Serial Fiction: The Trees of 8/2—Chapter 1
Image by Matthew T Rader on Unsplash
The Trees Of 8/2: Chapter 1
By Lingesvaran S
Trees have feelings. They harbour anger, rage, sadness, and pour forth love selflessly. When a massive highway begins its snaking path through Damansara, a revolt begins, stirred by an ancient evil and the lust for gold. This is the first chapter of the suffering of trees and the greed of men. The next chapter coming soon.
Jagish sighed and picked up the remains of his cigarette from the packet of noodles. He regretted flicking it with his injured finger.
The wind had died down but he looked up when a whistle rang through the boughs of the lone pokok payung. It was an odd tree. The usual ones had layers of spread out arms, with evenly spaced branches and leaves. This one had boughs. Packs of branches curled up into dark, dense clumps.
He stood staring at the tree, half clouded in darkness, away from the halogen lights. Eventually, he flicked the second cigarette at the tree and began his inspection route.
It was happening every night now.
Jagish clocked in, walked around the soil test sites and found drills broken at a site every night. Last night's incident got him into a fight with the day supervisor. They had argued about the illegal workers being not skilled and their carelessness causing damage to the equipment. He rode home with a cracked lip and bleeding nose.
There hadn’t been proof of tampering by vandals or the resident groups, though the police did take in some of the rowdier protestors for questioning.
Nothing. No one saw or heard anything.
Ten minutes into his rounds he arrived at the second site, and sighed when he saw the mangled mess. He wondered if feral dogs could have done it. His nose was still sore. He winced as he blew it, ejecting snot and dried blood.
"Nope. Not feral dogs," he decided.
A couple, worse for drink, ambled past him. He stared at them until they stopped near his bike. The girl held the friend as he heaved and emptied his guts.
"Oi!" Jagish shouted, and sprinted across. The man straightened up and ran, dragging the bemused girl with him.
"The stink is never going to go off!" he shouted, waving his fist at them while wiping the seat with his face towel.
A loud crack startled him. Jagish looked around. It had sounded like a breaking branch, but the last of the trees along this stretch was felled yesterday. The last Flame Of The Forest was colossal and they couldn't dig up the root after it fell. What remained as a one-meter high stump was currently a seat for an old man, who was staring at Jagish.
Jagish blinked and rubbed his eyes, just to be sure.
"Hello?" he tried.
The stare continued in silence.
"Uhm, uncle? Are you from around here?" Jagish tried again.
He wasn't sure if the man was Malay or Chinese. Definitely wasn't Indian, he decided, judging from the attire.
The old man was in a robe that covered his limbs. He was sitting cross-legged, hands resting on his knees. The old man shifted without moving his arms and nodded at a pile of logs stacked neatly on the pavement opposite.
"Where are they going?" the old man asked.
"What?" Jagish said, startled at the way the robe changed colour in the breeze.
"Where are you taking them?" the old man rephrased.
Jagish shrugged, trying to focus on the robe. Something told him that the old man wasn't exactly directing the question to him, rather to someone who Jagish couldn't see.
He saw the old man nod, agreeing to someone.
"OK, a nutcase," Jagish told himself and started towards the old man to remove him from the site.
Except, the old man wasn't on the stump anymore. Nor was he in the vicinity. Jagish was alone, with the distant sounds of a pub closing down for the night. He stood staring at the empty stump until he felt his thumping heart slow down to a purr.
"OK, don't panic. You're tired, hating this job and imagining things," he thought and continued aloud, "Old men don't stay out late, sitting on tree stumps, and you need another smoke."
Jagish sat on the stump and rolled himself a cigarette. It wasn't the perfect roll he usually prided himself with. It was hard to keep hold of the tobacco even when your fingers were trembling and your palms were sweaty. He took a deep drag from the slightly moist and bent rollup, glad for the throat hit and vanilla cherry flavour. The exhale caught his throat when he saw a shadow detach itself from a lamp post and limp into a gap in the roadside bush. Choking and rasping, he stood and squinted. The limp sort of reminded him of his grandma. Before he could shout, the shadow disappeared into the gloom. Jagish shook his head and smacked his face. This was getting a bit too much for one night. He needed something stronger.
_
"Where have you been?"
The figure removed the hood and gave a toothy grin.
"Scaring the kids coming out from the gaming centre," it replied to the old man.
The old man sighed, "you were supposed to be here hours ago. Do you know how tiring it is to be at two places at once?"
The shadow limped from one foot to the other and shrugged.
"Of course, you don't," snapped the old man. "Now, go to the T junction and man the broken lamp post. The Payungs will be out in force tonight."
"Woman," said the shadow.
"What?"
"Woman the lamp post," it clarified and sniggered.
