Stan.

The last time he went into his mother's village he was sixteen. He came up by the paddy, which is the long way, set the sack down on the floor of the doorway and stayed standing with one foot outside, talking from there. He went back down before it got dark. There was no scene and no slammed door: he stopped going up, and that was that. Up there, seeing one of his kind still counts as illness. Down the slope, out in the plots, they call him by name so he will open the row. Both things happen on the same day.

The row leader job is handed out by the office at the end of the season, going off the sheet. Stan has been passed over two seasons running and both times for the same reason: on that sheet his name tops nothing. The second time he found out at midday, in the drying yard; he folded the paper, put it in his pocket and got on with his work. To whoever carries the sheet at the end of the day he always says the same thing, quietly: "Put it under Solofo's name, I was slow today." He has cleared his row before anyone else and the ones standing there know it.