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

both Jack and the dead man. ‘Tomorrow night Jack go cross mountain. Jack-nephew go missing. Big problem Jack wife-brother. Tee-hee-hee. Jack-nephew smoke much pipe. His fadder say oooooo! Jack, please take stupid boy, you can please knock him head, oooooh please! So Jack knock him head for brudder-law, oooh, don’t do that! Tee-hee-hee. So him nephew make own gang once say Jack.’

‘With Khao?’ I asked as Khiem scraped the incisor down my arm. ‘He was making a new gang with Khao?’

‘Shhhhhh!’ Phoo didn’t like Khao’s name to be mentioned. ‘Maybe nephew go now Jack-brudder. Make new opium-plan. Jack no like this. Oooooh! Him go cross hills, tomorrow, gone for two day, maybe three day. Maybe make peace, maybe make war.’ I winced and Phoo went, ‘Tee-hee-hee! Fuck-hurt eh? Tee-hee!’

‘You catching this?’ I said to Mick.

‘Oh yes,’ Mick said thoughtfully. ‘I’m catching it.’

When it was over, Khiem began putting his tools into his embroidered bag, but Mick rolled the sleeve of his T-shirt, offering his own arm. Khiem looked thoughtful and said something to Phoo.

‘You no daddy,’ Phoo laughed. ‘You no carry spirit for she!’

Mick didn’t move, still presenting his mighty arm for Khiem, staring him down.

‘I afraid for you!’ said Phoo. ‘You want hep you fren but spirit too heavy for you carry!’

Khiem seemed reluctant. He muttered a few sharp words to Phoo, who said, ‘You no have same daddy blood for she. Spirit make ’tack on you for you hep fren!’

Mick pointed theatrically at his arm. ‘I came this far, didn’t I?’

Khiem shrugged, unrolled his bag of equipment and set about Mick’s arm. He had to go to the inner biceps to find a clear space. If I thought Mick was taking it too lightly, I said nothing. In one sense he wanted a little souvenir to show the folks back home, yet it was also his way of displaying full support.

So Charlie, Mick and I all had the same mark. Some kind of ideogram, I suppose. Not Chinese lettering but something quite like it; and with horns uppermost there was the crescent moon, presumably the slice that Charlie had stolen.

Later, when the two of us had a quiet moment to ourselves, Charlie said, ‘He’ll do anything for you, won’t he?’

‘Who?’

‘Who?’ she mocked. ‘Who might I mean?’

‘You mean Mick?’

‘Yes. Mick. He’ll do anything for you.’

I think I shrugged.

‘Must be incredible to have a friend like that,’ she went on. ‘Wonderful. To follow you into the jungle like this. Without question.’

‘It’s you he’s come to help.’

‘That’s crap, Dad. He’s here for you. To help me, yes, but for you. You told me he even put his savings at your disposal. He’ll fight your battles for you. He’ll even take that tattoo for you.’

I instinctively fingered the fresh scar on my arm. ‘So?’

She twisted her lips, and supposedly in imitation of my gruff tones said, ‘So? Is that all you can say: so?’

‘What do you want me to do? Jump up and down?’

‘You might recognise what you’ve got for a start.’

I didn’t like where this was steering. ‘What’s your point?’

‘I don’t have a point, Dad! I’m just saying how obvious it is!’

‘Obvious? What’s obvious?’

‘Mick. He’ll go with you anywhere. He loves you.’

I shot out a dismissive, barking kind of laugh at this.

‘You’re so blind, Dad. So blind.’

‘What are you saying?’ I cackled. ‘That Mick wants to get up my arse?’

Charlie was furious. ‘How can you reduce it like that? Even if it were so, how dare you sit there and reduce it so? How can you do that?’

This angry talk, or the tattooing, or both, had made me feel distinctly queasy, so I went outside. Plus the heavy incense smoke was beginning to get to me, and I needed to know what Phil was doing in the poppy fields. Mick wasn’t far from the hut. He stayed behind – we’d agreed not to leave Charlie unprotected after recent events.

Up on the hillsides I could see that the glory days of the poppy were beginning to thin out. I was losing track of time, and I had to count the days to find out how long we had been in the village. Incredibly, we had been there for only six days, and yet it seemed like a season.

It was the middle of the afternoon: the fields were empty and the harvesters had returned to the village. Many of the poppy pods had shed their petals and were incised and harvested. I guessed the short season helped Jack and the villagers: they could harvest quickly and shift the stuff rapidly. Jack had already told me that this village would then not be used for a season. He kept his men moving. It was guerrilla farming.

At first I couldn’t see Phil anywhere. He’d taken more and more to wandering the upper slopes of the poppy fields, so he could be closer to God I suppose. The thought of him going to and fro amid the poppies, talking aloud, wrestling with his conscience and looking for divine guidance was shredding my nerves. He was a ticking bomb. I knew I was going to have to do something extreme to get us all out of there, but what?

Some of the poppy pods still had traces of the brown juice where the pod had continued to sweat after the harvesters had passed by with their garnering tools. I broke a waxy crystal from one pod to examine it. Treacle-coloured sunlight fizzed at its surface. I sniffed at it and tried it on my tongue, but it didn’t taste of anything. I flicked the tiny nugget from my fingers.

As for Charlie, I was out of ideas about getting her to leave the hut. I’d pleaded with her. I’d talked to her about home until even I started to despise the phoney haven I was trying to make of it. I had no talk left. I just couldn’t reach her.

I heard Phil before spotting him. He was on his knees amid the poppies and praying loudly. Furious, I charged