Free For the Sake of All Living Things by John M. Del Vecchio Page B

onto a vacant dry-rice field. Without the trees they could see the breadth of the valley, perhaps three hundred meters. Ahead, the road reentered the jungle. Above the canopy they could see the cliff which terminated the canyon and the mountain rising into broken clouds. They crossed a log bridge surfaced with woven bamboo mats. Beneath them the waters of the O Kamang Chong, the canyon stream, were dark. At first Samnang thought the stream still, then he noticed a single piece of grass moving quickly with the glimmering surface. Chhuon’s eyes darted everywhere. The emptiness caused eerie chills to rise up his back. Again the trees closed, the trail remained level, the ridges rose. Light filtered through the foliage. Chhuon felt as if he were driving directly into the mountain. Not a breath of wind stirred.
    Suddenly the revving whine of small motors surrounded them. Yani snapped about. Three gray Honda 90 motorcycles, each with two warriors, appeared. Chhuon laughed. “By the way children,” he said, “remember, here men think, eh? Women work.” Chhuon laughed happily. He waved his krama out the window at the riding soldiers. “Hello,” he clucked in Jarai.
    Immediately there were two heavy thunks at the bed of the truck. Mayana popped to her knees. A chestnut-colored man dressed only in loincloth and open vest flashed a gigantic filed-toothed grin at her. “Oh!” She gasped.
    “Hello,” Samnang clucked out his window.
    The small truck entered another clearing, now carrying four soldiers, two in the bed plus one on each front fender. Mayana tried to see everything at once. Chhuon drove across another log bridge and up to a gate in a high bamboo picket fence. The escort motorcycles raced ahead as Chhuon chatted briefly in Jarai with the gate guard. High thatched roofs could be seen over the treetops of a mango grove.
    “If I believe,” Chhuon said to the children as he drove into Plei Srepok, “that one should speak Khmer in Stung Treng because it’s our country, then mustn’t I attempt to speak Jarai on Jarai land?”
    Samnang ignored the question. In an excited voice he said, “I hope Y Bhur’ll let me shoot his bow again.”
    The village before them consisted of eleven longhouses in four parallel tiers rising up the east hillside which had been notched like the notched logs that served as stairs into the homes themselves. The houses, sitting on four-foot-high stilt platforms, varied from fifty to as much as 120 feet long, though in other dimensions they varied little—width twenty feet, walls three feet, and immense thatched roofs like A-frames without windows beginning from below the height of the short walls and rising twelve to fifteen feet to cover the ridgepoles. Between and under the houses children played and bare-breasted women coated with sweat pounded grain, wove cloth or split wood. Samnang tried not to stare at the women, tried not to let his father see him staring. Older men in loincloths sat in the shade of small ritual verandas talking and smoking crooked pipes. Young men clad in Western-style shirts or partial military uniforms busied themselves with their motorcycles or rifles. The smell of cows mixed with the strong aroma of cinnamon.
    Chhuon pulled the truck up to Y Ksar’s longhouse. Chickens scattered, runt pigs squealed. “Eh! Look! Look at that!” Before them, across from a large vegetable garden, was a structure of a type Chhuon had never seen in a mountain village. Samnang looked about furtively, hoping to see Sraang, Y Bhur’s older sister, hoping, she, like the old women, would be clad in only a black sarong skirt.
    “I’ll be,” Chhuon said. Before them was a large, round, adobe-brick structure with a few small windows and a high, intricately woven, spearhead-shaped thatched roof. Beside its wide entry there was a raised platform and before that a swept courtyard with several low log tables.
    Mayana slid across the seat, out the door. She stood close by her father as a