Holding Rice

The sky was darkening by the minute as the clouds turned from white to light grey to a darker shade, to charcoal and now indeed black with a rapidity rarely seen. A wind had suddenly sprung up. Starting as a light breeze with a vague hint of coolness. Then gradually becoming a more noticeable breath of cool on face and exposed skin. A stronger blast. And now strengthening as its power is rediscovered, moving the branches on the trees surrounding the village and sending out a siren of rustles and creaking wood as it further strengthens and trees start to sway and bend. The sound of a branch falling through the foliage to the fine red dry dirt on the ground breaks the whistles of wind now flowing through not only every open space but finding every gap between massed trees, the smattering of houses on the dirt red packed mud road, that they were built along. The red dirt from under the trees, the road and even the rice farmland down the end of the pike now becoming airborne and coating the floors of the rude wooden houses on stilts, passing into the communal areas and under the houses where the farm tools were now coated in red. Visibility falling as the black darkness seemed to descend around all. With the rise of the wind, now a crescendo of whistles, crashing boughs, falling tools and pieces of slamming houses. The air now filled not only with dust in the air but pieces of tree, house, tile and detritus. Doors not fastened blown closed and open, crashing in rhyme to the beat of the wind.

In the distance, the sound of vague thunder could now be heard by those few still running to the shelter of houses or salas. Most now inside already. Another crash of thunder – closer – louder. As it approaches, what little electric the village had, now gone and not returning. The darkness cloying everywhere as the people in houses scrabble to find a paraffin lamp, or candle to give themselves some light, some heat, some hope to concentrate on until a time when nature had lost its anger or turned it upon another village along the big asphalt road, at the head of the dirt lane into the village, or decided to punish the village more by assaulting the very rice crops on the farmland at the end of the village, around the distant market, towards the mountain and stretching on into the lowlands that led nowhere. The very crops on which the life of the village relied. The thunder now louder obliterating any chance of conversation even at raised voice levels. Not that anyone was talking or thinking of talking. All quietly in their own isolated world wondering at their sins, their desires, their needs, their life, their livestock, their crops – whatever obsession resided in each person. The sound of the ghosts now filling the village as the darkness cut it off from whatever lay around it, and the winds still rising, forced those within its environs to hide in whatever shelter they had found. The ghosts coming for them, to punish and ruin whatever the storm decided to leave marked. Respite, there was not.

But still there was more to come. A single drop of hard heavy rain smashed through the foliage deepening the dark red of the farmyard outside the first house. Then another and another. A slow assault upon the very land the village was built upon. But not for long. The attack now coming more rapidly as heavy artillery gives way to a lighter more staccato fall. The incoming drops still hard, hard enough to sting exposed skin, even weatherbeaten flesh of years. The red land now a dark morass of red-brown, and heading rapidly to a boiling point where it would become molten and flow searching out the lower ground down towards the farm as it moved disjointedly, fingering out in every direction, sentient in its search for its needs.

The sound of the village dogs baying and screaming, seeking refuge under the houses, under the dot mypai, under the broken motorcycle adjoining one house, under the rice store of each house, in the hedgerow, or anywhere that offered lee from nature’s offensive. The chickens now quiet and disappeared into what nook, crevice or cranny, nobody could say, but sheltered until the passing. The cats and rats in an unholy truce disappearing from view. All that remains is the red dirt suspended in a rising tide, the broken branches tossed in it and the green foliage both attached and detached as the rain now deluges down in sheets hiding all from any prying eye whether of the villagers or animals. All now impossible for the senses to recognise.

And finally, the lightning in rhythm with the claps of the drumming thunder, not one second between them. The lightning flying left and right and down in lines, forks and balls of intense white light that breaks the darkness, but breaks it in a way that nobody wants it to. Those trees destined to always be struck, being struck leaving pieces of shattered limb flying through the air as they reduce in size, but struggle to live on until the next storm assails them. Those trees destined to never be struck, still swaying in the wind, but now not visible to the people cowering in their shelters. And those poor trees repeatedly struck in years yonder, ripped apart for a final time, to never grow and bear fruits or leaves again.

The storm was now at full strength in its mightiness over mere humanity, its structures and endeavours. The time had come for the natural order to be. Today, nay maybe more than only today, there would be no movement, no change, nothing by the hand of humanity, just the new vista that the storm decided on. Revenge was upon those who tried to bend the will of the world and use it for their own. Sacrifice was demanded from them.

