I Will Be the One

by Larry Farmer

  “Tell it to these people here. You’re calling them greedy?”

  “They are human. They care for others, but they also are greedy. Just like humans everywhere. We give these poor people loans at below-market interest rates, but they don’t pay us back. Instead, they go out and buy a radio. That’s greed. I’m not condemning, just saying.”

  This was the most heated talk we’d ever had. I wondered if I was going home tomorrow biologically unfulfilled.

  I turned onto my back and stared upward into the darkness. Waiting. Hoping. I reached over to hold her hand, and she pulled it away. But not angrily. More like “give me time.” I waited some more.

  “You really believe all that tripe,” she said, just above a whisper.

  That was another good sign. As if she was thinking and cooling off.

  “I’m looking for answers too, Lois. I want answers. Not moralisms.”

  “Is that what I’m doing?” she asked. “I’m just this airhead moralist? I hear you talk that way about others. Is that what I am to you?”

  “You haven’t heard of Maslow’s hierarchy?” I countered. “You know, the psychologist? He was basically saying, just like the mission at Mt. Carmel, you can’t get to the soul until you get past the body. We’re here on a material plane and have to satisfy material needs before the soul pays you much heed. The more basic the condition of depravity the entity faces, the more basic is the DNA response. It takes over instinctively. Even then there is a long leash for that individual entity in what to do. The entity doesn’t get a pass on anything that goes to save itself. It still has laws to abide by and ethics to follow, upward seeking to encompass. But it does get more to the chase of survival when it’s pushed hard.”

  “You’re getting close to Jewing this up, Mississippi. I liked what you were saying up to now, but you sure do want to overkill your elaboration.”

  I thought for a moment. I didn’t want to lose her.

  “In other words, Lois, there’s a type of division of labor involved here. There’s the material and physical needs and wants, which are infinite in a finite resourced world, and the spiritual, this infinite God-needing thing. Somewhere beyond our most basic physical demands, we start opening up to the spiritual, unless, in ignorance, we stay bogged down in materialism. You’ve had experiences, Lois. It’s formed ideas in you. I see how much you care. Watching you with Filemon tonight melted me. You have a degree in English. I love literature too. It’s a teacher. But I have an economics degree. It’s not a degree in master race. That was Hitler. Economics teaches us the ins and outs of how to get material things done. Things we need and things that make us more fulfilled in a material way. Literature helps with our souls. These aren’t two different entities as much as they are parts of the whole. They need each other. And I need you.”

  She rolled half way toward me and took my hand.

  “And I need you, Mississippi. It looks like we make love again tonight. I was worried for a moment we wouldn’t make it.”

  She rubbed my hand softly and affectionately as we lay in the dark quietly.

  “We’re genetically geared to compete, but also to cooperate,” she said as if in a review session. “For survival of the species. Remember that time we rode the jeepney together going to Midsayap? Where I tried to ride the bumper with you?”

  “They wouldn’t let you,” I reminisced with her. “You’re a woman. Women tire more easily, but also, women fall off more easily. Or if there’s an accident or ambush, no one wants to see a woman suffer.”

  “Exactly,” Lois said. “Survival of the fittest includes gallantry of the strong to protect the weak. Remember what that man said to me to get me to go inside? He tapped me on the shoulder. That’s what they do. They tap on the shoulder and say, I will be the one. I will be the one to take the hardship and danger. That is so beautiful, so touching.”

  She turned fully on her side as if to look at me, even though we were in total darkness.

  “When we get married someday, Mississippi, that’s going to be our wedding vow. Before you kiss the bride to seal our marriage, we’re going to face each other, look each other in the eyes, hold both of our hands, and say to each other—”

  She placed her hand on my cheek for emphasis. “Let’s say it now. I want to vow it right now. Let’s do it.”

  “I will be the one,” we said to one another.

  “Whenever one of us is weak,” she continued, “the other will be there. We will always be there for each other. We will always survive.”

