by Sharon McKay
“You good boy. Bell always say, but she no friend of Ol’ May. She say, ‘Pax my best boy.’ She thought she better than me. Fancy-pants, that what she was. I bet she named the lice that crawled over her. But she gone now, and she no coming back. You live with me. You do what Ol’ May say. See, nice house.” Ol’ May pointed to a two-room shack that leaned in the direction of the vanishing Pink House. It was made mostly of old car tires. Plaster and mud held the tires in place. “Here, take.” She shoved the bowl of rice into his chest.
“Thank you,” Pax muttered. He nibbled at the rice. He could not admit that they had Bell’s money box, and that they had enough money for food and had been eating every day.
“Speak up, boy. You no want to live with Ol’ May? You can live on the road. I no care.” She waved a fat hand.
He looked behind him. More boys had joined in to tear the wood from their home. At this rate the Pink House would collapse in a few hours.
Where could they go? He could rent out a bed maybe, in another place. But then the money would dwindle. It was best to spend the money on food and school. Ol’ May would not charge them, but she would make them do chores. Pax knew what one of the chores would be. She paid Bambang a few coins to sweep her shack and empty her piss-pot every day. He pursed his lips, lowered his head, and considered. Lots of people lived on the streets. He could do it if he was on his own, but what would he do with Kai?
“Kai must stay too,” Pax said.
“No, no. He too young. He bother. Take him to the church. Leave him on steps.” She waved her big paw about.
“We stay together,” Pax insisted.
“Go find somewhere else to live.” Ol’ May turned and flaunted her big backside. Pax knew the game. She was bluffing.
He looked up at her roof. “The rains are coming and your roof is leaking. I will fix your roof.”
Ol’ May turned back, twisted the hairs on her chin, and chewed her lower lip. “You fix the roof and stay one week. See that kid no cry,” she said.
Pax agreed.
That night Pax listened to Ol’ May’s snoring. When he was sure that she was in a deep sleep, he crept across the floor, pulled up a floorboard, and lowered the money box into the hole. There was one place that Pax was positive Ol’ May would never look—under her piss-pot.
Chapter 11
Every day Pax bought Kai meat and fruit. They walked far from Ol’ May’s shack because Pax did not want the neighbors to see that they had money. But how to explain their new sleeping mats, clothes, and notebooks?
“Bell left me this much.” Pax held out his hand and revealed one piece of paper money and coins.
Ol’ May’s eyes brightened. She lifted her hand.
“No!” Pax snapped his fingers closed. “This is for school.” Before Ol’ May could lash out, Pax handed over three coins. “This is for you, because you are . . . nice.” Pax grabbed Kai’s hand and ran out the door.
They went to a new school on the other side of the village. No one knew them; no one asked questions. Teacher was kind. His skin was like copper shining in the sun. He did not have many teeth but the ones left in his head were very fine. He did not hit the boys too often. There were fifteen students of all ages, but no girls.
The schoolroom was a room in a house. A butcher shop was beside the house. All day butchers sliced meat from sheep carcasses that hung on hooks in the open air. The stench singed the insides of their noses.
The students sat cross-legged on woven mats that covered a cement floor. Pax was the oldest and Kai the youngest, although few boys knew their ages for certain.
Teacher read poetry out loud.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
“Pax, what does he mean?” whispered Kai.
“It means that if you want to ask God for help, you must be awake,” Pax whispered back.
Later, on their walk back to Ol’ May’s, Kai announced that he could make a poem too.
“Only poets can make poems,” said Pax.
“But I will write a poem.” Kai picked up a stick and scratched words into the sandy road. The earth was hard and the marks just chicken scratches.
“Read it to me,” said Pax.
Kai read:
One hand holds back the ocean,
The other hand holds back the wind.
One hand sweeps away dirt,
The other hand wipes away tears.
“Do you have four hands?” Pax asked.
Kai nodded. “See?” He pressed his palms against Pax’s palms. “Now I have four hands.” He giggled.
“And now you are a poet,” said Pax.
Laughing, Kai swung on Pax’s arm.