*****

In one house within that village lived the only all female family in the village. The aging mother looked at her three children. All of them still at school. All of them still old enough to help on the farm. All of them old enough to walk with mother into the jungle on the mountainside, and haul back bamboo to sell in the street, or in the tiny market on the road near the only shophouse. The only building of half cement, except that of the family of the teacher who no longer could work in the village. The mother looked at her children – May, Mem and Mam. May now a teenager and flighty and uninterested in her education at the school in the town, that Mother had struggled so hard to repay the loan she had taken to enable. The struggles just to get one child to get higher than primary education, when primary education was all that nearly every child had in the farmlands. There were in those days, no laws about education to even fifteen.

“I chose the wrong one.” She thought.

Mem was the middle child and would soon be off to work in Bangkok when she hit thirteen. Some people from the district, people with money, had some need for workers down there, and had offered the opportunity.

“It was better for her than farming.” She thought remembering her own struggles in life with her three husbands and three different fathers for her children.

She smiled as she thought of the last husband. Her one time of enjoyment, if ever so brief, but she had learned from it, that there were better things than being a farmer. This husband had been a businessman, and a lot older than her, but he had taken a liking to her, and she had only a year before burned the body of a husband for a second time. Those times were hard on farmers and early death was not uncommon. That last brief marriage, had though been good. She was the fifteenth wife and most were still alive, and in the same house or rather complex of wooden houses. As the last, the tradition stated that she would show respect to, and do the chores given to her by the longer term wives. Of course, not everything worked like that, and there were jealousies. Even in her thirties, or whatever the real age was, for when she was born, registration of birth took place at any convenient time. A day, a week, a month, seven months even years after the birth. But even at thirty, and coming from poverty on a farm, she was still better looking, more fun, and even though she thought it herself more pert in attitude than the others, and men liked that. Not everything worked according to tradition when one was bestowed with such advantages. She smiled again thinking of those days, and even the arrival of the start of a storm could not stop that. Even the memories of becoming pregnant and having Mam that had led to the end of that relationship would not interrupt her memories of one of the very few brief times of enjoyment she had had in what was now, for a farmer, her long life.

When Mam had been born her husband had demanded Mother let one of his other wives raise her. He suggested a few, and indeed two of them wanted to have one of Master’s children to take care of in hopes that it would bring them once again to his attention, or raise them in the ranks of the fifteen, seeing that tradition was now ignored in the household. Mother, though, was going to have none of that. And one day she took Mam, filled the small bag once again with the clothes she had arrived with.

“We don’t need your charity.” She thought, “we will take care of ourselves.”

She left before dawn, before anyone else was awake, leaving the gold she had been given with the new clothes and money on the little table beside the bed, now empty as her husband was away. She knew what she was doing, and sought out a sugar cane truck to take her on the short trip back to the village.

“Nobody, would part her and her children again,” she thought remembering a time, a long time ago, with her first husband when she had, had a child and he had insisted on giving her to a distant relative so that, in between the beatings he gave Mother, she could continue to work on the farm, and drag bamboo from the jungle covered mountain, while he saw to more important matters over cards, dice and home distilled rice wine with his friends. No. Nobody was ever going to separate her from her children ever again.

She looked at Mam.

“The clever one, and I should have planned to send her to the good school in the town,” she thought, “but of course when I came back to the village and Mam bore the family name of a big powerful family, powerful mostly for the wrong reasons, there had been jealousy even among her own, and I was weak and let that get into my mind.”

That brought back memories of arriving back in the village, and the names the villagers had called her and the bad things they said about Mam. This always angered Mother. It had been a hard few years, but it was what it was and they did not need anyone else, is how Mother saw it. Her oldest daughter had left home to marry into poverty shortly after, so there were only the three other daughters and her to fend for themselves. Life was hard in those days with no man in the family, but in spite of potential takers, she wanted no more. She had, had enough of men and their silly habits and way of controlling everything, and then letting you down by spending everything including precious time on drinking and gambling or by dying when you were not ready. It would be hard, but she knew a thing or two about life.

Hard it was with theft of chickens from under the house at night, theft of farm tools, and no chance to ever be first to the bamboo, or the well as she had to feed the children before work. It was a time of being last to everything and struggling. But she was not one to put up with what could be stopped.

For a reason that she never told anyone, and never intended to, Mother had inherited a gun, a long gun, with a magazine that could fire many bullets quickly. It was later said, by those she overheard, that she came into possession of it back in the days of the communist insurgency, which was strong in that area. She laughed again as she thought of the time one night after taking it from its hiding place that she had quietly waited with the paraffin lamp out until she heard sounds under the house of those who were going to come for her new chickens. Putting the barrel through hole in the wooden floor that she had purposefully widened, she unleashed a volley of bullets with the noise waking the village, but she knew that nobody was going to leave their house to see why such a sound of gunfire had been about. She slept well after that. The next morning, she was relieved to find no dead body under the house as she looked for and removed as many of the bullets as he could find, but she was sure that was a spot or two of blood on the wooden stilt under the house. That would need cleaning. She laughed at how the local policeman had come and told her she could not be having a gun like that as the government in Bangkok did not allow it, but up here as they all spoke the same dialect, it would be enough that he took it away to dispose of.

