The Merit Birds.

Kelley Powell.

For my parents, Bert and Paula Powell, who always said I could.

Prologue.

He remembered how death had settled so softly onto her body, like the relaxation of a deep breath. He had killed her. It was the only thing he knew for certain. Other than that, nothing seemed real as he nervously crouched in a patch of tall, dry gra.s.s. It rustled noisily every time he shifted. He wouldn't be able to stay long.

It seemed to take forever for the slowly moving pickup truck to pa.s.s in front of his hiding place. He could see her framed picture on top of the white-and-gold casket that sat on the back of the truck. He felt his throat constrict at the sight of her in the photo, alive and smiling. A tinny death song played from a portable stereo. Her friend, Nana, wept as she led the procession behind the truck; like all of the girls in the procession, she wore a long, white skirt, a flowing white blouse, and a white sash across her heart.

The southeast Asian sun bore down on him; its intensity threatened to drive him out of hiding, but he didn't want to move. Didn't want to leave her again. Sweat trickled down his back. The rusty pickup truck turned into the temple grounds followed by the long line of mourning friends. No family members were there.

Once all of the mourners had safely pa.s.sed he skulked through the gra.s.s, his belly sc.r.a.ping across the hard, thirsty ground, to a thicket of banana trees with wide leaves. From here, he watched as they lifted the coffin onto an enormous pile of broken sticks and branches. He couldn't breathe as Nana lit the match and dropped it onto the pyre. He knelt, hand frozen to his mouth, tears the only thing moving as he watched her body burn. The air became thick with the smoke of death.

Her death.

Nothing would ever be the same again.

Beauty and Death.

Cam.

Eighteen years old and I don't know how to take a c.r.a.p. The frog mocked me. I knew it. His eyes gleamed in the moonlight as I stood before the toilet, trying to figure out what to do. There was nothing but a hole in the ground with foot grips on either side. The frog croaked out a chuckle when he saw me scan the closet-like bathroom for toilet paper. Only a hose with a sprayer hung from the wall. What the h.e.l.l was that for?

"Idiot," the frog seemed to croak.

"You okay in there, Cameron?" asked Julia, a.k.a. my mom. I hated her at that moment. It had been her idea to give up everything for a year - her job, our house in Ottawa, my last year of high school, the basketball team - to come here, to Laos. Who the h.e.l.l goes to Laos? I didn't even know how to say it right. Was it Louse, like lice that feed off little kids' blood? Or Lay-os, like some weird basketball move? The guy next door - I think his name is Somchai - said, "Welcome to Lao." At least he could speak English, and he looked my age, although it was hard to tell. In this country even grandpas look young. I stomped my foot at the frog and he leapt off to go tell his friends about the freaky foreigner who didn't know how to s.h.i.t.

This was supposed to be my year. I'd be the best player on the school team for sure. I planned to check out universities, apply for basketball scholarships, go to some good parties, meet girls. Instead my mother had her mid-life crisis and applied for an overseas placement. She left her cushy international development job with the feds in Ottawa for a posting in the sun-scorched capital city of Laos, called Vientiane, where red dust clung to my nose hairs and the stink of fermenting fish filled the air.

We'd arrived just after New Year's. First it was happy new millennium - then it was welcome to the Dark Ages. On the Lao Airlines flight from Bangkok to Vientiane the rickety plane spewed thick smoke into the cabin. Some other foreigners on board freaked out until we realized it was just the air-conditioning malfunctioning. Still, I think the plane must have been a leftover from the Vietnam war.

Stepping off the plane, I immediately realized how bored I was going to be in this country. Everything seemed to be in slow motion. No one hurried to do anything - not even the guys shuffling their flip-flops along the tarmac as they removed our luggage from the bowels of the old plane. Everyone seemed to be either really relaxed, super sleepy, or so high they couldn't move. I couldn't tell which. It didn't take me long to figure out that the heat had something to do with it. I felt like I was in a sauna. The sun seared my eyeb.a.l.l.s as we waited for a wobbly three-wheeled taxi called a tuk-tuk to take us to the house Julia's department had rented for us.

"Don't complain about the heat yet," Julia said. "It's still the cool season."

