Saving Fish From Drowning

  “What did he say?” Vera asked.

  Bennie shrugged. “It sounded like ‘the Lajamee.’”

  “There is a subtribe that begins with l,” Heidi said. “Bibi wrote about it. It’s in the folder back at the hotel. The La-something. Must be the Lajamee.”

  Wendy added, “You can tell they’re a tribe because of the black and red colors on the older people—and that thing wrapped around their heads, the terry-cloth turban. That’s a dead giveaway of something.”

  It was now three o’clock, my friends noticed. Dwight cursed: “Damn you, Walter, wherever you are, we’re going back down and you better have a good reason why you weren’t here.” Black Spot heard their plans to leave and turned to Grease and Salt. They needed to quickly remind the Reincarnated One who he was. The three men went to the small huts beyond the clearing to ask those residents to come out.

  Roxanne had taken out her camcorder and was now instructing the group to mill about so she could get some last shots of the twins, the strangler fig huts, as well as the more colorful members of the “Lajamee” tribe. As she panned the camp, she suddenly stopped. What was that? A skinned animal? She zoomed in closer. It was the stump of a leg! And its owner had a face that was even more disfigured. My other friends turned, and they, too, murmured disbelief. What in God’s name had happened to these people? There were two men, two women, and a pretty girl no older than ten. Each was missing a foot, or an arm, or the lower part of a leg, the limb ending abruptly in a coral cluster of blasted flesh. Why were they so horribly mutilated? Had they been in a bus accident?

  Roxanne faced Black Spot. “What happened to them?” she said quietly, and aimed the camcorder at him.

  “Three of them are once working for SLORC army,” Black Spot said, “walking to find land mines. They are going in front of soldiers, go right, go left. When the mine is exploding, no more danger, and then soldiers they very happy. Now path is safe for walking.” He glanced quickly at Rupert.

  Rupert was stunned. “They had a job stepping on land mines?”

  “Karen people not having choice.” Black Spot gestured toward the wounded. “That man, he both lucky and no. He now living, yes, but wife, sister, brother, they not living. The soldiers are shooting him in the head and body. But he not dying. That girl, she not dying.” Roxanne directed the camera toward the unlucky man. He bore a quarter-sized dark indentation in his cheek, and his shoulders were laced with pale scars. The pretty girl had an arm that bent at an odd angle, and on her shoulder was a keloid that looked like a meaty-red tumor. Despite their mutilation, these five people smiled at the camera and waved. “Dah blu, dah blu,” they sang. Roxanne was in tears by the time she turned off the camcorder. Several others were as well, and Black Spot felt great hope rising that they would help the tribe.

  When my friends were out of earshot of Black Spot, Wendy said, “A friend told me the Burmese military does stuff like this.” She was referring to Gutman. “He’s with a human rights group, so he knows all about these atrocities, horrible, horrible things. That’s why he said tourists should boycott coming here unless they’re coming as witnesses.”

  “I feel awful,” Bennie said, instantly filled with guilt.

  “We all do.” Vera placed her hand on Bennie’s shoulder. “We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t.”

  Marlena muttered: “I was the one who said we shouldn’t come to Burma.”

  “Well, we’re here,” Dwight replied grimly. “So there’s nothing we can do about that now, is there?”

  “But we should do something,” Heidi said. My friends nodded, thinking in silence. What could they do? What can anyone do in view of such cruelty? They felt uselessly sympathetic.

  “It’s kind of weird that Bibi had us come here as one of our activities,” Wyatt said.

  I was a sputtering ball of indignation until I heard Vera: “Bibi didn’t put this on the original itinerary. Inle Lake got patched in—remember?—because some people voted to leave China early.”

  Heidi sighed. “I just wish Bibi had told us more about the military here, the bad stuff. I mean, I sort of knew about it, but I thought it was a long time ago.”

  They went on talking softly among themselves, thinking how to deal with their moral discomfort. If only they had known more. If only someone had warned them. If only they knew that lives were at stake. If, if, if. You see how it was, In their minds I should have provided the information, the arguments, the reasons why it was all right to visit or not. But how could I have been responsible for their morals? They should have taken the initiative to learn more on their own.

