Drive-by Saviours (4 page)

By the time Alfi was old enough to properly absorb the nuances of Bumi's stories, he was an old market pro. He had befriended every bus driver who travelled the short trip from the docks to the market.

He visited Pram regularly, and paid small sums for his stories. On one occasion, Bumi was surprised to find Pram had brought a friend. “This is my girlfriend,” Pram said. “Arum.” Arum's feet had been irreparably mangled by police officers during a protest against the elimination of milk subsidies for young mothers. Unable to keep her fabric-sewing job afterward, she had to give the children to her ex-husband and his new wife.

Bumi surrendered two hundred rupiah for each story the couple told him, rationalizing the guilt away with this equation: more money for his new friends equalled less money for Yusupu's liquid diet.

ONCE BUMI WAS BIG ENOUGH TO TIE THE FLOTATION NETS HE HAD
designed years earlier his childhood was effectively over, and his days were spent shoulder to shoulder with Yusupu. Bumi's invention hadn't granted him his wish for more time with his father, but a little size, strength and coordination had. When granted, the wish came with the usual fine print of the fates.

Bumi hadn't bargained on the change in Yusupu when he'd longed for more time with the man, and he regretted his impatience. Up close he could feel Yusupu's unending flurry of twitches and snarls. He cursed at every snag in the nets, every improperly tied end, every piece of fish that rotted in the stalls before being sold. Though constant, the quickness of his movements kept Bumi on edge, in a state of perpetual surprise. It was like hanging out with a wasp's nest. Bumi could never relax knowing that at any time one sudden movement could sting him, leave him with a bruise or even a break. Yet interspersed with that danger were the occasional gentle touches: a rub of a shoulder, a pat on the head, a display of pride before a big-shot customer. Those touches hurt almost as badly as the bruises. They hurt for their usual absence. They hurt with their impermanence. They hurt for the trust they built, the trust Bumi knew would inevitably be destroyed again, rebuilt again, and destroyed again.

Yusupu and Bumi rose with each new sun and collected the overnight fish haul, Bumi trailing a few steps behind his father at each stage, trying to keep up. Yusupu was always first to the nets. By the time Bumi caught up, his father was already jerking them hard from the water and untangling the mixed catch, sorting them into buckets on the boat floor. Bumi wondered why it was that before they started using the flotation nets, when the men went chasing after fish half the day on the sea, Yusupu had moved so slowly. Now that the fish were coming to them and Yusupu had more free time, he was always in a hurry.

But Bumi didn't dare ask his father that, he just hurried to catch up and lend a hand. Yusupu would always flash the boy a smile when he did that, small praise to start the day, and Bumi smiled back as quickly as he could and got to work.

“Count them as you go, Son,” Yusupu would say. “Tell me how much we got,” by which he meant calculate not only the approximate weight of each kind of fish but also the total cash value they could expect. Bumi was careful to underestimate in case he needed to spend some of the take on stories. He counted the fish he sorted and the twice-as-large pile Yusupu sorted as they went, and as soon as the task was complete he rattled off a figure. Yusupu invariably shook his head in wonder, smiling ear to ear. “Smart boy, my boy,” he'd say, as if amazed anew each and every morning. “Let's go!”

They rode the short trip together across the strait, right into the blinding flare of the rising sun, which smothered the city in a pink blanket so that it always snuck up on them. The city too was a daily surprise. On the boat was where Yusupu seemed most content, most comfortable. There he would tell Bumi quick, easy stories that fit a ten-minute boat ride perfectly. He started each story with, “Have I ever told you about…?”

“Have I ever told you about the man who bought a turtle who could make gold?”

“Have I ever told you about how Rilaka spurned the Goddess of Rice and doomed us to fish?”

“Have I ever told you about the pirate who was tricked out of his gold-making turtle by a false-woman?”

“Have I ever told you about how Sawerigading taught our ancestors how to build boats?”

The answer was always yes. The stories were as familiar as sand, fish and palm trees to Bumi, and as familiar as concrete and cars to a city child. But he didn't mind the familiarity. The stories weren't as exciting as Pram's, but they were comforting and safe. For just a few minutes Bumi could close his eyes and listen to Yusupu and not feel uncertain, afraid or shocked by some quick, unexpected lashing.

