Spider Boys

by Ming Cher

  “Join the fun,” Yeow avoided meeting her eyes, and instead shook hands with Kwang. “I just came back! How are you?” he smiled. “Big day tomorrow?”

  “Yah, we talk later.” Kwang grinned, not noticing Kim’s expression. He introduced the girls to Shoot Bird, who was looking at them, surprised.

  “Are you all here for tomorrow?” Shoot Bird asked the girls. “Yah, same team with me,” Kwang replied for them. There was no rule against having girl supporters, and the big man, in fact, enjoyed seeing something different. But he was confused about Yeow and Chai, who he thought were from Bukit Ho Swee. “What district are you actually playing for?” he asked.

  Turning red with embarrassment, Yeow looked to Chai for help. Chai stared at Big Mole. Big Mole, in turn, looked helplessly at Shoot Bird and Kwang. Then Yeow, who wanted to nip the problem in the bud, said, “We are here for Chinatown.” He knew that the Chinatown boys had not showed up. When they did eventually arrive, the cunning Yeow bought their spiders from them so that he could represent Chinatown with Chai. “It’s the same thing, okay?” he said, to keep them from losing face. “I pay for the entry fees. You can have the money if I win.”

  This time, the thirty-five districts paid thirty-five dollars to register each spider. This money would eventually make up the winner’s bonus. Everyone agreed to allow a maximum of thirty-five people per district to join the games. Having a bigger group of participants meant allowing a risk that things may go out of control and cause fights, which had happened in past matches. Everyone who registered was given a number and the name of their district was written on a bamboo chip.

  The day ended with a party hosted by Shoot Bird, who showed everyone the gold medal for the year. Kim did not want to sit at the same table as Yeow and Chai, so she became nice to Kwang again and stuck her tongue out at the other two boys before leaving the scene with Kwang.

  15

  Spider Olympics

  IT WAS SUNDAY morning. More than two hundred spider boys from Bukit Ho Swee had been waiting under the banyan tree since before ten o’clock, and they now crowded around Kwang as he squatted before them, a spider box in his hand.

  “Show you all something first before we go,” he boasted, in a great mood. “Don’t say I don’t let you all see my king first.” He paraded his spider and watched the boys going “woh!” as they observed its size, rich colours and powerful limbs.

  “Let me show you how the king moves,” Kwang boasted again and gave one of the boys a different spider box. “Here, use this to kembang with my king and see how.”

  The other spider was a big one too. Both spiders jumped into the fighting arena, stared at each other and started to dance. When their arms met and their jaws locked, Kwang’s king spider tossed the other in midair with a single flip using both arms. The second spider landed an inch away but regained its posture to charge again. The king spider again tossed his opponent aside, and again and again after that, like a cat playing with a mouse.

  “Sure win or not?” Kwang said gleefully. “Enough?” He snapped his fingers at his pet, which looked up as he held out his hand, palm facing downwards. The spider leapt onto his hand and waited, as if for further instructions. It was so well trained from all the love, care and patience that Kwang had invested in it. Every boy’s face reflected the utter amazement he felt at the bond they witnessed between the spider and his master.

  His pride swelling, Kwang declared to the crowd, “This year I’m sure to win. If not, I’ll chop off my head! I tell you all why.”

  Before Kwang could elaborate, however, Ah Seow suddenly slapped him on his back. “Hey! Hey! Your mother behind you!”

  Yee had heard rumours and meant to check on him for a long time. She appeared from behind the old tree.

  Ah Seow’s words were like thunderbolt to Kwang and he turned pale. He had no time to put his spider away. In the split second that his king appeared to be looking up at him, he saw Yee’s cane coming down on him. He bent over his spider to protect it and took the lash on his back, and then ran with the king cupped inside both his hands. He looked like a person running with handcuffs on.

  Yee screamed after him like a madwoman. “This time I am going to kill you! I have no more eyes to see!” It was as if Kwang were still a small child.

