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“Here we have to help each other because nobody else will come and help us” one day my wife told me while coming back from Chiang-Rai city in the mist like rain in which you can not even see the overgrowth of bamboo bush from the adjacent mountain slope and to make things worse you are driving on a muddy road which will remind you of a freshly plowed rice field in the middle of a rainy season. The truck was struggling hard to move forward in that gravy-like-mud with a sharp loud groans of a tormented prehistoric animal and every time it took a sharp turn little protective Buddhas in various shapes, sizes and colors hanging from the rear view mirror clattered like my heart beat in fear which probably nauseated my wife enough to vomit right on my lap and from all of our sweat and rancid smell of that thrown up liquid the air inside the truck begun to turn mud.

Showing the deep gorge through the window I said “I feel little scared, look outside if the truck skids, we will be going up very quickly with the truck falling down”

Although I wanted to make the thick seriousness little lighter nobody was in a mood to pay any attention to it. My wife replied with a chocked groggy voice “Oh, I can not look outside, my head is spinning” then she clutched my hand.

My son leaned over the window to get a glimpse of nature outside but my wife pulled him back in her lap “Don’t jump around, stay near me”

“He is the only one having fun among us looks like” I said.

Closing her eyes she started a Buddhist prayer and the driver looked back with a big grin as if our apprehension was as meaningless as my wife’s sacred chant. His nonchalance surprised me, gave me a hint of confidence and I thought may be he had maneuvered through this kind of situation safely in past.

And the moment came on a bend of the road with a steep upward climb when the truck first came to a screeching halt like a roller coaster on top of a loop just before a frightful descend with its tires gyrating madly throwing splashes of semi-liquid mud and then slowly it started moving down towards the edge of the gorge giving us only couple of a seconds to act responsibly for our lives.

I could hear my wife’s scream “Hold him tight”

“Don’t panic, just get out” I shouted again.

Suddenly a thread of cold sweat ran down through my spine but before I could think logically about the consequence of the events and what we should do an unbridled fear threw all of us out of that state of frozen immobility except the driver and within a blink of an eye we realized we were out of the truck standing in that pool of mud.

“Oh” she couldn’t tell any more as her voice got chocked with tears of agony.

Then the hill tribe man who emerged from the thick mist and whom we picked up in our truck so that he would not have to walk five miles in this rain to go to his village promptly put two rocks at the back of the rear wheels to prevent any further descend and signaled me to push the truck up along with him. The road which was so marvelously beautiful enlivened my spirit the day I first went to her school appeared to be full of contradictory virtue, a diabolical trap at the center of its innocence and beauty at this moment. Our muscles and veins tautened, and eyeballs came out of the sockets with exertion of force against the beast which was overloaded with month’s supply of groceries. Then after couple of coming-downs, going-ups and nerve breaking moments finally it climbed up the slope and landed on a flatter track but even after resuming the journey on a relatively firm road I still felt the fear of death the event brought was pulsing in my senses.

For a while everything else blurred out of my sight as my mind like a single candle flame in a thick tar like darkness was focused on one thought of appreciation “Ah, I am still alive”. Then slowly the fear turned into a triumphant joy as I saw my wife was sobbing and mumbling a Buddhist chant closing her eyes and my son looking at me with his strangely wonderful eyes as if he was born again after the most fascinating experience of his life.

I told her “Oh, this road is a beast” then turning towards my son I asked “Are you OK?”

While my wife continued her sacred chant my son indicated that he wants to jump out of the truck again as if it was a great fun in some kind of kid’s theme park.

Through the window I saw the glimpse of velvety green mountains rose above the feather like low hanging clouds, cascading rice fields and splash of colors in a small valley of multicolored flowers, suddenly the rich texture of nature rushed in my spirit like a tidal wave and I told myself “Lets appreciate this life whatever is left of it, lets live happily from breath to breath”.

