‘A Special Price’

Jack Bord’s sculptures and photography incorporate surrealistic, mythological and magical imagery often with whimsical overtones — aimed at provoking our experiences and self reflections. Aiming to unbalance our rational minds, the predominant imagery deals mostly with facial expressions of both living and “non-living” beings, and things that speak to us in their own languages. They are mixed media assemblages that have been assembled, disassembled and reassembled, becoming abstractions unto themselves.

A Special Price

They wanted me to drive from Khon Kaen to Bangkok which is 450 kilometres and takes about 6 hours with no stops and I only said okay because I needed a booking and they argued me down to 5,000 baht even though the Grab app was giving no less than 6,250 but those app bastards take 24% anyway and fuel for this piece of shit car will cost me hundreds and there’s the toll roads as we come into the city which I will have to take to avoid getting stuck in traffic for ages during the rush hours we’ll hit and it’ll take me the whole day and night to get there and back home again which means me sleeping in the fucking car at the side of the road to avoid falling asleep at the wheel and crashing like I did once a couple of years back which led to me having to take out a loan which I still haven’t quite paid back to afford a new vehicle because I’ve no experience doing any other kind of work and I’m getting too old to try and I’m desperate which is the only reason I let them get me down to 5000 baht in the first place

….and I’m trying to explain this all to the fucker but I lost my mental translation abilities about four minutes ago so I’ve just been shouting at him in Thai and he has no idea what I’m saying. All he understands is that I have a knife and he has to listen.

We had stopped for fuel at a little garage at the edge of Talat Non Ta Then. I topped us up while he sat gawping and she took a photo on some expensive camera. I went inside and handed a couple of hundreds to Tao, an old friend.

“What’s the cargo today?” He asked.

“English.”

“How far?”

“Bangkok,” I said.

He laughed, showing me his few remaining teeth. Then he coughed.

“Fuck, man,” he said when he recovered, “take these.”

He grabbed a packet of cigarettes from under the counter and threw them to me.

“Need something to drink too?”

“I have water. They all expect free bottles when they book a taxi, now.”

“Bring them in, give me some more business.”

“Nah, got to go, man. Thank you for these,” I pocketed the cigarettes and returned to the car. I could tell they were having some sort of concerned conversation but they hushed when I got in.

“Ok, let’s go!” I said in English with as much enthusiasm as I could manage.

Off we went. I gassed up the car on the long empty road until we reached the motorway and we speeded on for some time, me switching on the radio and them exchanging boring comments about the flat fields and distant hills passing us by. BNK48 were singing about some lost love over a catchy , familiar beat and even though they’re not my kinda thing I found myself tapping along on the steering wheel. An odd silence had been building in the back. Not tiredness, but awkwardness was oozing from them, and I was trying to think of questions to ask them that I hadn’t already used up on the first short stretch to the gas station. The man, Robert, who had haggled with me with an irritating smirk on his face yesterday in Khon Kaen city was shifting in his seat, clearly building himself up to saying something. I relaxed my foot on the accelerator, meeting his eye in the rearview mirror. His wallet was out and in my periphery I saw his pale face inching forward.

“Hey, buddy,” he said and I turned down the radio, missing a good chorus. “We were just having a look through our… baht here, and… See we got breakfast and coffees earlier before you got us, so we actually only have four thousand, seven hundred for you. Not much difference, so that’s fine, right?”

It took me a few moments to compute it, turning over his tense expressions and numbers in my head. I kept a steady speed on the clear road. I thought of my come-back, politer than I would have been to a fellow Asian and prepared the phrases in English.

“My friend, we agree on five thousand. Five thousand is good price for you,” I said.

“I know, but this all we have now,” he said.

I looked in the rearview mirror and saw him looking straight at me, his mouth slightly open, ready for more protesting. She had turned away, staring out of the window, wishing she was elsewhere.

“We stop at ATM on the way. You get three hundred more,” I said.

“Ah, no, see the thing is, we’ve been using this travel thing,” he pulled out a colourful credit card from his wallet, “that doesn’t charge exchange rates, because of all the different little currencies in these parts, and we actually emptied it a few days ago cus’ this is our last country. We split the money between us and didn’t count it up. Sorry… so, four thousand seven hundred.”

I didn’t catch a few of his words, but I got the last bit. I figured the other stuff was just unneccessary bullshit.

“We agree five thousand. You give me five thousand.”

