Round 2 - Thorod vs Marauder X
TOTAL ECLIPSE
I belonged on the streets of L.A., what in hell was I doing here?
It was all Chad’s fault, Chad and his cosmic ‘Fate.’ He said it was meant to be, that there was a purpose here that I couldn’t see. Bull. Yeah, maybe his boyfriend left him the same week my girl left me, and maybe I’d been complaining to him about being burned out just as he was deciding what to do with the tickets, so what? He calls it fate; I call it an unfortunate coincidence. I still can’t believe I said yes.
So here I was, a straight private investigator from L.A., sitting in a field in Thailand with Chad and eight gay new-agers, waiting for the sun to disappear. Go figure.
Not that these were bad guys or anything, and I’ve always had gay friends; this was 1995 after all, not the fifties. But spending two weeks with nine gay men on a ‘Spirit Tour’ to Thailand’s Chiang Mai temples was…well, it was not my usual Saturday night, if you know what I mean. But I was burned out, big time.
I used to love my job. Walking the streets of L.A., getting people to talk, figuring out the case, there was a thrill there I can hardly describe, like static electricity running through my spine. My job was who I was, and I was content. But lately, it was just one divorce case after another, enough to make me doubt myself, and believe me that was a new feeling. Five in a row, this last stretch, five cases in a row where I wasn’t solving anything, I was just pulling out the telephoto and sneaking around backyards taking pictures of cheating husbands and their soon to be cheated-on cheating girlfriends. I could barely remember the last time I’d had a real case.
“Where are you?” Chad asked. It was his new-age way of saying ‘penny for your thoughts.’ He was sitting across from me in the grass, legs crossed, a blissful smile on his face, and wearing his eclipse glasses just like the rest of us. [picture 1, cheapsunglasses]
“Huh?” I said. “Sorry, I was thinking about my last cases.”
“You should be with the moment, Merrick. This is a once in a lifetime experience, a total eclipse of the sun! It may touch your inner spirit.”
“My inner spirit needs a whiskey, neat,” I said. Chad looked hurt. “You’re right though,” I said quickly, “this is amazing, the sun looks like a crescent moon!”
“It gets better,” he said, the hurt look gone.
Rawee, our Thai guide, took my arm and pulled me aside a few minutes before totality.
“I could not avoid overhearing, Mr. Merrick,” he said, in near-perfect English. “You are not like the others? Not here for the cosmic moment of enlightenment?”
“No,” I grinned, “I’m just here with an old friend, why?”
“I have a favor to ask, since I heard you say you are an American investigator. But first, let me show you something magical. Take off your glasses, but please do not look at the sun until totality.”
I took the eclipse glasses off, and took a closer look at our guide. Part of me was expecting him to start spouting some new-age cosmic nonsense, but my instincts said otherwise. In my line of work you get good at reading people, or you don’t last long, and when I looked at Rawee’s face I knew he was sincere. He really did need my help, and he really did want to show me something magical.
“Look to the northwest,” he said, pointing.
“At what?”
“Wait, you will see.”
I waited, but not for long. It was incredible, even magical, though that’s a word I almost never use. A wave of darkness was approaching, climbing over the horizon like some huge thunderstorm on steroids. It rushed up at me, powerful and ominous, and then suddenly it was night. I looked up, and the eclipsed sun shone like a shimmering dress of white silk, wrapped around an eye of utter darkness. My jaw dropped, and I felt that electric tingle in my spine, that tingle I had not felt in a very long time.
“In the legends of my people an eclipse was a time when a great demon, or Asura, devoured the sun, which we called Surya of the twelve names,” Rawee told me. “It took a lot of prayer to bring Surya back. But some demons are not so easily vanquished.”
A strange thing to say, but I didn’t answer; I just wanted to look at that orb of blackness wrapped in white silk. Less than a minute later it was over, a stab of light burst out from the edge of blackness and I had to put the special glasses back on.
“Magical, yes?” Rawee asked.
“Amazing!” I said. “That was definitely worth fourteen hours on a jumbo jet.”
