Bright

by Duanwad Pimwana

  Finally, he came upon someone. The man was gaunt and had a withered face; his hair hung matted to the base of his neck; his shirt and pants were filthy. Kampol found him sitting in front of a noodle shop on the side of the main road, mumbling to himself. From the look of him, he might not have eaten for a month. When Kampol spoke to him, he replied in a way that sounded deranged—Kampol couldn’t make out what he was talking about. This is it…this man is terribly hungry, Kampol thought. He might lose control and hurt someone. So, Kampol led the starved man back to Chong’s grocery.

  “Hia Chong, this man’s incredibly hungry,” Kampol told him. “He’s no longer in control of himself, but he still hasn’t hurt anybody yet.”

  Chong looked at Kampol, utterly stunned for a moment. When he snapped out of it, he hurried into the kitchen to fetch the man something to eat. The man appeared unaware of his surroundings and muttered to himself as Chong handed him the food.

  “What about you, Boy? Where are you going to eat this evening? Do you want to eat with me here?” Chong asked.

  “I’m eating at Jua’s this evening but thank you,” Kampol replied.

  The starved man carried his plate of food outside and sat down next to the jasmine bush, where he continued ranting something under his breath with his gaze toward the sky. Kampol and Chong, watching, rooted for him to lift the spoon to his mouth.

  A New Home

  Wasu Changsamran—or Ratom to those who still called him by his old name, which he changed when his youngest son was born—had good news for Kampol the next time he came to visit: they had a new home.

  Kampol packed his clothes, excited. He made the rounds to the different homes where he had stayed to say goodbye, running from one to the next. Wasu followed him, thanking the neighbors for showing his son such kindness.

  “May the heat and hardship be gone for good,” Dum said as a blessing.

  “Be sure to go to school next year!” was Mon’s parting instruction.

  “Hey! Wait!” Jua shouted. “You left some clothes at my house.”

  “Come back and visit us from time to time,” Chong told him.

  “Be well, the best of luck. May you find joy and comfort ahead.”

  “Good luck, good luck.”

  “Goodbye.”

  Kampol waved. He kept glancing side to side, at once happy but also in shock to be leaving his friends. Oan caught up with him, handed him a small action figure, and ran home.

  Outside the new house, Wasu’s ex-wife—whom Wasu had been married to before Namfon and had now conveniently taken up with again—was hanging cloth diapers on a clothesline. When she turned around and saw Wasu, Kampol, and his bag of clothes, her brow furrowed and her jaw dropped—she looked shocked. But she didn’t say a word; she simply spun back around and carried on with shaking out the laundry and placing it on the line—diapers, tiny shorts, miniscule shirts.

  Wasu smiled sheepishly. “You’re doing laundry, then? Boy, come here. Say hi to Mama Lim.”

  Kampol brought his palms together and waied her very politely. Mama Lim turned and gave him the barest of smiles.

  “Come here. I want to show you something.” With a tug, Wasu steered his son inside.

  There, Jon, Kampol’s baby brother, was sitting up in his metal crib. When he saw Kampol and his father, he pulled himself up by grabbing onto the crossbar. Kampol squealed and ran over to hug his little brother. “Papa, look! Jon can stand!”

  “Oh yeah…and you haven’t seen this. Let me show you.”

  Wasu lifted Jon out of the crib, stood him on the ground, let go, and backed away. “Come here, you, come to Papa, come, little guy, come!” Jon looked at their father, giggled, and started taking steps: one, two, three, four, five, six. The toddler came within reach of their father before he lost his balance, and Wasu caught him before he tumbled.

  “Six steps! Jon made it six steps!” Kampol said, jumping up and down.

  The three of them shared a hearty laugh.

  Mama Lim spoke very little. She was constantly moving, picking up something or dealing with some task. She earned her living primarily as a laundress. In the house, she had a massive garment rack that was always full of clothes that had been pressed and put on hangers. The whole room Wasu and his sons were in was infused with the pleasant smell of clean laundry. Kampol breathed it in deeply, feeling wonderful. Mama Lim had come inside, but now she finished the ironing and went back out to do some more washing. Kampol was looking after his brother, and their father left to work his shift delivering water on his truck. He would be back around dinnertime.

