SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

Marty frowns at their lack of respect for the festivities, even as he recalls his last meeting, where the Procurement Division Head had raised her eyebrows at his vacation request. (“For Lucban?”—and when Marty nodded, how she cleared her throat and averted her eyes.) Ignoring this, he gestures for his family to follow, and heads for the middle of the parade. JR complains that he can’t see, so Marty hoists him onto his shoulders. They walk on, keeping to the edges of the crowd. The higantes come after the band: giant, cartoony replicas of the president, the kagawad, a schoolgirl, a farmer. A carabao—live this time—follows it, pulling a cart full of waving children. Unlike the animatronic version, this carabao plods silently on, martyr-like. It is trailed by girls with feathered headpieces and dresses in garish colors, shimmying to a syncopated drumbeat.

The priest from morning mass scoops water out of a bucket and sprinkles everyone with it. Behind him walk the beauty pageant entrants, led by the newly-crowned Miss Lucban and her escort, standing on a float, carrying San Isidro between them. Marty is transfixed by the face of the saint—how it looks tired and drawn in the middle of the crowd, rocked to and fro by the music. The parade is pushing, pulsing from all sides; Marty presses onward, checking that Inez and Mariah are still following. The band has gone through its traditional repertoire and is now playing the Top 40. Everyone sings along—some droning, some with effort. Marty moves faster so that he can keep pace with San Isidro, but it’s difficult. He feels crazed, dehydrated, but he’s determined to witness the so-called miracle, determined not to care.

“Dad,” JR says, “Dad, hurry up, we’re going to miss the selection!”

Marty tries to walk more quickly, but the crowd keeps him at bay, measuring his pace. The people proceed down the street in a blare of noise and sound and color, getting more raucous as they approach the fancier homes. At some point the fiesta-goers begin to stop in front of each house, and lift San Isidro above the crowd, holding him there for a few moments. Each time this happens the procession holds its breath, then bursts into cheering when nothing changes. Marty is starting to get exhausted. He brings JR down and clutches his hand. JR beams up at him, infected by the delight of the crowd. Marty smiles back, as best as he can through the heat and confusion and the sudden shower of confetti and kiping raining from the house they are passing.

They’re drawing closer to Mang Delfin’s house, with the animatronic carabaos and giant replica of the mayor’s face. The frenzy and expectation heightens each time San Isidro is raised, but there is also a sense of inevitability, because only one house can win, and everyone seems to know which house it is. Someone starts chanting: “Mang Delfin! Mang Delfin!” The marching band launches into the current chart-topper. People are headbanging and wiggling and not-quite-accidentally grinding each other.

Marty realizes they’re not going to see anything if they stay where they are. Ducking into a side street, he skirts past former neighbors’ houses. He counts the walls before turning back onto the main road, right at the cross street between Mang Delfin and Aling Sheila’s house. They have a perfect view of the proceedings: the crowd is amassing in the home right before this one, breathing a collective “Ooooh!” as San Isidro is raised, then bursting into laughter when nothing happens, and he is lowered once more.

JR jumps up and down. “It’s going to be this one! It’s going to be this one!”

Marty’s heart races. He squeezes JR’s hand, and gazes at the façade of Mang Delfin’s house: up close, he can see potato-faced people pieced from squash and taro, with string-bean-and-okra hair; intricate butterflies made of rambutan and longgan; long, sweeping bunches of banana mingled with kiping. The mooing of the fake carabaos is incredibly loud. If there’s any house that can feed the whole town, it’s this one.

But what’s wrong with this food? He thinks. Isn’t this worth giving thanks for? What more do people want?

“Mang Delfin! Mang Delfin! Yaaaay!” The crowd whoops as it reaches its destination. Everyone quiets down enough so that the band can start a drumroll. Miss Lucban and her escort slowly, tenderly lift San Isidro up to face the house. Marty is magnetized, again, by the saint’s face: its severely rosy cheeks and sleepy eyebrows, the stiff golden halo behind his head. He can’t tell if San Isidro wears a look of benevolence, or of agony.

“Real food! Real food! Real veggies, real fruit!” JR hasn’t stopped jumping or chanting. Marty fights the urge to tell him to shut up.

“Oh my god,” Inez says. “This is actually so exciting!”

Mariah, who has whipped out her phone to record everything, says, “The signal here sucks!”

The hush continues. As the crowd watches, the statue of San Isidro—now facing its life-sized twin, in front of Mang Delfin’s house—lifts its wooden arm, the one holding the sheaf of corn, in a rigid salute. His face remains frozen, but for one instant, his eyes seem alive— and even though they aren’t directed at Marty, his belly churns and his eyes water. A child in the crowd bursts into tears.

Then: an explosion of smell and color. The house is suddenly unable to bear its own weight, and several ornaments come loose from the ceiling and balcony, falling on the crowd below. Potatoes and bananas roll off the shingles, detach from the windows; tufts of kiping billow out and descend on everyone’s heads. Marty sees this in slow-motion. Each fruit and vegetable is more alive, the smell so intoxicating Marty nearly vomits. He lets go of JR’s hand to cover his mouth, and JR immediately lunges for the food. Inez shrieks and darts forward as a squash-face starts to come loose from the wall. She tries to catch it in one of her new hats, shouting, “What are you doing, Marts? Grab some! Hurry!”

Everyone is frantically scooping. Mariah has her mouth full of something. “Oh my god ,” she says. “Oh my god, it tastes totally different!”

Marty looks back at where the procession had been neatly standing, and it’s all gone—San Isidro has disappeared, swallowed by a swarm of flailing limbs. Someone—Mang Delfin?—roars over the noise, “This is my house! Those are mine! Stop! Stop!”

“There’s enough for everyone, you greedy ass!” someone shouts back. The cheer that follows quickly dissolves into grunting as people climb over each other.

Marty comes into focus. “JR!” He calls frantically. “JR? JR!”

His little boy could be trampled. His little boy could get LBM, salmonella, stomach cancer. That food should never touch his lips.

Inez is still filling her hats; Mariah is helping her. Marty tries to enter the writhing mass of fiesta-goers. An elbow bashes him on the cheek, a knee catches his ribs. Someone to his left retches. The stench of body odor and puke overpowers the sweet fragrance of the fruits.

“JR!” He keeps shouting.

“Dad!”

JR squeezes his way towards him, reaching over two women grappling with a knot of bitter gourd. Marty manages to grab JR under the armpits, lifting then hauling him toward a side street. He takes deep breaths, trying to clear his head, and through a haze of nausea he sees JR’s giant grin. JR is clutching a swollen banana in his fist: a banana full of bruises, green at the base, just like the ones Marty used to eat as a child, nothing like the ones they now grow. “Dad! I got one! Can I eat it?”

Marty feels sick, overwhelmed, like too many eyes are on him. He reaches out, grabs the banana, and peels it without thinking. JR watches him, wide-eyed. Marty has no idea what he’s going to do—hold it out to his child and let him eat it? Eat it himself, because it looks so goddamn delicious? Thank God, San Isidro, for a miracle? Cry for his manmade miracles, so much nothing when held to the light of day, to a pair of tired eyes in a wooden face?