The Merit Birds Part 13

I looked at Julia. Why was he asking me this stuff?

"Cameron, don't answer him, please," Julia said. "Mr. Phon, we need a lawyer."

"Since you asked, Mrs. Julia, the second charge is manslaughter."

The world screeched to a halt. My head flopped forward.

"What are you talking about?" Julia said in a wavering voice. My eyes were closed. I wanted to reach across the desk and squeeze Mr. Phon's neck until his eyes popped out.

Julia buried her head in her hands. I could hear her sniffing back tears.

"Mr. Cam, can you tell me how much you drank at the Lao New Year party?"

"I wasn't at the Lao New Year party."

"So drunk you can't even remember, hey." He snorted a chuckle.

"No, Mr. Phon -"

"We have reports that you were there.

"I was supposed to be there but -"

"Cam, please," Julia said, black rivers of mascara running down her cheeks. "Do not say anything. Not until we get some legal help."

"Mrs. Julia, may I remind you that you are not in Canada anymore," Mr. Phon said. "We do things differently here. Our legal processes don't take nearly as much time as yours."

"From what I hear you have no legal processes," Julia said.

"You people always think your way of doing things is better," Mr Phon replied, annoyed. "Cameron, Mr. Khamdeng, who hosted the party, said that Nok invited you. It was his bike, but he wasn't driving. He has an alibi. The faster we do this, the better. The government is breathing down my back to solve this one. They want to see the foreigner responsible for killing a Lao daughter put in jail."

"Jail?" Julia said forcefully, the J popping out of her mouth vehemently. "Jail?"

This could not be happening. It just couldn't. I was petrified.

"a.s.sault. Manslaughter. We can't have this danger to Lao people walking free in Vientiane," said Mr. Phon. "Local people were harmed or killed in both cases. It's my job to protect my fellow citizens and I take my job very seriously." He stared at me. "Very seriously."

"But I wasn't at the party. I was in Vang Vieng."

"Can you prove it?"

"Yes, my friend was with me. Somchai. He lives next door."

Mr. Phon looked disappointed. He scratched his head and made some notes.

"Okay, then how about this basketball fight? Did you do it?"

"Mr. Phon, we're leaving. This is ridiculous. My son's not admitting to anything. We need some kind of lawyer here."

"Suit yourself, madam."

Julia stood up and grabbed my hand, squeezing it hard. It felt good to have her clutching on to me like that. I followed her outside and was relieved that it was pouring down rain by the bucketful so no one could see my watery eyes.

Julia was on the phone with the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs in Ottawa when they came for me. There were three of them in green-beige uniforms, each with a pistol at his side.

"You are being charged with a.s.sault causing bodily harm and manslaughter. You will be held until there is a trial," one of the police officers said in broken English.

I just stood there, stunned, while another handcuffed me.

Julia began to scream. "You can't do this! You can't just jail someone without some kind of legal decision." She was pale with terror.

"There was a legal decision," the lead officer said. "To put him in jail."

"But he wasn't there to defend himself. He hasn't done anything wrong." She grabbed at the officer leading me into the back of a rusty black truck.

"Two local people are his victims. A Thai and a Lao." He gently tried to push her off of him, but she kept lunging back. Finally the two other officers held on to her arms as they loaded me into the truck. An icy chill climbed up my back.

"Cam!" She started to scream. "They're taking my son! Help me, someone!" I heard her cry and saw her body heave as the truck's engine started.

"Julia!" I yelled. I struggled to free my arms from the handcuffs. "Let me go!" I screamed at the guards. "I didn't do anything! You can't do this!" Their faces were stony and silent, although I thought I detected a look of pity in one man's eyes.

I watched from the back of the truck as my mother doubled over, clutching her middle, and got smaller and smaller in the distance.

Fishbone.

Seng.

Vong and Seng stood near a food vendor's ramshackle stall in the busy Thai Morning Market in Nong Khai. Women with babies tied to their backs pressed past them. Men in tank tops and ripped shorts followed, pus.h.i.+ng large carts filled with the women's purchases of cooking oil, dish soap, and rice, forcing Seng to squeeze closer to his sister to make room. Across from them, a woman sold meat. Fatty flanks of beef lay in the morning sun as flies danced around and pools of blood gathered. The woman counted out change to a customer on a dead pig's body.

Vong ate spicy papaya salad and sticky rice with her fingers. She ate voraciously, but Seng couldn't. He knew he was hungry, but his nerves wouldn't let him eat. The weight of what they had just done sat heavily on his shoulders. He had fled the scene of an accident, evaded the Lao authorities, and entered Thailand illegally. To think that last week he had been a poor, nameless peddler of cheap Chinese goods. But then again, last week he'd had a little sister.