After the first week, Teacher did not ask Pax to pay Kai’s school fees. Kai was his prize student. Teacher said that Kai was one of the smartest boys he had ever taught. “He can attend high school. He will make my little school famous.” Teacher grinned a toothy grin.
“Class will begin,” said Teacher as he tapped his desk with a pointer.
Two boys, sitting side by side at the back of the class, pushed one another. Teacher raised his voice. “Who started this?” he asked. Each boy blamed the other.
Teacher said, “God has knowledge of everything.” He waited. The boys hung their heads. Teacher smiled. The other students grinned sheepish grins.
“Does God care about Pax and me?” Kai asked.
Teacher said, “If you need anything, pray to God and He will help you.”
Kai’s jaw dropped. He was amazed. “What do I say to God?” he asked.
“Whisper to God, and the whisper will return like a song,” said Teacher. “Now we will return to mathematics.”
After school, and with happy thoughts in his head, Kai hummed as they walked back to Ol’ May’s shack.
“Look, Pax.” Kai noticed a poster tacked onto a wall in the alley. “Is it a bird?” he asked.
They both stared. The creature on the poster had a long, white, feathered tail speckled with glittering stones. Her body was birdlike but her face, sculpted as if in stone, was that of a beautiful girl. On her head was a crown of sparkling pebbles.
“What is it doing there?” asked Kai.
“I don’t know,” said Pax. There were no words on the poster—nothing.
“Can we take it?” Kai asked.
Pax looked up and down the street. No one was watching. He carefully peeled the poster off the wall.
The two boys ran into Ol’ May ’s hut. They put the poster up on the wall, then sat down on their mats and admired it.
“She is like a queen,” said Kai.
“No, a goddess,” said Pax.
Kai leaned against Pax. Teacher had said, “If you need anything, pray to God.” What would he pray for? He did not like Ol’ May, but he had a mat, and food, he went to school, and most of all he had Pax. He had everything he wanted.
Chapter 12
“Pax, it has been a year since you have been in my school. You are smart enough to go to a state school. I have taught you all I know,” said Teacher.
Pax shook his head. “I must stay with Kai. He is only six,” he said.
Teacher looked at Pax with soft eyes. “You are a good boy. If you stay, you can be my assistant and teach the younger ones.”
He gave Pax a few coins to repeat the alphabet and numbers to young students. Every cent was accounted for, but he needed more money, much more money. He needed work.
There was a taxi stand on the main road. Pax and Kai passed the stand every day. A driver pulled Pax’s arm. “I pay you ten cents for every fare you get for my taxi,” he said. Pax agreed to come every day after school.
“Pax, I want to work too,” said Kai.
Pax shook his head. He wanted to keep an eye on Kai. It was easy to lose sight of a small boy on a crowded street.
Kai squatted on his haunches
in an alley between two shops and looked at the numbers in his copybook. Pax tried to get the attention of people walking by. It was hard work. He watched the other boys doing the same job. They cried out, “Hey Mister, you look rich. You should drive in a car like a rich man.” Pax tried shouting too. “Take a taxi, Mister? Why walk?” It took Pax three hours to make thirty cents, only enough to buy rice and bread.
One day Pax made nothing at all. An older boy said, “There is a foreign man looking for bike couriers.” Pax did not know what a bike courier was. “You ride a bicycle and deliver packages. And they even give you a bike,” he said.
Pax made a deal with Ol’ May. He would give her part of his pay if she would watch Kai. Ol’ May agreed. Pax went off to become a bicycle-boy. That’s when Pax met Andy.
Andy had red hair. He was a foreigner who came to their city to help street kids. Andy said that the deliveries were local and that the boys did not have to travel too far into the city.
The boys sat on wooden benches in an upstairs room of an old building and waited for the telephone to ring. Andy would call out a name and say something like, “You, go to Banboo Street and pick up a package. Ask for . . .” And then he’d say a name, like Mr. Samaur or Mr. Bitoo. When a bicycle-boy delivered the package, he usually got a tip. It was a good job, easy too, until the rains returned.
