Jimm Juree 01; Killed at the Whim of a Hat

get the local radio station on the microwave. It was probably a good thing that we’d moved to southern Thailand rather than southern Chicago. Mair would pull down the shutter and go to bed and leave fifty bags of rice outside the shop for the night. I can’t think why nobody ever helped themselves.
    Since we moved down here, Mair had also started to develop inappropriate relationships. To understand this Thailand of ours you have to realize that some things are endemic. A politician, for example, cannot, by the very definition of a politician, be entirely honest. Honest politicians have no influential friends to help them over the first hurdle – vote buying. Then there’s the business community. Businessmen and women have no social obligations. The whole point of being in business is to screw – politely if possible but not compulsorily – the next guy. Which brings us to dogs. Millions are born every day. In human terms, the vast majority will not make it past their nursery school graduation. Only the fit survive which means teenaged dogs are already mean and nasty and thoroughly unlovable. Helping an infant doggy, therefore, is tantamount to defying the laws of the jungle.
    But something happened in the heart of Mair when we moved south. It was as if Mother Teresa had possessed her soul. In Chiang Mai, she’d been perfectly content to chase away strays with a broom. But here she suddenly couldn’t pass a crippled animal without bursting into tears. She’d stop and talk to them. I mean, words. The type of googoo language you use to confuse newborn babies. Normally a stray would flee in panic at the sight of a person but there was obviously the scent of marrow about my mother.
    The first sack of bones she brought home had elbows all over. The mutt had so little meat on her she could have been the Kombi driver’s family pet. Mair fed her and nursed her to health and named her John. Within the month, John was strutting around like Bambi, not quite coordinated but with that unmistakable swagger of hope. For the next six months the dog had nothing to worry about other than how quickly she could grow into her enormous feet and how many people she could charm with her damp dog smile. She didn’t fool me. She wasn’t tethered or caged but she stayed. I tried to explain the concept of Stockholm syndrome to my mother but she insisted that the dog remained with us because she loved us.
    Buoyed by this miracle of life, Mair then picked up a naked and squeaking grub-like creature from beside the road one day. If not at death’s doorstep, it was, at least, in the front garden. She recognized a potential that none of us could see and took the bundle to Dr. Somboon, the livestock specialist. Dr. Somboon had set up his after-hours veterinary clinic, not because he was fond of domestic animals, in fact he found them most unpleasant, but because very few people took their ailing cows to a clinic in the evenings. And, of course, there was much more money to be made from pets. He’d put on rubber gloves before deigning to touch Mair’s latest find. He obviously recognized the angel of death hovering over the pup because all he could prescribe was euthanasia. But Mair wasn’t having any of it. She ordered a cocktail of drugs for a menu of ailments and spent two weeks nursing the skin bag back to health. She kept it there in a basket under the counter of her shop repelling the few customers who chanced by. When chocolaty hair began to sprout, Mair named her Gogo: Thai pronunciation for Cocoa. Gogo had a stomach complaint that prevented her digesting her food. She ate more than me and shat like a buffalo. Her condition made her permanently menopausal. For reasons I could totally understand, she didn’t like me. I didn’t like her back.
    So, by the eighth month of our southern incarceration, Mair had already launched a new generation of offspring which she regaled with the same love she’d afforded her children. Me and Arny were starting to hope that our services would no longer be needed. Our rival siblings were sitting either side of Mair in front of her shop when I returned from the Internet café. Gogo turned her back when I arrived but it didn’t faze me. I was in a good mood. I’d sent my story to three newspapers and the photos had been snapped up by 191. Thai Rat and the Mail wanted follow-up stories as soon as possible. I could see an end to the dark tunnel of selling empty bottles and used newspapers to the