A Wish in the Dark

by Christina Soontornvat

  Pong took the skewer out of his mouth. He held his left arm behind his back and waved the other stick of meat out in front of him, like a wand. Lies tumbled from his lips. “No! No, this isn’t what it looks like! I didn’t steal this. The monks said I could have it!”

  A quizzical look spread over the woman’s face, and for a moment, Pong thought she believed him. But then he spotted a group of monks walking toward them, holding their saffron-colored robes gathered in the crooks of their arms. His stomach dropped.

  The old woman leaned over Pong, scowling deeply. “We’ll see about that, you little thief!”

  Pong tried to dart around the woman, but she blocked him with her stomach and whacked him on the head with the basket of sticky rice. Bare feet padded across the temple floor as the half dozen monks rushed toward them and clustered around them in a semicircle.

  “What’s going on, Mrs. Viboon?” asked one of the younger monks.

  Mrs. Viboon bowed respectfully to each of them. “My husband forgot to bring the rice when he brought your breakfast this morning,” she said, swinging the sticky rice and nearly clocking Pong in the face with it again. “When I got here, I caught this boy taking this food, the meal we prepared for you. And when I questioned him, he lied to me. He told me that you gave it to him!”

  The monks stared at Pong, tilting their shaved heads at him in confusion. They parted to let an old monk with a walking stick stand in front of them. His robes were darker, a reddish brown, and his bald head was speckled with moles.

  Mrs. Viboon bowed again, even lower this time. “Father Cham, I am very sorry for disturbing your morning prayers. But this boy! He said you told him he could have this food. I can tell he’s lying! Can you imagine? Stealing and lying inside the temple!”

  The old man looked at Pong curiously. Pong had never spoken with a monk before, but he knew that monks fasted each day from noon until sunrise the next day. They prepared no meals themselves and depended on other people to feed them. Mrs. Viboon was trying to shame him, but he didn’t plan to stick around long enough for that.

  He searched for an opening where he could make a quick run for it. Just as he was ready to bolt, the old monk stepped in front of him, blocking his way with the walking stick. It was such a quick motion for such an old man that it startled Pong, and he dropped the precious pork skewers onto the dusty floor.

  “Now, now,” said Father Cham calmly. “You didn’t do what I asked, did you, child?”

  “What — what?” squeaked Pong. “I d-don’t know what you mean!”

  “I told you to make an offering plate for the graveyard first. Then you may take food for yourself. But I see that you haven’t made the offering yet, have you?”

  Pong blinked up at him, confused. He tried to squirm away, but the old man somehow got in front of him again.

  Father Cham clucked his tongue and shook his head at Mrs. Viboon. “I did tell him he could eat this food, but clearly he was in too much of a hurry to listen to all my instructions.”

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Viboon. “I see. Well, I . . .”

  “Thank you for alerting me, Mrs. Viboon. I will see that he learns his lesson.” The monk looked down at Pong, his dark eyes stern. “Because of your mistake, you will come with me to pray that you learn to listen. And you will be the last to eat.”

  “I — but what . . . ?”

  “Don’t argue with Father Cham!” scolded Mrs. Viboon. “You’re lucky that he wants to teach you to be a good boy. If it were me, I would have whipped you!”

  The old monk took hold of Pong’s shoulder as he smiled at her. “Thank goodness we have you to look after us, madam. Thank your husband for this food. Tell him to come to the temple tomorrow for a special blessing. Come along, my boy.”

  He led Pong past the other monks, who seemed as confused as Pong himself. Pong shuffled his feet, trying to keep up with the old man. Father Cham hummed as he led Pong away from the hall and up the steps of another open-air building.

  The monk settled himself in a low chair at the front of the room and shut his eyes. Pong looked over his shoulder. He could still see the other monks, and Mrs. Viboon, who had started serving food to them. They were busy now. Pong could break away from this old man if he had to, and no one would catch him. But instead of running, he found himself kneeling down in front of Father Cham.

