The Merit Birds (8 page)

Cam

I rode my bike home from the massage house as fast as I could and chucked it viciously into the rose apple trees.

“Brother?” Somchai stood at our front gate, his face filled with concern. I ignored him and stomped into the house. I was glad when I heard him follow me.

“What is it?” he asked.

I turned to look at him and was surprised how the worry in his eyes softened everything.

“Nok.”

“I told you to be careful with Lao girls. You had a fight?”

“I don't understand anything in this fucking country.”

I saw then that I had hurt him. “Sorry, no offence. I just —”

He was quiet for a while. Then he brightened and said, “I know. You need Vang Vieng.”

“I don't even know what that is.”

“It's a tourist town north of here. Let's go for the weekend. You and me. You'll like it — lots of English there.” Somchai grinned.

“But Nok told me Lao New Year is coming up. Isn't it the most important holiday in Laos? You should stay here with Meh Mee,” I said.

“We'll just go for a couple days. It'll cheer you up and you'll be ready to party for New Year when we get back.”

Getting out of Vientiane sounded good to me. I needed something I could understand. Besides, I didn't feel like being home alone all weekend again. Julia was with the principal all the time now.

The next day after school we took a
tuk-tuk
to the crowded bus station across the road from the Morning Market. Blue buses with
JAPAN OFFICIAL DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE
slapped on the side filled up with people jostling for a seat. Those who couldn't find one just stood. Barefoot kids wearing dirty, buttoned-up shirts and fraying shorts clambered onto the buses carrying plastic bags stuffed with baguettes. “Bread! Fresh bread for sale!” they hollered. Bottles of water were passed through bus windows to passengers already surrendering to the dry season heat. Hmong women with wrinkled faces deep brown with the April sun approached passengers, trying to convince them to buy their colourful cloths. The smell of fried food floated by as elderly women with mouths red from chewing betel nut flogged snacks for the journey. Dust tickled the tip of my nose and settled onto passengers' vintage suitcases that were ripping at the seams. It would be my first time outside of Vientiane. Anticipation should have crowded out thoughts of Nok. But instead I felt so tired. Tired of there being so much that I didn't know and couldn't understand in this country. Tired of my angry past dragging me down like the heavy, breezeless heat. Tired of myself.

The road north to Vang Vieng twisted and curved through the jungle like a roller coaster. We could only find one empty seat on the overcrowded bus and Somchai insisted that I take it. I refused, but he wouldn't sit.

“Take it before we lose it,” he said. He hovered over me, his brown hand grabbing on to the bar above as the cheap bus rattled over potholes. He didn't seem to mind the suffocating heat or the other standing passengers elbowing him. He just smiled happily and looked out the window at mango trees and hibiscus bushes whizzing by.

The conductor passed out plastic bags to passengers with their hands held high, like kindergarteners who waited too long to ask to go to the bathroom. I wondered what the bags were for until the little girl in front of me vomited as her older brother held her long hair away from her face. After the next curve in the road, the sound of more puking came from the back of the bus. Disgusted, I looked up at Somchai.

“It's a Lao thing.” He shrugged. “Weak stomachs, I guess.”

Soon the stench became overpowering. I began to wonder if the trip was a good idea.

I tried not to think about Nok during the ride, but it was impossible. The thought of that French guy forcing himself on her made me so angry I could feel every muscle in my body tighten, like a dog with its hair standing on end. I hoped I would never see him again. I knew it wouldn't be safe for either of us.

My thoughts were interrupted by the bus starting to sputter.

“What's going on?” I asked Somchai. I couldn't stand to be stuck on this barf-mobile for much longer.

“Bus trouble, I guess.
Boh penyang.
”

The bus staggered to a stop. No one seemed concerned but me and the German tourists at the back of the bus.

“I have to get off of this thing.”

Somchai followed me down the rickety bus steps to wait outside in the blistering sun. No vehicles zoomed past us on the winding road. We seemed to be surrounded by nothing but jungle. The smell of earth and plants was everywhere, reminding me of the way our kitchen back home smelled when Julia repotted one of her houseplants. For a second I thought of my life back in Ottawa and of Jon and Marissa. I realized that we hadn't been in contact for weeks.

The longer we stood on the jungle's edge, the more I noticed the busyness that lay beneath the peaceful surface of the wilderness around us — birds and insects called out noisily and large animal footprints decorated the road's dusty shoulder. Laos used to be called Lan Xang, the land of a million elephants, although I had yet to see one.

In the distance, I could hear faint singing. It was almost haunting, kind of like the way First Nations people sing back home at pow-wows and stuff.

“It's a tribe,” Somchai explained. “An ethnic minority. They sing to let the spirits know they're looking for food.”

My body relaxed a bit. I could see the bus driver walking up a dirt path to a small village that sat on top of a lush, green hill. He stopped at the wooden gate of each tiny, thatched roof house and called something out.

“He's seeing if anyone has the tools he needs to fix the bus.”

Curious, wild-haired children, some naked, some half-dressed in black clothes with colourful embroidery and silver baubles, emerged tentatively from their homes. A tall, older boy pointed at me. The other kids followed him as he strode toward me. I glanced sideways at Somchai and was glad he was there beside me. He laughed.

“Foreigners always make them curious.”

Soon a circle of kids, their mothers watching cautiously from the outskirts, surrounded me.

“Sabaidee,”
I said, feeling self-conscious. The children roared and their mothers chuckled quietly to the babies tied to their backs.

“They don't speak Lao,” Somchai said. “They have their own language.”

I nodded as I noticed a man standing behind the women; he wobbled from side to side and appeared to be laughing at nothing. He suddenly pointed at me and started shouting loudly.

