Bald-headed
Ch. 6

For the next eight years, he worked for Yujin. Originally he was one of twelve employees, but as time went on, the company grew, and he was promoted. By the nineties he had mastered the business and ran the entire operation, brokered deals and managed thirty staff. The yard has become the largest scrap metal dealer in Batam.

During that time, she dated several different women. He became serious with one of them, a waitress from a local restaurant with brown eyes and fine black hair. Although they dated for two years and had fun together, she never felt the same about him as she felt about Birundasih.

But he didn't forget it either. He was a few years older than her, and he was the one who taught her how to please a woman, a place to touch and kiss, a place to linger, things to whisper about. They sometimes spend the whole day in bed, hugging and making love that satisfies both.

He knew they would not be together forever. Towards the end of their relationship, she once told him, "I wish I could give you what you're looking for, but I don't know what it is. There is a part of you that you cover from everyone, including me. It's as if I'm not the one who's really with you. Your mind is on someone else."

He tried to deny it, but the girl did not believe him. "I'm a woman - I know these things. When you see me sometimes, I know you see other people. It's like you keep waiting for him out of thin air to take you away from all this. . . . " A month later the girl visited him at work and told him that she was meeting someone else. Sugi understands.

They separated as friends, and the following year she received a postcard from him stating that she was married. He hasn't heard from her since.

While he was in Batam, he would visit his father once a year during the celebrations. They spend time fishing and chatting, and occasionally they travel to the beach or highlands to camp for a few days.

In November, when he was twenty-six years old, riots began, as many had predicted.

Sugi returns to his office after a vacation, the following month he informs Yujin of his intention to apply for advanced school, college. He returned to Situ Gintung to say goodbye to his father. Five weeks later he finds himself in a training dorm.

While there, he receives a letter from Yujin thanking him for his work, along with a copy of the certificate that entitles him to a small portion of the landfill if it is later sold. "I can't do it without you" the letter said. "You're the best young man I've ever worked for, even if you're not the one I'm offending."

He spent the next three years gathering with AAS scholarship recipients, exploring the Great Victoria desert in Western Australia and the Daintree rainforest, fill up the full available holidays and never get away from the action.

Sometimes Sugi watched his friends get sick and die around him, watching some of them buried thousands of miles from home. Once, while sitting alone in the Ashburton River observing some crocodiles passing by, he imagined seeing Birundasih watching him.

He remembered that his studies were nearing the end of the year, and then a few months later he was able to return to his homeland. Sometime before he graduated, he received a letter from a lawyer in Batam representing Yujin.

While meeting with the lawyer, she learns that Yujin had died a year earlier and that her property was liquidated. His business had been sold, and Sugi was given a check worth almost seventy thousand dollars. For some reason he was strangely uninspired about it.

A few months later he returned to Situ Gintung and began to renovate the house. He remembers taking his father later, showing him what he was going to do, showing the changes he wanted to make. His father looked weak as he walked around, coughing and wheezing. Sugi is worried, but his father tells him not to worry, assuring him that he has the flu.

After staggering, he put down his equipment and returned home. Her neighbor, Madame Susantika, was there to thank her, bringing her three large pieces of homemade sponge and a large pudding of milk in appreciation for what she had done.

Susantika's mistress' husband was killed in the line of duty as a PP satpol, leaving her with three children and an old hut to raise them. The rainy season is coming, and Sugi spent a few days in place last week repairing his roof, replacing broken windows and propping up others, as well as fixing his wood stove.

Hopefully, it will be enough to keep them from getting wet and cold.

As soon as the woman left, she got on a broken Dodge truck and went to see Aceng. He always stopped by if going to the store because the Aceng family did not have a car. And they shop at Super Indo Cirendeu.

Arriving at home, he did not immediately unpack his groceries. Instead he took a bath, found Cemong and Pramoedya Ananta Toer's This Earth of Mankind, and sat down on the veranda.

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He still had trouble believing it, even as he held the evidence in his hands.

The news was published in the newspaper, at her parents' house three weeks ago. He went to the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee, and when he returned to the table, his father smiled and pointed to a small photo. "Remember this?"

He handed the paper to her, and after a disinterested first glance, something in the picture caught his attention and he took a closer look. "No way" he whispered, and as his father looked at him curiously, he ignored him, sat down, and read the article without speaking.

He vaguely remembered his mother coming to the table and sitting opposite him, and when he finally put the paper aside, his mother looked at him with the same expression as her father had done just a moment before.

"Are you okay?" his mother asked as she lifted her coffee cup. "You look a little pale." He did not immediately reply, he could not, and that was when he realized his hands were shaking. That's when it started.

"And this will end, one way or another" he whispered again. He folded back the piece of paper and returned it, remembering that he had left his parents' house in favor of a paper that caught his attention, so that he could cut the article.

He read it again before going to sleep the night, tried to understand the coincidence, and read it again the next morning as if to make sure everything was not a dream. And now, after three weeks of walking alone, after three weeks of distraction, that's why he came.