"Papaya salad doesn't taste the same here," Vong said, interrupting his painful thoughts. "No padek."

Seng didn't know how she was able to think about fermented fish sauce at a time like this. He could barely think. Everything that had just happened was jumbled up in his head.

"I have to eat before I can think," Vong said, apparently reading his thoughts. When she was finally finished she licked her fingers and whispered, "I think we should travel deeper into Thailand. Get away from the border." She looked around to make sure no one could hear her. The northeastern Thais could understand Lao well. "Let's take the train into Bangkok, like we planned. But we'll have to watch our money, I don't have much."

Seng nodded, but he didn't understand how she could live in Canada and not have much money. Maybe Canadians didn't have as much money as Amercians.

They climbed onto the overnight train to Bangkok for the long journey. When they first boarded they sat in silence on the hard, wooden third-cla.s.s seats. Seng was worried about drawing attention to themselves. The clickety-clack sound of the train floated in through the open windows and filled the silence between them. At first peddlers, too young to be by themselves on a train bound for Bangkok, strode up and down the aisles, selling bread, commercial cakes wrapped in clear plastic, toothbrushes and toothpaste. Seng didn't look up at them. He didn't want to make eye contact with anyone. As they chugged farther away from Nong Khai the little vendors got off at a stop and disappeared into the twilight. The journey grew longer and the seats seemed harder; he was thankful when Vong took out a thin, plastic photo alb.u.m she had brought with her. Something to distract him.

"In case I miss home," she explained. Wasn't Lao her home? He tried not to let his disappointment show when she pointed to a picture of her husband, Chit, with their house in the background. He had always imagined she lived in a house like he saw on TV: giant and brick in a neighbourhood surrounded by similar giant, brick houses. An oversized box store down the road. A "subdivision," they called it. But from the pictures Seng could see that his sister's tiny house was made of aluminum siding and had faded, flaking paint on the shutters. She explained that it was not a full house, but half a house, with another family living in the other half. A "duplex," she called it. She showed him pictures of her and Chit inside, standing along a flimsy stair rail, or sitting on brown, thin carpet. Where were the houses he had seen in the movies? The huge, airy houses with double-car garages and swimming pools in the backyards?

"Canada has those," Vong explained when he asked. "I just can't afford to live in one."

"But you work."

"I'm a cas.h.i.+er at a grocery store. Chit works for a toy company. We work, but life is expensive. I told you, we're going to have to watch our expenses in Bangkok."

"Do you own a car?"

"I take the bus."

Seng was glad when the conductor came by to check their tickets. He didn't want her to see his disappointment. Vong started to talk about when she had first arrived in Canada. He guessed it was to keep her mind busy. She laughed as she talked about her first time in a Canadian bathroom. She couldn't find the bidet anywhere.

"You mean they dry wipe?" Seng asked, disgusted. His friends had told him stories about how Westerners didn't use water after a c.r.a.p, but he always thought they were just saying it for effect.

She talked about how no one thought she was a foreigner in Canada because most people come from somewhere else, how the winter could be so cold that your eyelashes feel like they're freezing shut and how Canadians only eat certain parts of chickens, like the b.r.e.a.s.t.s or wings.

"What about the feet?" Seng asked.

"Can't even get them at the grocery store."

"What about from your neighbours?"

"My neighbours don't raise chickens." Vong laughed.

Of course they don't, Seng thought and reddened. He didn't know a thing about the world.

"But what do they do with them? The feet, I mean. Canadian chickens must have feet."

She laughed and shrugged.

"Euaigh, why did you never answer me?"

"The e-mails, you mean?"

Of course that is what I mean. He nodded.

"I didn't know what to say ..."

"But didn't you miss us? Didn't you want to know about us?"

"I read every word of your e-mails, Seng. I knew how you were doing."

"But you didn't reply?"

"And tell you that I don't live in your beloved America? Or that I don't have enough money to bring you to live with me? Then you would know how I've failed."

"How you've failed? What are you talking about?"

He looked out the window to see the sun painting the sky pink, like the colour of skin around the perimeter of a wound. It dipped into the horizon, finally deserting the day for good. He didn't want it to get dark. He wanted Vong to go back to talking about bathrooms and chicken feet and everyday things. Maybe it would fill up the s.p.a.ce in his head so there would be no room for the hurt lodged in his throat like a fishbone.

He remembered the concern in Nok's eyes as he'd gotten on the motorbike, the secure feeling of having her capable body behind him. The look of that same body flung across the road, leg at an unnatural angle, eyes wide open. Seng had turned away from the sight, but he could not turn away from his mind. He began to rock back and forth in his seat. The sun vanished completely and the darkness swallowed him up. Vong, quiet now, reached out and gently placed her hand on his knee.

