Father scowled at me. My other questions remained unasked. “We stay here,” he said firmly. “Maybe the herons weren’t driven away by the tenants yesterday.”
I sank on the dank black earth. My legs started to numb, and my throat was parched. I opened the bottle and took a hasty gulp.
Father saw me. “And what will happen if you are lost with no drinking water?”
I hastily screwed the bottle cap. This was no hunt at all; we were sitting on the edge of a stagnant brook, just waiting. After a long while, when nothing stirred in the grass, Father stood up and threw the gun over his shoulder. “Let us move,” he said without turning to me.
“Where do they really stay, Father?” I asked, following him.
“Anywhere.”
Were they in the high grass that rustled with every stirring of the wind? Or in the shade of the low camachile trees?
We came upon untidy clearings that were already planted and lingered in the empty watch houses at their fringes. The sun scorched the sky, and on and on we probed into the grass. Once, I listened to a faint, undefined tremolo—perhaps a birdcall—but nothing came out of it, no quarry taunted the sight of Father’s gun. Only tiny rice birds and still smaller mayas twittered and shrieked in the green.
Our shadows became black patches at our feet, and I felt the first twinges of hunger. I did not open the lunch box. As we walked on, I nibbled at the cheese Old David had given me, and its salty tang heightened my thirst. We reached the fire tree at noon. It would be some time before it bloomed. Old David said it was a landmark we could not miss. It rose above the monotony of rushes and thorny saplings.
“You never notice a fire tree that’s young,” Old David had said. “Not until it’s in bloom. You never see it as sapling or seed. You see it just like the way God had planted it and meant it to be, a blazing marker on the land.”
“I know this tree well,” Father said, pointing to his rudely carved initials on its trunk. “I did that years ago.”
I unslung the lunch bag and the water bottle. “Old David and Grandfather spared this tree when it was still small,” I said.
Father did not listen to me. He ripped the lunch bag open and handed me two cheese sandwiches. He ate hastily, and when he drank, small streams trickled down his chin. He smacked his lips contentedly as the water ran down his neck and drenched his shirt front. After eating, Father slumped on the big roots that crawled up the trunk and lowered his wide-brimmed cap over his face to shield off a piece of sun that filtered through.
“I’ll steal a wink,” he said. “Try it, too.”
Father took his hat off and fanned his face. He looked at me quizzically, then laid his head back against the trunk.
I laid the empty bag on a gnarled root beside him and perched my head on it. Above, hemmed in by branches and the grass, in the blue sky, swallows circled slowly. When I turned on my side, I saw that Father’s jaw had dropped. He was snoring, and a small line of saliva ran down the corner of his mouth. Later, when the sun shone through the branches on his face, he stood up. His eyes crinkled. Tightening the cartridge belt around his wide waist, he bade me follow him.
He said, “You will find hunting is luck. Mostly luck.” He straightened the wrinkles on his breeches, then walked again. I kept pace behind him and flayed the grass with a stick, sometimes with my feet. But no matter how vigorously I worked at it, not one heron or quail soared up from the grass. We were finally stopped by a brook, wide and still, and its quiet and opaque blue meant it was also deep.
“Shall we cross it, Father?”
Father contemplated the glazed waters and shook his head. “We can have as much luck here as across it.”
We hiked back to where we came from, where the ledda grass was burned by Father’s tenants the other day and many charred tufts still smoked.
“Are we going home?”
“You ask too many questions,” Father said.
The sun dipped. From the green before us, a pagaw suddenly whirred up and disappeared in the grass. Father raised the rifle too late. He did not fire. “Not even your grandfather or David could hit that,” he said, lowering the gun. “We are heading home.”
But where was the way? I followed him, and then we were once more near the tree in whose shade we had rested.
Was our aimless meandering now one of the cursed tricks of the delta? It is so easy to get lost in it, Old David had warned, especially at this time of the year when the grass was still high and the water holes were deep. And the thought that we were drifting in its fastness without finding our way soon frightened me.
