Rattawant Lapcharoensap - Sightseeing - Stories

Mama saved one for the next day’s breakfast, the plumpest she could find, a creature I recognized by its plumage as Saksri Bualoi. She picked up Saksri’s body, deposited it on the porch steps, the cock’s head swinging by a thin tether of flesh. Saksri was named after the welterweight champion of the world at the time, a boy who grew up in a nearby town — the only Thai world champion of anything, according to Mama. We’d been watching the real Saksri Bualoi pummel a fat Russian challenger on television years ago when Papa said that if chickens had a left hook, the new hatchling he’d just bought was just like Saksri Bualoi, and that’s how the cock got its name. But Saksri Bualoi would not be fighting anymore. He would be going into our breakfast now.

We carried the rest of the carcasses to the ditch marking our property. As I carried one, I felt its bloody, slithery neck wriggling in my hand, heard the thing purr like a frightened kitten. I quickly dropped it to the ground and — panicking — kicked it. The cock’s body skipped across the yard like a football. Then, to my horror, the chicken got on its feet and ran a few short paces before collapsing dead once and for all.

“It’s still got a little juice!” Mama said, laughing. “Don’t be scared, Ladda. It can’t hurt you now.”

But I didn’t want to touch it anymore. All I could do was nudge the carcass with my foot, flipping it across the yard, making slow and cautious progress toward the ditch, expecting the thing to get up and run around again. In the distance, I saw Mama toss a couple of carcasses like they were small, feathery sacks of garbage, their bodies thudding in the ditch.

Once we’d transported all the carcasses, Mama went back to the house to get gasoline. We set the pile on fire, then stood silently over the pyre for a while. Blue flames licked up around the carcasses’ feathers. Soon, a yellowish inferno danced enthusiastically over the pile, its syncopated pops and crackles echoing down the long corridor of trees before us. Mama poked the pyre with a branch. The fire answered with hisses and cries, the sound of fat smoldering. The air began to smell of burnt chicken-flesh, and I thought of the vendors in town with their street-side fried chicken stalls, fanning themselves with the day’s paper, thick sheets of vapor rising from their fryers.

“We’ll figure this out in the morning,” Mama said softly. We walked back to the house with the pyre still roaring behind us. Mama sat on the porch and picked up Saksri Bualoi. She began to pluck him, snapping fistfuls of feathers from the cock’s lifeless body.

That was my first sleepless night: my father in the chicken house, the carcasses burning in the ditch, Mama outside cleaning Saksri Bualoi. I stood by my bedroom window and watched the flames dance until they became nothing but a tiny orange pinprick in the distance.

I thought about what happened to that woman who was my aunt. I thought about Papa crying on the side of the road, cradling his father’s shotgun, having only made it halfway to town. I wondered if things would be different now if Papa hadn’t lost his will. Would Papa have lessened the sum total of the world’s suffering by killing Big Jui? Or would other Juis — Big and Little — have appeared in their place? Would I still love my father knowing he was capable of such violence? Would Mama? Where did murderous vengeance end and principled righteousness — justice — begin? Staring out my bedroom window, I loved Papa for not making it to town that night even as I despised him for losing courage. For it seemed to me that whatever had happened at the cockpit to produce that pyre of chickens might’ve been averted had Papa not cried like a fucking baby by the side of the road. And as Mama finished cleaning Saksri Bualoi; as I watched the fire die out like some fallen star; as the strays’ shadows emerged one by one to inspect that sizzling mess of cremated chicken parts — I wanted more than anything to return to life before Mama had told me her story about Papa’s no-name sister. For I felt like Mama had pushed me violently down a one-way street with her cockamamie story, a street I never wanted to go down in the first place. There would be no turning back now, though at the time I couldn’t say why or from what.

VIII

Papa had never lost like this. He’d never come home with more than two dead cocks. You can’t win every time, that’s what he always said; even the expert cockfighter loses once in a while. Nevertheless, losing was one thing; nine dead cocks was another altogether. He’d lost nearly half the chicken house.

The next morning we sat quietly around the kitchen table while Mama dished porridge. Papa hadn’t slept much the night before, though it was difficult to distinguish the old bruises on his face from the way his eyelids sagged and swelled. He shuffled in from the chicken house, sat down, and stared out the kitchen window. Tiny chunks of straw clung to his shirt collar. Gray hair sprouted from his head in strange, unruly wisps. Thin wreaths of steam rose from our bowls. Outside, the sun was starting to rise through the trees and I watched a stray — a gaunt, brown puppy with a stunted tail — nose the diminished mess in the ditch.

We started eating. My stomach lurched at the chunks of white meat wedged within the thick of my porridge. I asked Papa what happened. I tried to sound casual. “Nothing,” Papa muttered through a mouthful, still staring out the kitchen window. “I lost.”

“I’ll say,” Mama said. She hadn’t touched her breakfast yet. She just stared at Papa defiantly, waited for an explanation. Papa shoveled more porridge into his mouth. I stirred my bowl, picked out chunks of chicken and deposited them on the napkin beside me. I thought about the half-dead zombie chicken from the night before, the way it purred in my hand, skittered across the yard when I kicked it. I thought of Saksri Bualoi, his head swinging by a thimble of flesh, the way Mama plucked his feathers by the fistful. I wondered briefly if I had been dreaming the past night’s events — they seemed unreal by the light of morning — but those tiny white chunks piled on my napkin told me otherwise.

“How much did you lose, Wichian?” Mama finally asked.

“Eleven thousand,” Papa said calmly.

“Oi,” Mama cried, throwing up her hands. “Goddammit, Wichian.”

“It’s that Filipino kid,” Papa said, smiling weakly at Mama. “That Ramon. He’s good. He knows what he’s doing. And you should’ve seen the Filipino purebreds, Saiya. They’re huge. Almost as tall as Ladda here. I didn’t think chickens got that big.”

“Oi,” Mama said again. She shoved her bowl in front of her. It teetered on the linoleum tabletop, porridge dribbling over the lip. “How could you, Wichian?”

“I’ll get it back,” Papa muttered, turning to his bowl as if there was nothing he’d rather do than watch his porridge cool.

“You’d better,” Mama said.

“Well, he made nine thousand last week, Mama,” I interjected, but when I looked into Mama’s eyes — saw the exasperation there — I regretted saying anything at all. I looked at Papa instead. “So, really, you only lost two thousand, right, Papa?”

“Eat your porridge, Ladda,” Mama scoffed.

“Saiya,” Papa said.

“How could you lose so much money?” Mama said. But Papa just stared at Mama, biting hard on his bottom lip. Then he got up, dismissed Mama with an impatient half-gesture, and walked out of the kitchen.

“That’s right,” Mama called after him. “Walk away. Go tend to your fucking chickens.”

Then it was just me and Mama staring at one another. My mother seemed the picture of vindictiveness; even as she looked devastated by the eleven thousand lost. “What?” she asked, picking up her porridge bowl. “Stop looking at me like that.” But all I managed to say was “It’s enough he lost, Mama. Go easy on him.”