Sightseeing Read online

  Halfway there, winded from running, I saw all I needed to see. The men were torching the Cambodian shantytown. A light red glow bloomed at the end of the development’s main street, like a second sun rising in the night. I heard gruff, exasperated voices, the high-pitched screams of women. Something exploded. Glass shattered. Somebody yelled profanities. I stopped walking then and sat cross-legged in the middle of the street. I watched a rat scuttle into a sewer grate, appear once more to forage for food. Watching that awful red flickering in the distance, I felt so weak and dizzy that if the rats had emerged to eat me alive I couldn’t have done a thing to stop them.

  I don’t remember walking home. But I must have, because I woke up in my own bed the next morning, head throbbing with pain. I thought I was losing my mind. I tried to convince myself that I had dreamt the previous night’s events, but when I embraced Father that morning he reeked of smoke and gasoline.

  I went to Dong’s house immediately after breakfast. I tried to tell him about it, but Dong stopped me halfway and said he already knew. He told me his father had also smelled like gasoline. He said all the fathers in our development smelled like gasoline this morning.

  “It happens,” Dong said. “What can you do? They had it coming. It was only a matter of time. My pa said it wasn’t even their land. He said you can’t live for free like that, it’s really not fair to the rest of us.”

  “What about Priscilla?”

  “What about Priscilla?” Dong repeated. “She’ll be fine. She’s a survivor.”

  “I can’t believe this,” I said. “I can’t believe I’m best friends with a fat, knock-kneed asshole.”

  “Hey,” Dong said. “Watch it, fucker.”

  Then he turned around and went back inside the house. I stood there gaping at his front door, shaking with fury. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to hurt him. So I went over and took his bike from the yard. Dong screamed at me from his window but I was already pumping away at the pedals, racing toward what was left of the shantytown to find Priscilla and her mother.

  Bits of ash swirled around the railroad tracks. A thin veil of smoke hung in the air, stinging my eyes. When I arrived, it was as if the Cambodians’ shanty had never existed. There wasn’t a shack left standing. The ground smoldered with blackened sheets of tin. Their herb garden, too, had been razed. All the Cambodians stood around picking through the rubble, muttering to one another quietly in the early morning sun. Fortunately, some of their possessions had been saved; they piled bags and belongings together on a small patch of clean ground. Nobody looked particularly panicked. Nobody seemed particularly sad. It was as if they’d expected the fire. But nobody acknowledged me when I arrived.

  Priscilla stood with her mother next to the Cambodians’ stuff. The other women milled around them waving smoke from their faces. Her mother sat on a knapsack and stared at the rubble, a bored look on her face. She seemed to look right through me at first, but then she nodded seriously. Priscilla smiled when I arrived. She had dark rings around her eyes and her face was blackened from the fire, like somebody had smeared it with charcoal. “Hey,” she said. “Hey,” I said, panting, throwing Dong’s bike to the ground. “This really sucks, girlie.”

  She told me that nobody had been particularly hurt. She and her mother hadn’t lost too much. The golden tooth, the Presley album, the picture of Priscilla’s father—all had survived the fire, though they’d have to find a new pallet to sleep on. Priscilla said the men had come banging on their houses with sticks last night, told them to get out before they burned them alive in their shacks. I listened, nodded along, tried to look like she was telling me something I didn’t already know.

  I told her I was glad she and her mother weren’t hurt, but I could barely look at her. Priscilla shook her head and said the same thing had happened at the last place they’d squatted. Just like Dong, she told me it was only a matter of time. She said it could’ve been a lot worse.

  “We’re leaving,” she said finally. “We’re going. I’m gonna miss you guys.”

  She looked at Dong’s bike and asked me where he was. I told her he was sleeping. I invited Priscilla to the half-finished pool one last time. She asked her mother if she could go and her mother nodded silently, told Priscilla to be back in an hour. Before we left, I went up to Priscilla’s mother and apologized. It seemed I was always apologizing to that short, flat-faced woman. It seemed, too, that I’d never be able to apologize enough. “I’m very sorry about your house,” I said in Thai, and once more Priscilla’s mother slapped me on the back of the head, smiled widely out of that omelet face. “Hairy Beaver,” she answered in Thai. “Dickwad. Fuckface.”

