Bright

by Duanwad Pimwana

  Kampol tried to be friends with the dog by tossing him a roll of bread each day. The dog was no glutton, though, and didn’t allow anyone to come near him. He only ate when no one was watching. And if you ventured even a couple of steps beyond the perimeter of the fence, he would start growling scarily.

  Word of the dog’s abandonment began to spread, and lots of people were interested in making him their pet. An older boy, a sixth-grader at Kampol’s school, declared that he would be the dog’s owner. He lived nearby, not far from the wooden house.

  “He’s called Sua. Don’t go in there. He doesn’t like kids,” the boy said.

  “Yesterday, the lottery seller also said she was going to adopt it,” Oan said.

  “The man who runs the junk shop, too. He said he wanted him to be a watchdog for his store. He feeds him every day,” Kampol told them.

  “Nobody knows the dog better than I do,” the older boy said. “He doesn’t warm up to people easily. You have to be patient. When Auntie Juk first got him, three months went by before Sua even let her pet his head a little. It was six months before she could hug him.”

  “And where did Auntie Juk go? Why did she leave Sua behind?”

  “She didn’t want to, but she had to sell the house. Auntie Juk had to move in with her younger sister. She lives in a tall building where they don’t allow dogs.”

  “She shouldn’t have left him.”

  “He loves her like she was his own mother. Sua doesn’t believe it yet that he’s been abandoned. We’ll have to wait until he wraps his mind around it, until he stops waiting. Only then will he open up to other people. If someone wants him they’ll have to be patient. I know him well, but Auntie Juk thinks of him only as a dog. If she thought of him as her child, she wouldn’t have abandoned him.”

  Kampol, eyebrows dropping, blinked rapidly as he listened.

  The neighbors left an abundance of food out to lure him, but Sua grew increasingly thin. His fur, once clean, became filthy and matted. His stocky elegance slowly diminished. One by one, the people who had tried to forge a bond with him withdrew, and Sua still refused to submit to anyone’s friendship, holding out for his mother’s return.

  The changes continued. A contractor brought in workers to tear down the fence and the house. Sua ran wildly around the property, panicked. He barked, he howled, he grunted, he growled. Only when the sun was low and the workers had left for the day did he quiet down. By then, the fence and the house were no longer standing. Even the overgrown grass had been trampled flat to the ground. On one corner of the property, the workers had built a corrugated iron shed to take breaks from the sun or rain. Boards that had been part of the fence and house were piled near the shed. Sua sniffed around. He decided to use the pile of wood—the last remnants of the house—as the place to sit and continue waiting for his mother. Occasionally, he scaled the whole heap and sat atop with his head held high. Mostly, though, he avoided people’s eyes by staying in a pit he’d dug under the pile. Kampol and his friends began to forget about him.

  One day, though, on their way home from school, Kampol and Oan came across Sua running down the side of the road. The dog paused periodically to rummage through overflowing garbage cans. Then he went back home, or back to the remains of his home. Construction had begun on the land that was otherwise empty except for the shed. The pile of wood had disappeared. There were only a few rotting wallboards and the depression that had once been Sua’s lair remaining.

  Kampol took out some bread and stepped closer, little by little. Sua was crouched in what was left of his hole, watching Kampol without moving. Kampol held out the bread as far as his arm would reach. Sua got on his feet, and Oan jumped, shouting to his friend to be careful. Kampol was trembling but kept his courage. Sua approached and, though still vigilant, took the bread from Kampol’s hand. Kampol pet his head. Sua backed away. He peered at Kampol for a second, then he turned and went back to his pit with the bread. Kampol and Oan looked at each other and grinned.

  When they passed by the older boy’s house, the two were so eager to tell him about what had happened that they talked over each other.

  “Sua’s given in. He ate bread from my hand, and let me pet his head, too. He believes now that he’s been abandoned. He’s quit waiting. Why don’t you go get him and bring him home?”

  The older boy laughed at them.

  “You idiots, you pet its head with your bare hands? Haven’t you seen how it’s got scabies all over it? If you want it you can have it. Be my guest.”

