Spider Boys

by Ming Cher

  Downstairs, Ng Koo introduced Lily to an old millionaire, who later whisked her away in a Mercedes. Yeow was smoking on the bed when Ng Koo walked in, and she pinched the cigarette away and gave him a smacking kiss on the lips. She had changed into a transparent silk gown.

  “I am relieved the party is over.” She put out the cigarette on the bedside ashtray. “I am sick of making money.” She leaned over to massage Yeow’s toes. “I promised to give you a massage, didn’t I?”

  Her face was skillfully designed with makeup, which like a piece of art erased her age, making her seem mysterious and inviting, like her musk perfume. Her breasts heaved as she worked her way up his body with her hands and mouth.

  Her touch made him shiver all over. He licked and sucked her breasts hungrily, as if he could not have enough. She straddled him and pumped noisily until she dropped flat onto him in ecstasy. Yeow got up and turned her over slowly, then rode her like a beast, his teeth clenched tightly, her fingernails anchored to his back. She increased her grip on him until he exploded inside her. Even when it was all over, her legs were still spread wide open, as if she were asking for more. His excess continued to flow out of her as, through the big window, the clouds sailed across the moon, covering it completely and making the night pitch-dark.

  • • •

  Over at Bukit Ho Swee, Big Mole lay on her collapsible canvas bed, a few steps from Sachee’s, thinking hard about her impending rental deadline. The rent was twenty dollars a month. Although the place was small, it had a kitchen and a space where friends could sit on boxes. It was a home she had never had before and she loved it.

  Between them on the hard mud floor, a mosquito coil burned. The mosquitoes were terrible; they swarmed out from everywhere, especially when it rained in the day and there was no wind at night. Sachee smacked at them as they landed on his chubby face and tried to hide under the thin blanket.

  “Big Mole, Big Mole,” he cried. “One coil is not enough! Burn another one!”

  “Burn another one!” Big Mole sat up on her bed. She had a sarong on, secured around her tiny pointy breasts. “Burn another one is how much, do you know? What will happen if we have no money to pay the rent?”

  “Kwang will help you! Burn another one first!”

  Their neighbour knocked on the plank wall. “Hey! Stop talking so loud! So late!”

  Big Mole reluctantly placed a second mosquito coil under Sachee’s bed. They usually needed two coils between them for a whole night’s protection against the mosquitoes. Every penny added up in her mind. Each coil cost five cents. If they used two coils each time, Sachee’s demand meant a total of four coils and she would have to spend twenty cents every night.

  Big Mole crouched on her canvas bed, mindlessly watching the coil as it burned in the darkness. Out of its spot of light, she saw an image of Yeow smiling when he wanted something. Looking more deeply within herself, she began to see herself as trapped when she worked for him, having no self-esteem, being full of self-pity and, like Ah Seow, having no guts. She thought then about Kwang, about his interest in them, his generosity, which had no strings attached, the twinkle in his eyes when he grinned. Thinking about Kwang made her compare herself with Kim, something she had never done before.

  As the coil burned further, a semicircle section of suspended ash broke off, interrupting her stream of thoughts. She looked over at Sachee. He was snoring, but looked as if he were laughing. Big Mole frowned and got up to push him over to his side so that the snoring would stop and the laughing look would disappear.

  The still night hid nothing. Even the screeching insects outside the house sounded louder. The tapping feet of the small grey geckos feeding on mosquitoes on the ceiling gave away their positions. Their occasional clicking seemed to be a special language as they called on others to mate.

  In the discomfort of the humid night, Big Mole wished her ugly mole would disappear and her breasts were bigger. She slipped back under her blanket and touched herself all over her body. Then, with the geckos clicking away in the sweaty darkness, she masturbated for the very first time.

  14

  Shoot Bird

  AH PAW’S DEATH remained a mystery to the adults, but it no longer mattered to Kwang’s boys. The heat of the spider games was at its peak. Using money obtained from the coin scrambling, the participating spider boys conducted mini spider matches to select three representatives from each district for the finals, which would be held at Redhill as the winner in the previous year was from there.

