“Poison,” she said, looking at me carefully for my reaction.

“Poison?” Poison? “And so they think…” I didn’t bother finishing the sentence. It was obvious what they thought. And moreover, it was obvious they were right. Eddie had done it, the despicable bastard. To realize his dead parents’ dream of his becoming a doctor, he had killed the old doctor and the young apprentice to get them out of the way.

“So the police are going to arrest him?”

“No. You see those people down there?” Did she want me to answer that one? They were right there.

“What about them?”

As she said this, the two policemen got into their van and drove away. The crowd filled in the space where the van had been.

“They just told the police your doctor friend had already moved to Cambodia.”

I really wished she’d refrain from describing Eddie as my “doctor friend,” although I understood it was good for clarification, as there were three doctors in this story. But was I being unbearably dense? Why had the farmers told the police that Eddie had moved to Cambodia? And why was she excited about it?

“Don’t you see? They’re going to take the law into their own hands!”

“Meaning?”

“They’re going to kill him. And not only him. You too.”

“Me?”

“And those other Australians who came here to help him.”

“Wait a minute! Those Australians are my family! They didn’t do anything. They didn’t know anything about it! I didn’t know anything about it.”

“You’d better not go home,” she said.

“But I didn’t do anything! It was Eddie! This is the second time Eddie has put a lynch mob onto us. My God- my father was right. People are so single-minded about their immortality projects, it brings them down and everyone around them too!”

She looked at me blankly.

What could I do? I couldn’t waste valuable time trying to find the police; I had to get home and warn everyone that an angry mob was coming to tear them apart.

What a dog’s breakfast this trip turned out to be!

“Hey, why are you helping me?”

“I want your necklace.”

Why not? I had been foolishly superstitious by wearing it at all. I took off the repugnant amulet and gave it to her. She hurried away. I’d worn it only out of desperation, I suppose. If you don’t keep your guard up and someone tells you it has magical qualities, you can find comfort in a grain of sand.

The group below set off on foot through the jungle. I followed them, thinking of Eddie and my family and of their surprise when the bloodthirsty mob turned up to kill them. I had to make sure the mob and I didn’t converge; it was unlikely, not being Thai myself, that I would be assimilated into their number. I would be swallowed whole, as an appetizer. So I kept my distance. But I didn’t know the way home- I’d have to follow the mob back to Eddie’s house. The inherent dilemma was obvious. How could I arrive in advance and warn everyone that a murderous mob was on the way when I had to follow the mob to get there?

Yet another life-or-death matter. Oh well.

As the group moved, others joined it, forming spontaneously into a mobile crowd, then a pack, a sturdy vessel of revenge. They were a kind of human tsunami, gathering speed and size. There was no dispersing them. It was a petrifying sight. Eerily, they seemed to be gearing up for a silent massacre. This was not a pack with a war cry, this was a tight-lipped group rolling wordlessly forward. As I ran, I thought how I hate any kind of mob- I hate mobs of sports fans, mobs of environmental demonstrators, I even hate mobs of supermodels, that’s how much I hate mobs. I tell you, mankind is bearable only when you get him on his own.

Interestingly, it was a democratic crowd. Anyone could join in to mutilate Eddie and my family. There were even a few children. That surprised me. And some elderly gentlemen too, who despite being timid and frail were not struggling to keep up. It was as if they had been absorbed by the mob and taken on the energy of it, as if their thin, weak bodies were now nimble fingers of a powerful hand. But weren’t these people supposed to be Buddhists? Well, what of it? Buddhists can be pushed over the edge like anyone else, can’t they? To be fair, Eddie had burst into their inner serenity with poison and murder and blackmail and rape. Inner serenity isn’t impervious to a ferocious assault like that. Incidentally, none of them were smiling like the Buddha. They were smiling like the serpent, like a forty-headed dragon.

Even the sun took on a menacing quality. It was dropping fast. Naturally, I thought, this was to be no brightly lit spectacle of raw carnage. It was to take place in the dark.

But what’s this? The mob was picking up the pace! I was already pooped, and now I’d have to run at breakneck speed. How annoying! The last marathon I had intended to run was when I beat 200 million spermatozoa for the egg. Now here I was again. In truth, it was kind of exciting. I was so aware of what a relentless thinker I was that action felt surprisingly good. Murderous mob on its way- what are you going to do about it?

The dusk infused the sky with a soft, syrupy red: a head-wound red. As I ran, I wished I had a machete- it was heavy going, tunneling through all that thick vegetation. I was taking furtive passages through shaggy ferns, where the last of the sunlight only made it in random splotches. The jungle with its usual threatening noises had the surround sound of an expensive home entertainment system.

A half hour later I was losing them. Dammit. What was I going to do? What could I do? I ran, I fell, I vomited, I got up again. Why had we come here? Fucking Thais. An Australian mob might kick the shit out of you, but you’d crawl home afterward. This was murder! No, slaughter! My dad! And Caroline! And Terry! All alone up there, isolated and unprepared. I ran on to the point of exhaustion. And the heat. And the mosquitos. And the fear. I’m not going to make it. How can I warn them?

I suppose I could…

No.

Unless…

I had an idea. But it was foolish, desperate, impossible. I must be out of my mind. Or just my imagination amusing itself. But what an idea! Here it was: Dad and I were connected in deeper ways than just father and son, and I’d long had the suspicion that we were unintentionally reading each other’s minds every so often, and so if I concentrated intensely enough, if I only put in a little psychic effort, maybe I could send him a message. Absurd! Brilliant?

The problem was, it was difficult to summon up that kind of concentration while running, and if I stopped and it didn’t work, I might lose not only the mob but with them my way home. And everyone would die!

Did I really think we could read each other’s minds? Should I risk it? Running through the foliage was getting more difficult; I’d push aside a branch only to have it whip me in the face. The jungle was getting aggressive. The mob was getting away from me. I was wilting in the heat. My family was going to die.

Should I risk it?

Fuck it.

I stopped. The murdering rabble disappeared over a hill. My heart was aching in my chest. I breathed deeply to placate her.

In order to make contact with Dad, I needed to get myself into a deep meditative state. I needed to hurry, of course, but you can’t hurry absolute inner quiet. You have to coax it over time. You can’t transform the essential qualities of your mind as if you’re running to catch a bus.

I got myself in the textbook position. I sat on the ground cross-legged, concentrated on my breathing, and repeated my mantra, “Wow.” This brought about a quiet enough mind, but to be honest, I felt a bit blunt in the head. I had some clarity, enough to drift to the edge of consciousness, but no further. I felt a twinge of bliss too- well, so what? I needed to go further than I ever had, and here I was, going through the motions. From everything I had read about insight meditation, I had learned that there was a system to be used- this is how you sit, this is how you breathe, this is how you concentrate on your breathing. But using this system was a routine that seemed the opposite of the true meditative state I needed. Now that I had practiced this meditation thing a number of times, always the same way, with the same breathing, the same concentration, I felt I might as well be working on a factory line screwing tops on Coca-Cola bottles. My mind was peaceful, hypnotized, numb. That was no good.