Rattawant Lapcharoensap - Sightseeing - Stories

“Just come with us, miss,” Dam said again. “We don’t mean any harm.”

“You assholes,” I said, gritting my teeth. Then, to my own surprise, I spat at them both — one, then the other — thin strings of spittle landing on their shirtfronts. “That’s for what you did to my father.”

“Now, there’s no need for that,” Dam whispered, grabbing me briskly by the forearm, and my heart leapt, more from the gesture’s brutishness than from the pain it inflicted. I tried to pull away. I heard Noon then, recognized her bright, chirpy laughter. I tried to make eye contact, but Noon seemed oblivious, deep in some mating dance: smiling, hands fluttering, body leaning into a boy’s smile.

“If you want to be treated like a lady,” Dam hissed, tightening his grip, “start acting like one.”

“Okay,” I said. “Sure.” So I bent down and bit his thick, hairy fingers, his skin taut and salty between my teeth, his thick bones creaking like a plum pit in my jaw. Dam winced and yapped, tried to yank his fingers away. I wished Papa could see me. I wanted to break the skin, feel the warm gush of blood on my tongue, but Dam managed to pull himself free by yanking at my hair with his other hand. His partner Dang grabbed me by the waist, hoisted me up, and carried me toward the Range Rover. I kicked and screamed, his ropy arms like a noose tightening around my abdomen, Little Jui’s smiling face moving closer and closer with every step.

“Hey! Put her down!” a voice called out from behind us.

To my surprise, Dang set me down in the street. Little Jui laughed from the backseat of the Range Rover. Ramon eyed me silently, his mouth a straight thin line. When I turned around, I saw Noon lunging at Dang, pelting his chest with a flurry of impotent slaps. He tried to grab her flailing arms, told her to cut the nonsense. All the other students stopped and looked in our direction now.

The security guard ran toward us from his box outside the high school gate, a hand on his baton. “Is there a problem here?” he asked, looking at Dang, who now had both of Noon’s wrists in his hands. The guard said those words sheepishly, like he’d heard them somewhere else, on television perhaps. He was a young, sickly boy known more for his way with the high school girls than his ability to fend off whatever dangers necessitated his presence. He was just another one of the town’s many pretenses, especially where the law was concerned.

“Yes, there is,” Noon said impatiently, struggling against Dang’s grip. He let her go. Dam stalked up behind me, nursing his hand. I heard him call me a cunt.

“No problem, guy,” Little Jui said from the backseat of the Range Rover. “No problem at all.” Little Jui reached out and waved a red hundred-baht note in the security guard’s face. “We were just having some fun, guy. Just horsing around.”

The security guard kept looking back and forth helplessly between the note fanning before him, Little Jui’s smile, and me. “Just a bit of fun, guy,” Little Jui said again. He tossed the note at the security guard, the bill flopping in the air before landing at his feet. And all that time I felt Ramon staring at me over Little Jui’s shoulder.

“You can go back to your little box now,” Little Jui said. The security guard looked at me. He bent down and picked up the note from the ground. “Take it elsewhere,” he said to Little Jui, tucking the money into his breast pocket. “Go have fun somewhere else.”

“Hey,” I said as the security guard walked away. The students started chattering again. “These people are trying to kidnap me!”

“C’mon, Ladda,” Noon said, reaching for my arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

When I looked back, Dang had already started the Range Rover while Dam settled himself into the passenger seat, his face still red with pain. Little Jui leaned out the window and pinched my cheek.

“I’m gonna get you next time,” he said, sucking obscenely at his lips, fingering my chin. “I’m gonna get you good.” Ramon looked at me, brow furrowed in consternation. “You have no idea about the people you’re working for, do you,” I wanted to say to him. I reached out and tried to grab Little Jui’s fingers, thinking I might bite again; but Dang had already pulled the car away, Little Jui’s laughter fading down the road.

“You okay?” Noon asked as the car disappeared. “Fine,” I said, rubbing my forearm, blood like lava in my veins. “Thanks.”

We picked up our bicycles and walked away from the high school. The bike chains ticked between us as the sun elongated our shadows. I wanted to hug Noon then; I wanted to apologize for being cruel the day before. She had surprised me with her bravery. I wanted to tell Noon how afraid I’d been when that goon picked me up and carried me across the street. How suffocated. How helpless. How — for the first time in my life — truly endangered.

Before we parted ways, I asked Noon if she’d ever heard about Papa’s sister.

“Yeah,” she said nonchalantly. “The Slobbering Slut. That’s what the men in the teashops used to call her.”

“My God,” I said. “How come you never told me about it?”

“I guess it’s one of those things,” Noon said, shrugging.

“I need to get out of this town,” I said.

Noon nodded. “Call me when you figure out how, okay? I’m bored to death with these country boys. Speaking of which, what does Little Jui want from you anyway?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I swear I’m gonna move his asshole to where his face is.” Noon laughed. “Make sure I’m there when you do that,” she said. She got on her bike, tucked the back of her dress beneath her. “See you around,” she said. “Say hi to your papa for me. Tell him I’ll be praying for his chickens this Sunday.”

XII

Teaching chickens fear takes time, and Papa didn’t have enough of it that week. So he went that Sunday with only one cock — a weak, colicky creature quarantined out back because it had been plucking its own feathers. The chicken was diseased. Papa knew he would lose, but he needed to send Little Jui a message. Regularity was the message, he said. He wasn’t affected by last week’s losses was the message. But Mama said, “Here’s a better message, Wichian. Don’t show up. Find a new hobby. Collect stamps. Raise carp. Exercise. Help me with the lingerie. Do something civilized for once.” But Papa just laughed it off.

He came back that Sunday afternoon carrying the diseased chicken in a bloody plastic bag. Mama looked into the bag and said that if Papa wanted the thing slaughtered, he should’ve asked her to do it — at least then she’d be able to distinguish breasts from thighs from wings from feet from intestines. At least we’d have a useful chicken, Mama said. Now all we have is a mess. And when Papa told her over dinner that he’d lost another thousand, Mama said, “Enough is enough, Wichian. Let them win. Little Jui’s not out to kill you anymore. He’s decided to take all your money.”

But Papa shrugged and said the loss was expected. Losing had been part of his strategy. The diseased cock was going to die anyway. Once he taught his chickens how to be afraid, he’d start winning his money back. He’d humiliate Little Jui and that Filipino boy. He’d be champion again.

Still, he told us that something unexpected happened at the pit that afternoon: The men had cheered Little Jui, applauded the Filipino boy and his purebreds.

“It’s like they have no memory,” Papa said. “It’s like they forgot what he did to me. They treated him like a veteran. And they treated me like I was some amateur.”

“People like winners,” Mama said.

“How can they forget what his family’s done?”