ThailandStories.com - I See Dead People - Part 2

Once a few years back I wrote about an encounter I had one evening while living in the village. It was a story of something strange that happened to me. It's posted here on ThailandStories.com. I titled it 'Grandpa Comes for a Visit', which is what I was told by these Thais, this superstitious lot, these unscientific and rural believers in the world outside our own senses. I still don’t know what exactly I had experienced, and I probably never will really, unless of course Grandpa comes back again for another visit to bolster his connection with me and shows himself to me, but I am a doubter, a doubting Thomas. I would have questioned Jesus’ return much the same as Thomas did. I just find these sorts of things hard to believe. I have no faith as they say. I have to see it to believe it, and actually creepy things I really have no desire to see, time enough for that once I am dead and gone myself I figure.

The dead are dead and we remaining mortals should just let them be and quit bothering them with our questions, requests and prayers for help and guidance.

I can hear them now, a husband who has passed on and his wife still back on the mortal plane always wailing his name in her prayers and asking him to please do something about his son Johnny, who is 50 years old and still screwing up somehow.

“Sorry God, I’ll have to stop my praising, singing and hossanah-ing to the highest here for a bit. Seems I’ve got another call from my wife about Johnny. Yeah, yeah, I know. Well, not everyone has a son as good as yours ‘ey? You know, no one likes a braggart, Lord. Besides, you could have made mine a bit better now couldn’t you have?”

Or maybe from the other end.

“Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Oh, hold up there a moment will you Beelzebub with sticking that pitchfork in my ass? I think I have another call from the wife. Probably about my son Johnny again. Sorry for the interruption, but hey, you’re the one leading him down the path to hell right? Yeah, yeah, I’ll make it quick. I wouldn’t want to miss any more torture and punishment for my sins. Why don’t you go sharpen your pitchfork tines for a moment while I take this call huh, the damned thing’s getting a bit blunt."

Yeah, better I think to leave the dead to their afterlife and just get on with our lives as well. The Thais can’t seem to do this though, ancestor worship and all that. I mean it's no wonder they have so many spooks and ghosts and goblins around here, they’re always giving them food, and booze to drink, lighting nice smelling incense sticks and candles for them, and building them those neat little nicely decorated and laid out spirit houses for them to live in. What ghost wouldn’t want to hang around for all that cool stuff? Free room and board, a tipple now and then, and nothing much to do but hang around and be waited on ethereal hand and foot; why be reincarnated into another rice farmer and have to work all day in the hot sun?

While I was away this time back in the states my wife was house-hunting for a place we could stay in Surin. Daughter was now going to school there, and the move back to the village from our first rental house in Surin just wasn’t working out really. The village restaurant wasn’t doing well at all. Seems everybody in the village is like Wimpy in the Popeye cartoons, asking, “If you’ll give me a bowl of soup and rice today I’ll gladly pay you once the rice in my fields are harvested and sold.” Everyone wanted to buy on credit, and you know where that’ll get you in Thailand, freaking broke quick, that’s where. Sorry, cash only, or at least its equivalent in kilos of rice we can sell for baht maybe, but these buggers weren’t buying that either. “What if the price of rice goes up? Then you’d be getting more than I owed you?” they’d whine. “Just wait until my crop is in and sold and I’ll pay my tab then.” Yeah, right. Buzz off, go home, and cook your own damned rice then pal. Like we can wait six months to a year for you to pay for what you’ve eaten in the shop every day during that time, and have enough to restock supplies and pay for the cooking gas used and all the expenses incurred. They’d even want to drink beer and Lao Khao rice whiskey on the cuff as well. Sorry, no credit.

So the village restaurant wasn’t working out as planned, look sow (daughter) was going to school now in Surin, a one hour drive each way in the new pick-up, twice a day, four hours of driving, five days a week, which was using quite a bit of diesel fuel each week, enough really to justify a move back to Surin; and actually the cost of the monthly pick-up fuel bill would pay for a rental house in Surin quite easily at only 2,500 baht (65 dollars US) average a month for a decent rental home in a nice middle-class area, and a hell of a lot less driving and more convenient as well. The city of Surin is quite a decent sized city, with many more amenities and benefits than living in the village, and is a nice place to live and work, plus, people pay cash there for their restaurant bills and booze, so a shop there will probably work out much better. So we were pulling a reverse 'Green Acres' (an old American TV sitcom), “Goodbye village life, hello city life.”

