Cross Currents (5 page)

“You and your crabs. And your fish. There's no room left in your tank. The fish practically sleep on each other.”

“Fish don't sleep.”

“Well, your fish are going to sleep forever if you put any more in that tank.”

“Maybe we can . . .” Niran paused as his father appeared in the distance, wearing a frayed canvas hat that a tourist had given him years earlier. “See, we should have worked faster,” Niran said. “Now I have to go to the pier.”

“I'll go to the pier. You stay with Achara.”

“No, no, no.”

“Wait. Let me tell you a new joke before you go.”

He watched a fish break the surface of the nearby water. “Tell me.”

“Why did the farmer call his pig Ink?”

“Why?”

“Because he kept running out of the pen.”

Niran giggled, pushing her. “Tell me another one.”

“What's skinny, has black hair, and says ‘ouch'?”

“I don't know.”

She reached forward, pinching his arm.

“Ouch!”

“It's you,” she said, giggling. “You're the answer.” Before he could get revenge, she kicked some sand at his feet, and then ran toward their restaurant, waving to her father but not pausing. Niran started to run after her but stopped, since she was much quicker. He saw that his father was carrying their sign—a piece of wood that had been painted white, with RAINBOW RESORT written in bright colors.

“You sold six Fantas, four Sprites, and three beers?” his father asked, leading him to a footpath behind the beach, limping as he walked.

“And one of Patch's coconuts.”

Lek smiled, though he wished they had sold more. “You're a fine salesman. Are you sure you want to be a scientist?”

“Of course I'm sure. Then I can catch all the fish I want. Just like the French scientists who were tagging all those tuna.”

“That was neat.”

“It was amazing. And they get to do it every day.”

“How about we tag some tourists today? We've got seven empty bungalows. And that's seven too many.”

“Let's try.”

Father and son followed the path, which turned to the east, toward the interior of the butterfly-shaped island. The body of the butterfly was a rise about a mile long and a half mile across. On either side lay a beach, and at the end of each beach rose the massive limestone cliffs. The main village was located between the beaches.

As they neared the village, they began to pass a row of simple one-story shops that sold T-shirts, swimsuits, balls, sunscreen, refreshments, souvenirs, jewelry, and just about anything else that a tourist might want. The farther they walked, the more elaborate the stores became—soon small, A-framed structures that mimicked traditional Thai architecture. These one- or two-room stores contained masseuses, dive centers, Internet cafés, crepe and pastry shops, minimarts, and travel agencies.

The walkway was now paved with bricks, and thinking about how Patch had started to work on their path, Lek smiled. He looked up, gazing at the main trunk of a massive banyan tree that dwarfed everything beneath it. The base of the tree was encircled with strips of red, blue, white, and yellow fabric. A little red shrine had been inset within the weblike mesh of the tree's roots. Several incense sticks burned near the shrine. A variety of soft drinks had been set nearby—opened, but not emptied. Straws were aimed skyward, offering ancestors easy access to the drinks.

The center of the village bustled with vendors, children, and tourists. The foreigners wandered around carrying large backpacks, sat in cafés, haggled with shopkeepers, or studied maps and guidebooks. As Lek and Niran approached the opposite beach, a slew of restaurants materialized. Each restaurant had some sort of wooden boat outside, which was filled with ice and fresh seafood. There were rows of squid, giant prawns, lobsters, crabs, clams, snapper, shark, barracuda, and sea bass. Patrons could order any item and have it cooked to their specifications. Lek studied the offerings, wondering what he and Niran would spear for dinner. He didn't see much tuna and decided to hunt for such a fish. More tourists might come to their restaurant if fresh tuna was available.

The pier was about three hundred feet long and filled with people, carts, and baggage. Secured to the pier near the shallower waters were almost a dozen colorful dive boats, full of glistening scuba tanks and grinning tourists. Next came several rust-stained barges that had brought goods from Phuket. Toward the end of the pier, battered two-story passenger ferries had been lashed together, so that they pointed toward shore and stretched out, parallel to the pier. The boats were empty, but in the distance a white-and-blue ferry approached.

Dozens of Thais congregated near the end of the pier, holding signs and brochures featuring their guesthouses and resorts. Lek greeted many of the men and women he saw, taking his place in line. None of them jostled for a better position or sought to create a competitive advantage. Everyone was friendly, excited by the prospect of a full boat, of travelers with money to spend.

Lek leaned against a steel railing, his hip aching. “What did you learn in school yesterday?” he asked his son.

“What?”

“Tell me, my little daydreamer, what you learned in school yesterday.”

Niran shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? That can't be true. Think of one thing. One thing to make your father smarter.”

“Well, a whale is not a fish. It breathes air. Like us. I asked Miss Wattana about whales. And she told me all about them.”

“Really?”

“A whale has a . . . a hole in the top of its head. And it goes to the surface and breathes air.”

“Hmm. I didn't know that. Thanks for making me smarter. Your mother would be proud.”

Niran scratched at a mosquito bite. “Some whales can hold their breath for more than an hour.”

“Really?”

“They dive down so deep, and look for squid to eat. And they sing to each other while they hunt.”

“How wonderful. What kind of songs do they sing?”

“Long, moaning songs,” Niran answered, still scratching. “I want to hear one someday.”

“Keep studying, so that when you hear one, you'll know just what it means.”

“I will.”

Lek pointed to the approaching ferry. “It's about ready to dock. And we need to fill up those seven bungalows. What do you think, should we drop our price?”

