Jimm Juree 01; Killed at the Whim of a Hat

light from the upstairs window of a PVC pipe and pump store, one more at the intersection. It stretched the shadow of a threadbare cat into the shape of a giraffe. But the Internet shop was as dark as Nintendo Kong’s banana cellar, as quiet as Atlantis after the last of the Gorgon invaders had been destroyed.
    I took off my shoe and rapped against the shutter. The sound echoed around the town like a lone Pamplona bull charging through the streets, but the only reaction was a faint “What do you want?” from above the café.

Seventeen
“ I think we need not only to eliminate the toll-booth to the middle class, I think we should knock down the tollbooth .”
    —GEORGE W. BUSH, NASHUA, NH, AS QUOTED BY GAIL COLLINS IN THE NEW YORK TIMES , FEBRUARY I, 2000
    I got an early phone call from Dtor, my friend in Chiang Mai. The urban anarchists were still occupying our Government House. They’d been there for nine days already. They had their fold-up beach chairs and had diverted their magazine subscriptions to their new temporary address. They’d even rented a bank of Portaloos. They’d set up their futons and ordered in pizza while the police stood outside wondering why they had to make do with cold fried rice and a quick wee against the back wall. Anarchy was one of the fastest-growing middle-class hobbies. It had already overtaken Pilates and tai chi. I’d seen the photos: middle-aged women in stretch trousers and sensible tops giving the finger. Let’s see them try that in Burma. Anywhere else and you’d expect them to have been mowed down in a hail of machine-gun fire, beaten with batons, dragged screaming by their orthopedic shoes. This is our Government House, damn it. Our seat of power.
    Who do they think they are? I didn’t vote for these people. But when you’ve got friends in high places, you know you aren’t scheduled for a police massacre. You take your best iPod with you without fear it might get bumped in a skirmish. You know the authorities won’t dare hurt you. You have power at your back, influence whose name dare not be spoken. So you settle down to your sudoku and send e-mails on your BlackBerry telling old schoolfriends that you’re on an insurgency at the moment and the reunion might have to be put off for a week or two.
    But, of course, Pak Nam cared nothing of all that. It had squid. That was the extent of its concerns. The events at Wat Feuang Fa had blown through my life like a monsoon and when the squall died down, I was still standing, albeit windswept and crusted in salt. After all that had happened, I imagined that the busybodies might have crept back under their rocks and left Abbot Kem and Sister Bia to whatever it was they certainly weren’t doing. But a new complaint was lodged and a second IA abbot was on his way. For my own peace of mind, I needed to know what was motivating this monastic stubborn streak.
    When I arrived at the temple, the nun was painting the other side of the wall and all the grass around it. She had a yarmulke of white at the back of her scalp.
    “I see incarceration didn’t do a thing for your painting skills,” I said.
    She turned to find me in very much the same position as when I’d first met her. She smiled and returned to her task.
    “Some people never learn,” she said.
    “So I hear.”
    “Did Abbot Kem come back?”
    “He didn’t ever leave. He has a cave up there, over the crest. He goes there sometimes to consider.”
    That made sense. I couldn’t really imagine him charging off to Bangkok to rescue his maiden. The nun put the long buffalo-tail brush in the can. It fell out, splattering her ankles before coming to rest in a white puddle at her feet. She laughed and left it there.
    “It has a life of its own,” she said. “How could I ever hope to tame it?”
    She started off along the path, stopping briefly once to see if I was following. I hadn’t arrived with a plan, no questionnaire, no tactics. If she didn’t want to talk to me, I was prepared for that. I’d say goodbye and good luck and leave her alone to her secrets. But it was as if she’d been waiting for me. We sat on her porch and looked up at the sky. It was one of those days when you thought perhaps mother nature got her color ideas from looking at upmarket swimming pools.
    “If only I could paint like that,” she said. Unexpectedly, she looked me straight in the eye. I felt a peculiar pang of love for her. “The young policeman told me my freedom is largely