Sightseeing (17 page)

I knew it broke Papa's heart to kill those chickens, though. The way he ate his dinner—picking each bone clean, licking his lips and fingers—you'd think he was trying to teach me something about indifference. I, too, tried to make a show of eating, put on my bravest face, for in those days we were nothing if not a family of brave, ridiculous faces. But I wasn't a fool. I knew Papa loved those chickens. At night, I would often hear ululations coming from the ramshackle chicken house, Papa's lantern casting erratic patterns across my bedroom wall. He'd be out there cooing to his chickens for hours.
I didn't know if he was praying or cursing or singing the chickens a lullaby, but for some reason I could never sleep until my father was inside the house, until that light moved from my window and there seemed nothing to the night but the strays howling among the rubber trees at the edge of our property.

Good night, chickens. Good night, Papa.

Then Papa started sleeping with his chickens. For my part, I began to learn how unbearable the night could be. I'd watch my bedroom wall for hours, the shifting shapes of the lantern's glow filling me with dread. My terrors were no longer childish. I saw lewd, horrible men dancing on my walls with fangs, claws, raw red penises. I saw myself naked before them like a slab of meat quivering on a butcher's block. I felt fingernails sinking into my breasts, rancid breath moistening my face, woolly hairs chafing my stomach. Exhaustion invariably took me, but sleep was hardly a relief. I dreamt of sex and I dreamt of decapitations and these dreams were often one and the same.

Mama and I would find Papa in the morning snoring in a bed of straw, a ring of cigarette butts scattered beside him, the cocks clucking for their morning feed. She'd nudge him with her foot. He'd open his eyes suddenly, as if he hadn't been sleeping at all, and then silently go about his business—drizzling feed into the coops, changing water pans, stalking back to the house to take his morning bath—as if it was the most natural thing in the world for a grown man to be caught sleeping with his chickens.

People started to talk. They started to laugh. He'd become a bone for the rumormongers to gnaw. In town, the men would cluck at me, flap their elbows, and I never knew if they were making fun of Papa or making a pass at me or some strange combination of both.

“Your father's losing it,” Mama said one morning while we were doing the day's wash out back, up to our elbows in suds. We could hear Papa chasing the chickens through the yard for exercise, their clucks and squawks joining the chorus of early morning birds. During the week, when he wasn't training his chickens, Papa worked at the roofing factory hammering gigantic sheets of tin. “Chickens. Money. His feeble mind. He's losing it all.” I nodded, wringing a pair of my father's workpants over the washbasin.

“And your breasts,” Mama sighed suddenly, reaching out with a wet hand. “My God, you're getting huge.”

“Mama,” I muttered, swatting at her fingers. “Don't be disgusting.”

“Don't be such a prude,” Mama said. “I'm your mother. I gave you those things.”

“Mama!”

“Are you pregnant? That would be the end, Ladda. I'd shoot myself if some yahoo knocked you up.”

I just kept wringing my father's pants over the washbasin, listening to the chickens squawking and flapping in the yard.

We'd seen better times. Papa used to win. He used to be the best cockfighter in town. The men used to say Papa could
cast magic spells that sent his cocks into a bloodthirsty rage. Magic or no, I loved the way Papa would saunter into the house after a day at the cockpit: beaming, large, awesome with pride. He'd plop a wad of cash on the dinner table and Mama would squeal with delight. He'd let me count the money; I'd lick my fingers, judiciously flip through the bills, the way I'd seen gamblers in town fondling their cash after an evening tossing dice. We weren't wealthy but, for a little while, we could buy things. A brand-new bicycle for me. An electric stove for Mama. Orchids for her garden. The Mazda for Papa. A bigger, better television.

But all that changed the day Little Jui showed up at the cockpit.

II

Sixteen years old, heir to Big Jui's fortune and power, Little Jui was as notorious for being his father's son as he was for his methamphetamine habit. He arrived at the cockpit with his bodyguards, his mind infected with the drug-addled delusion that he was no longer a young man attending a cockfight but that he was, in fact, a mangy rabid dog. He got down on all fours. He barked at the chickens. Some say he foamed at the mouth, scratched his ears with his legs, sniffed the men's crotches. At first, nobody paid him any mind, but then some of the men picked up their coops and went home.

