THE UNWALKED JOURNEY

This is now the 14th morning that his voice isn’t heard over the loudspeaker by the church belfry. Some town residents are now missing his although uncultured nevertheless stentorian voice. In the Ave Maria as the dawn rosary begins, he blends his voice with a woman’s voice who does the first voice. This is now the 14th morning because he began to entertain thoughts that it is wrong to wake at three thirty in morning, walk fifteen minutes on a footpath to the church to pray the rosary. And the cold morning dew on the vegetation along the path activates bacterias and fungi on his skin making sensation that needs scratching. And it ate up some of his health too. He never went to a doctor but he felt some changes in his body. The right thing to him now is if he has to pray, he will pray because he woke; not to wake to pray.
Finding something worthwhile to do, he looked at his ukulele. He got up, unhooked it from a nail and tried if it is tuned. And then he made up in his mind something he’d always wanted to do.
As always the morning was cold and threatening to rain. And the feeling was contagious. The tingkiling cicadas named for the sounds they make, those insects science says wait for seventeen years to be of mating age and whose eggs need twenty five years to hatch, aren’t blending their noise with silence. Sounds crappy but what science said isn’t necessary to be doubted. Every year there are new cicadas that get to be seventeen years to become reproductively mature and there are cicada eggs that are through with their twenty five year wait to get to hatch into new cicadas. Just like when science say dinosaurs existed some one hundred and twenty to sixty five million years ago. The estimate is so safe to be proven wrong with the huge range of time it is telling the dinosaurs were around.
And the rain began to fall as it threatened when he got far from his home but not far enough yet to lose sight of his house. The two buli palms which are always of the same silhouette shape were not yet blurred by distance. He looked back and the distance reduced the size of his house. It was all alone among a forest of young trees and old coconuts whose trunks had been likewise reduced in size by distance. Its light materials thatched with talahib grass made it look like a used nest where fledglings were once reared and have abandoned when flying lessons their mothers taught was fully gained.
It’s the early days of December probably the last rain for Earth to fill its last bottles to journey its own Sahara in its orbit. This is December and kite fliers mostly adults have been waiting. Children only assist in launching the kites. Kites, those little paper suspended in the air with a string by the blowing of the winds; that little piece of paper an American liar said he flew in a thunderstorm to prove that lightning is a kind of electricity, like he can summon lightning when he wants it and where he wants it; like it’s possible to fly a kite in a thunderstorm when the wind is so strong. The wind has reversed direction blowing east to west. The rain got stronger but he wasn’t helpless from getting wet. The giant leaves of wild, inedible beets lined the path he walked. While agricultural science has yet to discover its use, the Subanos, this man's people, were already using its itchy flesh to control mice that steal their crops. They lace food baits with the white flesh of the beet that when the mice eat it, the mice will then be doing nothing but scratch itch all over their body until they die of hunger. He could get one leaf to protect himself from the rain.
A man cleaving coconuts with an ax by the side of the path was hopeful the rain won’t be pouring long. He was as hopeful as Noah. He had to, to dry the kernels into copra. The Bible didn’t say anything about where the rainbow appeared. But the world is yet to see a rainbow appearing in the north or in the south. The rainbow God showed to Moses was a sign that he is through with his wrath should have appeared either in the east or in the west. And it got into this man’s mind that the rain won’t indeed be long. He proceeded without taking a beet leaf. His ukulele hangs from his shoulder; no rain can destroy his ukulele. And he allowed the rain to wet him. And indeed the rain wasn’t long and the day gibbous moon slowly appeared in the sky halfway between zenith and western horizon. He was wet but he kept going, avoiding the town until he was far enough that nobody knows who he is, did he head for the highway. He wanted to avoid the town entirely but all he could do is walk where there are only a few people. He will be a fool to them; their dependence on rational minds made them incapable of understanding what he will be doing because it is indeed a foolish thing to do this thing he intends to do. And with the thoughts he had in his mind, he is indeed a fool as far as rational mind is concerned. It’s a Friday but he doesn’t wonder why it is a Friday. It is a Friday because yesterday was a Thursday and Saturday comes only tomorrow. He is not known to be like what he intends to do as far as his own town is concerned. As he gained distance from the town, he became more and more stranger to people along the way until no one cares about him anymore. His mountain ukulele of coconut shell and g-melina neck still hangs on his back. He made it himself as mountain ukuleles are self-made and to each his own design. His is badly made but this is all his artistry could craft. His care for his his ukulele like an expensive musical instrument ended as he intends now to put it to good use. No rain, no sunshine can destroy it. He walked without particular direction but he kept going like a butterfly that knows where it is going and where it is coming back. His faded golfers’ cap protected his head from the sun and its torn visor concealed his face from anybody who might still recognize him. He continued to walk without looking but his ears waits for approaching passenger bus going his way. He knew the sound of the vehicle he needed. Right of him was the north with the sea that goes to nowhere but to the horizon. Left of him is the plane that gradually upgraded into hills and then into mountains. The highway seemed to go straight to where the sun sinks at twilight. And then a red bus with the exact sign board on the windshield exactly where he intended to go approached. He waved his hand. He didn’t look neither a beggar nor a fool yet and so the bus stopped for him. And at last he was free from any uncomprehending watching eyes. He settled in the rear seats. He placed his ukulele and his bag in his lap resting his arms over it to keep it from slipping. And then he opened his bag, touched a thing inside to check that it is there and to feel its thickness. He closed the bag back gently sliding the zipper head to the other end. He settled back and got asleep.
It was past 1 o’clock when he got to the place. His hunger for the noontime meal passed without sating. It was beneficial to the intentions he had mind. It was a little city with only a few trees growing perhaps prices of land here have become too high to grow trees for shade or trees aren’t necessary -- buildings have their shadows. At the shadow of one building, she softly tried his ukulele out of habit if it’s tuned. And then he approached an establishment – a tiny drugstore and began to sing.
Silaw sa bitoon
Kahayag sa bulan
Ikaw pinangga, mao’y saksi ‘ning dughan
Sa likod nianang mga kabukiran
Naa dinha ang lungsod sa Labangan
Mao’y pinuyanan sa akong hinigugma
Sayon unta adtoon kung ako usa ka agila.
Didto padulong gikan dinhi akong lak’ton
Ang magagiya kanako (spoken)
Silaw sa bitoon
Ang magtultol kanako (spoken)
Kahayag sa bulan
Ikaw pinangga mao’y saksi ning dughan
He was about to begin another song but the tindera was already approaching. She handed him a yellow coin as the cashier before her cash register gave him a bad, look for he doesn’t look unhealthy to be begging if what he did was begging and it was too early to be caroling if what he did was caroling. He got his song finished not because they liked his song, but because the cashier was busy with the cash register. But it was to him a success enough to encourage him to try on another establishment. Nothing encourages more than success. He walked, away from that store where he won’t be heard singing the same song. It was a bank, a rural bank by status, but has its building of five stories, a newly finished building. He began to sing before the security guards, two outside and another two behind the glass door. But this one is a failure, the security guard told him to come back when the misa de gallo begins.
He turned to leave with only an agreeing nod as his goodbye as the guard closed the glass door.