  We sealed our vow with a kiss.

  Somewhere during the night we heard gunfire. I heard it in my sleep but didn’t understand it at first. Then I jerked and sat up. Lois gently pulled at me to lie back down. Was this why they called this region the Wild West?

  “It happens,” she said. “Is this the first time it has while you’ve been here?”

  “This happens?” I asked, aghast.

  “I told you that,” she said. “I told you about the gunfire at night sometimes.”

  “No, you didn’t. You never told me you hear gunfire.”

  “When it happens, it’s at night,” she explained. “Somewhere after midnight.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Maybe I was afraid you’d act like this,” she said. “It’s nothing to get excited about. They’re in another village. Nothing we can do about it. They’re hamletting.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, showing my frustration and anger. I was scared to death for her, just hearing the gunfire. Then I heard there was a creepy story about the gunfire. A common story somehow.

  “The elite military forces sometimes conduct searches in a wide circle. Like documentaries I’ve seen about Polynesia or somewhere, where the village forms a wide circle and beats on the water to scare the fish in. Then when the fish are close together and convenient for the villagers, they close in on them with their nets. Some of the farmers here do that in the rice paddies to kill the rats. But here, the elites close in on a village, then a hamlet. They go under and around a Nipa Hut so no one can escape. Then everyone is killed. Everyone. Old and young alike, male and female. Since I’ve been here, it’s never happened to this village. I suppose it’s used on suspected NPA, but I don’t know all who it happens to. Perhaps even political opponents, for all I know. And the NPA does it to a village or family that cooperates with authorities. I try to center myself and hold myself open for those tragic, lost people. In some way I want to be a channel to heaven for them. Maybe, while their soul escapes from this horror, somehow I can help ease them into a channel to heaven. That’s all I know to do. The last thing they know in their lives is the horror of a late-night execution and death on all sides.”

  I was so moved by her thoughts and feelings. This was the purest woman I’d ever met. All she seemed to know in her life was to be there for people. Even for people miles away in the middle of the night, people she couldn’t help in any other way except to exude her essence for them. I wanted to believe it helped.

  “I timed it last time, and it went on for twenty-five minutes,” she explained.

  I was horrified for her now. I could see why she hadn’t told me about this. I didn’t know if I could sleep anymore in my safe little room at my Lola’s in Cotabato City. She had been protecting me this whole time by not telling me. Letting me have peace for her being. I wasn’t allowed until now to share this about her, to add it to my fears while I was at my safe abode.

  “No one will say a word about this in the morning,” she continued. “I don’t know if it’s superstition or fear. But no one will mention anything. I call these coffin mornings. Before long, we’ll see many jeepneys passing along the roads and highways. Either coming for all the coffins or taking them away. It depends on the circumstances. I see more jeepneys and coffins than I actually hear gunfire. I don’t really know how many massacres there have been out here. This is the third I’ve heard at night while I’ve been here.”

 
“Marry me, Lois,” I pleaded. “You already brought it up. Marry me and come live with me in Cotabato City. Away from this.”

  “Someday,” she whispered. “Someday we’ll get married, because that’s what we want. But for now, my place is here.”

  Chapter 14

  It was harvest season, and the schools were out so the children could help their parents in the fields. What this meant for me was that I saw more of Lois. She had more free time now. It also meant I spent more time in Cotabato City, since she moved in with me during this break. So there was no need to see her at her place on weekends, few as I did anyway. Now she regularly helped me with my projects. And in spite of the inappropriateness of our living arrangement, Lola seemed fond of having her also.

  “Why is the dog barking at me, Lola?” Lois asked while we sat in the living room. She was familiar enough with Lola now to allow frustration to show.

  “You are a stranger,” my Lola replied. “He is protecting me.”

