Blood Red River - when your past hunts you down
Smashwords edition
Text by Petri Tuomela
eISBN 978-616-222-076-0
E-book published by www.bangkokbooks.com
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Text & Cover Copyright© Petri Tuomela
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For Alexandra
Chapter 1
A Boeing 747 had just landed at Suvarnabhumi airport. Ten hours earlier, the plane had taken off from a country on the other side of the world and the tropical humidity hit the passengers already in the terminal. In order to get his numb limbs moving, a man extended his steps and passed his fellow travellers. He would not normally have hastened to the passport and visa control, every officer who examined his passport and work permit could see that he was a Khruu, perhaps even an Ajahn—an honourable and well respected man—but the clock was already seven in the morning and the traffic would be dense. It was important to avoid wasting time, for Chompoo’s sake.
A woman smiled at him when their eyes met. Before they hugged she put the palms of her hands together in a wai, and when she asked how he was he kissed her softly. In the parking garage they walked towards a four wheel drive pickup. From a visit many years ago the woman remembered the remote country in the north, that the man had just returned from, and its rainy season, which had been very cold. The nights had been only a few minutes long, but fortunately not as cold as the ongoing snow and ice season, the season that was incomprehensible, almost dangerous.
She drove the man through Bangkok as result-oriented as usual; the roaring engine in the big car was being forced into submission as if it were a small puppy. Her name was Sumaree and she was thirty-six years old, but dressed in jeans, a cotton top and high heels, with her long black hair falling down her back, she looked younger, which made the man feel older than forty and other men wish they were hers. Her eyes scanned the surroundings totally unfiltered and the information was processed ultra-rapidly by her brain.
Blond and blue-eyed, the man had once come to Thailand with a tourist’s expectation and a Western way of thinking, dressed in shorts, t-shirt and sandals. When others returned tanned and full of holiday experiences, he returned full of emptiness. Twelve years ago he had found her and a home he had to return to; a life without Sumaree was no longer a life and to live together in Sweden had been loving in exile. Now they had been married for ten years and had an eight-year old daughter.
‘I’ve been so worried about Chompoo,’ the man said, facing Sumaree.
‘I should have looked after her better,’ she replied.
‘It’s not your fault. The traffic is to close to the school.’
‘I still should have been more attentive. The ball rolled down the slope and Chompoo and Tei ran after it and you just can’t see the road from there.’
Rex Roxenhed closed his eyes.
‘They just wanted to get the ball and did not see the truck and...’ Sumaree swallowed the rest of the sentence.
‘But she survived, honey, our little girl survived!’ Rex sighed.
They looked at each other. Chompoo was physically unharmed, but frightened and very sad.
Rex picked up a bottle of water and took a few sips.
‘What happened to the boy?’
‘The doctor thinks it will be difficult for him to be able to walk. We should be happy he is alive.’ Sumaree’s voice lowered and she spoke slowly. It felt as unpleasant as when nails are drawn down the blackboard, Rex thought. He squirmed in the seat.
‘What about him?’ he asked. Rex saw a lone tear running down Sumaree’s cheek. Once more she saw the accident before her. She had not witnessed the truck run over the boy, but she had heard the screams, and was the first one to reach him. His legs lay in an unnatural angle. The boy had been screaming for his mother.
‘We have to help him,’ Rex said and smashed his hand in the dashboard.’
It is better not to make the bottle of bamboo before you’ve seen the water, Sumaree thought and asked:
‘How was your trip?’
Rex looked up, surprised.
‘Well, what can I say. My cousin’s daughter, Rebecca, she is twenty-five now, shimmered like Lucia with ice crystals in her hair. It was a nice wedding.’
Sumaree smiled. ‘So you attended the wedding?’
‘Yeah, but I missed the party. But it doesn’t matter. They understood.’
‘How was Sweden?’
‘Freezing cold!’
Sumaree had to laugh.
‘I don’t understand how the Swedes handle the climate.’
‘Me neither. I was freezing the whole time.’
‘Was there much snow?’
‘It was icy.’
‘Huh?’
