Tree of smoke by Denis Johnson

guess. The datus said twenty-five kilometers, but it was silly of him to ask, because how could they know? Out of courtesy they offered an estimate: two days’ hiking. The datus insisted they leave right away in order to make Tanday by nightfall.
    They walked together until noon, as far as Maginda. There the datus accomplished the kindness of borrowing for him a horse, no bigger than a pony, with a wooden saddle on its back. Preceded by the three old men, the meager animal lurched beneath Carignan’s weight for a few kilometers, to the bottom of the hill below the barangay of Tanday, and then he had to get off and climb the path behind it as the dark came down over the endless folds of the low mountains.
    The pathway up the hill was wide and in that respect easy, hacked clear by the villagers, but it was steep, and he was winded. He’d grown too old for adventures—how old? Sixty, almost. He couldn’t remember exactly. Halfway along they heard a low whistle, and a fourth escort joined them. “Good evening, Pa-dair,” he said in English. “I will accompany you.” The young man identified himself as Robertson, a nephew of Saliling. Robertson’s face was invisible in the evening glow.
    Thoughts of Judas, images, the monk, the dream, had come back to him throughout the day. The monk in the dream with the silver cloud for a face. Maybe he could find someone to interpret it for him.
    They made the crest and went to the schoolhouse for the night. The men brought him a supper of sticky white rice and a green plant they called hwai-an, and soon, because the night was black, there was nothing to do but turn in. He lay on his side on the wooden floor like the others, without a mat or cover. He couldn’t sleep. The air smelled different from that of his bedroom by the stinking river near Basig, the schoolroom was stuffy, the huge leaves of banana plants crowded the windows, and even the lizards clucking in the eaves sounded foreign. Near midnight it started raining steadily, harder and harder, until the storm made as if to shatter the metal roof, drowning them first with sound, threatening to drown them very soon with water. The drops drove themselves through the seams of the corrugated sheets, and Carignan pulled two desks together and crawled underneath for protection. Villagers with even leakier roofs crept into the pitch-dark schoolroom until they must have made nearly two dozen. When the downpour quit, he could hear it roaring down off the hillside for hours.
    He woke at dawn having scarcely slept and stepped out to relieve his bladder against the side of the schoolhouse. After the night of rain it was cool, without a breath of wind. At this hour the land seemed to lie open, ready to give up its secret.
    What offering would I lay at the foot of the cross of the thief?
    He passed gas, and some children peeking at him from around the corner pursed their lips and imitated the sound and laughed.
    What consolation at the foot of his death?
    Without preliminaries or farewells the three datus came out and resumed the journey. They carried nothing, so he carried nothing. Although they went barefoot, he wore his Keds.
    They navigated a slick path downward to a long ridge and stumped along it toward another mountain. One edge of the world turned red and the sun came rolling over on them, burning away the vapors below and seeming to fashion from the mist itself a grander and more complicated vista full of hills and ravines and winking creeks and vegetation tinted not just the innumerable values of green, but also silver, black, purple. They stopped at a barangay of several huts on the adjoining hill and had native coffee and each a bowl of rice. Saliling spoke with the headman in the Bisayan dialect, and Carignan heard them discussing some gunfire they’d heard across the valley just this morning. “He has warned us of some fighting ahead,” Robertson said, and Carignan said, “I heard him say it.” They began hiking