Unwilling suitor, reluctant bride (2)

Lort's friends in the chicken shed gave me a quick lesson in bird economics: how much they cost, how much they fetch in competitions.

They also showed me their battle scars, another favourite Thai drinking pastime.

‘I haven’t been able to have children since a vehicle accident many years ago,’ said Lort, pulling up his T-shirt to show me a scar running down the length of his chest and stomach.

‘So they are not your children by birth?’ I asked pointedly.

Earlier, he was boasting about the size of his family. Yet the children in his present family come from his partner's union with her first husband, now dead.

‘I just give my earnings to Ball's mother, and they stay out of my hair,’ he shrugged.

We talked at length about Ball - and his younger brother Beer (Mr B), 16.

Lort said he knew the young men well, as he had been living in the same household as them for years.

'When he's sober, Ball says nothing. When he drinks, it all comes out.

'He and his brother are so different.

'Mr B likes computer games; Ball prefers drink.

'Mr B is outgoing, while Ball keeps everything pent up inside.'

Lort suggested I might like to meet Mr B.

‘Mr B is even more handsome – and super big,’ he added, referring not just to the young man’s physical height or body mass.

Sounds great! Why don’t I just trade in Mr Ball for his younger, larger brother then?

Lort called home. Ball was there, looking after the household’s two babies.

We crossed the vacant lot to Ball's place, so I could be reunited with him.

Today was market day. Traders were setting up makeshift clothes and food stalls in the dust as we crossed the vacant section next to the slum community where Ball and the rest of his clan live.

‘Do you like pork?’ Lort asked.

At his suggestion, I bought slices of pickled boiled pork, so I had something to present to Ball and his Mum. No one should turn up at a Thai home empty-handed.

This was my first time inside Ball's home. The young man looked embarrassed to see me.

His sad face was pale, his clothes ragged, and his arms and legs covered in scabs and bruises.

‘When I get drunk, I like to take out my frustration on walls,’ Ball had told me previously. But the marks looked much more vivid in daylight.

Lort introduced to me to his family: his partner; Ball; and Mr B, his younger but bigger brother.

Also present was their elder sister; her boyfriend, and their infant daughter.

We sat on the floor, as Ball fetched us something to drink.

Ball and Mr B also have an elder brother, Boy, a soldier who is seldom at home.

The list of family members does not end there.

Ball’s Mum also looks after an adopted baby girl who lost her parents.

Both babies slept in cloth hammocks strung across the room.

When he is not working, Ball helps his Mum care for the babies.

Neither of the children was wearing nappies, as Mum had run out. While we sat, a thin stream of urine broke loose from one of the pod-like hammocks.

Ball plucked the baby from its pod, undressed and cleaned her.

'Where did you learn how to do that?' I asked.

'I just copy Mum,' he said.

We were sitting in the living room, on the ground floor of their two-storey, delapidated wooden house.

The space was cramped, but lively. A TV was going in one corner, a washing machine in the other. It reminded me of a student flat.

If I was still in my 20s, I might enjoy living in such a happening place, though probably not for long.

The constant activity going on around me was exhausting. How do these people get any rest?

Ball had attended a job interview at a local supermarket that morning. They gave him the job, and he was to start work the next day.

‘I will sell eggs at a counter,’ he said.

Ball will work a 10-hour day, including breaks, six days a week, for what I imagine is a pitiful wage.

‘You can recommend him for a job at your company. It’s bigger, and I am sure they pay better,’ Lort chipped in.

I’d love to wave a magic wand, I thought, but it just won’t happen.

Ball left school at 15, and hasn’t been back. Why should he get a job when others, more qualified, miss out? That's even assuming I am in a position to 'pull strings', which I am not.

I asked Ball why he did not carry on learning.

‘I am not ready,’ Ball said, his mouth set firmly against the idea.

As we drank in his living room, Lort reopened the conversation he started in the chicken shed, about me investing in a ya dong stand.

He would help me set it up, he said.

‘Who will make the stuff?’ I asked.

‘Oh, it will be like a franchise. You won’t have to do a thing,’ he beamed.

now, see part 3