It was a quiet evening in Khukhan. Lek and Get had just won the fishing contest. They tied for first place, combining their catch. The competition was an improv thought up on the spot. And since Lek caught the only fish, he didn’t want Get to feel bad, so he declared a team victory.
The final Friday of the holiday — it was a cool 29°C (84°F), and the air smelled like a campfire.
The uncles and aunties made som tam. A papaya salad with fish sauce, fresh water crab, chilis with enough fire to boil the beer in your belly, a dash of lime to refresh your senses and bring in a lucky new year. Uncle Yang was questioning how lucky the new year would be. He didn’t think he’d live long enough to experience his first hemorrhoid, praying it would be his last. He and Papa were quietly sipping the Thai moonshine.
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When the boys returned, there was a toast to good health. Yang threw the large snakehead right on the grill next to the field rats and the sparrow-sized birds.
Everything was perfect. Tong got her guitar out and played a few songs. The music was working, Papa started twerking, and Grandma fell over in her chair. She lost her grip on the coconut she hadn’t yet opened, and it rolled into the leg of the barbecue grill. The charbroiler was homemade — two front forks of old bicycles wired together, an old oil barrel cut in half and cradled between the two sets of handlebars. When the coconut hit the front fork, it turned the handlebars and catapulted the feast and the hot coals. One coal fit through the chicken wire and settled on the haunches of the rooster. He jumped up screaming and ran around like a chicken with its head cut off. Feathers were flying, the whole place crying with laughter as they picked things up.
Nobody had noticed that the largest coal had rolled into a hole under the palm tree. It was broiling a bone the dog had buried there — and burning the trunk of the tree Papa planted 60 years before.
A couple more rounds and a roasted rooster later, the tree was fully ablaze. Flames so high they didn’t need to call the fire department. They just showed up. The fire was put out, and Papa declared that this weekend the grandchildren would learn how to plant trees.
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Originally published at https://jallie76.substack.com on April 3, 2026.