  “He barks every time I come. I just want to visit with you awhile, Lola. Not just have to immediately go up to Mississippi’s room or to a carindaria. He barks at me constantly. If I sit here for an hour, he barks for an hour.”

  “He still barks at me, too,” I said. “I’ve lived here more than a year, and for more than a year now he barks at me. If I cook and he’s around, he barks at me. While I’m eating or sitting in the living room like now. Lola, why am I such a stranger to him?”

  “I don’t know if it’s your white skin,” she said, “or if you have a different smell. But it is good he barks. That way I know he will guard us against robbers.”

  That didn’t cut it. “He’ll still guard you if you teach him not to bark at us.”

  “I’m afraid if I get after him he will relax against thieves too,” she explained.

  I had been over this with her before, but Lois’ complaints brought it back to me.

  “It’s that way everywhere,” I said to Lois, but glad Lola heard. “We have a watch dog at the bank. He barks at me the whole time he sees me. Once I went out to the sidewalk where he was. I sat next to him for half an hour. I wanted him to smell me, or get a better look at me, whatever it took, just so he’d stop barking after a whole year of me working there. He bit me, instead. Then kept barking. I still sat. And he still barked. When I go anywhere else, if there is a dog around, it barks. The one exception was the little puppy dog at that Samahang Nayon that grew up and I ate it. Some kind of karma, I guess, for it being nice to a white guy.”

  Lois started to say something but decided against it.

  “Let’s go to Mr. Rancon’s,” I suggested. “Some of the farmers are there, and they’re making soap from coconut oil. They make coconut shell charcoal, too, but it’s a by-product from the soap process. I wanted to show you, anyway.”

  As we rode along in the jeepney, Lois began to relate recent events in her village. She began casually, but the more she released, the more she needed to say.

  “It was after the last time I visited you before school was out,” she said in a near monotone. She looked straight ahead, out the side of the jeepney away from us, past the passengers, but not directly at any particular thing. The more she tried to be indifferent, the more it portrayed her concern. “I stayed with you later than normal that Sunday, if you recall, because we went to the museum with Lola and the college girls. It got me to Alamada late, and I had to wait at the market for what was the last jeepney ride home. I thought I’d need a tricycle.”

  She spoke so solemnly I could barely hear her for all the traffic noise. I leaned toward her slightly to hear better.

  “There was this American there,” she continued. “You and I are the first white Americans these people have seen in decades, and suddenly there’s this American from out of nowhere. Doing what? Visiting? Who? A tourist? For what? No transportation or highway that’s easily accessible. A bad bridge he had to get around. Was he USAID for your bridge project? Was he lost? What was he doing here? Maybe a missionary, I’m thinking, because that made the most sense. I understood better why all the locals think we’re CIA, because here I was wondering what the fuck this guy’s doing here.”

  Her language caught me by surprise. I’d never heard her use harsh words before. Not even after the ambush or the military confrontation in Davao. I listened intently.

  She glanced at me sheepishly, as if human again. She then shook her head, blushed, and nibbled on her lower lip nervously.

  “Maybe I’ve been here too long,” she said. “I’m paranoid, or at least overly suspicious. Exactly things we think about the locals when they behave like this. But there was something about that guy.”

  She smiled shyly toward me yet again, looked down at her lap for a second, then raised her head to stare back out toward the street, past the passengers, as we rode.

  “He claimed he was just out of the navy. I guess Subic Bay, but he didn’t say. He could speak Tagalog better than me, even knew slang words I didn’t, and left me a sheet of verb conjugations. He said he was just winging it through the neutral zone. So that leaves out missionary, I concluded. I had wanted him to be a missionary. I could live with him being here for that. But I’m sure he was some kind of operative. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I don’t think so. He was dressed down, in worn jeans and faded shirt. He was so buddy-buddy with people. But so are you, Mississippi, so I’m still working on that. I’ve just been here so long and must be turning native in the mind. Anyway, I was having a coffee at a carindaria while waiting on my jeepney, and I watched him get off a jeepney coming from Midsayap. From the national highway, you know. He sees me, this white girl at the Alamada marketplace, and it’s natural for him to come over for a visit. I’m curious about him, but in my mind he’s still a tourist or something.”