  Pong pressed his hands together and bowed his forehead to his thumbs. He cracked one eye open and looked around. Behind Father Cham, a gold statue of Buddha glowed in the light of dozens of little flames that danced on top of thin sticks. More fire.

  Pong’s pulse galloped as he waited for the old monk to finish his prayers. What was going to happen now? Why had Father Cham lied about the food to that woman? Pong had always been taught that monks never lied.

  Finally, the old man opened his eyes. He settled his hands in his lap and smiled. “What is your name?” he asked.

  “P-Pong, Father, sir.”

  “Did they tell you your last name at Namwon?”

  A shiver ran across Pong’s shoulders. He hid his hand behind his back, even though it was much too late for that now. “I know what you’re thinking,” Pong blurted out, rubbing his thumb over his tattoo, “but you’re mistaken. My mother and I were both released, fair and square. But there was a mix-up, and the warden forgot to fix my tattoo. My mother was going to take me back there to have it fixed, but we got separated. I’m on my way to the sea to meet up with her now . . .”

  The lies kept coming, pouring out of Pong’s mouth like water from a pitcher. Father Cham listened quietly, nodding, as lie after lie tumbled forth. At no point did he stop Pong, even when the lies turned wild and outlandish.

  A hot, angry knot started forming in Pong’s stomach. He was a runaway and a thief and a liar, and if there was a word for someone who disrespects a monk in his own temple, he was that, too. It had all happened so fast. In the span of a few days, Pong had become exactly what the Governor said he was.

  He jumped to his feet and took a step back. Standing up over a seated monk was the height of disrespect, but Pong was too far gone for that to matter now. “I know what you’re going to do,” he said, his voice trembling. “You’re going to call for the police to send me back. But it won’t work. I’m never going back to Namwon, and no one can make me!”

  “Send you back?” said Father Cham calmly. “Of course I wouldn’t do such a thing. You said yourself you’ve been released fair and square, so it would be a waste of time to send you back.”

  Pong paused. “I don’t believe that.”

  Father Cham shrugged. “What you believe is up to you. You are free to go and meet up with your mother, of course. But I would prefer to send you on your way with a full stomach and a blessing.”

  Pong stared at the monk. Father Cham didn’t look like anyone else Pong had ever met. For one thing, he was older than anyone Pong had ever seen — even his ears were wrinkled. But there was something else that Pong couldn’t quite name. Something bright and serene danced in his eyes, like the strange flames on the sticks near the altar.

  “A blessing?” Pong asked.

  Father Cham smiled, his wrinkles deepening. “Yes. It will bring you good luck on your journey to meet your mother.”

  Before Pong realized what he was doing, he had sunk to his knees again on the carpet.

  Father Cham reached for a small lacquered set of drawers. He opened one of the drawers and took out a roll of white string and a pair of scissors.

  The old man measured out a length of string and cut it. He held it between his palms and said a prayer. Then he tied the string around Pong’s left wrist. As he did so, he said, “May you never step in a snake’s nest.”

  Father Cham blessed and tied a dozen more bracelets around Pong’s left wrist, plus a couple on his right to balance it out. The old man’s blessings were varied and strange: “May you never get food poisoning from raw chicken” and “May wasps never sting the palms of your hands or the bottoms of your f
eet,” and others, all very specific and related to things that seemed unlikely to ever happen in the first place.

  “There,” said the old man, sitting back on his heels with a satisfied smile. “You see? Lots of good luck.”

  Pong turned his arm over. A thick cuff of white string bracelets circled his left wrist. His tattoo was completely concealed.

  “You say you are meeting your mother at the sea?” Father Cham asked.

  Pong nodded sheepishly, wondering if the monk suspected that he’d made that up.

  “Well, it’s several weeks’ walk to the sea from here. Without a boat ticket, you’d have to walk around the mountains. It could be a difficult journey for someone so young.”

  Pong frowned. Walking around the mountains meant taking the road. It meant passing through villages and people asking questions.

