OUTPOURING: Typhoon Yolanda Relief Anthology

by Dean Francis Alfar

  Or, if they were not, I would make it so.

  And I did.

  I insisted to reality that the story would be told, that if reality itself would not tell the story of its own accord then I would do so for it.

  And I had done that, too. I had lived the future that I knew to be the truth, and Jus had lived it alongside me.

  Yet now she was fading from alongside me. Now, after nearly a decade, the conviction that had made me mold reality to suit my wishes was ebbing. And the sign of this ebbing was that Justine ebbed.

  What was it that scattered my concentration? Was it the prospect of finally announcing to our parents—my Mom, Mr and Mrs Parland—that the fusion of the Jusjohn organism, so long established, was now to be formalized? Was it that my mind couldn’t embrace the clash between the two realities? Was it, and I’ve hardly ever dared admit this to myself, that I didn’t, at the core of me, really want our unity to be recognized by the world? Could it even be that my emotions rebelled against the thought of finally making physical love to Jus, that I was repelled by the notion?

  I don’t know. I still don’t know.

  But I know that as Jus and I strolled slowly home across the fields she trickled out of my existence as fine dry sand might trickle away through my fingers, until by the time I got home all traces of her had vanished. And I was entirely at ease with this—on one level.

  “Did you have a good time down by the river?” asked Mom as I kicked the mud off my boots. And: “Isn’t it about time you got yourself a steady girlfriend to go on these walks with you, John?” And: “I’ve made a meat loaf for supper. Dad should be home any minute. I’ve already opened him a beer. Would you like one too?”

  Yet on another level I wasn’t accepting of the new non-Jus future at all. The Jusjohn being was still there. There could never be a Pollyjohn, or a Veronicajohn, or a Katiejohn, or...

  I say that I live alone in my apartment. But that’s not quite true. Sometimes Jus is there also. I have never seen her or heard her, but there are times I walk from the cramped kitchen into the cramped living room and I’m aware that the sound of her laughter has been there just a moment before.

  None of this could I have said on the telephone. None of this can I ever hope to explain to Mrs Baldeen’s hard gray eyes.

  I stare at the phone. Will I be able to pick it up again and call Bill, as I originally intended?

  I’ve been living a wrong existence, I now know, since that afternoon when we walked home from the river.

  Parts of the truth I got right, parts I got wrong.

  As I was washing my hands and going back downstairs for the beer Mom had poured for me I assumed, as I’ve been assuming ever since, that the future I’d created was somehow the lesser reality, the subsidiary one—that the primary reality had reasserted itself, compelled my version of creation to converge back towards the mainstream of time’s flow. It had chipped my conviction, then stood aside to watch it crumble.

  But now I know, having spoken to the other John Sudmore, having heard the voice of Jus, how mistaken I’ve been.

  The effect of my conviction crumbling was not that Jus faded away into a rejected subsidiary reality.

  It was that I did.

  #

  I shrug my shoulders, as if I could discard the weight of infinity from them.

  I reach out to pick up the receiver. I’m going to call Bill and arrange to meet him for a drink at the Tobermory Inn or O’Riley’s or Duncan’s Place, and we’re going to talk about old baseball games and new movies and I’m going to submerge my knowledge of the reality I’ve lost. Of the reality that lost me.

  But the receiver is only halfway to my ear when I change my mind and return it to its rest.

  Tonight...

  Tonight is a night for drinking alone.

  Tuba Knight

  By Cesar Miguel G. Escaño

  Author’s Note: This story is dedicated to my parents-in-law, Augusto Z. Santos and Elizabeth Cecilia R. Santos, who were swept away during the storm surge of Typhoon Yolanda.

  It was the eve of the storm. It was also the birthday of his daughter’s father-in-law.

  Tito went with his wife, Beth, to their in-laws’ house a few streets from their own house. During the party, Obet regaled everyone with his singing and music from his guitar.

  A Pampangueno, Obet was a great cook and equally adept at singing. He rented an annex room in the same lot as the family of Tito’s daughter and her in-laws. Obet had been a stranger before moving in months ago. Now he was part of the family.

  He shared with Tito a passion for this blood-colored liquid called tuba. Made from the fermented sap of young coconut fruit, tuba tasted as sweet as red wine. Unlike other alcoholic drinks, tuba gave no hangover the morning after.

  They held the first of many tuba nights about a month after Tito and Beth moved to Tacloban. It was just a simple weekend dinner held for no special occasion. Obet proposed the dinner so that they could drink a gallon of tuba a co-worker had given him.

  Quality tuba could be drunk straight without mixing it with Coke or Pepsi. That was not the case with the tuba Obet let everyone drink during the first such night. They had to mask the bitterness by mixing it with liberal amounts of cola as with rhum.

  Obet apologized, promising to bring better-tasting tuba the following week. Tito’s in-law, Ben, said he’d bring a bottle of quality tuba so that the others would know how first-class tuba tasted like.

  So that was how Tuba Nights started, with tuba taking the place of wine, merriment and song. Tito looked forward to every Tuba Night savoring the moment the sweetish liquid wet his lips before entering his mouth.

