Rattawant Lapcharoensap - Sightseeing - Stories

“Don’t be stupid,” Little Jui hissed. “Don’t push it, old man.”

Then Little Jui raised the pistol high into the air and brought it down upon the side of my father’s face. Papa fell to the ground. As Papa braced himself, Dam and Dang descended upon him with a flurry of indiscriminate kicks, like two fat children clumsily vying for a football.

“Know your place,” Little Jui said, when Dam and Dang had exhausted themselves. And then they walked away, their shadows disappearing down the dirt road as Papa lay there heaving.

Later that night, from my bedroom window, I watched Mama tend to Papa’s wounds outside. She rubbed ointment into his bruised torso. She swabbed his brow with alcohol. She muttered profanities under her breath. Papa stared blankly out into the rubber trees, wincing every so often, the strays’ high-pitched howls echoing in the night.

“You idiot,” I heard Mama mutter. “You moron. What did I tell you? This cockfighting business — it’s dangerous. Promise me you’ll never go back, Wichian. Promise me you’ll never fight another chicken so long as you live.” But Papa just kept on staring out into the night. Mama began to cry then as she applied a bandage to one of his wounds. Papa reached out with a consoling hand, but Mama recoiled from the gesture. And as I watched my parents bathing in that moonlight, I began to understand for the first time what kind of world we were living in, what men were capable of, and I longed more than anything to take the three of us to someplace safer, far, far away.

III

Later that week, as I biked home from school, Little Jui eased up in his Range Rover beside me, arms and head hanging limply out the back window, the engine growling like some awful mechanical beast. Dam was driving the car; Dang prodded a zit in the mirror of the passenger-seat visor. I could smell the sour scent of cologne and nicotine and alcohol wafting from Little Jui’s head. I kept on biking, concentrating on the road ahead.

“Oooh, girl,” he cooed. “Why don’t you throw your bike in the trunk. Why don’t we go for a ride. You’re making me hard.” I tried to pedal faster. But the faster I went, the closer that Range Rover seemed to draw up beside me.

“What’s the rush?” He glowered at me, smiled lazily. “Don’t be scared,” he said. “Little Jui won’t hurt you. Little Jui just wants to show you a thing or two.”

“Go away,” I muttered.

“Don’t be that way,” he said, laughing. “I’ve seen the way you look at me, girl. I’ve been watching you. We’re not children anymore, you know. Just think about the things we could do. We could touch tongues. We could fondle each other. We could do it doggie-style.”

“Leave me alone.”

“Did I ever tell you how much I love your breasts? I love ‘em, Ladda. I was just telling Dam and Dang about them the other day. Hey, guys”—Little Jui leaned forward in his seat, tapped Dam’s and Dang’s shoulders—“wasn’t I just telling you about her boobies?” The bodyguards looked over briefly. They chuckled. One of them winked at me. “See? I dream about your breasts, girl,” Little Jui continued. “I think about them all the time. I imagine them jiggling when I spank my little monkey at night.”

I stood up on my bike, pumping furiously now at the pedals. I managed to pull ahead of their car, but the Range Rover caught up with me again, Little Jui’s face leering out the window like the head of some aberrant dog enjoying an afternoon car ride. In the distance, I saw Papa’s figure in the yard, still dressed in his gray factory uniform, feeding the chickens. Mama was working at her lingerie on the front porch.

“There’s your old man,” Little Jui said, following my gaze. “How’s he doing these days?”

“Leave my father alone. He never did anything to you.”

“Say hi for me,” he said. “Tell him I’ll be back at the pit on Sunday. And tell him”—Little Jui leaned far out of the car now, almost whispering into my ear—“tell him I’m going to fuck his daughter one of these days.” He puckered his lips, made sucking noises at me, and then they sped away. They honked when they passed the house, long obnoxious bleats echoing down the road, and through that thick dirt cloud Little Jui yelled something toward my parents. Mama leapt to her feet, ran screaming toward them, but by the time she got to the road the Range Rover was far out of sight.

When I arrived at the house, Mama was out in the yard yelling at Papa, gesticulating wildly with her hands.

“You can’t be serious,” she cried. “You can’t go back, Wichian.”

“Don’t be hysterical,” Papa said, smiling at me through swollen eyes, his face still bruised, the chickens waddling around his feet. I knew I should tell them about my encounter with Little Jui, but instead I just stared at the welt on Papa’s forehead, wondering how he could stand there grinning when he’d been pistol-whipped just a few days ago.

“’Hysterical’?” Mama cried. “Don’t you remember what they did to you? You want to die? Is that it, Wichian? You want to make me a widow?”

“Don’t be so dramatic. You never complained when I was bringing money home from the pit.” Papa bent down to stroke one of the chickens. “You never complained when I was buying your orchids and your electric stove.”

“But this is different, Wichian,” Mama said. “You know this is different.”

“If I don’t show up at the pit, then it means they’ve scared us,” Papa said, crouching now. “It means they’ve won. I refuse to give them that satisfaction, Saiya. Besides,” Papa continued, “what else am I supposed to do with these chickens?”

“Fuck the chickens,” Mama yelled, kicking at the creatures. The cocks lurched into the air before settling nervously back on the ground.

“Hey. Watch it. Chickens are delicate animals.”

“You want to be a hero?” Mama yelled, ignoring him. “You want to be the good guy? This isn’t a movie, Wichian. There are no good guys. And even if there were, even if this was a movie, I’ve seen this one before. This is the one where the good guy dies and his family ends up with nothing but a bunch of useless chickens squawking in the yard to remind them of his stupidity.”

IV

Word got around town that Little Jui would bring cocks of his own to the pit that Sunday. He’d procured, with his father’s help, four Filipino purebreds and a prodigal eighteen-year-old handler from Manila named Ramon. Rumors had it that Ramon — who was seen accompanying Little Jui in town that week — could hypnotize his chickens. He’d meditate with them every morning to synchronize their auras. During a match, Ramon would murmur to the cocks, urge them on in a language that the chickens understood but that sounded strange and inhuman to everybody else. According to the men, Ramon had once trained a plump, egg-laying hen for the world-famous Manila pits and won.

“Men are lunatics, Ladda.” Mama sighed. She was behind schedule with the bras again; I was helping her pin ornate lace trims to foam cups. The lingerie company demanded eight hundred finished bras a month. We needed to make three hundred more in seven days. Papa was still at the factory hammering tin. “You’d think God invented stupidity the same day he came up with the penis.”

“What are you talking about, Mama?”

“Don’t act dumb, girl. I’m talking about the fuss these men make over their stupid chickens.” Mama bit off a piece of thread, spat the tendrils out between her teeth. “Meditating with their chickens. Ha!”

“Cockfighting is an ancient tradition, Mama,” I said, throwing a finished piece onto the large heap between us. “It’s the sport of kings. You know, King Naresuan was a champion cockfighter during his reign.”