by John Muir
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THE GLASS SURPRISE
Today was the day he was going to show his secret project to his seven month pregnant wife and five sons. Johnny Punzal was pleased about the interruption to his fishing. It had been caused by the masked New Peoples Army (NPA) gunmen holding the resorts' patrons for ransom. They had stopped any locals going near the resorts.
He was not interested in the NPA or their politics. Now they had gone, he did not know where or when, they had just disappeared. The only other excitement for his barrio had been the military helicopters flying over the resort and barrio on previous days looking for the NPA. Helicopters were a rare sight for the villagers. They had all run outside to watch them fly overhead. One of the villagers said the helicopters had sunk one banca when the NPA fired at them.
Not being able to go out fishing he put the time to good use on his secret project. Today could be the possible beginning of a whole new career if the demonstration was enough to convince his wife of the money earning opportunity in his creation.
She supported him in the way good Filipino wives did. Every two years they had been blessed with another pregnancy. The only daughter they had was the third born child and she had died at two months old. There had also been one stillborn son six years later. His oldest son was now a strapping teenager of 14 years already taller than his father. Skinny but taller.
Most of the family income came from the fish he caught daily from his banca, and sold to one of the nearby tourist resorts. They underpaid him and then over-charged tourists who willingly paid a price still less than they would pay in their own countries.
Johnny had been one of the earliest from his barrio to supply fish to the resorts. He had been making good money in those early days. Now things were different. Too many others were doing the same thing. With competition, the resorts were choosy in selection of the catches. They played the fishermen off against each other to pay the least price when catches were plentiful.
With the growth in his family size the income had become too little for their needs. So three years earlier, his wife had joined the many other women peddling T-shirts, and monogrammed towels to sunbathing tourists who ventured outside the protected areas of the resort. Some days she sold nothing but occasionally she had made as much as 100 Pesos in profit. Most days the profit was 20 Pesos. Not enough to buy rice for the day but enough to supplement his earnings.
He had always given her the total proceeds of his sales to the resort. Almost always. Well almost most of the proceeds. He would keep a little back to buy a few cigarettes and beer. Though he would never smoke or drink where she could see him. The only safe place for that was when he was out, or on the banca fishing. As a result he had to swear his two oldest sons to secrecy when they had been taken out on the banca. Unknown to him his breath told her the real story, but she played his little game and never mentioned it.
Sometimes he would have a little money for other little pleasures in life. He spent more at the cock fights than his wife knew of. She was as generous as she was able when she allocated the funds to the various resources that they needed. Though the pocket money he had been receiving of late was insufficient for his needs.
Johnny knew with another mouth to feed things would be worse. He had seen something on the barrio's communal T.V. which he thought he could adapt for himself.
With the little money he had kept back, he bought two jeepney windscreens. They were flat and almost rectangular. With a borrowed but still correct set square to ensure his cutting was accurate, he carefully cut into the glass with his fishing knife. Gently, and day after day in secret at his bachelor friends hut, he would make dozens of passes down the same lines on the glass to reduce the chance of any crooked break. His wife merely thought that the extra time he was spending re-sharpening his knife each night was a sign of his determination to take a better haul of fish the next day.
When the day came to make the ultimate test on the depth and accuracy of his cutting, he was terrified. He had taken advice from any person willing to give advice on glass cutting. He knew the ultimate test of what he had heard would be in the breaking of his two screens.
The first test of his skill on the first of the readied screens required more preparation time than a brain surgeon before an operation. He gently heated the edge of the glass along the lines of the grooves he had painstakingly etched with his knife. Laying the screen on a flat section of the floor, he lined up a narrow timber slat under, but on the inside of the area he wanted to break off. With gentleness akin to covering the body of a loved one, he removed his dirty and ragged T-shirt from his back and placed it carefully over the edge he was to hit gently but firmly with the borrowed hammer. After a brief but genuine appeal for a blessing from God he brought the hammer down. With a feeling of shock and disbelief, the piece he hit broke off from the main screen exactly as he had hoped. He examined the freshly cut section from all angles in wonder at his good fortune. He did not even notice the small cuts to his leathery hands caused by the still rough edges. Only when the streaks of blood appeared on the glass did he look at his hands.
