Sightseeing (2 page)

I'd been combing the motel beachfront for trash when I looked up from my morning chore and noticed Clint Eastwood sniffing his new friend. An American: Her Budweiser bikini told me so. I apologized from a distance, called the pig over, but the girl said it was okay, it was fine, the pig could stay as long as he liked. She called me over and said I could do the same.

I told her the pig's name.

“That's adorable,” she said, laughing.

“He's the best,” I said.
“Dirty Harry. Fistful of Dollars. The Outlaw Josey Wales. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”

“He's a very good actor.”

“Yes. Mister Eastwood is a first-class thespian.”

Clint Eastwood trotted into the ocean for his morning bath then, leaving us alone, side-by-side in the sand. I looked to make sure Ma wasn't watching me from the office window. I explained how Clint Eastwood loves the ocean at low tide, the wet sand like a three-kilometer trough of mud. The girl sat up on her elbows, watched the pig, a waterlogged copy of
The Portrait of a Lady
at her side. She'd just gone for a swim and the beads of water on her navel seemed so close that for a moment I thought I might faint if I did not look away.

“I'm Elizabeth. Lizzie.”

“Nice to meet you, Miss Elizabeth,” I said. “I like your bikini.”

She threw back her head and laughed. I admired the shine of her tiny, perfectly even rows of teeth, the gleam of that soft, rose-colored tongue quivering between them like the meat of some magnificent mussel.

“Oh my,” she said, closing that mouth, gesturing with her chin. “I think your pig is drowning.”

Clint Eastwood was rolling around where the ocean meets the sand, chasing receding waves, running away from oncoming ones. It's a game he plays every morning, scampering back and forth across the water's edge, and he snorted happily every time the waves knocked him into the foam.

“He's not drowning,” I said. “He's swimming.”

“I didn't know pigs could swim.”

“Clint Eastwood can.”

She smiled, a close-mouthed grin, admiring my pig at play, and I would've given anything in the world to see her tongue again, to reach out and sink my fingers into the hollows of her collarbone, to stare at that damp, beautiful navel all day long.

“I have an idea, Miss Elizabeth,” I said, getting up, brushing the sand from the seat of my shorts. “This may seem rather presumptuous, but would you like to go for an elephant ride with me today?”

Ma doesn't want me bonking a farang because once, long ago, she had bonked a farang herself, against the wishes of her own parents, and all she got for her trouble was a broken heart and me in return. The farang was a man known to me only as Sergeant Marshall Henderson. I remember the Sergeant well, if only because he insisted I call him by his military rank.

“Not Daddy,” I remember him saying in English, my first and only language at the time. “Sergeant. Sergeant Henderson. Sergeant Marshall. Remember you're a soldier now, boy. A spy for Uncle Sam's army.”

And during those early years—before he went back to America, promising to send for us—the Sergeant and I would go on imaginary missions together, navigating our way through the thicket of farangs lazing on the beach.

“Private,” he'd yell after me. “I don't have a good feeling about this, Private. This place gives me the creeps. We should radio for reinforcements. It could be an ambush.”

“Let 'em come, Sergeant! We can take 'em!” I would squeal, crawling through the sand with a large stick in hand, eyes trained on the enemy. “Those gooks'll be sorry they ever showed their ugly faces.”

One day, the three of us went to the fresh market by the Island's southern pier. I saw a litter of pigs there, six of them squeezed into a small cardboard box amidst the loud thudding of butchers' knives. I remember thinking of the little piglets I'd seen skewered and roasting over an open fire outside many of the Island's fancier restaurants.

I began to cry.

“What's wrong, Private?”

“I don't know.”

“A soldier,” the Sergeant grunted, “never cries.”

“They just piggies,” Ma laughed, bending to pat me on the back. Because of our plans to move to California, Ma was learning English at the time. She hasn't spoken a word of English to me since. “What piggies say, luk? What they say? Piggies say oink-oink. No cry, luk. No cry. Oink-oink is yummy-yummy.”

A few days later, the Sergeant walked into my bedroom with something wriggling beneath his T-shirt. He sat down on the bed beside me. I remember the mattress sinking with his weight, the chirping of some desperate bird struggling in his belly.