“Aren’t we lost, Father?”
“Lost?” Father laughed. “Lost?” he repeated but did not look at me. He paused, whipped out a handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped his face. He studied the thin trace of a trail—if it was a trail—that led to the west, then peered at the sun. We followed the trail hurriedly, and when we heard the river finally gurgling in the shallows, Father’s steps quickened. When we reached the bank, however, the raft was not in sight, nor the tamarind tree to which it was moored. We scanned the other bank, but there was no familiar gully there—only the long hump of earth, the dike.
“Can’t we swim, Father?” I asked. “Old David said the river is not deep.”
Father shook his head vehemently. “We are still hunting.”
“I wish Old David were here,” I said. “He knows this place so well.”
“Don’t say that!” Father’s voice was stern. “No one really knows this land. I’ve come to it year after year long before you were born. Each time, the landmarks are lost except for the fire tree. Even the brooks change their course. The river washes everything away. Nothing remains constant here.”
Father closed his eyes and leaned on the gun barrel, his feet wide apart.
“Let me find the way, Father,” I suggested.
When he did not speak, I parted the high grass and walked ahead. After a few paces, I heard the swoosh of his boots and the crackling of dry camachile twigs behind me.
I walked briskly; to the left from the tree, straight to the left, I remembered Old David’s advice. Pushing through the tall grass, I felt my knees start to wobble. But soon the dunes that sloped before me looked familiar, and finally the clear prints of Father’s boots, the water holes where some water buffalo had wallowed—all the places we had passed that morning.
“Old David said no one can really get lost here,” I said. There was a rustle behind me but no answer.
I was heading straight to the right bank, and I broke into a run. I found the big path used by carabaos, and as I rounded the last scraggly growth of low camachile trees, at last—the river, the tamarind tree, the raft.
The rope that held the raft bit my hand as I untied it hastily. After drawing the raft nearer the landing, I turned around: Father was still not behind me. I called aloud but no answer; I called again, and after a while the grass before me rustled. Father emerged from the green, clutching his gun. He looked tired.
I wanted to brag about what I knew of the delta, all that Old David taught me, but then I heard the distinct flapping of wings.
Wings, bird wings—not the lapping of the water on the reeds or the moaning of the afternoon wind against the brambles. I glanced abruptly at the water’s edge by the raft, and there, only a few paces before the unruly growth, a big, white, long-limbed bird alighted. For an instant it seemed as if it was an illusion, but the bird tilted its head and calmly stood on one leg like one of the porcelain figurines in the house. I turned to Father going out of the grass to the landing.
“Look,” I called softly, afraid lest the thing be disturbed.
Father did not heed me. “There,” I repeated, pointing a trembling finger to where the bird stood. He paused, saw the bird at last, and slid a shell into the gun.
The roar thundered across marsh and river, but the bird did not fall; it hopped slowly to the nearest bush before Father could fire again.
I ran to where it vanished and was still cur
sing as I jumped upon the brambles that scratched my hands and legs, when I felt Father hold my shoulders and shake me. He looked at the scratches on my arms that had begun to redden.
“You couldn’t have missed,” I flung at him. “Old David said the buckshot spreads.” I was shouting. “And it was so close, so close!”
He did not speak. I walked to the raft and jumped into it first. Neither Old David nor any of the tenants were by the gully to pull us to the other bank, and we both strained at the line.
In midstream Father paused and asked, “What did David tell you about the delta?”
I did not answer.
Father sat on the low bamboo platform, and the eddy that breasted the floats slapped at his muddy boots. “I won’t get angry if you tell me.”
“Stories,” I said, “just stories.”
“I never saw you speaking to the old crow.”
“We talk a lot,” I said uncomfortably. “Under the balete tree, in the stable. Usually when you are away.”
Father bit his lower lip and turned away.
“I wanted to know about the delta,” I said.