  And yet, I admit I was shocked as well to see the people of No Name Place. I had not encountered anything like this when I was alive, never in all my previous trips to Burma. But when I was alive, I was not looking for tragedy. I was looking for bargains, the best places to eat, for pagodas that were not overrun with tourists, for the loveliest scenes to photograph.

  “Maybe tourism is the only way that they can make money,” Heidi reasoned.

  “We should definitely support their economy,” Bennie said. He promised to buy a lot of souvenirs.

  “I’ve done guiding on a number of ecotourism trips,” Wyatt said, “where the clients pay a lot of extra money to plant trees or to do research on endangered species. Maybe they can do something like that here. Get people to come and help them set up ways to become self-sufficient.”

  “We could each give them some money when we leave,” Esmé said. “We can tell them it’s for the children.” My friends accepted this idea as the obvious way to be of immediate help and lessen their discomfort.

  “A hundred each?” Roxanne said. “I have enough to cover all of us. You can pay me back later.” Everyone nodded. This was the same solution they used for many situations. I am not criticizing. Most likely I would have done the same. Give money. What more can a person do? Roxanne picked up her camcorder and did one final pan, resting longer on the maimed, the young children, the old ladies with their smiling faces. Wyatt put his arm around a man missing the lower part of his leg. The two men grinned at each other as if they were great friends.

  “We’ve come to this beautiful place,” Roxanne narrated, “and we’ve learned that within beauty, there is tragedy. The people here have suffered terribly under the military regime ... it’s heartbreaking. . . .” She spoke of the forced labor, the explosions of land mines. She concluded with a promise to help. “We can’t just give them sympathy or a token bit of help. We want to help in a bigger way, a substantial way that can make a difference.” She was speaking, of course, about their generous contribution.

  They decided to give the money to the twins’ grandmother. She seemed to be the one who bossed people around the most. They had a little ceremony to thank her for the tribe’s hospitality. They spoke slowly in English, bowed to express gratitude, made a thumbs-up sign for the food, gestured around at the wonders of this dark, dank settlement. They put on sad faces, as if reluctant to leave such wonderful people.

  Then Roxanne stepped forward and took the grandmother’s tiny, rough, clawlike hands and pressed the money into them. The old woman looked at the wad, appeared shocked and insulted, pushed it back into Roxanne’s hands, and kept a palm upraised as if fending off a demon. They had expected she would. Marlena had already advised that the Chinese had to dramatically refuse three times, and maybe they had a similar custom here. On the fourth offer, after Black Spot muttered to the grandmother to take the money, she snapped at him, saying the money was useless out here, and if anyone was caught with it by SLORC soldiers, it would buy nothing but a grave. Black Spot told her to take it and hand it to Grease, who would put it in Roxanne’s satchel when the Americans were not looking. So the old woman smiled at my friends, bowed and bowed, kissed the money and held it toward heaven for the Great God to see. She shrieked thanks as if deliriously grateful.

  Warmed that they had done the right thing, my friends picked up their packs and turned to leave. “We better
head back,” Moff said to Black Spot. Several members of his tribe cried to him, “Why does the Younger White Brother want to leave us?” Black Spot quietly told them not to make too much noise about this. It takes time for a Reincarnated One to recognize who he is, even if he has shown the three signs. It was true for other holy people, true even for Loot and Bootie. But once a Reincarnated One knows who he is, he will slowly regain his senses and his powers, and fulfill the promises he made. The tribe was soothed to hear mention of this. They all knew the promise of the Younger White Brother. He would make them invisible, with bodies that no bullets could pierce. They would take back their lands. They would live in peace, and no one would ever try to harm them again, because if they did, the Younger White Brother would unleash on them all the Nats.

  Black Spot and his cohorts discussed how to handle this latest situation. They had been lucky in getting the boy and his followers here. Perhaps they needed a little bad luck to keep them. They had no choice. They had to delay the boy as long as they could. Say good-bye to them, Black Spot instructed the tribe, wave to the foreigners just like they are doing.