“I am an astronomer,” Rawee said, “and this is my third eclipse tour, and still I can scarcely believe the beauty of it. The wave of approaching night feels like magic every time.”
I laughed, something else I had not done in a long time. “Okay, Rawee, you came through. You showed a jaded American tourist some real magic. What’s your favor? I’m a P.I., sure, but I’m a stranger here, I don’t know if I can be of much help.”
“Real magic? No, I think that lies ahead of you, Mr. Merrick. This may feel magical, but it is just an astronomical phenomenon.
“It is because you are a stranger here that I am coming to you. It is only a stranger that can help me, or perhaps it is only a stranger that I can trust, I’m not sure myself. Your group is going to Chiang Mai next, is it not? To the Santithan Guest House?”
“That’s right, to practice ‘sacred meditation’ in the Buddhist temples.”
“But you, Mr. Merrick, you will not be meditating with your friends, I assume?”
“You got that right, I’m having fun tagging along, but I draw the line at staring at the wall. I was hoping to find a good bar in Chiang Mai, one that my friends probably wouldn’t be interested in.”
“I guessed correctly then,” Rawee said, “you are indeed the one who can help me. My people are being murdered, Mr. Merrick. This is no mystery for an American investigator; it is just politics and hatred. But something else has started, a new evil, and only a few of us are aware of what it might mean. I want you to take a message to someone, and, as fate would have it, she works at a good bar in Chiang Mai.”
There was that word again, fate. It was enough to make me start listening to Chad’s gobbledygook. The electric tingle in my spine was still there, and getting stronger, even though I was no longer watching the eclipse.
“The Thai are being murdered?” I asked.
“I am not Thai, Mr. Merrick, I am Karen. I may be a Bangkok scientist by training, but in my heart I am still a hill tribesman of the north. We are a dying people, I’m afraid, and there is still prejudice and hatred for us here, and much more in Myanmar. That is why I have come to you. The Thailand police have no interest in tracking down Karen rumors, even when a Karen is murdered they do little more than fill out a report.”
“Okay, so what’s going on? What is the message you want me to deliver?”
“This,” he said, pulling out a folded-up piece of typing paper. “If you are willing, I would ask you to deliver this to Naa Kraisertmaklang, she is a waitress at a bar called Chaos City, in Chiang Mai. Please deliver it to no one else, or mention it to anyone, even your friends on the tour.”
“Easy enough, and a fair trade for a total eclipse of the sun. You got it, Rawee, though you better write that name down for me. Is that it, just deliver a letter?”
“When she reads this, she may need your help in other matters. If she asks for your help, I would be most grateful if you would listen to her, if you would help her.”
My practical side was saying stop it here, promise to deliver the letter and call it a day. But there was that tingle, and it had been a long time, after all. And there was also an earnestness in Rawee’s voice that my instinct told me was akin to desperation. What the hell.
“I give you my word,” I said, and held out my hand. He shook it, then suddenly pulled me hard to the side.
“You need to watch your feet in Thailand, Mr. Merrick,” he said, pointing down, “look.”
There were two green snakes in the grass where I’d been standing, entwined around each other. I shivered.
_
Chiang Mai was like much of northern Thailand, a curious mix of the ancient and the modern, the sacred and the profane. 300 temples, 300 bars. The Santithan Guest House was everything I feared, but I’d prepared myself, and once I got settled in it wasn’t so bad. If you’d asked me a month ago if a hotel that catered exclusively to gay new-agey Americans could thrive in the north of Thailand, I’d have told you to up your medication. But sometimes even a P.I. like me can be surprised.
I couldn’t find an excuse to get away from Chad and the others till the next evening, but no one was shocked when I gracefully bowed out of the ‘cross-cultural meditation and unity chant’ in favor of hunting down a few iced Singha’s. Chad told me to have fun, but be safe, and I was on my way.
I thought I’d seen it all when two gay Thai’s checked me into their hotel with a wave from an incense stick, I was wrong. Chaos City was a punk bar; there was actually a punk bar in Chiang Mai. It was like slipping back in time twenty years, a mass of barbed-wire over the entrance, music so loud I could feel it through my boots even out on the street, mohawks in every color of the rainbow. The band was playing a strange mix of punk and ska. The biggest surprise: They were really good.
