“No more than ten seconds.”
“Civilai, what’s your point here?” Daeng asked.
“Just playing the odds, Daeng, old girl,” he said. “I’m a young helicopter pilot. I’ve just engaged autorotate. I’m slicing toward the trees with a full gas tank. I have nowhere to land. I know in thirty seconds I’ll be blown to hell. As I’m quite fond of myself, I’d rather not let that happen so I climb down into the fuselage, release the cable, grab hold of the harness and jump.”
“And what damned good would that do you?”
“Push the odds more in my favor, comrade. I’m traveling forward at sixty knots at the end of my thirty-meter cable. That means I hit the trees a few seconds before the helicopter which, as that would be an isosceles triangle, is thirty meters away by the time it explodes. Due to the trajectory and speed the force of the explosion sends its whatever volatile substance ahead of it. Hence the crater being at the edge rather than the center of the crash site. A sixty-forty chance of the pilot not being blown up.
When Peach passed this fantasy on, Johnson laughed until his belly hurt.
“You’d be flying into trees at eighty miles an hour,” he said. “You’ve dropped to the end of a steel cable in ten seconds. If the harness hasn’t crushed your ribs you break your head on a tree.”
“Tree tops being basically soft leaves,” said Civilai, determined to rescue his hypothesis.
Johnson asked for the old Politburo man’s telephone number. He told him he had friends in Hollywood who’d really be interested in a man with such a vivid imagination. To his surprise, Civilai took out a pencil and started to write it down. He was interrupted by Phosy who shot to his feet and looked around as if he’d scented an ambush.
“Damn,” he said, and rushed off at full speed into the jungle.
“See? Now you’ve upset Phosy,” said Daeng.
“What do you suppose that was about?” Civilai asked.
By the time the search continued after lunch, the objectives had changed. More of them were hunting with the hope of not finding any human remains. Civilai’s fanciful theory that the pilot might have enacted a daring escape had secretly sparked more hope in the others. Madame Daeng knew nothing of the character or dreams of the young pilot but her sense of adventure left her willing him alive. Nobody knew what had happened to Inspector Phosy. Someone suggested he might have come down with diarrhea after eating too many NASA lunch modules. But when he returned at three, he looked none the worse for wear. He had headman Ar in tow. The old man called his son’s name and the boy emerged from his hiding place in the undergrowth. He walked over to his father and grinned at the policeman. Phosy called for everyone to gather around as he had an announcement to make. He asked Peach if she’d be so kind as to help with the translation. He put his arm around the boy’s shoulder. Bok shrugged him off.
“As some of you already know,” Phosy said, “this is Bok. He’s headman Ar’s son. Bok cannot speak and he’s a little slow to understand. But he’s very talented. He hunts well and he knows all the secrets of the jungle. His speciality is catching insects, as you can see. I asked his father when he first developed this fascination with lassoing little creatures and it appears it was somewhere around the time the sorceress witnessed the dragon crash into the moon. She believed Bok’s sudden change was another manifestation of the disaster that happened that night. Apart from his insect fetish, Bok also started to draw pictures. In the beginning he drew them in the sand but his father bought him some paper and crayons and Bok became an artist. Another miracle. Before that the boy just used to sit in front of his hut day and night, staring off into the distance. Suddenly he could walk and the strength returned to his fingers. He was a different person. He couldn’t yet speak but his father believes it’s just a question of time. So what really happened to stimulate Bok’s mind?”
Phosy pulled an old Thai Mekhong Whiskey calendar from his pack. On the front page was a colour photograph of a young girl in a bikini. The audience looked on in dismay. Was the boy’s mind turned by half-naked women holding glasses of whiskey? Fortunately not. The inspector turned over the calendar to show that the backs of the photographs were blank and someone had made sketches on the large white sheets. He flipped them over one by one. The illustrations, without exception, were of what looked like a large monster. It had big feet and hands like table tennis bats. All of this might have been attributed to an inability to draw. But attention had been given to small details like the flowers on the monster’s shirt and blood spurting from the mouth. And the main feature of each picture was a string leading from the monster’s hand. It reached up into the sky and at its end was a bizarre flying creature with one huge eye.
“Very nice story of rehabilitation,” said Judge Haeng. “Very heart-warming. Now perhaps you’d like to rejoin the search. We’ve been covering for you for two hours.”
“No, I feel a point coming on,” said Civilai.
“The point is,” said Phosy, “there’s no ground in any of these pictures. The monster is flying. For ten years, Bok has been training insects so he can fly like the monster. Where did a boy with no schooling or life experience pick up a concept like that? Why would he ever believe he could be carried away by insects?”
“By being at ground level and watching a man fly down at the end of a string,” said Daeng.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” said Phosy. “From Bok’s point of view the helicopter was as small as an insect. There was a full moon so he could see it clearly. And to him, the man was a monster. Civilai was right. Boyd did come down at the end of the cable.”
“Oh my goodness.” Judge Haeng laughed and looked around apologetically at the Americans. “What rubbish. Surely this isn’t what we pay you for: the psychological analysis of mental retards.”
“It sounds plausible to me,” said Madame Daeng.
“Of course it does, madam,” said Haeng. “And we all know that you studied for five years at law school. So … no wait, it was primary school, wasn’t it? I seem to recall you didn’t even make it to high school. And if you had, you’d know that such a farcical theory is inadmissible. It’s missing the two key ingredients known as empirical evidence and logic. Giants being transported by hornets won’t get you far in a court of law. Am I correct in assuming you don’t have any concrete evidence of this, Inspector?”
“No … sir,” said Phosy.
“Just as I thought. Now perhaps-”
“No, I mean, no you aren’t correct. The evidence has been in front of us all the time but we didn’t look.”
He turned to Bok and said something in Phuan. Bok looked at his father who nodded. Slowly and gently, Bok removed his cap. The exhausted beetles were both resting on the peak. Phosy took the once yellow cap and held it up to the audience.
“I don’t know if you can read it from where you’re standing,” said Phosy, “but the lettering on the cap says UNC. At the orientation they told us that Boyd played college football for the University of North Carolina.”
“The boy might very easily have found it at the secondhand market,” said Haeng.
“Together with atomic submarines and Elvis Presley wigs,” mumbled Civilai.
Phosy turned over the cap. Sewn inside the lining was a label.
“Peach, could you read this for us?” Phosy asked.
She took hold of the cap and smiled.
“It’s printed with the name “BOYD BOWRY, 1960.” If Bok found this in the market, he got real lucky.”
The discovery caused elation in all but the judge. He continued to argue that the hat, like the tailplane, could have been blown away in the explosion and found at a later date. He wasn’t able to explain how it escaped the flames. It didn’t irrevocably prove that the pilot had survived the crash but Sergeant Johnson apologized to Civilai for doubting his hypothesis. He promised to buy him a beer and the Hollywood deal was still on. As they walked back to the trucks, there was just the one remaining mystery to be solved.
“Since when could you read English?” Civilai asked Phosy.
The policeman smiled.
“I may be an old dog,” he said, “but Dtui’s been teaching me some tricks. I can’t have a wife who’s smarter than me, can I now? English this year. Russian next. By the end of the seventies I’ll be a chief inspector at Interpol.”
