Coffee Luak

     You don't really know a man 'til you drink beer with him in a cheap whorehouse on a rickety pier over a stinking tidal flat six miles from the equator. I know James Angus Leonard, by God! We sat there in a thatched roof shack built of scraps of wood and cardboard, drinking cold beer and talking while the girls begged us to sleep with them.

      Now Berlitz can go suck eggs. The quickest way to learn a foreign language is to hang out in a cheap bar and get some pretty young gal to teach you. Greetings, numbers, anatomy, why, in a couple of days you can pick up a lot. Some of it you need a shot of penicillin to get rid of, but life ain't boring if you pay attention.

      Gray headed, crew cut ol' sumbitch was full of stories, and some of 'em mighta been true. He sure knew a lot about Indonesia, and was always trying to teach me something. Got to be annoying, but he was a good ol' boy and I didn't want to make him mad. Besides, most of the stuff he told me was interesting. Like coffee luak.

     "J.D. you ever hear of coffee luak?" he asked me one Saturday night.

     "No, but I bet I'm about to," I said, and popped another Anker beer. "What is it?"

     "It's real expensive coffee, hard to find, but Indonesians say it's the best you can get. You know they grow a lot of coffee in Indonesia. Did you know that's how it came to be called 'Java'?"

     "Hunh!?"

     He ignored my grunt and kept talking. I was running out of ways to answer his revelations. "Oh, yeah? Is that right? You don't say?" I had used them all, but he was so full of "information" that I had started to just grunt when he launched a tale that seemed to need a response. Damned if it wasn't like having a wife around. If you raise the tone just a little bit at the end, it makes 'em think you're really listening while you're actually thinking about something entirely different.

     "Well, coffee bushes make a little berry that grows right from the branch, not from a bud or leaf, and the beans are the seeds of that berry."

     "Is that right?"

     "The berries ripen at different rates, so you might have some green ones on a branch next to ripe ones. And when they do get ripe, they're only at their best for a couple of days, so they got to be picked right away. If they're picked too soon or too late, the coffee's not as good."

     "Thank you, Juan Valdez."

     "It's true, J.D."

     "Oh, I don't doubt it for a minute."

     "That's why your best coffee, the premium grade, is so expensive. Somebody has to go out and hand pick only the ripe berries and leave the green ones."

     "That makes sense, I guess. But what about coffee luak?"

     "I'm getting there, J.D. A luak is a little animal like a cross between a squirrel and a monkey, and it lives up in the mountains where the coffee bushes grow. Now, the luak eats coffee berries, and the coffee berries he eats are only the ripe ones."

     "The coffee farmers must hate the little bastards. Is there a bounty on 'em?"

     "No, they love the things. See, the luak eat the berries, but the seeds, the coffee beans, are indigestible." He paused to sip his beer.

     "Well, so what? If they already ate the berries, what difference does that make?"

     "Don't you see, the berries are digested, but the seeds go right on through."

     "Oh, now wait a minute!"

     "That's right. They collect the droppings, wash out the coffee beans, and that makes coffee luak."

     "Aw, that's the most…that's bullshit!"

     "Nope, it's the honest-to-God truth, J.D. Coffee luak. Ask anybody. Hell, try it sometime, if you ever find it."

     "It will come a damn blizzard right here in Bontang the day I do that. Even if it is true, which I don't believe for a second!"

Exerpted from "Oil Patch" by Gary Gentry, available at www.authorhouse.com/bookstore