"Looks just like I've cut myself with the fishing lines again," he said to the empty room.
With only slightly more confidence he tackled the second edge. In a little over an hour he had completed both screens and wanted to run outside and shout his achievement to the whole barrio. But he could not. Even his friend in whose hut he was working could not see the joy. He was away at his girlfriends place.
Johnny knew he still had to work on sanding the edges. Apart from that he had two rectangular flat sheets of glass with perfect right angles.
Over the following few days he sandpaper smoothed the edges. As soon as that was done he began working on the eight pieces of three foot wide planks he had bought off one of the visiting banca owners. He carefully measured and cut the planks with a borrowed saw. Then with the careful use of a saw he began carved slots in which he could recess the glass. He had his own hand drill and bits with which he pre-drilled screw holes.
With the glass now fitting snugly into the timber he was ready for the final stage. He spent the last of his salted money on proper glass and timber glue. Gently he glued around the edges of the glass and inserted them into the planks. He had to work rapidly with the help of his friend. As each box structure was complete, they securely tied it up with hemp rope to ensure the glue could take its maximum effect. Then they screwed the timbers together for greater strength.
The following night he undid the supporting rope and looked proudly at his glass-bottomed boxes. His friend looked on just as proudly as if he had done all the work.
So today was the day it was all going to be tested on his wife. And of course the hoped for approval of his plan he felt sure would automatically follow.
She had been objecting to his pleas to come on the boat with him to see the surprise. He placed the boxes in his banca and covered the glass bottom of each box with fishing gear. They merely looked like new tackle boxes with pairs of enormously over-size blunted shark hooks inverted and fixed to one side of each of the boxes. Eventually his very pregnant wife, encouraged by keenly enthusiastic sons, who were also ignorant of the surprise, scrambled her way into the now very cramped banca. Johnny Punzal, aided by the 14 year old, pushed the banca off the sandy bottom of the shallow beach, before nimbly slipping aboard over the stern.
The engine started easily after the second pull on the rope. Johnny sat at the stern, tiller in hand, a smile on his face, pretending to be totally unaware of the six pairs of eyes looking at him at various times with curiosity.
The banca headed toward a shallow reef, two kilometres away from the barrio where Johnny had occasionally caught lobster for the resort. The 14 year old made busy with a fishing spear tied to a good strong and long line. He wanted to be ready in case they spotted any dolphin unlucky enough to be frequenting the waters nearby. After his line was ready he instructed his younger eight year old brother in the p
reparation of a second spear, and proceeded to demonstrate throwing styles without releasing the spears. The twelve year old boy was standing in the bow holding one of two replica M16’s Johnny had made from the left-over timber slat off-cuts and piping. He said he would fight off any pirates that might try and steal their fish. Their father continued steering the banca toward the reef outwardly oblivious to the presence of anyone else on board.
When they were directly over the reef he switched off the outboard engine. The sea was table-top flat. His wife's face frowned in concern as she knew that at low tide there was perhaps only one metre of clear water beneath the banca hull at normal carrying capacity. She watched curiously as her husband made his way to the centre of the banca and emptied two boxes that she had missed seeing before among all the usual fishing gear. She had been looking at her husband for most of the trip. While he was emptying the boxes she looked over the side into the clear water and became even more concerned at the seeming closeness of the reef to the hull of the banca. He lifted one of the boxes over the side and lowered it. She noticed that inverted shark hooks were holding the boxes over the side without letting them sink or float away. He then put the second box on the other side of the banca. Nodding with a smug self satisfaction that only seemed to increase the size of his smile he moved back to the stern, without any comment and sat.
The natural curiosity of the children did not allow them to wait for any invitation to see what their father had done. They pushed eagerly towards the sides of the banca to position themselves in a spot where they could see what had been done. “Oohs and "aahs" issued uncontrollably out of their mouths. It was too much for their mother. She had to see what was causing the children's reactions.
