Touch Meas?

The man raised his head until his dark eyes, before concealed beneath the rim of a battered and tattering straw hat, met those of the man questioning him. His skin was blackened from long days in the sun, his skin gaunt, stretched over his cheekbones like a canvas pulled tight. His age was difficult to gauge but crows feet at the corners of his eyes betrayed his years. His face was impassive. No shadow of emotion turned his lips nor did any curiosity flicker in his eyes. His questioner's eyes, however, revealed an embarrassed nervousness, his stare flickering downwards, unable to hold the steady impassive eyes of the man in the straw hat. The questioner had a certain softness about him entirely lacking from the man in the hat. His cheeks were round and while he was not young, age had not yet scratched lines into his flesh with the claws of hard days. His white shirt looked fresh and neat, tucked into trousers that ended with smart-looking sandals. The white sedan that he had arrived in sat a few meters away on the narrow dirt road he had followed that day in his search for the man with the black eyes who stared unmovingly at him now. Touch Meas. It is you, isn't it? he asked again, his voice revealing the slightest doubt and faintest hint of an imploring whine. The man in the hat turned his head to the side, but his charcoal eyes never strayed from the other man's face. Yun! Yun! his voice thundered, his teeth flashing white like lightening and unleashed a boom as if a monsoon cloud had burst overhead. The volume and cadaverous tenor of his voice was entirely out of proportion with his thin, gaunt figure, his slight height, and its echo could be hear, reciting his words again and again somewhere there in the distance of the vast paddy fields with their mountainous frames. What, you? answered another man, his voice barely audible at that distance, bringing up the mudsplattered white ox he had been driving, an iron plow laying open the ground before him as if opening a wound in the earth. The animal dropped its head, looking impatiently from a mouthful, but all that surrounded it was the rich, loamy earth of dry paddy, still devoid of weeds from its more recent plowing. This city man is looking for Touch Meas? Do you know him? again that voice rolled over the earth. The man's answer could not be made out, and when asked again his words were little more than a whisper. No, brother, I do not know that name. A boy, probably not yet ten, had materialized from somewhere. He stood near the sedan, his attention divided between the machine and the stranger, standing there in the sun at the end of the paddy. The boy shifted his weight in order to place himself more within the umbra of the eucalyptus trees that lined one side of the road, their silver leaves dancing in a breath of wind. He was without a shirt, his shorts torn. There original color was beyond guess, but now they were a mottled brown. A scar the size of a grown man's hand splayed across his stomach, perhaps some mishap with a pot of boiling soup or frying oil some years back. The scar was an elephant gray, contrasting with the walnut darkness of skin. The man in the pressed shirt glanced at him, and then back to the man standing before him, again silent and passive.

Putting his hand into the back pocket of his pleated trousers, he took out his wallet. The boy, now out of his field of vision, noticeably took interest and stepped forward, out of the shadow of the trees and blinked as the sunlight hit him fool in the face. The city man wiped the sweat from his forehead with the hand that held his wallet before extracting something from it with the other and then held it out to the other man at arm's length. The other man hesitated, and it was in that moment that for the first time he even seemed human, of the same kind, to the man from the city. Before, he's seen like some animal, perhaps like one of the catfish from Tonle Sap, silent and unblinking. The hand reached out, extended an arm of sinew, muscle, and veins, an elbow calloused from propping oneself up on a rough wooden floor, and a knotted bicep that spoke to hard work with little to eat. The fingers closed on the proffered item and withdraw, each with a deliberateness unusual among men. The man studied the item. It was a black and white photograph, two by three inches, creased through the middle and wearing at the edges. The man studied it for a long minute, and as he did the city man again wiped the sweat from his forehead, wiping his hand across his fine trousers. The photograph was extended back to him, and he took it while staring inquisitively at the man who had just handed it back. He looked for any sign of impact, perhaps a twitch of the eye, a turn of the head, and hardening of the mouth. He often looked for these signs in people. They were road maps for him, indicating which way to turn, to press ahead or to rein back, to tread cautiously. In this sunburned face he saw not the slightest tremor. He did watch those eyes, those back, catfish eyes, flick to the boy he know was behind him hovering around his car, and then back to him. He put his wallet back into his pocket without moving his eyes. The doubt that he felt earlier had gone, burn up under the sun when he saw not even the slightest curiosity stir at the corner of this man's eyes, not the least depending of those crow's feet as he squinted to make out the faded face in the photograph. Sometimes nothing is a sign of something. The man in the hat turned his head, looking over his shoulder back at the Western horizon, back towards Yun with his back now turned towards them as he followed his ox and plow toward the other end of the field, back towards the sun slipping across the nearly cloudless sky that heralded the last days of the dry season. Then he turned his eyes back to this man who had come from some other world, from the town. It won't be dark for another three hours, he said, his lips barely seeming to move but his voice ringing in the other man's ears as if he'd come close enough for him to feel his breath against his neck. You can walk with me home, he said, and he motioned towards an ox standing in the shade of the eucalyptus trees, chewing its cud. He seemed to say, Whatever you have to say, it is not worth delaying work. I can, the man is the laundered shirt replied, and again the unsureness was present. But I am known to be here, he said with a glance back at his sedan. The boy was gone. He had not seen it, but after he'd put his wallet back into his pocket the white car had not been enough to keep the boy's interest and he'd wondered barefoot off the road and across the trails that crisscrossed the paddy. The other man had already begun walking away, and without turning his head to look back at this uninvited guest he replied with that drum-like voice, So am I.