Then I saw the hill tribe man who almost saved our lives seating silently with a smile which had the expression “I am happy to help you today”. His face color of wet sand probably once was whitish but was burnt and washed over many years of fierce sun and rain had faint cracks of age. His eyes were the eyes of those rabbits I saw on the river bank small unflickering which had a strange curiosity and frivolity of a child. I felt ashamed of my inability to trust people not sure whether caused by the intense competition of a civilized world or a wounded soul from many broken trusts. My wife winked at me with a smile as if a penetrating lucidity permitted her to know all these course of events which reminded me that when she had told the driver to stop the truck in order to give this unknown man a ride up to his village I was horrified “You don’t know anything about this man. He can be a smuggler or a terrorist; god knows what his true identity is. We can not allow a complete stranger in our car and especially when you are with me”

“Don’t worry; here we have to help each other” she told.

“Yes it is but still better than spending the whole night in this jungle if we face any problem, isn’t it? He can help us if we are stuck”

“I don’t know, none of the alternatives are good to me. I think me and the driver are enough to take care of such problem”

“Here we have to trust local people, we don’t have any choice. It is their land and they know what to do if we face any problem. I still remember one night when Nuer had very high fever and at that time he was only five months, I had to take him to a hospital far from here in a small town far from our village. It was raining and you know there is no light on the road. One of the tribe-man took us to that hospital in that rain through this muddy road in the darkness of the night in his motorbike. He knew very well that he could have died that night skidding into a gorge but still he helped us. So whenever possible I try to return them the favor once they gave me”

“But everybody is different. You knew that man well who helped you that night but this guy is a complete stranger” I argued.

“I am living here for so many years so I know well that they all live together very closely so they have similar thinking and values. It happened many times that I had to give them a ride to their village but never anybody did any harm. They are very quite and peace loving people” she tried to put off my doubts with her assurance.

“Well, if something happens then I have to act like a Robin Hood at that time” I threw the joke on her face.

“Yes that will be a good exercise for you unless you fall down in this mud and turn into a piggy” we both laughed.

Here trust is not a concept of Thai soap opera; it is your hope of survival in the very face of death. You don’t get a moment to think and doubt because your mind ceases like a sinking man trying to hold onto anything floating near him. But it works, may be trust makes people more responsible. When you rely completely and make yourself totally vulnerable then it makes people conscious and they loose all the devils to harm you.

And to my dismay one evening I saw a fat farang whom they call Christian Missionary was talking about faith and god in head master’s office. His right hand gripped tightly the ivory head of an ebony cane and his bloated body which had the bloodless pale hue, looked like a corpse submerged in motionless water for too long. I accidentally stepped into the room looking for my wife for a reason I can not remember now but she was there translating his verse into Thai because she was the only person who knew both English and Thai aptly qualified as an interpreter. I stood in the door frame till he came to a stumbling halt. Then he looked at me with his twinkling eyes which were almost lost in the fat ridges of his face and said in a dry cold voice “Hi”

Before I could introduce myself my wife said “My husband” then I smiled with a nod “Hi, I am Victor”

“Glad to meet you. Are you living here for a long time?” the man said.

“Do you think these folks get anything what I say?”

“I don’t know their mind but at least they are now Christian” I replied.

“Yes beyond that I don’t know anything but may be over time they will get it right” the confusion came out from the depth of his withered heart. I thought for a moment whether to make up a reply to bolster his confidence or to tell the truth, truth being my understanding of their perception of religion and in the end I decided to tell the truth so that at least if he ever value my opinion then he can decide his course of action based on something which I truly believed.

“If your religion faith and god give them rice to eat, place to stay and more Mekong whiskey to keep them warm in winter nights then they don’t mind being Christian. And for some of them if it gives their son good education which means in future they will get money from their earning then they don’t mind either but I don’t think people like them who are fighting death every day take religion in any other way”

He nodded his head in despair and sat near the window. In the light behind him through that small window his motionless torso reminded me of an idol of hopelessness, a scene sort of tragic and serene. May be faith is the only thing he was robbed of and here in this land he would have to discover it all over again.