and when Keong spat at him, the boy threw a punch that floored Keong, to the laughter of the others. The next day at soccer, the same boy slid into a tackle, bringing Keong down face-first into the dirt. This time Keong was prepared. He had a rock in his pocket, which he held tightly in his fist as he swung at the boy’s head. It was the dry season, and the blood marked the earth for many days afterwards.
On other occasions, the smallest insult would ensure that Keong stopped dead in his tracks. He’d stand still and walk towards whoever had offended him, fists clenched. It could be anything, whispered words that didn’t mean a thing – lia ma, cheebye, really, just meaningless expressions – but Keong would always react in the same way, throwing the first punch, launching himself with the full force of his scrawny body at whoever had muttered the passing vulgarity. I’m not sure why they continued to insult him. He lived in a house at the farthest end of the village, and didn’t go to school, so they had little contact with him. Maybe it was simply that he wasn’t one of us. Or maybe that without knowing it, we were bored by the regularity of our lives – scared by the way our fate was determined by the weather and the tides, the way the slightest change in the moon’s position could mean that we would have little to eat for the next month. With Keong, the equation was so much simpler. Call him a bad name and he’d react in exactly the same way every time. I never understood why he kept turning up at our games, when he knew it would always end in a fight. I guess he needed to do that to remind himself that he would never belong in our village – that he was hated there, and had a good reason to get the hell out of the place.
That I became his only friend in the village was not a surprise. He never expressed any gratitude for my silence over his beating up of the boy, but I knew he was thankful that I hadn’t caused any further trouble for him. I wanted to explain that it wasn’t because I cared about his welfare that I didn’t snitch on him, it was just because I didn’t want to get involved in anything messy. I was always like that, even as a kid. But somehow, at that age, explanations don’t come easily, and don’t seem necessary either, so the episode became anchored in the depths of our shared history, never talked about, but never forgotten either. It was the same in the days and weeks following the killing, when I was waiting for the police, for someone, anyone, to discover what I’d done. I didn’t know when or how it would happen. I was scared of life’s sudden uncertainty, but I was sure of one thing: that Keong would not tell anyone about the incident. If no one else found out, that terrible act would be silently swallowed up by our past.
He and his mother were my closest neighbours – the first people we saw when I cycled into the village. At that point we were living in our own house about a mile away from the village proper, and at night I could just about make out the lights of their house from across the fields. Physically separated from the rest of the village, it was easier for us to strike up a friendship that went unnoticed by the others, who found Keong’s urban manners unnatural and ridiculous – his cowboy swagger, arms and shoulders swaying, his constant chatter, always comparing things in the village unfavourably to what he had experienced before. I knew he was an idiot too, but I couldn’t resist his stories of life in the city, even though I suspected that they were exaggerated, and maybe plain untrue. Being with Keong and listening to his tales of fights in alleyways behind shopping malls, or making so much money you couldn’t fit it all into your pockets, was like watching a movie that enveloped me completely, that made me feel I could be part of the action if I wanted to, even when I knew it was made up. Just reach out and I could touch that world. Just hop on a bus and I could be living in it. The more I lapped up his accounts of his life, the more he talked, spinning ever more outrageous tales. Your mother, of course it’s all true!
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