  Kampol and Oan walked home, still exhilarated by having won Sua over, but confused and sad at the same time.

  Quiet, Please!

  The grown-ups were constantly warning the kids not to bother Bangkerd the mortician.

  Chong was emphatic that they mustn’t make a lot of noise outside his apartment, because Bangkerd needed to sleep during the day. Dum told them the mortician kept a ghost inside his home, and Keow, the mortician’s next-door neighbor, said she’d heard fits of yelling, which sounded like he was tussling with something or someone to her.

  But the prohibition might as well have been encouragement. The children liked to snoop around in front of the mortician’s home. They were careful not to make noise in the beginning. Their routine was to crouch low and lean against the wall under his window, then poke their heads one by one carefully over the edge and peek between the glass louvers into the room.

  “He’s sleeping,” Oan whispered after he retreated.

  It was Kampol’s turn to poke his head up. Huddling back down, he told everyone: “He’s got joss sticks burning on his Buddha stand.”

  Ploy stood up and then very quickly withdrew. “He’s not asleep. His eyes are open.”

  Jua rose then ducked down. “He’s up.”

  “He’s up? What’s he doing? Is he fighting a ghost?”

  Kampol stood for another look and stayed up. “Nobody there,” he reported to his friends.

  Everybody stood up. All of them tried to shove the others out of the way as they clung to the grating on the mortician’s window, fighting for a view between the panes of glass. All they saw was an empty bed and an empty room. They caught a whiff of burning incense. Then, all of a sudden, the door flew open. The children jumped back screaming, and when the mortician emerged wielding a baton, the group exploded in every direction. But the mortician managed to grab only one of the kids by his collar.

  Jua shrieked, his mouth stretched wide. You could hear him all the way to Chong’s store.

  “Quiet!” the mortician barked. “I said, quiet!”

  Jua shut up but couldn’t stop sniveling. His face was wet with tears.

  “How many times have I told you all not to play around here? Why don’t you ever listen?”

  “I wasn’t playing,” Jua replied. He glanced over at his friends, who had regrouped a safe distance away and were watching him suffer. “Those kids over there brought me to come and look.”

  “If you want to look at me so desperately, then look!” Jua did his best to yank his face left and right but the mortician had it clutched tight and forced Jua to look at him straight on. “And don’t cry,” he growled when he saw Jua’s face rumple. “Get your eyeful, and don’t you dare blink. If you blink, I’m going to knock you on the head.”

  Jua didn’t last more than a second staring at the mortician. He cracked, struggling and screaming for his life.

  The mortician let go. He sighed as he watched Jua limping away. Then he turned and went back inside, smiling to himself. Finally, he was going to get plenty of sleep—it had been three nights in a row he had had to stay up at the temple to ensure that incense burned continuously by the casket.

  “He forced me to look him right in the eye. And he wouldn’t let me blink. He said if I did, he was going to club my head with the baton,” Jua told his friends.

  “I suspect Uncle Kerd’s been possessed by a ghost,” Noi said, his expression darkly serious.

  Everybody’s heart
pounded.

  “He doesn’t know it. We’ve got to help him,” he said.

  And so again—very quietly—the children tiptoed back.

  Kerd the mortician was about to cross into sweet slumber when he sensed something flickering at his window. But he was dead tired and determined to keep his eyes shut and ignore it. Beneath his lids, though, his fury and his fatigue were doing battle, and soon enough the former triumphed over the latter.

  But not for long: sheer exhaustion came back and brought his rage to its knees. The mortician couldn’t fall asleep, but he also didn’t have the energy to get up. He could do nothing but lie still, staring at the ceiling.

  A short while into their stakeout, the children grew concerned about the inert body lying on the bed with its eyes stuck open. Their whispering started to grow louder and louder: “He’s dead.”

  “Let’s try calling out to him,” one of them said.

  “Uncle! Uncle Kerd!” Noi yelled.

