THE SUN WAS HOT ON my skin but not a burning heat. It felt like a heat you could get used to. The ground was warm, as if it were made for sitting on and lying down on and never feeling cold, at least not here in the extreme south of India, where it was always hot. Every country had its own feeling, it seemed to me. I liked the feeling of India already.
I think that Hollie liked it too. He seemed calmer, more relaxed and more reflective than before. There was something in the air here—the heat maybe, or the sun, or the smell of the land—that fired my imagination. Everything looked so different from everywhere else, and felt so different. And the feeling was pleasant.
I had to find a bank and a hospital. And we had to find Seaweed. Well, actually, Seaweed would find us. There was no way in the world we could find him. All we had to do was stay out in the open until he spotted us. Seaweed could find a speck of rice on a sandy beach, and it wouldn’t take him long.
I followed the boy down the road. We passed more empty warehouses and some houses. It was early but there were people outside already. Mothers were washing clothes and their children. The children stood naked while their mothers scrubbed them down with soap, then emptied buckets of water over their heads. Some kids were using the bathroom outside in front of everyone. That was weird. Then I noticed some people waking up on the ground. They had slept underneath blankets and newspaper. They stared at us as we passed. I tried not to stare back. But some people waved and I waved back. Hollie stared at everybody.
I asked the boy his name but couldn’t figure out what he was saying, even when I tried to read his lips. I asked him if he knew where a bank was. He nodded. Was it open early? He shook his head. How about a hospital? He thought about it for a while, then nodded. I asked about a restaurant. His eyes lit up and he grabbed my hand and pulled me along. I freed my hand and followed him.
He led me to a corner in the road where a group of men were standing around a small portable food stand. I saw steam rising from a stainless steel container. The men looked old and tired but they smiled at us. They greeted the boy in a friendly way and wanted to shake my hand. One man slapped me on my shoulder in a warm and welcoming way. I pointed to my ear and shook my head. They looked sorry and nodded their heads. Then the man behind the stand took a ladle and scooped a hot brown liquid into two small cups. He offered them to us. I watched the boy take one with two hands, bring it to his mouth and sip it. He closed his eyes and smiled. So, I did the same. Then I smiled too because it was probably the best drink I had ever tasted. It was hot tea with lots of cinnamon, sugar, nutmeg and milk. It was so rich!
I asked the boy to tell them that I would return with money after we went to the bank. They shook their heads and said no, no money. The boy looked at me and shook his head too. I wondered if these were the friends he had smiled about. I thanked them and we followed the road to where the Chinese fishing nets were.
There was something hypnotic about watching the big nets swing down into the water and rise with fish in them. Half a dozen men worked each one while other men just stood around and watched. The nets never came up empty. I looked at the faces of the men who were watching. They must have seen this a thousand times yet they seemed fascinated still. I noticed there were no women here. I had seen women only at the washing. I tried to imagine my grandfather here. He wouldn’t do it because he liked to work alone. He would respect it though, because it was a good method. It produced results. He just wouldn’t want to do it himself.
When the bank opened, we were the first ones there. I put Hollie inside the mesh tool bag and hung it over my shoulder. He liked it and was used to being carried in it. It had a wooden frame and was just big enough for him to ride inside comfortably. He could see out but no one could see in unless they stood next to him and stared closely.
But the boy was nervous and didn’t want to come inside the bank. I insisted because I needed his help. I couldn’t hear. So he followed me in but a man stepped in our way, smiled at me but frowned angrily at the boy and pointed to the door. He barked something at him; I saw his mouth. I held the boy’s hand but the man looked at me and shook his head. He ushered the boy outside, without actually touching him. I thought that was strange. I wondered if it was because the boy’s feet were bare. “I’ll be right out,” I said to him, and I probably said it too loudly.