  We didn’t do much at the pool that morning. We just sat around with our feet dangling off the edge chatting about this and that, the weather getting hotter and hotter. If we lived in a better world, I would’ve ridden that bike off the diving board and landed perfectly in the deep end for Priscilla. She could’ve remembered me by that. But it didn’t feel like a morning for bike tricks; it didn’t feel like a morning for clowning around. Priscilla was tired, uncharacteristically quiet. She hadn’t slept all night. Another incisor was coming out. She showed me, nudged it lightly with a finger, the golden tooth wobbling to and fro on her short pink gums. I stared at it transfixed because I knew that this would be the last time I’d peer into Priscilla’s golden mouth.

  We made our way back to the smoldering shanty. To my surprise, Dong was there when we arrived, chatting with Priscilla’s mother. We didn’t acknowledge one another. The Cambodians were gathering their belongings, getting ready to leave. I went with Priscilla to her mother, listened to them talk for a while, tried to ignore Dong standing beside me. It suddenly made me nauseated being around the Cambodians.

  Priscilla was asking for something in a pleading voice. Her mother nodded, looked at her sternly, looked over at Dong and me every so often. They were arguing about something. But then, after her mother nodded once more, Priscilla skipped excitedly to their knapsack and dug out the teakwood box.

  “This is for you,” she said, putting the tooth in one of Dong’s hands. Dong looked at me for the first time. “I can’t take this, girlie,” he said, shaking his head, extending his open palm back to her.

  “It’s for you and your mama,” Priscilla said, closing his fingers around the tooth. “Take it or I’ll beat you again.” Dong shrugged. “Okay,” he said, shoving the tooth into a pocket. “Thanks a lot, girlie.”

  She looked at me. I was next. I wanted to tell her no. I wanted to stop her. But Priscilla was already working away at that incisor, wobbling it back and forth with a thumb and a forefinger, her face contorted in pain and concentration. All the Cambodians stopped, looked over at Priscilla and me. She seemed to work at that incisor for an unbearably long time. I could hardly look at her do it. And then with a strong, vigorous gesture she got the tooth free at last, and there was a small gap now where there should’ve been gold, a smidgen of light red blood on her gums.

  “And this is for you,” she said, wiping the tooth clean on her pants, handing me the thing. I took it, put it in my back pocket. I thanked her. And then she went over and helped maneuver the large knapsack onto her mother’s back.

  We never heard from Priscilla the Cambodian again. Those, too, were the last days Dong and I spent together. Soon after, Dong’s parents sold their duplex back to the development company for half the original price. My parents eventually did the same for even less money.

  That day, however, Dong and I stood by their ruined shantytown and watched them walk away, their figures getting smaller and smaller by the minute. But then, wordlessly, I decided I couldn’t watch them leave. I walked over to Dong’s bike and picked it off the ground.

  “Hey,” he said. “Give me my bike, you asshole.”

  “You fat fuck,” I said, scrambling onto the seat. “Come get it yourself.”

  I started pumping away at the pedals again, standing upright, the wind blowing quickly through
my hair, Dong’s exasperated voice trailing off behind me. I don’t know how long I biked that morning. In my mind, I’d decided to bike to the ends of the earth. The development flew by. I biked past its limits, out onto Pattanakan Road, past the Thicknecks’ pristine development. I crossed through the fresh market. The streets and the people became stranger by the minute. I biked through thick traffic, smoke and exhaust whipping around me, cars honking every so often as I maneuvered haphazardly between them. I climbed over the bridge spanning some wide black canal. I went farther from my house that morning than I’d ever been on my own. I kept biking until the sun rose high in the sky and my body quivered from exhaustion and my thighs burned as they’d never burned before.