‘There was ice on the streets, but not so much snow. It was practically impossible to drive.’
‘Cars,’ Sumaree muttered. ‘Who cares about cars? Think of the people instead. One cannot walk on ice.’
Rex fell silent.
‘But we have to worry about the traffic,’ he said quietly. ‘We must...’
‘You know who owns the trucks,’ Sumaree interrupted.
Rex nodded.
‘Komsan Buakao would hardly listen,’ Sumaree said.
Chapter 2
They passed the invisible border to Northern Thailand, where the fertile plains of the Central region turn into rolling hills covered with lush greenery. Sugar canes and rice grew between the hills. The view was beautiful.
Forty kilometres north of Nakhon Sawan Sumaree stopped next to a restaurant, just where the limestone mountain Khao Nor shoots out of the ground like the humps of a camel. The mountain’s cavities and caves are home to millions of bats who simultaneously leave the mountain at sunset to hunt. There are enough of them to darken the sky.
They ate fried beef with oyster sauce, bought a couple of cans of ice-coffee and filled up the car. Rex took place behind the steering wheel. They continued in silence.
It was almost one o’ clock when Rex turned onto the gravel road that led home. The road was lined with eucalyptus and mango trees that cast a cooling shade in the tropical heat. The gate stood open and Rex drove on to the carport. From the house their mutual workplace laid barely five hundred metres away. It was from there, the public school, that Chompoo came running when they stepped out.
‘Mom! Dad!’
‘Come here honey,’ Rex said, lifting the girl up and hugging her.
‘Put me down, Dad!’
Chompoo looked exactly like her mother, and anyone could have taken her for a kid among other village kids, if not her medium brown hair had gossiped about a father not born in the village.
‘Aren’t you happy to see me?’ Rex asked the girl.
‘Of course I am,’ she replied smiling. ‘But you don’t have to make me fly, Dad!’
‘Come,’ Rex said, pulling his daughter close to him. Chompoo hugged back. She began to cry.
She shook in his arms.
‘Try not to think about it,’ Rex said.
‘I can’t help it. I saw him being run over, and he screamed so much! It was horrible! There was blood everywhere and his legs looked so strange.’
‘Let’s go inside the house.’
‘It was not my fault.’
‘Of course it wasn’t. Please, darling, it was the truck driver’s fault.’
‘I hope the police take him.’
Rex promised to talk to the truck owner.
Chompoo looked intently at her father.
‘He can’t drive here no more!’
Chapter 3
The carport was on the north side of the house. They unloaded the bags from the back of the truck and walked through the porch to the entrance facing south. Double doors with fiery dragon motives led them into a large room that functioned as a combined kitchen, dining room and living room. In the middle of the room the ceiling terraced up three shifts and from the lofty middle hung a crystal chandelier. To the right was the sleeping area with three spacious bedrooms. The house was white rendered and had a blue roof and from a distance the colours brought both sky and sea to mind. Rex and Sumaree had built the house five years earlier, the plot being a wedding gift from Sumarees father; the family owned the land to the west and north. To the south was the village and to the east pasture for livestock. The village was beautifully named ‘Where Rubber Trees Grow at the Shrine’ and had nearly five thousand inhabitants. Many families had lived there for generations.
Rex unpacked his bag in the bedroom and listened with half an ear to Chompoo and Sumaree chatting in the kitchen. With clothes in his arms he walked through the house towards the bathrooms. When crossing the kitchen he winked at Chompoo and pretended to stumble. At the last second he parried the fall and just avoided dropping the laundry pile.
‘Haha, you’re clumsy, Dad’, Chompoo laughed.
The childish laughter made Rex smile and whistling he filled the washing machine while Sumaree was preparing food. When the machine started buzzing, he partook in the kitchen work by chopping up the chicken that Sumaree was going to wok. Through the window Rex saw Loan the police walking along the driveway with two persons following.
Loan waited for the others and the three men entered the house at the same time. They raised their hands in a wai. Rex returned the greeting.
‘We ...’ Dr. Ey began.
‘We wanted to talk to both of you about what happened,’ Wan the Phu Yay Ban said.
