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

bearded henchman – filing through the village with four other men. They were men I hadn’t seen before, all wearing army fatigues. As he passed by Khao scowled. Mick being Mick, he scowled right back. They locked eyes as Khao and the new men trooped past our hut.

‘An ugly one,’ Mick said after they’d gone.

‘He’s bad news.’

‘What’s he done to you?’

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Yet.’

I took Mick and Phil up to the opium fields. I cannot describe how outlandish and beautiful was the appearance of these fields in the diffuse early morning sunlight. It has become mixed up in my mind with images of a radiant Eden. I decided to introduce them both to the fairy-tale figure of Khiem.

Khiem was decked in his red, white and purple petals, and today he wore a floppy felt hat, also pinned with poppy flowers. Mick approached the old man with a wide mouth and enough respect to float a sailboat. He waid ridiculously deeply, and even though the hill tribes tended to shake hands rather than wai like the Thais, Khiem returned the honour. I told him Mick’s name and the old man repeated it two or three times.

The amulet hanging around Mick’s throat caught his attention. He moved in to inspect it, indicating his approval with soft, cooing noises. Mick made to take the thing off so that Khiem might examine it, but Khiem stopped him with the flat of his hand, gesturing that Mick should keep it on. He glanced from the amulet to Mick with bulging eyes, and then back at the amulet. Something in the figure of the crescent moon impressed him deeply.

‘Moon!’ Khiem said.

‘Moon!’ Mick said.

‘Moooon!’ Khiem said.

‘Moooooooooon!’ Mick said. ‘Mooooooooooon.’

‘Stop it!’ Phil said. This tomfoolery around the tribal medicine man seemed to unnerve him.

I glanced skywards and said, ‘“Then they called Superstition and asked him to look at the prisoner”.’ It was a line I remembered from Pilgrim’s Progress. Mick didn’t seem to hear, but Phil turned and stared at me. I’d been right. I’ve no idea what I meant by saying it, and I couldn’t even remember the context, but I’d got the little bastard’s measure. Let’s see how he likes it, I thought.

Khiem seemed favourably disposed towards Mick. We left the old man to his work and moved through the poppy fields. Mick got among the labouring villagers, relieving them of their tools, making a great show of taking over their work. This amused them greatly. They giggled at his efforts, and scolded him if he incised the pods too deeply, or butterfingered some of the crystallised latex to the ground. Meanwhile Phil hung back at a distance, wincing slightly.

It fascinated me, the difference between the two of them. That Mick could do this, where Phil (and I, it has to be added) would hang back; where one man would dive into any given pool, while another would always be subject to a checking or restraining instinct. Within ten minutes it seemed that everyone in the field was laughing and repeating his name. ‘Amick. Amicka.’

‘You do realise this makes you complicit,’ Phil said.

‘You what?’

‘You’ve joined in the harvesting. That will go to make morphine and heroin and it will end up being sold outside the school gates at home.’

Mick looked at me, as if he might detect through me whether Phil was being serious. ‘Bollocks.’

I also showed them the generator, which was ticking over nicely. The hideous masculine groaning on the radio had been replaced by some tinny female vocals only marginally more acceptable. We grabbed a couple of bottles of the unwanted Calpol to take back with us.

The village was quiet as we approached the hut. This business with Phil had me pretty agitated At last it erupted. ‘Look Phil,’ I demanded, ‘what’s all this about jealousy?’

Phil didn’t even break stride to answer, loudly, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’

I was as tired of Phil speaking in Bible quotes as I was of hearing guff from Pilgrim’s Progress. I rounded on him angrily, grabbing his shirt collar. My eyeball was an inch away from his. ‘Talk straight for just once in your life.’

‘Get your hands off me.’

‘You two knock it off,’ Mick said.

‘Not until he meets a straight question with a straight answer.’

We scuffled a bit, turning an undignified half-circle in the dust while Phil tried to break my grip. I wanted him to take a swing at me. I’ve never hit him in my life but with the stress I felt at that moment I could easily have knocked his brains out.

‘Right, that’s enough!’ Mick said, coming between us. ‘I said stop or I’ll bang both your bloody silly heads together!’

I let go of Phil’s collar. He was red in the face.

‘Fucking ridiculous,’ Mick said. ‘The pair of you.’ But I knew he meant mostly me.

We crossed the village and approached the hut in sullen silence, but as we drew near to the porch something made Mick stop dead. He put a hand on my arm and Phil, too, drew up short behind me. Through the open door we could see one of Khao’s bandits standing over Charlie’s bed. The man’s elbow jiggled at his side. He was masturbating over her as she slept on unaware.

Mick dashed inside and surprised him. He did something I’ve never seen before or since. With one hand Mick grabbed the man by the face, squeezing his fingers around cheeks, jaw and nostrils, lifting him clean in the air. The man’s semi-erect dick hung from his open trousers as Mick carried him out of the hut, toes trailing the earth before he was thrown twelve feet across the dusty ground.

The man was so shocked he lay in the dust for some moments capturing his breath.

‘A good wank?’ Mick said.

The bandit hauled himself to his feet and started screaming. He zipped up his trousers, releasing a volley of abuse and threats. We didn’t need to know what any of it meant as