“Take it,” She thought, “I have no more bullets for it anyway, so it has done its job.”

It did indeed seem to have done its job for from that moment on, there were no thefts, and the families and the men in the village especially, began to show her more respect and her family, poor as they were, were reintegrated into the village.

She looked at Mam again.

“Yes, I should have sent her to the good school. I must remember her more.”

*****

Mother looked at her children. They may put on brave faces but they were scared. Children could not hide that from their own mother. This storm was going to be a big one. Maybe the biggest she could remember. It could be as destructive as that time in childhood when the airplanes with stars on the wings- American airplanes had bombed the town causing part of the wooden market to burn and some of her friends to die. She tried to clear this memory from her mind. She needed to stay strong and take care of her children. They were all she had, but more importantly she was all they had. It would not do to be scared in front of them especially after she had got them through all the problems of the past.  She did not want her children to carry the memories of such as that recurrent image of bombing planes from her own past, that still lingered until this day. She would be brave and keep them comforted through the storm.

Even as she thought this though, she worried. She knew nature could upend anything and people were so small compared to it. She knew thatched roof on her house was old. Really it should have been changed a couple of years ago, but money had been difficult for the last couple of years what with poor rainy seasons, and her not as young as she once was. She sat and hoped the roof would just remain mostly on the top of the house, and not leak too much. Maybe next time, or the time after, if she was lucky a metal corrugated roof could be put on. There was nothing that could be done but hope it stayed in place.

Then there was the small rice store outside, with its own tin roof extending over the wide opening where she would take the rice stored from the last harvest. It was leaning now and not as strong as it once was. The bamboo legs on which it was kept above the ground were now old and bent. She had little hope this would survive if the storm got out of control. Either the wind, or the running flood water would bring it down. But she hoped this was not the case because as Mother thought of the store, she knew it had memories for her and the family, not least, that one. She laughed thinking about it.

*****

In the village there was this gunman. Everyone knew he was a gunman. Well, everyone except the police, or if they did know, they had a habit of forgetting about it as they often did with those of the same dialect that they had gone to school with, and whose families they were inevitably intermarried into. Nobody knew exactly what him being a gunman meant. Maybe he was not even a real gunman. Bu tin the village he was the gunman. He had a gun, probably more than one, and at times he disappeared for a long time and then returned. The rumours of his endeavours were many even though nobody ever knew if any of them were true or not. He was a quiet one and never spoke of such matters. Nobody was going to ask him, for he had a gun and he was and always would be, to them, the gunman.

Well one day, after a recent absence and an even more recent return, it was rumoured that the gunman had done something big, and that the police were after him. It just so happened that at this time the gunman was walking down the lane past the houses, while Mother was chopping some wood into small pieces to be used on her barbecue. She remembered this time well, and it always brought a smile to her face because the others who had hid or turned a blind eye as this incident happened always spoke about it.

Mother’s rice store, or rice house as she liked to call it, was close to the lane and away from her house. But she saw him walking down the road, and wondered. Her eyes followed him, glancing up from under her eyebrows, so it looked like she was concentrating on the wood. Coming close to her rice house, he pulled a gun from a small bag he was carrying. He pulled it out by a piece of material wrapped round it, and tossed it into the opening of Mother’s rice store. He hurried on towards the fields at the end of the lane.

“He is going to take a right at the fields by the well, and walk back into the market and the paved road,” she thought. “I will catch him yet.”

She hurried to the rice house with a thin piece of freshly chopped stick. Seeing the gun, she put the stick through the guard round the trigger and raised it, taking care not to touch the gun.

“I may be illiterate, but I am not stupid.” She thought, “I know about fingerprints.”

Holding the stick with the gun half way down caught on a knurl she hurried back onto the road, and then up to the main road.

“It was a risk,” she thought, “I may be seen by a passing car, or bus, or worse yet the police from the big town, but nobody is interested in an old woman with a stick. It should be fine.”

She walked surprisingly quickly for her age with her sarong hitched up slightly by her left hand, to help.

Reaching the turn for the market, she went down, and sure enough coming up the other way she saw the gunman.

“Here, you left something in my rice house. I think you may need it more than me.” She held the stick out. There was little the gunman could do but take it back.