“Congratulations, Private,” the Sergeant whispered through the dark, holding out a young and frightened Clint Eastwood in one of his large, chapped hands. “You're a CO now. A commanding officer. From now on, you'll be responsible for the welfare of this recruit.”

I stared at him dumbfounded, took the pig into my arms.

“Happy birthday, kiddo.”

And shortly before the Sergeant left us, before Ma took over the motel from her parents, before she ever forbade me from speaking the Sergeant's language except to assist the motel's guests, before I knew what “bastard” or “mongrel” or “slut” or “whore” meant in any language, there was an evening when I walked into the ocean with Clint Eastwood—I was teaching him how to swim—and when I looked back to shore I saw my mother sitting between the Sergeant's legs in the sand, the sun a bright red orb on the crest of the mountains behind them. They spoke without looking at each other, my mother reaching back to hook an arm around his neck, while my piglet thrashed in the sea foam.

“Ma,” I asked a few years later, “you think the Sergeant will ever send for us?”

“It's best, luk,” Ma said in Thai, “if you never mention his name again. It gives me a headache.”

After I finished combing the beach for trash, put Clint Eastwood back in his pen, Lizzie and I went up the mountain on my motorcycle
to Surachai's house, where his uncle Mongkhon ran an elephant-trekking business. M
R
. M
ONGKHON'S
J
UNGLE SAFARI
, a painted sign declared in their driveway. C
OME
E
XPERIENCE THE
N
ATURAL
B
EAUTY OF
F
OREST WITH THE
A
MAZING
V
IEW OF
O
CEAN AND
S
PLENDID
H
ORIZON FROM
E
LEPHANT'S
B
ACK
! I'd informed Uncle Mongkhon once that his sign was grammatically incorrect and that I'd lend him my expertise for a small fee, but he just laughed and said farangs preferred it just the way it was, thank you very much, they thought it was charming, and did I really think I was the only huakhuai who knew English on this godforsaken Island? During the war in Vietnam, before he started the business, Uncle Mongkhon had worked at an airbase on the mainland dishing lunch to American soldiers.

From where Lizzie and I stood, we could see the gray backs of two bulls peeking over the roof of their one-story house. Uncle Mongkhon used to have a corral full of elephants before the people at Monopolated Elephant Tours came to the Island and started underpricing the competition, monopolizing mountain-pass tariffs, and staking their claim upon farangs at hotels three stars and up—doing, in short, what they had done on so many other islands like ours. MET was putting Uncle Mongkhon out of business, and in the end he was forced to sell several elephants to logging companies on the mainland. Where there had once been eight elephants roaming the wide corral, now there were only two—Yai and Noi—aging bulls with ulcered bellies and flaccid trunks that hung limply between their crusty forelegs.

“Oh, wow,” Lizzie said. “Are those actual elephants?”

I nodded.

“They're so huge.”

She clapped a few times, laughing.

“Huge!” she said again, jumping up and down. She turned to me and smiled.

Surachai was lifting weights in the yard, a barbell in each hand. Uncle Mongkhon sat on the porch bare-chested, smoking a cigarette. When Surachai saw Lizzie standing there in her bikini, his arms went limp. For a second I was afraid he might drop the weights on his feet.

“Where'd you find this one?” he said in Thai, smirking, walking toward us.

“Boy,” Uncle Mongkhon yelled from the porch, also in Thai. “You irritate me. Tell that girl to put on some clothes. You know damn well I don't let bikinis ride. This is a respectable establishment. We have rules.”

“What are they saying?” Lizzie asked. Farangs get nervous when you carry on a conversation they can't understand.

“They just want to know if we need one elephant or two.”

“Let's just get one.” Lizzie smiled, reaching out to take my hand. “Let's ride one together.” I held my breath. Her hand shot bright, surprising comets of heat up my arm. I wanted to yank my hand away even as I longed to stand there forever with our sweaty palms folded together. I heard the voice of Surachai's mother coming from inside the house, the light sizzle of a frying pan.

“It's nothing, Maew,” Uncle Mongkhon yelled back to his sister inside. “Though I wouldn't come out here unless you like nudie shows. The mongrel's here with another member of his international harem.”

“These are my friends,” I said to Lizzie. “This is Surachai.”

