It was midmorning and already heating up in the tenements district, and the reflected heat from the roof shingles wasn’t making it any easier. Tom had long since tossed his shirt away, working in thrift store khakis and battered work boots as he moved up and down the steep edges of the roof, carrying a dark bucket of pitch and mismatched ( Read more... )

Eventually, the ache subsides and Tom believes that he's getting better. For a while, it had seemed like an impossibility, with the pain, with the limp, no prospects but a dirty bed in Tenazi and more fines to the company store. Now, he's healing, and the wound was closing to a healthy, pink scar ( Read more... )

It happened so slowly, he think to himself, dirty and tired, leaning in the lee of a public house as the rain misted down on Tenazi, greasy and relentless, filling up the asphalt potholes with dingy water. He sighed, trying to keep his weight off his right leg, trying to look healthy through layers of pain and hunger and poverty. The ore mills ( Read more... )

He’d never really thought of Siam as home, before ( Read more... )