12
Three days after our high school day, Miss Santillan packed her things and told Father she was moving to another house with one of her female colleagues because she “needed help and guidance on some of her class projects.”
Father objected a little, but I did try very hard to dissuade her.
Later in the afternoon, Father went down, his white coat crumpled and dirtied, and he stayed out the whole night. He did the same thing many times afterward, and though I suspected where he went, I did not ask.
I was having a snack in the kitchen one late afternoon when Sepa, who was serving me, said: “I hope you don’t think ill of your father when he leaves in the late afternoons.”
“You are speaking in riddles,” I said. “He plays chess in the convent or in Chan Hai’s shop.”
The old woman sighed, and her small, bleary eyes were slits as her cheeks puffed up in a smile. “Maybe he does …”
“You old fool.” I waved her away with my spoon. “You know nothing but make stories.”
She called me to the window, and I reached it in time to see Father hurrying out of the yard, past the screen of bananas in the direction of the rice mill.
“Do you know where he’s going?” she asked. She wiped her fat, oily face with her apron and went back to the stove.
“He is taking a shortcut to the rice mill,” I said. “If you have something to say, say it.”
“You’ll find out yourself,” she said. “You’ll find out.”
“You are a witch!”
“Follow him, then,” she said. She shook the ladle at me and laughed again.
“You old witch,” I said, flinging the spoon at her.
For a woman of her build, she dodged nimbly. As I left, her roiling laughter trailed me.
It was not easy to forget what Sepa had said, but in time I did forget, for there was Carmay and boys like Angel with whom I played. Father started leaving the house more often. He would be out the whole night and return only in the morning. I never bothered asking him, for he worked hard, managing his farm and Don Vicente’s, and if he did play chess even for a whole week, it was his business and I would not interfere.
Angel and I were out in the fields near the rice mill one gusty April afternoon. We were flying a kite I fashioned out of Father’s extra Christmas wrapping papers the year past. Angel let me launch it alone; it was a perfect kite, for I had just run a short distance when a puff of wind picked it up and sent it soaring to the sky. It wavered sideways, then hovered motionless in the air, its string uncoiled to the very handle, taut and tugging at my hand.
With my kite safely up, I sat down in the shade of a banaba and dismissed Angel, for I no longer needed his help. He had barely disappeared beyond the turn of the path when a strong wind swept the sky; the string snapped, and the kite started its slow, swaying descent.
I raced across the field and followed the kite as it was blown farther away. In a while I found myself near the river, beyond the rice mill. I ran up the mountain of black ash, and as I reached the top I looked down and saw Father walking swiftly along the bend of the river to the new nipa house on the lot where Martina and her father had once lived.
For an instant, I wanted to call out to him and tell him of the kite that was now drifting down the river, but it became apparent that he was in a hurry. What Sepa had said rankled in my mind, and I hurried down the ash mound and trailed him.
Father walked quickly, as if he was afraid someone was following him. As he neared the nipa house, a woman I had never seen before came out. She hurried past the bamboo gate to the path, and as Father drew near, her arm went around his waist, and arm in arm they went up to the house.
I crouched behind a sapling, numb in spirit, and forgot all about the kite. I remembered Mother’s whitewashed grave and Father’s angry voice when he saw me wearing her dress. When I finally went home, the sun had sunk and Rosales was empty and dark.
All through the night, I could not sleep. When Father arrived at dawn amidst the howling of the dogs, for the first time I loathed him.
He appeared at the breakfast table in excellent spirits, his face radiating happiness. He must have noticed my glumness, for he asked me what the matter was. I shook my head and did not answer.
The whole day I stayed in the bodega with my air gun idle in my hands. Many rats were out in the open, scampering in the eaves and on the sacks of grain, clear targets all, but somehow they no longer interested me.
And at the supper table after all had left, Sepa came and tried to humor me.
Unable to contain myself anymore, I went to Father, who was smoking in the azotea.
“I was near the rice mill yesterday afternoon,” I said, hedging close to him. The rocking of his chair stopped; he knocked his pipe on the sill and turned to me.
“What were you doing there?”
“I was flying a kite,” I said, looking down at my rubber shoes, unable to meet his gaze. “Its string snapped and I chased it. I went near the new house by the river.”
I looked quickly at him and saw in the cool light of the Aladdin lamp his tired, aging face.
“What else did you do?” he asked, his voice barely rising above a whisper.
“Nothing,” I said. “I saw you.”
He looked away and said quietly, “I don’t have to explain anything.” And with a wave of his hand, he ordered me away.