The highway has ended at the center of the mountain town and the next town at the other side of the province connects with an unpaved provincial road graveled and badly maintained. This road is either dusty or muddy. This is November the beginning of the dry months that will last until April. He's nearly an authentic beggar now for having not changed clothes for three days. Some of the dust he stirred as he steps the unpaved road settled on his feet and some settled back on ground. Houses along the slowly highway thinned into clusters of three as he gained distance from the city. And as he walked slowly without stopping for days houses were all gone from along the highway. He is dirty almost beyond recognition now in a place nobody recognizes him or anybody to recognize him. He's now in a live dream, not just in a sleep dream where information is erroneously processed by the brain. It's taking place right before his open eyes and wake mind. Dreaming awake is far better than dreaming asleep: vision is clearer. No psychologist have ever said such a word but it's happening to him. A house similar to his house except in size is presently visible. The house at the sight of the man seem to meet him like they were moving to each others direction, like it has something to show to him. And his mind gained the ability to see the inside of the house while still distant. The bamboo slats used as the floor were a little more than inch apart. A portion of the bamboo slat floor has two pieces broken near the sleeping area. And a baby fell from there among the sow and eleven piglets below. The sow had three little ones including the baby. It partook in the suckling of the sow's teat the way the little pigs did. But the baby did not move from one teat to another as humans are the weakest, only its not stupid. Three other houses were visible as landscape changed as he was passed the first house he saw. A little crowd of about seven people were milled around a small table playing cards in a gamble. Ante of coins and a few bills were heaped in the middle of the table. Three were seated, one of them was the mother of the baby. She was deep squinting with her cards. A cigarette with unflicked ash burns between her lips; faint tiny smoke gets into her eyes but she didn't have a third hand to rub the little pains the smoke inflicted. Her husband silently kibitzers behind her back too afraid to say opinions how to handle the cards. He was a fool to them; they were fools to him too. But they were both sane to mind each other. He took one last look at the pigs and the baby in the hope that some eyes among the gambling crowd follow where he looked. They were too occupied to mind a baby either.
The images before him changed as he kept walking. The gravel road began to climb. And then he was walking among trunks of giant banyans, the trees no lumberjacks hasn't the courage to cut down. Only a few rays of sun succeeded in penetrating the sieves of leaves through the ground. He walked slow, as slow as a ship in the horizon like he didn't want to gain distance. He could feel the oxygen released by the trees but he was inadequately educated to know the reason. It was cool like the inside of a mall, but he'd never been to any to know the similarity. He was long in getting to the top of the climb to begin the descend to an unbridged river.
Once he was about halfway, he looked to where the river is coming and where it's going. He thought of walking the river to its source or its estuary. Although this is now December and the rain have stopped coming, this river has the infamy of causing motorcycle riders missing while crossing to the other side as and here's the head of the flood rushing. This man knows to be called smart one should have followed rivers in his lifetime. But he proceeded in crossing; this journey had been unwalked for so long.
The sun was still half a perlicue above the horizon but crepusculars mostly insects and some other creature impossible to locate had began their cacophony of metallic and demonic sounds. He continued walking after he crossed the river but on the look out where to gain invisibility in the night. A giant durian tree no lumberjack would want to cut down provided what he needed. He gathered dead twigs and heaped it. He pulled out from his back bag a lighter made in China, the one that has a little light on one end. He started a fire and when the fire was receding, he scooped his hand cacao seeds at the bottom of his bag. He roasted the seeds on the receding fire. When the seeds sent its sweet aroma to his nostrils he began picking the seeds from the fire, crushed it between his thumb and fingers to peel the chaff and put it his mouth. That was supper. He pushed some fallen leaves with his feet to the fire. He lied, pillowed his head on his bag. As dusk turned to early evening, insect noises changed to crickets and cathydids and other nocturnals like bats fighting for the tasteless fruit of a nearby talisay tree that only bats would fight for. And the luminous fungus brightened as the night deepened the way distant stars do in the sky.
He woke to the calls of birds and soundless noises of the forest morning. It was not intended for him; he just happened to be there. But it was enough to make him feel like a fictional character of tales in the olden times. If there are moments that he would want to live and remain forever, it is these kinds of moments. But this journey, he thought again, had been unwalked for so long to want to live in this moment forever. He heaped the dead embers of last night's fire and lit it. When the fire was steadily flaming he gathered few more dead twigs and put it on top. He opened his bag, got his tin cup out, poured water from a plastic bottle, pushed the bottom of the cup over the fire to let it stand and leave it there. Once more he got his hand inside his bag to touch the ginger inside and brought it out. He peeled it of skin and then crushed it on the durian root with his fist. He put it in the cup and waited, and when he estimated that the water got enough heat from the fire, he picked it up holding the cup with with a folded t-shirt he got from his bag. He sipped his lips on the gingered water, and then he scooped his hand a few cacao seeds from his bag and put it on the receding fire. A few moments later the seeds were ambrosiac. He picked one and began to eat intervaled with the sipping of the cup. That was all his breakfast. He pushed some earth into the dying fire and went back to the road like a ship returning to its course after sheltering from a storm.
The primitive man walked this earth barefoot. He took off his sandals of plasticized rubber and rubberized plastic that was made without consideration to traction. He put it inside his back bag and right away he could feel his attachment to the ground with his bare sole. He's a part of this ground; this ground is made of the same materials as his living body. He walked without stopping and then the runway-straight distance showed a stalled logger truck almost at the other end before the road curved to the left. It was loaded full with logs cut short in short pieces probably as firewood for coconut oil mills nearby. A lone tiny object was moving about the truck trying to do something.
As he neared the trucker, a path that goes inside a mahogany forest was inviting to be followed. Leaves of the past deciduous years accumulated underneath. The path crosses a little brook that silently flows under a footlog. But the man ahead needed help. It was a punctured tire that stalled him. A skinny child was with the driver after all, but he was too light to step on the pipe lever and not strong enough to hold the wrench on the nut. The driver waited his approached. As soon as they were near enough for a smile to be noticed, the driver's face lighted. And then it turned into a smile.
"Hey!" the driver greeted as the journeyer was at speaking distance.
"Hey," the journeyer answered.
"Been here four hours now. If you could step this pipe down while I hold the wrench on the nut to loose it."
"But why you're alone with that boy? Your son?"
The journeyer didn't wait for answer. He went to where he was needed. One after another the nuts were loosened, pulled the punctured tire out and replaced with another, nuts put back and tightened. He looked up at the man while he was still squatting by the tire.
"Thank you," the driver said. "Going far?"
"Yeah."
"Where, if you don't mine."
"I mine, but I still don't know where to go."
The driver smiled almost like a laugh thinking it was a joke or was this an encounter with an insane. The driver turned on the engine and the muffler blew dark smoke out kept there for hours. The truck with its overworked engine struggled to stay alive.
"Really, is next town already near?" they journeyer asked.
"Around 40km from here."
"Good!"
"Good?"
"Yeah, it's good."
"Come ride, come on."
The driver stepped on the clutch and released without shifting the gear lever.
"No. Thanks."
The boy looked ahead through the winshield impatient at the long delay and the driver's difficulty in parting with someone who have given help but doesn't accept help in return.
"Aren't you really going to ride?"
"No. Thank you."
"But it's still 40 kilometers to the next town."
"I don't even want to get there, or to any place."
"Well."
"Just go ahead."
"Thank you so much then for your help."
The driver once more stepped on the clutch and finally shifted the gear lever to first gear, pushed the accelerator, slowly released the clutch and the truck was beating inertia. His left foot went back to the clutch pedal and shifted to second gear. He waved his hand out of his window to gesture his goodbye. And then he glanced at the walker in his side mirror to aside his gratefulness. The driver tried to retain in his mind the face of the walker; so did the walker. And when the truck turned the curve and into a private forest with trees grown by the landowner, both walker and driver became nameless faces in each other life.
The walker trudged on. When it was his turn to turn the curve, he could still see the dust of the truck beginning to settle. The dusk caught him as he approached a UCCP church that had a well and a boy pumping water for his mother to cook the evening pone.
"Asa man ka uncle?" the boy shouted in the local language.
"Didto," the walker answered.
A little farther was a Catholic chapel constructed with materials that do not cost anything. The walls are of the same materials as its thatch. At the entrance hangs a rusty differential shaft discarded by loggers long time ago. A lay minister in charge of the chapel approached the shaft with a long steel in hand to ring the angelus. The bell was clanging not ringing, but it sent the little community into prayer.
TO BE CONT AND TO BE EDITED. AALISIN KO IYONG NAGPALIMOS SIYA, AT IYONG UKULELE, WALA NA DAPAT ANG UKULELE