Captured.

Cam.

The red dirt driveway of Khang Khok Prison was inappropriately cheery. It snaked through a grey, concrete wall with a barbed-wire fence on top. A tower loomed high, overlooking two cellblocks, one for women and the other for men. From outside the buildings didn't look much different from others in Vientiane. They had sun-baked, rusty, red roofs and porches stretching the entire length of the one-storey buildings. White paint flaked off their wooden siding. But inside was different.

The wooden leg blocks were the first thing I noticed when they brought me into the cellblock - my hands cuffed together and the sweaty, brown palm of a prison guard pus.h.i.+ng into my back. My heartbeat thrummed in my ears and I wondered if I was really processing everything. Wooden blocks? Through the steel bars of a cell door I looked to see them clamped onto a black man's feet so he couldn't walk. He lay on his back in a pool of his own p.i.s.s. I could see where his pants were wet around his crotch. Five other men - his cellmates - crowded around him in the small cell. I swallowed. My injured ankle gave out and I stumbled. The guard yanked me up, but then he breathed something into my ear - I couldn't understand what, but his tone sounded surprisingly kind. He pressed his hand into my back and guided me to my cell.

An outhouse stench hung so heavily in the air I could taste it. Through a tiny open window I could hear chickens clucking and palm trees rustling, as if life were perfectly normal. Then I was shown to my cell, and met the eyes of the four inmates I would share the small s.p.a.ce with. I hoped they couldn't see how much I was trembling. I had never been so scared in my life.

Only foreigners went to Khang Khok - apparently the jails for Lao people were worse. From what I could tell, a lot of the prisoners looked Thai or Vietnamese. Some were African. In my cell was Tong, a Thai arrested for drug trafficking; Danh, a Vietnamese guy caught with heroin; and Huang, an old Chinese man with one gummy eye sealed shut. I couldn't piece together what he was in prison for. The only one who spoke English was a thin, bald Thai guy named Sai, whose English was good and reminded me of Somchai's way of speaking. I nervously scanned the small cell for my bunk.

"We sleep on the floor," Sai said. "One blanket between the five of us. Doesn't matter much during the dry season, but when it's cool you have to make a deal with Huang. He controls the blanket."

My hands shook as I changed out of my clothes into the torn prison uniform a guard had shoved into my hands. I think it was supposed to be white, but was now a drab grey. I could barely manage the b.u.t.tons. From the corner of my eye I saw a prisoner on his knees in the damp hallway outside our cell. A guard hovered over top of him, barking something in Lao.

"You can never be higher than some of the guards," Sai explained. "Have to stay on your knees when you talk to them. Others are a bit gentler. What are you here for, anyway?"

"Nothing." I slumped on the wooden floor in a corner, my back against the concrete wall.

Sai laughed. "That's what we all say. What are the charges?"

"a.s.sault causing bodily harm. Had a fight during a basketball game." I didn't tell Sai about the manslaughter charges.

"Must have been a bad fight."

"That's what they say. I'm just here until they complete the investigation."

Sai smiled sadly. "I've been waiting three years for a trial."

"Three years! They can't do that."

"They can do whatever they want. The communists burned the national const.i.tution back in the seventies. There are no laws, or at least none that are enforced in any kind of consistent way."

"The Canadian government will get me out."

"Yes. You're allowed one-fifteen minute visit from them a month, if the police allow. There were a couple of Kiwis in here. Their government got them out, although it took five years."

I felt sick. I went around the corner into the tiny bathroom. There was no door. The toilet was a hole in the ground with foot-grips on either side. Beside it was a thin, concrete trough filled with water. A small, red plastic bucket sat on its slimy edge. My whole body was shaking. Why was I here? Where was the driver of the bike that Nok had fallen from? I didn't think her brother could drive a motorbike. Could it have been the drunk French guy? I splashed water from the bucket over my face and then poured it over my head. The cool water trickled down my back. I wanted to wash all of this away. It couldn't be real. Any minute some Canadian official in a suit would walk up to the cell, call out my name, and unlock the door.

When I came out of the bathroom Huang was slumped in a corner with his head hung between his knees. I could hear him snoring. Danh and Tong were gone. Sai was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the cell, his hands resting on his knees, his back ramrod-straight and his eyes closed. He breathed deeply. Was he meditating or was he a mental case? I could hear the air rus.h.i.+ng in and out through his nostrils. One inhale seemed to take forever. With each exhale his belly sunk into his spine and his ribs stuck out. I could count each rib if I wanted to.