“How do you do,” Surachai said in English, shaking her hand, looking at me all the while.

“I'm fine, thank you.” Lizzie chuckled. “Nice to meet you.”

“Yes yes yes,” Surachai said, grinning like a fool. “Honor to meet you, madam. It will make me very gratified to let you ride my elephants. Very gratified. Because he”—Surachai patted me on the back now—“he my handsome soulmate. My best man.”

Surachai beamed proudly at me. I'd taught him that word: “soulmate.”

“You're married?” Lizzie asked. Surachai laughed hysterically, uncomprehendingly, widening his eyes at me for help.

“He's not,” I said. “He meant to say ‘best friend.'”

“Yes yes,” Surachai said, nodding. “Best friend.”

“You listening to me, boy?” Uncle Mongkhon got up from the porch and walked toward us. “Bikinis don't ride. It scares the animals.”

“Sawatdee, Uncle,” I said, greeting him with a wai, bending my head extra low for effect; but he slapped me on the head with a forehand when I came up.

“Tell the girl to put on some clothes,” Uncle Mongkhon growled. “It's unholy.”

“Aw, Uncle,” I pleaded. “We didn't bring any with us.”

“Need I remind you, boy, that the elephant is our national symbol? Sometimes I think your stubborn farang half keeps you from understanding this. You should be ashamed of yourself. I would tell your ma if it wouldn't break her heart.

“What if I went to her country and rode a bald eagle in my underwear, huh?” he continued, pointing at Lizzie. “How would she like it? Ask her, will you?”

“What's he saying?” Lizzie whispered in my ear.

“Ha ha ha,” Surachai interjected, gesticulating wildly. “Everything okay, madam. Don't worry, be happy. My uncle, he just say elephants very terrified of your breasts.”

“You should've told me to put on some clothes.” Lizzie turned to me, frowning, letting go of my hand.

“It's really not a problem,” I said, laughing.

“No,” Uncle Mongkhon said to Lizzie in English. “Not a big problem, madam. Just a small one.”

In the end, I took off my T-shirt and gave it to Lizzie. As we made our way toward the corral, I caught her grinning at the sight of my bare torso. Though I had been spending time at the new public gym by the pier, I felt some of that old adolescent embarrassment returning again. I casually flexed my muscles in the postures I'd practiced before my bedroom mirror so Lizzie could see my body not as the soft, skinny thing that it was, but as a pillar of strength and stamina.

When we came upon the gates of the elephant corral, Lizzie took my hand again. I turned to smile at her and she seemed, at that moment, some ethereal angel come from heaven to save me, an angel whose breasts left round, dark damp spots on my T-shirt. And when we mounted the elephant Yai, the beast rising quickly to his feet, Lizzie squealed and wrapped her arms so tightly around my bare waist that I would've gladly forfeited breathing for the rest of my life.

Under that jungle canopy, climbing up the mountainside on Yai's back, I told her about Sergeant Henderson, the motel, Ma, Clint Eastwood. She told me about her Ohio childhood, the New York City skyline, NASCAR, TJ Maxx, the drinking habits of American teenagers. I told her about Pamela, my last American girlfriend, and how she promised me her heart but never answered any of my letters. Lizzie nodded sympathetically and told me about her bastard boyfriend Hunter, whom she'd left last night at their hotel on the other side of the Island after finding him in the arms of a young prostitute. “That fucker,” she said. “That whore.” I told Lizzie she should forget about him, she deserved better, and besides Hunter was a stupid name anyway, and we both shook our heads and laughed at how poorly our lovers had behaved.

We came upon a scenic overlook. The sea rippled before us like a giant blue bedspread. I decided to give Yai a rest. He sat down gratefully on his haunches. For a minute Lizzie and I just sat there on the elephant's back looking out at the ocean, the wind blowing through the trees behind us. Yai was
winded from the climb; we rose and fell with his heavy breaths. I told Lizzie about how the Sergeant and my mother used to stand on the beach, point east, and tell me that if I looked hard enough I might be able to catch a glimpse of the California coast rising out of the Pacific horizon. I pointed to Ma's motel below, the twelve bungalows like tiny insects on a golden shoreline. It's amazing, I told Lizzie, how small my life looks from such a height.