HIS CHOSEN TIME TO DIE

The last time we were together in a drink, not really booze, only a few bottles each of San Miguel, was several years ago – 23 years or so. We have long stopped the habit of drinking too much where we start with one bottle each but end up with the waitress putting a case beside us for the bottles we emptied.

Gil was a generation older, he was a fully grown man, of marrying age and was teaching English and Spanish in a high school which later on closed down and the man who founded it would become his father in-law through his marriage to that man’s eldest daughter who never went to college. After the school where he taught closed and we were little children he would watch us play rubber bonds we never realized while watching us, he would reveal to us later that he was wondering then what to do with his life at that time when he was out of work. We never really cared whether he was around or not. But when we were teenagers and were about to graduate from high school, he was to be our English teacher in the last few months of our high school life, no more Spanish as the government during that time perhaps felt the uselessness of learning the language but perhaps too the government wanted to cleanse us, beginning with our generation, of whatever influence good or bad the Spanish had left on the people. He assumed as substitute to our female English teacher who went on maternity leave until the close of the school year. And that was to be the beginning of our friendship, a friendship, in my case, that would last until his death.

As he was new to the school and to everybody, he needed somebody he can talk to. Once we found him talking with the security guard, he must have been telling jokes because the guard had been giggling in laughter while watching them from a distance. And when we joined them, we knew he changed topic – a serious one, fit for us students.

Although we were already of remembering age when he would watch us play, we care more on our toys than noticing a grown man in the sideline so we never really had the slightest idea who he really was. Our transformation from children to teenagers and his transition to old age changed both of us beyond each others' recognition. Neither do we recall that a grown man did not come unknowingly into our lives watching us play nor can he remember that we were the children he once watch playing.

He was not that old really, just about at the approach of forties. But our children’s standard made him look to us much older.

The remaining time left for our high school days seem to be short now that our friendship with Gil has began to take roots in our hearts. Before he arrived we have become impatient for the graduation day. He made learning easier; he made learning fun. But now that he had become our friend we have stopped longing to leave high school. He arrived and left our lives unknowingly and then came back to our lives for only seemingly a very short time.

Twenty three years or so ago, that was the last time we had our last beer together. And that was when we have become capable of engaging a learned man in conversations. Because by that time we already had our college degrees and have joined the teaching staff of the school where we graduated high school and Gil was still teaching there. Either he regretted having drank at the time he got his stroke or strokes at his age could come easy. We offer ourselves to take blames but he would only shrug his shoulders. Although the stroke caused no damage to his body, his vision and hearing suffered some impairment. For a while he tried whether he can still handle teaching before he accepted his incapacitation. He stayed home and never went to school anymore except for some few minute visits more on seeing us than really coming to the school. We would return this gesture by coming to his house as often as we could after class and on weekends.

His steps had grown slower and slower. He had stopped going to the second floor of his house. The climb needed so much effort that he would rest at every rung. And his vertigo too made the descend dangerous. The two rooms of the second floor of his house which he and his wife alternately used in their younger and healthier years had become a repository of something they want to discard but doesn’t have the heart to give it up to the garbage truck. The life-size bust of his wife’s grandfather, a pioneer of the town, sculpted by a U.P fine arts grad in the 30s was left in one of the rooms when they moved to the ground floor. Only when the municipality volunteered to care for the piece of art was it brought down and caged in glass in the municipal hall and became a museum article.

For twenty five years he never spoke to his sister in-laws. His quarrels, his misunderstandings with his wife’s sisters range from the pettiest like taking a bottle a vinegar without first asking permission to the biggest like taking money and land titles, the use of car his wife bought second hand and sacks of rice already milled, also without permission. The money was his, sent to him in money order check from the SSS during the time of Renato Valencia after more than 12 years of neglecting to fill up a form to collect it. But his wife’s sisters thought the money is his wife’s. A shouting quarrel worded with invectives and other words spoken only in hell, watched live and in person by some relatives including us was the last occasion they spoke. Although his sisters in law were only three, they’ve given him enough trouble to the point of wanting to die ahead of his wife. He knew how miserable his life could be without his wife.

“But you’re six years younger than your wife,” I said. “How can you die ahead?”

“I’m sicklier; she’s healthier.”

“Not one of you is sicklier or healthier. Your wife’s health is as bad as yours.”

“Then pray that I die ahead, that will be the biggest favor you’ll do to me. It might be unkindness to her to leave ahead but her sisters are giving me no choice”

“Alright, I’ll pray that you die ahead.”

“Pray hard.”

“But if my prayers aren’t heard as God hardly hears my prayers, and what you fear is the one that will happen, what will you do?”

“I don’t know.”

We paused long. I withheld what I want to say. I studied his face to find out what reaction he might have for the thought I had in my mind.

“I know,” I said at last.

“What?”

“I know what to do with you in case your wife dies ahead of you.”

“What?”

“I’ll take you to my home.”

“What?” he said in disbelief.

“I’ll care for you in my home.”

“But we are not relatives?”

“It doesn’t matter. We don’t have to be relatives. You don’t have relatives here, neither friends except me.”

“How can you say that so easily? Are you sure you know what you’re talking about?”

“Of course I know what I’m talking about.”

“If I live three, four, five, six more years, excrete liquid stool in my pants urinate in my pants smell stool and stink urine you think you’ll still care for me? I might outlast you.”

“And you still think you’ll live that long with that health of yours with that age of yours?”

“Ok, ok, so you’ll really care for me until I die.” I knew he was controlling himself from crying. “You and Claudio, where is that boy? -- are my real friends, my time-tested friends. Where’s that boy?”

I protested the word “boy.” He said it twice; I didn’t want him referring us as boys a third time..

“Boy? We are not boys anymore. He’s in Manila, he came to say goodbye before he left, you don’t remember?”

“What is he doing in Manila?”

“Teaching…”

“…teaching what?”

What I know is that Claudio is teaching some literature subjects but I can’t let him know. I don’t want him doubting Claudio’s capability in teaching the subject.

“I don’t know.”

“So he’s in Manila?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s not talk about that bo…”

I interrupted with a look to his eyes not to allow the last letter pronounced.

“…yes, yes,” he continued. “He has left us; let’s not talk about him, what should be the word?”

“Guy, fellow,” I suggested.

“Yes, let’s not talk about that guy. But I would prefer to call him Totpo,” the inverted the Visayan word for persons of inadequate height. It was better. Poking fun at us is better than calling us boys.

“Let’s not talk about him. You’re not prepared with a topic to talk about. When you come you should be prepared. Anyway, know why I don’t have children? Because my wife’s eggs always all the time overlooked my sperm, the seed that I sprang hard each time, like they weren’t worthy of becoming human beings like I’m not worthy of becoming a father that’s the only thing I wasn’t good at. That’s the only thing I haven’t achieved. But I could have been as good as any other man, a father like them. But I cannot be unfaithful to my wife, she been with me all my life never was there an evening that she wasn’t with me and me wasn't with her. There was never a day in my forty seven years of marriage to her that we were not together. Maybe I could have impregnated a married woman -- a Manila businesswoman, but I did not do it because what good is it anyway if I have a child by another woman if I only acted as breeder and the child doesn’t know I’m his father. Know why I didn’t want to die when I was young as young as you are. What about you would you like to die with that age? I didn’t want to die when I was as young as you are because when one dies they’ll say ‘rest in peace.’ But what good is resting without tiring, yes what good is it resting without tiring? When you have rested your body it feels good to get tired again. You’re dirty minded that’s not the tiring I am saying. That tiring you have in your dirty mind is resting while tiring resting and tiring going along together, twining. My goodness you dirty minded twining of resting and tiring nothing more nothing less plain and simple now what do I mean I don’t know exactly neither do I mean what you are thinking. So that boy is in Manila. The Manila that I know is the Manila of the mid 50s and 60s and late 70s. Houses were made of wood; slums were not as many. Nobody lives under bridges in the Manila that I know. Where is Totpo living in Manila?”

“Tondo --Vitas Street,” I said quickly not wanting to interrupt him.

