THE END OF RICE by Peter Nolan Smith

Thailand has many superstitions. One concerns rice.

Never joke while eating or else a ghost will steal your rice.

The ghosts will have to wait, for this is the beginning of the rainy season and throughout the Kingdom aging farmers are planting rice. The current price for jasmine rice per tonne from the wholesalers is between 15,000-20,000 baht, which has been guaranteed by the government since last year. Mothers and fathers call their children for help with the crop, but fewer and fewer Thai young work the fields. Manual labor is beneath them. As one old farmer said, "The only thing my son knows how to carry is a mobile phone."

Several years ago at dawn in Bannok my wife's father asked, if I wanted to plant rice.

"Plant rice. Know life Thai."

"I don't know."

I had seen rice planting all across South East Asia. It never looked like an easy job.

Not in Bali.

Not in Java.

And not in Thailand.

Maybe you not man. Maybe you ladyboy," joked Den.

"Ladyboys make more money."

Not you. You ugly ladyboy."

My mother-in-law, wife, and daughter laughed at the thought of me as a kathoey.

"Okay I'll give it a try."

Finish eat. Go field."

Nu begged off going. She had had her share of the rice fields as a child. Angie, my daughter came with me, carrying cold beers. She knew my weaknesses better than most.

We arrived at the rice paddies with the sun creeping over the palm trees.

Ten migrant Burmese were already hard at work.

To the west mountains marked the frontier.

The air was gentle, but the first rays of the sun promised a hot one by mid-morning.

"Paw-ter, not do rice," my daughter begged and pulled me from the path.

Angie was worried about my health.

I was not a young man, but neither was Den, who handed me a shoulder bag crammed with baby rice shots.

See me do."

He stepped off the path into the brown water and began the traditional repetition of planting rice without ever standing up straight.

Now farang." Den motioned for me to join him.

I stepped off the path. My bare feet sunk into the soft mud and the water lapped at my thighs. Old stalks poked at my tender soles. My technique of stick the rice shoots into the field were met with harsh criticism from the old farmer in Ban Nok.

"A pig shit rice better than you." Den was joking, but only half-joking about my effort. He was 65 and his fatless body resembled the starving Buddha.

"I never work rice."

"I see you never work rice." Den was planting twenty times faster than me and my daughter laughed from dry ground as did several of the Burmese migrants whom Den had hired to assist with the crop. They got paid about $5 a day with a meal.

I got nothing.

"Farang no work rice."

I had picked apples as a young boy on the South Shore, but couldn't recall working on a farm since then. Only ten minutes had passed and I was ready to call it quits. I headed for my daughter, who wore a wide-brimmed hat and long-sleeved shirt to protect her skin from the sun. She grabbed cold beer from the cooler.

"You stop work?" Den nodded with satisfaction.

He had bet his wife that I wouldn't last more than fifteen minutes.

"Yes, I stop work." I sat on the dirt and drank a Leo beer in one go.

"You same all farangs."

"Same all Thais too. Where young Thai?" I waved my hand across the fields.

"Your daughter lazy."

"Not lazy. Not stupid same kwaii," Angie disrespectfully muttered under her breath and stormed back to the shaded rice shack.

"I last Thai. After me no Thai grow rice. Then they eat air," Den shouted after me. "Thailand old now. Not young. No one have baby. Only farang."

He was right, for Thais have been abandoning the rice fields for work in hotels, factories, and bars. Thai families have been shrinking too. Once Den's generation is gone, the communal rice tradition of long kek will disappear into the abandoned paddies.

Back at the shack I asked Angie, "If I am old and have no money, will you work rice so I can eat?"

"Mai." Her refusal was quick. "Growing rice for stupid people."

"Farmers aren't stupid."

"Then why they not rich?"

"Money isn't everything." Most rice farmers are hopelessly in debt to the banks and one in Asia worked harder.

"You want work rice?"

"No."

She brought another beer and hugged me.

"Same me."

My beer was very cold and I was glad she was my daughter.