“Well, we don’t have five thousand any more. Four thousand seven hundred it is.”

I was getting angry, a itchy sweat coming over me and I was losing concentration on the motorway. A junction had brought more traffic and I knew I needed to get somewhere quieter to focus on this crap.

“Five thousand,” I said again and my polite service voice was starting to slip. A large lorry dragging stacks and stacks of haybails, bits of which were flying into the air, had rumbled up to the lane on our left.

Then, she joined in, the girlfriend. “It’s only a few pounds difference, it doesn’t matter.”

“Four thousand seven hundred is good, mate,” Robert said.

The annoyance in their voices added to my anger. The rudeness. The insult. I had to get off this road. The lorry was getting bigger in my wing-mirror.

“We agree on price,” I said, “it’s… important.”

“A few pounds makes no difference,” she said.

They all come here and they think our country is just one big market stall. They think we will all bend to their will if they push hard enough. Not today, I thought, not now, not anymore. I saw a turning off from the motorway coming up. A muddy farm road. The lorry was almost on my ass but I stomped down to the ground, the car lurching and coughing over 120kmph and I swerved into the next lane, straight ahead of the massive monster of a vehicle.

“What the fuck?!” Robert cried out and she let out a shrill whine.

The pissed-off driver smashed his horn in a succession of gutteral honks, but I ignored the fat bastard and continued on to the left, coming away from the motorway in a cloud of hay.

“What you playing at?!” Robert yelled.

I said nothing, trying to formulate a proper argument in English in my head.

“Mate, there’s no need to drive like that, it’s still a lot of money to you, it’s fine,” he continued.

I took the car down the dirt track with not enough grace to avoid a few more bumps. She flailed around in the back like I just crashed the thing.

“What are you doing?” She said, voice raised with drama.

I kept going for a few seconds, getting us away from the din of the main road, tall yellowy grass rising on either side of us as I went deeper into the fields.

“Mate, what are you doing?”

“Need to think and talk,” I said, then I stopped the car. A slow break, grasping for composure.

“Oh!” She went.

“Oi, mate!” He went.

My hands were tight on the wheel, the car stationary. My body was tensed like I’ve rarely felt in my life. I took a few deep breaths, then unlatched my seatbelt and turned to face them. “Please, five thousand.”

“Why did you leave the road? Rob, why did he leave the road?”

“Yeah mate, this isn’t cool.”

“Yes, not cool,” I said, “we agree on price, now you say no. Now you say less. I need this money!”

“This isn’t the way to get it, mate, you’re being a bit weird here.”

“Rob, I don’t like this.”

“Please, Robert” I said, “five thousand. We agree.”

“This isn’t cool,” he said again, more re-acting to her than to me. “Can you turn this thing around and get us back on the main road?”

“I gave you low price,” I went on, fighting with reason, “lower price than Grab. I can not go more low. I need five thousand.”

“Rob, we need to get back on the road,” she said, clutching his shoulder.

“Yeah, look, whatever about price, mate, we need to get back on the motorway,” he said, getting hard with me, like it was me being the prick here, like it was me who was ripping them off.

My heart was pounding. I felt hot. I wanted space. I wanted them gone. I wanted to be treated fairly. I wished I spoke better English. Or they spoke some Thai. I tried to get calm again to deal with it properly.

“Rob…” She whispered, almost crying.

Then he did the thing that sent me over the edge.

Looking from his pathetic girlfriend to me, he puffed himself up, leaned closer so I could see the blue of vains in his forehead and said, loud and slow like you would talk to a child you were disciplining:

“LISTEN…” he grabbed his ear and wiggled it, “YOU…” he pointed at me, “START DRIVING…” he mimed his hands on a wheel, “BACK TO THE ROAD” he pointed out the back car window, “OR WE WON’T PAY ANYTHING…” he shook his finger side to side. “UN-DER-STAND?” He pointed at my head.

In truth, I don’t know what I was looking for in the glove box when I whipped it open and I don’t even know where the knife came from. But as soon as they saw it there was only one way this could go.

“WAIIIIIIT!” I shouted as I grabbed it and their inevitable screams began.

And they wouldn’t stop screaming and shouting and shaking, their arms up, backs in the seats, balls completely gone. We needed air, we needed space to sort this out.

“GET OUT,” I said to him, the blade waving in my hand.