  I stopped at an intersection; men and women in business suits looked at me sternly as they walked by. I didn’t know where the hell I was. I didn’t know how long I’d been biking. I needed to get to a bathroom. I needed to piss; I needed to vomit as well. I left Dong’s bike by a telephone booth and went into a noodle shop. The owner eyed me curiously over steaming vats of broth. He asked me what I wanted. I could tell that he thought I was some street urchin. I didn’t say anything. I just marched to the back of the shop and slipped into the bathroom before the owner could stop me. In the bathroom, as I was urinating, I remembered the tooth Priscilla gave me. I threw that keepsake into the toilet bowl. I flushed. I decided I couldn’t keep a thing like that.

  When I emerged from the bathroom, the owner was waiting for me, frowning severely. “What the hell are you doing, kid?” he asked me.

  “I was taking a piss,” I said. “What did you think I was doing?”

  He reached out and tried to grab me by the collar. I slipped from his grasp just in time. I tried to punch him in the stomach. But he’d reached out to grab my wrists—one, then the other. His hands were strong. He gripped me hard and pulled me toward him. All the strength left my body, and my eyes suddenly felt hot with tears. I was crying, though I hadn’t realized it until then.

  The owner of the noodle shop knelt down to look me in the eyes.

  “I’m not one to thrash another man’s child,” he whispered through gritted teeth. I felt my hands getting numb from his grip. I tried to writhe away but the more I struggled, the harder his hands held me in place, his thick fingernails digging into my skin.

  “So this is what we’re gonna do,” he said. “We’re gonna pretend that you didn’t just try to punch me. I’m gonna let you go and I’m gonna count to three. By the time I get to three, you’re gonna be gone. You’re gonna go back to wherever the hell you just came from. You understand me, boy?”

  I started crying in earnest then, the tears streaming freely down my face, mucus salty on my lips.

  “Let me go,” I whimpered. “Please.”

  “I’m not running a goddamn orphanage here, kid,” he continued, still gripping me. “I’m not running a public rest room, either. I’m running a business, you understand me?”

  He stared at me for a while, his face contorted with exasperation.

  “You understand me?” he asked again.

  “Yes, sir,” I stammered. “I understand you, sir.”

  “Good,” he said, letting go of my wrists. “One. Two. Three.”

  DON’T LET ME DIE IN THIS PLACE

  My son Jack says I’m being difficult. It’s dinnertime. It’s hot as hell. The mongrel children are kicking each other under the table, yapping and giggling senselessly. The wife’s coming at me with spoonfuls of cold, clumpy porridge. Each time the spoon hovers close to my face my foreign daughter-in-law opens her mouth like she’s instructing me by example. I hate it when she does this. It’s demeaning. I know how to eat, thank you very much. And while I’ve learned to accept with dignity the fact that I can’t really feed myself anymore—and while, hell, I’ve even learned to live with wearing a bib during meals—every time my son’s wife opens her mouth like that it’s almost enough to set my dead right arm to shaking.

  “Jack, please tell her to stop,” I say, the spoon so close I could lick it, the wife with her lips parted stupidly again. “Tell her I hate it when she opens her mouth like that.” But my son just gapes at me, sighs, and says, “Don’t be difficult, Father,” like I’m some child misbehaving in a department store.

  The wife looks at me, looks at Jack, shoves the spoon back into the porridge bowl. She gets up from the table. The mongrels quiet down for the first time all evening. “Enough,” the wife says in English to my son, throwing up her hands. “I no do this no more, okay? He eat by himself now, Jack.” Jack sighs again, calls after the wife by her name. He says, “Tida—,” but she’s already halfway out of the kitchen, muttering to herself in Thai like some crazy.

  Jack blinks at me, frowning. “Nice,” he says, getting up to follow her. “Mission accomplished, Father.”

  “What? What the hell did I do now?”

  But my son just throws down his napkin and goes to fetch his Thai wife. Soon it’s just the mongrels and me staring at each other. A mosquito buzzes in my ear. I reach out with my good left hand to swat it. I miss. The only thing I manage to kill in that ear is the hearing. I watch the girl say something to the little boy in Thai. The boy looks at me wide-eyed. “Stop,” I tell them, though neither of my grandchildren speak much English. “You shouldn’t stare. It’s rude.”

