Rattawant Lapcharoensap - Sightseeing - Stories

That night, as we rode back from the Café Lovely, I felt my brother’s arms around my waist, his head slumped on my shoulder. I remember thinking then about how I’d never felt the weight of my brother’s head before. His hot, measured breaths warmed my neck. I could still smell the thinner’s faint, sour scent wafting from his face. I suddenly became afraid that Anek had fallen asleep and would tumble off the bike at any moment.

“Are you awake, Anek?”

“Yeah, I’m awake.”

“Good.”

“Do me a favor. Eyes on the road.”

“I’m glad you’re awake, Anek.”

“Third.”

“What’s that?”

“I said third.”

“You sure?”

“It’s a onetime offer, little man.”

I slipped off the seat, accelerated a little, twisted the clutch, and tapped the gear pedal as we hit the speedway. I was so excited we might as well have broken the sound barrier, but the engine jolted us forward just enough that my grip weakened and we went swerving along the empty speedway, weaving wildly back and forth at thirty kilometers an hour.

“Easy now. Easy. There, there, you have it. Just take a deep breath now. Holy shit, I almost had to break your ass back there. You almost had us kissing the pavement.”

I could feel the palms of my hands slick against the throttle. Even at thirty kilos, the wind blew hot against our faces.

“Accelerate,” Anek said.

“No fucking way.”

“I said accelerate. This is a speedway, you know, not a slow-way. I’d like to get home before dawn.”

“You’re out of your mind, Anek. That’s the thinner talking.”

“Listen, if you won’t do it, I’ll do it myself,” he said, reaching over me for the throttle.

“Fine,” I said, brushing his hand away. “I’ll do it. Just give me a second.”

We slowly gathered speed along the empty highway — thirty-five, forty, forty-five — and after a while, the concrete moving swiftly and steadily below our feet, I was beginning to feel a little more comfortable. Anek put his arms around my waist again, his chin still on my shoulder.

“Good,” he whispered into my ear. “Good, good. You’ve got it. You’re fucking doing it. You’re really coasting now, boy. Welcome to the third gear, my little man.

“Now,” he said. “Try fourth.”

I didn’t argue this time. I just twisted the accelerator some more, popped the bike into fourth, sliding smoothly off the seat then quickly back on. This time, to my surprise, our course didn’t even waver. It was an easy transition. We were cruising comfortably now at sixty, sixty-five, seventy, seventy-five, faster and faster and faster still, the engine singing a high note beneath us as we flew along that straight and empty speedway. We didn’t say a word to each other the rest of the way. And nothing seemed lovelier to me than that hot wind howling in my ears, the night blurring around us, the smell of the engine furiously burning gasoline.

On a pleasant morning in April I go three doors down to Wichu’s house and we walk to Wat Krathum Sua Pla, the temple where the annual district draft lottery will be held. Wichu has been my best friend all my life. It is hardly sunup, the air thick and cool with dew. We walk silently through our neighborhood. The teashops. The dilapidated playground. The pond with its perpetual scrim of scum. The mangy strays sleeping haphazardly in the streets. The elderly Chinese women gossiping and exercising by the Shinto shrine. The porridge and plantain vendors. The Burmese refugees unloading thick bundles of Thai Rath and Matichon for the newsstand. We walk silently past all that we know like we know our own skins, all that we will remember fondly in our separate ways, though we regard them then as impediments to our youthful, inchoate ambitions. This is a few years before the neighborhood started sinking into the marsh ground upon which it had been built. This is before the floods got worse with every monsoon and the river rats appeared by the thousands and you could hear them plashing and squealing at night. Before those who could afford it fled for higher ground, my mother and my father included among them.

Wichu and I had been drinking the night before at a small bar in the fresh market. Cane liquor hot in our veins, we’d promised to pray for one another. We weren’t religious — the last time we’d been to temple was to admire the swimsuits at the Miss Jasmine Pageant — but we agreed to pray just in case the gods decided to interest themselves in the Pravet District draft lottery. It couldn’t hurt, we decided. We drank one last dram to seal the agreement, then we went home.

What Wichu didn’t know then was that he needed my prayers more than I needed his. But I didn’t tell him that. I didn’t tell him everything had already been arranged for me. I didn’t tell him that my father’s boss’s older brother — a retired navy lieutenant — had recently received two crates of Johnny Walker Blue and a certificate for his wife to a famous goldsmith in Pomprapsattruphai District. I didn’t tell Wichu that the lieutenant, in turn, had called my father to thank him. He told my father that he’d recommended me to the draft board as an upstanding young citizen, so upstanding I didn’t need the benefits of marching drills and mess hall duty and combat training to improve my character in any way. I was a fully formed patriot, he’d told the draft board. A resplendent example for the nation’s youth. A true son of Siam. Which means there’s nothing to worry about, the lieutenant told my father. Everything has been arranged. Just have your son show up at the lottery.

This was the first and only secret I would keep from Wichu. I prayed for him when I got home from the bar, just as I’d promised. I prayed as I hadn’t prayed since I was a child. I don’t know if Wichu prayed for me, too, but as I lay in bed waiting for sleep I hoped that he’d save all his prayers for himself.

The next morning I arrive at Wichu’s house at the appointed hour. His mother fusses with his hair and his cuffs at the front door. She’s wearing a phathung pulled over her breasts, her shoulders caked with menthol powder, her hair wet and jet-black from her morning bath. Wichu wears the outfit she bought specifically for the occasion: a neatly pressed white button-down; crisp, black polyester slacks; a new pair of brown Bata loafers, buffed bright with Kiwi shoe polish. She’s even borrowed a gold watch from a friend who hawks them to farangs on Soi Cowboy; it hangs loosely from Wichu’s wrist like a bangle, glinting in the weak morning light. She believes that the less Wichu looks like a day-laborer’s son — something he’d in fact been until the day-laborer died before Wichu could commit him to memory — the less the draft board will be inclined to put a red ticket in his hand when he reaches into the lottery urn. A red ticket means losing her youngest son to two years of duty, just as she lost her eldest, Khamron, who’d been drafted though he drank a whole bottle of fish sauce, who arrived at the lottery violently ill, and who came home eighteen months later from the Burmese border with a vacant look in his eyes, a letter of commendation and honorable discharge, and a flower of shrapnel buried in his right leg slowly poisoning his bloodstream.

Wichu’s mother eyes me curiously when I arrive. I’m wearing tattered blue jeans, a white T-shirt, rubber slippers. I haven’t showered. I haven’t even brushed my teeth. For a moment, I am afraid she will say something, ask about my relaxed appearance. I am afraid she has found me out and will wonder aloud to Wichu. So I look at Wichu instead. He’s clearly hungover, embarrassed by his mother’s fussing.