The Trunk Rider

Chapter 9

            “So it seems to me,” Jessie reflected, “Your dad was part of some organization, and then left.  They weren’t happy about that.”

            “Yes, I understood that,” I rallied, “But what? What did he leave, why did he, and why couldn’t he?”  I stared blankly at the whitewashed cinderblock wall opposite, trying to recall the conversation.

            “He said something about… getting something through a flight.  Something they couldn’t just check.  Something illegal, by the sounds of it.  He said something about the business, whatever that means.”    

            “Drugs?” Jessie suggested instantly, “Smuggling.  Trading.  Dealing.  A gang, a big gang, the kind you join for life.  You hear all about them. ”

            “You think Dad was in a drug deal?”

            “Can you think of something that makes more sense?”

            As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I couldn’t.  Everything seemed to fit.  But then, what did the porcelain elephant mean?  And that name, that ominous name.  Just like an elephant of cliché, Ivory Key does not forget.  It seemed almost that… but no, that was impossible, so distant from any part of our lives.  I put the worrisome idea out of my head.

            A long silence ensued.  Jessie took a bite of her sandwich.

            “Delilah asked Derek to the dance, by the way.  You’ve got competition.”

            “She can have him,” I decreed listlessly, “Aren’t they our enemies, you said?”

            “So this school is just black-and-white, two-sides war, eh?  Maybe.  But couldn’t you fix that a bit?  You’ve got the chance to make a bridge here.  We wouldn’t have to fight them anymore.”

            Not if Delilah’s my competition, I thought.  Did I really want bridge a gap, anyway?  There was an odd satisfaction to waging this shallow war.

            “So my father could be being hunted by a drug trafficking gang, and I’m supposed to care about this?”

            “Yeah,” Jessie said softly, “It’s all sort of useless.  But…”

            But, I knew she didn’t finish, it was something to hold onto.  Our fight, a purpose. 

            I would see how it all turned out on Thursday night, I supposed.  Then, if Loris was to be believed, I would have a far greater distraction by next Tuesday.

The week passed, to all observation, as all those before had.  I sat through my classes as always, but a sense of trepidation seemed to be growing inside of me.  The conversation I overheard kept playing over like a song stuck in my head.  Before, when I passed the clusters of smokers that huddled outside the school, I would only wrinkle my nose involuntarily at the sour stench, and pass by.  Now I wondered where their cigarettes had come from, whether they had been smuggled across the ocean by my father’s old friends, stashed in the hoof of a porcelain elephant.  And every time, darker ideas came, impossible, but ever-lingering ideas.

                On Tuesday, I woke to a thin mist covering Mangrove Park.  It couldn’t truly be called rain, not like the warm deluges the monsoons brought to Chiang Ban, but it seeped an earthy petrichor scent from the close-cropped lawns just the same.  I took it first as a welcome change from the usual dry, concrete-roasted air, but soon a damp chill began to soak through me.  I stepped into Clairedon shivering, grateful for once to be inside.  The next day, the grass was glazed in thin white that cracked under my boots.  I had been expecting snow for so long, it came as little surprise – until I commented on it, in the attempted casualty of having seen these seasons all my life, receiving only some odd looks and comments that it was “just frost”.