Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

concrete absorbed the endless rains, Siri fancied he saw the outline of New Zealand stained there, or it could have been a twisted balloon poodle. Following a disastrous year of drought, the farmers had smiled to see the early arrival of the 1978 rains. It was as if the gods had awoken late and, realising their negligence, had hastily attempted to make up for the previous year. The rain fell heavily and ceaselessly – three times the national average for April. The Lao New Year water festival celebrations – a time to call down the first rains of the year – were rained out. The earthen embankments of the new rice paddies were washed flat, the bougainvilleas had been rinsed colourless. The earth seemed to cry, “All right. Enough.” But still it rained. It was nature’s little joke. Like the Eskimos with their four million words for snow, the Lao vocabulary was expanding with new language to describe rain.
    Today the water hung in the air like torn strips of grey paper.
    “What is that?” Civilai asked.
    “What’s what?”
    “That noise you’re making.”
    “It’s not a noise. It’s a song. I have no idea where I heard it. I can’t get it out of my head.”
    “Well try. It’s annoying.”
    Siri swallowed his song.
    “What do you think they’ve got on me?” he asked. “I mean, the DHC.”
    “Huh,” Civilai laughed. “I knew it. You do want to be a national hero.”
    “I do not. I’m just…curious.”
    “About your warts?”
    “Yes.”
    “Oh, where do I start? How about your abrasive personality?”
    “Personalities change. And history has a way of smudging my character, don’t forget.”
    “So I heard. All right…” Civilai beeped his horn for no apparent reason. “There’s the spirit thing.”
    “How could they possibly know about that?”
    “They probably don’t know the specifics. Not that you actually chat with ghosties. I doubt they know that. But they must have heard the rumours. This is a small country. People like Judge Haeng must have accumulated a good deal of circumstantial evidence of your supernatural connections.”
    “But no proof. By its very nature he can’t have accumulated evidence.”
    “No.”
    “Then they don’t have anything.”
    “All right. Well, they probably don’t like your Hmong campaign, either.”
    “It’s hardly a campaign.”
    “You walked up and down in front of the Pasason News office with a placard saying ‘WE NEED ANSWERS ON THE PLIGHT OF OUR HMONG BROTHERS’. People have been shot for less. You seem to have it in your mind that the government has a policy to intimidate minorities.”
    “It does.”
    “Well then. With that attitude I can see the central committee making little pencil crosses beside your name, can’t you?”
    “Things have to be sorted out before it’s too late.”
    “You’re right. If I were the Minister of Pinning Things Onto Chests I’d make you a Knight of the Great Order of Valour right away. Sadly, I’m just a retired has-been.”
    They sat silently for another moment, watching the moss grow.
    “Thirsty?” Civilai asked.
    Siri twisted around on his seat. The leather squeaked under his bottom.
    “Perhaps just the one.”
∗
    To celebrate their impending hero status, Siri and Civilai partook of one or two glasses of rice whisky at a cigarette and alcohol stand behind the evening market. The proprietor was nicknamed Two Thumbs. A dull sobriquet, one might argue, no more spectacular than a fellow called One Bellybutton or Ten Toes. But Two Thumbs’ uniqueness lay in the fact that both of his thumbs were on the one hand. Nobody could explain it. It was as if one of his thumbs got lonely in the womb and swam across the narrow channel of amniotic fluid to keep company with its twin. It was the talking point that attracted smokers and drinkers to his stall. There was nothing else remarkable about him. In fact, he was almost completely devoid of personality, as dull as laundry scum.
    The drizzle continued to fall and the old grey umbrellas that offered respite from the hot sun did little to keep out the determined night rain. The straw mats upon which they would normally sit cross-legged had assumed the consistency of freshly watered post office sponges. So the old men each sat on small plastic bathroom stools with a third stool between them as a table. A fourth and final stool offered a perch for their bags and shoes. Two Thumbs sat on a regular chair with his cigarette display case parked upon two