The Merit Birds (12 page)

Cam

I stayed in bed for days after I found out about Nok's death. I didn't speak to anyone, not even Somchai. But he had told Julia everything. Now she was knocking on my door hourly, asking me if I needed anything, leaving plates of macaroni and cheese or vanilla pudding on the floor by my bed. My childhood favourites. She must have cooked them herself. You can't buy those things in Vientiane.

“I'm sorry, Cameron. About Nok,” she said uncomfortably, standing at my bedroom door. “I had no idea.” She apparently stayed home from work; through the sound of the harsh rain viciously hammering our tin roof, I heard her as she moved around the house. She came to my room regularly, to bring me food or tell me that Somchai was at the door.

“Tell him to go away.” I knew he would make me feel better and I didn't want to feel better yet. I had been like a plant in the Canadian spring, waking up from a long, harsh winter and daring to poke its tender head out of the soil, only to be frozen to death by a cruel and unexpected frost.

“Cam, I think you should get up. Go outside for a little bit. Get some fresh air.”

I rolled over to my other side so she couldn't see my face.

The next day she tried again.

“Cam, don't you think you'd feel better if you got up?”

I was annoyed by her intrusions into my isolation.

“You know what? This is your entire fault,” I said. Suddenly I wanted to tear into her. I had been craving someone to blame. It felt good to find a target. Of course it was her fault.

“If it wasn't for you I would have never met her. I wouldn't be in this stupid country!” I was screaming now, like a little kid, with snot and tears streaming down my face. “I hate you more now than when I was a kid. Why don't you just fuck off!”

She sat at the edge of my bed, like she didn't know what to do. She had this sympathetic, compassionate look on her face. For a second I saw how pathetic I must seem in her eyes. It made me sick. She wouldn't leave so finally I stood up, dizzy and weak. I grabbed some clothes and tromped through the house, slamming the front door shut.

I stepped out into the humid evening, woozy and mad. A red sunset smeared across the sky like a wound. It was my first time out in the world since I found out about Nok's death. I climbed onto my bike and my ankle twinged as a reminder of my fall in the cave. A reminder of a time before all of this. When Nok was alive and we were eager to see what would happen. Now there was no future. I tried to pedal fast, but soon I felt winded and weak.

“Oi!”
an old woman on a bicycle yelled as she veered to avoid hitting me.

I was out of it. Like an alien, hovering above everything, observing as if I couldn't be seen.

I slowed down, pedalling slowly through the smoky evening air to
Patuxai
, the Victory monument — Laos's version of Paris's Arc de Triomphe. Carved into the mushroom-coloured sides of the mammoth, concrete arch were mythical Buddhist creatures, part human, part bird, with round breasts and pointed, elaborate headdresses.
Bird
— it was the meaning of Nok's name.

Exhaust, thick in the muggy twilight, spewed out of the hundreds of motorbikes, aging Russian cars, and rusty pickup trucks circling the arch's roundabout. Coconut trees, stooped like mourning people, stood along the stone road that led underneath the monument. I noticed a man pacing the coral-coloured road, his dark brown face glistening with sweat as he clutched a main cord that had several tiny, square, wicker cages tied to it. I heard the peeping and twittering of small birds and immediately knew what he was selling. Merit birds.

I cycled over to the man; he nodded at me and pointed to the panicky plovers, asking if I wanted to buy. I looked at the birds, frantic and fragile, trapped and helpless, in their cages. I wondered where they were from. Probably nowhere near the busy Patuxai traffic circle. Wouldn't it have been better to leave the birds to their freedom in the first place?

“I'll take them all,” I said.

The man looked up, surprised.

“Muht?”

“Yeah, all.” I reached into the pocket of my shorts to pull out a limp wad of dirty
kip
bills. I passed the money to the man and he looked pleased with himself as he counted each bill. He watched me as I propped my bike against the victory arch, took the chain of cages from his hand, and made my way to a stretch of green grass. There were about ten cages tied to the main cord. The birds fluttered anxiously in their makeshift jails. In some, two birds were stuffed inside.

