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

Mick fanned the rest of the banknotes for him so he could see how much was there.

‘Ooooooooh!’

Mick turned to me. ‘Phoo says after Charlie walks there will be dancing, bonfires, festivities. Full-moon party. It’s absolutely the moment for us to slip away. We won’t get a better time. No one will notice us. And Jack is away. Phoo here will take us to the river, and on a raft.’

I suspected a trap. I had a feeling Jack had a good idea what had happened to his nephew. It would suit his purposes to get us out into the jungle, away from the villagers who themselves bore us no ill-will.

‘What the hell is the matter with you?’ Mick hissed. ‘This is it, Danny! This is fucking well it! We’ve got to go while Jack and his men are away! You want to stay here until they turn something up? We go by raft, and Phoo will have a man waiting by the road with a truck.’

‘How the hell is he going to arrange that?’ I protested.

Phoo unbuttoned his breast pocket and took out a slim black object. ‘Cellphone!’ he said eagerly.

‘What’s more while you were away, something good happened,’ Mick said brightly. He held out his amulet for me to see. ‘I found it outside the hut.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘that improves our position enormously.’

I didn’t like it, but Mick was right. I smelled Jack’s rancid finger in all of it. But it was a chance we had to take. ‘So you’ll do it then?’ I said to Phoo. ‘Yes or no?’

Phoo rubbed his chin in agitation and looked at the wad of notes in Mick’s fist. ‘Oooooooh!’

We spent a hideous afternoon. Charlie was in a dreadful state, sleeping in fits, crying through her nightmares, thrashing her arms, soaking her bed with sweat. I cradled her as much as I could; I found myself holding her foot again. I had no idea what she would do, come the hour. We briefed Phil on the plan, and he spent the time wrestling with his own demons.

It had to work. We couldn’t wait around any longer for that body to be turned up. I tried talking to Charlie even though she was sleeping. I tried telling her that this had to be the moment.

Khiem appeared late in the day, relighting the incense, performing his inscrutable rituals around the hut, singing songs of a repetitive rhythm. ‘Moon!’ he said to me. ‘Moon!’ He wanted me to be ready. He also asked, by means of gestures and pointing, for some personal things of Charlie’s, which I gave him.

Just before twilight Nabao brought us one of her noodle soups, but I had no stomach for it, and neither did Charlie. Her guts were rioting as the hour approached and we had to keep leaving the hut for the sake of her modesty. Even Mick, though he ate, had gone quiet. In fact he was in a decidedly strange mood. He kept fingering his amulet.

‘What is it, pal?’

He let out a big sigh. ‘Remember that Buddhist monk in Chiang Mai? The one having a ciggie under the bo tree?’

‘What of it?’

‘I keep thinking about something he said. He told me that the pot had to break and become the clay and that broken things are made whole again. Odd, isn’t it? Charlie here thinks she’s been punished for stealing a piece of the moon. And I show up with a quarter-moon amulet. And if that’s not enough, then I lose it and find it today, on the evening of the full moon. It’s all got to snap together, hasn’t it?’

‘What are you driving at?’

I noticed Phil listening intently to this. ‘Mick’s saying it’s a sign. It’s like we were meant to be here, at this very moment.’

I looked hard at him. ‘Mick, you’ve got to keep your head together.’

He stared meaningfully at my bandaged hand. Then he turned to Phil and arched a single eyebrow.

Dusk fell and the temperature began to plummet. I knew something was about to happen because the radio was suddenly silenced, and this time I knew it wasn’t a fault with the generator. Then, as darkness descended on the village, I heard movement outside the hut. I went to the porch. Villagers were gathering from all directions, men, women, children, even some very old people I hadn’t seen before came hobbling to join the assembly. Two or three of the men held burning flares aloft, but the others, including even the smallest child, carried metal pans, mostly aluminium saucepans or stainless steel dishes. The villagers lined up on two sides, forming a path. At the far end of the path stood Khiem.

Khiem gave a cry, half shout, half ululation. When he stopped, the villagers began banging their pots and pans very quickly with sticks or spoons. I looked up at the moon. It was full, like a plump silver gourd hanging incredibly low in the sky, waxy and benign.

I went into the hut. ‘This is it,’ I said. I didn’t know what was going to happen next. It was down to Charlie. Then there was a rustling sound by the door.

It was the sound of a single bamboo strip torn away from the hut, next to the door. On the other side of the door another strip whistled as it was plucked away from outside. I saw what was happening. The villagers were widening the door for us to come out. They were going to dismantle the hut stick by stick.

‘Oh no,’ Charlie said. ‘Oh no.’

Nabao was inside, stroking Charlie’s hand. The old woman looked up at me with infinite pity. She knew this had to be the moment. She’d prepared a pipe of opium, and gestured towards Charlie.

‘Yes, give it her. She’s going to need it.’

While Charlie smoked her pipe more strips of bamboo were plucked out of the wall. I unpacked something from my bag. I’d been saving it for this moment. It was my own bit of dark magic. ‘Something was