Sneak peek at The Merit Birds!

Chapter One of The Merit Birds

Beauty and Death

(Cam)

Eighteen years old and I don’t know how to take a crap. 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 hell 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 hell 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 thought his name was 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 use the toilet.

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 Aviation 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 Viet Nam 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 eyeballs 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 at 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 embarrassed by my babyish thoughts.

“Yeah, great,” I said. My response sounded sarcastic, though I didn’t mean it to be.

From the glassless windows of our bright blue and red tuk-tuk I saw bald monks in carroty 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 massive lily pads and pink lotus flowers. The smell of diesel made me want to cough and I could feel dust, gritty and coarse, in my mouth. My head was foggy from jet lag and my stomach knotted with resentment.