I waited until I was sure the house was quiet, then I stole into the kitchen and with the meat cleaver, I busted my bamboo bank and filled my pockets with the silver coins. The back door was open, and without a sound I stepped out into the moonlight.
Sepa was at the gate. She sat beneath the pergola, smoking a hand-rolled cigar whose light burned clear like sapphire in the soft dark.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Do not interfere,” I said. “You are a cook and nothing else.”
She held my arm, but I brushed her away. Undaunted, she stood up and followed me to the street. In the moonlight, she peered at me. “Young one,” she said, “it’s a nice night for taking a walk, isn’t it?”
I did not speak.
She said lightly, “It’s a lot better sleeping out in the open than in a room stuffy with curtains and mosquito nets.” Her hand alighted on my shoulder. “But then sometimes it rains, and then there’s the heat of the highway, and the awful dust that spreads and itches and soon pocks your body with sores.”
“Leave me alone,” I said.
“I should, but listen. It is a man who understands, who knows that life isn’t always cozy,” she said with a wisp of sadness in her voice. “We would like to see things as we want them to be. Unfortunately, that can’t always be.”
We reached the town plaza, which was now deserted of promenaders and the children skating in the kiosk. The plaza was lined with rows of banaba trees glistening in the moonlight.
“Take these trees,” she said, “how wonderful it would be if all through the year they were blooming. But the seasons change just like people. There is nothing really that lasts. Even the mountains don’t stand forever. But people, I am sure, can be steadfast if they have faith.”
Her hand on my shoulder was light, and as I walked slowly she kept pace with me. With her wooden shoe, she kicked at a tin can and sent it clattering down the asphalt.
“Who is she, Sepa?” I asked after a while.
“Who?”
“You know whom I mean.”
“She is good-looking. She came from a village in the next town … was a barrio fiesta queen.”
“Did Father build the new house for her?”
“That’s all I know,” she said. After a while, from out of the quiet, she spoke again: “You know how it is with the hilot—the midwives who deliver babies. I’m one, too. Remember? Sometimes they have to use force to hasten birth and lessen the mother’s suffering. It’s always better for the mother and the baby, but it doesn’t always look good with the hilot. She is misunderstood.”
“I understand you perfectly,” I said flatly.
Sepa sighed: “I still believe your mother was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, and more than that I believe, too, that she bequeathed much of her graciousness to her only child. And your father—he is a wonderful man.”
Then it was November again, and the rains no longer came in gusts; the sun shone and the grain ripened, and all over the land the rich smell of harvest hung heavy and sweet. There would be smoke in the early evenings and the delicious odor of roasting, half-ripe, gelatinous rice, and there would be pots of bubbling sweets—camotes, bananas, langka. The mornings would be washed with dew, and I would lie longer in bed till the sun roasted my brain.
It was on one such morning that I was roused from sleep. Father had swept into my room, his leather boots creaking; he tapped the iron bedpost with the steel butt of his riding stick, and in the bronze glimmer of day, he stood before me, big and impressive. “A hunter must rise ahead of the sun,” he said.
I stirred, but when Father had gone I slowly sank back into this bog of blissful sleep. It was brief, though, for the dogs started howling in the grounds, and Old David was shouting at the boys not to tarry with the saddles. Above the clangor of everything, I could distinguish the neighing of the black pony that Father had given me. The world was alive; we were going to hunt together for the first time, for I was already old enough to handle a gun. It was a time I had waited for, and looking back, all through those trying times, Father really needed not just the woman I had yet to meet but a diversion from the cares that had begun to nag and depress him.
At this time of the year, Old David said, the delta was dry again; the waters had receded from their pockets, and in the mornings shrouded with mist the quail would gather at the water holes. It was time for Father to mount his chestnut horse, gallop past the iron gate through the still-sleeping town. On mornings like this when I was not yet allowed to go with him, I would rise early, too, and wrapped in bedsheets, I would linger at the balcony and watch Old David help him mount. The face of the old man would always turn up to me in a smile as he and Father passed below. I loved his work, his closeness to the horses to whom he often spoke, and I often idled in the stables, all around me the pungent smell of urine and sawdust, while he tinkered with the leather. And in the stable, he dismantled father’s escopetas—the twelve-gauge double-barreled shotguns—and cleaned them till their bores shone and their hand-carved stocks glistened. With his permission and watchful eye, I had touched them, listening to the double click of the trigger. By the time I was ten, I could handle the guns, though I could barely lift them, and I had learned not just how to shoot but how to treat them with respect and caution.
