Francisco Jose - Dusk

Birdcalls shrilled from his right. There would be wild boar and deer here — if only he had a chance to hunt, but he could do that only with a gun. “Tatang!” he continued screaming. Still no reply.

He should work out a system by which every man would have to look back occasionally to find out if the carts behind him were secure. He must tell them that at the next stop.

At the turn of the trail, he saw it — this python dangling from a tree, as thick as his own thigh, and it was coiled around the old man, who was no longer moving, his eyes closed as if in sleep. The reptile was tightening its coil, squeezing the life, the blood, out of Ba-ac. For a moment, Istak stood transfixed with fear. Like his brothers and all the menfolk in the caravan, he always had a bolo slung on his waist. He knew what had happened; the reptile had swung down from its coil around one of the low-hanging branches where it had waited, struck his father, then quickly strangled him. As soon as all the bones were crushed, it would swallow its victim slowly.

The python had seen him, but it did not move or relax its tenacious grip. With all the force in his weakened body and praying that he would not miss — God give this wounded arm strength! — Istak struck at the python’s body with his two hands. Immediately the coil loosened but the reptile was not dead; now it lashed around and again Istak struck at it. The shiny skin was now gashed with a deep wound, the white flesh opened, the blood started to spurt. The reptile fell on the ground in a heap, helpless, its great, slick body twisting, weaving. Again and again, with two hands Istak lashed at it, not caring where he hit it. Again and again, from each new and open wound blood spurted out. The reptile was now quivering, a dozen cuts on its long body, its head almost severed. Istak did not stop until it was still. Then he went to his father.

Ba-ac’s body was completely crushed. His bones sticking out of the shapeless shirt wet with blood. Istak sank on his knees and cried. A massive wave of weariness swept over him, drowning him.

An-no and the others found him staring blankly, the python dismembered at his feet, its innards spilled on the wet ground. They carried Ba-ac back to the cart, his body wrapped with the leaves of the anahau palm, which grew along the trail, and tied carefully with twine. They also brought back one of the carts and loaded the python onto it. Its meat was good — like chicken, the Ilokanos always said — and the women cut it up and salted it, for it would not do to dry it; the sun no longer shone regularly as in the season past. The rains were really upon them.

They buried Ba-ac at the edge of the forest. Ahead — perhaps a day or so, past the cogon-covered hills — were the plains of eastern Pangasinan at last. That night, after the prayer which he led, Istak asked his mother if they should go back to Cabugaw. “Father is gone, we need not flee from the Guardia anymore.”

“And if we returned, what will greet us? The ashes of our former homes? A land which we cannot till because it never belonged to us? I am old, my sons; it is you for whom I must live. I will go wherever you want to go.”

“I will go on,” An-no said. “Orang cannot go back. We can start a new life.”

“And you, Istak?”

Somehow, his mind was still cluttered with what Padre Jose had said, a tenuous hope that he could return to the kumbento , to the seminary in Vigan. Dalin had said that he was not a farmer and would never be one, but that he could help the farmer even if he himself never touched the handle of a plow.

“I don’t know, Mother,” he said.

“Ask Dalin,” his mother told him.

It was dusk and on a dry patch of ground they had already placed the stones which they used as stoves, and lighted the firewood. Dalin had gone to the creek down the clearing to fill the water jar. He followed her. She was crouched on the bank and had put sand inside the earthen jar and was scrubbing the insides to remove whatever moss had gathered there. Watching her, he knew that he would not leave her, that he would go with her wherever she wanted to go.

When she was through, she filled the jar with water and rolled a piece of cloth which she placed on her head. Istak helped her raise the jar and lift it to her head. Neatly balanced, she carried the jar without holding it although the path was slippery.

They walked up the low incline.

“Will you tell me where you want to go?” he asked.

She did not turn to him; it was difficult to do that with the jar so. “Wherever you want to,” she said.

“You must make the choice and I will follow.”

He could not see her smiling. “It is you, my husband, whom I will follow. Wherever you want to go,” she murmured.

“Tell me then, the valley?”

“I pray that we reach it with nothing setting us apart …”

“Nothing can set us apart now,” he assured her. “Tell me, what is it like there?”

“A plain as far as you can see,” she said solemnly. “And all the land you can clear. I will help you. I will work very hard beside you.”

They did not linger in the towns in the great plain. They kept to the narrow muddy roads. In places, the constant rain had washed away the roadbed and the foundations of stone jutted out, jolting the carts as the caravan labored over them. The new towns looked scraggly and unkempt, and they did not have the stone churches or the big houses of brick that lined the main streets of the Ilokos. It also seemed to them that the Guardia were far away. Among these poor settlers, there was not much booty.

In the near horizon, the Caraballos were a wall of deep blue. They would still have three days of travel before they reached those mountains.

They brought out the salted python meat to dry whenever there was sun; the white strips were laid on flat bamboo baskets balanced atop the carts. They continued to worry about food — they had barely enough to last them through one planting season. But there was always the tobacco they could sell freely now that the monopoly had been lifted.

They met other caravans, Pangasiñenses with woven baskets and salted fish to sell. They overtook farmers who were also looking for land. They were all in a hurry to get to their destinations before the rains really fell — the siyam-siyam that would transform the plain into a vast rimless ocean of brown and the giant river, the Agno, into a rampaging sea.

At night when they bivouacked, sometimes with other settlers, while cooking their meals or just drinking an occasional coconut bowl of basi , Istak came across wisps of his recent past. A squad of Guardia Civil was stalking the caravans, asking questions about those who had come from Cabugaw. He told his brothers and uncles to avoid the other settlers, not to talk with them unless necessary. They now camped by themselves, away from other groups, even though they had also come from the north.

In the mornings, when they started out, there was always something uplifting about the land, the cascade of light everywhere, the brilliant glaze on the leaves of bamboo, on the acacias. Even the razor grass seemed greener in the plain. Indeed, the rains had begun.

There was more variety in their food now. The saluyot shrubs had started growing in the fields and alongside the roads more catuday trees had bloomed, and they gathered the pink and white flowers and cooked them.

Once they encamped along a long, sandy stretch of land near a creek. The place was overgrown with tough ledda grass. Shortly before nightfall, the air was suddenly alive with huge insects. Some clung to Istak’s clothes while others just buzzed about. Dalin called happily from where she was cooking the rice. These are May beetles, she cried, and like a madwoman, she started flailing and catching them, storing them in a fish basket. She called to them to do as she did, and they set about catching as many as they could.