“Tondo? My goodness I never went to that place, Vitas Street, where the slaughter house is. My address was better when I was in Manila, Del Monte, near Lourdes School where I was teaching. See that frame over there?”

My eyes followed his lips merely in obedience. I’ve seen it a hundred times at the ledge of his bay window, a newspaper column he clipped from the Philippine Star by Isagani Cruz, the Mini Critique not the former Supreme Court justice. Him, Nieves Epistola and Bienvenido Lumbera were remembered by Cruz as his best teachers.

“You’ve seen that many times. Know who my neighbors were? One of them was a former senator, and vice president, never given a chance to take his oath though, became almost like crazy after that, regained his sanity when situation went back to normal.”

“Who was that?” I quickly asked.

“My goodness either you’re too dull to remember or you don’t care about our country. That part of our county’s history is too recent for you to forget. You never care about our country at all. As I said he got his sanity back when situation went back to normal again. There is no such word as normalcy I tell you. It was an American president, Warren Harding, yes Warren Harding who said that word. It’s incorrect, there is no such word. But it was later accepted as correct because he was the president of a powerful country. One local politician tried to do the same introducing incorrect word: aggrupation, yes, that’s the word. There is no such word. Your computer will underline it red, but not Harding’s normalcy. That local politician tried to use the word in his speeches but it never gained acceptance because he was not among them, he was among us. Anyway back to my neighbor. He was vice president to the madman from my province. One of these days I’m going to die I want cremation and I want my ash broadcast in my place, my place of boyhood in Ilocos -- Laoag City. Nobody wants my ash here. Help me think of an epitaph. But no I’ll be cremated. But perhaps I want these words in my epitaph if I’m buried in a tomb: HE ACHIEVED NOTHING. Will you jump into my fire while I’m being burned?”

“Where are we, India?” I scolded him. He allows me to scold him as long he is wrong. “And I’m not your wife. Ask that to your wife. Make your joke appropriate all the time,”

Our conversations were always like that, he did most of the talking and I did most of the listening. Allowing him talk was like opening an encyclopedia. We would talk about etymologies of words, about literature, about countries, about anything except math. The only side effects I got from allowing him talk without my interruption is that I learn something from him each time.

It was more than three months before I could visit him again. He was not home. He was brought to a hospital by a maid. He never troubled his wife to look after him when he’s in a hospital even in their younger days. I rushed to the hospital. As soon as I get there I hesitated, I suddenly lost the courage to see him. He could be in his last moments or he could be struggling to recover although with his age recovery was unlikely. Both ways I know he will be in a pitiful situation and I didn’t want to look at him in whatever situation. But I was already there.

“He’s there, ward 321,” the clerk at the information told me without being asked. She knew it was Gil I came to a visit.

I was with other people finding patients. He knew me by instinct. As I approached his bed I knew it was his instinct that told him I was coming. As soon as I was within the range of his fading senses, his face lighted. But it was long before he spoke perhaps overwhelmed by the joy of my arrival.

“What time is it now? Is it getting dark?”

I looked at the time in my cell phone. “It’s only a few minutes before three; it doesn’t get dark in hospital wards like this unless there is power failure.”

“And is it raining, do I hear the rain on the roof? It’s your joke that is inappropriate this time. It’s only about three you say but why I can see darkness now. Come on hold my right hand with your both hands, come on now. I’ve been waiting for you. See my dying time, you said few minutes to three. I'm like Jesus dying at three but I’m not God. So you’re good at praying. Know why I want to die now when actually I don’t really want to die yet? I’m dying at a time when I am sad. Who wants to die anyway? But this is what you prayed and I accept it I feel no bitterness in this dying. I can’t feel anything I’m numb all over my body. I can’t swallow the yolk this has been here in my mouth since last night. I can’t spit it out either. It’s not your prayer that is being heard by God it’s just my day now. I know this may not be the moment yet but it could be any moment now. I can see darkness now.”

His voice was not sad although moments ago he said he’s dying at a time when he is sad perhaps the gamut caused by his own disbelief in dying in the choicest time. The eyes that would look straight into mine whenever he wants to drive a point in our millions of conversations lowered its eyelid. His hands slowly loosened on mine. The rain had stopped and the downspout dripping the water that lingered on the gutter into a puddle was the only noise that sounded against the solemnity of his dying moment.

Five faces began to appear and a conversation among them began to take place. The faces were not meant to be seen by mortal eyes and their conversation is not meant to be listened by mortal ears. Their faces and their voices can be seen only by the eyes and ears of the person they provide guidance. They live behind the veil on the other side of time and always there for Gil. It’s only now that he recognized them. It’s only now that he realized these faces have been his companions all along. They welcomed him the way anybody might to a friend joining a journey. They have been walking with him as he stumbles through the world. Gil and me and Claudio have attempted deism, to just believing in God but not accepting religion and its teachings. But each time we do so we fall back to accepting our religion because it is our religion itself that teaches about God. We have tried atheism as well but disbelieving God is just like being at the other side of the same mountain. The shadow still falls on us. Entertaining these thoughts in our minds could be a weak point and a fault in our hearts. But the faces keep no record of weak points or faults and never took those thoughts of ours personally.

They know the coming of the priest whom we had misunderstandings in the management of the school where we were teaching. They have myriad of ways to divert the priest from getting into Gil’s death bed but they did not do anything.

The priest and his assistant got down from his motorcycle and walked to the hospital. The arrogant thuds of the heels and soles of the priest's shoes were amplified by the moment’s silence. But as soon as they saw us they seemed to conceal their arrogance especially the priest and hesitated in their approach. But it’s his responsibility to perform the final sacrament whether the dying person wants it or not, whether the dying person likes him or not. He could be answerable to God if he does not perform it. He got his crucifix out of his shirt to dangle in his chest like he was going to perform exorcism instead of extreme unction.

A bit of Gil’s instinct was still with him when the priest was about to begin. He saw the priest in his dying mind with the same vagueness as a dream

I don’t want this ceremony I don’t need heaven if this is the priest that oils my sole I’ve not yet died before but I’ve seen somebody about to die like me at this moment he’ll be touching my head with his hand the way he’ll do to my sole keep you hands off me that hand of yours that raises the Holy Host is the same hand that pushed this friend of mine down almost hitting his head on edge of a desk and that hand of yours aimed a punch at him and that mouth of yours that says it’s the body of Christ you’re holding is the same mouth that told us threatening words now what are you doing to my feet? This guy, he’s a priest can’t make this rite holy God was never wrong with His mind in allowing people to do rites like this Not even gods in myths will accept your prayer Yours are not prayers to God but incantation to the devil You’re the worst priest ever assigned to this parish Your sermons are the worst; you’re the dumbest sermon speaker I’ve ever known You have no shame to speak your sermons to the churchgoers without preparation Your churchgoers are educated even twice higher in education than you My goodness you’re the only priest I know who delivers homilies on a whatever-comes-to-your-mind basis You can’t make this rite holy – this rite is not holy No priest came for Jesus, his feet didn’t have oil when he died but blood from nail punctures The lightning that struck at Jesus’ moment of death was not meant for Judas but for you What are you doing Leave me alone.

The priest went on with what he was doing leafing pages of his black book. And then his hand, glistening with coconut oil, touched Gil’s forehead and recited pre-worded prayers not his own.

I didn’t mind him. I moved my hand from the wrist where the pulse slowed and stopped, to the joint of his elbow, to his bicep and to his chest. For a long moment I kept my hand there. The heart wasn’t struggling. It was simply like a candle wick toppling as it runs out of tallow. I lifted his hand and released.It dropped like a flag on a windless day.

Come on Gil, let’s go now, one of faces said as he reached for his hand. They waited as he hesitated to leave perhaps not wanting to leave while the priest has not left yet. It was too soon to wear off the livings’ idea of existence in this world.