  My friends left, with Black Spot, Grease, Fishbones, and Salt following behind. Vera complimented the tribe, knowing Black Spot would hear and report this flattery to his people: Really nice folks, so generous and sincere. Others piled it on: That place was the greatest. And those strangler trees—have you seen anything so bizarrely beautiful? What a wonderful surprise. They were so glad they came. And lunch was unusual yet tasty. It was good to try something new. But now they were looking forward to hot showers. Of course, there was still that wobbly bridge to get across. The second time would be easy. Just take a deep breath.

  When my friends arrived where they had crossed, they were puzzled. Where was the bridge? They must have come down the wrong way. They were about to ask Black Spot for guidance when Rupert shouted: “Dad, look!” He pointed at the barely visible bridge, dangling by limp ropes on the other side.

  Bennie gasped. “Oh my God, it’s fallen down!” He rushed to Black Spot. “The bridge!” He gestured madly. “It’s broken. How are we going to get out of here?”

  Black Spot looked at the dangling bridge. He yelled to his comrades, telling them to act surprised. He did not want their guests to become alarmed, thinking they were held against their will. He simply wanted them to remain as their guests. Moff called over to Black Spot: “What’s another way out of here? We need to get down before dark.” He pointed to the dimming sky.

  Black Spot shook his head. “No other way,” he said.

  Dwight broke in: “Maybe the ravine is less deep up ahead, and we can climb down into it and then up.” Again Black Spot shook his head.

  “Oh man, this is bad,” Bennie moaned. “This is so bad.”

  Dwight shouted at the top of his lungs. “Christ! Walter, you fuck! Why aren’t you here to deal with this?”

  Vera noticed that the men from the tribe looked ashamed that their guests were unhappy, so she tried to calm the group. She was skilled at dealing with crises. “If the Lajamee people can’t get us out soon, I’m sure Walter will send for help once he gets here. Maybe that’s what he’s already done. He came and saw the bridge was gone and went back down. The best thing we can do is stay put.”

  There were sounds of agreement, acknowledgment that this was reasonable logic, the probable truth. Help was on its way, they now believed. And so, with the exception of Dwight, they agreed to retreat to No Name Place and bide their time there. As they walked back into the camp, the people of the Lord’s Army greeted them with hands clasped in prayer. Thanks be to the Great God. Black Spot told them to give their guests the best of everything.

  Dusk came, Walter did not. Another hour rolled by, then another. Except for firelight, the camp was pitch black. The inhabitants of No Name Place slashed bamboo and sharp palm leaves to weave stools for their honored guests. Black Spot had told them that foreigners did not like to sit on mats. Grease and Fishbones brought a pile of clothes and set them down. They pointed to them: “Take, take.”

  “Hey, that’s my polar fleece,” Rupert said, and he pulled out an orange jacket. The others dug through the pile and found the clothing they had brought to wear during the chilly morning ride that now seemed so long ago.

  “I thought we left these in the truck,” Marlena said.

  “Those porters must have brought everything along with them,” Vera replied.

  “Thank goodness they did,” Marlena said. “It’s a lot cooler up here than down there.” She tossed Esmé a purple parka and shimmied into her own black one.

  “I wish we were in a hotel with a real bathroom,” Esmé said. Earlier in the afternoon, most of them had visited the latrine, situated a discreet distance from camp. A palm thatch screen, about five feet high, provided the scantiest of privacy, and behind it was a trough of rushing water, flanked by two long boards on which the user could balance. Instead of toilet paper, a bucket of water with a ladle stood off to the side.

  Marlena put her arm around Esmé. She watched an old woman stoking the fire in the rock hearth. What a long night this would be. Her thoughts drifted to Harry. What was he doing now? Was he worried about where she was? Was he even thinking about her? She pictured his face again, not the one that was lustful or embarrassed. She was seeing the sheer wonder in his eyes when she first lay down on the bed with him. Tomorrow, she thought, but no candles, no mosquito netting this time.

  “Think of this like summer camp,” Marlena consoled her daughter. “Or a sleepover.”

  “I never had a sleepover like this.” Esmé was feeding Pup-pup scraps of chicken.