The old man glared at the shadow as it limped away.
_
Jagish spat out the rest of the rollup and walked a nonchalant but brisk stroll towards the 7-Eleven. The supervisor wouldn’t mind him grabbing a beer. “What he doesn’t know, wouldn't hurt me,” Jagish thought.
Perhaps he was tired of this job. He had been a site clearance officer for three years but had already started hating it after the first four months. It was the only thing he knew and his dismal SPM results didn't open many other doors. And then the DASH highway project was approved and with a promotion to supervising site inspector, he was posted here. The project would give him at least another four years of employment, if the feral dogs or the resident protestors didn’t get to him first.
Tonight was probably his imagination or it could be a sign for change.
The 7-Eleven was close to the last two sites. He decided it would be quicker to inspect them and then knock off for the night. He skipped over the road divider and headed to the closest one.
It was only set up yesterday, and he was worried about the silence of the drills. They should have been hammering the ground.
Wind whistled through the gaps in the twisted metal. The drill bit was missing. Jagish reached out to touch the tortured hammer but drew back his hand and swallowed. A gnarled root was withdrawing into the hole below the drill. At the pointed end, the root grasped the torn up drill bit. It paused, shivered, and then with a sound like shovel slapping wet cement, it was out of sight.
It was the last straw. Jagish, frozen for the few seconds of gazing-at-an-impossible-root, screamed, turned and smacked his forehead on a trunk. A branch caught him as he slid, unconscious, to the ground.
_
Clementine Joe sipped his iced white coffee as he read the report. He reached into his pocket for the absent box of cigarettes, sighed, and picked up his vape.
He stared at the fresh report from the site manager. Another missing person. The site supervisor didn't clock out that morning and he was suspected of running off with the workers’ salaries.
Highly unlikely, he thought. CJ knew Jagish. He often mumped roll ups on long nights from him. The man had an integrity of sorts. The kind that didn’t rip off contract foreigners.
There was a mention of alcohol somewhere in the report.
Jagish didn’t drink. He remembered the tale of Jagish’s father drinking himself to bankruptcy one long night at the mamak. Jagish had to work after school, with his mum, cleaning offices.
No, he definitely didn’t drink.
He was missing, a day after the kids.
His friends only knew CJ as Wacko Joe. Only his mother called him Clementine. His late father called him ‘Bastard’, when he wasn’t drunk, and ‘Boy’, when he was. To his crew, he was known as Captain CJ, and in one particular case, ‘Boss’.
“Kumar!” he shouted at a reclining figure on the guest sofa.
The figure jumped up and tripped on a cat, resulting in a squeal and groan.
“Boss?” Kumar limped over to the Captain’s desk.
“Why didn’t you alert me about this?” he said, waving the report.
“What is that, boss?” Kumar said, holding his bleeding arm.
CJ paused, allowing the man to grab a tissue and wipe the blood from a scratch wound.
“How many times have I told you to get rid of the cat?”
Kumar shrugged, looking sheepish.
“He doesn’t cause any trouble, boss.”
Kumar’s eyes followed his Captain’s gaze to his arm.
“Right, and stop snoozing on the sofa. You were supposed to be on rounds tonight.”
Kumar shrugged again.
“The Corporals are on patrol tonight. I took the last two nights, boss,” Kumar said, wincing at the scowl from CJ.
“The Corporals? The Corporals? They’re on desk duty until I tell them! Those idiots couldn’t stay away from the maids, remember? I had to do something to make sure no one gets fired. Especially me!”
He paused for another tissue wipe.
“Get them back here this instant. I need to look into this,” he said, waving the report again.
Kumar’s eyes darted to the report.
“Is that the one about the missing site supervisor?”
CJ nodded, while Kumar continued, “But that’s not ours, is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean … I mean, this is the settlements case,” Kumar stammered.
CJ sighed, “No, this is the one from DP.”
“That’s what I meant,” Kumar said, “the settlements.”
CJ frowned. “The orang asli settlements? No, he was reported missing at the highway site at DP…”
“… near the settlements,” Kumar finished the sentence.
“So?” CJ said, incredulous.
“The cursed trees? The missing kids? The old man?” Kumar pointed out, pointing three fingers at CJ.
“What?” CJ laughed, “those are just stories to scare the workers. This is real.”
Kumar looked at the sergeant. He’s known him for over twenty years, ever since they joined the Watch. CJ had climbed up the Watch ladder fast whilst he remained a Constable, watching the ladder crumble every time he tried stepping on the first rung. And, all these years, CJ’s been the closest he’s had to a family. But the man can drive you nuts sometimes!
Kumar sighed, “I don’t have a choice, do I? We are going to the site tonight?”
