Free The Blue-Eyed Shan by Stephen; Becker

him within her, or seemed to, and in this Naung was shy and uncertain; and she cried out encouragement and thanks. She was not stringy like Wan’s woman, a scold.
    He took a bamboo pole from its pegs on the rear wall, and a round wicker basket without a bottom, and a wicker creel which he slung on his back. “I’ll go,” he said, “but I’ll be hungry afterward. And later—you know what fish does to a man.”
    â€œBig talk,” she complained. “Who snored first last night?”
    â€œPerhaps if my woman were less homely,” he suggested, and she beat him out the door, pounding his back with the flat of her hands and laughing as she cried, “O! O! You rhinoceros!”
    Light lingered over West Slope and the Sawbwa’s house. Naung touched his pistol. The evening sounded normal, a calm voice here and a laugh there, a pye-dog’s yap. Naung hurried. He would need more than starlight, and the moon would be late tonight. The air of dusk was cool and soothing on his face. He trotted toward the upper paddies. They were submerged now, with waterweeds growing that would later be fertilizer. Each spring Pawlu dispatched a body of armed men to follow the valley’s deep stream to the River Lae, a tributary of the great Salween. These men made bundles of reeds and grasses, and strung the bundles on bamboos, and laid them down in shallow water, weighting them with stones. Fat river fish came to the shallows to spawn, and their eggs clung to the reeds and grasses. At the proper time the men gathered these reeds and grasses in great baskets and bore them home, and scattered them in the paddies, and soon the eggs hatched and later the fishing was good.
    At the edge of the paddy Naung removed his cloth shoes and trousers. He waded out a few paces; the water did not reach his knee. He swept the surface with his bamboo pole. Nothing. He went on sweeping. A silver flash broke the surface, but he could not see which way it fled. He went on sweeping. Another flash, and he pounced. Through a small hole in the top of the round wicker basket he felt for his fish. He found it, grasped the tail and hauled it up. Larger than a man’s hand. He dropped it into the creel, dried his legs on his trousers, donned the trousers and shoes, and marched home with his tackle and his catch.
    Lola laughed at the silvery creature and clapped her hands. While Loi-mae cleaned the fish Naung hung up his gear, lit his pipe and swigged his beer. He sang to his daughter, who stole a mischievous sip of the beer. He sang about a little girl who strayed from the valley and was devoured by a leopard. Lola’s eyes were enormous and her teeth gleamed in the firelight, and at the end she cried, “Her father should have rescued her!”
    In the morning Mong fashioned bamboo cages while interested villagers murmured compliments. He drew a crowd always. He was an artist with bamboo, and their compliments were a way to say, “Mong, why should anyone else do this work when you do it so well? Therefore we will all smoke and gossip and be thankful.” Mong cursed them with great good nature. He bound the bamboos with stout hemp twine; he slit, trimmed, lashed again, tested. When the cages were complete he cleaned his knife, and stretched. “I’m hungry,” he said. His wife, Chung, was a famous stout woman, jolly in good times and even-tempered in bad; she was prepared for this announcement and came to him immediately with rice, cold chicken and tea. “Chung has not eaten it all!” a villager cried, and there was free and merry laughter, and Chung called out, “Let who will, sleep with sticks! Mong likes a good substantial woman!” Chung was aggressively round, and in the heavy heat before the monsoon, when the women often wore only the long skirt, her great breasts hung like ripe pumpkins. It was no surprise that she and Mong were raising a large family, seven healthy children, five