“Village drunk, I guess,” Somchai said.

“What's he saying?” I asked. The man looked like he was getting more agitated. I thought of Nok's drunk harasser.

“I have no idea.”

The man began to stumble toward me. Now he was screaming and wagging a finger at me with hostility. Spit flew from his mouth. I could see his yellowed teeth. One of the mothers was in his way and he shoved her aside forcefully. She fell to the ground and her baby started wailing.

“Hey!” I yelled and advanced toward him. It's what I should have done when the drunk Frenchman was following Nok. Instead I had just stood there like an idiot, even though I had seen the terror building in her eyes.

“
Boh penyang
, Cam,” Somchai was saying. “No worries. He's just a drunk. Let it go.” He walked over to the woman and helped her up.

I knew my adrenaline was rising; my tongue felt thicker, the taste in my mouth changed. I looked at the woman dusting off her skirt and straightening up the baby on her back.

“Cam, back off. It's nothing,” Somchai urged. He knew all about my fight with the Thai basketball guard. I could see that he was afraid I would hurt someone again.

I tried to slow my breath, making it long and deep. I realized it was my memory from yesterday that was making me so angry, not the present moment. The woman was back to chuckling with her friends. She had obviously let it go. Why couldn't I? A toothless woman tried to distract me by holding up a sort of bamboo flute in front of my face. I let my eyes fall away from the drunk. The woman motioned incessantly for me to play.

Somchai sighed with relief when I took the flute.

What was I, the Pied Piper? I'd never played an instrument before, unless you count the piano lesson Julia forced me to go to when I was ten. Her attempt to refine me. I had gone to the first lesson to try to keep her happy, but it didn't last long. Halfway through, the teacher mumbled something about me being tone deaf. I stormed out and never went back.

Now there was no running away. It seemed the entire village and bus were watching me. I had no choice but to take the flute. No one else seemed to be as bothered by the drunk as I was. I blew into the instrument hesitantly and it made a sound like a smoker's cough. The crowd started to chuckle tentatively. The man waved his hand at me as if he was dismissing something and mumbled to himself as he wandered off. I watched him turn around and pee into the bushes. The children laughed.

By now other bus passengers had their faces pressed to the windows, or had come off the bus to see what was happening. I put the flute up to my mouth to play again, when, like an unexplainable character that pops out of nowhere in the midst of a bizarre dream, a wizened old woman appeared, wearing a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses that were too big for her face with rhinestones stuck to the black arms. Her sunglasses seemed so out of place in this practically prehistoric village. It was so wacky I couldn't resist. I laughed out loud. She ignored my laughter, took the flute from me, clicked her tongue, and began to play an energetic tune that sounded like the jungle insects. The children laughed and clapped and danced. I felt like I was in the middle of a photo from
National Geographic.
My fear about losing Nok eased up a little. I would find a way to make it okay again. In a culture as fluid and open-hearted as this, anything was possible.

I was almost disappointed when the bus driver finished his work underneath the belly of the old bus, and motioned for everyone to get back on. I could have hung out here for a while. The drunk was nowhere in sight. As I settled back into my hard seat, I heard a German girl call out from the back of the bus.

“Hey, has anyone seen my sunglasses?”

“Black with rhinestones?” Somchai answered.

“Yeah, that's them.”

As the bus pulled away, he pointed out the window to the wrinkled, old flute player, wearing the sunglasses and now doing some kind of funky jig with the children as she played. Even the German girl couldn't help but laugh.

The bus started its roller-coaster ride again. The driver passed back more plastic barf bags. By the time we got to Vang Vieng I was too woozy to worry that we were nowhere but on the side of some country road, surrounded by craggy mountains closing in on me like the bodies on the bus. In a daze, I followed Somchai along the path into Vang Vieng town.

It wasn't long before I was yanked out of my foggy brain. I couldn't believe the number of foreigners in one spot. Bands of white guys with sunburned shoulders joked with each other in English as they walked by. Tanned European girls in tiny bikinis rode their rented bicycles through the handful of streets while Lao men giggled and Lao women shifted in discomfort. A group of Israelis kicked a
katoh
ball as their Hebrew floated through the countless restaurants. I overheard a fat
falang
attempting to explain to a waitress the meaning of “over easy.”

Somchai chuckled as he watched my jaw drop.

“You like?” he asked.

I didn't know yet. It was such a shock after our stop in the jungle village. I felt like someone had chucked a bucket of cold water on me.

We found a guesthouse and unpacked before going back outside. We passed a shop renting inner tubes and he asked if I wanted to get one and float down the River Song, which flowed along the edge of the small tourist town. I shrugged. I didn't know why, but I wasn't sure about this place, even though I could understand nearly every conversation that wafted past me. The familiarity of Western culture everywhere should have made me feel better, but it didn't.

I followed Somchai into the inner tube shop, anyway, and then down to the riverbank. Water buffalo watched us from muddy banks as we drifted downstream in the cheap, black tubes. I could see why tourists were into this. Warm river water flowed between my toes. Vibrant blue-and-yellow butterflies gathered together in the riverbank reeds. Jagged mountains loomed overhead like lifeguards in a chair. We hadn't gone far when an old man called to us from one of the banks. He held out a large stick for us to grab on to. I looked at Somchai, confused.

“It's his business,” he explained. “He brings the tourists in so they can see the caves on this side of the river. Grab on.”

I caught the elderly man's stick and he pulled me in towards the bank. We paid him 1000
kip
and he gave us a flashlight so we could see inside the cave. Climbing the trail to the cave, massive leaves waved us on and red ants scurried for a taste of our hands as we placed them on a rickety bamboo handrail. I was back in my lush, jungle dream. The only thing missing was Nok.