  Yeow was trying to decide whether he should put in an appearance before the games. Timing was important. He picked up the phone and asked Cigarette Woman to send Chai to him. Chai, he heard, had started to run his Chinatown boys with a heavy hand and Yeow had deliberately withheld his salary. Chai’s hair had been given a crew cut on account of the traditional hundred days’ mourning period for his grandmother. When Yeow’s call came, he rode his bicycle half the length of Singapore to Katong.

  The door to the beach house was open when Chai arrived, perspiring heavily. A ceiling fan turned slowly above the coffeetable, where a tin of 555 cigarettes rested.

  “Lots of traffic?” Yeow smiled from his smooth leather couch, sipping his coffee coolly.

  “Crazy!” Chai fumed about it and helped himself to a smoke.

  “I don’t get you here for nothing.” Yeow admonished. Giving Chai a light with his Ronson lighter, he continued, “Tell me, what’s all this spider game stuff worth? I’m very interested.”

  “You count it yourself!” Chai puffed out smoke. “Last year, thirty-two districts paid thirty-two dollars for each spider they registered. Ninety-six spiders all together, more than three thousand dollars for the champ to take!”

  “That is a lot of water.” Yeow smiled at the thought of the money, propping a leg up on the couch so he could rub his toes. “Kwang will be fat if he can really win.”

  “Fat?” Chai’s rolled his eyes. “Very fat!”

  “He will be grinning,” Yeow agreed. “What’re his chances?”

  “Nobody can guarantee,” Chai admitted. “But I will throw down my pants to bet all on him.”

  Yeow smiled again, but said nothing. Chai could not help asking, “Are you coming out, then?”

  “Depends. I’m not sure yet. Why?”

  “Come out!” Chai suggested. “Throw your weight on the sideline, sideline betting even bigger.”

  “How much are you talking?”

  “Imagine it yourself. Last year Redhill boys pulled up a few hundred together. They laughed away with around ten thousand!”

  “Ten thousand!” Yeow stopped rubbing his toes in astonishment; he had underestimated the potential returns.

  “How many of those spider guys are there?” Yeow sensed that something really big might happen.

  “Six to seven hundred last year. More this year. Every year more areas want to join. This is not a small thing.”

  “I heard a big shot is running the show, familiar with him?”

  “Familiar! Big fat old fellow, we call him Shoot Bird for his cross eyes. He lives in Changi, why?”

  “He must be something. Wonder how he started it?”

  “He gives away a two-ounce gold medal.”

  “Waah, is it!”

  “It’s true!”

  “Did he make any out of this?” Yeow snapped his fingers to signal cash.

  “No, no, it’s just for fun! Very loaded fellow.”

  “I feel like meeting him, just for a bit of chitchat. No problem with you?” Rub shoulders with brilliance and make himself brilliant too, as Cheong Pak would say.

  “Make it tomorrow at about twelve when the Changi market closes.”

  “Why that time?”

  “Tomorrow all the spider heads have to pay cash upfront to register with him. I know him well. He won’t like to see any of us until tomorrow, to play fair.”

  “Fair enough.” Yeow stood up to signal that Chai should go. “I see you tomorrow at the same
time, okay?” He could see that his runner was feeling desperate, but he wanted to test Chai’s limits.

  Like Yeow, Chai was also an individualistic person who did not like being pushed around. But he felt embarrassed about asking for money. He lingered, rubbed his big nose, hung his head, and tried not to appear too impatient. He looked as if he was about to exhale fire, however. Seeing that, Yeow briskly pulled out three crisp hundred-dollar notes from his wallet.

  “Don’t be shy to ask,” Yeow said in a way that sounded authoritative but inoffensive.

  “Yeow,” Chai admitted, moved. “Nice of you to say it out. I feel a lot easier. I’ll do that the next time.”

  “Don’t forget, anyone can forget,” Yeow said skillfully, taming his assistant completely.

