How Beautiful the Ordinary

by Michael Cart

Through a kind of fog I appreciated that the captain was embarrassed, that he felt someone must pay for his embarrassment, that those two by the wall had paid some—one had the captain’s red slap print on his cheek—and that the stable-boy who had started the thing was as good a point of extraction as any. I let him run on while I absorbed the sights of the room. I walked forward, to where I could see all the blood spread down like a fringed red cloth across Miss Bess’s bosom, and her thumb, her own thumb that had done this, still pressed on the musket’s trigger.

  I did not faint, exactly, but time did strange things then, leaping, dragging. Patches of sound went missing, so that the captain’s words went senseless as cawing crows. I stayed quite calm, and slowly put together the scene and sequence of what had happened, and then it ran slowly forward under its own power and showed me the likely consequence.

  “I think you have only to wait, sir,” I said when the time seemed right to speak.

  “To wait,” the captain said, with deepest scorn.

  “He doesn’t know yet,” I said, eyeing Miss Bess’s thumb to keep from facing the captain’s reddened rage. “He just thinks you have taken a potshot at him, one of your soldiers. But when he hears of this, that it is her…”

  I looked her up and down, awestruck again. What love might make a person do! What it might make this girl do, Bess Bracken of Bracken’s Inn! There was more to her than I had thought. There was more to her than I’d known anyone contained inside them.

  “Yes?” snapped the captain. “What then?”

  “He will shoot himself, sir, and save you the trouble. And if not, I should think he’ll return for revenge on you.”

  “Or he might go to ground!” The captain waved his speckled hand and dipped his speckled head at me. “He might for all intents and purposes disappear from the face of the earth! And never be seen again!” He finished with a ghastly smile, goggling at me.

  “I think not.” I could see the highwayman rising in his stirrups, in the cloak and tangle of her dark hair, in the glitter of his own glamour, almost a-swoon with it. “As you can see,” I said to Miss Bess’s thumb, “they were mortal fond of each other.”

  I had just lifted a shovelful of dung when I heard the shot. Then another shot, then another, and Gramshaw and I were at our respective box doors, each with our loaded shovel and still shots sounding, light little cracks under the dawn in the distance, not at all like the midnight blast that had near blown us off our footing in the hayloft with surprise.

  “I’m going,” said Gramshaw, and he dropped his shovel and closed Star’s stall and ran.

  And I was after him. God, it was good to run, after the night holed up and waiting, after the tenseness and the gossip-muttering and then the horrors one upon the next. I ran and I passed Gramshaw and then it became a race, until we reached the brow of the hill and could see the played-out event, when we slowed to a ragged walk side by side.

  He lay in the white road, one leg crooked up. He held the rapier in one hand, still brandishing it even dead, and a pistol lay a little way from the other, silver in the dust. His fine mount was distant now, nearly to the forest, galloping mad.

  “Oh, I thought that was all blood,” panted Gramshaw. “But it is his coat.”

  Soldiers were coming out of cover; they made little watchful runs at the body, or strolled more upright and confident behind more tentative others. He did not move; he lay and looked at the sky. His lovely hat had bowled away and lay in the weeds like some other killed creature. A chill and stammering breeze, doubtful as the slow-dawning day, made the lace at his throat signal and signal—Here I am! Here! A gentlemanly lock of hair trailed up from his head and danced about on the gravel.

  Down into the hill shadow I walked, with Gramshaw following. My steps felt exceedingly long but did not seem to convey me far each one. I kept on. Soldiers’ white legs, black boots, were all around him; soldiers crouched at his head, at his feet, and rose again; soldiers’ voices moved time along, word by half-audible word.

  “You have him!” cried Gramshaw heartily.

  “No,” said one of them. “He runned orf into the bushes. What’s it look like?”

  They made room for us, though, and we stood by the blood that was puddling by his head, where the lock of hair was caught now and fighting to pull free from the sogging.

