My Father’s Tragedy

It was one of those lean years of our lives. Our rice field was destroyed by locusts that came from the neighboring towns. When the locusts were gone, we planted string beans but a fire burned the whole plantation. My brothers went away because they got tired working for nothing. Mother and my sisters went from house to house, asking for something to do, but every family was plagued with some kind of disaster. The children walked in the streets looking for the fruit that fell to the ground from the acacia tree. The men hung on the fence around the market and watched the meat dealers hungrily. We were all suffering from lack of proper food.

But the professional gamblers had money. They sat in the fish house at the station and gave their orders aloud. The loafers and other bystanders watched them eat boiled rice and fried fish with silver spoons. They never used forks because the prongs stuck between their teeth. They always cut their lips and tongues with the knives, so they never asked for them If the waiter was new and he put the knives on the table, they looked at each other furtively and slipped them into their pockets. They washed their hands in one big wooden bowl of water and wiped their mouths with the leaves of the arbour trees that fell on the ground.

The rainy season was approaching. There were rumors of famine. The grass did not grow and our carabao became thin. Father’s fighting cock, Burick, was practically the only healthy thing in our household. Its father, Kanaway, had won a house for us some three years before, and Father had commanded me to give it the choicest rice. He took the soft-boiled eggs from the plate of my sister Marcela, who was sick with meningitis that year. He was preparing Burick for something big, but the great catastrophe came to our town. The peasants and most of the rich men spent their money on food. They had stopped going to the cockpit for fear of temptation; if they went atall, they just sat in the gallery and shouted at the top of their lungs. They went home with their heads down, thinking of the money they would have won.

It was during this impasse that Father sat every day in our backyard with his fighting cock. He would not go anywhere. He would do anything. He just sat there caressing Burick and exercising his legs . He sapt at his hackles and rubbed them,, looking far away with a big dream. When Mother came home with some food, he went to the granary and sat there till evening. Sometimes, he slept there with Burick, but at dawn the cock woke him up with its majestic crowing. He crept into the house and fumbled for the cold rice in the pot under the stove. Then, he put the cock in the pen and slept on the bench all day.

Mother was very patient. But the day came when she kicked him off the bench. He fell on the floor face down, looked up at her, and then resumed his sleep. Mother took my sister Francisca with her. They went from house to house in the neighbourhood, pounding rice for some people and hauling drinking water for others. They came home with their share in a big basket that Mother carried on her head.

Father wasstill sleeping on the bench when they arrived. Mother told my sister to cook some of the rice. She dipped a cup in the jar and splashed the cold water on Father’s face. He jumped up, looked at Mother with anger, and went to Burick’s pen. He gathered the cock in his arms and went down the porch. He sat on a log in the backyard and started caressing his fighting cock.

Mother went on with her washing. Francisca fed Marcela with some boiled rice. Father was still caressing Burick. Mother was mad at him.

“Is that all you can do?” she shouted at him.

“Why do you say that to me?” Father said. “I’m thinking of some ways to become rich.”

Mother threw a piece of wood at the cock. Father saw her in time. He ducked and covered the cock with his body. The wood struck him. It cut a hole at the base of his head. He got up and examined Burick. He acted as though the cock were the one that was hurt. He looked up at Mother and his face was pitiful.

“Why don’t you see what you are doing?” he said, hugging Burick.

“I would like to wring that cock’s neck,” mother said.

“That’s his fortune,” I said.

Mother looked sharply at me. “Shut up, idiot!” she said. “You are becoming more like your father every day.”

I watched her eyes move foolishly. I thought she would cry. She tucked her skirt between her legs and went on with her work. I ran down the ladder and went to the granary, where Father was treating the wound on his head. I held the cock for him.

“Take good care of it, son,” he said.

“Yes, Sir,” I said.

“Go to the river and exercise its legs. Come back right away. We are going to town.”

I ran down the street with the cock. avoiding the pigs and dogs that came in my way. I plunged into the water in my clothes and swam with Burick. I put some water in my mouth and blew it into his face. I ran back to our house slapping the water off my clothes. Father and I went to the cockpit.

It was Sunday, but there were many loafers an gamblers at the place. There were peasants and teachers. There was a strange man who had a black fighting cock. He had come from one of the neighboring towns to seek his fortune in our cockpit.

His name was Burcio. He held our cock above his head and closed one eye, looking sharply at Burick’s eyes. He put it on the ground and bent over it, pressing down the cock’s back with his hands. Burcio was testing Burick’s strength. The loafers and gamblers formed a ring around the, watching Burcio’s deft hands expertly moving around Burick.

Father also tested the cock of Burcio. He threw it in the air and watched it glide smoothly to the ground. He sparred with it. The black cock pecked at his legs and stopped to crow proudly for the bystanders. Father picked it up an spread its wings, feeling the tough hide beneath the feathers.

The bystanders knew that a fight was about to be matched. They counted the money in their pockets without showing it to their neighbours.They felt the edges of the coins with amazing swiftness and accuracy. Only a highly magnified amplifier could have recorded the tiny clink of the coins that fell between deft fingers. The caressing rustle of the paper money was inaudible. The peasants broke from the ring and hid behind the coconut trees. They unfolded their handkerchiefs and counted their money. They rolled the paper money in their hands and returned to the crowd. They waited for the final decision.