  Others were having similar thoughts. Would their beds be hard as a rock? Would there even be beds? What kind of people were the Lajamees, really? Moff and Wyatt exchanged stories of the travails of past backpacking trips: A thunderstorm in a leaky tent. Bears that got their food. Getting lost after smoking pot. Moff said they’d probably look back on this night as one of the more memorable parts of the trip.

  A strange sound arose. Sirens? Could it possibly be . . . police cars sent out here? Off to the side, my friends saw a glow of intensely bright light. It flickered. They rose and approached this mysterious illumination, and there they beheld rows of people watching—good Lord, of all the amazing things one might find in a jungle—a television set! A news channel was on, and a female voice was reporting on a gigantic fire in a nightclub in China.

  “A TV!” Wendy exclaimed. “How funny is that? And it’s in English.” More news reports followed. My friends were transfixed.

  “Global News Network,” a man’s deep voice announced after a few minutes. “Making news in how we report the news.”

  It was good old GNN!

  My friends moved closer to see. Those were the familiar faces of news anchors beaming back at them. Instantly they felt comforted. They were closer to civilization than they thought. But then one of the twins aimed the remote and switched from the news to a program that featured people wandering through a jungle. The crowd whooped and cheered.

  A woman in outback duds held a mike in guerrilla reporting style. “Will Bettina eat the leeches?” she asked in an Australian accent. “Stay tuned and find out on the next episode of Darwin’s Fittest!”

  “How the hell are they getting reception out here?” Dwight asked.

  “Here’s your answer.” Wyatt pointed to some snaky cords leading from the television set to a car battery. Another cord ran along the ground and up a tree.

  “Must be a satellite dish above the tree canopy,” Moff said. “Man, that’s a lot of tree trunk to cover.” He kneeled and tapped a loop of rope that circled the tree trunk. “And here’s how they climb it. They get inside the lasso and leap like frogs.”

  “But where did they get the satellite dish?” Bennie asked. “It’s not like you can order this stuff and have it delivered up here.”

  Rupert inspected the battery more closely. “Didn’t that come in the back of the truck with u
s?”

  Two young Karen women rushed to offer Rupert a stool made of rattan that was taller than the others. He would have sat on it, too, if Moff had not given him a look that strongly suggested he let Vera have the seat. Soon additional improvised seating was made available to the other guests—stumps and more low stools, which they placed near the television.

  “We’re back!” the Aussie woman chortled. “Darwin’s Fittest, number one among kiwis and wombats.”

  “Numbah one! Numbah one!” the children chanted.

  The Aussie woman leaned close to the camera so that her nose looked like a frog with dark holes for eyes. “And now we’ll see which of our survivors will be brave, and which will face hunger and starvation .” Suspenseful music rose, bass fiddles sawed away.

  “You’d think the people here were watching this show to get pointers,” Roxanne joked. And in fact, they were. The tribe had fantasized that they might one day have a TV show. They were fitter than these survivors. If they had a show, everyone would admire them. And then SLORC would be too ashamed to kill a tribe that was number one.

  When the show ended, the jungle hosts led their guests to their accommodations. They were given greenish-colored blankets, woven from the fibers of young bamboo, the panels stitched together with heavy thread. Rupert, Wyatt, and Wendy broke into grins when they learned that they would be staying in the strangler tree “bungalows.” Bennie noticed right away that the floor was a platform of rattan raised six inches above the ground, and atop that was a springy bed made of layers of small bamboo strips, which, as he discovered upon lying on his back and then his side, was amazingly comfortable.

  Heidi used her headlamp to inspect the interior of her room for the night. The sinewy root walls were smooth and clean, devoid of the dreaded four: mold, bats, spiders, and muck. She took out her Space blanket and wrapped it around herself; it would reflect and retain up to eighty percent of her body heat, or so it was advertised. While she was putting the Lajamee blanket over that, an old woman poked her head in. She hurried over to Heidi, threw off the blanket, turned it the other way, and pointed to the fringe, gesturing that it must always be at the bottom, never near the face—that was a big no-no. Heidi was amused that the woman was such a stickler for details. That should hardly matter out here.