only a little of what had to have been one of the hottest days in months in Bien Hoa, but the dark brought with it a sticky and thick mugginess.
It was nearly midnight now and he slumped drunkenly on the gnarled wooden chair. The maddening cries from the garden had finally quieted, and Thang was just about to thank Buddha for his compassion when a scream ripped through his brain and once again triggered the piercing agony in his mouth.
“Quiet!” he shouted toward the door, which set off a machine gun volley of awful throbs in his tooth.
The thunder passing overhead was so close to the earth that the flimsy guard shack in which he had the misfortune of being assigned this horrid night shuddered from each deafening, tooth-jarring concussion of air masses. With the electricity knocked out, the only illumination came from sporadic lightning flashes that found their way through the cracked and dusty window to bathe briefly the sad interior in harsh whiteness. No matter. He did not need a dim light bulb to know that the shack contained only empty bottles on the dirt floor, and an unopened one atop a decrepit table.
It was about eleven p.m. when Thang decided to open the scorpion wine. He usually drank cheap Chinese wine when the boss made him watch the garden all night, but he ran dry about eight tonight, long before it had dulled the pain in his mouth. The expensive delicacy, one that would cost a year of his wages, he acquired when a wealthy and foolish woman set down her bag on a Saigon sidewalk to answer her cell phone. He out ran the old hag even with his crippled leg.
He had hoped to sell the wine but his mouth needed it now, desperately. He had heard that scorpion rice wine is as delicious as it is strong, and it is good medicine to treat back pain and other ailments. He hoped it worked on a rotting mouth too.
Just as Thang lifted the bottle from the table, lightning washed through the room, illuminating a large scorpion floating in the amber liquid, and a cobra coiling lethally from the bottom of the bottle to the top where its evil mouth clamped tightly on the midsection of the scorpion. The serpent’s eyes pierced into Thang’s. Mother fuck!
Another scream emanated from the garden, making Thang scrunch his face against the pain. Then another, even louder than the last.
With hands trembling from the wine drunk earlier, and from what felt like nails stabbing into the roots of his lone tooth, Thang ripped off the yellow wrapper from the neck of the bottle and stabbed his knife into the cork. His face dripped as he twisted the blade left and right until it began to lift. When he twisted it too hard and unevenly, the cork broke off, with nearly half of it still jammed in the bottle.
Cursing, he stabbed the blade at the cork again, missed, and rammed the knife blade deeply into his thigh, the very same leg that bad karma had twisted and deformed at his birth sixty-seven years ago. “Oooiii!” he cried loudly, and immediately as if an echo, several voices cried out from outside the flimsy wooden door.
“Shut up, you fucks!” he screamed, clutching his thigh and watching as blood oozed over his boney fingers. “Ooiii!”
Moaning, he stripped off his filthy T-shirt and wrapped it around his thin leg, tying a knot tightly over the wound. “Ooiii!” he cried again.
Another scream burrowed its way into his rotten tooth.
He angrily twisted about in his chair and punched the door with his fist, nearly dropping the bottle. He started to punch it again but instead waved his hand at the door with disgust, and turned back to dig out the last of the cork. The knife slipped again, miraculously missing his leg this time. Finally, he speared out the last chunk, tossed it and the blade onto the table, and upturned the bottle into his mouth. He wasted no time swallowing, but with eyes closed, he poured the burning liquid straight down his throat and into his stomach. He drank for a long glorious moment, and when he opened them, just as lightning flashed, he looked straight into the cobra’s eyes. And the snake looked into his.
Emitting a guttural cry, he snapped the bottle away, slopping some of it onto his legs and onto the floor.
“Shit,” he wheezed, his breath on fire from the powerful liquid. He tilted the bottle again to his wet, trembling lips just as another flash from the heavens lit the small room long enough for him to see that he had drank nearly half and that the scorpion was—gone.
He slammed the bottle onto the table and beat frantically at his chest. “Where…?”
The wine had acted fast on his brain, blurring his vision and making his head feel like mashed rice. “The shcorp… scorpion,” he slurred, continuing to swat at himself. “Where is the shor-pion?”
A gush of wind slammed rain against the side of the shack and the little window. The lightning flash was briefer this time, but it lasted long enough to see that the scorpion was still in the bottle. He giggled to himself for a moment. Of course it was still in the bottle, but still he drew his feet up under his stool.
Gripping the sides of his chair to keep from falling off as the room rocked and spun, he realized the pain in his mouth was now no more than a dull ache. When an especially loud scream came from the garden, he started to grimace, but realized he felt no pain. Even his leg no longer hurt. He giggled again. It is said that the power of the cobra and scorpion can heal.
“Me agree,” he said aloud. “Did I say ‘me agree’?” he asked the darkness. That made him laugh too.
He had not checked the garden since early evening. Maybe the cabbages had grown. That thought made him giggle again.
He used the table to pull himself to his feet only to fall back into his chair with a hard thump. “Oooii,” he said, then laughed like a fool because he did not feel anything.
This time he got up and stayed up, but swayed dangerously. When he tried to pull open the door, it struck his foot and bounced closed. Cursing, he lumbered to the side so he could open it all the way.
Ah, the rain felt good splattering against his hot face and bare chest. It had eased a little and the lightning flashes were not as intense as earlier. Still, they were bright enough to illuminate the metal walls that encased the small, open garden, and the mud puddles and murky, little streams that wound around the cabbage heads.
“How are…” he swayed for a moment, grabbing the doorframe to keep from falling. He shielded his eyes with a bloodstained hand against another lightning flash. “My cab-chages,” he called, squinting to see. “How are my cab-chages?”
An explosion of near thunder startled Thang. Another flash of lightning lit the garden long enough for him to see the cabbages, all twelve of them, three rows of four.
He stumbled about to go back inside the shack, when another hysterical scream pierced his tooth.
“Ooiii,” he groaned, one hand on his mouth and the other over his ear. Damn, the wine must be wearing off already.
Another scream. This time he saw the one that did it. The one in the second row near the ever-widening pool of muddy water.
“I will be right back, you loud cabbage,” he said, straining to see the noisy little bitch. “Let me see how much you scream with a big, fat cobra wrapped around your pretty little neck.”
I’m sitting at a table with Samuel and Mai. We’re all slurping noodles from our bowls of phở. I somehow know we’re in a restaurant although everything beyond