Dr. Ey was squirming.
‘We can come back later.’
‘It’s not necessary,’ Rex said. ‘Let’s talk now. Would you like to eat with us? Chompoo, set the table for three more persons.’
Rex made the men smile and Sumaree look away.
They sat down for dinner. Rex served the guests the chicken wok and rice. Sumaree put a platter of woked vegetables on the table. Rex opened a couple of bottles of cold Chang beer.
‘Well,’ Dr. Ey began. ‘It would be great if we could...’
‘How is Ta and Dham’s boy?’ Sumaree interrupted.
‘He’s in the hospital in Ban Tak, so I don’t know for sure.’ Dr. Ey looked down at the table on one of the beer bottles, pretending to study the two elephants on the label. Sumaree did not take her eyes off him. The doctor cleared his throat and turned to Wan the Phu Yay Ban with an appealing look in his eyes.
Sumaree quietly moved her gaze to Wan.
‘It is a matter for the insurance company,’ Wan said.
‘Do you really think that Dham and Ta can afford an insurance?’ Sumaree snorted.
Dr. Ey and Wan exchanged a few hurried glances. Wan suddenly sounded upset. Loan the police had been eating in peace and quiet and had not looked up from his plate until now.
‘We depend on the jobs that the quarry provides and...’ ‘Is the dependency unconditional?’
The machete is a blunt weapon but hits with weight, Rex thought when he heard his valiant wife.
‘It sounds unnecessarily hard to put it that way.’ Wan the Phu Yay Ban lowered the guard a little.
‘It’s hard to get stuck in a wheelchair when you’re eight, especially if your parents are poor.’
‘It was an accident,’ Wan said.
‘It’s our duty to make sure it doesn’t happen again.’
‘But the parents are responsible for the boy!’ Wan had his guard up again.
Rex thought of Muhammad Ali who danced like a butterfly and stung like a bee.
‘But don’t we all represent the village, our village? Should not our children be able to play safely on the school grounds?’ Sumaree asked.
‘I have to look after everyone’s interests,’ Wan answered. It sounded like a plea for respite, just as the bell in a boxing ring.
‘It’s not that easy, that’s all.’ Loan the police stepped into the ring as one of the seconds.
What were they looking for? Were they afraid of Komsan Buakao? Rex’s eyes met Sumaree’s. That was the bell for the second round.
‘We will see the manager,’ Sumaree said.
‘Just take it easy, okay?’ Wan said.
‘By what right do you come here telling us what to do? Do we owe you something?’ Sumaree pushed her opponent against the ring ropes with new forces.
‘Of course not.’ Wan the Phu Yay Ban was dancing away.
Loan the police smiled a crooked smile. Sumaree continued:
‘But we must help the boy. His parents need money. There are specialists in Bangkok...’
‘Do not go jumping the gun!’
Sumaree had run straight into the Phu Yay Ban’s left jab. She grimaced, but continued:
‘We must do what we can.’
‘You shouldn’t do anything, let me handle this.’
Sumaree had struck her final blow, which Wan easily parried with the gloves. The fight was over. Sumaree’s eyes turned totally raven black.
‘Trust me,’ Wan said, and suddenly sounded like he’d eaten honey.
‘We should probably go now.’ Loan the police had finished eating.
Wan smiled the winner’s smile.
Sumaree looked worried.
Loan the police shrugged.
The men left the house.
Sumaree silently watched them leave, but when she felt Rex’s arms around her she turned around. He kissed the humiliation from her face.
‘What was that all about?’ Rex asked.
‘Money, it was all about money.’
‘Bribes?’
‘Call it what you want, but Komsan Buakao is too important for the economy around here.’
‘He is also a villager among other villagers.’
‘This is Thailand.’
Numerous contributions to the village temple, donations to the school––including the small computer room––the expansion of doctor Ey’s clinic, support for Wan the village headman’s election campaigns. Sumaree made Rex understand in what degree of dependency the previous guests stood to Komsan Buakao. There was plenty of room to the south of the village to build a new road between the quarry and the highway. The children’s safety must come first. They were both partly responsible for the safety of a hundred and forty pupils who were playing just where Komsan Buakao’s trucks passed. It was pure luck that there hadn’t been any previous accidents and that Tei had actually survived.