  “Dashing feller,” says Gramshaw, while the dead man stared through us wide-eyed, still mad with rage, his lips pulled back from his teeth.

  “I drank a very nice claret once, just this color.” A soldier kicked the hem of the coat over to show the velvet side. “A Frannitch one. And I had the vineyarder’s wife along wi’ it.”

  The captain dropped his heavy hand on my shoulder. “I should never have doubted you, lad,” he said at my other ear. “You knew what you was talking about.”

  “Yer,” said someone nastily. “Any more of these lawless fiends you is apprised the where’bouts of, the movements?”

  “No,” I said, noting the many darknesses where the fine clothes were spoiled, where a ball had gone in and blood and bone shards had come out. “No, I cannot help you further than this.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. You could bring us a horse, now, couldn’t he, captain? Any old nag will do, to fetch this chap to Chafton and show the constable. Just sum-mink to sling ’im over, like. Think your master would begrudge us a borry?”

  I looked at the captain.

  “It’s not put the nicest way,” he said, “but yes, Tom Coyne, that would be most helpful.”

  “Come, Gramshaw.” I turned from the sights.

  “Good lad!”

  “What a courteous chap!”

  “En’t people frenly ’roun’ these parts?”

  So the soldiers jeered quietly behind us.

  “You can go to Chafton,” I said to Gramshaw when we were out of their hearing.

  “To Chafton?” I might have asked him to go to London, or maybe across the water to Frannishland, he sounded so astonished.

  “To fetch back Saxifrage when she have carried the man in.”

  “But I went yesterday for you! And this would be on foot!”

  “That’s right,” I said. “But there is only so many forms of torture a man can take. And I have had them all, these two nights and a day.”

  Which, as he had given me some of them, and even though he ranked above me in the stables and could have refused, I trusted him to understand.

  He walked awhile, looking side-on at me as if I were perhaps a more interesting specimen of person than hitherto he had thought. We come-upped the hilltop then, and the sun burst upon us and showed me to him, all glare and hay scraps as I was. Its warmth painted my front but did not reach farther into the body of me, which was all cold knowledge. Bosomy Bess with her tumble of scented hair and that grand audacious man risen in his stirrups and reaching for her—I had killed them both, sure as if I had pulled the triggers myself. And all for hope of a glimpse that I did not gain, of a king’s man, of my man and my darling, that I might never see again nor touch. Two souls were dead of that secret, of that meeting and mixing of men in the dark of the forest, of that madness. Such weighty other sins, now, were piled upon the original that the joy of it and the glory had been pinched right out, as sudden as a candle flame between an inn man’s fingertips.

  “What you staring at?” I said to Gramshaw, and the smoke of the extinguishment poured black out my throat and my eyes.

  “Fair enough.” He turned his mild face toward Bracken’s. “I’ll go to Chafton, then, if you want.”

  FINGERNAIL

  BY WILLIAM SLEATOR

  I met Bernard in the fertility symbol room of the National Museum in Bangkok.

  I went to other rooms before that, and saw many old and beautiful things—I am a poor boy from the countryside and never been to a museum before, and people told me this one was good. And then I go into this room and nothing is there but cocks in glass cases, made out of stone and metal and wood, many size and many shape.


  And also in the room is a farang, a westerner, very handsome man with light yellow hair and dark blue eyes. I have seen many farangs in Bangkok, but I never know one. He keeps looking at me, and I keep looking at him—I am not shy. And this farang, when he sees me looking, he comes right over to me and kisses me. Right there in the museum! People are walking by, but no one sees.

  I am very surprised. Twenty years old, and already have sex with a Thai woman and a few Thai men, but nobody ever kiss me before. I walk out of the museum fast. The farang follows me. I cross the street through the cars stuck in traffic and he crosses the street too. I walk past Sanam Luang, the big empty field near the Grand Palace. The farang comes after me now. We stop by a tuk-tuk, little three-wheel taxi. He lights a cigarette.

