Read Online Sightseeing by Rattawut Lapcharoensap - Free Book Online Page B

more hours in the physical examination line. The pavilion air has become unbearably hot. More relatives arrive, station themselves by the ropes; it is as if they’ve come together for a picnic or a boxing match. Wichu seems shaken by the encounter with the woman. I try to make small talk, but he just nods and smiles at me demurely.
    The boys line up eight at a time at the front of the line. They take off their shirts for the doctors on duty. They look at their feet while the doctors put cold stethoscopes to their chests, examine their ears, teeth, nostrils, check for scoliosis, measure their height, weight, wingspan, waist, chest—theirbodies reduced to so many numbers. The doctors’ assistants take notes on their clipboards. Some of the waiting boys jeer and laugh when the fat kids take off their shirts.
    Every so often, a doctor gestures to one of the men in fatigues and a boy is told to put on his shirt and go home. When this happens, there is always a bright burst of cheering and clapping among some of the relatives.
    A kratoey with heavy makeup wearing a red blouse arrives at the front of the line. When he takes off his blouse, everybody—all the boys waiting in line and all the relatives behind the ropes—laugh and clap and point, even the officers watching from the stage. The kratoey smiles defiantly, his painted face strange on his dark, skinny torso, before bowing to the crowd flamboyantly. I recognize him. The kratoey is a boy named Kitty that Wichu and I knew in high school. Although it is well-known that some boys will arrive at the lottery in drag to try to evade the process, Kitty is not a draft day kratoey. When Kitty passes the physical exam and gets sent to the next line, there is laughter and applause again, and Kitty blows kisses at us all. When the commotion dies down, I hear a boy sitting in front of us say to his friend that we’re all fucked now if that kratoey can pass his physical. The friend grunts and tells the story of his uncle, who had chopped off the tip of his pinky finger to avoid the draft thirty years ago.
    He cut it off, the boy says. And they drafted him anyway. Told him he didn’t need a pinky to pull a trigger.
    Wichu and I finally arrive at the front of the line. I wonder if I will be sent home now, if this is what the navy lieutenant meant when he told my father that everything would be arranged. But the doctor examines me like all the other boys. We get sent to the next line, take our seats before the stage. We watch the woman who’d registered us set up the lottery urn. We sit and wait for the rest of the boys to be examined. It’s early afternoon now. The doctors pack up their bags, bid the officers good-bye. A man walks to the podium. We’re to take an hour break for lunch before the lottery begins.
    Wichu’s mother has arrived. She gestures to Wichu. Wichu walks over to her. She’s wearing her housecleaning uniform. She waves at me, smiles, and I return the courtesy. I watch Wichu kiss her on the cheek, watch her fuss over his hair and his shirt again. She’s brought us lunch, and Wichu carries the canteen back to our seats. As we eat, Wichu asks me if my parents are coming. I tell him no. I tell him that my parents are too nervous; I tell him they can’t bear to watch. The truth, of course, is that my parents have gone to Chatuchak to buy birds-of-paradise for my mother’s garden. Wichu nods. The lunch his mother has prepared—pork fried rice and green eggplant curry—tastes bitter and metallic in my mouth. But I am famished and devour it anyway. All the other boys are eating as well. Soon, the air is a potent admixture of home-cooked dishes. The sparrows in the rafters flutter down to peck at food spilled on the pavilion floor.
    After we finish eating, Wichu and I share a jasmine tea. As I’m taking a swig, an officer—a balding, middle-aged man with a gut like a melon and a toothpick between his