Free INTERZONE 253 JUL-AUG 2014 by Andy Cox Page A

they ran toward her, like a shoal of catfish outside a river temple when someone threw food into the water. Narong decided he was definitely still a child when he found himself following them as fast as his arthritic knees would carry him.
    The woman backed toward the truck, looking as though she expected the children to steal the clothes she stood in. Her bare shoulder touched the hot metal of the cab. She jerked forward with a yelp.
    “Stand back, younger brothers and sisters.” Narong caught his breath. He may have been a child at heart, but the pounding in his ears reminded him he didn’t have the heart of a child. “It is not good to get so close to our visitors that they cannot move without treading on you.”
    The children backed away without taking their eyes off the woman. One of them fell into the dry ditch beside the road but there was no laughter as he scrambled out. Even the funniest mishap was less interesting than an exotic stranger. Farang were such a rare sight that today’s children didn’t even know the jokes that kept Narong and his childhood friends entertained for hours.
    The woman looked at her driver, a young man with his hair cut short at the back with a longer fringe. He’d probably never driven more than a hundred kilometres from Bangkok. The driver spread his hands, looking helpless. He reminded Narong of the junior official the government sent a couple of years ago, who gave a speech about how the government hadn’t forgotten the north east of its country and went back to Bangkok before it got dark. Even the government had shown more sense than to let such a boy drive himself.
    The driver stepped out of the cab and looked at Narong. His stare carried all the respect Narong expected a man wearing foreign-made shoes to show an old man wearing sandals made from an old tyre.
    Narong had met too many well-dressed boys from Bangkok to expect him to say anything worth listening to. He walked toward the farang woman. He wanted to hear her voice.
    She watched him coming without looking at him directly, showing her wariness.
    Narong pressed his hands together and bowed. “ Sawadee kob .”
    She shuffled her feet and returned his wai with the clumsiness of someone unused to the action.
    “ Sawadee kob ,” she mumbled. No one had told her women said kha instead of kob .
    “My name is Narong,” he said. “Guess your gearbox dropped.”
    Relief washed over her face at being addressed in English.
    “Angela Ri—” She bit off what Narong assumed was her surname. “Angela.”
    She held out her hand, then remembered she had already done the local equivalent and withdrew it. “How do you know it’s the gearbox?”
    Narong felt a moment of disappointment. Her voice sounded as if she never used it to laugh.
    “Sure sounded like it,” he said.
    “The gearbox. That’s bad?”
    The question was addressed to the driver, who looked as though she had set him a problem in differential calculus.
    “Got a toolbox?” asked Narong.
    Angela looked at the driver.
    “Must be jack and wrench somewhere,” he said.
    “He said a toolbox , Gehng. It’s a bust gearbox, not a flat tyre.”
    As she rounded on Gehng, Narong saw pearls of sweat gathered across her shoulders. How much water must she drink in this climate? He winced at the volume he estimated.
    “In this make, it’s usually under a panel behind the cab,” said Narong.
    Angela looked at Gehng, who showed no sign of knowing if there was a panel, let alone a toolbox. Narong reached for the knot tying the tarpaulin to the cleats along the side of the truck. Gehng seized his wrist.
    “It is not good to look underneath.” The hard edge in Gehng’s Thai contrasted with his deferential English.
    “Oh for God’s sake, Gehng, let him look.” Angela may not have understood Thai, but Gehng’s body language was unambiguous. “ He seems to have some idea of what he’s doing.”
    “I call headquarters in Bangkok.” Gehng pulled a phone from the