‘What do you think, should we go to the hospital?’ Rex asked.
‘I will be more than happy to go,’ Sumaree answered.
‘At once?’
‘Yes, why not? Chompoo can stay with my parents.’
‘Where are you going?’ Chompoo had grown tired of all the adult talk and sat on the sofa with a Harry Potter on the DVD. She now looked up from the movie.
‘Mom and dad will visit Tei,’ Sumaree said. She saw the momentary fear in her daughter’s eyes, and added:
‘But you may be stay at grandma and grandpa’s.’
Chompoo turned off the movie. She didn’t want to talk about Tei.
Chapter 4
Rex Roxenhed locked the doors on the front of the house and they left through the back door. Sumaree turned the car in front of the carport. Rex and Chompoo jumped in. The gravel road led in two directions, to the right towards the motorway half a kilometre further to the west and to the left towards the school. The narrow and approximately five hundred metre long road took them down to the village. On the main street Sumaree turned left, drove past the school and parked opposite the temple at her parent’s house. Sumaree’s father sat on the porch sharpening a machete, smoking home grown, hand rolled tobacco. The entrance to the long narrow house was reached through the porch on the side, through sliding doors that were held open during the day. The house was built on stilts and the scent of teak was apparent and inside it was airy and cool.
Grandpa Ruay joked with his grandchild, who only had time to laugh before she ran to the kitchen in the extension on one side of the house, where grandma Noy and aunt Kit sat on the floor mashing chili in marble mortars. Chompoo wanted to help. Rex told his father-in-law about the guests who uninvited had shown up for lunch and the old man nodded affirmative, without surprise. Sumaree said that they would go to the hospital for a while, but that they’d be back before evening. Her father nodded again and rolled a new cigarette.
When they left the village the red sun already stood somewhat lower, but still high enough to provide light for a further few hours. To the right of the junction where the village road led into Phahonyothin was the police station. It was a sleepy existence, where the practical intervention for Loan the police and two other policemen mostly consisted of fining lorries from Bangkok, but sometimes small crimes needed to be investigated; fights that had gone bad, minor thefts that needed clarification or livestock that needed to be brought home from the wrong lands. Life went its course and that suited Loan perfectly. He sat relaxing on a chair outside the station with a cigarette, a glass of Singha beer and looked, with his thoughts both here and there, out over the motorway. The two officers washed the police car in brown and white and the three Kawasaki motorcycles. Loan liked to take first things first without trying to change the world. Not everyone could afford beautiful ideals. Loan did not like the farang and his stubborn wife. Wan, the village headman, and Dr. Ey had anxiously sought him up, fearing what indeed proved to be true; the teachers wanted to hold Komsan Buakao responsible for the accident. Loan the police, who’d seldom upset anyone’s circles unnecessarily, understood the concern. Besides, the police profession was not as well-paid as teaching and Loan had nothing against an extra income. The meeting had, however, gone quite well and the food had been delicious; thinking of food made him feel hungry again. He sat for a long time gazing after the four-wheel drive pickup that had just turned south.
Chapter 5
Sumaree honked twice a short distance beyond the neighboring village Mae Salid and they raised their hands in a wai towards a small house halfway up the red mountain. The house was void of people but full of flowers and decorations. Later on, on the other side of the highway, next to another mountain, was one of the trading venues where Komsan Buakao sold marble for factory prices. A small part was sold like that, while most of it was sent to buyers worldwide. The marble was sorted by colour and quality in endless rows of pallets under a long ceiling supported by columns that lacked walls. It was quite busy there, many cars had stopped. Rex read Krungthep Mahanakhon on many of the license plates. The business paid off well, apparently, if the customers were willing to drive four hundred kilometres, one way. Sumaree passed the northern entrance to Ban Tak and took a short-cut eight hundred metres later through the u-turn in the middle. The village Where Rubber Trees Grow at the Shrine belonged to the district of Ban Tak, a town of nearly twenty-thousand inhabitants. Twenty kilometres further south was the provincial capital Tak. Four hundred thousand people lived in the vast province that, via remote jungles in the west, shared borders with Burma and in the inlands met the historical town Sukhothai.