*****

Mother knew this would be a big one, unnaturally big, and after it passed, there would be nothing but damage and more pain for the villagers. Once more she looked at her three children. May now fourteen, Mem now twelve and little Mam already eight. How those years had flown. Years of hardship at first that had passed to a more settled life, and now another test. But she had had enough of those in her life already. What would be, would be. It was the way. But for her children, she felt once again the need to protect in the hope that one or all of them may have a better life than her when they were older.

Mother thought about what to do. She was not one to show open emotion, or one who turned openly to physical affection. No, cuddles or warmth in that way were not Mother whose experience taught her that such things were usually not real. She was not one for nice words, and now was not the time for harsh ones, but she knew her children needed something as they sat around the one paraffin lamp watching the wick grow brighter, and then receding into a lower intensity before once again rising. She concentrated on this a while and found herself more focused. There were the old ways, and the young ones knew the stories that the old people with their wizened faces told. Mother was not really one for the old ways. She preferred the modern medicine and even that science, but she best not think about that now. It offered no remedies here. Mother thought, how she, if alone, would have a glass or two from the bottle of rice wine that she kept hidden in the earthenware pot with the hole in it that would no longer hold the water for cooking, that it was intended for. Hidden under the clean and not used yet cleaning rags for the kitchen area. But now was a time to stay focused on the little ones and think about them and not herself. Once again, her mind returned to the old ways.

The lightning was now lighting up the house coming more regularly and she could see the fear in the eyes of both Mem and Mam. May, well May was different. She was a hard one to read now, and had drifted away from Mother. The booms of thunder, ever louder now coming a lot sooner after each time the intense white light lit the inside of the house. The poorly fitting and loose door not hiding any of it, but the door held tight by the bar she had put across it, locked in place was that bar she had placed across it, and into the two protruding pieces of wood each side. The door would hold in the wind, but was no match for the light and sound. A sound too loud now to even hear the crying of the dogs, even if they were still daring to make noise.

Now in that village, and many others, she had heard, even across the other regions to which Mother had never been, it was said that lightning would not strike the food. It would not strike the rice. It was not just said, but also believed by many, maybe nearly all, apart from those people in the big towns who had forgotten real life, and where they had come from. They may even have forgotten that lightning will not strike the food.

Rice was something that Mother’s house, like every other house in the village and far beyond had inside. It was the life blood of the farms and country. Mother shuffled to the small lower part of the house where she cooked. Putting her lined bony hand into a jar, she pulled out a handful of rice and walked back, quicker this time, to her children in the middle of the room sitting around the paraffin lamp, and close to the main support of the house.

Mother sat and asked her children to hold out a hand. Into each hand she put grains of rice. May looked at her blankly as she told them to hold the rice until the storm had gone, but Mem and Mam listened intently.

“Why did Mam have that look she got,” Mother wondered. Mother had seen this before when Mam had seen the wooden splinter in Mother’s foot and pulled it out when Mother just thought it was her old age pain that made walking hard.

“What was it now?” Mother wondered.

But there was still one more thing to do. She took out a few grains of rice and put them into the hair of each child. Now she had done what was needed. She sat back and relaxed and tried to smile for the young ones. May was looking bored. Mem was tightly clutching the rice in her hand, and seemed to be the most scared of the three. Mam sat quietly; her little fist clenched. She was sitting next to the hole in the floor that Mother had enlarged on that occasion when the chicken thieves had been silenced, Mother noticed.

The storm was now at its peak. As well as the constant lightning and thunder, the sounds of crashing branches, flying materials from the trees, and the farms crashing into buildings and farm paraphernalia and the occasional falling tree. Now was not the time to survey, or even peak out, but a time to just sit and wait. Mother clasped the remaining grains of rice tightly in her hand and smiled at her flock. She noticed that nobody had said a thing, but then again none fo them would have heard anything uttered such was the might of the storm.

*****

Then suddenly, instantly the sound, the light, and the wind were gone. The silence shocking and unannounced by any lessening. Just gone in an instant from full fury to nothing. Silence.

Mother smiled again, looking at her children. She turned to a little metal pot that was close to hand.

“This will do,” she thought and said, “Now remember the rice and its protection, and put the grains from your hand into here. We must show respect to the rice and not just throw it away.”

May emptied her hand into it using her other hand to brush that cloying to it into the container.

Mem having watched her sister, did the same.

“Mam, your turn,” said Mother.

Mam opened her hand and showed Mother. There was no rice in it even though it was tightly grasped.

“Where is it? You did not throw it away, did you?” asked Mother. “That is not good.”

“No, Mother. The storm was hungry and I fed it. One piece at time through the hole here. When the last grain fell, the storm stopped. The storm is full, now. It is happy now.”