Smoking Poppy by Graham Joyce (the read aloud family .txt) 📕

remark. He jabbed a finger in my direction and spoke, animated and angry, to Jack. Some of the other workers a short distance away looked up from their labours.

‘He says the crop will be good if the Lord of the Moon is allowed to do his work. He says why don’t you take your daughter away from the village, so the Lord of the Moon can do his work?’

I was astonished, as much by the nature of this outburst as by the knowledge of my situation that it revealed. I was lost for words.

‘Come on,’ Jack said. ‘Let’s go.’

We walked back to the village. ‘How does he know who I am? What’s all this about the moon?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Everyone in the village knows who you are.’

We arrived at one of the huts at the edge of the settlement. He motioned me to sit down at the long rustic table outside. If Jack was king of the heap, the heap didn’t seem to afford him many more luxuries than the rest of the villagers. Inside, however, I noticed three modern nylon backpacks. Jack went inside and unzipped one of them, returning with cigarettes and one other object. This object he placed at the far end of the long table.

It was a bottle. Not any old bottle, but an unopened bottle of Johnny Walker Scotch whisky. The amber liquid rippled with hue as it was struck by the strong sunlight. The light flared on the contours of the glass. Placed at the end of the table it was like an apparition, a mirage. I had to drag my eyes away from it.

Jack offered me a Western brand cigarette and seemed to forget about the whisky. He lit up, sat back, put his feet on the table and exhaled a thick, blue plume of tobacco smoke. ‘What you going to do about your daughter?’

‘I’m taking her home.’

‘How will you do that?’

‘I’ll carry her.’

‘Good luck.’

‘I have my friend and my son with me.’

‘Your friend is sick.’

‘He’ll get better. He’s strong.’

‘Which way you going to go?’

‘Chiang Mai.’

‘Sure. Which way is that?’

I made a general gesture. Something in that motion seemed to irritate Jack, because his pleasant demeanour seemed to switch in a fraction of a second. He leaned over the table and snarled, ‘You don’t even know what fucking country you are in!’

His eyes were frightening. Very cold. I did my best not to look intimidated. ‘I’ll get there.’

He smiled and leaned back, friendly again, puffing on his ciggie. ‘Seriously, which country are you in?’

‘Thailand?’

‘Ha! Dear boy, I was right. You don’t know.’

I tried to think how many times we’d crossed the river on our trek. ‘We’re not in Thailand?’

‘Well, you might have a point. See, some of these villagers argue about where the borders actually are. You might be in Myanmar – Burma to you. Or maybe these are Shan lands, and the Shan don’t respect the provisional borders. Either way, you don’t know where you are.’

‘Will you help me?’

‘Why the fuck should I help you, dear boy?’

‘Where did you learn to speak English?’

‘Charterhouse, actually.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘You haven’t heard of it? What sort of an Englishman are you? A lower-class one, obviously. I’m an old Carthusian. I was there for four years.’

‘Why only four years?’

‘Some local trouble here. Money ran out, temporarily. Only a liquidity problem but by the time my father could pay my fees again I’d decided that I hated it anyway. Why do you keep looking at that whisky?’

‘Do I?’

‘It’s as if you’re drawn to it. As if it has a grip on your soul, so to speak.’

‘I was thinking how much my friend would like a glass. He’s in poor shape. Glass of whisky would help set him up.’

‘Whisky is a rare commodity around here. Where you live, you can get the stuff in every corner shop. Rarity increases its market value, don’t you think?’

‘Would you mind telling me what that poppy man was saying about the moon?’

‘You should ask your daughter about that.’

‘I’m afraid she’s too out of her head on your dope to speak to me about anything.’

‘My dope? I don’t think that’s the case. Her condition has little to do with the small amount of opium she smokes. Most of the older people you see working in the fields smoke a little opium. They don’t lie in bed all day.’

‘Do you know what’s the matter with my daughter?’

He shrugged and stubbed out his cigarette in the red earth. ‘If you ask Khiem, he says that there’s an evil spirit hanging on to her. He says it lies in the hut with her, like a fat leech, or a vampire, draining off her life force. Khiem says it sucks her life essence through a hole in her big toe.’ He waved a hand through the air. ‘I don’t expect you to think much of Khiem’s diagnosis.’

‘And what do you think of it?’

Jack stood up. The leather of his holster creaked again. ‘I think I’ve got one or two things to do. I think we’ll talk some more later. Take the whisky with you. But save a glass for me, won’t you?’ With that he strode off through the huts, to where the harvesters were still hard at work.

After he’d gone I vented a huge sigh. I’d been practically holding my breath throughout the encounter. The man terrified me.

I picked up the bottle and carried it rather self-consciously back to Charlie’s hut. I hadn’t got very far in my efforts to construct a stretcher, but at least I’d been given something that might put the sparkle back in Mick’s eyes. Meanwhile my head fizzed with questions about Jack the opium bandit. I knew he’d spent the last three quarters of an hour making an assessment of me, and had decided that I posed no threat. But I still had the feeling that while getting into this little kingdom of poppy cultivation had been relatively easy, getting out again was not going to prove quite so simple.

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