“Shall we make it this coming Sunday?” Burcio asked.

“It’s too soon for my Burick,” Father said. His hand moved mechanically into his pocket. But it was empty. He looked around at his cronies.

But two of the peasants caught Father’s arm and whispered something to him. They slipped some money in his hand and pushed him toward Burcio. He tried to estimate the amount of money in his hand by balling it hard. It was one of his many tricks with money. He knew right away that he had some twenty-peso bills. A light of hope appeared in his face.

“This coming Sunday’s all right,” he said.

All at once the men broke into wild confusion. Some went to Burcio with their money; others went to Father. They were not bettors, but investors. Their money would back up the cocks at the cockpit.

In the late afternoon the fight was arranged. We returned to our house with some hope. Father put Burick in the pen and told me to go to the fish ponds across the river. I ran down the road with mounting joy. I found a fish pond under a camachili tree. It was the favourite haunt of snails and shrimps. Then I went home.

Mother was cooking something good. I smelled it the moment I entered the gate. I rushed into the house and spilled some of the snails on the floor. Mother was at the stove. She was stirring the ladle in the boiling pot. Father was still sleeping on the bench. Francisca was feeding Marcela with hot soup. I put the snails and shrimps in a pot and sat on the bench.

Mother was cooking chicken with some bitter melons. I sat wondering where she got it. I knew that our poultry house in the village was empty. We had no poultry in town. Father opened his eyes when he heard the bubbling pot.

Mother put the rice on a big wooden platter and set it on the table. She filled our plates with chicken meat and ginger. Father got up suddenly and went to the table. Francisca sat b the stove. Father was reaching for the white meat in the platter when Mother slapped his hand away. he was saying grace. Then we put our legs under the table and started eating.

It was our first taste of chicken in a long time. Father filled his plate twice and ate very little rice. He usually ate more rice when we had only salted fish and some leaves of trees. We ate “grass” most of the time. Father tilted his plate and took the soup noisily, as though he were drinking wine. He put the empty chicken meat.

“It is good chicken,” he said.

Mother was very quiet. She put the breast on a plate and told Francisca to give ti to Marcela. She gave me some bitter melons. Father put his hand in the pot and fished out a drumstick.

“Where did you get this lovely chicken?” he asked.

“Where do you think I got it” Mother said.

The drumstick fell from his mouth. It rolled into the space between the bamboo splits and fell on the ground. Our dog snapped it up and ran away. Father’s face broke in great agony. He rushed outside the house. I could hear him running the toward the highway. My sister continued eating, but my appetite was gone.

“What are you doing, Son?” Mother said. “ Eat your chicken.”

The Bread of Saltby NVM Gonzalez (1958)

Usually I was in bed by ten and up by five and thus was ready for one more

day of my fourteenth year. Unless Grandmother had forgotten, the fifteen

centavos for the baker down Progreso Street - and how I enjoyed jingling

those coins in my pocket!- would be in the empty fruit jar in the cupboard. I

would remember then that rolls were what Grandmother wanted because

recently she had lost three molars. For young people like my cousins and myself,

she had always said that the kind called pan de sal ought to be quite all right.

The bread of salt! How did it get that name? From where did its flavor come,

through what secret action of flour and yeast? At the risk of being jostled from the

counter by early buyers, I would push my way into the shop so that I might watch

the men who, stripped to the waist, worked their long flat wooden spades in and

out of the glowing maw of the oven. Why did the bread come nut-brown and the

size of my little fist? And why did it have a pair of lips convulsed into a painful

frown? In the half light of the street, and hurrying, the paper bag pressed to my

chest, I felt my curiosity a little gratified by the oven-fresh warmth of the bread I

was proudly bringing home for breakfast.

Well I knew how Grandmother would not mind if I nibbled away at one piece;

perhaps, I might even eat two, to be charged later against my share at the table.

But that would be betraying a trust; and so, indeed, I kept my purchase intact. To

guard it from harm, I watched my steps and avoided the dark street corners.

For my reward, I had only to look in the direction of the sea wall and the fifty

yards or so of riverbed beyond it, where an old Spaniard's house stood. At low

tide, when the bed was dry and the rocks glinted with broken bottles, the stone

fence of the Spaniard's compound set off the house as if it were a castle. Sunrise

brought a wash of silver upon the roofs of the laundry and garden sheds which

had been built low and close to the fence. On dull mornings the light dripped from

the bamboo screen which covered the veranda and hung some four or five yards

from the ground. Unless it was August, when the damp, northeast monsoon had

to be kept away from the rooms, three servants raised the screen promptly at

six-thirty until it was completely hidden under the veranda eaves. From the sound

of the pulleys, I knew it was time to set out for school.