“Rob! No,no, no, no , no…” She gushed, but he did what I asked and I got out after him and rounded on him, stood there in the open, the humid fresh air a slight relief to the cars stuffy atmosphere.

“Listen…” he starts, voice weak, “Please, just-”

“NO,” I yelled and for a few moments I felt like a giant, “YOU LISTEN, NOW…”

And that’s when I launched into my explanation.

The words pour from me until I’m out of breath and I’m doubled over, raising the knife up while I find the next reserve of energy within. He’s silent and probably more confused than ever. Sicadas hum and screech. When I’ve let it all out, for myself, not him, I feel a sag of relief. But then, as I take some deep breaths, the panic about this new situation sets in, the blade in my grip coming back into focus.

My options as I see them:

1) Try to calm everyone down, myself included, get back in the car and finish the remaining 4 hours to Bangkok, hoping they don’t jump me on the way.

2) Get her out of the car too, take their money and anything valuable and drive back home, leaving them here to sort themselves out.

3) Kill them both, take their valuables, drag their bodies further into the fields, leave them, and go home.

4) Just leave them here. No stealing or killing. And go home, the price of fuel not even covered.

There’s problems and complications with each.

I can’t see a way in which they will calm down and leave this be to continue riding with me. If I leave them here, with or without their shit, they’d be bound to flag someone down on the main road easy enough anyway. Fellow Thais are too curious to leave them there long. And then they would surely go to the police after. They seem like the type to make a big deal out of things, to get attention. It might be more hassle than it’s worth for them but it could end up with this job being over for me and with it my last straws of hope for keeping things afloat in my life. I sent them a message this morning with my car details for the pick-up, so the law would be able to find me if they could be bothered. I can’t imagine Robert paying me properly by choice now. I want five thousand baht but not five thousand baht by knife point. I’m not a thief, really. I haven’t stolen anything since I was a boy and I took sweets from the shop. And I’m definitely not a murderer. I’m not even violent. The last time I hit someone was when I was twelve years old. All I could manage in my recent rage was a bit of shouting - nonsensical to them. I think of my children. I imagine their sad faces if I got sent to prison. The embarrassment of it. But I need money. I really need it. My children’s faces are often sad and embarrassed with the little I can provide for them now. I need money like I need food and water and air. These people don’t know that feeling. They can travel around the world.

            I’m staring at Robert, tears in my eyes now. His arms are lowering. He’s seeing that I don’t mean it, I think. He sees my weakness, sees that I’m not someone used to holding people at knife-point. He’s calculating their way out. Even the girlfriend isn’t weeping anymore. She’s watching us from the car like she’s watching a thriller on TV.

            “Put the knife down, mate,” he says, his voice stronger than before.

            I could stab him. I could kill him. I could take what he has. I could flay his skin and be him for a while. How good that life would be, to travel the world. 

            He takes a cautious step towards me.

            She bites her nails.

            The raging gravity I felt in my chest as I started this is leaving me, I’m going weightless in its absence. I’m becoming nothing. I wish I’d never swerved the car. I wish I’d kept my mouth shut. I wish I hadn’t met them yesterday and told them I would drive them to Bangkok, even convinced them to let me. I lower my knife.

            He watches it go down, his victory becoming apparent, then he takes another step towards me. I only realise now how tall he is.

            “Drop it,” he says.

            Now I fear that he’s going to rob me, take my car and leave me here. But I guess they don’t need that piece of shit or my worthless possessions. All they want is an easy ride.

            “How much?” I ask, my voice now pathetic.

            There’s a scary flash in his eyes as his new power comes through. His girlfriend eyes him with a horny gaze.

            “After all this… Nothing. And you’re still taking us to Bangkok,” he says. He’s growing and growing. He has everything now. My life in his hands even though it’s me with the knife. They could ruin me and he knows it. White tourists are listened to. They make the news, they have influence. I don’t.

            “Two thousand,” I say, reaching.

            “Five hundred,” he says.

            “One thousand,” I say.

            “Seven hundred,” he says.

            There’s a look of hateful joy on him. This will be quite the story for them. One they tell with excitement and animation at their fancy parties to their friends across the world. For me, I won’t even tell my wife. I drop the knife to the dirt.

            “Okay,” I say.

Daniel Paton has had short fiction published in multiple print anthologies and online literary journals and websites, and also writes screenplays and stage plays. Having completed his Creative Writing MA, he looks to work on new projects including, someday, a debut novel.  Instagram: @danielpaton96