  Chai rode away happily, ringing his bicycle bell in farewell to Yeow, who waved and smiled back. When Chai was gone, he turned and walked towards the beach to think. He smiled as he thought about what Ng Koo had offered him a week ago, after sex, “Why don’t you let me buy you a car? Then you can come and see me more often.”

  “What I need is a fucking driver’s licence.” He deliberately swore, “Can’t fucking read and write. How to get it!”

  She loved his heavy language, which made her feel very horny. “That is not a problem,” she said smoothly. “How many do you want?”

  “What about the fucking police if I am caught?”

  “The police are in my hand.”

  Engrossed in his thoughts, Yeow found he had walked the length of Katong Beach. He sat down to watch a rainbow that had formed over the sea, and smiled again at the thought of meeting Kwang once more after a gap of several months. Unfortunately, he found it was hard to separate Kim’s face from the scene. To switch her off from his mind, he picked up small flat stones to throw across the incoming waves, watching as they skipped across the surface of the water.

  • • •

  Kim felt restless and went to visit Big Mole. “Why don’t you come and see me nowadays?” she asked Big Mole, who was sitting on a box alone, eating plain rice porridge.

  “I’m not like you,” Big Mole replied scornfully. “I have to worry about my rent. I have to move out!”

  “How much is your rent?”

  “Twenty dollars a month”

  “That is not much. I lend you.”

  “How to pay you back?”

  “Wait for Yeow to come home.”

  “Wait for what? Somebody said Chai met Yeow secretly, many times, more than one month ago! I am going to depend on myself from now on, even if I have to die!”

  Kim squatted down in disbelief. “Are you sure about Yeow?”

  “Very sure.” Big Mole understood how Kim felt and warned her, “Sometimes Yeow is like a devil with many faces. Don’t waste time on him.”

  “How do you know?” Kim retaliated. “You never talked like that before. Why do you want to say things behind his back? That is not fair!”

  “Who do you trust, me or him?”

  Unlike Kwang who always tried to have sex with her, Yeow did not touch Kim even when there had been an opportunity that night. “I trust him more than you,” she retorted sourly and walked away.

  Usually, it would be Big Mole who would seek reconciliation after she and Kim had bickered. But she did not do so this time. Time changed people; Big Mole was now bolder and she was determined to stand up for herself, even if she arrived at a dead end. The only thing was that this dead end was like a locked door with no key out, and the only way was to take a risk and gamble. By way of Sachee’s and Ah Seow’s new friendship, she knew that a dollar’s bet could reap anything between fifty dollars and a hundred dollars if the pool kept rolling over, all the way to the grand finals.

  Her belief in Kwang winning was very strong. As someone who spied for a living, she’d had to watch all kinds of people, and she had never seen anybody as determined as Kwang. She counted her money down to the last cent, which amounted to over five dollars, and thought about betting all of it on Kwang in the competition.

  • • •

  Kwang had developed a new way of feeding his spiders. He tied a strand of hair around a tiny bedbug and dangled it from a bamboo splint. Each time the spider pounced, he teased it by tugging the bug away, forcing the spider to try again. This tactic trained the spider to become smarter and quicker. Once the spider caught its food, Kwang dragged it along for a while so that it would hold on to its meal more tightly, and in time it would become stronger and more aggressive. Some of his spiders could hang on to their meals in midair.

  During the knockout competition, Kwang’s spiders defeated everybody else’s and he won the right to call the shots. This happened even without him having to reveal his king, which he kept a secret for strategic reasons.

  Ah Seow was delighted by the early positive outcome. “Like that, you’re sure to win,” he said to boost team spirit.

  Sachee also tried to make himself useful. “Big Brother,” he said, “what do you want me to do? Just say...”

  Ah Seow pulled Sachee aside. “Don’t worry about here, ask Big Mole to come and bet. A few dollars can make a lot. If we win, we can start the fish business.” Ah Seow was responsible for working out the grand total received from the sideline bets.