I was back in my element, once I got over the retro-shock. I stood at the end of the bar, ordered a cold Singha from a British kid with bright blue, spiked hair, and started watching for waitresses. It was loud, smoky and packed, but I was good at this, and in no time I’d found who I was looking for. There were two waitresses making the rounds at Chaos City, one a skinny American girl, the other a skinny Thai girl (not Thai, I corrected myself, Karen). I waited till she was between customers, pushed through the crowd of kids until I reached her, and shouted “I’ve got a message for you Naa, from a friend, Rawee.” Same as a whisper in this noise.
The girl’s eyes went wide, and I knew immediately that I’d guessed right.
“Not now!” she shouted back in my ear, when I bent over. “After close, in back, three hour.”
I headed back to the bar. Three hours jamming to Thai punk? Hey, it sure beat staring at a wall and chanting. When there was a break in the music I asked the blue-haired Brit if by any wild chance he had a bottle of whiskey hidden away, the Singha was starting to taste as bad as Coors. He poured me three fingers of something he called ‘Chiang Choon’; it went down like fire, but it was better than the beer.
Sometime after midnight the band finally called it quits, and I closed out my tab. I hadn’t seen Naa for almost half an hour, but I figured she was in the back helping to close up. When the crowd of kids had mostly disappeared, I headed into the alley behind the bar, looking for Naa’s skinny figure in the darkness.
I found her.
People always talk about suddenly going stone cold sober, but unless they’ve found somebody in a back alley by almost slipping in a pool of blood, they’re talking through their nose. This was the second time in my life it had happened to me, and it didn’t get any easier with repetition.
I went over the body as carefully and quickly as I could in the dark. She’d been stabbed, and there was no purse, no ID. As soon as I knew I couldn’t learn anything more I high-tailed it out of there before the Thai police showed up. I thought I saw a figure standing at the end of the alley, but when I turned the corner there was no one in sight. I figured it was probably nerves, but filed the memory away just in case.
I made it back to the Santithan, and thankfully everyone was asleep, including Chad. I washed up quietly, then sat in one of the room’s chairs and lit a cigarette, trying to think about what to do next. I’d only spoken two sentences with the girl, but that didn’t make me feel any less guilty. In this business, if someone dies just before a back alley meeting, it is no coincidence. Maybe if I’d gone out earlier, waited for her. Yeah right, and maybe now there’d be two bodies in that alley. The question wasn’t what if, but what next. The only thing out of the question was doing nothing. I’d shaken a man’s hand.
I was sitting there, smoking in the dark, when I heard footsteps on the patio outside. My first instinct was to go for my gun, before I remembered that it was back in L.A., this was supposed to be a vacation. I grabbed the crystal ashtray, better than nothing, and stood up. There was a quiet tap on the patio door, and I set the ashtray down and unlocked it. If I’ve learned anything as a P.I., it’s that the bad guys rarely knock. I opened the patio door, which made a metallic screech loud enough for Chad to wake up. He sat up in his bed and turned on the light.
It was Clyde, one of the other members of the ‘Spirit Tour.’ I liked Clyde, he was more down to Earth than most of the group, but the little French maid’s outfit he was wearing was a bit of a shock at four in the morning. Especially after the night I’d had.
“What’s going on?” Chad asked, still half asleep and blinking in the light.
“Nothing, Chad,” Clyde said, “sorry to wake you. John and I just got back from that Halloween party we heard about at the chant, and I wanted to have a word with Merrick.”
Halloween, of course. No wonder Chaos City had been so packed. I’d completely forgotten.
“Oh, okay,” Chad said, rolling over and going back to sleep. Right now I envied his lack of curiosity, but there was a good reason Chad wasn’t in the P.I. business.
“Can I have a drag?” Clyde asked me, talking quietly.
“Sure,” I said, “you can have a whole one.” I lit a new smoke from mine, and handed it to him. [picture 2, whataman] He took a deep drag, then walked over and turned out the light.