  The jeepney we rode stopped now, just short of Mr. Rancon’s house, to let off a passenger. I was so engrossed with Lois’ story, however, I almost missed that we had arrived. I wasn’t in the mood to go to the soap factory now. Lois needed me. Was something up, as she feared? And what all exactly did she fear, or was she going native in paranoia, to her detriment, as she feared?

  “Let’s go to a park bench,” I suggested. “There’s one nearby. Would you like a Coke or something to take there?”

  “I’m okay,” she replied. “Let’s just talk. Find a bench out of the way. People will be eavesdropping if for no other reason than we’re Canas.”

  We walked along silently until we got to the park. As we turned toward one of the benches, Lois took my hand to hold affectionately, as she often did. But this time she smiled at me shyly, as if apologizing for doing so.

  “He began talking casually,” she continued her story as we sat near a flower garden at the edge of the park. She was more relaxed now. “He told me his name, but I’m sure it’s a fake name. His casual questions became bit by bit more pointed as to what was actually going on in the region. My curiosity about him turned into suspicion. Or maybe paranoia. So I changed what I was saying from giving any information about where the no-man’s land was around Alamada, and who were the targets of the military elites, as well as the NPA’s targets. I began telling him the opposite of what I knew or thought, as well as saying things had quieted down, which wasn't true. I decided to Mata Hari him in this damaging game he was playing with me.”

  “Don’t use the word paranoia anymore,” I said reassuringly to her. “Native mindset might have seeped into your psyche, but only by making you unsure of yourself. We don’t really know who this guy is, but what you’re telling me sounds more than suspicious. You’re trying too hard. That’s good. We don’t want to be trigger happy in our assumptions. But this really does sound suspicious, and I’m just listening to you.”

  “There’s more,” she said. “It gets bigger.”

  I leaned back into the park bench backrest. I was ready for the long haul. That’s where we seemed to be heading. She leaned back with me.

  “My jeepney for my village was boarding t
hen, so I apologized to him and got up to leave. He followed me. I looked at him cynically, but he continued on with me.”

  “‘I enjoyed our talk,’ he told me. ‘I’d like to see your village and find out more about what a Peace Corps Volunteer does,’ he said. He didn’t ask me, you know—he told me he was following me. I thought about demanding he not do that, but I didn’t want to let on how suspicious of him I was by now. I could make a scene, but I couldn’t really stop him. So I just warned him that there was no place for him to stay there, that it was a small, impoverished village. Plus, I didn’t want my neighbors thinking I was cheating on you. Just his presence with me would do that. I was really bugged with him by now.”

  She leaned forward, deep in thought. There was tension left, but fight prevailed.

  “One of my neighbors indeed saw us together when we arrived. One of them, in fact, who had tried to exorcise the devil out of me that night you were there. You know, when my neighbors did all that chanting outside my Nipa Hut. Anyway, I didn’t want this guy following me to my hut, so I went straight for a small carindaria near where the jeepney stops. It’s near a church near the square, and this woman was there in the church lighting a candle. When she saw me, she came over, and I introduced them, telling him she was like my village mother, and explained to her that he was traveling through. He asked her about lodging there, which made me squirm even more, because I really was suspecting him by then, especially since I had already informed him there wasn’t anything. Now, in my mind, I’m calling him an SOB, because he would compromise me at my site. And here he was, willing indeed to compromise me for information. Well, this lady invited him to stay for dinner and overnight at her house as a guest, which he immediately accepted. I know she saw I was on a spot because here I am socially attached to you. But I was inwardly fuming from all this. CIA is supposed to strictly stay clear of us. If he was not CIA, then being ex-military he still should know better.”