  That evening, Mama Lim made palo egg stew. The aroma of it alone had Kampol salivating, but he had to hold back until his father got home so they could all have dinner together. Mama Lim sat out front waiting for Wasu to arrive. Kampol, feeling upbeat, thought it would be fun to hide behind the shoe cabinet so that he could ambush his father with a “Boo!” when he came into the room. It was just before dark when his father returned home.

  “Wasu, we need to talk before we go inside,” Mama Lim said, intercepting him. “Are you bringing the boy here for a visit or to stay?”

  “Let him stay for now, okay? It’s just one kid. And seeing that I’ve already brought him here…”

  “I’ve already got all I can handle with Jon. There’s simply no way. And we’re about to run out of formula again. Did you get some money? I’ve already spotted you for several cans.”

  “Can you spot me again for now?”

  “Fine, but after dinner, take Boy back. And do it today—the longer he stays, the harder it’ll be on him.”

  Wasu sighed, his head drooping. As he came inside the house, Kampol remained crouched down in silence. He forgot to shout “Boo!” at his father.

  With everyone home, it was time to dig into dinner. Mama Lim and his father both gave Kampol their eggs.

  “What a pity!” Wasu exclaimed. “Mama Lim has to go to the hospital for several days. Boy, you’ll have to go back and stay in the old neighborhood for now, okay? After she gets out of the hospital, I’ll come get you again, all right, son?”

  Before leaving, Kampol went over to the crib. He looked at his baby brother for a long time. Then he grabbed something.

  “What did you just take?” Mama Lim immediately asked.

  “It’s mine.” Kampol said, holding out his action figure, and just before his hatred showed in his eyes, his father led him out of the house.

  In the dark, father and son walked without talking until they reached the front of Chong’s grocery.

  Wasu set Kampol’s bag down. He leaned in and whispered: “I’m going to have to leave you here. You call for Hia Chong in a second, all right? I’m off. Good luck, son.”

  Kampol watched his father walk off until he disappeared. The flavor of the palo stew had grown distant, and the scent of detergent faint. He opened his hand: the blue action figure glinted in the dim light.

  Pony Express

  The grocery had a telephone now. Chong had purchased a big red pay phone and had it installed in the front of his shop. The children were excited by the development and ran to tell their parents. Customers coming into the store to do their shopping tossed glances at the shiny new red telephone. Within a few days, the community members all carried the telephone numbers of their friends and family in their pockets, both immediate and extended. Everyone suddenly had important business that required regular use of a phone. It didn’t take long until they were griping about how much money they’d dropped making calls. So, they tried to come up with a new strategy. Some smart cookie went and asked Chong for the shop’s phone number. Within a few days, everybody in Mrs. Tongjan’s community had the number.

  For Chong, it was total chaos. The phone rang off the hook—callers asking to speak with various neighbors. He kept having to leave the shop unattended to go fetch whomever was requested. After a couple of weeks, he began getting aggravated. He appealed to them, asking them diplomatically to please only have people cal
l the phone for truly urgent business. But they told him it couldn’t be helped, since they weren’t the ones making the calls. Thus, a new policy was put in place: anyone who received a call had to pay a five-baht service fee.

  The profits fell right into Kampol’s lap. He became the pony express, sprinting off to get people for their calls, and as soon as they hung up, he was right there to demand the service fee. Kampol became so rich he had to buy a piggy bank. Many of the other children watched him making money enviously. Since he didn’t have time for it anymore, he relinquished the job of being Dang’s masseur to Oan. He also allowed his friend Jua to serve as a limping messenger once or twice a day. Chong was relieved to be able to extricate himself from the task.