“Let’s go out on the patio,” he said.
We went out, and I closed the door behind me, lifting it up this time so it wouldn’t scrape.
“What’s up, Clyde?” I asked, trying to sound surprised by his visit. I knew it must have something to do with tonight, that whole coincidence thing again.
“Well, it’s weird, weird enough to see if you were awake anyway. The party tonight was at a gay bar called the Parasol, mostly American tourists like us. John and I went as French maids.”
“That much I gathered,” I said.
“Yeah, we were a hit. Didn’t win best outfit though, there were a couple of professional drag queens there who won instead.”
“There’s no accounting for taste.”
Clyde laughed. “Anyway,” he said, “it was getting really late, and we were talking with some of the other tourists, and you came up.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you know, the straight guy traveling with us ‘cause Chad’s man left him. We were talking about what that must be like, since we figured it must be pretty weird for you.”
“You have no idea,” I said, laughing.
“Well, while we were talking a Thai came up to our table, short guy, really old. ‘Do you speak of an American named Merrick?’ he asked us. ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘do you know him?’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘but I have a message I would like you to deliver to him.’ ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘no problem.’ ‘Tell him that he must go with you the day after tomorrow, on the hike into Chiang Dao National Park.’ ‘That’s it?’ I asked. ‘He must go,’ he said, then he just walked out the door. It was weird.”
“I guess I’m going on a hike,” I said, after a long drag on my cigarette.
“So you know something about this?” Clyde asked. “I didn’t think you’d ever been to Thailand.
“I haven’t, and I don’t have any idea what he’s talking about. But I made a promise to that astronomer guide we had back in the south, and it probably has something to do with that.”
“Okay, friend, keep your secrets. I’ve delivered my message, and it’s really late, so I’m going to bed. See you on the hike.”
“Thanks, and could you do me a favor? Don’t mention anything to Chad, he worries about things too much.”
“Sure, that’s easy, since I have no idea what this is about anyway.” Clyde stomped out his cigarette, and headed back to his own patio. I went to bed.
I didn’t wake the next day until after noon, and when I did my head was pounding like the punk music from the night before. I groaned, and pressed my palms against my eyes.
“Rough night?” Chad asked. He was already up, showered, and ready for whatever cosmically enlightening experience the tour guides had scheduled.
“Yeah, you could say that,” I said. “Note for your guidebook, Chad. When in Thailand, avoid Chiang Choon at all costs.”
“What’s Chiang Choon?”
“Chinese whiskey, at least that’s what the bartender told me.”
“I guess this means you’re not coming to the bonding ritual?”
“No, you have fun. I think I’ll just take a walk through town. I’ve decided to go with you on the hike tomorrow though, that sounds interesting.”
“Oh good, I’m glad. We’re visiting a native village you know, people who are really in touch with the land!”
I almost responded that they were probably more in touch with American eco-tourist dollar signs, but I held the words back just in time. Chad headed for his ‘bonding,’ happy as a clam, and I rolled over for another hour of sleep.
It took a while, but I did make it into town. I headed straight for the punk bar; one of my rules when I was working a case was ‘start where it’s hairiest, even if the cops are there’. The cops were there. Two of them talking to the blue-haired bartender out front. I was in luck; since the bartender was a Brit the cops assumed he couldn’t speak Thai. I moved closer, acting the part of nosy American tourist.
“So that’s it,” one cop was saying, “a Yang hooker got stabbed in the alley, but there were no witnesses and she’s got no family in town?”
Blue-hair looked over at me, and immediately back at the Thai cops. I could tell he remembered me, and I could also tell that he wasn’t going to share that with these two. My kind of bartender.
“She wasn’t a hooker, I told you she was one of our waitresses,” the bartender said, not looking very happy about the Thai cop’s attitude.
“Well, we’ll fill out a report. We’ve had a lot of noise complaints about this place, adding a murder report isn’t going to look good when your licenses need to be renewed.”
