By Father Joe Maier

Published in the Bangkok Post, Spectrum Section, May 13, 2018

From the second floor window of their flat, Pretty Molly sees her slum scavenger husband returning from a day of foraging. Her snippy stray mongrel barks excitedly as Pretty Molly begins shouting out the window to him.

It's the same every day -- a proper welcome-home for a faithful man.

Faithful husband Uncle Dawn parks his pushcart next to the kindergarten school gate, alongside the crippled guard, who watches over the day's bounty. He looks up to the window that frames his wife and snippy dog, and then climbs the flight of stairs and ambles through the door, always careful not to knock over Pretty Molly's stack of street-sweeping brooms.

This is home, and a fine one at that. If you live anywhere fancy, you wouldn't think much of it.

But to a street-foraging, faithful man who spends most days on his feet and bent over in the heat, a second-floor flat with an appreciative, welcoming wife and dog is luxurious.

The flat is really Pretty Molly's.

Legally that is, because faithful husband doesn't have a legal document to his name. Says he doesn't need one. He's not against it, but in his "line of work" the paperwork isn't necessary, he says. As a true blue slum scavenger, no authority has ever asked to see his "ticket". And it's true.

No one has ever asked.

But there was that time a few years ago when he was put in prison for three years. His Thai identity card had long ago expired, but that's not really what landed him in prison. The jail sentence stemmed from a convoluted joke that ended with Uncle trying to steal a motorbike without knowing how to even start a motorbike.

It was all in fun, Uncle told the judge. No harm, no foul, right?

His judge that day had grown up in Klong Toey and was familiar with Uncle Dawn's former reputation for hard work and kindness. Uncle Dawn had been the slum's "Favourite Uncle". A title like that carries clout with a slum-born judge. So the kind judge put Uncle in the slammer. It was the kindest thing he could do for the slum's kindest scavenger. The judge had wanted to make sure Uncle had enough to eat, a place to sleep and a roof over his head.

You see, at the time of the sentencing, Uncle had not been at his physical best. As we say in Klong Toey, he was "scavenger slum sick". His dad had died from the "grip of the grape" (local unlicensed moonshine) and his beloved mum of a local street drug called do me kum.

You could say his gene pool was doubly cursed.

As a young migrant to Bangkok, Uncle Dawn had started down that same slippery slope. No education (you don't need book learning to care for water buffalo and to plant rice) and he spoke with an accent from a faraway province.

Then he met and courted Pretty Molly.

After great hesitation, her own mum gave the young slum scavenger permission to move in with herself and her only daughter. But both Mum and Pretty Molly demanded a proper wedding.

So Khun Dawn, as he was called in those earlier days, pulled out a somewhat reasonable looking shirt from his scavenger stock, washed it, asked Mum to iron it, and then put on a pair of trousers and even shoes.

They didn't fit very well, but shoes are shoes. Pretty Molly had her hair fixed by a lady in the flats, and the lady didn't charge anything. She just wanted Pretty Molly to be beautiful on her wedding day.

Together, the groom and the bride picked out a beautiful reduced-price (beginning to fade) bouquet of flowers. Just after sunrise, they waited, with her mum, beside a nearby Sacred Shrine. Stood next to the gate of the kindergarten where he parks his pushcart.

Pretty Molly, a non-government street sweeper, leaned two of her street-sweeping brooms against his cart. Mum held the flowers.

Seeing the old Monk on his morning rounds, they gave him the fading bouquet as an offering.

They knelt on the sidewalk and he blessed them.

And right there next to the pushcart and brooms, they promised to be forever true and faithful to one other.

If the story ended here, it would qualify as one of those feel-good fairy tales of how love conquers all.

Makes marriage sound like a cure-all. But no matter if it's uptown or downtown, life and love are sometimes messy and slopes slippery.

You see, about a year after the sidewalk wedding, Uncle Dawn and Pretty Molly had a child. For reasons no one really knows to this day, this sent Uncle spiralling.

He went headfirst into the bottle and straight down the slippery slope. The descent was lightning fast.

Pretty Molly wasn't having it. Or having him. She grabbed one of her street brooms and swept him out of their flat and out of her life. She said he was worse than the soiled rags he salvaged from the streets and garbage heaps.

Yelled it at his backside as she was sweeping him out.

For the next four years, Uncle lived out of his homemade pushcart. Neighbours mostly avoided him and mothers shooed children away from him.

Late one afternoon, as had become his custom, he walked into the local temple to beg food from the monks. But on this day, he walked into the middle of a funeral/cremation procession. Looking around, his eyes met Pretty Molly's.

She was dressed in black and clutched a photo of their four-year-old son. He had fallen sick and died of a fever.

Seeing her drunken beggar husband there, Pretty Molly began begging too. She begged some local teenage toughs to throw Uncle out of the temple.

In front of everyone, she screamed at the top of her lungs: "My son deserves better than to have his drunk father at his cremation. Have you no honour? Have you no dignity? Leave, leave!"

The old Monk who had married them kindly helped Uncle roll his cart out of the temple. Uncle fell to his knees in front of the monk and begged for forgiveness. The gentle old Monk said regretfully, "I don't know if forgiveness is mine to give. You must go and find it yourself."

From that moment, Uncle never touched another bottle to his lips. He didn't feel worthy to become a Monk, and didn't know if the monks would accept him in the temple, but he hung around outside of it with the stray dogs and cats. And, like them, he would eat the temple's table scraps. At night, he slept in the temple's open sala.

Some months later, Pretty Molly heard Uncle was sober and living at the temple. She visited him there and silently handed him a street-sweeping broom. This way he could sweep the temple and maybe feel useful. She just looked at him; never spoke a word.

He felt great shame about their son's death. He learned sometime later that when their only son was dying, a distraught Pretty Molly searched for him.

But he was nowhere to be found.

She has now forgiven him, but he still can't forgive himself. Shame clings to him. "I should have been there and I wasn't," he says.

Regardless, Pretty Molly took him back in. She, like others in the flats, recalled Uncle from the good days-before the booze and slippery slope.

Everyone gave him a second chance.

On days when Pretty Molly finishes cleaning the section of her streets early, she too looks for collectables and the local slum kids help her. At the end of the day they all split the money and put it to immediate use -- the kids for candy and Pretty Molly for breakfast and her regular morning shot. (Where some folks take vitamins and fancy pills, Pretty Molly needs only a stiff shot of the local Chieng Chung elixir.)

Nowadays, every week on the Buddhist Holy Day, you will find Uncle Dawn and Pretty Molly walking together -- she with her brooms and him with his cart -- going to temple to make merit. There, they light a joss stick for their dead child.

And each week, she can't stop crying over the loss of her only son.

Uncle tries to comfort her as best he can, whispering gently in her ear: "It will be OK. The angels took him to heaven and we some day maybe we will meet him again."