During the drive I saw that Vientiane wasn't even a city. It was just a bunch of grubby villages that grew into one another. Oversized jeeps and vans with the logos of international development organizations muscled past us. Guys my age drove past on rusted bicycles with big, girly banana seats. Red dust stuck to the sweat marks on my white T-shirt. I had to find a way to get back home.

"Isn't this exciting?" Julia squeezed my hand. It was the first time she had touched me in a long while. Maybe something good would come of this. Maybe she wouldn't be so busy here. I was embarra.s.sed by my babyish thoughts.

"Yeah, great," I said. My response sounded sarcastic, though I didn't mean it to be.

From the gla.s.sless windows of our bright blue-and-red tuk-tuk I saw bald monks in carrot-coloured robes carrying black, oversized umbrellas to protect them from the vicious sun. A family of four balanced on one motorbike drove past us. We wobbled past skinny palm trees, farmers with triangular hats bent over green rice paddies, and stagnant ponds suffocating with ma.s.sive lily pads and pink lotus flowers. The smell of diesel made me want to cough and I could feel dust, gritty and coa.r.s.e, in my mouth. My head was foggy from jet lag and my stomach knotted with resentment.

From my peripheral vision I noticed a woman on the side of the road, crouched over a tree stump. The tuk-tuk stopped at a crowded intersection and I saw that with one hand she was holding down a squawking chicken, its scrawny neck bared along the smooth top of the stump. In the other hand she held a knife high in the air, the ferocious sunlight glinted off its blade. She looked dressed up, in a s.e.xy tight top with a high Chinese collar and a long, thin skirt hugging her hips. She looked so graceful in the thick sea of grubby children and rundown wooden shops that lined the roadside. Suddenly, she powerfully brought down the knife. I caught my breath as brilliant red blood sprayed from the chicken's neck and bubbled onto the dusty ground. The chicken's headless body jerked and flapped as it fought death. A band of little kids walked by and barely even looked. I guess fatality was nothing new to them. They seemed more interested in the packages of cakes and cookies that dangled from strings hanging along a shop's entrance. The beautiful woman wiped her shiny brow with the back of the hand that still clutched the long blade. The traffic light turned green and our tuk-tuk began to trundle on. I turned around to watch her disappear in the distance, shocked at how beauty and death could get so mixed up together.

We pulled up in front of a faded orange fence and Julia laughed as she tried to figure out how many bills worth of kip to pay the tuk-tuk driver. I gazed around this strange place where my mother expected me to live.

"This is it, Cam," she said. "Home."

"You think I'm staying here?"

I didn't want to play the part of the typical grumpy teenager. I knew how excited she was. But come on. This was too much to ask. I eyed the red dirt road that snaked through the village. Along it sat a muddled-up mess of houses: wooden shacks sitting on stilts so the breeze could flow underneath, pretentious mansions with wrought iron fences nearly as tall as the houses they were meant to protect, and smaller, cement houses with peeling paint. Our rented house was like one of these: simple and concrete with white paint, burgundy wooden shutters, and a corrugated-steel roof. The kitchen and bathroom were in small, separate buildings behind it; a high fence enclosed the small compound, and bushy trees and plants ran along its outside edges. Inside, there was no gra.s.s, only lifeless concrete.

"It's to keep the malarial mosquitoes away," Julia explained.

The property looked like a comatose, concrete island desperately trying to keep the dirty, teeming, chicken-clucking, rooster-crowing life of the neighbourhood out. There were even brown, green, and clear pieces of sharp, broken gla.s.s cemented to the top of the fence.

"They say it's a really safe neighbourhood," Julia said when she saw me eyeing the shards.

That evening our rumbling stomachs gave us the courage we needed to venture out of our heavy, wooden front door and into the neighbourhood. A crowd had gathered on the road in front of our house. Men riding home from work on tarnished bicycles stopped to peer through our front gate at the strange newcomers. They waved over schoolchildren, who wore uniforms of crisp white b.u.t.ton-up shirts and pleated navy-blue shorts or skirts. The little girls clapped hands over their mouths and giggled into their palms. Julia waved awkwardly. I nodded and looked down at the ground as I followed my mother to the neighbourhood pho shop. Thankfully it wasn't far from our house.