I walked away, I’d seen enough bribe requests/threats in my time to know what was going on. I decided to talk to the blue-haired Brit in a day or so, when things had settled down. Rawee’s words about Thai cops not being able to help him were ringing in my head. I didn’t know what a ‘Yang’ was, but the way the cop said it sounded nasty.
After the scene in front of Chaos City I headed for the shopping district to see if I could pick up any information that would explain something, anything. All I got was a bunch of vendors desperate to sell me over-priced trinkets. Eventually I gave up, and went back to the Santithan. I was tempted to go find another bar that served Chiang Choon, but I resisted. Hiking was not my thing, and I figured tomorrow would be hard enough without another long night.
The hike wasn’t too bad; they jeeped us pretty deep into Chiang Dao National Park before we even started. The park was incredible, even for a city guy like me. Lush, green and very steep. On the way to the ‘native village,’ we crossed a bridge that was straight out of Indiana Jones, right down to the loose floorboards. [picture 3, overtroubledwater] The rest of the group was eating it up, but the P.I. in me couldn’t resist looking a little closer. I hung back, and unwound a bit of the tattered-looking rope. Yep, steel cable underneath, just more window-dressing for the eco-tourists.
Before we got to the village, the guide gave us a canned lecture about the Karen people, their intricate crafts and their primitive connection with the land. Lots of Chief Seattle mumbo jumbo, but I could see Chad was totally convinced, so I kept my mouth shut. So far I’d met two Karen, an astronomer and a waitress at a punk bar; yep, pretty primitive.
The native village was quaint, rustic and beautiful, as advertised. A few Karen tribesmen sat on their porches, weaving rope or carving native crafts. Magic, pure magic, right. I was sure I recognized one of the carvers; I’m good with faces. He was a man who’d tried to sell me a carved pagoda yesterday, in the shopping district of Chiang Mai. It was too much. I was about to tell Chad what I thought of the place when a woman’s voice said from right behind me “You don’t believe in magic, do you Mr. Merrick.”
“What?” I said, whipping around.
“I didn’t say anything dude,” Clyde said, “you okay?” There was no woman anywhere, nobody behind me but Clyde and his partner John.
“I’m fine,” I told Clyde. “I think it was just one of these damn jungle bugs buzzing in my ear.”
But I wasn’t fine, I was shaken, and that’s another feeling I’m not used to. The voice had been so clear, perfect English but with the same Karen accent as Rawee the astronomer. My imagination must be getting the better of me, I thought, not a good thing in my line of work.
We were headed out of the village, and I had convinced myself that the voice was straight out of my subconscious, when a Karen boy ran up to the guide. The boy was arguing with the guide, but not in English. I knew it was about me though, from the pointing. Then that voice again. “Go with the boy,” she said.
I turned around, couldn’t help myself, but I already knew there’d be nobody there, and I was right. The guide came over to me, looking apologetic.
“Mr. Merrick,” he said, “there is an elder of the village who would like to speak to you. Apparently she knows your name, though I promise you our tour company keeps such things confidential. The rest of the group and I are supposed to wait for you at the rope bridge, though the boy says that your friend Chad can come with you. Personally, I’d recommend that you refuse. I’ve run hundreds of these tours, and no villager has ever asked this before. It’s not according to the…I mean it’s against procedure.” I swear he was about to say ‘script.’
“I’ll go,” I said, “I may have a message for this Karen elder. Chad, want to tag along?”
“Talk with a Karen elder? Are you kidding? Of course I’ll come along!” Chad was so happy about getting a chance to talk directly with a Karen that the strangeness of the whole situation had gone completely over his head. A great guy, my friend Chad, but clueless.
“As long as you understand that this is your choice,” the guide said, “and that I advised against it.” He sounded more worried about lawsuits than he was about me.
The Karen boy led Chad and me to one of the village huts. There was a square hole in the roof that let in light, which I took as a good sign. I’ve been to too many meetings where it was so dark you couldn’t make out any faces. There was a Karen woman sitting on a low stool, and the boy pointed us to cushions on the floor in front of her before disappearing.
