Read Online Thirty-Three Teeth by Colin Cotterill - Free Book Online Page A

tells me they were carrying a lot of spare gas in the cockpit, which in turn makes me think they expected to be traveling a long distance or carrying a lot of weight.
    “And of course, the fact that they’d both been shot a number of times didn’t give them much of a chance of getting out of the burning chopper. The closeness and angle of the bullets suggest they weren’t traveling very fast. That’s why I’m assuming it was a helicopter rather than a plane. I’ve retrieved the bullets, all AK47, LPLA issue. So whoever these two gentlemen were, they were probably gunned down by our people. How am I doing?”
    Houey looked at the nodding guard and laughed. The man laughed nervously back.
    “Our visiting genius from the capital has been doing a lot of guessing. Too bad he isn’t much of a guesser.” He turned to Siri. “No, Comrade. You’re wrong.”
    “I don’t think so.”
    Houey huffed, and the two men left the room without further comment.
    Miss Latsamy stepped into the doorway after they’d gone. Staring at the window, she said “Uncle, can you ride a horse?”
     
    It was barely a horse. It was more a pony with a paunch. But Siri had ridden many such creatures in his time in the mountains. Indeed, he quite relished the thought of returning to the saddle. Pak Xang was about fifteen kilometers from Luang Prabang, a distance he used to cover regularly between villages in his days with the Viet Minh.
    But the old Lao saying “A year away from the nipple can make a baby nauseous of breast milk” was coined neither for fun nor for scholastic debate. His motorcycle saddle had made him soft. Five kilometers out of town, he negotiated the animal out of its happy canter and into a more leisurely trot. Old dears on bicycles with huge bundles of lemon grass overtook him. The journey took ninety minutes, not much faster than if he and the animal had changed places.

Forbidden Fruit
    Still sore, Siri walked away from his sister-in-law’s simple house feeling even sadder than when he had arrived. Everything about Wilaiwan reminded him of his wife. The way she smiled, her walk, even the widow’s peak that stood on her forehead like the prow of a great white ship.
    The sisters had been born nine months apart: yield from the sibling production line so common in well-off families of the old regime. Boua, his wife, had been the middle child of nine and the only rebel. While her family was in the royal capital working under the king’s patronage, Boua was in France training to overthrow the royal family and rescue her country for communism.
    She had returned to Laos after eight years, with ideals and a rather baffled doctor husband called Siri. But she never came back to Luang Prabang. Instead, she dragged her lover through the jungles of Vietnam and northern Laos and joined the Pathet Lao in their struggle against tyranny.
    Now she was dead, and Siri had come to let her sister know how she had lain on a grenade and pulled the pin to end the confused misery that haunted the final years of her life. In some way, she had expected to erase the depression that had infected her and then spread to her sad husband.
    But, of course, he didn’t tell her. How could he? Honesty can be a dirty gift. It can muddy a sparkling stream of memories. So he said there had been a raid. She’d died a brave patriot as she’d lived, full of hope for a new regime.
    Wilaiwan received the news passively and silently, and together they’d sat on the old wicker chairs on the veranda and let tears roll down their faces without embarrassment.
    As there wasn’t but an hour of daylight left, she invited him to stay the night. Her husband had caught two juicy catfish that were keen to be eaten with some homemade rice wine. So Siri went for a walk to build up an appetite and a better mood.
    He crossed the dusty intersection that marked the center of the village and found the riverbank. There, he followed a river, creamy brown like slow-moving café au