  Although Kwang could, on a normal day, easily outrun his mother, it was not easy to run well with hands held together. His stamina was good, but an angry person’s energy was heightened. His speed and his mother’s were evenly matched. Losing his nerve, Kwang started to run uphill but lost his footing. Having no handhold, he tumbled down the slope helplessly, the spider still cupped between his palms. When he landed on even ground and checked his spider again, he saw that one of its arms had been squashed by his own hands. He quickly put it back into its box.

  Once his mother caught up, Kwang grabbed her cane and used it to return the whipping, enraged. “Go and die! Go and die! I am not your son anymore!” Then he dropped the cane and walked away. At the age of fourteen, he had renounced his mother.

  It was not the physical pain that hurt. It was her son’s words that broke Yee’s heart. She fainted. Villagers rubbed white flower oil on her nostrils to revive and console her. “Let him go! Let him go!” they said. “The world nowadays is turning the other way. He grew wings already!”

  • • •

  Kwang went to the farmer’s patch of the big yam leaves. His grief over his injured spider was unbearable. One of its arms was crushed and twisted. He howled with hurt and anger. Ah Seow, who knew where he would go, found him squatting with chin on the spider box. San, Big Mole, and Kim followed him.

  “Get lost!” he said, flaring up at the sight of them.

  Ah Seow, startled, stepped back with a jerk, the record books and other spider boxes clonking against one another inside his shoulder bag. But Big Mole had become bolder. “Get angry with us, no use,” she said. “What are you going to do now?”

  “Hard to say.” Kwang looked away from her and mumbled, “Have to find a place to stay. I think my fucking mother will take my two small brothers away.”

  “I think so too,” Kim admitted quietly.

  “Then what to do?”

  Big Mole continued. “I asked Sachee to follow them.”

  “Yah,” Ah Seow confirmed.

  “Don’t worry,” San calmly assured Kwang. “I know my father will find something for them and your mother. We will find them no matter where they go, we are surrounded by friends!”

  Kwang recovered sufficiently to stand up. “Yah,” he whispered. “Stay here all day also no use.”

  “Let me look at your spider.” Kim took the box from him.

  At first, they thought his spider was dead. They all looked more carefully, and saw that the spider was biting at the injured arm and trying to shake it off. It looked a lot better already. Ah Seow whispered to San, “Spider with one arm can still fight!” This was true, spiders could do that. They normally took a day or two to recover from the injury and could grow a new arm within a few months.

  “No need to talk cock lah,” Kwang grumbled. He snapped his fingers and his spider looked up at him. He gently spat out some saliva for his pet. Then he put it back into the box, with a female spider inside as consolation, and turned to San, “We’d better go down and divide the pool money back to everybody. I don’t want to go to Redhill. We can’t win now.”

  But when they returned, the boys who had been waiting all insisted he should go ahead with the competition. Some argued, “We won’t regret! Die, die together!” Some other boys said, “Maybe we can still win with the other two, give it a go! Better to die fighting than nothing!” Another said, “Stupid not to go when you paid the entry fees!”

  “They are right, don’t waste time,” said San, who knew how to say the right thing at the right time. “Your two small brothers are all right with my father now.”

  “And Sachee is there!” Big Mole assured him further.

  “Yah!” Kim agreed, pul
ling him up. “You must go!”

  The sense of everyone’s participation cleansed Kwang’s personal grief. “Yah lah,” he finally admitted, as if he were born again. “No point running away. We can play smart to win at least some money back. I think I know who else can win.” He grinned, “We go! And die, die together!”

  “Yah lah! Die, die together!” All the spider boys, big and small, threw up their hands in a rousing show of support.

  • • •

  The Spider Olympics started at one o’clock. The thirty-five participants from Bukit Ho Swee were given a rousing farewell by the rest of the village as they set off eastwards. It was as if they were going on a trip. Some of them armed themselves with slingshots for shooting at wild fruit, birds and flying lizards along the way. After an hour of bush tramping, they came to the top of Redhill, where they looked down at a large space occupied by a brick factory. Trucks were unloading planks and bottle crates for building temporary seats around five spider-fighting arenas, randomly arranged in the shadow cast in a straight line by the sun crossing west over the cliff. Viewing the match would be like looking down into a pit at a one-metre-square piece of white board, which served as the fighting platform for the spiders. Planks were arranged in rows, supported on wooden crates. To create three seating tiers, the crates were positioned in three different ways—on their widest surface, on their short side and on their long side respectively.