My blundering fingers fiddled with the little wicker loop that closed the first cage shut. The bird trapped inside quivered. I was so anxious to free him that it was making me clumsy with the lock. Impatient, I yanked on it, but it made the bird more terrified. I had to slow down. Finally, I was able to undo the loop and open the door. I could almost feel the bird's tiny heart pounding as he whirred past me to freedom. By now the sky was dusky grey and it was difficult to see where he flew, but I caught sight of his silhouette soaring past the beam of a light sitting on top of the arch. I wondered if he would be able to find his way home.

The other birds twittered impatiently, as if they knew they would be next. Urged by their restlessness, I quickly undid more cages. Flapping wings buzzed in my ears and I saw the birds gather and swoop in the twilight. With each bird released I felt lighter. Perhaps this vicarious feeling of freedom was why people paid money to let them go. Feeling calmer, I freed another, and another.

Then I came to the last trembling bird. I loosened the loop locking his cage and the brown plover peered out of the open door, dumbfounded by his new freedom. He looked from side to side, but stayed perched on the edge of the cage door.

“Go!” I urged him. “Get out of here.”

But the bird stayed — so used to the cage, and so fearful of the unknown.

“Fly!” I yelled, annoyed by his stupidity.

I jiggled the cage a bit. Finally he peered from side to side one last time and then lifted off and up into the boundless night sky. I watched his little outstretched wings as he soared up near the top of the arch, claiming his victory, but then suddenly he swooped back down near the traffic circle. Over again he swept up and floated back down, as if on some kind of aviary roller coaster. He was making me nervous, the way he glided so close to the evening traffic. Why wouldn't he just fly away to the clump of trees on the other side of the road? I heard the flutter of his wings as he swooped past me. It was almost as if he still had one eye on the cage, which now lay open and useless on the ground.

“You're free! Just go!” I swatted my hand in his direction.

I strained my eyes to follow him in the darkening sky. I'd momentarily lose sight of him and worry until I spotted him again, flitting under the arch.

I followed him with my eyes for some time. I decided a captor probably really makes merit when he no longer captures. I caught a glimpse of the merit bird seller, slurping noodles at a street vendor's cart. I knew it was my
kip
that had bought his dinner. The night settled in and the vendors lit their kerosene lanterns. I saw steam rising in the lamplight from the soy milk and spring rolls they sold. I sat down in the grass, my head turned up to the sky. I saw my bird make another dramatic swoop up into the air, only to cast himself back down into the headlights of oncoming traffic. The motorcyclist didn't even realize she had hit him.

I ran to the edge of the busy road and stood on the perimeter, as close to his shattered body as I could get. Motorbikes and cars whizzed by, oblivious to his death. In the light from the arch I could make out my bird's flattened body, his brown feathers flapping lifelessly every time a vehicle zoomed past.

I sat on my knees, right on the edge of the hectic roundabout, and didn't want to ever get up again.

Seng

Seng anxiously packed a bag in the darkness of his and Nok's deserted house. He was trying to think of what he might need, but the problem was he didn't know what he was going to do. He couldn't live in the bush forever. He also couldn't live with the guilt of the foreigner suffering. Nok said his name was Cam. It meant gold.

He was so hysterical that his movements were clumsy. He had to get out of there before Vong arrived. He didn't want her to know what he had done. He couldn't bear to see the pain on her face. The pain that he had put there. He had traded his whole life, everything that mattered to him, for a drunk buzz. Talk about an idiot.

He kept knocking things over. A Beerlao calendar with
Sabaidee Pi Mai
written on it in bright, happy characters fell to the ground in a shadowy corner. He jumped. He looked up at the black-and-white pictures of their parents. Small mantles sat underneath each photo for offerings to their spirits — incense, sticks of brown
longan
fruit, and cones fashioned from browning banana leaves and wilting marigolds. Just three days ago Nok had put the offerings there for Lao New Year. Just three days ago she had stood there, radiantly alive.

“What should I do now?” he whispered to his mother's picture. “How I have failed you!” He stuffed his mother's picture into his bag. He said a silent prayer that Nok would be with her now.

He was zipping his bag shut when he heard a noise outside, like a
tuk-tuk
trundling away from the front of the house. His heart beat frantically, like a bird just caught and stuffed into a cage. He tried to peer between the slats of the closed shutter. In the darkness he could make out a silhouette. Someone was standing in the driveway. He would escape out the back door and into the thicket of banana trees behind their house. They would never catch him. They had taken away too much.

“Seng?” he heard a woman call. He froze in his tracks. It had been three years, but she sounded exactly the same. It was as if he were a kid again and she was calling him inside for supper.