FAIR FOR FEAR

The jeepney stopped; he got off first. She took his hand as she stepped her shoes on the rung and the pavement. In her mind she isn't sure if she took his hand out of affection. Instantly they disappeared among the multitude re-emerging at the queue at the mall gate before security guards inspecting women's shoulder bags and frisking men from waist to calves before they were allowed in. From there they proceeded to the movie ticket booth.

Inside the theater, their eyes adjusted to the darkness. All their eyes could see is the screen scrolling up the end credits.

A shadow approached from the opposite direction. It puts it hand in its jeans pocket and kept it there. As they came within reach of the shadow, the hand thrusts hard a glinting thing into his chest. She didn't notice anything until his hand loosened on hers as he dropped to the floor.

"Oh my Godddddddd!" she screamed. Her voice echoed like it was shouted to a cliff. Moments later, the screen went blank and the lights were turned on while the shadow casually walked to the door. The momentary opening of the door allowed the noise out but not enough to be noticed by the people outside as the closer sprung shut the both-side swinging door again.

The outside lights revealed the face of the shadow -- a girl, lanky from being thin. But that was all the details the lights could provide. She was not fleeing; the crowd was enough a refuge that escape wasn’t necessary. She quickly joined the other people and was gone to a pedestrian lane wanting to cross the highway. She stood there to wait and thoughts different from what the eyes can see came flooding. The highway was a river and the cars were giant boulders carried by a flood. At the other side of the river were children playing in its cliff bank. One child, too young to be naughty and naked from the waist down, was sitting at the edge of the cliff. He dangled his feet almost touching the water. His penis rested on the sand as he sat. Some grits of sand adhered to the moist end of his uncircumcised penis as he stood to jump into the water. He buried his toe among rocks in the water and kicked his feet into the air to the direction of the other side of the river. He buries his toe again and the boy transformed into a carabao calf and his right toe the mouth of a dugong grazing underwater weeds. As the calf moved away, a Japanese-looking man with gray beard and mustache and sideburns superimposed the vision. He was cutting reeds at the foot of a bridge. The other side of the river was houses of all-bamboo materials. Men were drinking the other day’s tuba, a prelude to a party of an unknown celebration. The carabao calf re-appeared, went near them and got knocked in the forehead with a big rock by the drinking men. They drained the beast of its blood from the nostrils into their drinks instead of cutting a slit in the neck. The boy emerged from the body of the dead beast the way a phoenix would from the ashes. His eyes looked around but without looking at the drinking men. His eyes wandered to where a thin dog is being chained to a bamboo chair like it had stolen fire. The dog's left hind leg is free to allow it to raise it when urinating. The mind of mix up thoughts segued to reality. Her hands were still hidden in her jeans pocket. And then she joined the crowd that crossed the highway.

Back inside the theater, the coagulated blood remained on the floor when they carried the stabbed man out of the theater and out of the mall into a taxi to a nearby hospital. It tells the history of the past few minutes. When the giant screen darkened for the next screening, feet trampled it. As the taxi sped away blinking lights to indicate emergency, she struggled back to her senses to look back at the recent past.

"You’ve the idea why I called you here?" the professor asked.

"No, not at all," she lied.

"Look at this." He opened he pouch and brought out the content. She looked without saying anything. "How can you mistake this for your answer to the exam? One page is not enough to satisfy my questions in the exam, not even 15 or 20 pages. How can you mistake this letter to be your answer to the exam?"

"I've put the wrong paper."

"Alright, I want you to comeback within two days. Show it to me; bring it to me -- the answer to the exam that you mistakenly mailed to your parents. Exam time is not the time to write letters to parents, I might forgive you. Come back within two days."

She folded the paper on which she copied the test questions pretending to be answering and secretly put in her jeans pocket. After submitting her sealed manila envelope she went straight to the university post office and then to the provincial library. The university library closes a week before the final exam. More than a week later, home for the semestral vacation, she herself received the pouch from the letter carrier.

"So what's your decision? He's old -- nearly twice as old?"

"I'm thinking of accepting."

"I'm not giving you up to him – or to anybody."

"Only for a while, I'll come back to you."

"No!" she said angrily.

"We will still be seeing each other."

"I can't share you with anybody."

"There's nothing I can do."

"There is, if you really want to. I want you to say no."

"I'm not coming back to this university just for that one subject alone."

"I spent so much on you."

The word changed the atmosphere from quarrel to fight although their voices were controlled.

"I told you I will still be seeing you. You're the reason I neglected that subject so I had to cheat."

"I said I'm not giving you up to him."

"I said there is nothing I can do."

"There is something I will do."

"Then do it! But what is it?"

"You'll know when I’ve done it."

There is a moment of silence and exchange of looks. Their voices toned down to soft conversation.

"You'll be in jail."

"I'm not going to jail."

"The law will be after you."

"They law will have nobody to run after. Don't worry about me. I care more about losing you than the loss of my..."

She kept the finisher word unsaid. It doesn't exist anyway as far as they are concerned. She was several paces leaving her behind when the final parting word that needed to be said was to be said loud to be clearly heard.

"Where will I find you?"

"You know where to find me."

He was almost twice older -- such a kind of relationship as that of Joseph and Mary was probably the best known one. Michael and Catherine picked up the idea but they failed to get the trend moving. And on her part, she detested the idea, only she didn't have a choice. But now her heart melted for the dying man. The warmth of his blood that flowed and dried on her blouse and on her undies and belly skin, the man’s dying moments spent in her arms, somehow ate up a space in her heart. And now she wished the murder did not take place.

A pair of feet approached the house, a barung-barong by city word. Nobody is home save for the child -- a boy, and a dog, curled near the open door. The path on which the feet walked seemed trodden only by the owner of the house whose husband died when the child in her womb. He died for the movement and she accepted the loss without bitterness. And now that her husband is gone and the movement is in a sense dormant or totally dead, the path had become less and less walked.

Here the clouds aren't merely for the eyes to see. It's also for the hand to touch as it lingers low until late mornings. Arecas abound and while evaporation was not yet strong its millions of tiny flowers perfumed the morning breeze. Unlike the ilang-ilang, no spirit maker has yet patented the areca scent. As the feet stepped on the dry areca frond heaping on the path, it sent signal like a trip wire to the sleeping dog. He began to bark guessingly and instantly his barking voice added colors to silence. As the approaching feet emerged from the fog, he added loudness to his barking intent in keeping the intruder at bay. He bared his fang growling ready to attack.

"Osmond, Osmond! You're still alive after all these years. And who is this angel? Ah yes, you were in your Mama's body when your Papa died. Where is your mama?" she asked like the child is capable of giving her the information she needed.

Osmond stopped barking as soon as his name was called. His canine sense of smell didn’t send signal to the brain any scent of this intruder’s fear and his mine went rushing through memories to check why this intruder knows him by name. And the he recognized her smell and Osmond began to wag his tail. She kneeled to him and held the dog in the ear with both hands almost kissing him. And then he led her to the child's mother in the broke. She was about finished with the dishes when they arrived.
"Babes!" she called.

"So you're the one being barked."

"Yeah, I was."

"You have come back. Is there still reason to come back?"

"I just missed this place. Is there still reason for you to stay here?"

"I cannot leave this place yet."

"You still with that solar light NGO?"

"Yes, that's why I'm still here. But what really happened? I know you won’t come here for that reason alone -- missing this place."

Babes looked at her in the eyes demanding confession.

"I've killed a man."

"Is there still reason to kill?"

"It's not in the name of the movement."

"So what is it?"

"It's Fear."

"What about Fear."

"She went out with another man -- a man."

"Do we accept that kind of killing?"

"We don't, but maybe we can blame it to the movement."

"You want to get away with your crime using the movement?"

"We've gotten away so many times."

"Yes, but that was different. We did not do that for our own selves. We did that for the country. They were not personal enemies. We did that for what we fought for."

"Ok, alright. But I'm not giving myself up. If the authorities find me and arrest me, I'll give myself up -- without a fight."