  To my surprise they seem to understand because they start looking at their half-empty plates like they’ve suddenly cultivated an interest in china. So I sit for a while and look at my foreign grandchildren trying not to look at me. I try to get my hearing back, pick at the assaulted eardrum with my good left hand. I glance over at the bowl of porridge, and suddenly I’m hungrier than I’ve been in a very long time.

  * * *

  Jack’s washing my back with a coarse sponge. Given the evening’s events, my son’s scrubbing me quite hard tonight. I’m rocking from the brash, rough motion. I feel a little bad about things—the wife never came back to dinner—so I try to keep quiet. But there’s only so much passive-aggressive scrubbing a man can take from his only son.

  “Dammit, Jack,” I finally say. “Clean me. Don’t skin me.”

  He stops. He comes around and starts wiping down my torso. He doesn’t look me in the eye. Jack hates to look when I bathe. He’s embarrassed by my nakedness. If there’s anybody who should be embarrassed it’s probably me. He’s not the one who can’t bathe himself.

  “What’s it going to take, Father?” he says now, directly at my navel, the sponge cold and prickly against the folds of my stomach. “What’s it going to take for you to be happy here?” He squeezes the sponge over my shoulders. Water dribbles down my chest. I wipe at it with my good left hand. “Good question, Jack,” I say. “You always ask good questions.”

  He laughs. It’s not a good laugh. It’s a grunting, impatient sound.

  “Dying would be good,” I say finally. “Dying would make me pretty happy.”

  “Father—”

  “I bet it would probably make you all a lot happier too.”

  “Christ.”

  “Well, maybe not you, Jack, but certainly that wife of yours,” I say. “She’d probably throw a party. That woman hates me. I know she does. Why, Jack? Why does she hate me? I’m just an old man, you know. I’m very fragile.”

  “She doesn’t hate you, Father.”

  “Of course she does,” I say. “Just look at tonight. All I did was put in an honest request and she makes a scene. I swear, Jack, that woman’s trying to give me another goddamn stroke. She’ll kill me with her hate one of these days.”

  “You’re incredible,” Jack says, shaking his head. He mutters something else under his breath, soaps my thighs, wipes at my legs with the sponge. He’s working fast now, like he can’t wait to get the whole thing over with, scrubbing in that rough, unpleasant way again. I stare at the top of his head for a while. It’s all depressing me to no end. I feel like furniture. So I look at the shower walls, search for pictures in the mildew like they’re cloud
s in the sky. I make out a herd of wild horses galloping across the linoleum. This turns out to be a bad idea because it makes me think of Macklin Johnson back home—that poor, beautiful man—and how we used to sit around and rent old Spaghetti Westerns to pass the time, and suddenly something hot and awful blooms in my chest and my eyes start to well up involuntarily.

  “Jesus,” Jack says. “Don’t tell me you’re gonna cry now.”

  What can a grown man say to such a thing? My son wipes down my face. He’s helping me into my clothes. He’s carrying me to the electric wheelchair, his arms like tight ropes around my shoulders and legs. I’m still thinking of Mac. I’m still steeling myself against tears. “Jack,” I say, swallowing hard. My son straps me in, positions the lame arm across my lap. “C’mon now,” he says, smiling at me for the first time all evening. “Buck up, old man. Things will get better. Nobody hates you here.”

  “Jack,” I say again. “I want to go home. Don’t let me die in this place.”

  “You’re not going to die, Father,” my son says. “You’re going to be happy.”

  I’m trying to get some sleep, still thinking of old Mac, when the wife peers into my room and scares me so bad I nearly crap my pajamas. She stands in the doorway, her small silhouette dark and ominous, and says in a meek voice, “Mister Perry sleeping?” and I say, “No, woman. Mister Perry’s pole-vaulting. Mister Perry’s running a goddamn marathon. What else do you think Mister Perry’s doing?”

  She stands there silently, cocks her head curiously to one side.

  “What do you want from me?” I ask after a while.

  “I no want nothing.” Her voice is a little louder now. “I just want to say sorry to you. I no mean to make you upset.”