  “Or,” said Father Cham, looking as if he’d had a sudden idea, “you could stay here at the temple. We could try to get word to your mother, telling her to meet you here instead.”

  Pong looked up into the old man’s eyes.

  “And . . .” Father Cham nodded to Pong’s left wrist. “While you are here, if any of those bracelets pop off, I can easily give you new ones to replace them. But the choice is up to you. I would never make the decision for you.”

  Pong ran a finger over the bracelets. He tried to get that image of the blue ocean back in his mind, but he couldn’t picture it for some reason.

  He suddenly felt overwhelmingly tired and hungry, hungrier than he had ever been before. It would be safe here. He could rest and eat and then keep heading south in a few days.

  “Maybe I could stay,” he said softly. “For a little while.”

  “Excellent!” Father Cham tapped one finger to his chin. “I told Mrs. Viboon that you would learn a lesson. I think I know the perfect lesson to start with.”

  “What’s that, Father?”

  The old man grinned. “How to choose the best dipping sauce for grilled pork.”

  One day turned into two, and two days became a week, which stretched into months as Pong found more and more reasons to stay in the village of Tanaburi and its temple, Wat Singh. He kept telling himself that soon he’d return to the road and make for the sea, even as his head was shaved and he took his vows.

  Pong became a “baby monk” and began training under Father Cham’s guidance. The other monks never saw his tattoo or heard the story he’d made up about his mother. And Father Cham never asked about her again. He kept Pong’s bracelet supply up, always replacing the frayed ones just before they snapped. Everyone assumed that Pong must be some distant relative of the old man. Why else would he bestow so many blessings on one quiet, ordinary boy?

  It would also explain why Pong never complained about being hungry, even though monks didn’t eat anything after noon, or about being bored, even though a monk’s daily routine is long and mostly uneventful.

  They couldn’t know that Pong was eating better than he had in his life, fattening up on Mrs. Viboon’s barbecue, which was worlds better than the cold turnips and rice the prisoners were served at Namwon.

  The monks couldn’t know that Pong’s practice of paying attention to mangoes and watching out for the swing of a guard’s baton had prepared him to sit in long hours of quiet meditation.

  Yes, in those ways, life in the temple was similar to what Pong was used to. But otherwise, it was completely different. At Wat Singh, he had the kinship of other monks, who called him Brother. Pong was cared for, and he was expected to care for others. The biggest difference, though, was Father Cham.

  At Namwon, everyone was respected according to their rank or their age. But Father Cham treated everyone the same. Pong had never seen anything like it. When beggars came to the temple from down the mountain, Father Cham received them as if they were visiting nobles, feeding them and chatting with them for long hours. He never talked down to children. And Pong was given as much respect as the oldest monks at the temple. For the first time in Pong’s life, a grown-up was concerned for him, caring for him, teaching him, and always repeating to him, “You have a good heart, Pong.”

  But did he?

  At night he lay on the floor of his tiny room, listening to the rains drenching the jungle. His mind, which had been so quiet all day, began to whir with the thoughts of all the bad things he’d done.

  He’d run away from prison.

  He’d left his best friend behind, alone.

  He’d lied to the monks.

  It was as if in trying to run away from the Governor’s words, he’d instead made them come true. He was a fugitive, taking advantage of the kindness of the monks. If anyone ever found out, he’d go back to prison. Worse — Father Cham might even be in trouble for hiding him. The thought made Pong sick to his stomach.

  Pong resolved that he would build up a mountain of good deeds to overshadow his bad ones. He swept the temple twice a day. He walked the meditation paths in the forest until they were worn to rock. He read the Buddha’s teachings again and again, until he had memorized every word.

  The Governor’s words never left Pong. The box they had formed around his heart had settled in deep, and when he sat very still, he could hear them in the back of his mind: Those who are born in darkness always return.

  Even so, Pong grew and thrived at Wat Singh. And by the time four years had passed, he’d stopped dreaming of the sea.