The woman was ancient, though she sat with her back straight. She had on a silky white blouse and her hair was pure white, long, and worn loose, the light from the hole in the roof made her hair almost glow. Her face was dark and wrinkled, and her eyes were black, like deep pools of black ink. She stared at me in silence for a moment, and I stared back at those black eyes. She looked familiar, and when I tried to place her it hit me, the eclipse. She looked like the eclipse, all deep mysterious darkness surrounded by a circle of glowing white.
“O soo o clay ker saw daw a?” she asked.
“I’m doing fine, thanks,” I said.
“You never told me you speak Thai!” Chad said, looking at me in surprise.
“I don’t,” I said. It was only then that I realized her question had not been in English, and weirder yet, my answer hadn’t been either.
The old lady laughed. “Neither English nor Thai, Chad,” she said. “That was S’gaw, the language of my people. But I think English will do for now. I am Nitta Kawbi, an elder of the Karen. Your names I already know. Mr. Merrick, I believe you have something for me?”
Rawee had said to give his message only to Naa, but Naa was dead. My spine was tingling like crazy, but every instinct I had told me I could trust this old woman. The kind of trust where I’d hand her a gun to cover my back, if you get my drift. I took the folded piece of paper out of my hip pocket and handed it to her.
The old woman opened the note, and while she read it I looked over at Chad. He was looking back and forth between me and the old woman as if he’d been dropped down the rabbit hole, his mouth was open, but he couldn’t seem to find words.
“It’s okay, Chad,” I said, “it doesn’t make sense to me either. I’ll explain about the note on our hike back.” Chad nodded, still unable to speak.
The old woman looked up at me. “Do not blame yourself, Mr. Merrick, you could not have saved her. I am sorry too, she was very young, but our people have had to deal with deaths like hers before.”
It was seriously creepy, the way she’d gotten inside my mind. I wondered if I needed to talk at all. Chad’s mouth had dropped open again, if the situation had been even a little less strange it would have made me laugh.
“I tried to read it, after Naa was killed,” I said. I figured keeping a secret from this woman was beyond futile. “But I couldn’t, I guess it’s in S’gaw too.”
“No, it’s in Thai. My people have no written language. Our stories tell us that we did once, but that our ancestors got lazy and let it die,” she laughed. “I’d like to believe those stories, they make for a good warning.
“The note is about our new enemy, but I’m afraid it came too late.”
“Your new enemy?” I asked.
“Yes, our new problem. It is why fate has brought us together, Mr. Merrick, fate or perhaps Vasuki, the wise snake god of our ancestors.”
There was that word again, fate. I’d never given it much thought before, but I sure was now. Coming from the old woman, it didn’t sound nearly as hokey as it did when Chad said it.
“The Karen are under attack from all sides. For years we have been a people without a country. We are despised, if tolerated, in Thailand. We are murdered in Myanmar. With every generation there are less of us left. That is a great evil, and we fight it, as we are able.
“But there is some new evil at work now, and we don’t know how to fight it because we don’t know, yet, what it is. Villagers are ending up dead, always stabbed, always without witnesses. Some are even talking about the demons of legend, saying that maybe they’re real, maybe they’ve come back. I prayed for someone who could unravel this new threat before too many more of us die. And then you came to Thailand, Mr. Merrick, to see an eclipse of the sun.”
“Fate,” I said, “yeah, I know, you don’t have to say it. But I don’t think I’m your man. My life is in L.A., and I have a plane ticket out of Chiang Mai tomorrow. I don’t know the language here, I don’t know the streets, how could I be the one to help you?”
“I am not sure. But I am very good at seeing who people really are, and you are an investigator, a searcher after truth. It is in your very marrow.
“Will you help us, Caduceus?”
I sat back, shocked. I hate my first name, had ever since grade school. The curse of having two history professor parents with strange senses of humor. From the moment I left my parents’ house, everyone just called me Merrick, and I changed my first name officially to Cal.
“Caduceus?” Chad asked, finally finding his voice.
“It’s my first name,” I told him, “the staff of Hermes, from Greek myth.”