“Do you think he would take me hunting now?” I had asked so often, it had become a ritual for us. But Old David, chewing his leaf tobacco, merely shrugged: “Next year, perhaps. Your father knows best.” At the end of the day, as the sun toppled over the foothills, I returned to the balcony, knowing they would soon come, and by dusk Father would ride in slowly, Old David cantering behind him. But many a time, however, the saddle pack did not hold even one skinny bird, and many a time, too, Father tramped to the house with thunder in his boots, banged at the doors and did not even look at me when I rushed down the stairs to kiss his hand.
There were times in the years long past, Old David said, when they did not know where to put the quail and the heron that they had shot, but now the birds hid in the fastness, driven there by men who no longer had enough rice to eat. More babies were born, they grew up, and there being no more land to farm in the plain, they moved to the foothills and razed them of their cogon grass. They tried planting in the delta, too, when the rains stopped, but the course of the river had always been erratic, and what could be a fertile field this year could be a sandy bar next year.
I prodded Old David again to go ask Father if I could go with him to hunt; he had said that my voice was changing and, yes, perhaps this time it would be all right. We went up to Father’s room, but only he entered; I tarried at the door, which was ajar, and heard Father say, “But why must he come? There is nothing there but wasteland. Here he has everything, has he not? An air rifle, a bicycle, companions …”
“He wants to hunt, Apo.”
“And if he gets lost? Or if he drowns? No one will replace him …”
“I have forgotten, Apo.”
“Can he take care of himself?”
“Yes, Apo. He knows how to handle a gun now.”
A long pause, then Old David came out, his craggy face bright with a smile. And later that day, from the open window of Father’s room, I aimed at a brown kapok pod buffeted high in the wind. This was the moment I had waited for, to load and aim a gun, and when I fired, my bones rattled, my teeth jarred, and in my ears the roar was deafening. When the acrid smoke cleared, the pod no longer swung in the tall and slender tree across the street.
Father was grinning when I turned to him. “All right, eh, David?” then to me, “But if you come, you must carry something, like the lunch bag. And you keep track behind me so you won’t get lost.”
But doubts persisted. “Tell me, am I not ready yet?” I asked. Old David shook his head. He had often watched me aim a slingshot at Father’s empty beer bottles lined up in the yard, and each brown exploding glass was like the shattered body of a bird. Then, with an air rifle and at a greater distance. Now with the gun.
“You’ll do,” Old David said simply.
So on this November morning when smoke from the kitchen stoves and yard fires of the neighbors curled up to a sky polished with sun, I finally was to see the delta. I had new rubber boots and denim overalls. I went to the dining room, where Sepa and Old David were serving Father coffee and fried rice, and sat at the other end of the long mahogany table. The chocolate the old man placed before me steamed fragrantly, but it was not enough. I motioned to Old David to pass the fried eggs, but Father warned: “A hunter must always eat light before the hunt.”
I waited till Father rose. At the door, without his seeing it, Old David slipped into my hand a white lump of native cheese wrapped in banana leaf.
Down at the stable, the boys ringed me and wished me luck, then they dispersed hurriedly when Father came. After he had mounted, Old David helped me up onto my pony. For the past few days I had studied the animal’s temper, raced it to the meadow beyond the barbed-wire fence, anticipating the time I would ride it to the delta. Now the frisky animal reared, then pawed the ground. I held its reins steadily.
Old David mounted his low-chinned mare. With Father on his castaño before us, we rode down the driveway. Through the town the dogs followed us in howling packs. The early risers, who sat haunched before yard fires warming their hands, stood up and watched us and our horses, whose breath spouted from their nostrils like blasts of steam in the morning chill. We clattered over the new wooden bridge across the creek, then turned to a weedy bull-cart road, and down to the fields where farmers were already harvesting. They paused in their work to watch.
“We will be there soon,” Father said. We were halfway, so Old David said, when Father told us not to follow him, and jabbing his stirrups into the hinds of his mount, he galloped ahead.
I turned to the old man as Father disappeared at the bend of the road. “Tell me, Old David, can I really get lost in the delta?”
Old David maneuvered his mount away from the mud pits and the deep wheel ruts that sliced the road and moved away from me. He did not answer.
“Are there many birds there?”
“You know what the delta is. There isn’t anything about it that I haven’t told you,” he said.
I brought my horse beside the old man’s mare so that as we jogged on, our legs brushed.