  He’d started to forget about the warden and the prison, and he’d convinced himself that he had been forgotten, too.

  Pong spent most of his time inside the temple grounds, but when he turned thirteen, Father Cham began taking him along more often on his visits to the village and surrounding countryside.

  The old monk’s walking stick clacked in time to his steps as he called to the people who came out to greet them. “Ah, hello, Mrs. Treesuwan! You look very happy today. I hope this means your brother is doing better? Good day to you, Mr. Prasert. I heard your son is graduating this year. How time flies!”

  As they passed on through the village square, meeting and chatting with the villagers, Pong’s senses were dialed all the way up. Tanaburi was a small, ordinary village, and it was the ordinary things that he liked to watch the most: people hanging their wash out to dry, sweeping porches, chatting with their neighbors, cooking breakfast. Walking beside Father Cham, surrounded by this everyday life, made Pong feel safe. It made him forget about his tattoo and all those things he’d done wrong. He was just a boy in a village, following his teacher.

  They turned onto the road that led down the other side of the mountain. “You said we’re going to the school today,” said Pong, slowing his steps to match the old man’s stride. “Are you giving a talk to the students?”

  “Not today. Today we have a special errand,” said Father Cham. “There is a baby we need to see about.”

  “A baby?”

  Father Cham nodded and clucked his tongue. “Yes, an orphan, poor thing. One of our farmers found her, wrapped in blankets near the crossroads at the base of the mountain.”

  “Who’d be so heartless to leave their baby alone on the road?”

  Father Cham didn’t answer. He tilted his chin down and appeared to be thinking very hard about the gravel at his feet.

  “Teacher, not even you could excuse such a thing as leaving a baby alone to die by the side of the road,” said Pong. “I can’t imagine anything worse.”

  Father Cham scratched his nose with the pad of his finger. They walked in silence for a while. Pong knew what this meant. When Father Cham didn’t want to talk, nothing in the world could get him to say a word. This is what he did when he wanted his students to do the talking.

  Finally, Pong sighed and said, “Well, maybe the parents were starving or something.”

  “Ah,” said Father Cham, nodding as if Pong were the one who’d thought this through and not the other way around. “You make a very good point. There are starving and desperate people in this world, aren’t there?”


  Pong looked down at the road as they walked. “And maybe they had other children. Children they couldn’t feed.”

  “Can you imagine the heartache of having to choose which of your children you are able to keep alive?” said Father Cham sadly.

  “And I guess . . .” said Pong, thinking as he talked, “they knew that someone from our village would find the baby and take it in.”

  Father Cham nodded. “They did leave her in the morning, when the farmers drive their rice carts down the road. And our village does have a reputation in this area for taking in orphans.”

  “It does?”

  “Oh, yes, a long reputation,” said Father Cham, looking up into the trees with a faraway gaze. “In the years after the Great Fire in Chattana, things were very bad. Food was scarce, and many people died. Our fishermen began finding baskets floating down the river with babies inside. The little notes tucked in with them were heartbreaking. The parents who sent them away had nothing to feed them. Instead of watching them starve, they sent them on and hoped that someone would find them. For a little while our fishermen caught more babies than fish!”

  Father Cham stopped in the road, leaning heavily on his walking stick. He pretended to inspect the bottom of his staff while he caught his breath. Pong offered his arm to help him stand up again.

  “So I sent word out all over the province that our village would care for any children from Chattana or anywhere else, no matter what the circumstances,” said the monk. “We also spread the word to leave them at the crossroads, not send them down the river. Too many crocodiles for that!”

  “Did people listen to you?”

  “Oh, we took in dozens and dozens of babies!” The old man smiled and pointed down the road. “That’s why we ended up building the school. To hold all those babies.” After a little while, he patted Pong’s shoulder and smiled widely. “Thank you, my boy.”

  “For what?”

  “For teaching me that desperate people deserve our compassion, not our judgment.”