I changed my money from dollars to rupees and walked out with a fat handful of funny-looking money. Some of the bills were large and some small. I stuffed them into my pocket, let Hollie out of the tool bag and asked the boy to show me where the hospital was. He pointed up the road so I turned and started that way, but he lagged behind. When I turned around to see why, he came running up to me with something in his hand. I looked. It was one of the large bills. I counted the rest of the money and realized that I had dropped it, and he had found it. We stared at each other for a moment. He could have just kept it and I would never have known.
“Thank you,” I said. He smiled and his eyes sparkled. I remembered once finding a twenty-dollar bill when I was little and giving it to my neighbour who had lost it, and she gave me a dollar as a reward. So, I took one of the smaller bills and gave it to the boy. “Thank you for your honesty,” I said. He took it in his hands and stared at it as if he had never seen money before. And as we continued up the road, he never took his eyes away from it.
The hospital was just a small clinic. But they wouldn’t let the boy in. He stood at the door with a deeply guilty look on his face, as if he had done something wrong. This time I asked why he wasn’t allowed inside. A lady in a white uniform tried to explain it to me by writing a word down on a piece of paper. She wrote, “Dalit.” “What does it mean?” I asked. She looked at me and frowned. She wrote another word underneath the first one. “Untouchable.” Oh. That meant he was in the lowest class of India, or even lower than the lowest class. I wondered how she knew that. Could she tell just by looking at him? Was it because he was barefoot? Because his clothes were shabby? Was it the guilty look on his face? That went away when it was just him and me and Hollie.
So I asked the boy to wait for me again. He agreed. He pulled the bill out of his pocket and turned around to examine it again. I followed the lady to an examination room where she had me fill out a form asking for my name, age, address, passport number and what was wrong with me. I was waiting for her to tell me to take Hollie out too once she realized I was carrying a dog on my back, but she didn’t. She clicked her tongue and smiled at him through the mesh.
When the doctor came in, he read the form I had filled out and he clapped his hands but I didn’t hear anything. He looked surprised. He opened a drawer, pulled out a bag and took a little hammer and tuning fork from it. He put the tuning fork close to my ear and hit it with the hammer. I did hear something. “I heard that,” I said. “Just a little.” He went to the other side and did it again. I thought I heard it but wasn’t sure. He picked up a tool with a light on the end of it and stuck it into my ear and looked through it like a periscope. He moved it around. That hurt. I could feel his breath on my neck. He went around to the other side and did the same thing. Then he wrote down on a sheet of paper and showed it to me. “You heard a very loud noise?”
I said yes, but wasn’t about to tell him that I had been chased by the Indian navy and that they had attacked my submarine with depth charges. He wrote something else and tore a little sheet off a pad. Then he wrote on the other sheet again. “Prescription for steroid drops. Ears are damaged but will heal. Put drops in twice a day until gone.”
“Thank you,” I said. “How long will it take to get better?”
He raised two fingers, then three, and tossed his head to one side.
“Two or three days?”
He shook his head.
“Weeks?”
I paid for the visit. It was only the same as twenty dollars in Canada, which was really cheap. The nurse drew a small map to show me where to buy the eardrops. I met the boy outside. Suddenly I had an idea and ran back inside and asked the nurse to come to the door for a moment. She frowned but came. I asked her to ask the boy his name and write it down for me. She shook her head. No. She wouldn’t do it! I couldn’t believe it. What the heck was wrong with her?
I let Hollie out and we walked away. Now I was hungry. “Are you hungry?” I asked the boy. He nodded. “Good. Me too. Let’s go find a restaurant.”
We found three restaurants but none of them would let the boy in. They saw him standing there staring at the ground in shame and they shook their heads at me. Holy smokes! So we went back to the Chinese fishing nets. There were people baking fish and onions and selling them. And there was more of that delicious drink. I bought a whole bunch of everything and we sat down by the nets and ate it, and man it was good. Suddenly my first mate came gliding out of the sky and landed beside us, probably because he saw us eating. The boy was startled to see a seagull come so close to us, and couldn’t believe it when the seagull let Hollie sniff its feathers. I explained that Seaweed was part of my crew.
The boy twisted his face up in confusion. What did I mean?
I smiled. Boy, was he in for a surprise.