There was a long moments of silence, each trying to find a word to say and what to decide. Osmond who was lying near them stood up and began to rub his body on Babe's legs as though to beg to allowed her to stay. She touched him in the head and Osmond steadied to be touched some more. He whined and barked then touched his paw on her. Her hand accepted his paw.

"You think that's fair enough for Fear?"

"How can that be fair or unfair for Fear?"

"She's a girl."

"So?"

"She might have fallen in love with the man you killed."

They looked at each other long each struggling to find words to say. Babes got up after sitting long before the spring. She felt the blood in her shins and soles creeping back to circulation. She picked up the pail loaded with washed dishes of the morning meal and began to walk the path towards the hut. The lanky girl walked behind. They walked in silence still finding for words to say like every word had been said.

Osmond went rushing through their legs to the direction of the hut and to the heaped dry frond by the path and began barking at a figure emerging in the mist.

--- e n d ---

My Last First

Papa is a full blood Visayan. His parents came to Mindanao at the time when lands in Mindanao were all owned. Mama Enalay was a full blood Subana. Her parents own all the lands the eyes can see from where one stands, documented to prove ownership.

The description Subana not only is intended to carry gender but also to tinge the name of something like uneducated, uncivilized. Uneducated could be true to Mama Enalay. She quit school before she could be grade three; school was too far she had to walk four kilometers and cross one and the same river three times. Uncivilized, I don’t think she was although I never knew my Mama Enalay in person. I only knew her as Mama Enalay. That her Mama was one of the wives of a Subano datu in a harem of eight wives, that her Mama was a lesser wife, reason why the land she got from the datu is smaller and not the choicest, that her father datu, my grandfather, was once invited to Malacanang Palace by President Magsaysay and that he was wearing what legends tell the attire datus wear. Mama Enalay, Papa has always told me, that she was beautiful no matter who’s the beholder. The other thing I know about Mama Enalay is that she was the youngest among seven; (Papa, middle born, the third among five.) I never saw her but only her grave marked with her name in badly written words and dates by an inadequately educated writer which was my Papa. Enalay Dalaay Buhawan, star Jul 18, 1940, cross Sep 24, 1982. He grave is among the unarranged graves in a public cemetery. It was as long ago as my age since Mama Enalay’s death but her death didn’t lose newness to Papa. Whenever he is free he goes to her bringing her wild goat flowers of orange and crimson and elephant violets, whose secret fragrance, as the Subanos claimed, being close to nature, are known only to their dead. This is why these wildflowers freely grow in our land. Papa neither scythe nor uproot them although he never cared for them.

One morning Papa selected among the dried lomboy leaves he kept in a small basket. He chose the biggest and carefully halved it to avoid a tear where the smoke might leak. And then he pulled his work bolo from the wooden sheath he was already wearing in his waist like a belt. He rubbed the leaf against the blunt side of the bolo to de-brittle the leaf. From his pocket, he pulled out his tobacco wrapped in a banana leaf to keep the flavor from evaporating. He tore two strips of equal length estimating without measuring. Sometimes he would tamp the extra length with a stick into the rolled leaf; sometimes he would chew the extra length like betel when he trims it with his nicotined teeth; and sometimes he would just spit it out like unneeded saliva. Two things are predictable when he does this early morning ritual: either he’s going to Mama Enalay’s grave or he’ll be working the endless chores at the coconut farm. He stopped inviting or requiring me to work with him or to Mama Enalay’s grave after I delivered the memorized valedictory address when I graduated high school. I don’t know his reason but he had the two copies of my picture behind a lectern on our sawali wall. He paid twenty five pesos for the two copies. He wanted only one so he could save twelve fifty, but the photographer wouldn’t agree. Beside my picture hangs his Subano ukulele made of coconut shell and g-melina in a canvass case like it is an expensive musical instrument. As I have said Papa have stopped requiring me to work with him, perhaps to him, a high school grad could be too high an education for works like he does. Or it could be that he wants to get used working alone without me helping and keeping him company. In a matter of days, I’ll be leaving for college. But I know, had he somebody to talk to other than me or if Mama Enalay still alive, he would be talking loud to her. I know the noises he makes as he works the morning meal, were meant to waken me in case I want to go with him. I was still lying on our romblon mat, the katsa blanket of eight pieces of flour bags sewn together, still wraps me from my hips to the toes. I was already awake but still hypnagogic.

From the dying fire that boiled his coffee of the Subano variety that grows among other low growing trees, he pulled an ember and put over the strips of tobacco to keep it burning when lighted. His fingers were as careful when he put the tobacco in the lomboy leaf and rolled it into a gasper. He blew the ash to reveal the orange fire and then lighted his cigarette sniffing and puffing. The other leaf was rolled next but only to be a reserve. Lomboy trees abound in our mountain for the twin purpose of providing food to the birds and other animals diurnal and nocturnal, and Papa’s smoke. He bit his lomboy cigarette between his incisors as he clipped the other one in his right ear. The scent of the burning lomboy leaf scented what could have been the heavy smell of tobacco. Although I like the mixtures of the two smells, I never tried it, but only once. It seemed like my lungs were out of oxygen and like I was going to collapse.

Papa poured coffee into his tin cup and immediately the aroma added to what was already a pleasant smell. He ladled three chunks of last night’s pone and dipped it into the steaming coffee and then put it into his mouth looking up like a fledgling regurgitated of food. But it was really to avoid one drop of the coffee or grit of the corm from escaping. He consumed the coffee to the dregs hooking his finger to carry the bits of pounded coffee and stone-ground corn to his mouth. That was all his breakfast but enough to last him until the noontime meal. Without saying a word to me or looking at me on the mat, he left, a hammer and a saw were in his hand and I knew where he was going.

I waited until I could no longer hear the sound of his bolo sheath clashing against his thigh. I stood up leaving the blankets and mat and pillows like a lazy man. I had to get to Papa fast. He may have done plenty of things before I get to him and so lessen the importance of my presence. Nobody comes to our house anyway. I scooped corn with my fingers holding the food in my hand without putting it in a plate. Being young, my taste is different. I pinched my other hand twice on the salt stored in an antique china bowl, which is the only thing of value Papa have, and sprinkled it on my pone. I ate as I hurriedly walked to where Papa could be working. With the tools he had in his hand when he left, I know he will be repairing his kangga. He will probably be delivering to stores in town his charcoal and firewood any day. A few minute walk and I could hear a tap-tapping but with a rhythm different from that of a woodpecker. I walked to the direction of the sound, and there I saw him knocking a nail on a wood with his hammer. He was singing the endless Subano love song he said he leaned Mama Enalay.

maralak n’g bton

maralak n’g bulan

ya’a pat’l nga

inig gestigos

Nga gad dabu

Sensing my presence, his singing turned into soft hum and then probably to conceal the feeling of embarrassment at my interruption, he began again, but this time now softer and then back to humming again. I slowly edged to him not wanting him to stop humming. I love to find indications that he is happy. And then his humming went to a total stop as his aloneness ended.

“Sumino-nora ma lagi?” he said.

I dropped to my knees beside him to join him trying to find a way to help. The grass tickled my skin but cushioned my knees

“Salaura d’g balay,” I answered. I never learned to speak Mama Enalay’s language. If only Mama Enalay is still alive, Papa would have somebody to talk to in Subano and I would have learned the language listening to them.

“Gabas mo wi ni.” He pushed to me a newly cut round wood and passed to me the saw.

Papa doesn’t need to do this work. And we could have better food than the breakfast we’ve just had. I never complained. I’m used to it even though food I ate while attending school was far different. The money from the coconut land Mama Enalay inherited from her parents is sufficient enough for whatever food I liked. Sixteen hectares of coconuts, intercropped with ipil-ipil my papa planted which he harvested every month to sell as firewood. Papa planted the ipil-ipil without fully understanding, as he once told me, at the time when Imelda Marcos wanted to introduce the “gassifier” on jeepneys. And the charcoal from the coconuts was an additional load to Papa’s work. Too little money comes from it but he works on it nevertheless not wanting it to go to waste. A week ago when the rain stopped he worked on the nuts extracted of kernel separating the coir from the shell. It took him several days of slow work to finish it.