While I was back in the states getting some surgeries done on my screwed up spine, which was going to take a while and keep me from Thailand for a couple of months, my wife would go out house-hunting every day after her and Sis would drop off our daughter for school, then pick up daughter from school and return to the village. About six weeks after my arrival back in the states to be poked, prodded, and stuck with various instruments of medical torture while enduring the freezing winter wonderland that is one of Boston’s claims to fame my wife called me, all excited.

“Honey, I find house in Surin for to live in!” she chirped excitedly over the long distance lines.

“Oh, yeah?” I said, not so excitedly, as I was doped to the gills for my back pain.

“Yes, nice how (house). Have sam (three) bedroom. Have song (two) hong nam (bathrooms). Have American toilet in upstair hong nam for you! Have AC in bedroom you and me! Good play (place) for live in Surin!” she fairly sung in happiness over the phone.

“Hey, that’s nice. I don’t think I could get back up off a THai 'squat' toilet after taking a crap at the moment dear, so that’s a big plus right there. AC, huh? That’s a bonus as well, although right now I’ve had all the cold air I need to last me a lifetime I think. It’s freaking snowing right now as we speak darling, again.” I mumbled in my codeine induced trance-like state of euphoric freedom from pain. A couple of Tylenol #3’s every few hours has that effect on one. Lots of codeine in those things. You are pain-free, but a bit foggy at times under their influence. You can function on them, but really don’t want to, and you speak like you’ve had a few shots of nice mellow Irish whiskey really.

“You okay tilac?” my wife questioned worriedly. “I no unnerstan you mahk mahk. My kow jai (I don’t understand).

“Yeah, I’m fine darling. So how much is this wonderful palace in Surin to rent anyway?” I asked her.

“2,500 baht one month! We have to make one month dow (down, the deposit) and one month rent. What you think tilac (sweetheart)? Can make?” she asked, still sounding excited about her find for our new Isaan abode.

“Listen honey, it’s up to you. If you like it and think it’ll do for us to live in in Surin then get it. I’m sure it’ll be fine. 2,500 baht, that’s around 60 dollars (at that time). So I’ll send you the deposit, 'down' as you say it, and the first month’s rent, and you can rent the place and start moving in the beginning of next month, okay?” I told her, hoping I wasn’t slurring my words too badly.

She squealed in glee and said, “Yes, I think you like too mutt. I have wait for boss (the owner) of how (house) to say okay. We have friend from Sis Fon who know boss from how. She talk to boss from how and say we are okay family to live her how. I think no problem, but I tell boss how she we want to take now.” (Did you get that?)

I thought I understood what she was saying, mostly, so I just gave her the go ahead to rent the place, told her I’d send the needed monies that week, and we chatted a bit more; mostly about our daughter and family and setting up the move, which would be done while I was still away, and we said our goodbyes and I love you’s and all that and cut the long distance connection. I lay back in my drugged state and wondered where this would all lead me to now in my life, and what adventures and changes this would bring me on my return to the Land of Smiles. I liked Surin. We had lived there before in a rental house for almost a year before buying the pick-up and moving back to the village and setting up shop, so I had few qualms about the move to the city. I’m not one who minds change really. I actually prefer it mostly; new places, new faces, new environments, a bit of excitement in the newness of things when change occurs. It doesn’t bother me really, if it did why would I be spending so much time in a different country, among a different people, language, and culture? I go with the flow and try to enjoy myself as much as I am allowed in this lifetime. Once I got back there and settled in we could start looking around for a place to set up a new shop/restaurant in Surin. Things would work out, and I looked forward to seeing this place my wife had found for us to stay in that she was so excited about. I fell asleep in my drugged stupor with dreams of sugarplums, candy-canes, and for some reason, water buffalo, in my head. The TV was left on a National Geographic show, still muted from when I had answered my wife’s late night phone call.

I slept like the dead until morning.

(to be continued)

Cent
(The Central Scrutinizer)

I See Dead People - Part 2

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