To make trouble with Little Jui was to make trouble with Big Jui was to offer yourself up for unfathomable cruelties. In middle school, Little Jui had picked a fight with Samat, the bartender's skinny son, who—unaware as the young often are of the world's lunatic ways—decided to teach Little Jui a thing or two about schoolyard kickboxing. Big Jui caught wind of the matter and we all watched in horror the next day as Little Jui led a beaten Samat through town by a leash tied to his tiny, hairless penis. There was nothing any of us could do about it.

At the cockpit, snapping occasionally out of his methamphetamine dream, Little Jui kept betting against Papa's cocks. Little Jui kept losing. He howled with escalating rage every time another chicken left the pit with a ruptured breast, a gouged eye, a severed wing. His bodyguards, Dam and Dang—two fat, betel-chewing men—handed Papa his money with stone-faced courtesy.

Papa made six thousand baht in four matches from Little Jui alone.

That's when Papa should've quit. He should've known better. He'd always said there was nothing so important as good manners when other people's money starts going into your wallet. The gracious cockfighter, he used to tell me, always spares his opponent needless embarrassment and financial ruin. But Papa must've been thinking of what they did to Samat—how a thing like that could ruin a little boy forever—and
he must've also been thinking of all the other people who'd suffered from the senseless abuse of Little Jui's family through the years. So Papa kept his cocks in the pit. He kept accepting more challenges. He kept taking Little Jui's money.

The men knew Papa had abandoned his customary cock-fighting manners for higher stakes. No one in our town had ever defied Little Jui's family. And while this was just a cockfight, there seemed something gratifying about Little Jui losing and losing and losing again, howling like a wounded animal, while Papa's wad of money thickened with every match. And though the men knew better than to cheer, they couldn't suppress their sly, satisfied grins.

It got dark. The cocks had become gray shadows flapping in the night. Papa'd made nine thousand from Little Jui now—the most he'd ever made in an afternoon. The boy was enraged. He threatened to have his bodyguards cripple anyone caught smiling at his defeats. More men went home. Papa decided to do the same. He'd done enough, he thought. No use being reckless.

“Dinnertime,” Papa announced ceremoniously, picking up a few coops to take to the Mazda.

“You're not going anywhere,” Little Jui cried, a finger pointed at Papa. Dam and Dang moved quickly to Papa's side, thick hands reaching for his arm. “One more, old man. Double or nothing this time.”

The pit fell silent. Nobody in our town had ever wagered so much. Papa considered for a moment, blinked at Little Jui.
He opened his mouth to say something, but Little Jui suddenly fell to his hands and knees, rolled around in the dirt, and began to whimper like a dog again. There must've been something about seeing Big Jui's son groveling like that. There must've also been something about having Dam's and Dang's thick fingers wrapped around his skinny forearms. Something, too, about the way the men looked to him now, like he was a hero, like they were pinning unnameable hopes on Papa and his chickens. And there must've been something about the money that stood to be won now—another nine thousand—more than Mama made the whole season sewing fake pearls onto brassieres at home for Miss Mayuree and the lingerie company.

Pack it up, Papa. Leave. Bring those chickens home.

But Papa stayed. He began to prepare Somsak, a meter-tall Thai bantam he'd named after his own father, my grandfather. Papa rarely fought Somsak. He'd only bring the cock out for big matches. With his vermilion breast and his green crown set against a canvas of iridescent indigo feathers, Somsak was once named “Native Chicken of the Week” by one of the cockfighting magazines. We had the spread pinned to the refrigerator door. Pictures of Papa handling the cock. Somsak leaping, midair, a dazzling swirl of colors. Complex diagrams of the chicken's imperial plumage. Somsak never lost, though he'd been close once, when an opposing chicken's spur punctured one of his lungs. Between rounds, Papa inserted a straw through the wound and sucked out the blood filling the
chicken's chest cavity. Somsak reentered the pit energetic as ever. He won the match. Later that evening Papa sutured the wound with Mama's sewing kit while I held the quivering chicken between my knees. The next morning Somsak was out there dashing and flapping across the yard with the rest of the chicken house.

The rumormongers used to say Somsak's name was no accident. He was my grandfather's spirit reincarnated in poultry form, back to give Papa what my grandfather couldn't give in life. Which might not be so silly, because Papa always said the real Somsak never gave him anything but bruised buttocks and a broken home.