  The unit that Kampol’s family had once lived in was no longer empty. The new tenant was a small man, very neatly dressed. He had wavy hair that he always combed back with oil. He owned a motorcycle, though not a single person knew what his occupation was. One week into living in the community, the man visited the grocery store, and asked for the phone number so that he could be reached for his work, telling Chong only that his name was Bangkerd.

  The first time he got a call, when Chong answered the phone, all he heard was sobbing. The caller wept as she spoke: her son had died, and the body was at the hospital. The temple had given her this number for Bangkerd the mortician so she could get him to come prepare the body. Chong told her to hold on.

  “Whose call is it, Hia Chong?” Kampol asked, set to run.

  “It’s all right. I’ll go myself.”

  The mortician came to take the call. He said only a couple of words and then hung up. When he went to pay the service fee, Chong refused it, shaking his head. Kampol was puzzled as he witnessed the interaction.

  All the excitement about the phone started to die down, so Kampol’s business grew sluggish. But his piggy bank was more than half full of five-baht coins by then, and it weighed a ton. He only got to carry a message every few days. Only Bangkerd the mortician still received calls regularly. But each call to him meant that someone had died. From every which way, news of death funneled through the red telephone and into Chong’s consciousness, before he relayed it to Bangkerd. Chong grew more and more somber every time he took one of those calls, even though he continued to be willing to inform the man himself and never charged him.

  The whole time Kampol kept wondering. He didn’t understand why Chong didn’t charge Bangkerd a service fee. One day, he was sitting around just waiting, bored. He hadn’t had to go fetch anyone for a call in days, and all his friends had disappeared. Kampol gave up and went off to find his playmates.

  In the older housing development down the road, Kampol happened to pass by the home of Tia, the short, cheeky fisherman universally loved by the children. Whenever they ran into him, they formed a line behind him and followed him wherever he went. Tia was a funny guy. He regaled the children with hilarious anecdotes that bordered on the inappropriate, and he never repeated the same story twice. But for some unknown reason, many of the adults, in particular the women, didn’t care for him.

  Kampol stopped outside Tia’s house and looked in. Through the upstairs window, he saw Tia’s head bouncing up and down.

  “Uncle Tia,” Kampol yelled, “have you seen Oan or Jua?”

  Tia poked his head out and looked down. He was up to something that Kampol didn’t understand. He was panting and bumping up and down as if he were on horseback. He sneered at Kampol then shouted, “I don’t fucking know.”

  Kampol kept watching. It was very curious the way Tia’s body was moving, it looked like he was riding the merry-go-round at the shrine fair, except on a faster horse and didn’t rotate.

  “What are you doing?” Kampol asked, picturing a wooden horse swaying back and forth. “Are you riding a rocking horse?”

  Tia flashed his canines. “Oh yeah, I saw Oan over there!” Kampol stared up at the window for a while longer before he left to look for Oan. That evening, after he’d returned to the grocery, the phone rang. Chong answered. Kampol kept his fingers crossed, hoping to get the job.

  “What? Tia’s dead? How did he die?”

  Kampol went numb. He screamed at the top of his lungs, “That’s not true, Hia Chong. I just saw Uncle Tia earlier this afternoon—he was riding on a rocking horse.”

  “What did you say? Where did you see him?”

  “At his house. He was on a rocking horse by the window.”

  Chong looked shaken. “Uncle Tia is dead, Boy. He died riding the horse by the window.”

  Kampol’s face fell and he started crying. He missed Tia already. This time, he went to find Bangkerd himself and turned down the money when the mortician tried to pay him.

  The Funeral

  Tia’s death came like a bolt from the blue. The children all mourned his passing: from now on, there would be nobody to tell them fun tales; around the bends of the river, streams, and swamps, there would no longer be the short man with his fishing gear.

  Tia’s funeral was planned for a single evening at the Samed Temple. His daughter, who had her own family and lived in another province, had come back to organize her father’s rites upon receiving the news. The photo next to the casket was from his national ID card, complete with the height ruler in the background—he had only been one hundred and forty-five centimeters tall. His face looked dark and scary in the picture. He had been exactly sixty years old.