  The farang cannot speak Thai and I cannot speak English. But we can make sign to each other. He makes sign he wants to have sex together. I make sign saying, “No, no, no!” Then he makes sign we can eat together. I am hungry. I never know a farang before. I make sign saying, “Yes!”

  The farang is very happy and smiles a very big smile. We ride in tuk-tuk to the farang’s hotel, near the big old train station, Hua Lampong. We go to a restaurant outside the hotel. I never have enough money to eat in restaurant. I eat duck with rice, very delicious. The farang smokes many cigarettes. The waiter speaks English and of course Thai, so he can speak with me and with the farang, and tell us what the other one is saying. The farang is French, but he speaks English too. He is thirty-two years old. His name is Bernard Duval. I tell him my name is Lep, which means “fingernail.”

  He wants me to come to his room after we eat, but I cannot, I have to go back to the school where I work and where I live. He wants me to meet him at the hotel the next day at lunchtime, but I cannot, I have to work then. I say I cannot come until six o’clock tomorrow evening. He says he will wait for me until then. He smiles and takes my hand when I leave.

  I come from a small village in the countryside. I went to school for only four years, because my family is so poor and I have to work, taking care of the buffalo. When I was seventeen I went to Bangkok and worked in construction for my older brother. I am short, but already I am strong from working in the village. And from working in construction I am stronger. But my brother doesn’t pay me, so I find another job, working in a school, helping the cook to make food for the students. Their families are rich and they have enough money to go to school for many years, but I am not envy, I am lucky to have work, this is my life. I have another job too, working for a very rich titled lady, a Khunying, taking care of her cars and her garden.

  And now I am very excited. I never knew a farang before and this one seems very kind, smiling a lot, speaking gently, buying delicious food for me. He is also very handsome. Maybe something will happen. Maybe this will be something good for my life.

  I am so excited I even have trouble sleeping, but never mind. I get up at three the next morning to go to the market. I have to go early because later there will be too much traffic and it will take me too long. I buy food and I carry it back to the school and I help the cook to cut things up, many many onions, and pounding all the garlic and chilies for a long time. I help serve it to all the students and then I clean everything up. After that I go to the Khunying’s house and I wash four of her cars, and then I do some work in the garden, cutting the grass with clippers. After that I hurry back to the school to the little place where I sleep next to the staff toilet and I take shower and put on my best clothes and take the bus downtown to the restaurant. I want to be on time so the farang will not think I am not coming, but I am still ten minutes late. I am afraid the farang will be angry but he is not, he smiles and says, “Hello Lep,” and I say, “Hello Bernard.” And then we go up to his room.

  I’ve never been in a room like this, with a western bathroom and a big high bed and a thick carpet and a TV. But I don’t have time to look at the room, because Bernard is kissing me. And I am learning how to kiss him.

  It was never like this before, the kissing, slowly taking our clothes off, doing many things, taking our time. Before, with Thai men, it was always fast and secret, hurry up so no one will catch us. Here, with Bernard, no one can catch us. Here, with Bernard, we can do anything we want, for as long as we want. We can study every part of our bodies. I can tell he likes my body, and my dark skin. His body is very strong too, from karate, he says, and his skin is very white. And the kissing! The kissing makes everything different. This is not just a quick release, the way Thai people do it. The kissing and the taking time make it meaning. Now I know that for me the real way is with a man, not with a woman.

  Because already I love Bernard.

  Nobody was ever so good with me, understanding my body so well. We do many things. We stay in bed for a long time. He strokes my body, smoking a cigarette. Finally we fall asleep in each other’s arms.

  When I wake up in the dark I can see from the clock by the bed that it is time for me to hurry and go to the market. I want to say good-bye to Bernard, but I don’t want to disturb him and wake him up. But when I pull away from him he comes awake. He reaches out to pull me back. I point at the clock and signal to him that I have to go to work. He kisses me and then gets dressed and comes down with me, smoking a cigarette.

