The first rays of the sun began to glint from behind the leaves of the mango tree that grew over the wall in the garden at the side of the bank. The air felt fresh, a slight breeze began to rustle in the leaves. The gentle noise suggested that the wind would take the edge off the heat from the rising tropical sun. It was the first day that Papa Han had been truly gone from them, and it felt like a new beginning. Kheng got out of his hammock, stood up, stretched his back and observed the familiar surroundings. For Kheng this was the best part of the day, before the heat and humidity began to build, and before the rest of the town woke up and disturbed all of the dust that had spent a whole night trying to settle down.
Kheng untied the end of his hammock from the trunk of the old jackfruit tree at the rear of the bank’s compound. With a swift pull on the thin rope it slipped away from its moorings, and he carefully rolled it up and put it in his bag. The way of tying-up his hammock was something he’d learned a long time ago in the army. If the enemy was nearby while you were camped out in the forest you could quickly pull away the hammock without fiddling with complicated knots, and then silently disappear into the undergrowth without being spotted. It was surprising that his old combat skill had become a useful life-skill that he could apply to his current career as the guard at the bank. Kheng had long since retired from the army. He’d been barely a man when he was signed up, but had stuck with the life and somehow survived more than thirty years of service. He finally left once he felt he was too old to keep going. He wasn’t connected or educated to become an officer with a desk job, and wasn’t quick enough to keep up with the younger blood. Besides, the war was long since over and there was a comfortable peace to the country. So, most of all, he hadn’t felt he needed to serve any more. He would have long since retired from all work if it wasn’t for his wife constantly nagging at him while he was at home. His having a job seemed to calm her down a bit, whilst simultaneously reducing the contact time available for her to be irritated by him.
For the last seven years, Kheng had quietly been performing the duty of the night guard at the Maklai provincial branch of the Khoyleng Bank. The bank didn’t have a day guard. Old Papa Han had managed the branch for the last thirty years and had never seen the point in having one. Maklai was a respectable sleepy provincial town with respectable and sleepy people. They would never show such unpatriotic disrespect towards the establishment of their country as to denigrate one of their great financial institutions. For Papa Han, there was very little point in wasting money on a guard that wasn’t needed. The bank was supposed to look after money, not squander it needlessly. Papa Han had only employed Kheng due to the pressure from the head office in the capital to show at least some tokenistic acknowledgement of their security policies.
Kheng would arrive for work every afternoon, just as the bank employees were locking up at 4.30pm. After a long night of guard duty, once Mr Tann, the head bank clerk, had returned to the bank and opened up the front doors at 8.00am each morning, he would head home. Kheng had been in the job for seven years now, and it was a lifestyle that suited him perfectly. Officially, his task was to patrol the compound around the bank throughout the night and then report any problems to the head clerk the next morning. For seven years Mr