  Sachee sped away. Halfway home, he spotted her. “Big Mole!” he cried out. “Where are you going?”

  “Why?” Big Mole asked.

  “Bet on Kwang!” Sachee urged. “Maybe we don’t have to move out, go nowhere! If we win, we don’t have to worry about money anymore.”

  “I know,” Big Mole said, pursing her lips tightly. Together they went out to buy, using all of Big Mole’s savings, ten dollars’ worth of shares, at ten cents each, from Ah Seow and his best friend, San. Ah Seow and San were the spider referees who collected the cash and issued receipts. That very day, Ah Seow and San collected over five hundred dollars from more than two hundred people, all of whom had been saving for the big occasion.

  Resting under the banyan tree and surrounded by his worshippers, Kwang was quiet and kept his arms folded. There were many things weighing on his mind. “What will happen if I lose?” he wondered. His worry was reinforced by everybody looking at the money and at him with hopeful eyes. Those silent eyes spelled pressure and made him feel lonely.

  Big Mole instinctively understood how he felt and approached him. “What are you going to do next?” she asked. Chatting might relieve the pressure, she thought.

  “I think... I think I’ll go to Chinatown.”

  “Look for Chai?”

  “Yah, talk a bit and see if we are going together on his bicycle. I have to go to Changi tomorrow to put our village name down.”

  “Changi is very far away, have to change bus, how many times?”

  “Three times.” They began walking.

  “If it’s important, ten times also never mind. Why run after Chai just for a bicycle?”

  “Only temporary. I buy my own bicycle if I win.”

  “If?” Big Mole stared, thinking about her life savings at risk.

  “Yah,” he said, forcing a grin. “If not, we lose everything.”

  “That is hard.” Big Mole bit her nail nervously. “If so, what are you going to do?”

  “Think about it later. No use thinking about losing.”

  “True. Are you going alone tomorrow?”

  “Better like that. Everybody wants to go, they will grumble if I choose anybody. I can only take two.”

  “Why don’t you go with Kim?”

  “She doesn’t like what I do. Can you ask her for me?”

  “We just quarrelled.”

  “Over what?” he interrupted.

  “Not important,” Big Mole replied, holding back the truth, worried Kwang might lose his temper and ruin all their chances. “I’ll go and ask her for you.”

  “Tell her we all go together, three of us,” Kwang suggested.

  • • •

  Spider Olympics registration day was a Saturday.
Standing tall and proud and sporting a big belly, Shoot Bird was a figure none of the spider heads would miss when they arrived at his Changi coffeeshop from as far away as Jurong. At over fifty years old, he looked as wealthy and healthy as ever.

  Shoot Bird had started the spider games in 1950 after he noticed poor boys catching fighting spiders to play with. They did not have money to buy toys. His business grew like magic after that because he was right about guessing that the game crowds would attract even more people to his shop. He now ran a bustling business renting food trucks to hawkers and also still owned the big corner coffeeshop, which now had a larger space outdoors for additional tables and chairs.

  On this day, all the tables outside were reserved for the spider heads, and cold drinks and light snacks were provided for free. Upon arrival, the spider heads shook Shoot Bird’s hand with respect. After a brief handshake with Yeow, who arrived with Chai, Shoot Bird asked Chai, “Where is that boy? Third last year. Is he out this year?” He meant Kwang.

  “No, he is in,” Chai replied. “We are waiting for him.”

  “Should be here anytime soon,” Yeow said, blending in easily, even though it was an event at which everybody, except himself, knew everybody else. For a while he imagined that Shoot Bird was sizing him up with a sideways glance, but the latter’s crossed eyes were actually looking in a different direction.

  Kwang and his girl supporters arrived, causing the people around to wonder, why girls? Kwang waved at everyone and said, “I’ll see Shoot Bird first.”

  Shoot Bird simply shook his head in mock resignation because he remembered that Kwang had been the one who started calling him by the nickname two years ago. Kim, on the other hand, was angry to see Yeow. “How come you are here?” she demanded to know.