Now she was at the door, letting herself in. She still had a key. She walked in and they faced each other, two black shadows in the night.

“Vong.”

“Brother,” she said and began to weep. He could hear her sniffling and faltering breath. “I am so sorry, my brother.”

He couldn't help but go to her then. As he walked closer he could see that she was fatter now. She looked up and in the moonlight he could see laughing wrinkles around her eyes, like cracks in mud during the dry season. She looked older than she should.

He fell into her arms and despite all of his fears about her judgments and pain, it felt good to feel the warm embrace of family.

“Sister, you are home.”

Seng

When Seng finished telling the story of the accident, Vong remained silent. She looked like she was fighting against a tsunami of rage and grief. He scratched the back of his neck nervously. Finally, after some time of sitting in silence on the floor beside him, she said she was exhausted. She patted Seng's hand. He wanted to know what she was thinking. Did she hate him? She didn't even know the worst of what he had done yet. He didn't tell her about leaving Nok alone on the road.

“I need to sleep now,” she said.

She stumbled to a plastic woven mat on the floor; it was only after she was under the green mosquito net and Seng had turned out the light that he saw her curl into a fetal position in the moonlight and begin to heave silently. He wanted to go to her. He was surprised at how her presence comforted him. He did feel better with her around, but he couldn't drag her into his plan. He needed her to fall asleep so he could leave right away.

Night sounds surrounded the small house — howling dogs and belching bullfrogs. They would cover the sound of his footsteps. He would slip out of the house silently, leaving another sister alone. She would understand. After all, she was the first to leave.

He turned and went to search for his bag in the darkness. Suddenly she stood up and flicked on the light.

“Little brother?” she asked tenderly.

Seng turned around, shocked. He didn't know what to say. They stood there, facing each other, blinking as their eyes adjusted to the bright light. Suddenly he let his bag drop onto the floor.

“I'm so afraid,
euaigh
,” he said in a small voice.

Euaigh.
Big sister. She knelt beside him and sniffed at the top of his head in a Lao-style kiss. It reminded him of their mom; how she would tiptoe in the night around the space where they slept on the floor. She would kneel so quietly beside them, convinced they were sound asleep, and sniff each one of their heads or stroke their cheeks, mouthing prayers for them.

In Vong's arms, Seng's sturdy body shook. His head was slick with sweat.

“The police will come for me. They are starting to crack down on drunk driving now, like in your country. They will make an example of me.”

“What did the police say after the accident?”

“I don't know,
euaigh
. I didn't see them. I ran away.”

“You did what?”

“I ran. Into the bush. I wanted to find help, but I couldn't. I just came back to the house tonight to gather some things. Then I'm leaving.” He was scratching the back of his head like a madman.

“Seng, how could you —”

“I know, I deserve to be in jail. But it would break Nok's heart. All of our dreams — evaporated. Too much has been taken away from our family. Too much,” he hung his head and sobbed. “I'm not going into jail.”

Vong's mouth hung open.

“But where … where is her body?” she asked. The words sounded so toxic, like poison entering his body through his ears.

“She was at the morgue. Nana came and got her. Gave her a proper funeral. I watched it from the bushes.”

“What? Damn it, Seng! There has already been a funeral?”

“I'm sorry, sister. Khamdeng said you were coming, but I didn't know when. You never answered my e-mails.” He hadn't wanted to bring it up so soon, but it just slipped out. He was having a hard time holding things together.

He watched Vong swallow hard.

“They're trying to find me,” he continued. “They already questioned Khamdeng.”

Vong looked around the room, as if she was searching for an answer in the blackness.

“You have to come with me,” she blurted out.

“To America?”

“Seng, I don't live in America.”

“What?”

For three years he hadn't even know what country she lived in? He was that much of a dimwit?

“I live in Canada.”

The word
Canada
was like a slap on his cheek. He hadn't told her about what Khamdeng said to the police. He was trying to push the
falang
far out of his mind. He stood there, eyes searching his sister. He was suddenly struck by how much they looked alike. Their pudgy, stocky bodies, Meh's big round eyes and face. How could it be that they were so far apart now?

“Turn the light off,
euaigh
. I don't want anyone to know we are here.”

In hushed voices, Seng and Vong made their plan.