CJ smiled.
“You read my mind, brother!”
Outside, it had began to pour, causing steam to rise from last night's wrecks. A wet smack and a slithering sound was drowned by the drops on the road and mud. An inquisitive strand investigated the edges of the drill hole before hurling a muddy lighter to the street.
_
The mamak stall offered a smug, albeit smoky, shelter from the driving rain. Two soaked men sat opposite each other sipping coffee and smoking cheap cigarettes.
"Boss, it doesn't look like the rain is going to stop," said Kumar.
"And?" asked CJ.
Kumar grinned and said, "Maybe we should just go back?"
CJ turned at stared through the rain.
"No, we should wait for it to stop," he said, nodding at a drill across the road, “That’s the only working drill left. Whoever has been tampering with them is probably waiting for the rain to stop.”
He lit another cigarette and took a deep drag. It was someone who was protesting against the highway being built there. He was sure of it, even if, deep down, he knew murders or kidnapping over something like a strip of bitumen never actually occurred, except maybe in gangster movies.
“It could have been one of the gangs from KD,” said Kumar, reading his boss’s face.
CJ said nothing, just a certain extent of shame rose that Kumar knew so much about his ambition to, one day, be able to bust a kingpin.
“That’s one of my guesses. Maybe they were demanding protection money.”
Not likely, Kumar thought. The gangs were juvenile, harassing liquor stores and food stalls. The highway construction company was a little above their extortion rank. But he kept his thoughts to himself. Anything that would keep his friend off the bottle was fine with Kumar.
In any case, he was very, very sure it had something to do with settlements. He mumbled a prayer and tapped CJ’s shoulder.
“Let’s take a ride down to the kampung and look around,” Kumar said.
CJ scowled at him but shrugged. The rain wasn't showing any signs of letting up. At least if he agreed, the trip down would put Kumar’s spirit fantasy to rest .
_
Three days earlier, a couple from the settlement had lodged a tearful report at the beat post; two of their children were missing. The kids had been playing in the puddles on the football field behind the school. This was verified when one of the officers questioned the school caretaker.
He had chided them but as most pre-teens do, they had ignored him and splashed around well into dusk. It was way past dinner time when the father, having had a bad day at work at the meat sorting section in the local market, came looking for them. He roughed up the caretaker, suspecting him as most would suspect a lone old man in charge of schools at night, but only found their school bags in the mud when they went out to the edge of the forest bordering the field. The father, in the confusion that neither their bodies nor other evidences had presented themselves, had taken out his anger on the old man, leaving him with a broken nose and a stooped limp. He had then taken off to fetch his wife from the construction’s concrete mixing section, before heading to the beat base to make the tearful report.
_
The junction down by the school was deserted. That was expected, thought CJ. It would have been unusual to have people milling about the pisang goreng stalls whilst getting drenched, unless of course the place was jammed with traffic and commuters needed respite from the rain. But the stall was closed and it was a long weekend. The smouldering remains of a wood stove offered a little bit of warmth in the cold October shower. No, correct that to downpour.
CJ wondered why the stove was warm when the shop should have been closed that day. He poked the ashes with a stick, turning the smouldering embers around. He wasn't sure he wanted to find anything illegal being cooked over the stove but he, being the bastard he was, was still trying to find out.
Kumar was fumbling about in one of the desk drawers that served as a cashier counter.
“Found any missing kids in there?” CJ’s snide remark drew a shrug.
Kumar was always looking into things, especially things that were not his own. Like other people’s wallets during a roadblock or the contents of the laundry operator’s coin pouch.
"Nope. Did you find any in the stove?"
CJ grunted and grinned, “You know me and my twisted mind. They might have been grilling weed in a can.”
“Yes, it tastes better with some batter, I heard,” Kumar snorted.
“I’m going over to the flats,” CJ said. “Why don’t you wait here and see if any of the usual junkies pass by?”
“What? In this rain?” Kumar asked. “They’re only out and about when it’s darker and no one can smell them.”
CJ walked out, pulling the hood over his head, “It’s getting dark and the rain will wash away some of the stink. They’ll be here, and I want you to question them.”
Kumar imitated a bad version of the grunt. CJ was right. It was raining and junkies are the only good pickings around. He jingled the coins in his pocket. And he needed to buy dinner later, so there was no point arguing with CJ. Kumar squatted and began to rummage the bottom shelves.
The rain began to pour in earnest, in deference to the fact that it just did the same ten minutes before.
*
Lingesvaran S: "Working as a technical project manager during the day, and donning the hopeful author cape and mask and night. Short fictions published, but never followed up on, with high hopes of publishing the two full length novels that keep refusing to cooperate."
0 notes