  Tito usually kept his alcohol in check although there was not much need since he and his wife lived a few streets away. But he sometimes lost his guard while drinking tuba. During his son-in-law’s birthday two months before, he drank so much tuba that he monopolized the singing with Obet accompanying him on his guitar.

  Tito later told Obet that the tuba gave him the strength and the courage to show off his singing. Obet replied that he would give a bottle of tuba as a present to Tito sometime.

  Before everyone called it a night, Obet handed Tito a bottle of tuba. He said it was an overdue gift.

  “To warm your heart when the storm comes,” he told Tito.

  Before he and his wife went to bed, Tito reminisced with Beth on their journey from Metro Manila to Tacloban.

  It was November. They had moved to Tacloban, Leyte in June. His daughter, Jackie, had moved with her husband and her son months before them in March.

  The proud grandparents always looked forward to seeing their grandson, Mito. Since their house and their in-laws house were only a few streets apart, Jackie brought Mito over almost every day. His visits were the highest point of their day.

  Mito was the first grandson on both sides of the family. He was the reason Tito and Beth moved to the province.

  After his daughter moved with her husband and child to the province, Tito felt a great sadness. No medicine could help him, not even the regular maintenance he took for his hypertension. Instead of tightening in his chest, he felt his heart drawing anchor and casting off.

  The last time Tito felt this way was when his family moved away from Navotas in Manila when he was a boy. Navotas was a fishing town along the northwestern shore of Manila Bay.

  While his father fished and his mother went to the market to sell the fish he caught, Tito swam in the sea with his friends. Before he came of schooling age, he spent all the day at the sea, going home only to have lunch or when his mother finally came looking for him in the afternoon. Tito and his friends would swim all the way a hundred feet or so from the shore to where boats whose passengers were checking on shrimp traps or diving into the deep for seaweed and sea urchin. They would climb the katig, bamboo outriggers, on the sides of the boat and jump right back into the sea.

  Climbing on one katig without another child already perched on the other side would unba
lance the boat, causing it to rock from side to side. If you weren’t an experienced katig climber, you would suddenly find yourself back in the water seconds after surfacing from the sea. If you were mischievous, you could rock the boat after climbing onto the katig, causing the child on the other side to lose his balance and fall with a splash.

  It was the first and the last time Tito climbed a boat with someone already on board. The fisherman, the lone passenger, had his back to the sun, hiding something within his shadow. Hunched over like a vulture, he was examining fish hooks, straightening those that were too crooked or curling those whose ends were too straight. He did not mind the first child who climbed onto the katig facing him. As the boat swayed from side to side, he just gave the child a firm look to tell him not to try anything funny.

  His admonition was wasted on the wrong child. It was then that Tito climbed the katig behind the fisherman. Too engrossed with the mischief he was about to inflict on his friend, Tito failed to notice the fisherman in the boat. After climbing onto the katig, Tito jumped up and down to try and unseat his friend on the other side. Instead of his friend, the one who fell over was the fisherman whose back was turned to him.

  Later at home, Tito tried to explain to his mother that the glare of the sun blanketed the fisherman, rendering him invisible to his eyes. His mother retorted with a slap on the back of his head. “You also didn’t see that, did you? Maybe you should start wearing glasses so you won’t cause any mischief.”

  Tito started wearing glasses a few years later. He had astigmatism, according to the doctor. His mother blamed the boy’s poor vision on him narrowing his eyes too much and too often whenever a mischievous thought entered his head. “Stop being naughty or you’ll lose your eyesight entirely,” his mother warned Tito.

  The boy took his mother’s warning to heart. His friends, accomplices and victims to the pranks Tito played, all wondered what had come over him. He stopped sticking his butt out and pulling his shorts down as his friends surfaced from the water so that the first thing they would see was his glistening rear end staring at them. He stopped collecting his farts in a bottle and bringing them to school and opening the lid every time he felt the teacher’s lecture getting boring. Tito valued his eyesight more than his mirth so he let other friends in his barkada take over the role of prankster.

  The morning of the storm, Tito awoke to the howling wind. He had closed the windows last night to prevent wind and rain from entering. Outside, the storm banged at their house like a hungry wolf trying to blow their walls down. Their house was made of concrete and metal roofing but it might as well have been made of wood and nipa the way the entire house shook against the fury of the storm.

  Tito stood up and walked to the windows. The floor and the walls around the windows were slick with rainwater. The wind was so strong that it was pushing the rain in through the windowsills and any opening inside the house. Tito looked back at the bed to wake Beth up. She was already sitting up and reaching for a rosary she kept underneath her pillow.

  Together, they had prayed the rosary last night before sleeping. The wind was already roaring last night but its strength and loudness were nothing compared to the tempest they woke up to. Their metal roof shook and wailed like sheets of paper about to be torn apart. Their windows vibrated with such urgency as if the glass panels were trying to escape from the metal framing.

  Tito hurried to Beth’s side and grasped the rosary she held in her hands. As he was about to make the sign of the cross, she stopped him.