“Ay,” the old man sighed. “Long before your father ever went there, when your grandfather and I were still boys, we hunted there. One night we kept vigil at the edge of a brook. With a powerful gun you track just one bird. One skinny bird! We let the pagaw and the heron alone, but you can’t do that now. You know what were there once? Wild pigs and deer that cavorted in the light of the moon and stood unafraid at the edge of the clearings!”
Once, before I knew what a deer was like, in Father’s study I gazed at the mounted heads of boars that adorned the wall, their tusks sticking out of their petrified snouts like Moro daggers. Beside Father’s folding desk I touched the smooth tapering antlers that served as cane-and-hat rack. On Father’s high, carved chair, I perched myself to reach the blades of the spears, the forked arrows, and the double-barreled shotguns on the wall.
“People didn’t crowd the delta then, nor was it planted with crops. Deer and wild pigs roamed it freely, scared not by the sight of men. They nibbled at the corn; like disciplined soldiers they drank at the riverbank without muddying it. The river was very clear then, like a spring, and the land wasn’t dead. But more people came, sapped it dry of its milk. The animals fled to the deeper hills. Then there was no more place to flee to but here. Everything was cleared. The hills. The mountains.” Old David’s ancient face looked wistful.
“You must love going to the delta,” I said. “Year after year, you go there.”
“So does your father,” the old man said. He smiled enigmatically, then whacked the rump of his mare with his rattan whip. The animal doubled into an awkward trot, and sensing the prospects of a race, I whipped my pony, too, and in a burst of speed I passed him.
The wind whipped my face; the road exploded in a blaze of orange and green. Then the dike loomed, a high mound that followed every turn of the river’s bank. At the base of the dike, I stopped and waited.
Old David rode up to me, and we went together, without speaking, our horses straining up the path. Now, atop its narrow crest, I could see the whirling waters of the river and, beyond the tufts of grass and camachile brambles, the vast green spread—the delta sprawled toward the sun.
“Your hunting ground.” Old David nudged me. Then down the patch of land below the dike we saw Father signaling us to hurry.
“The river is not deep,” Old David said as we trotted to where Father waited.
“And what if it be a hundred bamboos deep?” Father glared at the old man. “You said he can take care of himself. Hurry with the pack, and no more talk.”
The old man alighted slowly and helped me down. He unstrapped the pack from the saddle, unholstered the gun, and laid it on the grass. I held the barrel up and asked Father if I could carry it.
Father shook his head. He pointed to the saddle pack that contained our lunch and the water bottle. Leaving the horses tied to knots of grass near the dike, we walked to the riverbank and down a narrow gully; at its bottom, a bamboo raft swayed with the current. A tenant setting fish traps in the shallows told Father that the first cucumber and watermelon seeds in the small clearings were planted the other day.
“So it’s like last year, eh, David?” Father said happily. “Pray that the birds haven’t been frightened away yet. We should have come earlier.”
Old David strained at the raft line that stretched across the river. The raft moved closer and hugged the muddy river edge. Father leaped into the raft, and I followed him with the lunch bag and the water bottle. The raft swayed giddily.
“You come back for us at sunset with the horses, David,” Father told the old man. “This time, since you aren’t coming, we may have better luck.”
Old David pulled the line, and the raft slithered with the current. We balanced ourselves on the dry bamboo floats, safe from the waters that lapped and swished at our perch. With Old David’s every heave at the line, the steel wire above us sang. The land and the mossy reeds jutting up the waterline drew near, and in a while the braced prow of the raft smashed into the delta. The tamarind tree, on whose trunk the steel line gnawed deep, quivered with the impact.
I leaped into the sandy landing, the bag and the bottle narrowly missing the tree. Father followed; he wasn’t much of a jumper. He splashed into the river’s edge, and I turned just in time to grasp the gun, which had slipped from his hand.
“I’ll hold it, Father,” I suggested. I raised the bottle and the lunch bag. “These aren’t heavy.”
Father grabbed the gun from me and did not answer. He started out immediately on one of the paths that forked from the landing, Swinging the lunch bag and the bottle over my shoulders, I followed the measured drift of his steps. He did not speak. We plodded on until the trail we followed vanished into a high, blank wall of grass that fringed a small brook.
“Shall we stay here, Father, and wait?” I asked, wiping the sweat on my forehead. I had begun to tire, and I had not seen a single bird. “Old David said the delta birds usually roost near the mudholes.”
“We rest here,” Father said. He parted the grass and the undergrowth with the muzzle of the gun.
“But won’t we go deeper?” I asked. “Old David said we have more chances of finding something to shoot at … if we go deeper.”
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 cursing 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.