The Tin Mine Page #5

Toss them out, are you nuts?

What are you, anyway? The public health officer?

A stab wound would develop tetanus.

Hey!

This guy comes in here for help. He asked for this tincture.

These hill people are too scared to go to a hospital.

I'd be crazy not to sell it to him.

You eaten?

I only see you drinking, what food you talking about?

I'll bring you back some corn in trade.

Just bring the sweet ones!

So rich yet so stingy.

You're surely going to Hell.

In business, there's no Heaven or Hell.

There's only profit

and loss.

Hurry up, hurry up. Bring it in.

You carried them all this way? Wow!

Sure is some good-looking corn.

Where did that guy get stabbed?

In his arm, but it's stopped bleeding now.

The tincture worked so well!

After he cleaned his wound with the first one, he drank all the rest

!

He drank the tincture?!

You are definitely going to Hell now.

You should be praying to God, not the rain.

Hoping it'll wash away your sins?

You know what I'm praying for?

That they don't send you to prison?

I'm praying that tincture

was harmless as rainwater.

And that was the moral of the greedy merchant's story.

The richest canteen owner in the forest,

in one desperate moment of remorse,

suddenly felt all his greediness fall away.

Could you write a letter for me?

Sure.

Who's it to? The Boss?

No.

To a woman.

I want it written in a sophisticated city style.

This Southern tongue hasn't got enough syllables to charm a girl.

Who is she? Does she know you're married?

Mind your own business, back to work!

Of course not.

But she's very pretty. Name's Laied.

She just moved in near here with her brother.

Mister.

Who's out there?

It's me.

I got this letter last night.

It's from Mister John.

Could you read it for me?

I can't read.

Did you know my brother is from Baytong?

He's actually my cousin.

Guess what? I'll be 20 years old this year.

Hey, we've got the same kinds of scars.

Kai!

You stay here and watch these things.

I'll meet you back here later!

One, two, three!

One, two, three!

Sh*t! The wood is swollen.

The Boss loves this so much.

Bloody expensive, too.

When's he getting back from Phuket?

Better get back to work before he sees all of us here.

That was quite a storm last night.

Yes.

I'm glad you made it across the river in one piece.

With half of my bachelor's degree completed,

I'd learned about work from the workers

and about empathy from the Boss.

And where I'd once been a just careless kid,

I was now a very detail-oriented man,

studying every inch of the maps.

I'd work till I dropped

just to prove to myself

that I was giving the mine its money's worth.

SENIOR:

By the time that year arrived,

I'd become a total stranger to my friends and family in Bangkok.

Any mails for me?

Nope.

My face and my life had become so

familiar in that small town

as if I'd been its native son.

Looks like rain for the New Year.

If you stop the next rain from falling,

don't be sad when you realise the last rain's fallen already.

"Happy New Year!"

Those four years had no bus-rides to work.

We walked under burning sun and pouring rain

to the dredger, which inched forward every hour

and then back to the crumbling hut.

Sometimes, the rain would come down for ten days straight.

Everyone was reaching their breaking point.

The mountains got so soaked they crumbled

and the leaves wouldn't lift their heads.

Stop now!

Stop! Stop! Stop!

I'm in no hurry to die!

Those Southern rains came down so hard that

I realized that if we were mining rainwater,

we'd all be rich by now.

Finally, we surrendered to the forces of nature.

We were people of the forest,

the children of the cold,

and friends to the constant rain.

Down in this valley, with a wall of mountains around us,

shutting out the light from the sky,

our destinies became fused together

like separate paths that had merged as one.

The lifeline of the Tin Mine had been stretched to its limit...

and it seemed as if it soon might snap.

The dredger got stuck for a month, then two months...

... then three.

We lost all hope of finding tin.

All we were mining was mud.

When the money in the office ran out,

we were forced to dig through our waste dump,

searching for tin scraps to sell as salvage.

Mr. Sam became best friends with liquor and loneliness.

And his brother grew quieter and quieter,

and eventually resigned.

I later found out it was the map-maker's

negligence that had done us in.

When what he should have noted

in Western measurements

as "0.01 per cubic foot",

he'd copied as "6.01".

And when we finally did free the dredger from the fork,

the home office decided it was time

we had a new engineer.

Attention!

His name was Mr. Norman.

This is the new engineer they've sent us?

The insurance company in Penang

decided they'd only cover us if we had

two non-Thai bosses on the books.

Well, you'll have your work cut out for you training this guy.

Maybe I ought to look for another job.

If I don't quit now, people down here will spit in my face,

thinking "John's sold himself out, taking orders...

... from a clown like this."

Don't worry, I'll survive out there!

I'm Lert.

The foreign boss sent me over.

I'm your new Chief of staff.

I'm the Chief of the staff here.

But I'm tendering my resignation today.

Name's John.

John... yeah, I've heard about you.

But what are you quitting for?

Guy like me can find work anywhere.

That's the way I feel myself.

I can fit in anywhere at all.

Where you planning to stay?

Might was well use my place.

I won't be using it anymore.

If I'm not working here, I won't be sleeping here either.

As for me,

If I haven't worked here,

I won't sleep here either.

As for you giving me your place,

let the insects take it over instead then.

We haven't got in the boxing ring yet,

too bad, you are saved by the bell.

Black coffee,

double bitter?

This a**hole Lert needs a kick in the teeth.

But you know,

if I were a stranger in a new place,

I'd have done the same thing.

Anyways, no matter what happens,

be sure to take care of Laied for me.

There were days when it seemed like sun

didn't come out at all.

And my senior year courses proved to be

my most difficult yet.

After John showed us

his taste for new adventures and quit,

Huan got caught in the jaws of the dredger

and unintentionally donated one of his legs to the mine.

And Jieng, that cloud-watching pal of mine,

dreamed himself right into the middle of a flash-flood.

But it was Lert who came to seem the biggest problem I had to solve.

You guys need to re-measure out here everyday?

So it seems.

Be careful, the strap on that compass is wearing thin.

Everything here is old.

The dredger's starting to sink as well.

Then we need to start fixing things.

Whenever you say.

I'd decided to deal with my wish that John

would return by surveying the area in complete detail.

I was searching for anything that might prove

that John was a better foreman than Lert.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes