Draft Day by Rattawut Lapcharoensap, 2004
The magic trick:
Adults who act badly, leaving the children to bear the burdens
This is about as heart-wrenching as they come. Well worth your reading time, though.
“Draft Day” tells the story of two boys put through the rigors of a military draft lottery in Thailand. The story employs a well-aged technique. The adults act badly – selfish, corrupt, cruel – and leave it to the wholly innocent children to reckon with the consequences.
And that’s quite a trick on Lapcharoensap’s part.
The selection:
On a pleasant morning in April I go three doors down to Wichu’s house and we walk to Wat Chaichana, the temple where the annual district draft lottery will be held. Wichu has been my best friend all my life. It is hardly sunup, the air thick and cool with dew. We walk silently through our neighborhood. The teashops. The dilapidated playground. The pond with its perpetual scrim of scum. The mangy strays sleeping haphazardly in the streets. The elderly Chinese women gossiping and exercising by the Shinto shrine. The porridge and plantain vendors. The Burmese refugees unloading thick bundles of Thai Rath and Matichon for the newsstand. We walk silently past all that we know like we know our own skins, all that we will remember fondly in our separate ways, though we regard them then as impediments to our youthful, inchoate ambitions.
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