“Well,” Father said gruffly, “you know it now.” He rose and gave the line a violent tug. The raft lurched forward, and I almost fell into the water. It smashed into the landing, and I jumped off and raced the incline up the river’s bank.
The sun was buried in a fluff of clouds, and the hilly rim of the world burned with the fires of sunset. Beyond the blurred turn of the dike Old David came leading the horses.
I turned and saw Father swaying up the gully, clutching at each strand of grass that sprouted on its sides. He loosened the earth with each step and brought down a small avalanche of pebbles and loam. When he neared the top, he placed his right leg over the rim and extended the gun muzzle to me. I pulled, and with a grunt, he heaved himself on level ground. He sank on the grass, panting, and did not get the gun back.
“I’ll go ahead, Father,” I said. “I’ll tell Old David to hurry with your horse.”
I hooked the water bottle on the gun barrel and swung it on my shoulder. After a few paces, Father followed. His arms were not swinging.
Old David came with the horses, whistling an old Ilokano ballad, and in the hush of afternoon the tune was clear and sad. “A fine hunt?” The old man grinned as he handed me the reins of my horse. He took the gun and gently placed it in its holster in his saddle. “I heard the shot, and I said, this time, the last bird in the delta is done for.”
I stared at him, wordless, then mounted my horse and jabbed my heels into its flanks. The spirited animal reared, and sprang. I brought the horse down with a jerk of the reins, and Old David grabbed the mouth bit, held it firmly, murmured unintelligible words, and patted the animal’s glossy coat. The horse became still.
“There will be other years. Next year, perhaps,” Old David told me gravely, then he led his mare and Father’s mount away.
I was still gazing at the delta darkening swiftly when I heard Father cursing behind me. Turning around, I saw him walk up to Old David; his hand rose, then descended on the old man’s face, but Old David, holding on to the reins of the big chestnut horse and his own bony mare, stood motionless, unappalled before the hand—the bludgeon—that shot up, then cut into his withered face once more.
CHAPTER
13
The day I was to go hunting again never came that year or the next, for that December the war came and Father surrendered his shotguns to the Japanese. They also got all of the riding horses, save one—the old skinny nag that was Old David’s. The delta where our prey was safe became the sanctuary of brave and angry men.
The war changed the delta and Rosales but hardly altered us. Father and our relatives, we retained our leisurely manners, our luxuries, and the primeval quirks of our nature. Only Tio Doro, I am now sure, was profoundly affected by the war, and I am glad he had survived it. Of all my uncles, it was only he who devoted the best years of his life to politics. There has always been some distaste in our family for any activity that was political, but Tio Doro was simply made of a different fiber. He took to its swagger and blather not for personal honor, but because he found in politics an outlet for his nationalistic passions.
He had no delusions or misgivings, however, in his last days when the ideas that once propelled him to great wrath seemed finally jaded. Maybe he was consoled somewhat by the thought that in his time he had lived fully and well.
After the war, when the Philippines was granted independence, I was sure he would be the main speaker in his town during the program that marked that momentous hour. The honor would have been his by right, because he was Balungao’s first citizen and all his life independence was his one consuming obsession.
I had expected him to say so many things, and those who knew how fiery he had been would have been surprised at the change. Not that he had forsaken his old beliefs for new, pragmatic ones; he simply had outgrown them, I suppose, just as I had outgrown my short pants.
If it were not for his daughter, Cousin Emma, I would not have gone often to Tio Doro’s place. Not that his big, blue house was far from Rosales—it was only five kilometers away. He was awesome, and moreover, he seldom talked with me, maybe because he felt I was not ready for his ideas. I had heard Tio Doro deliver speeches in public, and I recall vividly his Rizal Day speech many years ago. At that time I had enough of a grasp of English. Tio Doro had always occupied a prominent niche in his town, and he was the program’s principal speaker.
