Missing In Rangoon

Ratana came into the room carrying incense sticks, yellow candles and orchids.

“You’re late to meet Khun Ed,” she had said to Calvino. “You’ll need these.”

Colonel Pratt nodded as he examined the items for a ritual to appease the spirits.

“You should help your boss with this Thai word, ‘thouy.’ It’s a difficult one for foreigners.”

The Colonel omitted that it was even more difficult for the Thais—not to pronounce, but to think about the story behind the word. It caused a shiver and a prayer that the Lord Buddha would protect them from ever finding themselves in that situation.

The Square had never been a pretty place. Originally designed in the shape of a large horseshoe, it consisted of rows of Chinese four-story shop buildings—squat rec-tangular structures built for function and not designed to win awards. At last the redevelopers had found their sweet-spot price and slowly bought the horseshoe, piece by piece. The Lomesome Hawk Bar had been part of the shoe. It had been Calvino’s home away from home, his makeshift office, the crossroads café where men drifted in from the oil fields, foreign wars and domestic firefights to shelter, heal up and decide on Plan B.

Calvino stepped around a pile of concrete debris and garbage as he turned toward the Lonesome Hawk—or the shell that once had been the bar. Inside he found Ed McPhail sitting at his favorite booth. The cushions were gone, the walls were bare, and the floor was cluttered with scraps of wood.

“Hey, buddy. I thought you weren’t coming.”

Calvino eased into the booth.

“Colonel Pratt showed up at the office.”

McPhail smoked a cigarette, his eyes looking around the bar. He wasn’t listening to Calvino.

“The place is a wreck,” McPhail said.

“I’m thinking of going to Rangoon.”

“Most of the regulars are dead. They never lived long enough to see this.”

“Why don’t you come along?”

“Rangoon?”

Calvino nodded. “It’s opening up.”

“This place is closing down.”

He flicked a long ash on the floor.

“George used to sit over there and shout at the girls, ‘Turn down that goddamn music!’ If he’d seen the place looking like this, it would have killed him.”

Calvino pulled out the candles and incense sticks.

“Give me your lighter.”

“That’s a good idea. A remembrance. That’s what I said we should do.”

Calvino walked over to the bar counter. The stools had been stripped, and the bar broken in places. Lighting the bottom of each of three candles, he stuck them on the top and then lit the wicks. He found a glass behind the bar and put the incense sticks in and lit them. He placed the orchids in front of the glass.

A moment passed.

“That’s it?” asked McPhail.

The bar had been fading away for a long time. Like a terminal patient, it had grown weaker, smaller and less friendly, more foreign. George had died. Most of the regulars had died too, or drifted away. Its time had passed. No one was surprised at the end that it had rolled over and died with the rest of the Square.

“You die and then what?” asked McPhail.

Death, Calvino thought, looked a lot like one more missing person case where there’s no evidence.

“I figure it’s like one of those dashes,” Calvino said finally, “that mark you find in a sentence linking one part with an explanation. Life on one side, and it stretches through the dash into an empty void. Remember when everyone came back after George’s funeral and sat around the bar, arguing and bullshitting about death?”