She pushed her large stomach to the side of the banca and looked down again toward the reef through Johnny's "invention". The glass at the bottom of the box gave a clear uninterrupted view of everything below the banca. She had often wondered what it would be like to go underwater with those tanks, fins and masks that she had seen the tourists wearing. This must be like what they could see.
"Oh Johnny," she called out in a childlike voice without even looking up, "it's wonderful. Oh it's absolutely wonderful."
Johnny Punzal sat seemingly unmoved but in reality was feeling even smugger and more self-satisfied than before. The width of his smile revealing every line of his dark sun dried face. He could not restrain himself any longer from having a proper look himself. He had not seen through the boxes onto a reef. He had only tested them out with a quick sneak view at the shallow beach by the barrio. He pushed one of the children aside to be next to his wife. When he looked through the glass even he was surprised at the clarity of the reef beneath them. Fish of all hues, shapes and sizes had returned after the initial disturbance caused by the arrival of the banca. It now drifted silently over the reef, bathing parts of it in the shadow of the hull.
Johnny Punzal slipped his left arm over the broader than usual back of his wife. The other five children were now all sharing the other reef viewer; Johnny felt he was almost alone with his wife, the closeness similar to that on the rare occasions that he had been able to make love with his wife when the children had been out of the hut. He was sure that despite her advanced pregnancy they would make love again tonight. Perhaps after that he would tell her of his proposal to use his boat to take fare-paying tourists from the resort to view the reef, just as they were now doing. That way he was sure he could make more money than selling fish to the resort.
For a few brief seconds he thought he could hear the throbbing beat of his heart then realised that the beats were too deep to be his heart. It was doubly confirmed as the beats got louder. He looked up from the viewing box toward the direction from which the sound was coming. He saw the lone helicopter approaching at what seemed a slow speed. His wife too looked in the same direction. The banca gently rocked and he looked around to see what was causing it. The children too had spotted the helicopter's approach and had stood up to wave. The fourteen year old ran to the bow. This helicopter was much closer than those they had seen over the resort in the past few days.
The helicopter climbed for height about one kilometre distance and continued heading directly toward them. Johnny's twelve and eight year old sons waved their replica M16’s at the helicopter. Its path seemed it would fly directly overhead.
Suddenly there seemed to be dozens of little fish breaking water and jumping in a straight line directly towards his banca. Johnny wondered what predator was lurking below to force the small fish to the surface. As the jumping line of fish got level with his boat, a thudding sound began on the hull. Items began to be flung around and out of the boat. Johnny looked around when he heard one of his children scream and saw blood coming from the hand of his oldest son. His immediate thought was that his son had impaled his hand on the spear he had been waving. Next he felt pain in his back and at the same time saw the face of his two year old explode in front of him. A hole appeared right through the chest of his eight year old now standing near the bow with his toy gun. He was suddenly catapulted over the side of the banca.
Whatever was happening seemed to be happening so fast, and so slowly at the same time. He noticed that the bottom of the banca was rapidly filling with water yet he could not understand why it should start sinking so suddenly. Perhaps he had overloaded it or had holed the banca on the reef. He looked back at his wife to see if she was concerned. She did not seem to be as she was leaning further over the side of the banca looking back down, her body almost inside the viewing box.
He felt a sharp pain in the top of his neck, felt nauseous and faint and realised he was falling to the bottom of the banca.
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The pilot of the Philippines Air Force Iriquois helicopter swerved wide around the banca to give his side gunner a wider arc of fire. He could hear the noise from the exploding 12.5 m.m. machine gun over the sound of the chopping blades. He had watched the sea churn up short of the banca as his gunner adjusted the range. The shells falling short made a neat little line as they approached the banca. Then he nodded in satisfaction as the banca and its occupants were shredded in the hail of fire. The ammunition or weapons boxes that these guerillas were dropping onto the reef might even possibly be recovered by one of the surface craft later if he could make an accurate fix of the position. It looked quite shallow.
He was pleased that the side-gunner had been so quick to react to the threat of the weapons that the banca occupants had been waving at the helicopter. He had forgotten to put on his flak jacket for this flight, instead choosing to sit on it. He knew that this was another bunch of NPA guerillas that would not threaten his helicopter or any other members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines again.