  I don’t understand until we go to the restaurant with the English-speaking waiter, which is open very late. Bernard and I had no trouble understanding each other in bed, but we have a lot of trouble understanding about practical things. And he has something important to tell me: He has to go back to France today!

  Now I am very sad. But Bernard keeps smiling and telling me he will never forget me. He asks me if I want to learn French or English. I say English, because I know it is the most important language in the world. He writes down his address in English letters. I write down the address of the school; the waiter, who is very smart, writes it in English for Bernard.

  Bernard says he will write to me every week, and he will come back to Thailand to see me as soon as he can. Outside, on the dark street, he kisses me. He gives me money to take a taxi. I want to save the money and take the bus, but Bernard waves at a taxi, and I get in. I watch him out of the back window as the taxi drives away, and he stands there smoking and watching me.

  I am very tired all day, but it is a good tired. I work every day, and on Friday I get paid. On Saturday I go to the weekend market at Sanam Luang, and buy an English-Thai/Thai-English dictionary. I also buy a book called Seventy-nine Hours—after you study this book for seventy-nine hours, you will be able to speak English. The bookseller says it is a very good book, it really works. I have almost no money from my salary after I buy the books, but I don’t care. I can eat at the school. And what else do I need money for? Now I can study.

  More than anything else I wanted to go to school, but I could go for only four years. And after that I had to work very hard so I had no time to study on my own. But now, because of Bernard, I have a very strong reason to study. I can find the time now. I work with the book Seventy-nine Hours. Every week a letter comes from Bernard, and I read it, using the dictionary. At first it is very hard, but slowly I begin to understand. I learn English from the book and also from Bernard’s letters. And every week I write back to Bernard. My English writing looks very stupid, very different from his. And he writes back that he doesn’t understand one word in my first letters, I am writing too many things backward. But I keep writing, thinking of him all the time. And after a while he writes that he can understand more things in my letters now. He never forgets to write to me, and that is why I keep studying harder and harder.

  Every time, we write how much we love each other.

  Sometimes I have quick sex with Thai men, a release only. But not kissing, not loving like with Bernard. Not the same thing at all.

  And after ten months I get the best letter of all. Bernard is coming back to Thailand in one month. I will see him very soon!

  I have already finished the book Seventy-nine Hours.
I talk as much as possible with the English teacher at the school. He helps me say the words right. He can hardly believe that Lep, the cook’s helper, can speak English like this now. I can’t wait to talk to Bernard. He doesn’t know from my letters how well I can speak English. We will really be able to understand each other now.

  His airplane arrives at nine o’clock in the evening, so I am free to meet him. I take the slow hot bus all the way out to the airport in the traffic. I have never been to the airport before, but I am good at finding my way around. Inside, I wait behind the fence with all the crowds of other people waiting for someone to come from another country. I watch the immigration door. I am very excited.

  Bernard comes through the door, looking so lovely. I jump up and down and wave at him. He sees me right away and throws a kiss to me. I run to the place where he can come out from inside the fence. We hug each other very strong. I never want to let go of him. But we are in the airport so we have to pull away.

  He will be very happy to hear how well I speak English! I pick up his bags and smile and say, “Welcome to Thailand, sir. I hope you had a very comfortable flight.”

  His smile falls away. “Where did you learn to speak like that?” he asks me, looking very serious. “Who taught you that word ‘comfortable’?”

  “I learn from my book, Seventy-nine Hours, and from your letters,” I say, holding on to his bags, a little frightened now. “I learn many words from the dictionary. Is in my pocket now. I write to you about it.”

  “Are you sure?” he asks me, his eyes very thin. “Are you sure you didn’t learn from another farang while I was away?”

  I don’t know what he’s talking about. But I am very unhappy because something is wrong. “I don’t have any other farang friends, you know that,” I tell him. “The English teacher at the school helps me. I don’t understand what is problem.” And then I say very softly, “I love you.” It is the first time I can say it to him.