Smart and loving.

Always.

Den came over to join me.

Angie gave him a beer.

We gave them together.

A Thai and a farang.

He shouted for the Burmese to get back to work.

"They drink lao later. We too."

He is the most real Thai I know.

Chai-yo.

A Few Steps With A Ghost

Walking back from High Falls
Quiet sang in the woods
Opposite the abandoned Philmont mill
Dusk swooned over the western ridge
The sun was fare-welling day
With a final offering a glow of neon orange.
In my sixty-nine years I have seen over twenty-thousand sunsets
Many of them alone
But not tonight.
A spectral figure passed between two trees.
A luminescent creature from the far-beyond.

They disappeared as fast as they appeared.

The Living mean nothing to the Dead.
And the Dead meant nothing to Me,
Unless they are family and friend,
Because those ghosts never died for me.

The Roam of Ghosts

My youngest son talks about phee or ghosts. Fenway is not scared of these spirits, but he doesn't want to go to certain houses on our soi in Sri Racha, since the four-year-old sees birds with voices. His mother thinks that he has the 6th sense. Mam says that she is not frightened by ghosts.

"Not zombies too." Mam weighs 45 kilos. Zombies like fat people. She is mostly skin and bones.

I explained that zombies weren’t ghosts, but flesh-eating monsters.

“I not see them eat Thai people in movie. Maybe not like taste. They like eat farang, not Thais.”

“What about the ghost that eats people’s intestines? Phi Krasy?”

Mam shivered like a ghost entered the room. “Don’t say that word.”

“Phi Krasy?”

MAM didn’t talk to me that night and I slept close to her body, if only to protect her from the dead, because there are lots of ghosts in Thailand and here's a list of thai demons or phi-saat complied by Stacker on http://www.thailandqa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4792

Phi Krahang - A glowing fusion of a man and a bird dedicated to a diet of offal.

Phi Krasy – this demon lives within a witch’s body. the succubus leaves the sleeping host to consume your intestines. Eyes incapable of blinking and can’t look anyone in the face like a TV newscaaster.

Phi Phrai – The spirit of a woman who has died in childbirth and whose body has been used to make phi thai hong lotion. A sorcerer must hold a candle under the corpse’s chin, and from the resultant melted oil essences are manufactured which drive men mad

Phi Tai Ha – The spirit of a woman who has died of malaria. The ghost will also spread this disease.

Phi Thuk Khun – The substance of a living person which has to be sent out on astral journeys every week, or harm will come to its owner,

Phi Khamod – A spirit in the shape of a red star which, like a Will o’ the Wisp, misleads wanderers.

Phi Nang Tani – A female tree spirit which is essentially beneficent and may fill the alms bowls of itinerant monks.

Phi Pa – A forest spirit. Hunters may leave a piece of the foot, lip, tongue or eyelid of a killed animal to show respect to this spirit.

Phi Poang Khang – A spirit in the shape of a black monkey which likes to suck the big toe of people sleeping in the jungle. It is said to live near salt licks.

Phi Ka – These spirits are inherited through women and can be contagious. The Ka, if not properly treated (with raw eggs) will attack and possibly possess people without the owner’s knowledge. Perhaps understandably, ordinary people are said to be reluctant to marry into Ka clans!

Phi Hai – Hungry, amoral spirits associated with places where people have died an unnatural or violent death. Phi Hai are easily offended, and take every opportunity to possess people. Normally, they can be induced to leave their victim if suitable offerings are made, but on occasions an exorcist has to drive them out. In such cases, when incantations and lustral water prove insufficient, a whip may need to be employed.

Phi Pob – A malicious and very dangerous spirit which manifests itself as a beautiful woman. Phi Pob float through the air because they have no legs or lower body. They generally appear as a length of internal organs and intestines suspended from a strikingly lovely face – therefore, beware beautiful women gliding mysteriously by in long dresses! This type of ghost is probably more feared than any other species in Thailand.

They're coming to get flesh.

More on me than Mam.

