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Part 2

After grabbing a quick shower I inspected my toe once again for damage. It was scraped raw, but fairly undamaged, although it still throbbed like the blazes. I snatched my shaving gear and lathered up. When with my wife in the LOS (Land of Smiles) I have to shave daily, a chore I despise really, because she bitches and moans if I try to kiss her with a day's growth of stubble. Preferring kisses, to bitching and moaning, I shave daily. When back in the states without her I shave every three or four days, unless I have something to do somewhere where a clean shave is necessary. Or when, while brushing my teeth, I look in the mirror and notice all the silver hairs in my beard, which annoys the hell out of me for some reason. Mortality sucks. My body surrendering to the aging process annoys me, dammit.

I finished shaving just as the first stirrings in my bowels signaled the coffee was doing its job. Good! Maybe today I could take a decent dump for once. I had been eating so much rice and noodles, and vegetables, and other Thai/Lao stuff of late that I had been crapping like a rabbit the past week or two. I needed some beef and potatoes to straighten up my innards. I vowed to go to Makro later in the day to buy some and feast in the evening on some decent falang food for once.

I reached for the toilet paper, which I keep up on the towel rack on the other side of the hong nam, mainly because if I put it on the toilet paper dispenser it gets wet from the shower. I've yet to find the right type of shower curtain rod and ceiling hanger supports for what I need to put up a proper shower curtain. Another thing I need to get done one day. As I grabbed the roll of paper something inside the cardboard tube moved and touched my finger, scaring the shit out of me, figuratively, and causing me to yelp and drop the toilet paper roll on the floor. It instantly soaked up the water on the floor where it landed, becoming unusable. Dammit.

"What the hell!" I growled as I stepped away from the ruined roll of paper and glared at it.

From the center of the roll came two silvery furred legs wavering about and testing the air for danger. A damn spider! I hate spiders. Especially these bigassed hairy buggers in Isaan. I had noticed one hanging around the bathroom the past couple of days since the rains started pouring down nightly. He gains entrance through the air blocks in the rear wall and sits in the corner catching and eating anything smaller than himself that comes within his reach, even baby lizards! I have no idea if they are poisonous, but I've seen their big black pincer jaws, and have no desire to ever get bit by one of these ugly sonofabitches, plus I have this thing about bigass spiders. The creepy bastards have too many damned legs if you ask me.

Here's a pic of a much smaller younger one. You get the idea though. The one I ran across was an adult grown to full size. Consider that the wooden beam pictured above is about 3 and a half inches wide. Think skinny Tarantula here.

Once he climbed all the way out of the toilet paper tube I grabbed the hand shower and pulled the water knob to full blast. I proceeded to wash him into a corner and drown his ass for disturbing my, what I was hoping was anyway, first good crap in a couple of weeks. Bastard. I harangued him with my full sailor's vocabulary of swear words (I was in the navy four years) as I watched him shrivel up and drown. I gave him a good piece of my mind, which I can ill afford, then I washed his dead ass out the open drain on the floor board. Served him right.

A knock came to the bathroom door and my wife asked, "You okay, tilac (sweetheart)?"

I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around my waist and opened the door.

"Yes, why?" I asked her, as she stood peeking into the hong nam.

"Who you talk to?" she said.

"Who? Oh! I was killing a spider that was hiding in the toilet paper roll!" I exclaimed.

She gave me a funny look, and said, "Oh. Okay."

"Listen," I queried her, "Did Sis bring back the newspapers from Surin this morning?"

Sis usually grabbed the Nation and the Bangkok Post for me from Surin every morning. They were a day old, as the papers get to the shop from Bangkok by truck around noon time, but she had the guy save a paper each for me every day, and she got them every morning after bringing our daughter to school. A day old English language newspaper is better than no paper at all when up in the village, believe me.

"Yes." said my wife, "You want?"

"Yes please. The Nation darling, if you can."

She left and came back with the paper. I thanked her and grabbed it, and ducked back into the hong nam to see if I could reclaim the bowel movement that I had lost in the excitement with the damned spider, while reading the paper on the toilet.

I made like a rabbit once again.

Omnia Vincit Labor
(Labor overcomes all things)

After finishing my toilet I went into the bedroom, threw on some clothes, shorts and t-shirt and sandals, made myself another cup of pseudo Joe, and ate my jam and toast while reading the oh so pleasant news from around the world, which is enough to drive any man into a fit of depression and wrist slashing isn't it? I don't know why the hell I even bother reading the papers any more. I love being in the village because I want to get away from all that crap actually.