While Papa prepared Somsak—slicking the cock's feathers, attaching the spur to his leg, pinching his purple gullet—Little Jui tried to find a suitable opponent, walked around the pit examining the other men's chickens. Ignorant of the pit's standards, he chose an aging, diseased rooster long past its prime, a creature so fat the men called it The Hen. The owner tried to convince Little Jui that The Hen didn't stand a chance. It wasn't going to be a match, he warned Little Jui, it was going to be a slaughter. But Little Jui said he knew they were all conspiring against him, that they wanted to see him lose, so shut the fuck up, I know a good chicken when I see one, I mean just look at the fat fuck, he's a goddamn ostrich, he's the motherfucking emperor of chickens, so get him ready or I'll show you a slaughter, I'll have my bodyguards stuff that chicken's bulbous head up your tiny little asshole.

The men sized up the cocks, beaked them in the center of the pit. Somsak thrashed and bucked violently in Papa's hands. The Hen, in the meantime, dashed toward the pit perimeter, which sent all the men scurrying because—like Papa always said—when a gamecock gets loose and flaps around with its spur you'd better get out of the way, lest you get stabbed by the errant chicken. But The Hen wasn't the nimblest of creatures. His owner managed to retrieve him before anybody got hurt.

Order was restored. The men beaked the chickens again to agitate them anew. The cocks were released. Somsak leapt into the air and—with the first blow—swung his gaff-blade directly into The Hen's neck. The men said later that you'd think Somsak was the chicken Bruce Lee, it was that beautiful. The Hen crumpled immediately, like a deflated feather balloon. He'd nearly been beheaded. The pit silt turned red with The Hen's blood.

Game over. Papa wins again.

But before Papa could retrieve Somsak—who now strutted around The Hen like a boxer taunting his collapsed opponent—Little Jui shrieked and leapt over the pit fence. All the men stood stupefied as the boy wrestled my grandfather's namesake to the ground. He pinned the squawking cock beneath his knees. He bent down, stuffed the cock's crown into his mouth. He bit off Somsak's head.

And then Little Jui just sat there with his mouth full of feathers, blood dribbling down his chin, a crazed, petulant
grin on his face, before spitting Somsak's head in Papa's direction.

“Draw,” he declared triumphantly. “Nobody wins.”

Papa picked up Somsak's head and threw it back at Little Jui.

“You barbarian,” he screamed. “You animal.” Papa moved toward the cockpit, but Little Jui's bodyguards quickly wrestled him to the ground. You'd think Little Jui was the prime minister and Papa some crazed assassin the way those bodyguards descended upon my father. One of them sat on his chest, pinned Papa's arms with his fists. The other put a handgun to Papa's head.

Little Jui started laughing then, high-pitched, deranged, still straddling Somsak. The rumormongers said later that as Little Jui sat there laughing, Somsak's headless body flapped its wings for the final time. There seemed something strange about the scenario then, how Papa had gone so quickly from being a hero among heroes to having both his body and his prized chicken, now headless, pinned to the earth.

“Aw,” Little Jui said. “Don't cry, old man. It was just a chicken.” Papa tried to speak, but with the bodyguard's weight on his chest he could only gasp for air. Little Jui crawled toward Papa. He hung his head over my father's purpling grimace.

“You know,” he whispered, smiling, blood dripping from his chin onto Papa's cheeks, “I could kill you, old man. All Dam has to do is squeeze.” Papa stared up at Little Jui, squeaking,
still trying to speak. Dam dug the gun's muzzle into the side of Papa's head.

“Stop it,” one of the men said.

“There's no need for this,” said another man.

“It's just like you said, Little Jui. Nobody wins.”

“That's right, Little Jui. It's a draw. It's always a draw when both chickens die.”

But Little Jui just kept on panting into my father's anguished face. He spat into my father's eyes.

“All right,” he said to Dam and Dang, standing now, wiping his lips with a forearm. “Get off the geezer.”

They let Papa go. Little Jui walked away from the pit with his bodyguards, back down the dirt road that led to the town's main avenue. The men gathered around my father, asked if he was all right, but Papa just lay there gazing at the night sky as if struck dumb by the stars.