Mia Alvar - In the Country - Stories

And now you know why saints crave suffering, invite all kinds of pain so they can feel in some small way what Christ, whom they love, felt.

The flood had risen to your neck when you carried Pepe out of the house. So many of the trees had fallen. Those that hadn’t yet were bowing to the ground as if to tell the wind, You win. You sat the baby on your shoulders and marched forward as the water reached your chin.

And then you heard the fibers come apart. Mahentoy, that old giant you had scaled to canvass for your father, started breaking at its base, and just missed you before falling like judgment’s sword. It cleaved your home in half, where, not a minute earlier, you’d found Pepe. You ducked and ran, underwater, for both your lives.

Now two arms grab you by the ribs, knocking your breath out. You are yanked back into time and through the ash on someone else’s feet, your own dangling. You cough, either from his grip around your lungs or from the soot that’s gathered in them. Your hearing’s back. And now it’s clear this roar is bigger than those typhoon sounds from home. The breaking trees; the thunder in the sky; the helicopter’s gun-like patter as it dipped to drop food sacks beside the rescue tent you reached with Pepe, by some miracle; the wave that rose fifty feet high and almost ate your hometown — those are smaller, even taken all together, than this roar, this day.

Your rescuer slams you into an iron fence. His badge is on your shoulder blade, his back a shield against the hail.

The world grows dark. You wonder if you’ve fainted, but you’re fine. You’re conscious. Night has, in fact, descended on this morning.

“Come on,” the voice over your shoulder says. His hand and flashlight lead you down a set of stairs. He has you stand against a wall. Something like a cloud climbs up your windpipe. When the flashlight shines into your face, you think your eyeballs might ignite.

After Pepe crashed his motorcycle, he woke up remembering some Good Samaritan who’d held his head in her lap and pulled the bits of gravel from his face. She left him when the ambulance arrived. My angel, Pepe said, my ghost. He could not forget her voice or her fingertips.

“You’ll be all right down here.” With that, your savior’s flashlight, and the portion of his black sleeve you can see, are gone.

You know you’re not alone. The coughs and sobs and choking sounds of others echo off the station walls. They find your hands and lead you up the platform in the dark.

—

“He’s gone,” your mother said.

The rehab farm had released Pepe with a certificate and a kit of wood-carving tools. You’d bought him an apartment in the city, two hours from the plantation. But Pepe never showed to get his key. The rehab priest discovered money missing from his vault. Weeks later Pepe called your mother from Manila.

“He went to see about a business venture there,” your mother said, “with friends.”

“And you allowed it?” you said. “Don’t you know what business venture means with Pepe?”

“He said replacement parts for small electronics. You don’t think it sounds legit?”

“Do you?”

Your mother isn’t half as dumb as she pretends. “You think I could have stopped him?” she said. “You wouldn’t think so, not if you’d been here these years. He was a child when you last saw him. He might weigh next to nothing now, but there’s no making him do anything.”

That week, the lies you’d told the supervisor came true. Your feet clanged with such misery at work, you might as well have been stepping on glass. The bleach and toilet paper felt like bricks you had to push uphill. Even friends at church noticed a limp. That nurse you knew told you to toss your Keds for clogs that got her through her double shifts. You did. They didn’t help.

John waited by his door that Tuesday night. “You’ve looked so tired,” he said. “Can I help?”

You stepped back, fearing he might reach for you.

“I know I’m not supposed to care,” he said, steering you to the sofa. “Or act on caring, anyway. You don’t have to tell me why you’re sad, either. I have an idea, though: you rest here. I’ll clean the office.”

You almost laughed. “I don’t think so.” And yet the leather felt so cool against your back. Your eyelids sank watching him take the handles of your cart.

Twelve minutes later, you woke with your feet up. John had finished at the window. He stared at the buildings.

“No one builds castles or cathedrals anymore,” he said. “I read that skyscrapers are how cities show off, in our time.”

The next night he was standing by the door again. The next night you removed your shoes. Each time, you fell asleep and woke to John dusting his cabinets or replacing his trash. These naps never lasted more than twenty minutes, but calmed you more than your own bed at night. You lay there — Esmeralda, daughter of the dirt, born to toil in God’s name till your hands or heart gave out — reclining like an infant or a queen, a hundred levels aboveground. Priests had promised you this kind of peace in heaven.

You shall feast on the fruits of your labor, and your works shall follow you.

One of those nights you dreamed about your work. The office floor had thickened into soil, and you were pulling the cleaning cart behind you by your teeth. As the cart grew heavier, you turned and saw Pepe, dropping his woodwork and tools and motorcycle and replacement parts for small electronics into your garbage bag. Your heart rejoiced: you hadn’t seen Pepe in years, and here he was. Visiting you! How did he find you? Still, it dawned on you in this dream that you had to keep walking and could not stop. And Pepe could not follow, only wave good-bye and shrink behind you as you carted his burdens away. You woke in tears, sitting straight up and swiveling your legs as if you’d just remembered an appointment. John was on his knees, dusting the table by the sofa. His gloved hands caught your stockinged feet before they hit the floor.

“Are you all right, Es?”

You shook your head. “I have a problem with my feet.”

He nodded. He didn’t speak, only pressed his thumbs along your instep. You were silent too, letting the sore bones and stiff muscles speak for you. You looked up at the cratered ceiling tiles and closed your eyes. His forehead touched your knees, bone against flat bone.

“I missed you,” he said afterward — his suit, your uniform, stretched across the table like ghost bodies.

Months after he’d disappeared, Pepe turned up again at the rehab farm. Relapse, said the once-addicted priest, is just part of the process. His rule for returning men was three strikes and you’re out.

—

Emerging from the darkness underground a few blocks north, you hobble to the river, coughing clouds of dust. On the grass a rescue worker tears a white sheet from a gurney into strips. Red tears rain down his face. You think again of saints. You collapse to your knees, a park bench for your prie-dieu.

You’ll catch your breath here, that’s all. Before you head back south. John’s tower stands, without its twin, still smoking in the distance. He’s still there. You’re sure of it.

Why shouldn’t you expect a miracle? You found Pepe, fine and floating in his cradle, didn’t you? What could have killed him didn’t, because you were there.

But Pepe was a child, and without sin, some voice reminds you. God’s book does not mince words about what happens to a man who does what John has done, what a woman like you deserves.

Is today a judgment, then?

God doesn’t say.

And so you offer what you would have offered on the day you were prepared to find your brother dead.