Fiction: A plot is hatched to kill Mat’s wife and their baby. However, he is accused of the murders

Long after that incident, he – Mat Dawuk, I mean – told me himself that he only regained consciousness three days after the death of his wife, was only able to move his body on the fifth day, and struggled with great effort to bend the prison bars in the early morning two days after that. He pretended to faint and then walked out of the police department office, which had been left empty and unattended as the Ashar call to prayer rang out.

It was possible that the police had purposefully vacated their post and were letting him go so they could casually shoot him in the back, saying he had been trying to escape. Someone seeking revenge, a mob or maybe the entire village might have attacked him as soon as they saw him walking down the main road. It’s not that he didn’t think of these things, but they didn’t worry him at all. He should have been dead, so it was nothing for him to face death once more. The most important thing was to know where Inayatun and his child, still in her womb, were buried. So, as long as he was permitted to live, he would know where to make his pilgrimage. And if he had to die, he would know where his soul must go searching.

He knew the Cottonwood Grove village cemetery as well as he knew his own front yard. It was where his mother was buried, the place where, in his derelict and lonely childhood, he had played and even slept. It was the same place where I, for the first time, found a kid of about ten years old, with dishevelled clothes, a filthy body and an ugly face, nodding off next to the gravestone I was seeking. So that was why, even though he arrived there after dark, he had no trouble finding one of the two new graves. He wailed the whole night long, reciting Yasin and Talqin and Tahlil prayers for the dead, lamenting Inayatun and his child, who didn’t yet have a name, humming verses from their favourite songs. Just before dawn, he went to his in-laws’ house, a house he had never before tried to enter and would have never before been permitted to enter, before returning to the police station to turn himself in.

Now this part, I am willing to bet a finger on it, has never been heard out of anyone in Cottonwood Grove, no matter how honestly they might have told the story because they didn’t know about it – maybe they were purposefully kept from knowing. All they knew was, after Ashar on the same day that Mat Dawuk went to Pak Imam’s house, there was news from the district that local police forces had just recaptured an escaped prisoner. And that was enough to throw the village in the middle of the forest into another uproar just a few hours after the tumult of that morning.

It could no longer be refuted: this meant Mat Dawuk was still alive. Now it was clear that the figure who had walked along the village road the previous evening and who had met with Pak Imam at his house early in the morning had not been his ghost, but Mat Dawuk himself. Mat Dawuk was still breathing, even though his bones were fractured and his body was battered and bruised. Now they were regretting, really and truly regretting, that they had let the police come, had even helped them drag his limp and blood-stained body and throw it into the patrol car without first making sure that the son-of-a-bitch was dead. Whether they liked it or not, now the people of Cottonwood Grove had to admit that, just as they had heard it being said, that Satan-faced bastard who they had looked down upon ever since he was a child indeed had nine lives.

Now, the only path left for them to finish him was to take him to court.

“I will offer everything I have, my fields and my rice paddies, everything I own, to have that man publicly hanged – and chopped into pieces, too, if possible!” Pak Imam fumed in front of the crowd attending the memorial, held forty days after Inayatun’s death.

“However much the prosecutor asks, whatever the judge wants, I’ll give it to them, as long as that son-of-a-bitch is sentenced to death. Wawasan 2020 and an independent Malaysia is still a long way off. UMNO is still in control of Parliament. Ringgits are still scattered across the streets of Malaysia; all that’s left is to scoop them up,” boasted Hanan, Foreman Har’s brother-in-law, who was also Woodsman Hasan’s older brother. Hanan had been a degenerate and hopelessly incapable youth, and his father hadn’t trusted him enough to bequeath him the family sawmill. But his luck changed completely after marrying Haryati, Ranger Hartoyo’s daughter, and going abroad to Malaysia. Now, he was known to be the richest migrant, with the best house, in all of Cottonwood Grove.

No less ferocious than his older brother was Woodsman Hasan. Still fervently repeating how Mat Dawuk had slaughtered two people who loved each other – which is how he was now describing Inayatun and Foreman Har – he vowed to do whatever it took to get justice for his dear friend.

“Right now, if there is anyone who will put an offer on my sawmill and all of its equipment, its hundreds of planks, and its paper, I will sell it, and I will use all the money to pay anyone who can guarantee to finish that cursed devil once and for all. What value does material wealth hold when compared to true friendship? If necessary, I will sell my soul!” he declared, drawing his finger across his throat. Of course, while saying all that, he was careful to watch his mouth so that he didn’t let slip how he had scuttled away after splitting his friend’s chest open with his hatchet.

So as not to appear silent at the unfortunate death of one of his ranks, a forest police representative who had come to attend the forty-day memorial for Foreman Har also staunchly declared that his agency would rally all their energy and effort to ensure that Foreman Har’s killer would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. He also promised that Foreman Har would receive a posthumous raise in rank since he had died in the course of duty. But at the 100-day memorial, the man returned with a weaker statement – that low-level officer had been warned by his superiors not to speak out of turn. Aside from the issue of whoever had killed Foreman Har, the police findings reported that the killing was motivated by an act of infidelity, and that did not reflect favourably on their organization. “We will be following the legal case as it unfolds,” was all he said.

All kinds of talk – from those full of rage, those pretending to be full of rage, and those just following along – and it seemed that no one in Cottonwood Grove disagreed with the will of Inayatun’s and Foreman Har’s families. It could be no other way: Mat Dawuk had to die.

Once again.

Excerpted with permission from A Dark Tale From Cottonwood Grove, Mahfud Ikhwan, translated from the Bahasa Indonesia by Annie Tucker, Speaking Tiger Books.