“Two snakes, entwined around a rod,” the old woman added. “One symbolizing intellect, the other symbolizing perception. The Buddhist monks of these hills would add that the snakes are the negative and positive kundalini, wrapped around the spine in perfect balance. It is the staff of a seeker of knowledge, a thief of truth, and the name was well given.”
“Yeah, well, I always hated it,” I said, standing up. “Look, I’d like to help you, Ms. Kawbi, but I’m not your man, really. You need someone who knows these hills, who knows the streets of Chiang Mai, who knows the language. I’m sorry, but it’s not me. Come on, Chad, let’s go, our tour guide is probable getting nervous by now.”
The old woman looked up at me, dark face surrounded by white, and her hair stirred in the breeze from the hole in the roof.
“Goodbye, Caduceus,” she said calmly. She was smiling, and it was not comforting.
-
On the way back to the jeeps, Chad and I hung back from the others while I told him everything that had happened, even about Naa. He took it better than I would have thought.
My practical side was trying to take over, telling me to go find a bar in Chiang Mai, any bar but Chaos City, and get drunk, then take the plane to Bangkok in the morning. Go back to L.A., take a few more divorce cases, make some money. My world. Chad was not so sure.
“Surely even you believe something magical happened back there,” he said. “I heard you talking another language!”
“Parlor trick,” I said, “had to be. I could find a dozen hypnotists in L.A. who could do the same thing.”
Chad was not convinced. Hell, I hadn’t even convinced myself.
When we got back to Chiang Mai, there was a crowd waiting for us. Mostly Karen vendors trying to sell carvings to the eco-tourists still flush from their exotic adventure. A young boy caught me eye, he could have been the little brother of the boy who had brought us to Nitta Kawbi. He had a street mutt with him, trained to hold a collection bucket, and he wore a sign in both Thai and English that said ‘Help support the fight for Karen civil rights.’ [picture 4, fidough] A picture flashed in my mind, a skinny Karen girl lying dead in an alley, my boots in her blood.
I took out all the Thai money I had left, almost nine thousand Bhat, a little over two hundred dollars, and dropped it in the bucket. Down payment on guilt.
“Let’s go get drunk,” I said to Chad, “you shouldn’t leave Thailand without at least trying some Chiang Choon, it can’t all be about meditation rituals.” I didn’t think he would, but Chad agreed.
The next morning it took two minutes of Clyde pounding on the door to wake me up. I once thought that there was no hangover worse than one from Southern Comfort, but Chiang Choon now tops my list. Chad was still asleep, looking like something the cat had drug in and the dog wouldn’t eat. I felt a little guilty about that, but not much, Chad needed to taste life a little more.
I found tomato juice in the mini-fridge, and little bottles of vodka. God bless those two little gay Thai’s who ran the Santithan, this made up for the incense and then some! Chad and I made it to the Chiang Mai airport with an hour to spare, and went looking for breakfast.
There was a crowd gathered outside the airport, watching some street performer. I wanted to go find food, something hot and spicy to kill the last of the hangover, but Chad was curious, so we elbowed through the crowd.
It was a snake charmer, of course, had to be. Fate. [picture 5, twins!] He had two young king cobras, and he’d gotten them to weave in unison. I tried to turn around, go find breakfast, but Chad made me watch. The charmer was good; soon he had them twisted around each other, entwined.
I looked at Chad.
“You’re staying, aren’t you?” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I give already. Mulder wins this time.” It was an old joke between us; Chad said we were such good friends because the Scully inside of me balanced the Mulder inside of him.
“But what about what you told the old woman?” Chad asked. “I mean, you have no idea what this is all about. You don’t even know where to start.”
“You’re right, I have no idea what this is about, but I’m used to that, it’s what I do. It’s who I am. Besides, I do know where to start.”
“You do?”
“Sure, it’s one of my rules. Always start with the bartender!”
Chad laughed, and then he hugged me, hard.
“Goodbye, Merrick,” he said.
“Call me Caduceus.”
. But now that the pressure is off and I feel these things from a clinical perspective, as opposed to a waiting, needing to know perspective, I thought I should bring them up. That or maybe I was just too scared to piss off a judge before they finished judging my story 
.