  The team discussed competitive tactics. San pondered, “Who else do you think is good? We should back them as well.”

  “I know,” Kwang said decisively, hatching a plan in his mind. “Use half our pool money to roll behind the guy from Bukit Timah, crew-cut hair like Sachee. Spread out just a little bit on ourselves. Save the rest to see what happen.”

  “That is the best way,” Ah Seow said. “Spread our capital out.” He led the way down the slope. By the time they arrived at the site of the games, another truck had arrived with cases of soft drinks from Shoot Bird. Spider boys who had hopped onto the truck from the main road now got out to help unload the drinks. Among them were Yeow and Chai. Kim and Big Mole pretended they didn’t see them. Yeow did not mind that, but simply smiled to himself.

  “Hey! Monkey Boy!” Chai stared at Kwang. “What happened to your eyes? So swollen!”

  “Waste that kind of talk later,” Kwang growled. “What do you want to find out?”

  “Don’t get us wrong,” Yeow smiled. “I’m only here to join the fun, come to see you win. What are you going to do after this?”

  “Don’t know, see what happens first.”

  “We are only bluffing around here for Chinatown,” Chai said to clear the air. I am throwing my pants behind you beforehand. All right with you?”

  “A word is a word,” Yeow affirmed. “Make it this way. Half of the win is yours, lose not your problem. Fair?”

  “No point talking now,” Kwang said in a straightforward fashion. “I’d better show you what happened to my best one today.” He opened his spider box.

  “That is like dead!” Chai winced and looked mutely at Yeow.

  “You are right,” Yeow said to Kwang. “No point talking now.” Disappointed, he started to depart.

  Chai stopped Yeow from leaving and pleaded, “Yeow, you have to register a spider. You have to play! Where are you going? I recommend you here! Don’t make me lose face.”

  “I know! Okay!” Yeow snarled quietly, feeling trapped. He turned around to watch as Kwang rejoined his group and walked around with them, mingling with the boys in the other spider groups, enjoying the free drinks as they sounded one another out. Seeing that Kwang was still very popular, Yeow decided to stay. “Why not?” he said to Chai.

  The last truck to arrive was the one transporting Shoot Bird and previous Olympic champions, who would be refereeing the games. All of them had a gold medal dangling from a gold chain, clearly visible on their unbuttoned chests. Shoot Bird wore an additional pendant with the image of a laughing Buddha carved on it. The crowd clapped to welcome their arrival while many of the spider boys, including Kwang, walked over to shake their hands. Yeow mentally photographed each of the spider boys.

  He asked Chai, “Do you know them?”

  “Yah, every single one,” Chai replied.

  Beaming with delight, Shoot Bird initiated the opening ceremony by climbing on the back of his truck with a loud hailer and speaking forcefully into it. He wanted to pair up the players by drawing lots. “Tew chiam! Tew chiam! One against Two at Table One! Five against Six at Table Five!”

  When the referees were ready, they sat on their red bricks and presented the participating spiders to the audience by placing them on the platform and using glass cups to keep the spiders in place. The bettors were allowed five minutes to observe the creatures and another ten minutes to place their bets. The referees gave all bettors receipts for their bets, from which they would later deduct two percent based on all winnings.

  • • •

  During the first preliminary, Bukit Timah made money for Kwang’s team, who had agreed to bet on that group. In a later round, Big Mole’s spider was knocked out, but Kim’s won. Kwang’s seven-legged spider, which he named after himself, stunned the crowd with a shock success. It simply kept dancing backwards for a good thirty seconds before it charged and knocked out the confused opponent. Even Kwang was surprised at the miracle recovery. He knew that the longer a spider danced, the better its form.