The hospital was housed in a white two-storey concrete building. There were plenty of parking spaces in front of it and they found a good one in the shade.
Inside the reception a man in his forties spoke with a nurse behind the reception desk. He needed to see the Senior Physician, it was important. The nurse was sorry, but it was impossible. The man didn’t understand why; he had made an appointment. The nurse, at least ten years younger than the man and very pretty, said again that she was sorry, but the Senior Physician was not available and she had been instructed to cancel the meeting. Tawatchai Somkhiet, journalist at Tak Lai Wan, was irritated, but tried to avoid losing face in front of everyone. He was writing a series of articles about the province’s general medical care and felt no friendlier after this. The nurse was continuously sorry. Tawatchai Somkhiet said it wasn’t her fault, but her boss was a coward not daring to meet him. She could tell the boss he would be back. When the journalist left, Rex went up to the front desk but Sumaree followed the journalist out.
‘I couldn’t avoid hearing that you write for Tak Lai Wan,’ she said. The journalist looked suspiciously at the woman; an amateur trying to teach him his job.
‘That’s right,’ he sighed.
‘I would like to discuss something with you, an idea for an article. It’s up to you, but do you have time for a meeting?’
The journalist seemed to think: even worse, a moron with good ideas.
‘I’m busy right now. The poor are referred to a public health care that is purely pittance. I don’t have time for anything else.’
The journalist continued to move towards a car not far from their own Toyota.
‘Do you know Komsan Buakao?’
The journalist stopped immediately. Sumaree smiled. Finally, the journalist handed over a business card.
‘Call me at this number. Now I have to go.’
He jumped into a small Honda and left the hospital area after a flying start. Sumaree put down the business card in her purse. Rex waited at the reception area.
‘What was that all about?’
‘Oh, just a friendly chat, darling.’
‘About what?’
‘About the accident, about Komsan Buakao, about the situation in the village.’
Rex suddenly stopped and took Sumaree’s hand in his, pressing it hard.
‘Please, baby.’
‘What’s wrong with talking to an honest journalist?’
Rex squeezed his wife’s hand even harder.
‘You know nothing about what’s going on, and how do you know he’s honest, anyway?’
‘Didn’t you hear how upset he was about the health care?’
Rex was not convinced. Sumaree pointed at her purse.
‘At least I got his business card.’
They walked up to the second floor. There were two wards. The nurse had given instructions and Rex opened a door to the right.
‘We’ll talk more later. This is where Tei should be.’
Tei was in the third bed of four in a room that was approximately four by three metres wide. All patients were children. Tei’s mom sat by the bed and Tei greeted his teachers with a big white smile. Sumaree had brought sweet mango with sticky rice in coconut milk, a delicacy she knew Tei loved. Tei’s mom was a small skinny woman around thirty. Sumaree had, through contacts in Bangkok, arranged scholarships for some of the poorest children and Tei was one of them. Now the boy seemed pleased to see his teachers.
‘How are you doing?’ Sumaree asked.
‘I’m fine,’ said the boy, still smiling. His leg was plastered to his hip.
‘That looks painful,’ Rex said with a nod.
‘May pen rai.’
The boy was being very brave. Sumaree saw how his mother proudly straightened herself up.
‘I will get the school a new ball when I come out,’ the boy said.
‘It is certainly not necessary,’ Sumaree said.
‘But it was run over, too.’
‘Forget about it,’ Sumaree said, now more determined. She looked at the boy’s mother.
‘He’s been having a bad conscience for the ball,’ Ta said. Her voice was about to crack.
‘Oh my God.’ Sumaree caressed the boy across the cheek. ‘Stop thinking like that, you hear me!’
‘Yes, Mrs. Sumaree!’
‘The only thing that is important now is you,’ Rex said.