Thirty-Three Teeth

Farewell the Beer Smuggler

Ounheuan and his wife had decided on an early night. They had to get up early the next morning to smuggle whiskey and beer from across the river. They weren’t criminals, of course. Most shop owners had to engage in a little rowing in order to have something to sell.

In spite of their good intentions, they hadn’t been able to get a wink of sleep. First, there were the howls. Then there came one almighty dog fight. Now, one of the creatures, obviously injured, was growling and whining in front of Ounheuan’s shop. His wife decided she had tossed and turned enough.

“Oun. Can’t you go down and do something about that?” There was no reply. She thumped him on the shoulder, and he grunted as if barely roused from a deep sleep. “Come on, lizard shit. I know you aren’t asleep. It’s annoying you as much as it is me.”

He continued a well-practiced snore, and she knew the worm had no intention of going down to the street.

“Bum.”

She yanked back her side of the net and got to her feet. Tightening her sleeping cloth above her fleshy breasts, she walked to the window and looked down. A wooden awning jutted out between her and the door of the shop. Although she could hear the wounded dog, she could see nothing in the unlit street.

“Shit.”

There was nothing humane about her going downstairs. She wasn’t about to apply first aid to the bleeding paw of some street dog. Those mongrels would have off your hand as soon as look at you. Probably give you rabies too.

No, the plan was to grab a long stick and prod the creature far enough away that she could get some sleep. She found the perfect thing: a length of lead piping. If the poor thing were too injured to limp away, she could whack it over the head and put it out of its misery.

The padlock was on the inside of two large metal doors that concertina’d together to fill the frontage of their open-terraced store. Still grumbling, she took the key from the glass cabinet and unfastened the lock. The sound of the rusty door scraping along the ground was the last thing Mr. Ounheuan remembered before his pretend sleep became a real one.

When he awoke, the sky was already cobalt blue and he knew they’d overslept. The sun would soon be up and their dealer on the Thai side would take his booze elsewhere. He cursed his stupid wife and turned toward her place on the mattress, but she wasn’t there.

Perhaps she’d gone by herself. Didn’t want to disturb her sleeping loved one. Some blasted hope. He went down to the shop, scratching his crotch through his football shorts.

“Phimpon, what the hell are you playing at?”

The metal door was open and the key poked invitingly from the padlock. “Oh, right. Let’s just leave the place wide open so anyone can help themselves to-”

He’d reached the doorway and froze there, hardly believing what he saw. Two black crows flapped but stood their ground. The gravel front of his shop was alive with the squirming bodies of cockroaches. There were thousands of the little buggers feasting on some sticky substance he couldn’t make out in the half-light. He assumed it was some sort of treacle.

But then he recognized the remains. Two, perhaps three dogs had been ripped apart. He picked up a length of lead pipe that lay in the doorway and went at the crows that were feeding on them. They retreated the length of the pipe, but still didn’t fly away from their dream breakfast.

It was then, beneath their flapping wings, that Ounheuan noticed something that turned his stomach. He could barely breathe. He sank to his knees and vomited. He couldn’t bring himself to look again. But even though his eyes were clenched shut, he could still see the image of the hand. His wife’s wedding ring on the middle finger glinted in the rising sunlight.