The land could have been taken by Mama Enalay’s three brothers and four sisters had I died with Mamay Enalay when she gave birth to me. I knew how difficult it could have been for Papa assimilating with my aunts and uncles without me. We even rarely went to them. Although he didn’t forbid me from going to them, I know he doesn’t like the idea of going to them. He was the one different from them, not them different from him.

Reason why Mama Enalay had difficulty giving birth to me was because it took them nearly twenty years before she got pregnant of me. She was already past forty then, that’s why. Papa never remarried for if he had, Subano tradition dictates that he would have to leave me to Mama Enalay’s brother or sister and leave the land. There is no such thing as step children or step parent as far as Mama Enalay’s family is concerned. I know it would be difficult for him had he left the land and I knew difficulty is not the thing he feared. He is used to it. I knew he wants to care the land and the money from it for me.

The money from copra and from charcoal and firewood is in a rural bank and in a Manila-based bank in the other town twice bigger than ours. The last time he showed me the bankbooks there was more than seven hundred thousand pesos, accumulated since I was born as indicated in the first deposit. Hardly were there withdrawals but two times which he told me was to test if he really has the money available anytime. His only expenditures were the basic ones and one luxury: his tobacco. He was determined not to feel the pain of hunger anymore. But he did not unreasonably and excessively scrimp. Each time he delivers his firewood he goes to the fish or meat section of the public market He spends only very little amount of the copra money buying the workers that intoxicating drinks and be customers of a billionaire fellow that owes the government billions in unpaid taxes. But the government, as my high school teachers say, cannot wring his arm to pay as he might declare bankruptcy and close his businesses and his workers will have no more works. This is only time Papa’s copra workers vacation their tongues from the tuba they drink daily in mountain stores. And then Papa goes straight to the bank to deposit the money. Before Mama Enalay’s parents died and before the land was divided among them, there was almost no money, sometimes no food on the table. The rustic table, on which they ate, was eaten by termites as Papa told me. Termites had the table as food while they had no food on the table. And he was determined not to feel hunger anymore which to him is a kind of pain.

Papa is almost illiterate, writes words or numbers with great effort. Numbers were only for money and recognition of it is aided by the colors of each bill or size of each coin. Having that amount of money, clerks at the banks knew him by face and would know him by name the moment he presents his bankbook. By the amount of money in his passbook, he’s an important client and their assistance available almost exclusively for well dressed lowland folks was accorded to him.

And then his kangga was restored ready for use again. Our land is bared completely to the sun now. We went to Aguspar, his female kalabaw to send her to the wallows. As soon as she felt from her rope that she was freed, she pranced the way she did when she was a calf before she broke into a playful run to where she understands where we want her to go. Papa has three other kalabaws naming each of them for nomenclature. We recognize each of them by their horns but their names were still necessary to know where each of them is teetered. I went to Saling the other female but oldest kalabaw; Papa to Mars and Sabar. Mars and Sabar were ahead in the wallow, as soon as Saling get to the wallow, she slipped her front feet between Sabar and Aguspar like the space had been bookmarked for her. The mud was topped with shallow dirty water and water walkers. She tried to drink but she was reprimanded by Papa pulling her rope tight and beating it on the water. Papa never used his kalabaws for plowing although they were trained to. Neither Papa plows anymore although he used to in his younger years. Not only that he’s now old to plow, “agricultural technicians” are teaching farming techniques that benefit fertilizer and pesticide manufacturers more than the farmers – which Papa doesn’t agree.

His kalabaws’ only jobs were to pull the one and the same kangga we repaired with loads of fire wood, charcoal or copra to town. Papa let them do the job alternately; Saling being the oldest did the least work; Aguspar being young did the lightest work. As soon as they were settled and as the gnats land on the mud instead of their faces, we left.

There was still time to gather in one place near the kangga the firewood before we go home for the noontime meal. Three hundred bundles of six pieces of wood per bundle almost a yard long, Papa told me it will take the whole day to gather them all near where the kangga is parked. Papa will be selling it five pesos per bundle and all in all he’ll get P1500.00 from it.

It took us the whole afternoon to ready all the firewood for delivery. It took us the whole day the next day to deliver them to five stores in town. We placed stanchions of bamboo slats by the side of the kangga so we can load more than the kangga is capable of carrying. It was Mars and Sabar’s turn to dray. And then it was the charcoal that we worked on. We filled six giant rattan baskets heaped high above the brims we got from one, big, deep coaling pit Papa had been using time and again. The charcoal took us only three trips of Papa’s kangga to the same stores we delivered the firewood.

After we’ve transacted our wares and got all the money, we walked to a house at the outskirt of the town where the paved street changed into a graveled barangay road where grasses were in the middle not growing tall. We stopped at a house at the edge of a mango plantation fenced with cyclone wires. Pigeons were feeding in his front yard and the nest is up on a santol tree by the side of the house. Goats in herds of almost fifteen and a fewer one, were grazing on the grasses that were not shadowed by the mango trees. The owner knew Papa by name and already knew what Papa wants. Maybe they’ve talked about it before we came. He told Papa to come back in the evening or next morning. I did not ask what‘s going to be the transaction but Papa reached to him a fifty peso bill from the charcoal money.

We walked back to the market place. We proceeded to the fish section. He chose the best fish – yellow fin tuna. He bought two kilos at one hundred and twenty per kilo. Because I was with him, I know he could have chosen the less expensive fishes probably the caballas or the tamarong. Papa went to another stall for his only luxury in life; and me to the vegetable section where he instructed me to buy ten pesos worth of sibuyas dahonan, luya, green tomato, and one big biyasong. I knew by then what we are going to do with fish: Papa’s favorite kinilaw.

“Magalat to deg tabako-an,” he said in Subano. The more we are among Visayans like him, the more he speaks Mama Enalay’s language.

“Tinuod” I softly answered with a nod.

We walked to where we left Sabar and the kangga. It was late in the afternoon now and the sun has begun to lose its heat. Papa rode Sabar; I climbed the kangga and we were immediately what city folks usually see in the rural areas. Sabar did all the walking for us all the way back to our home. He‘s strong as a bull as he is indeed a bull anyway.

In the afternoon of the day that followed yesterday when our shadows were long beside us when we walked, we were again back to the town. We went back to the house by the mango farm. Only then did I realize that the fifty pesos Papa paid to the man was for a pigeon. The bird was in a cage when we arrived. The man handed Papa a strip of cloth to tie the red legs of the bird; but Papa just accepted the bird in his hand. That was all we went to the town for. We went straight home from there.

Dusk had turned into early evening when we reached the top of a hill that looks over the sea that separates Mindanao from the other islands. No clouds were up in the sky that impedes our vision of stars. It was like inside a giant planetarium muted of narrator. We stopped to look at the glow of the provincial capital a little northeast in the evening horizon. All over were fishermen’s lights strewn like heavenly bodies at sea just a few millions of perlicues away. Beyond the faintest light, Papa’s hand that holds the pigeon pointed a distant and unseen city where a university he wanted me to attend is. I knew the city and the university he was thinking. His inadequate education could be the thing that prevented him from keeping in his mind the name of the school. Without his knowledge, without asking first his permission, I took the university’s entrance examination given in a public high school in the provincial capital. I passed the exam.

“Gusto wa ngo digto ka magosaila,” he said still looking at the distant lights.

“Mahal a’g biyaran dig gusailan,” I pretended hesitation to provoke his insistence.

“Ta’ana ,” he calmly answered.

“Sige, ya’a.” I said, satisfied with his assurance.

Papa made a little cage of all-bamboo materials for the pigeon. I haven’t stopped wondering what he was going to do with the pigeon until the morning that I had to leave home for the city and the university. He dug with his bolo a little hole where rainwater from the thatch drops. He cut a slit in the pigeon’s skin near ear. Blood came out and he drained it into the hole he dug. And then he dressed the pigeon without scalding and he butchered the bird and then he stewed it including the head without adding anything to the water that will be the soup to improve the taste. After feeding woods three times to the fire, cooking was done. He fished the head from the boiling soup and carefully broke it on a chopping stump not hitting the brain. He shook the brain off the pigeon’s cranium into a spoon.