And I'm a better meal than Fenway.

By at least 70 kilos.

SCARED OF NOTHING By Peter Nolan Smith on Kindle Books

In 1958 my mother served canned beets for Halloween. My older brother, sister, and I had to finish them before going on our trick or treat rounds through our suburban neighborhood in Falmouth Foresides, Maine. I forced them down with difficulty. Later that evening I ate four Mars Bars. I upchucked purple, proving beets and chocolate don't mix in the stomach of a six year-old costumed as a skeleton.

Since then I have refrained from mixing beets and chocolate.

SCARED OF NOTHING is a collection of short stories and photo-romans with a Halloween theme as well as ghosts, zombies and witches set in Maine, Boston, New York, Thailand, Guatemala and Paris' Pere Lachaise cemetery.

My favorite Halloween song in HAUNTED CASTLE by the Kingsmen and while I am not scared of ghosts and witches, I believe in them.

Anyone who had seen one or more would do the same.

To purchase SCARED OF NOTHING from Kindle Books for $2.99, please go to the following URL

http://www.amazon.com/SCARED-NOTHING-Peter-Nolan-Smith-ebook/dp/B00P2RBEUG

BOO!!!

THE GHOST OF MOJO by Peter Nolan Smith

I don't know how many people I've met in my life. I've never tried to count them, but they must number in the tens of thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands since I worked 20 years in nightclubs in New York, LA, London, Paris, Nice, and Hamburg and have also circumnavigated the globe over twenty times. Some people I have forgotten. Some names I've forgotten. Some people I remember very little, while others exist as a story surrounded by shards of memories and Mojo is one such person.

Mojo had been the doorman at the Berlin in the 1980. The after-hours club was located in a four-floor walk-up at the corner of Broadway and Houston. The stairs were very steep. Mojo was big, black, and mean to women. On several occasions I warned him to calm down and he glared threateningly without making a move. My temper was legendary back then.

I hadn't seen him years, but I didn't forget him like other people.

Mojo was one of a kind and two year ago I ran into at a Williamsburg bar.

Mojo greeted me as if I had risen from the grave. He was smiling. All that meanness was gone.

"I've been working as a chef." Mojo was bigger than ever. I gauged his weight at near 300. Heavy people like working in restaurants.

"Where?" I like eating.

"Out in the Hamptons." Mojo shrugged as if it wasn't his first choice. "Tough living out there without a car, but I live about a ten minute walk to the restaurant. Even quicker if I cut through a graveyard."

"Aren't you scared about a graveyard?" I wouldn't walk through one at night.

"That's what I thought too, but a month ago I was drunk and decided to take the short cut. There was no moon, but I could see the lights of my house, so I knew where I was going. Problem was that it was too dark to see the ground and I fell into an open grave. The impact of the drop nocked the wind out of me."

"How you get out?"

"Get out? A man my size ain't getting out of no grave. I tried climbing out, but it was a waste of breath, so I sat down and waited for someone to come along. I had cigarettes and it wasn't a cold night. I might have even fell asleep, except I heard someone coming. He was drunk. I was about to call out for help, when this white frat boy fell into the grave. He gets to his feet right away and starts jumping out of the grave."

"Not easy." Six feet is six feet.

"Not at all, but I figured that he could climb on me and get out, then get help to get me out, so I coughed and said, "You can't get out of here that way."

"And what he say?" I was laughing hard now.

"Say? The white boy squawked like a chicken with a hot rod up its ass and practically flew out of the grave like I was Satan." Mojo laughed at the recollection of this moment. "Man, his eyes were bigger than dinner plates and ten minutes later the police come down to the cemetery. Nothing gets those lazy fucks working faster than a black devil in the grave, but one of them knew me and they helped me out of the grave."

"Soo more short-cuts?"

"None at all."

After a few drinks Mojo and I bid each other 'health' and went our separate ways. Each happier for his tale from the grave.

ps 'Mojo' is a magical bag of charms used in Hoodoo, an ancient Afro magic.