The rains began like silver threads dangling from the clouds. But soon the threads were so numerous and fell together so quickly that they became as thick as sheet metal. Dirt paths turned slimy and slippery. Ditches became swollen with water. The debris and sludge that clogged them began to run free and spilled over onto the paths and roads. Bike tires got caught in the little rivers. The bicycle-boys repeatedly tumbled over their handlebars and into the mud. Packages fell into the muck too. Some days they did not get a tip; they got a clip to the ear instead. Some days the telephone did not ring and the boys just sat, backs to the wall, waiting.
One day a man clomped up the stairs. He stood in the doorway and gazed around the room, resting his eyes on one boy, and then another, and then another. He looked at the boys as if he were inspecting fish or meat. He gave his closed umbrella a good shake and then flicked off rain that had beaded like tiny pearls on his suit. Thin as a stick, he walked past the boys and into Andy’s office.
Andy had a window in his office door. No one could hear what the two were saying but Pax could see Andy frown, shake his head, and run his fingers through his red hair until it stood up in points, rooster fashion.
The man came out of Andy’s office and stood at the top of the room. He pointed. His fingernails were curly and as brown as wood.
“Who would like to make a lot of money?” he asked.
Hands shot up in the air. “Me, me, me!” the boys cried.
Pax shoved his hands under his thighs, as if to pin them in place. There was something wrong about this man. But what?
The man’s upper lip pulled into a sneer. He had stubby, yellow teeth, a forehead as slanted as a roof, and the eyes of a snake lying on a hot rock. Even from where Pax sat on his bench, the man smelled stale, like water in the ditch.
“They call him Mister,” Tirta, another bicycle-boy, whispered into his ear.
“Mister what?” asked Pax.
“Just Mister,” said Tirta.
“What does he want?” Pax whispered back.
Tirta shrugged. “He asks boys to make deliveries. He will pay double the money Andy pays.”
“Double?” said Pax, eyes wide.
Tirta nodded. “And his driver takes us in his car.”
A car? Pax had never been in a car. “It must be drugs,” said Pax. He knew about drug selling. The punishment for selling drugs was death by hanging.
Tirta shrugged. “Mister said no drugs.”
“Do you believe him?” asked Pax.
Tirta shrugged again. “It makes no difference. See, he gives out buzzers. When it beeps and lights up, it means that Mister wants to meet a bicycle-boy.” Tirta pulled a little blue-and-silver beeper from his pocket. He pressed a button. It lit up and the beeper beeped.
“You work for Mister too?” Pax asked.
“Sometimes. But he wants more boys,” said Tirta.
“Where do you go when the beeper goes off?” asked Pax.
“Do you know the kebab-seller between the dress shop and the metal-seller?” Tirta’s whisper was so low that Pax had to lean in to hear.
“Yes,” said Pax.
“We meet there. When the beeper goes off , I have to run fast. Mister gets angry if he waits too long.” Tirta slipped the beeper into his front pocket. “I never keep him waiting.”
“And he pays you?” asked Pax.
“Big money, and in American!” said Tirta.
Pax whistled. American money, that was good.
Mister pointed to Tirta. The boy smiled and followed Mister down the stairs.
Pax looked back at Andy. He did not look happy, but then the phone rang.
“Pax,” Andy bellowed. Pax leapt up and ran towards the office. “Here, go to this address and pick up a package. They will tell you where to deliver it. Hurry.” Andy handed Pax a slip of paper. Pax was the only bicycle-boy who could read.
“Andy, about Mister . . . ?” Pax dithered in front of Andy’s desk.
“Stay away from him. Go!” Andy snarled but he did not look up.
Pax dashed down the stairs. It was a good address. Maybe he would get a good tip.
Even though Kai stayed with Ol’ May, he still had to follow Pax’s rules. First, he had to do homework. Teacher gave Kai special homework. It was difficult work, algebra and geometry. Only when the work was done did Pax say that Kai could play outside of the shack. But he was not to go near the big road. “Promise?” Pax would ask Kai, over and over. Kai would nod and say, “I promise.”
Ol’ May laughed at Pax. “What you think this learning do? Nothing.” She waved her big hands about as if swatting flies.