  Kampol and his friends joined up, over ten of them in all, to head to Tia’s funeral together. The temple was just under two kilometers away. Several of the kids went to the Samed Temple School so they were used to the walk. Kampol, Oan, and the lame-legged Jua, because they were smaller than the others, had a harder time. They needed to walk a bit then run a bit to keep up with the bigger kids. The three of them were afraid of the dark.

  At the pavilion where the body was, five adults were running around, and three cooks, in the kitchen behind, were making fish-and-rice porridge. A group of more than ten kids from the older housing development had also shown up for the funeral. They were hanging out by the steps of the crematorium. Kampol’s crew marched straight to a guest table when they arrived and sat down. The kids from the other development snickered. One of the grown-ups came out and shooed them away with the wave of a hand. Awkward and embarrassed, Kampol and his friends got up, revealing their feet that were covered in dirt from the walk. They stood around clumsily trying to stay out of the way by moving over to one side. Eventually, they claimed the steps that led up to the kitchen.

  “Hey! I smell fish porridge!” somebody in the group exclaimed.

  “You think they’ll let us have some?”

  “Of course. We’re here for the funeral.”

  “You dumbass. You’ve got to give them an envelope with money, otherwise they don’t feed you. They only let people with envelopes sit at the tables.”

  “You’re back again?” one of the cooks snapped, standing over them. “I just told you to get lost, and here you are again running your loud mouths. Get out of here! Don’t you have some place to go and play?”

  Because they didn’t know where to go, they went over and sat with the kids from the other development on the steps of the crematorium.

  The monks were already chanting, but no guests had arrived. The tables and chairs set up in front of the pavilion were completely empty. The kids got spooked by the whistling wind. Kampol told everyone about how he’d seen Tia through the window before the fisherman died. Everyone’s hair stood on end thinking about how they’d have to walk by the dead man’s house later. The kids from the other development, ready to take off, nudged each other. Kampol and his group kept looking at one another, before finally deciding to follow after the other bunch.

  The kids, about twenty-five of them all together, walked in a pack, kicking up a haze of dust as they went. They made a lot of noise and played pranks on one another until some of the smaller kids broke into tears. Tia’s funeral had come and gone for them, though the
y could still hear the monks’ humming prayers channeled to them by the wind.

  Meanwhile, Tia’s daughter was complaining to the cooks. She didn’t understand why no one had shown up for her father’s funeral.

  “Don’t take this as me speaking ill of the dead, but it’s kind of common knowledge that he was a lech,” a cook told her.

  “Yeah, he liked to move in on other people’s wives,” the second cook added.

  “One time, he took Song’s wife out into the fields and they had sex. When Song found out, he brought a bunch of his friends and they beat Tia silly. But he still didn’t learn his lesson. When he healed, he was chasing her again,” the third cook shared.

  “Some women were really into him. They went behind their husbands’ backs to meet up with him.”

  “The young women sure didn’t like him, though. They’ve all been on the receiving end of his raunchiness at least once or twice. By the end, everybody avoided even passing him on the street.”

  “Yeah, most of the men were mad at him and the women didn’t dare show up because they were afraid their husbands would suspect they had something going on with Tia. And the young women…you can forget about them. That’s why no one’s here.”

  “But strangely, the kids really loved him. I don’t know how he did it, but he always had them in stitches.”

  “Yeah, he gave them fish, sometimes, too.”

  “So maybe that’s why. And what the mortician said—how Papa died having sex—is that true?”

  The second cook looked horrified and turned red. The other two eyed her suspiciously.

  The cremation took place a few days later. Oan was at school, but Kampol and Jua showed up and waited, hoping to snatch some money in the alms toss. But even before the Samed Temple School let out for the day, the students were already mobbing the front of the crematorium. Jua ended up having to stand back and watch because he was worried about getting trampled. Kampol came out of the stampede with a black eye and not a single coin.