Batman 5 - Batman Begins by Dennis O'Neil Page B

looked up at where he had come from and saw wisps of smoke rising against the evening sky, and then down, at the trail to the village and prison. Which way? No choice, really. He started toward the trail. The door to another of the huts opened and the little boy he had seen during his first visit ran out, carrying a bundle wrapped in sackcloth. He handed it to Bruce and, without saying anything or waiting to be thanked, vanished into the hut and closed the door. Bruce unwrapped the bundle enough to see what was inside: a clay bowl full of rice with a chunk of brown bread and two crude chopsticks on top. Lunch. Bruce bowed to the boy’s hut and moved down the trail.
    The air was chilly, but not cold, as it had been on the mountaintop, and the next morning, bright sun gradually warmed Bruce. When it was directly overhead, he perched on a boulder, opened the bundle, and ate the rice and bread.
    The sun was low when he finally reached the trail-head and continued past it on the road the army truck had taken a year earlier to the town—or small city?—near the prison. His plan, such as it was, was to beg for food and money until he had enough for a telephone call to the United States—to Gotham City and Wayne Manor and Alfred. It might take days, but it would probably be faster than finding a berth on a ship bound for America.
    But he got lucky. As he was hunkering down at a roadside near the marketplace, now almost deserted as darkness inched over the area, he met an old shipmate, a bosun’s mate, who was accompanied by a slender woman whose eyes were downcast and whose whole demeanor was one of extreme shyness.
    “Hello, my old shipmate,” the bosun yelled in breath laden with rum. “Remember me—Hector. I beat you up plenty.”
    “I still bear the scars,” Bruce answered, grinning and shaking Hector’s hand.
    “Guess what? I am husband now. How you like that?”
    “Congratulations.”
    Hector said that he and the woman had just gotten married, that very afternoon, mere hours ago, and were celebrating and did his dear old shipmate want for anything, anything at all in this blessed world? In the end, after more hand-shaking and much back-pounding, the bosun’s mate gave Bruce the money he needed and, with promises that they would get together soon, put his arm around his new wife’s shoulders and stumbled toward a nearby inn.
    Bruce located a merchant who offered long-distance telephone service and persuaded him to remain open long enough for Bruce to make his call.
    There was no answer. Perhaps Alfred was having one of his weekly nights away from the big house. Bruce left a message on the answering machine and, thanking the merchant for his kindness, left to seek a place to sleep.
    He finally settled for a culvert. He put a thin layer of dried grass on the rounded bottom and lay on it. He was cold and uncomfortable and seven years ago that would have been a problem. But now, he simply accepted the cold and the discomfort, instead of fighting them, and slept for the five hours he needed.
    The next morning, just after sunrise, he walked around, seeking food. He was not discomfortingly hungry, not yet, but he had eaten only the boy’s rice and bread in the last day and his body would need fuel soon. He saw a mendicant monk, barefoot and wearing an orange robe, going from house to house and holding out a bowl into which householders put a morsel of food. Bruce approached the monk, who seemed to immediately guess what Bruce might want, and gave him half of what was in the bowl.
    At about eight, Bruce returned to where he had made the call to Alfred. The merchant was waiting for him. Alfred had already returned the call and made the necessary arrangements, which the merchant read to Bruce from a sheet of lined paper. Again, Bruce thanked the merchant and began to follow Alfred’s instructions.
    Two days later Bruce was in Kathmandu, standing at the end of an unpaved landing strip. There was a corrugated steel shed at