  She said, “I’ll be the one to pray. Check on our daughter and grandson and everyone in the other house.”

  He answered her, saying, “I won’t leave you.”

  She replied, “They’re more important than me.”

  Tito did not know what to do. In his heart, he wanted to be with his wife, but a part of him also wanted to make sure his daughter and grandson were safe in the other house. He felt cold and helpless with the wind wailing outside their home.

  He remembered the bottle of tuba on the floor on his side of the bed. Obet gave it to him at the party last night before they walked home. He said: “To warm your heart when the storm comes.”

  Tito opened the bottle and took a swig. There was no time to add Coke or Pepsi to sweeten the bitterness. He closed his eyes. A warm feeling spread from inside his chest throughout his entire body. He felt as if he were rising into the air. The warm feeling gave him courage and strength. He knew what to do.

  Tito rushed out of the house and ran to the house of his in-laws several streets away. Their houses were about a hundred meters apart but he crossed the distance in only a few seconds despite the wind and the rain. The tuba in his lungs fueled his charge and made him young again.

  He ran to the back of the house where his daughter’s family was staying in an annex room separate from the main house.

  When he left his house, the water was just a few inches on the streets. As he approached the other house, the water suddenly rose above his ankles.

  In the distance, above the wind and the rain, he could hear the sea being unloosened from its shackles and surging from the East, the direction where the storm was coming from.

  There is no time, he thought. He still had to go back.

  When Tito reached the door to his daughter’s room, the water was already waist-deep. He looked through the window and saw people still inside. His daughter was holding his grandson. Standing beside them were his son-in-law and in-law, Ben. They were unaware that the sea was already rising outside their doorstep. They had to get out through the other door and head for higher ground.

  Tito gripped the doorknob with both hands. The water continued to rise around him. He knew that they had get out through the other door before this the door he was holding collapsed against the weight of the current pressing against it. This door opened inward to the room. If it collapsed before the other door leading to the main house was opened, the floodwaters would trap everyone inside.

  He held on with all of his strength. Behind him, Tito noticed Obet had left his room and was standing just beyond the edge of the space between his quarters and the door Tito was holding onto. Obet wanted to cross the distance and enter the room but the height of the water and the strength of the current gushing through the hallway nailed him to his precarious position.

  Tito yelled at Obet over his shoulder. “Wait. Wait. Just wait until they get out.” He hoped Obet could hear his voice over the wind and the rain.

  A door opened inside his daughter’s room. Peering through the window beside the door, he saw Airene, Mito’s yaya, standing in the doorway as waist-deep water flooded into the room. Everyone hurried outside to the main house. They formed a human chain with Airene at the lead, Jackie and Mito following her with Ben, his in-law, holding the both of them with Miggy, his son-in-law, at the end of the line holding onto his wife, son, and father while pushing away objects floating toward them.

  It was time to let go.

  The door collapsed with a roar, the wooden frame snapping into two as the current surged into the room. In seconds, the water in the room was chest deep. Everyone inside was almost through the open doorway at the other end. They headed for the dirty kitchen connecting the annex quarters to the main house that had a second floor.

  The only one left outside was Obet, who waited for a lull in the surging water before he could cross over safely to the other side. Only four feet lay between his position behind the wall and the now open doorway but it might as well have been a chasm. The current was so powerful it would carry Obet out to the open if he tried reaching the other side.

  Tito wished he still had the bottle of tuba so he could drink more of that gasoline-colored liquid to rev up his body. Yet enough energy remained in his muscles to save one more life.

  Clutching the side of the doorway with one hand, Tito swung his body outward like an opening door to block the current surging through the hallway. His fingers dug into the wall opposite the doorway and he w
edged his foot into the corner between wall and floor. The current broke around his body like a wave crashing against a stone pier.

  Tito yelled at Obet to go. “Now’s the time. Go! Go! Go!” he screamed with all of his strength.

  Obet could not possibly hear him through the roaring wind and the surging floodwaters but he saw the momentary lull in the current and took his chance. He leaped four feet into the doorway. Once inside, he waded through the chest-deep water. A table bobbing at the surface blocked his path. He climbed on top of it until he dropped to the other side. He crossed the now open doorway leading to the dirty kitchen and to the main house.

  Tito let go of the opposite wall, his body swiveling to the side like a door closing inward. The current resumed its rage. The water gushed through the open space where Tito’s body had been like a river breaking through a collapsed dam. He clung to the side of the hallway facing the wall. He inched across the wall for about fifteen feet until he cleared the hallway.

  At the end of the hallway, the walls of the maids’ room facing East had already collapsed. This gave Tito a view of the east side of the house. There was an opening several feet from the ground where an archway of colored glass used to be. The archway was on the middle level between two flights of stairs from the first floor to the second floor. The opening created by the collapsed archway showed a human chain with Tito’s daughter and his grandson. Everyone had safely reached higher ground.

  Tito looked Eastward in the direction of his house. The water was now so high that it reached his neck. It was still rising. He had to go back. His wife was still inside their house. She could not swim.