The rest of the day was a dangerous balancing act. In the market Bumi drove a hard bargain to please his father, but if he drove too hard and lost the customer he would have to contend with Yusupu's eyes, peering out of a stone-set face—the official illustration of disgust. It was worse if he sold the fish for too low a price. Then Yusupu wouldn't look at him at all, just jab him in the leg under the table with the blunt end of his fish-gutting knife.

At the end of the market day was Bumi's only reprieve from Yusupu, who would send the boy to buy provisions while he bargained with the farmers, trying to sell them his rotten leftovers as fertilizer. He would crumple a few bills into the boy's right hand and say, “Get us something nice for tonight,” with a spastic wink and a half-smile. That meant Bumi was to buy some vegetables and a little black-market rum. Together they would travel home, this time in tired silence, to reset the traps and eat dinner.

THOUGH THE DAYS WERE TENSE, EVENINGS WERE THE MOST DAN
gerous. After dinner, while the men played
gaple,
Bumi would ease his fearful mind regaling Alfi with stories. He told her everything, and she became the equivalent of a literate child's journal—always listening, never judging.

He passed on to her all of Pram's and Arum's stories, free of charge. He told her of the sarong Arum had hand-sewn for him from bits of material she found littering the streets. Arum said it was a gift but Bumi could spot an ulterior motive before it entered a schemer's heart.

“You see,” he explained, “Arum is shyer than Pram. She's not a braggart like he is. She has told me so much already about her children and her ex-husband, who took another, younger wife, and when he could no longer support them both, he left her. But he got the kids when she lost her job. Can you imagine a woman on Rilaka putting up with that? But Arum had to. In Makassar if you don't have a job you have nothing. You
are
nothing. Makes you glad to live on Rilaka doesn't it? Your husband will never try to marry a second wife, or he'll have to answer to me. And Daddy too.”

He unconsciously rubbed his sore jaw. “Here, you'll never have to have a job. Anyway, Arum feels she's out of stories, and didn't want to rip me off, so she made me that sarong, which almost cost me my life.”

THE MOMENT BUMI SAW THE SARONG HE KNEW IT WOULD CAUSE
him trouble. If Yusupu saw it he'd wonder how his son acquired it. Yusupu knew nothing of the friends Bumi visited after running the end-of-day errands. When Bumi was gone for an hour or more, Yusupu assumed he was a little lost—as geniuses tend to get as their minds and bodies wander about together. The boy's dawdling was just one of the many annoyances associated with relying on him. Bumi had never intended to keep his friends a secret, but once the fateful first two hundred rupiah had been passed to Pram's very temporary coffers, he couldn't talk about them.

On the day of the sarong incident Bumi had purchased four stories from Pram, and, not wanting to make Arum feel inferior, spent an equal eight hundred rupiah for the sarong, which he feared but could not resist. It was designed specifically for him. The sixteen hundred rupiah bill doubled his previous record expense, and on a day when the catch had been less than average.

This expenditure left Yusupu with a dissatisfying day's profit. He said nothing as they sped back to the island. For once he seemed calm. He watched the sun heading toward the horizon and he let Bumi steer the boat. Yusupu's calm silence was never a good sign.

When they beached the boat he scooped Bumi up and carried him back to the house. Bumi couldn't help but giggle a little, but he knew he was in trouble as Yusupu set him down in the sand just before their home. “What did you do with my money?” Yusupu demanded.

Bumi looked down at the sand and said nothing.

“Where is the rest of the money?” Yusupu repeated.

Bumi was about to fall on his knees and throw himself at Yusupu's feet begging mercy but Yusupu was too quick. He grabbed Bumi and pulled his shorts down to get a better crack at his backside. There he discovered the ugliest multicoloured, multi-patterned little sarong he'd ever seen, stitched together by someone with obvious skill, which became even more apparent when it took all his strength to separate each small piece. Arum's skill saved Bumi's life. Yusupu vented so much of his rage tearing the sarong apart he managed only a half-hearted kick to the boy's jaw before going to sleep.