The children followed us to the pho shop and laughed as we pointed to what we wanted - big steaming bowls of rice noodles swimming in clear broth with green stuff and hunks of meat floating in it. I kept my head down and slurped the noodles as quickly as I could. I was so hungry I was able ignore the unidentifiable, gelatinous beige b.a.l.l.s of goop bobbing at the surface. Twenty-one hours on planes and three days of stopovers and sitting in airports had made me too exhausted to care. We had flown from Ottawa to Toronto, Toronto to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Seoul, Seoul to Bangkok, Bangkok to Vientiane. Julia said the indirect route would save her department a ton of cash.

"Money first," I had scoffed.

From the corner of my eye I could see a small schoolgirl timidly waving her hand to catch my attention. I was too tired to make eye contact and fake that I was nice. I couldn't think of anyone but myself right now. It was dinnertime here in Laos, but back home Jon and the guys would just be waking up.

The next day Julia convinced me to walk with her to the Morning Market. The intense sun penetrated my body like an X-ray in search of something broken. We followed a dirt path along the side of a road. Barefoot vendors pushed large, ramshackle wooden carts filled with green vegetables and tropical fruits I had never tasted before: creepy red, hairy b.a.l.l.s called rambutans and spiky green jackfruit. The vendors' straw, cone-shaped hats protected them from the unforgiving rays of the sun. I was glad when we finally stepped inside the shade of the market.

I had to follow Julia with my head lowered like a slave so I didn't brush up against the filthy tarps that acted as a makeshift roof for part of the market. The cement floor was slick with liquid; I didn't want to know what it was. Women with babies tied to their backs and hands busy with plastic bags filled with dried rice pressed past us. The stench of raw meat was disgusting. I covered my nose with my hand.

"You look silly," Julia said. I didn't answer. "Come on, I have to buy material for Mrs. Mee - you know that lady who lives next door?"

"Not really."

"I think meh means mother. Mother Mee. Anyway, she said she'd make me some sins. I'll need them when I start my job."

Sins, the long skirts were called. She was already trying to dress native. She could be so embarra.s.sing. All of the women wore them, only Julia was going to look ridiculous in hers. I knew it. A white woman trying to be someone she wasn't.

"You've got enough sins," I said.

She knew what I was talking about. The story of my childhood: me, alone, while she chased everything else - success, men, money. I hadn't called her Mom for years - she never felt like one. I remembered my first day of kindergarten: the bus driver wouldn't let me off because no one was there to meet me after school. We sat on the side of the suburban road, bus door slammed shut, while the bus driver, unable to conceal his irritation, sighed and called the school, barking at the secretary to find out what the h.e.l.l he should do with me.

Then, as now, Julia ignored me. She grinned stiffly at the Morning Market vendors watching her finger the cotton laid out on tables. She prodded me to greet them in the Lao way, with hands in prayer position and head slightly bowed.

"Say sabaidee," she urged. "It means h.e.l.lo."

Wanting to please her, sins and all, I mumbled "Sabaidee" and a market woman looked at me like I had three heads. Back home I'd been one of the most popular guys at school.

When we got back from the market, Somchai was in front of his house dribbling a basketball. He looked up and threw the ball to me. He p.r.o.nounced the a in my name short, so it sounded like Cahm. It means gold, he told me. That made me laugh. I thought of all the temper tantrums, all of the fights, all of the counsellors. No one else would call me gold.

I returned his throw, only harder. He grinned and threw it back, just as hard. We spent the next sweat-drenched hour shooting hoops, using a basket tied to a coconut tree. We didn't stop until his mom, Meh Mee, brought us tall, perspiring gla.s.ses of sugary lime juice.

"You're good," Somchai said.

"You're not bad, either."

He shrugged. "That's nothing compared to katoh."

I was confused about what Somchai meant, but when he went behind his house and returned holding a wicker ball in his long fingers, I realized he was talking about a different kind of game. The rest of the afternoon we volleyed the ball back and forth with our feet. Kind of like hacky sack, only nastier. I left Somchai's house with bruises and sc.r.a.pes on my shins. I was going to like this guy. Too bad I had to like him and stay in his country at the same time.

Cheese.

Seng.