It was hot. The rains had stopped. Pax came home from the bicycle shop and found Ol’ May’s hut empty.
“Kai?” he called out. He stood outside. The whole area was quiet. Agung, an old man who lived with his daughter, squatted on his haunches outside his shack. He was the only sign of life. “Agung, have you seen Kai?” Pax called out.
The old man cupped his hand around his ear.
“I said, HAVE YOU SEEN KAI, THE BOY?” Pax shouted.
The man batted the air with a crippled hand and hollered, “Gone to the execution.”
“What execution?” Pax asked, but he did not wait for an answer.
Pax ran down the lanes, dodged small carts, leapt over ditches, and smacked back dozens of hanging wires that brought television and electricity to their area. Crates and stacks of filthy dishes lined the alleys. He heard the groan of a machine, the sharp grind of metal scraping against metal. Laundry flapped overhead. He kept running. He turned a corner. And then there they were—a surge of people coming towards him, all smiles. Children led the way, leaping and jumping as if returning from a day in the park.
“Pax, Pax!” Kai cried out, both hands waving in the air. He raced towards him and fell into Pax’s arms. Instantly Pax’s T-shirt was wet with Kai’s tears.
“What has happened?”
“The man’s feet kept dancing. They hanged him from a big thing.” Kai turned to Ol’ May, who was not far behind. “What was he hanged from?” Kai called out.
“A crane,” hollered Ol’ May. She was flushed pink from heaving her great bulk around.
“They tied his hands behind his back and put a blindfold over his eyes and then the crane lifted him high in the air.” said Kai as he buried his face in Pax’s shoulder.
“You are all right,” Pax whispered into Kai’s ear. Then he turned to Ol’ May. “You should not have taken him to see such a thing,” he yelled. His voice rose above the noise of the crowd.
“Boy having fun. Dead man a drug dealer, murderer maybe. He deserved to die,” jeered Ol�
�� May.
Pax faced Ol’ May square. “Kai is just a boy!” he screamed at the woman.
“And you like old man. You no his father. Where you get ideas? I tell you, from foreign woman, Bell. Mad as they come. Killed herself, too. Ha!” Ol’ May threw her great paws up in the air.
“She was sick! Don’t you talk about her ever again.” Pax could have hit Ol’ May. He could have shoved her back into the ditch, stepped on her face, and drowned her in the mud. Instead he took Kai’s hand and marched down the path towards the shed.
Bell—he was beginning to forgive her.
A man, a stranger, paced outside Ol’ May’s hut. Pax slowed down. The man was neither young nor old but some age in between. His clothes looked expensive—new and clean. He wore shiny shoes with pointy toes.
“Stay close.” Pax pushed Kai behind him. Maybe he was from the city. Maybe he had come to take Kai away. “Who is that?” Pax whispered to Agung, who still squatted on the edge of the road with his knees up against his ears.
“That be Ol’ May’s son.” The old man chuckled.
Pax stopped and stared. Ol’ May had a son?
Ol’ May’s voice rang out in greeting. She pushed past Pax and stumbled towards her son. Her arms were outstretched, her face cracked open into a wide smile. Ol’ May son’s face contorted in disgust. He turned his back on her and walked into the hut. Ol’ May followed. There was a spring in her step.
Pax and Kai waited on the road beside old Agung. They heard shouting and then sobs. The son charged out of the hut as if he were on fire.
“It’s always the same.” Old Agung chuckled.
“What is?” asked Pax.
“The son hates the mother. He gives her a few coins so that she does not come to the great city and embarrass him. I think he is tired of giving her even a small portion of his money. What use is she to him?” Agung shrugged.
“Stay here,” Pax whispered to Kai.
Slowly, silently, Pax walked over to Ol’ May’s hut and stood on the threshold. There she was, sitting on the floor, her massive head cupped by her gigantic hands. Great mounds of flesh escaped her soiled blouse as her body heaved in sobs. He tried not to recoil from the stench. The shack stank of tobacco, sweat, and stale beer. Coins lay on the bare floor in front of her.