Bumi sat on the sand and held his jaw. Though it hurt to do so, he clenched it tightly, holding back his tears. He ground his teeth together until pain was shooting up from the jaw into his temples. Still he would not cry. He clutched at the sand and pressed his forehead to it as if in prayer—but he did not pray. He pushed a futile angry breath through his clenched teeth and bit into the sand. With his head against the sand he beat on his sternum with his fists, revelling in the pain. He tortured himself this way until he had no more strength, and he rolled over and lay there, looking at the stars for guidance.

“Endure,” they whispered to him. “Life has its rewards if you can harden your heart to the pain for long enough.”

BUMI WAITED A FEW MORE DAYS BEFORE HE DARED MEET WITH HIS
friends again. When he did drop by again, only Pram was at the usual meeting spot behind a booth that sold skewered barbequed chicken.

“Where have you been?” Pram asked.

“Fishing,” Bumi answered, using the standard excuse for anything needing excusing under the Rilakan sun.

“Fishing? For four days? That's a lot of rotten fish to sell.”

Bumi wasn't sure what to say. No one had ever called him on the fishing excuse. The strongest rebut he'd ever heard before was, “Well, what did you catch?”

Bumi just gazed at his friend with love and regret. “Where is Arum?” he asked.

“She's given up on you. You know it's not easy for a gimp to get around. I wouldn't be here either, if this wasn't my home.”

Bumi, not wanting to waste his hour looking for Arum, stayed listening to Pram's stories about how he almost
drove the Japanese out of Makassar single-handedly, before that one sadistic soldier took away his ear and his balance.

Arum was back the next day. She looked down at the ground and said nothing for a long time. Finally she spoke. “I came back because I need money, that's all.”

“I'm sorry,” Bumi said.

She gave him a thin smile and he knew she would forgive him. Arum sewed the pieces of his sarong back together within two days and he repaid her with fresh yards of fabric he purchased from the market, saying, “If you use new fabric, big people will buy sarongs from you too.”

“But I still want to spend time with you, Little One,” Arum told him. She closed her eyes but Bumi could see an entire history of lost children etched in the lines of her face.

“You can sew and we can listen to Pram's stories together,” Bumi told her. Pram gave him a half-smile. “When you finish a sarong, I will sell it to the sarong salesman for you, buy more material, and we'll split the profit.”

Arum pulled Bumi onto her lap and tickled his cheeks and shoulders with kisses. Stone-faced, Pram gazed on the woman and child, saying nothing.

BY THE TIME ALFI WAS FOUR YUSUPU HAD BECOME FRUSTRATED BY
the girl's tendency to stare at things: the sea, the sand, washed up debris. Bumi sensed danger, and at eight years old, he had figured out how to throw temper tantrums to divert Yusupu's frustration away from the girl.

The extra beatings were well worth it. He'd gotten somewhat used to the physical pain, but his father's constant betrayals were getting harder and harder to forgive. The chamber of his heart where his father held permanent residence was getting harder and harder too, and where Alfi lived was soft, moist and pure. For Alfi he'd have taken the dullest fishing knife and hacked his father's part of his heart right out, though he prayed to Allah and the sea gods that it wouldn't come to that.

Still he harboured a secret fantasy of slowly pushing the blade through and sawing away until he pulled out a bleeding, quivering burgundy sliver, placed it lovingly into Win's fish stew, and fed it to his father in a bowl, saying, “Here, you can have your love back now. I'm finished with it. It did me more harm than good.”

Then he'd drag his bleeding little body across the harbour and join Pram and Arum, having truly become one of their indomitable, broken-bodied ranks.

Before long Bumi had heard even the tallest of Pram's tales. Arum, whose true stories were once the most interesting, rarely spoke. She sewed sarongs in silence, for the sake of her and Bumi's profit. The only thing Bumi ever bought for himself was an old Spider-Man comic book. Though tattered and torn, the pictures alone told a story well enough to teach Bumi that stories move from left to right.