  The mortician moved his head slightly, shifting his gaze from the ceiling to the children at the window. He was trying to think of a solution whereby he could sleep in peace, without the children disturbing him, since both warnings and threats had failed. Since he was coming up empty, he simply lay still, looking at the kids all bunched together at his window, sticking their noses against it.

  The children, joining forces in a chorus now, called out to him. Because they weren’t getting a reply, they felt they needed to try a new tactic. Kampol went and tried the doorknob, reporting back that the door wasn’t locked. All of them barged in. They surrounded the mortician’s bed, shouting his name and shaking him.

  The mortician, utterly hopeless, closed his eyes and turned his head from side to side. He labored to push himself up to a sitting position since trying to sleep was a lost cause. He glared at every one of the children in turn and then groaned, “What the hell are you doing inside my house?”

  “He’s come back! Uncle Kerd’s come back!” The children looked relieved. “You were possessed by a ghost, but it’s gone now.”

  The mortician’s head dropped. “Yeah, thanks for your help. Now, please, it’s time you all go home. It’s about to get dark—you don’t want to get possessed, do you?” He looked at the children with his eyes pleading.

  By nightfall, the mortician was out cold. Because he lived alone, he had never realized that he was a sleepwalker: he got up at night to fight ghosts in his sleep.

  That night, he sleepwalked again, but for the first time he sleep-battled children.

  Meant to Be

  Everyone teased Kampol, all the time, about a little girl who sold grilled sticky rice. Nadda was six, a second grader at the Samed Temple School, where Jua went to school. She and Kampol were destined to be together, according to all the adults, because she had also been abandoned by her parents. But Nadda had a home and grandparents to look after her. Everybody knew Old Choi, a war veteran who was missing his left leg, and his wife, Jeu, who sold grilled sticky rice and whose left foot was about to be amputated because of diabetes.

  “Nad, dear, where’s your grandmother? Why are you out selling sticky rice alone?” Chong asked.

  “It was too much for Grandma to get around on her foot today, so she sent me out instead.”

  “Aren’t your arms tired? Those bags look pretty heavy. I think there’s someone who might want to help you with them,” Chong said, pointing at Kampol.

  “Hey, Hia Chong,” Kampol yapped, a scowl coming over his face, “why are you pointing at me?”

  Every day after school, Nadda continued to hawk grilled sticky rice in her grandmother’s place. Not only did she look sad, she was growing scrawnier before everyone’s eyes. And no matter how the adults tried to lighten the mood by teasing her, she hardly ever smiled anymore.

  People got used to the new situation. The person who sold them grilled sticky rice had gone from being sixty-year-old Jeu to six-year-old Nadda. The grandmother did the grilling at home, and the granddaughter made the rounds selling. Kampol hated being teased so he never bought grilled sticky rice anymore.

  One afternoon, after Kampol had finished his homework, he went out to look for his friends. Jua wasn’t home, and Oan was nowhere to be found. He ended up walking all the way over to the old housing development, where he passed Old Jeu’s home. He saw rows of sticky rice on a grill with a thin cloud of smoke rising from them. Kampol looked around but didn’t see anyone, so he simply kept walking. Then he froze: someone was calling out. Kampol turned around, went back over to the house, and poked his head inside. In the dim home, he saw Old Jeu—a dark heap on the floor in front of the bathroom.

  “Help me, whoever’s there. Can you go get Choi?”

  Kampol was flustered hearing the old lady’s groans of pain. He sprinted up the street and then back down, but he didn’t find Old Choi until he ran across and down another street. The old man was playing chess with a friend, who looked to be about his own age.

  Choi, frantic, swung his cane far forward and hopped to join it, over and over. Kampol followed close behind him the whole way. A few neighbors came over and helped get the old lady off the ground. A junk truck happened to be nearby; it backed up and parked, and Jeu was carried onto it. She was seated with her back against the bundles of used paper. Old Choi climbed in and sat next to her, and they went off to the hospital. As their help was no longer needed, the neighbors dispersed. In a daze, Kampol remained standing there, even as his nose picked up the scent of something burning. Finally, he gathered his wits and went to investigate: the sticky rice on the grill had been charred black, but luckily the fire had gone out.