“To four hundred baht a night?”

“Let's try three seventy-five.”

“All right.”

“Will you give it your best, my son? Let's really try to reel them in.”

Niran nodded, watching the ferry pull alongside an almost identical vessel at the end of the row. A few minutes passed before tourists started crossing from boat to boat, drawing nearer to the pier. Most of the newcomers spoke excitedly and eyed their surroundings. All carried large backpacks. As the foreigners approached, the Thais began to hold up their signs and, in broken English, encourage people to come to their guesthouses. Since Niran's English was much better than his father's, when he wasn't in school he often visited the pier and tried to entice people to come to Rainbow Resort. Sometimes Suchin joined them as well.

Lek realized that the boat was less full than he had hoped—which was unfortunate, because the nicer resorts would continue to have vacancies. He listened to his competitors, aware that many were also dropping their prices. After whispering to Niran to offer three hundred and fifty baht for a room, he gripped his fists tight as his son exchanged words with a group of blond-haired women. He thought that they were going to agree to Niran's offer, but in the end, one of the women thanked him, patted him on the head, and turned away. Lek closed his eyes, angry that the woman had touched Niran's head, that she didn't know Thais considered heads to be sacred and therefore practically untouchable.

Niran knew that his father was watching him, that his family depended on him. And so he smiled wide and used his best English. He told tourists about the beauty of Rainbow Resort, about how his mother was the number one cook on the island, and about how their bungalows were on the prettiest part of the beach. But many tourists already had reservations at nicer places, and Niran didn't have brochures like some of the other people offering places to stay. All he had was his voice, which he used as a poet uses words. He made people slow with his voice; he made them stop and smile. But even when he dropped the price to three hundred baht, people kept shaking their heads. And soon only a smattering of Thais remained on the pier.

Having failed his father, Niran turned and walked toward shore, watching his bare feet rise and fall. “I'm sorry,” he whispered, switching to Thai.

Lek paused and, despite the pain in his hip, bent down to look into his son's eyes. “Don't be sorry. You tried your best. And you spoke so well. I've never heard you speak so well.”

“Why didn't anyone come?”

“Because there are too many of us and too few of them.”

“I wasn't good enough. Suchin would have been better.”

Lek smiled. “You were perfect. Just perfect. Now let's go get the spear gun and catch a tuna. So many of these foreigners like sushi. Let's hit a tuna and fill their bellies with it.”

“Tuna are hard to hit. They can swim up to almost a hundred kilometers an hour. Faster than cars.”

“So that's why we usually miss them? Because they're faster than cars?”

“That's right. That's why it's so hard to bring one home.”

Pursing his lips, Lek pretended to ponder Niran's words. “Well . . . don't you think it's hard for air to find the hole in the head of a giant whale?”

“That would be hard.”

“But the air finds the hole. Every day. And so maybe today we'll find a tuna. Such a big tuna that we can eat some after the foreigners are full.”

Niran scratched at his bare, bony shoulder. “Let's go.”

After slowly straightening, Lek turned to look at the ferry, wishing that it had been full. Sarai would be disappointed once again. “Let's surprise your mother with the biggest tuna she's ever seen,” Lek said, increasing his pace, grimacing at a sudden bout of pain.

“Does your hip hurt?”

“No. Not today. So let's hurry, my little scientist. Let's hurry and make her happy.”

SEVERAL HOURS LATER, ON THE sandy area behind Rainbow Resort, a group of about fifteen Thai children played soccer. Only two girls competed, each on opposite teams, wearing shorts and T-shirts, while the boys wore only shorts. The field, about forty feet wide and seventy feet long, had been cleared of palm trees by Lek a decade earlier, before he hurt his hip. He'd wanted his future children to be able to run, as he had fond memories of doing so as a boy. And though he'd been tempted to build bungalows on the field, he'd been able to resist this notion, convincing himself that foreigners wouldn't want to be so far from the beach. His neighbors had encouraged him as well, glad that their children had a place dedicated to the game they loved. So much of the island was devoted to tourists. Foreigners stayed on the nicest stretches of sand, scuba dived above untouched reefs, and enjoyed the best of everything. Most of the locals lived far from the beaches and worked all hours of the day.

Lek might have been able to earn a bit more money by destroying the soccer field, but he chose not to. And his wife, who was practical in many ways, and who deftly managed what little money they possessed, wanted the field to remain as it was. Sarai liked hearing the children laugh after school as she diced vegetables with her mother and prepared to feed ten or twenty people.

Now, as Lek leaned against the back of the restaurant and watched his daughter and son with pride, he wondered what would happen to the field if they were forced to leave for Bangkok. Surely it would be developed—guesthouses or a hotel put in its place. Suchin's and Niran's friends would have to find another place to play. And while several such fields existed in the middle of the island, they were closer to piles of discarded water bottles and old engines than to any beach.

Suchin had always been much better at soccer than Niran. She could defend, pass, and dribble as if she'd learned such skills in the womb. Niran often looked as if he'd just started to play. To his friends' surprise, he didn't seem to mind being one of the worst players. Though no one else knew why, the reason was simple—Niran saw his father hobble every day and he felt no need to be the fastest or strongest. His being so fast might make his father sad.

From inside the restaurant, Lek heard Sarai announce that dinner was ready. He started to call out to his children but saw that Niran had the ball and was dribbling toward the goal. “Hurry,” Lek whispered, clenching his fists, releasing the tension when another boy kicked the ball away from Niran as other defenders cheered.