Finishing my breaking of the nightly fast I wandered out onto the veranda, after dutifully placing my cup, saucer, and plate in the sink out back for later washing by my loving wife.

Call me a male chauvinistic pig, but one thing I love about being in the village is I never have to wash my dishes, nor wash, dry, and iron my clothing. It's not considered my job or duty, and I catch no shit or grief for not doing so. I have my man jobs to do. Sans peur et sans reproche. (Without fear and without reproach) Ah, to the manly life! Let us drink a toast gentlemen! What's that sound I hear? The gnashing of teeth of a woman reading this?

I noticed the clouds had dissipated a bit, the rain had finished for a while it looked. I decided to get out my new electric 'weed whacker' and boldly and bravely strike out into the wilderness of my minuscule front lawn, to try to tame the lush growth which had been tickling my knees every time I walked to and from the tarmac of the street to the front door of the house. It had been neglected for many months. (No, I'm not lazy. I was away caring for my ailing father for a while. Helping my Mom.)

This messy lawn, being a breeding ground for tics, mosquitoes, and God knows what else, needed to be beat back of its thriving wilderness, for the health and welfare of my family, and visiting friends and neighbors. Salus populi suprema est lex! (Fitting Latin, meaning: The safety of the people is the highest law.) Yes, I'm on a Latin kick lately. The residues of my altar boy days I suspect.

Thus seeing my 'manly' duty I set out to prepare for the dangerous mission I had accepted. I am the man of the house; the lawn is my domain and responsibility. I will not be seen as lacking, nor will my lawn be the disgrace most Thai lawns here-abouts are! I am falang, dammit! Civilization of a western sort has come to the village. Lawns are sacrosanct to us Yanks.

As I stepped across the 'ground gutter' in front of the house something large splashed in the bottom of the concrete culvert, causing me to hurry my step across and turn and look down into the gutter. At first I thought it a large, short, fat snake that I spied thrashing about in the watery muck at the bottom of the drain. Upon further closer inspection, though not too damn close, you never know what the heck you'll come across here in the tropical Isaan villages, I found it to be something like what we in New England call a 'skink', a water loving lizard, sort of like a large newt, with a fat black shiny body, and with tiny, almost non-existent legs, with spots and stripes of color banding its sides. The one pictured below is the same one we have around the village. 

A long-tailed sun skink - Mabuya longicaudata

For some odd reason my demented brain thought, "Dew on the Newts We Got", a strange song from Frank Zappa's 200 Motels album, and the song, "The Lad Searches the Night For His Newts" from the same album. Well, last night the lad would have had a hard time searching for his newts, that's for sure. I remembered then the utter blackness of the previous night.

I hunted down my miserable excuse for a grass rake, a plastic piece of crap that is all I've found for a rake to purchase in this area. God, what I would give for a nice, springy, steel tined falang grass rake, or even a sturdy split-bamboo one would do. I found the rake around the side of the house, and used it to move the skink from in front of my house to further down by the dirt drainage ditch that lies along the road beside my property, where the creature would be less likely to alarm anyone else, and probably be much happier. Besides, I didn't know if it was poisonous. Well, some are you know.

I left the rake out front for later use and hunted down my new weed whacker. It was in back of the house.

This excellent machine I had first spotted in the Makro Super-store in Surin a couple of weeks before. I lusted for it the moment my eyes set upon it, but it came in a package deal, which included a circular saw as well. I didn't really want, or need, the saw at the moment, but desired the weed whacker greatly. It was at that time of my first spying the weed-whacker in the Makro Store that I was cleaning up the front yard of the Surin rental house. The grass needed cutting, and I had naught to cut it with but a rice picking sickle, and a sorely damaged back that I was loathe to test with the constant bending and cutting of yard grasses with a gahddamned short-handled sickle.

So after a couple of days of waffling, and watching the front yard grasses grow yet higher in the moist climate of rainy season, I ran down and bought the weed whacker and accompanying circular saw. I gave the saw to Sis as a present. With different interchangeable blades it could cut ceramic tiles, cement block, metals, and other stuff, as well as wood. She loves tools anyway, being a manly sort of woman.

I brought the weed-whacker home to Surin and set about putting it together.

The piece of shit weed-whacker broke in the first half hour of use!

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"By the work one knows the workman."

La Fontaine
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(To be continued.)

Cent
(The Central Scrutinizer)

This story was written in 2003. All rights reserved by the author.