  Back at Chong’s grocery, a crowd had congregated. Kampol was bewildered by the scene when he arrived—in the back of his mind he feared that something similar to what he had witnessed moments ago might have also happened here. But then he heard Oan’s voice.

  “Here he is. Here comes Kampol, sir.”

  One of the grown-ups turned around. It was the principal of the Baan Huaykapi School.

  “Oh, so this is Kampol Changsamran? Come here, my boy, come over here.”

  Everybody made way for Kampol. The principal had good news: Kampol was going to receive a scholarship of four thousand baht to help with his school expenses. The purpose of the principal’s visit was to check in on Kampol’s living conditions. Having been told about Kampol’s situation by a number of the people in the neighborhood, the principal had been overcome with sadness and sympathy. He asked Kampol more about his parents, all the while gently patting the boy on the head and shoulder.

  While Kampol was telling the principal about his father, through a small gap in the crowd of bodies gathered around him, he spotted Nadda. She was holding bags loaded down with grilled sticky rice, her eyes melancholy and her head hanging. Her little arms looked bent from the weight of the bags. No one else saw her, because no one else turned.

  When Kampol spoke of his mother, everybody hushed to listen. The principal, his expression serious, gave his complete attention. Kampol himself didn’t look like he was holding up too well. He wanted people to turn around, notice Nadda, and help her out by buying her grilled sticky rice. Someone should tell her that her grandmother was ill and had been taken to the hospital. And that all of the sticky rice on the grill had burned.

  Nadda lingered, looking around aimlessly. Kampol kept peeking at her through the narrow space, growing more and more sorrowful. He wanted to tell her that her grandmother had fallen in front of their bathroom and had been rushed to the hospital, but with everyone standing around him he didn’t want to be teased about how he was destined to be with Nadda.

  Then she was gone from the little gap.

  Kampol was in the middle of talking about Jon, his little brother, but he suddenly broke off, his face crumpling. His large eyes welled up, and tears began to spill out.

  The principal pulled Kampol into his arms. “All right, that’s enough. You don’t have to tell me any more. I understand.”

&nbs
p; But the more he was comforted, the harder he sobbed.

  “From now on, if you need something or have any problem at all, come let me know. Don’t be sad, my boy… Now, now, be still. Why don’t you tell me what you need most right now—are your clothes, shoes, and school socks still in decent shape?”

  In the principal’s embrace, Kampol cast his eyes up the road, toward the front of the housing community. He pointed and said in clipped phrases, “I… I want…grilled sticky rice.”

  I’m Not Just Me

  One day Kampol had had enough of his life. During first period at school, he got into a scuffle with a girl named Rattana, and Mr. Sanya summoned them to the front of the classroom. At the end of it, they were both given detention during lunchtime, during which they were to help the janitor sweep the cafeteria instead of having recess. The punishment for Rattana was for one day, but for Kampol it was three days, even though she’d instigated the fight. To add insult to injury, Mr. Sanya made Kampol stay after class for a one-on-one chat.

  “It’s because you’re a boy that your punishment is more severe. Boys can’t beat up on girls, do you understand that? Answer me—do you understand?”

  Kampol mumbled a “Yes.” He pouted, conceding only grudgingly. All he could think about was how hard Rattana’s hand had landed on his back, leaving him winded. And when he’d spun around to retaliate, all he’d been able to do was tap on her shoulder with his fingertips, because Rattana, that little monkey, was too quick.

  “Kampol, look up. I’m being hard on you because I know you don’t have anyone. The other kids, they have parents or relatives around to give them love and to keep them disciplined. If you want me to get off your back, you have to take care of yourself, you have to learn to keep yourself in line. You have to become an adult sooner than the others.”

  That afternoon, Ms. Angkana inspected everybody’s personal hygiene. Kampol’s nails were too long and had black gunk under them, and he had a thick layer of grime behind his ears, so he received raps across his knuckles and flicks on his ears. And even though half of his class had unkempt nails and their skin was just as grimy, Kampol was again singled out to stay after class for a talk.