Graham Lawrence

Writer, Publisher, Retired

Tag: tales from the village

The Eggman

It was around seven or eight years ago that I first noticed him, this aging man. Quite exactly how old he was, was hard to tell as he had the start of a curved back and looked constantly at the floor with his bewhiskered jowls hanging from each side of his mouth. His hair was white or silver, but not in a distinguished looking way, but more in a mop of short but unkempt hair hanging over his head and flopping down onto his forehead as he shuffled forward with his brown scuffed sandals around his brown feet and his blue fisherman pants swaying with movement and breeze. His arched back inside his plaid long-sleeved shirt was letting out a little perspiration as he lugged the wide basket containing his collection of about thirty boiled eggs. He manoeuvred from table to table along the stretch of seawall at Laem Than where the young people sat and drank and chatted trying to sell an egg or two or three at each table for the drinkers to snack on. Occasionally he was even successful in getting someone to buy three eggs in a little plastic bag with a small sachet of sauce as he manoeuvred surprisingly rapidly between the jovial groups.

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Holding Rice

The sky was darkening by the minute as the clouds turned from white to light grey to a darker shade, to charcoal and now indeed black with a rapidity rarely seen. A wind had suddenly sprung up. Starting as a light breeze with a vague hint of coolness. Then gradually becoming a more noticeable breath of cool on face and exposed skin. A stronger blast. And now strengthening as its power is rediscovered, moving the branches on the trees surrounding the village and sending out a siren of rustles and creaking wood as it further strengthens and trees start to sway and bend. The sound of a branch falling through the foliage to the fine red dry dirt on the ground breaks the whistles of wind now flowing through not only every open space but finding every gap between massed trees, the smattering of houses on the dirt red packed mud road, that they were built along. The red dirt from under the trees, the road and even the rice farmland down the end of the pike now becoming airborne and coating the floors of the rude wooden houses on stilts, passing into the communal areas and under the houses where the farm tools were now coated in red. Visibility falling as the black darkness seemed to descend around all. With the rise of the wind, now a crescendo of whistles, crashing boughs, falling tools and pieces of slamming houses. The air now filled not only with dust in the air but pieces of tree, house, tile and detritus. Doors not fastened blown closed and open, crashing in rhyme to the beat of the wind.

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Family

Nim was a family man. Like many poor farmers in the villages of rural Thailand he held strong beliefs. All he lived for were his wife, daughters, nephews and any other member of the extended family. Not a wealthy man and one who was blighted by every farming venture he tried turning to dust in his hands, but one who surrounded by family remained happy and upbeat.

Now a few years ago it just so happened that Nim’s latest venture into a new piece of farming machinery, or was it a new crop had gone disastrously and predictably wrong resulting in another pressing debt that needed to be paid off. It wasn’t a time of year when work was plentiful in Uttaradit, so being illiterate the only option was a trip to one of the building sites of central Thailand for months of daily toil until enough was saved to cover the lost farm investment. Leaving the family would be hard but having the family land repossessed would only leave them landless and forced to leave the village, so there was no option. Tum, Nim’s friend, recommended a site in Rayong in the industrial east of the country where they could both go.

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