reflection on the glass of the store front windows, he winced.
The line of monks slowly began making its way back to the monastery as the sun climbed higher in the sky. There they would eat the food given to them, receive spiritual instruction, medi-tate, do tasks around the grounds of the temple, and take care of stray dogs.

Ute walked slowly back to his quarters. He had eaten and he had listened to the Abbot talk about the impermanence of all things, about suffering and how it was the result of attachment to the impermanent things in one’s life. Now it was time to begin the meditations, to begin the various exercises that were designed to release him from his attachments. It was the part of the day he dreaded most. He could not attend to the sound of his own breathing, mull over the teachings of the Abbot, or in any other way quiet his mind. It was the best he could do to put on a mask of serenity to fool the others. When he assumed various meditation postures, and began the exercises, it was not peace that came. It was not a sense of calm. It was not detachment from the impermanent things in his life. What came was yet another replay of his loss of face before his fellow police offi-cers, the laughter. What came was Lup Law's amazing discovery of a single thirty-five kilo bag of pure heroin in a squatter's shack down by the railroad, his subse-quent appointment to the captaincy, and the arrival of a new B.M.W. that did not come with the job. What came to Ute was hatred and a desire for revenge.
There was nothing Ute could do to satisfy this desire. Everyone he knew feared Lup Law and, by himself, Ute could do nothing. So he strove to defeat the desire itself, to control it, to rise above it. For an hour and a half he grappled with it, trying to trick his mind into going elsewhere. He attempted to empty it of thought, grasped at every image of seren-ity he could think of, and finally forced himself to breathe so deeply that he nearly passed out.

Ute stepped out into the bright sun and squinted. When his eyes adjusted, he noticed Bom. The sixteen-year-old novice was sitting under a bo tree meditatively puffing on a cigarette, his legs arranged in the proper lotus style. Bom had been left in the care of the monks when he was only seven years old, and had grown up at the temple. He clung to Ute, hoping the former police officer would use his connections to find him a job so he could leave the place.
“Where are you going today?” Bom asked.
Ute did not answer immediately. He had several rotating des-tinations for his daily penitential walking meditations. “To the high school,” Ute said finally, knowing that Bom would want to come along no matter what he said.
Bom stood up. “Good place. Good place. I like to X-ray the girls as they come out of their classes.”
“I'll be walking without sandals and avoiding the shade,” Ute said.
“A little pain and discomfort to blot out the past?” Bom asked.
Ute said nothing and began walking through the hot dust toward the temple gate, all the while attending to the precise movements and sensations of his feet. Bom grinned, slipped on his sandals, opened his umbrella and followed.

“You know the first thing I'm going to buy when I get out of that place?” Bom asked, breaking a silence that had lasted nearly half an hour.
“No, what?” Ute asked reluctantly though his attempt at walking meditation was going poorly.
“One of those new Honda water-cooled scramblers!” Bom's eyes seemed to glaze over. “You can really sit high in the saddle on one of those things. You could hit a buffalo and go right over it without feeling a thing. A truly amazing bike!”
Ute smiled. “They're nearly 45,000 baht, you know,” he said.
Bom dismissed the fact with a wave of his hand. “I'll get the money somehow, even if I have to go into debt for the rest of my life.”
“You probably will,” Ute said as they neared the school.
There was a small restaurant across from the school gates. They sat in the cool under the awning and ordered two Pepsis. As monks they were not allowed to eat solid food after midday but liquids were permitted. The woman poured two iced bottles of Pepsi into plastic cups, handed them to the two monks and bowed before them. Ute and Bom ignored her. They were again being used by someone to earn good karma.
The students began to trickle out of their classes and make their way home. The young men wore black shorts and white shirts. Their names and the name of the school were sown in blue across the shirt pocket. Black socks in various stages of disintegration clung to their ankles and descended into brown canvas shoes. Their hair was cut short in the manner of a new military recruit.
The young women were also required to wear uniforms. They wore black or navy skirts that came down to just above the knee, white socks that were generally better preserved than those of the young men, black plastic shoes, and white blouses. Their hair was worn in straight bobs and not permitted to touch the collars of the blouses.
Bom kicked Ute under the table. “Look at that one!” he whis-pered. “Isn't she something else?”
The young woman was about sixteen, had a delicate but perfectly proportioned figure, huge eyes with long lashes and a bashful smile. She was the closest thing to perfection that Ute had ever seen and she was surrounded by young men who were behaving like buffoons. “Do you know who she is?” Ute asked.
“You mean you don't?” Bom asked in amazement.
“Should I?”
“That's Chiang, Lup Law's daughter.”
The color slowly drained from Ute’s face.

* * * * *

Captain Lup Law rolled his pen between his fingers as if re-hearsing a conjuring trick. The action betrayed the practiced cold attitude of the rest of his features. His daughter sat in one corner of his office sobbing. In another corner stood Tanait, her twin brother. The young man was bamboo thin almost to the point of emaciation. You would think I didn’t have the money to feed him, thought Luplaw.
“No, father, no! I can't do it. No!” Chiang sobbed.
Luplaw brought his attention back to his daughter. The Captain had arranged for Chiang to see the doctor at the hospital that morning. She had come to her father's office in-stead. “Listen to reason, Chiang,” he said in a subdued near-whisper. “It would ruin everything...”
“What are you talking about? I love him and I will not kill his baby!” Chiang shouted.
Lup Law closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “It's not killing,” he said quietly. “The baby has not yet been born. It has no life of its own until it's born.”
“Not according to the Abbott,” Tanait said.
Luplaw turned his attention to his son. “The Abbott? You went to the Abbott?”
“Yes. We asked him. He said that an unborn child has already experienced the transmigration of the soul and so to kill it would be a sin. It would break the Buddhist precepts.”
Lup Law looked hard at his son and then sighed. He was beaten. He could not be seen in public encouraging his daughter to get an abortion, not when the Abbott at the temple had declared it to be a violation of the Buddhist moral code. “All right,” Lup Law said, his voice now projecting. “If that's what the Abbott has said, then we must keep the child.”
Chiang looked at her father blankly for a moment before real-izing that she had won. “Thank you, father,” she said simply and bowed to him, a smile beginning to grow on her face.
“Now, you go home and get some rest. I have work to do here.” Lup Law followed his daughter to the office door and watched as she walked down the hall toward the stairs that led to the ground floor. He turned back to Tanait.
“This did not involve you,” he said.
“I didn’t want you to make a public mistake,” Tanait said.
“You don’t achieve a position like mine by making mistakes,” Luplaw said. He moved to the window and watched as Chiang emerged from the building, and climbed into the back of a pedicab beside Ute.