Phi Jaroon and I were sipping beers. Khun Anuphan, being Muslim, was having his fifteenth cup of coffee that day. Phi Eat was having something in a teacup. She drinks everything from a teacup because she’s a lady, and because she’s a lady I never ask what’s in the cup.
Phi Jaroon lit a Krong Thip cigarette and offered me the pack. Khun Anuphan rolls his own and Phi Eat, being a lady, doesn’t smoke. Phi Jaroon is a sub-lieutenant in our local police station. He works 24-hour shifts, from noon to noon, with 24 hours off between shifts. He was still wearing his boots, uniform pants and holster, but was bare above the waist. The holster, which on duty carries an enormous revolver, now held his smokes and lighter. Since it was Monday, Khun Anuphan also wore his uniform. If you had taken a quick look at the table last night, seeing Phi Jaroon’s skinny, naked chest and sleep-deprived eyes next to Khun Anuphan’s razor-sharp creases, yards of gold braid, and perfectly straight rows of ribbons, you might have mistaken the cop for a criminal and the academic for an admiral.
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Since we have no big hotel on our bay, there is no legion of pool-boys to go down at dawn and clean the beach, so in the rainy season we always have a nice load of plastic bags and water bottles littering the strand, pushed all the way here from Sri Lanka by the Western wind. Once the seasons change the Eastern wind will deliver all of our plastic trash over to the Sri Lankans, so it’s an even trade, but Khun Anuphan is an avid conservationist, and he was commenting on this problem. More precisely, he was commenting on our village headman’s apparent inability or unwillingness to deal with what Khun Anuphan perceives as a problem. Nobody else in the village sees the trash on the beach as a problem; it’s been there every rainy season as long as anybody remembers, and it has gone away every dry season as long as anybody remembers, but there are very few things in a village the size of ours on which one can build up a healthy righteous indignation, and the plastic scraps of consumer culture on the sand are the issue that Khun Anuphan has claimed for his own.
Khun Anuphan kept his voice low, meant to travel no farther than our table, though the place was empty except for ourselves. Phi Jaroon and Phi Eat are familiar with Khun Anuphan’s views, and with his political ambitions, so they were neutral. Actually, as a cop, Phi Jaroon is supposed to remain aloof from politics, and because she’s a lady, Phi Eat keeps her opinions to herself outside of the voting booth. As a farang, my opinions are of less value than the mynah bird’s. Khun Anuphan simply uses us as a sounding board, liking the sound of his own voice as many gifted teachers do, and crafting elegant phrases for use in the next election for village headman.
Phi Eat left us for a minute, saying it was time to turn the lights on, though I noticed that she took her empty teacup into the kitchen and returned with it half full of something that in no way resembled tea. Phi Jaroon offered me another beer, and having been raised in a gracious home I accepted just to be polite.
As soon as the lights came on a rented jeep pulled up, covered in stickers advertising Patong attractions and full of tourists. The driver hopped out and asked to see a menu. He read it under the fluorescent tube and called out something in French to his companions, I don’t know what; all spoken French sounds like a dessert menu to me. The rest of the gang climbed out of the big red party machine and arranged themselves around the longest table. There were three farang men and two Thai women, and Phi Eat greeted the girls with a familiar idiom that said she remembered them from the last time they came.
Occasionally tourists will ask their dates if there isn’t some place quiet to go for dinner, and the girls will lead them over the mountain to Phi Eat’s place, because she, being a lady, treats all other women as ladies.
Phi Jaroon helped his wife out by making the drinks, and if the tourists were put out by being served by a man wearing a holster full of cigarettes, they didn’t show it. Khun Anuphan moved over to their table and started practicing his French. I was left alone and since it was completely dark now I finished my beer, thanked my hostess through the kitchen door and went down to sit on the beach. I smoked the day’s last cigarette and watched the fish traps light up outside the bay.
Behind me I could hear the tourists laughing at something Khun Anuphan said. A real charmer and born politician he is, especially when he’s on a caffeine buzz. It was a fairly still night; before the sun went down there were clouds piled on the horizon that said we’d get rain after midnight but for the moment the air was still, and I could hear everything going on behind me in Phi Eat’s. I heard one of the girls ask Phi Eat if she had any plaa ra, the dish made from three-year-old pickled fish, evil smelling but very popular in the Northeast. Still eating Isaan food but speaking Phuket Thai put her in the bar for about a year, no more. The other girl was feeding a banana to mynah bird and Bingo, the leader of Phi Eat’s dog pack, was whining for scraps, even though the food would not hit the table for another ten minutes.
The Bilan was calling the faithful to prayer over the village loudspeaker for the fifth and list time of the day when I got up and brushed the sand off my butt. On a whim, I turned around slowly, taking in the sea, mountain and stars, the little splash of light that was Phi Eat’s place and the jeep, the tourists and the girls, washed up here by chance like the water bottles, like myself, all of us just flotsam on the beach.
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