  • • •

  The punting from the sideline was conservative in the first preliminaries, and slightly better in the second round. Kwang and Bukit Timah continued to win, and made their way into the quarterfinals, where money changed hands more quickly and in bigger amounts. It was becoming more exciting. The public bets kept the bookkeepers running back and forth at the five tables. Racing against time, San got in behind Kwang and asked, “We turned over nearly two thousand all together. How now?”

  “Not so sure about myself yet, play safe first,” Kwang insisted. He quickly made up his mind because he knew that Bukit Timah, the hot favourite, could soon be booked out. “Use one third on me, two on Bukit Timah.”

  Again, they won on both sides and their winnings doubled. Kwang felt an overpowering urge to kiss his spider as the crowd gave the king a standing ovation.

  “Who else is winning?” He turned round to Ah Seow, who had just rushed back from checking the other results.

  Ah Seow reported hastily, “Bedok, Geylang, Punggol and Jurong.”

  A spy added, “Chai and Yeow are rolling behind Jurong.”

  Another said, “They are lending money, too.”

  “That is their problem,” Big Mole advised Kwang. “Concentrate on ourself first.”

  Kwang felt frustrated that he could not leave his player’s seat. He turned around and asked, “Where is San?”

  “Right behind you,” said San. “We are rising to three thousand... How about half-half between us and Bukit Timah?”

  “Why not!” Kim answered on Kwang’s behalf.

  “Yah, okay,” Kwang confirmed with a nervous grin. He could see that his spider was exhausted and thirsty, but spiders were not allowed to drink during the competition.

  • • •

  It was now the semifinals, and eight spiders would now compete on four separate platforms. It was like the clash of the titans. The biggest crowd, which included more than half of all the spider boys present, gathered at the platform where Jurong would fight Bukit Timah. They stood there even though most of them could barely see the action.

  “Losing money is one thing,” they moaned. “But we don’t even have a chance to watch.”

  • • •

  Yeow and Chai, who were entrants, were among the privileged ones in the front row, betting on Jurong.

  “I hope you are right,” Yeow said to Chai, just before the referee rang the bell. And they did win again; Bukit Timah lost. Ah Seow almost fainted at the size of the loss: fifteen hundred dollars. But Kwang won his way into the finals
, recovering the money. He was so ecstatic and the applause so thunderous that he heard nothing when San reported the Bukit Timah loss into his ear.

  After the noise died down, San repeated himself, “Bedok, Punggol and Jurong on the final. Bukit Timah out.”

  “I thought Bukit Timah is better than Jurong,” Kwang mumbled, still grinning. “How many rounds?”

  “Eight, according to Ah Seow.”

  “Any injury on Jurong?”

  San looked towards a spy, who said, “Lost one leg.”

  “That is not much. What about Bedok and Punggol?”

  “Punggol nothing. Hot favourite now.”

  “That’s tough. Anyway, how did Bukit Timah lose to Jurong?”

  “Jurong bites like a dirty dog,” the spy reported. “Left Bukit Timah with no arms and ran.”

  “I hope Jurong is not a bulldog spider,” Kwang guessed. “Better to see who faces who before we bet.”

  Big Mole, who was quietly listening, said, “No time to wait!”

  Ah Seow suggested, “What about don’t be greedy? Throw two thousand in, save one thousand for the grand finals? Just in case we lose?”

  But the majority said in one voice, “No! One way all the way!” All of them agreed to bet everything on Kwang.

  • • •

  Yeow and Chai were winning so much money by consistently betting on Jurong that they forgot about Kwang’s presence until Shoot Bird announced his name. Chai momentarily stopped counting his cash and looked over at his boss, who was also counting money.

  “Yeow!” he said. “You heard what Shoot Bird say? Hard to believe, Kwang is in!”

  “I am not deaf,” Yeow said warily. “Funny thing, he must have nine lives like a cat... What about change side to roll behind him?”

  “No, never bend backwards!” Chai insisted. “Jurong is a bulldog spider. Kwang will lose even if it has two arms!”