The heat hung heavily on Seng's chubby shoulders, like pails of water weighing down the thin body of a villager. Even children moved slowly and the mangy dogs that crept along the red, dusty road wouldn't eat. Seng wiped his brow with the back of his hand and continued to push his bicycle along, plastic knick-knacks dangling perilously but never seeming to fall from the tall, metal pole he had attached to the back of his bike. Normally, the heat didn't bother him so much - he was Lao after all. But today he was bugged. He kept humming that song all the Americans liked, the one about a Barbie girl. It helped him to forget. He wondered what was so special about girls named Barbara. Or why they were made from plastic. He'd find out once he got to America.

Nothing was supposed to bother him. He was the cla.s.s clown, the fat guy who was always laughing, the one who didn't take life very seriously. He said boh penyang - no worries - more often than most Lao people did, and that was a lot, considering it was virtually the national mantra. The signs outside of the tourist cafes read Welcome to Laos! Boh Penyang! But the truth was he did have worries. Especially when it came to his little sister, Nok. Something was happening at her work and he had his suspicions. He might be stupid, but he wasn't born yesterday.

The fact that Nok had to work because he, Seng, didn't make enough money made it so much worse. With her brains she should be at school.

I am not a failure, he tried to tell himself. I can do more than make people laugh.

An array of goods hung heavy like the heat from his Thai-style bike - spoons, forks, little buckets for bathing, matches, a few combs, children's toys. The plastic wares were balanced just right. Not too unstable in case they fell, but not too st.u.r.dy, either. He wanted to attract attention. His head looked tiny compared to the ma.s.sive balloon of brightly coloured plastic that exploded on the pole behind him. As he cycled along he was part salesman, part circus show. No wonder n.o.body took him seriously.

Usually the Vietnamese sold this kind of stuff, but Seng and Nok were desperate for money. He had bought the cheap objects a month ago from a Chinese salesman, hoping to make some kip. He had to sell something today - just one thing. Something to make it all worthwhile.

A group of backpackers, tall, white, and hairy, pointed at him.

"Check out all the stuff balancing on that guy's bike!"

Seng understood their English, or at least those particular words. He liked to think about the big baci he would throw if he had 500 kip for every time a foreigner said them.

"You like Barbie?" he called out. He knew it made no sense since he didn't actually sell Barbies, but he was okay with that. He wanted to make them laugh. Something about this made him sad, but he wasn't sure why. He should really stop thinking so much. It wasn't good for him. He smiled his wide grin and the falangs focused their cameras on his face, deep brown from the sun.

"Cheese!" they said. Seng always thought this was funny because the backpackers usually smelled like cheese, or at least milk or yogurt or some kind of dairy. It was the unmistakable smell of whiteness. Truth was, Seng wanted to smell like cheese. He had tried it once and liked how it filled his belly in a heavy, complete way. It looked so good on those advertis.e.m.e.nts he saw on Thai television, all melted and creamy. He liked most things he saw on television: microwaves, instant soup mixes, and blonde girls with big b.o.o.bs. He wanted to go to America someday. He thought about it a lot - walking down the street, free from his plastic merchandise, and on his way to an easy job sitting at a desk in air-conditioning all day long. Biting into a big, fat hamburger with a big, fat white girl beside him. A mind free of thoughts about where to get his next kip and most of all, the biggest baci at his house that any Lao-American person had ever seen. His oldest sister, Vong, had moved there when she got married. Her Lao-American husband, Chit, had left whatever glitzy American city he lived in to visit Vientiane. He had come to please his aging parents; they wanted him to know his roots, he wanted to know Lao girls. Seng was certain the parents must have been happy when Chit returned with a Lao bride, but Seng and Nok hadn't seen their sister in a while. Still, he was sure Vong would help him get to the land of cheese, white girls, and big baci parties.

"Want to buy?" Seng asked the tourists who had taken his picture. He gestured toward all of the plastic on the back of his bike.

"No, thanks," the tallest one answered.

"So sorry to hear that," Seng said. Then he brightened. "Barbie's plastic, I sell plastic, it's fantastic!" Use their song, he thought. Brilliant marketing plan.

The tourists laughed. "You really like that song, eh?"

"Most popular song in America," Seng answered proudly. They would not be able to deny that he knew a lot about their culture.

"I've never even heard of that song," one of the girls said.

