Bangkok Noir

Sombat the legless boy down the road was found dead yesterday, still upright on his little wooden cart, the one he propelled by hauling back on the steel crane-operator’s lever. It was amazing how, so frail, he clattered and squeaked around the neighborhood, honed down to sinew and spirit, yanking away on that big handle. But yesterday was too hot, and he tried to go too far too fast. Or maybe he just got tired of it all. Who knows? He sat there as though asleep, breathless, like the day itself, motionless as the leaves on the trees behind the temple wall, his face drawn but peaceful.

The lane where Chai stays with his brother Vajira and his brother’s wife is all but deserted. Vajira is surprised that Chai isn’t going to the temple. Everybody liked the boy, and there’s to be a tamboon, a merit-making ceremony, to mark his passing. But Chai has something he must do today. It’s too hot to move, really, but this is something he has to do. It’s going to bring in money. Good money. And his brother Vajira has been paying for everything the past couple of months. The temple is all very well. It’s a good thing. But right now money comes first. There will be time for the temple later. So he has come to meet his new partner, into the middle of the city in the traffic and the heat, to do this job.

And now he’s waiting.

A little way along, on the other side of the pedestrian overpass from where Chai waits, a beggar sits at his station. He’s older than Sombat was, but just as legless, the legs of his short pants pinned up and empty. His face is full of mortification, his life one long humiliation. As people come by, he rattles the few coins in his cup, supplicant, bending forward to bang forehead and cup on the steel deck, pisspools either side of his head. A legless beggar in a puddle of his own urine, left by his handlers for a long day shift on the overpass. A couple of people drop coins into his cup. Most do not. Fastidious, they walk around him and his piss. One band of youths laugh, pointing to the pools. Three armed soldiers on patrol in camouflage outfits look, just as they look everywhere, for signs of insurgency. It’s a full year after the last Red Shirt protests boiled over, but the government is still in power, the soldiers are still here and Chai is still hungry. No one asks the beggar if he wants to be moved. The police won’t move him, Chai knows; they have been paid.

Chai leaves his post to turn and stroll past the soldiers. He stops to check his pockets as though he’s looking for something and watches as, oblivious to his presence, the patrol descends on the opposite side. He returns to his vantage point.

Looking down, he can see his partner, Dit, standing a little back from the street with his motorcycle. Beside Dit, under a road construction sign like a pup tent, a dog rests in the shade. The naked red ulcers all over its body look sore. Its muzzle, now healed, has been crushed and twisted to one side, maybe from too close an encounter with a car. That painfully contorted dog face turns and turns, strangely peaceful, observing passers-by with quiet interest.

Dit is pretending to work on his motorcycle. That boy knows what he’s doing; he has been around. Dit was a Ranger. Up in Korat. And last May he made good money as a Red Shirt guard. Dit laughs quietly and says that’s because he wore black, not red. Chai was there too, but he only wore red.

Chai likes Dit’s high-top sneakers, and he feels ashamed of his own rubber thongs. Though he wonders if the high-tops aren’t hot in this weather. Maybe he’ll buy a pair after the job, when he has money. Below, the traffic stops for the red light, and the dog turns to watch as, loose-limbed, flip-flops slapping a quick tattoo on the metal, Chai comes down the steps to stand on the pavement. Dit looks over at him, his manner questioning. But Chai just waves and lights a cigarette, the Marlboro Dit gave him earlier. Chai catches a glimpse of himself in the tinted windows of a passing Toyota Crown. He likes the sunglasses. Counterfeit Polaroids. Same as the real ones, but cheap. He takes the glasses off and hangs them on the collar of his T-shirt. Right now, this afternoon, he wants the city unmediated by his Polaroids. Maybe it’s the heat, but the colors are brighter today. Hotter and brighter. More real. Especially without the sunglasses. Even with the pollution and the car exhaust, everything is so clear. “CHEVY CHASE” reads his brand-new T-shirt. Chai doesn’t know any English, but the vendor who sold him the shirt explained that a Chevy Chase is an American car. That’s what he’s going to buy one day, Chai tells himself, admiring the logo on his shirt front. A Chevy Chase. He wants to tell Dit. After they are finished.