Hani

Hani was born in the wet season of 139 in a small hamlet on the forest edge above the lower Mekong. His family spoke an Austroasiatic tongue like their neighbors. A headman took rice and labor for wider river networks, and people spoke of lowland rulers as powerful and far away. At home they kept relations with spirits close: water-spirits in the backswamp, rice spirits in the field, and the family dead who received food and smoke at a post near the cooking place.

His father, Chanur, worked swidden plots and gardens and carried loads when the headman demanded it. His mother, Tema, planted and weeded with the others and spent long hours in the forest and along wet ground gathering edible shoots, fuel wood, and fibers for cord and baskets. Before Hani could walk, there had been another child, Kadang, who died the year before; Tema kept a small bundle for him and placed a pinch of rice there when the household made offerings.

Hani grew into a careful child. He learned by watching. When an adult gave him a list of instructions, he lost the thread, and he waited for someone to show him with their hands. Tema broke tasks into pieces. She put a basket in his arms, pointed to the same stand of rattan again and again, and he returned with it cut and tied the same way each time. He took comfort in repeating what worked. If someone moved the drying rack or changed where the knives were kept, he froze and looked to his mother until she set it right.

Soma was born when he was three. When he was six, Tema gave him the job of bringing water for her and the baby from a shallow channel that held water even late in the dry season. He walked the same path every day and hated detours; when the brush grew thick, he cut a new opening and kept it clear. Later, in 145, his younger brother Ramuk arrived. Ramuk grew fast, loud and quick to try things Hani avoided. The boys fought over a palm-leaf ball, then laughed together when it rolled into mud and needed rescuing with a stick.

By seven Hani joined in field work. He pulled weeds with both hands until his fingers cramped and lined the pulled plants in neat piles so they could be dried and burned. If he was told to watch a small plot while others went to cut trees, he stayed until he was called back, even when rain began and his skin wrinkled from it. Chanur valued that. He scolded Hani when he forgot an instruction, but he also put him on duties that required steadiness rather than quick judgment.

When Hani was a teenager, the headman’s demands grew heavier. Men were called to clear new ground and to haul bundles down toward the river. Work parties formed, moving between hamlets and river landings. At seventeen, during one of these trips, he met Lemis from a nearby place. She was quick with teasing, and she knew the songs people sang while walking in a line with loads. Hani liked sitting near her at the edge of the firelight, chewing roasted tubers and listening to stories. They began meeting whenever their groups crossed paths. The sex came with the familiarity of repeated visits: behind a screen of banana leaves, or in an empty shelter after others had gone to sleep. He did not talk about it in his own house. He kept his tools cleaned and his hair bound the same way each morning, and he behaved in the work parties the same way he always had.

At nineteen, Lemis’s visits stopped. The headman’s agent, Vakram, had begun to assign Hani more often to hauling work because he did not argue or disappear. Chanur also pushed for a marriage that would strengthen ties with a household that had better access to gardens closer to reliable water. Hani did not negotiate; he sat while older men spoke and nodded when his father told him what had been agreed.

He married Bani in 161. The union brought obligations in both directions. Bani moved into the household, which grew as Chanur’s widowed sister Merong and her unmarried son Prakut joined them to pool labor. Bani and Soma worked well together: Soma fast and opinionated, Bani steady and sharp-eyed about stores and infants. Hani did the heavier clearing and carried loads when the headman demanded it. In the evenings he repaired traps and basket frames, tying knots the same way every time. He enjoyed the salty fish paste that came up from the river with traders, and he saved a bit for days when he felt proud of a finished job.

Rina was born in 163. Hani held her awkwardly at first, then learned how to support her head. He talked to her more than he talked to most adults, using short sentences and repeating names of things: fire, rice, water, knife. When she toddled, he made a low fence of sticks around the hearth so she would not stumble into it. He grew irritated when other children touched his tools; he hid the adze under the sleeping platform and checked it each morning.

The wet seasons brought sickness. Diarrhea swept through the hamlet after floods muddied the water channels, and people boiled water in small pots when they had enough fuel. Tema took ill in 164 and never regained strength. In 165 she died, and Darok, the ritual specialist, came to tie a string around her wrist and to speak to the household ancestors. Hani brought rice and a small cup of fermented drink to the spirit post, placing them with careful hands as Darok instructed.

After Tema’s death, the household worked harder to keep up. Ramuk was old enough to take larger tasks, and for a while it held. Then a bad season hit in 165. The rains came wrong; the rice heads filled poorly. Another year followed with fever and weakness that kept people from the fields at the right time. The headman’s dues did not shrink. Borung, the headman, sent word through Vakram that arrears would be paid with labor.

At twenty-six, Hani entered the harder arrangement that people spoke of quietly. He and his household owed days and days of clearing and hauling on Borung’s terms. Hani rose before dawn, ate a handful of cold rice, and walked with others to the work site. He cut brush, carried poles, dragged loads down slippery paths. When Vakram shouted instructions, Hani struggled if the task changed midstream; he waited for a demonstration, then repeated the movement again and again until his muscles memorized it. He did not argue when others complained. That made him useful, and it kept him in the work parties longer.

The pressure tightened again in 168 when Ramuk died at twenty-three. He had returned from a hauling trip with a deep gash on his leg from a slipped machete; the wound swelled and turned hot. The household lost a strong back and a quick mind. Soma took over some of the tasks Ramuk had done, and Hani added more hours in the field, keeping rows straight and storage covered, trying to make up for the missing labor with sheer repetition.

Bani became pregnant again in 169. Hani tried to build up stores, but Borung’s agent still took a share. The infant boy, Talun, was born in 170 and died the same day. Bani’s crying brought neighbors; Darok came again, and a small bundle was made and placed near the edge of the settlement with food and a smear of ash.

That same year Chanur’s health failed. He could not walk far without stopping, and Hani spent days helping him sit, drink, and eat, then leaving to complete the day’s assigned labor before dark.

Chanur died in 170. The household remained extended, with Soma staying close and Bani’s relatives visiting often. Hani held to routine more tightly than before. He checked the lashings on baskets twice. He counted bundles with his fingers and moved them into stacks that matched the number he had been told, because he could not keep the count in his head. Rina, now seven, had learned which tasks her father could do without help and which ones needed explaining twice. She brought him tools before he asked for them and put them back in the same places.

In the rainy season of 172, fever struck him after a stretch of work in wet brush. He returned home shaking, then sweating. Darok burned resin and spoke over him, and Bani placed rice and a bit of fish paste at the spirit post and called on the household dead by name. The fever did not break. Hani died on October 19, 172.

They prepared his body, bound it in cloth and woven mats, and placed it in the ground on slightly higher earth near the hamlet. Cooked rice was left above the burial and resin smoke rose over it. Darok marked the place so the household would return with food on the proper days.