“Arol mo,” he said.

“Para prita’an me’n,” I pretended hesitation and to provoke his insistence as I always did.

“Arol mo ra gud, patu’d m’u,” he answered with the insistence that I wanted.

“Para prita’an mo lagi, tulo-an mo ra gud,” I took my turn to be insistent.

“din na pia tuntol di ni ah. Nandaw wo ra tinuntol di ni ah. Now, I’m not supposed to tell you this. I did not tell you this the first time I did this to you in your first day in school. But this is your last first I hope I’m not wrong in telling you the reason. You saw where I drained the blood? Next to that little pit that I dug were the blood and the wing feathers and the entrails and the red legs of the pigeon when I first did this to you. Mini ta na a’g pigbalmo.”

“Andun mi’g minita?” I pretended not to know.

“Rol mo langi, palangasay mo.” His insistence turned to begging.

I obeyed. I swallowed the pigeon brain perhaps the way I did the first time Papa did this to me I couldn’t remember exactly now. It’s tasteless. My tongue hurried to carry the brain to my throat followed with all the saliva I had in my mouth for I might vomit it out. Papa handed me a glass of water to sink it further down to my stomach. And then I swung my back bag bursting with clothes to my back. It was heavy but the excitement of going to a city I’ve never been before were all the things I had in my mind in those moments. And I would even want to live in those moments forever.

“Pagindog mo puso dig lupa, di a maglingay. Mbusa na paglingay bo di mo na mita mag wara-wara bingkon.”

I obeyed, but I wasn’t able to resist the temptation of looking back. He was sitting on the top rung of the step as he watched me go. I could see the faint smoke of his lomboy cigarette. He shooed me with his right hand to keep going.

After I turned a curve in the path and descended the first hill, we were out of sight of each other. I was far now. The only marker to locate home now was the two buli palms growing as tall as five story building. They were always of the same silhouette shape.

I was two hours early; the slow, diesel-smelling, old boat was more than an hour delayed in its departure, caused by undisciplined domestic shipping procedure. No closing time is imposed. Cargoes mostly farm products were still coming at the time the vessel is scheduled to depart.

Nearly half an hour after the ship sailed, I was watching a phenomenon that takes place everyday: sunset, the sun slipping out of sight in the horizon. I looked back at the Mindanao that I was leaving behind. As the ship eaten up distance, only the lights of homes getting obscure can be seen. And with the fishermen’s lights between us beginning to brighten as the night deepens, most likely, Papa is watching from the top of the hill the two of us used to stop.

---- e n d ----

the coin diver

It was Sunday morning and the sun slips from the horizon to float freely in the sky. Only one old, diesel smelling, slow, passenger boat that crosses to another city in Mindanao was moored on the pier. The other boat that shuttles between the city and another smaller nearby island had left earlier. Only the two cranes with its gantries raised to the sky working on the pier expansion made the pier seem busy.

Down beside the aft of the old boat was a Badjao couple in their canoe and their daughter less than three years in estimate was inaudibly sobbing from hunger. Hunger was reason enough to cry but she was too weak for the effort to really cry. They’ve been displaced into a civilization they can not assimilate. Except by this trade.

The wife grabbed the baby to coddle her in her arms resting its buttocks on her lap then put her left nipple on the baby’s mouth to pacify her not really to feed her. The baby was naked and her thin genital, wrinkling from inadequate nutrition was cleaved to the eyes of the boat passengers as she turned her head to her mother's unhealthy milkless breast. The romblon hat her mother wore hides her face from the glare of the morning sun as she suckled.

Coins were thrown to the water for her husband to dive. Each time the coins were long in coming, she asked the passengers to throw some more using the Badjao language the passengers don't understand but nevertheless knew she's asking for coins. She never raised her hands with an open palm the way beggars do. She extends her hand as though she is reaching another hand for a handshake. Her people never considered this begging but a legitimate trade. Her husband provides a diving show to the boat passengers by allowing a few seconds before he follows the sinking coin underwater.

The family knew there was not enough time anymore for the day’s business. The boat leaves in a few minutes and the next ship from a Malaysian city arrives at dusk and so coin diving is impossible.

The boat blew its horn twice to signal departure and the funnel sent black smoke into the air to get ready. The couple knew what it meant so the wife added a little amount of loudness to her voice.

"Sige na" she shouted in their own language.

The mooring ropes were removed from the bollards and were dropped to the water and almost instantly, the ship carried by the current drifted a few inches from the log fenders. The winches hummed as it rolled to gather the ropes into the giant spool. The engine rumbled and the water ruffled with the heavy movement. The wife dug the paddle to follow the boat while she called for more coins. From crystal clear, the water turned deep blue-green and the dune-like bottom sand and a few debris and some garbage of an uncaring city began to get obscured. Some passengers remained leaning on the railings watching the couple waiting for some diving exhibition. One passenger who was lying on his cot, not pleased by the entertainment, stood and approached the railings.

"Why these people don’t find work," he murmured.

He dipped his hand in his jeans pocket and the wife saw it. She directed her hand to where the man stood.

"Sige na! sige na!" she called, her voice carries the tone of begging now.

When the man got his hand out from his pocket, his palm had three pieces of yellow coins. The husband’s face lighted to show willingness to give the man entertainment if entertainment is what the man is looking for in exchange for his last minute generosity. He grabbed his daughter from his wife and put her on his back and the baby dutifully clang to his father’s neck as though she knew that this is an early practice in the trade. The passenger threw one of the coins and father and daughter instantly leaped into the water. They landed a few meters away from where the coin dropped. Some few seconds later, two gleaming heads bleached brown by iodine and sunshine were back on the surface. Father shook his head thrice in quick succession to free his eyes of the stinging saltwater that drips from his forehead; daughter wiped her face with one hand for the same purpose while her other hand remained clinging to her father’s neck. They swim towards the canoe as the wife rows towards them to meet them. His forefinger and thumb touched his mouth where the coin is clipped between his teeth and then extended the hand to the side of the hull of his boat to drop the coin there.

A few seconds after father and daughter climbed back to the canoe, the second coin was thrown. It was almost like torture as oxygen had just gathered back into their lungs. He put his hand on his forehead like a visor and lowered his face almost touching the water to locate the coin. The child on his back was a censored sight. Her legs parted as her toes dug the side of her father’s waist to avoid somersaulting ahead into the water. The watching passengers were divided between laughter and pity. Once the sinking coin sent a whirling gleam to the eyes of the coin diver, they slipped into the water in that position.

Up in the big boat the passengers were held in suspense. But not the wife. She knows her worry can’t do any help; she knows the diving skills of their men even before greed fishing destroyed with dynamites their fishing grounds to steal their fishes.

The coin whirled too far. It sunk in a zigzag motion in obedience to both buoyancy and gravity. Two times his palm missed the coin. The bottom sand was just a few kicks below before he finally caught the coin.

Father and daughter resurfaced nearly half a minute later and too far from where everybody’s eyes expected them to emerge. Once more the wife rowed towards them to meet them.

Slowly, the old boat turned south to set her on course. Once the prow found its destination in the horizon, the tail boiled. The last of the three coins was still in the fist of the passenger. He threw it but a bit too close to the bubbles of the propeller. The husband handed the baby to his wife and for a few moments thought about diving for it. He changed his mind. Instead, he dangled his right foot on the water to help his wife counteract the current the old boat created and gave the coin thrower a blaming look. His eyes locked on the man’s blurring face like a jet fighter on its target. The yellow coin may not mean anything to that passenger but it means so much to the couple like food that slipped from the mouth irretrievably into an unclean surface.

But the boat sped up now and the distance it gained had freed the passenger from the eyes of the coin diver.