"It's that cheesy song from a few years ago," another answered. "Guess it takes a while for radio hits to make it to Vientiane." Seng's heart sank. He had to do something to lighten the mood; otherwise, these tourists would never buy anything.

"Cheese!" he suddenly exclaimed. He posed as if someone was going to take his picture again. They all laughed. "So you will buy? Nice comb to brush your chest hair?"

Seng didn't know much about chest hair. Lao guys didn't have it. Surely it would need some grooming?

The group of backpackers exploded into laughter.

"No, thanks, bud," one of the guys laughed and put a hand on Seng's shoulder.

"So sorry to hear that," Seng said, and pushed down on his pedal so he could move away from them. He suddenly felt embarra.s.sed.

He dodged tuk-tuks as he pedaled by the Morning Market. Always a showman, he rang his bike's bell for children on their lunch break, their white-and-blue school uniforms overtaking the city's sandy streets like ants on food. They reminded him of his school days. As he and his sisters left for school each morning their mother would slip money into their pockets, her round face filled with pride. Of the three, he was the only one who hadn't lived up to that pride. Nok was always at the top of her cla.s.s and Vong - well. Vong was in America! What more could be said of her success? But here he was, still trying to make a life for himself.

Girls thought he was too goofy. In school he could make them all laugh, but no one wanted a pudgy clown for a boyfriend. They wanted the smart guys with big muscles. Seng hated schoolwork, especially English. While everybody practised "Have a nice day" and idioms (or was it idiots? He never remembered), he sat silent. He felt like an idiom. The only reason he went to English cla.s.s was to please his mother.

He could remember clearly the day she was taken for political re-education. Even at a young age he had known it was coming. Other employees of King Savang Vatthana had been taken years before, in the months after the communists took the king himself. To this day Seng wondered what his parents had done to keep the communists away from their door for so long. He remembered the heavy, rainy season sky on the day his mother and father were stolen in Luang Prabang, the town where he was born. Lush mountains shrouded in mist. A banging on the door. The greenish beige of the communist officer's uniform. The smell of the cigarette smoke he blew in Pa's face. The peaceful sound of the gong vibrating down from the mountaintop temple, in stark contrast with the chaos that was happening in the town beneath. Luang Prabang, home of the royal family and countless golden temple roofs stretching up to the cool, northern sky, faced the communists' irritation more than other Lao towns. Communists aren't big fans of royalty or religion, and Luang Prabang had plenty of both.

"Take care of each other," Meh had said, her smile doing nothing to hide her fear. "Your father and I will be back."

Seng had been five years old. He never saw them again. Every once in a while he would think he spotted his mother in the crowds at the boat festival, or crouched along the side of the road at dawn, offering alms to monks wrapped in orange robes. He remembered how she liked to put a bit of sticky rice in the monks' bowls. Sometimes a banana or some kip. Of course it was never his mother whom he spotted, but it didn't stop him from imagining how it might be to meet her once more. She would take him into her arms and sniff his cheek the way Lao parents did to show affection. After the shock of meeting again wore off, her questions would come. "What have you made of your life, son?" And he would have nothing to answer.

Nothing.

Seng rode his bike home slowly. He hadn't sold a single thing. From the road he could hear Nok in the front yard, sifting rice. She looked so serious.

"Good day at work?" he asked. She nodded without looking at him; she was preoccupied and he was glad. She wouldn't ask him about his sales for the day.

"Don't worry, little sister. Someday I'll take you to America. You won't have to work so hard, and you can go to any university you want."

He knew what her wistful little smile meant. She thought he was a goof like everyone else.

"No, seriously. Vong will bring us there someday."

"Did you write her the e-mail you said you were going to?" Nok asked. He thought he could see something different in her eyes. A heaviness. Her job was definitely getting to her - but why?

"Seng, you're not listening." Nok drew him out of his thoughts. Nothing about the girl was phony, not even her words, although sometimes Seng wished they were. She had a way of making her sentences as direct as an arrow. He, on the other hand, had no problem with phoniness. He hadn't written a letter since high school, but would never admit that he didn't know how to write one. Especially one that was going to be sent to America. On a computer.

"I could write it in English if you want." Nok had aced high school, and could have gone to Dong Dok, Laos's only university. But when she'd graduated there had been no money; she had taken a course on traditional Lao ma.s.sage instead.