It was highly fashionable then to speak in English, although only a few understood it, and Tio Doro spoke in that language for the benefit of the high school students and town officials who occupied the first rows of rattan chairs. A platform had been set up on empty gasoline drums, bordered with split coconut fronds and draped with the national tricolor. Everywhere around the stage, people were sprawled on the grass, on the amorseco weeds, on caretelas and bull carts, and on the floats decked with tobacco sheaves and girls in native costumes.
He wore one of those ill-fitting, collarless drill suits that was the uniform of bureaucrats. His stiffly starched pants almost shackled the ankles, but they heightened his patriarchal dignity. When he strode to the stage, there was a discernible clapping from the front seats. After clearing his throat, Tio Doro cast a solemn glance at the newly painted Rizal monument, whose base was covered with amarillo wreaths, and then he broke into a resonant voice that became more vigorous as he progressed.
He spoke of death, declared that dying could not be more glorious than when one gives up his life for the native land. He said this with such intensity that it made me wonder if he remembered it on his deathbed. He relived the days when, at the age of thirteen, he was already with the revolutionary forces. And on he meandered, no longer elaborating on dying but attacking Occidentals, the despicable manner in which they had exploited Filipinos for centuries. He dissected the Monroe Doctrine and its distorted implications, the hypocrisy of the Americans in exercising it, their much touted entry into World War I to make the world safe for their democracy. His voice rose as he lambasted whites for their rapacity and deliberate blindness to the Filipinos’ right to self-government. He gesticulated and swore to high heaven and evoked the wrath of the gods, because on earth nobody would act as Tio Doro wanted.
He finally concluded: “God forbid that I will ever have ties with foreigners who ravaged this beautiful Philippines!”
As if precipitately timed with the end of his speech, the brass band played the hymn “My Country,” and the notes hammered at the already excited audience. The ensuing ovation was ringing and long.
As I said, Tio Doro seldom spoke to me, and when he did, he was aloof and dull. On one visit, however, we finally had a chat. I was browsing in his library, and Cousin Emma was banging on the piano. I had picked out the Noli from his Rizaliana and was giving it a cursory look when he emerged from his room, propped himself comfortably on a sofa, and asked what I would want to be when I grew up.
/> There was a note of concern in his throaty voice. For a moment I did not know what to say. I was but a sophomore in high school. I finally blurted out that I had not yet given the matter much thought, but Father had insisted on my becoming a doctor. Tio Doro remarked that I might be a writer someday, because I was always reading. But being a doctor, I told him, impressed me more. Whereupon, he tried to dissuade me from becoming one, arguing that there were too many doctors who had M.D.’s only as honorary suffixes to their names. And that was when, for the first time, Tio Doro talked with me as though I were grown-up.
“It is just too bad,” he mused, gazing at the unlighted Aladdin lamp above us. “We don’t have a language that is known throughout the world. Even if we could have a national language someday, it would still be better if our writers wrote in English. Then they will have a wider following. However, if you will ever write, use a pen name. If you use your own, you might be mistaken for a Latin or even an Italian. Now, if you wrote under such a name like Lawag or Waywaya, no one would doubt your being Malayan.”
Though I did not quite know his motives then except for what I gleaned from his impassioned speeches and from textbooks about Bonifacio and Del Pilar, I said I understood.
Tio Doro was an elementary school principal and was among the first batch of graduates of the Philippine Normal School. After his wife passed away, he gave up teaching and focused more attention on his estate, which, after all, was the main source of his income. He plunged into active politics immediately after he quit his teaching job, and that was even before I was born. Several times he ran for the presidency of his town, but every time he lost. His political enemies had a tough time dislodging him from the political platform, though. He was that kind of a man—he could be stopped but not knocked out. And when he finally retired from the political arena because of physical disability, never again were elections in his town thrillingly anticipated. Under the tattered banner of the Democrata-Nacional he waged his fight, and when this party irrevocably split over the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Law, he sided eventually with the Democratas.
Don Vicente Page 13