It was in his service, as a coconut plantation overseer, that Grandfather had

spent the last thirty years of his life. Grandmother had been widowed three years

now. I often wondered whether I was being depended upon to spend the years

ahead in the service of this great house. One day I learned that Aida, a

classmate in high school, was the old Spaniard's niece. All my doubts disappeared. It was as if, before his death, Grandfather had spoken to me about her, concealing the seriousness of the matter by putting it over as a joke. If now I kept true to the virtues, she would step out of her bedroom ostensibly to say

Good Morning to her uncle. Her real purpose, I knew, was to reveal thus her assent to my desire. On quiet mornings I imagined the patter of her shoes upon the wooden veranda floor as a further sign, and I would hurry off to school, taking the route she had

fixed for me past the post office, the town plaza and the church, the health center east of the plaza, and at last the school grounds. I asked myself whether I would try to walk with her and decided it would be the height of rudeness. Enough that in her blue skirt and white middy she would be half a block ahead and, from that distance, perhaps throw a glance in my direction, to bestow upon my heart a deserved and abundant blessing. I believed it was but right that, in some such

way as this, her mission in my life was disguised. Her name, I was to learn many years later, was a convenient mnemonic for the qualities to which argument might aspire. But in those days it was a living voice. "Oh that you might be worthy of uttering me," it said. And how I endeavored to

build my body so that I might live long to honor her. With every victory at singles

at the handball court the game was then the craze at school -- I could feel my body glow in the sun as though it had instantly been cast in bronze. I guarded my mind and did not let my wits go astray. In class I would not allow a lesson to pass unmastered. Our English teacher could put no question before us that did not

have a ready answer in my head. One day he read Robert Louis Stevenson's

The Sire de Maletroit's Door, and we were so enthralled that our breaths

trembled. I knew then that somewhere, sometime in the not too improbable

future, a benign old man with a lantern in his hand would also detain me in a

secret room, and there daybreak would find me thrilled by the sudden certainty

that I had won Aida's hand.

It was perhaps on my violin that her name wrought such a tender spell. Maestro

Antonino remarked the dexterity of my stubby fingers. Quickly I raced through

Alard-until I had all but committed two thirds of the book to memory. My short,

brown arm learned at last to draw the bow with grace. Sometimes, when

practising my scales in the early evening, I wondered if the sea wind carrying the

straggling notes across the pebbled river did not transform them into Schubert's

"Serenade."

At last Mr. Custodio, who was in charge of our school orchestra, became aware

of my progress. He moved me from second to first violin. During the

Thanksgiving Day program he bade me render a number, complete with pizzicati

and harmonics.

"Another Vallejo! Our own Albert Spalding!" I heard from the front row.

Aida, I thought, would be in the audience. I looked around quickly but could not

see her. As I retired to my place in the orchestra I heard Pete Saez, the

trombone player, call my name.

"You must join my band," he said. "Look, we'll have many engagements soon. It'll

be vacation time."

Pete pressed my arm. He had for some time now been asking me to join the

Minviluz Orchestra, his private band. All I had been able to tell him was that I had

my schoolwork to mind. He was twenty-two. I was perhaps too young to be going

around with him. He earned his school fees and supported his mother hiring out

his band at least three or four times a month. He now said:

"Tomorrow we play at the funeral of a Chinese-four to six in the afternoon; in the

evening, judge Roldan's silver wedding anniversary; Sunday, the municipal

dance."

My head began to whirl. On the stage, in front of us, the principal had begun a

speech about America. Nothing he could say about the Pilgrim Fathers and the

American custom of feasting on turkey seemed interesting. I thought of the

money I would earn. For several days now I had but one wish, to buy a box of

linen stationery. At night when the house was quiet I would fill the sheets with

words that would tell Aida how much I adored her. One of these mornings,

perhaps before school closed for the holidays, I would borrow her algebra book

and there, upon a good pageful of equations, there I would slip my message,

tenderly pressing the leaves of the book. She would perhaps never write back.

Neither by post nor by hand would a reply reach me. But no matter; it would be a

silence full of voices.

That night I dreamed I had returned from a tour of the world's music centers; the

newspapers of Manila had been generous with praise. I saw my picture on the

cover of a magazine. A writer had described how, many years ago, I used to

trudge the streets of Buenavista with my violin in a battered black cardboard

case. In New York, he reported, a millionaire had offered me a Stradivarius violin,

with a card that bore the inscription: "In admiration of a genius your own people

must surely be proud of." I dreamed I spent a weekend at the millionaire's

country house by the Hudson. A young girl in a blue skirt and white middy

clapped her lily-white hands and, her voice trembling, cried "Bravo!"

What people now observed at home was the diligence with which I attended to

my violin lessons. My aunt, who had come from the farm to join her children for

the holidays, brought with her a maidservant, and to the poor girl was given the

chore of taking the money to the baker's for rolls and pan de sal. I realized at

once that it would be no longer becoming on my part to make these morning trips

to the baker's. I could not thank my aunt enough.

I began to chafe on being given other errands. Suspecting my violin to be the

excuse, my aunt remarked:

"What do you want to be a musician for? At parties, musicians always eat last."

Perhaps, I said to myself, she was thinking of a pack of dogs scrambling for

scraps tossed over the fence by some careless kitchen maid. She was the sort

you could depend on to say such vulgar things. For that reason, I thought, she

ought not to be taken seriously at all.

But the remark hurt me. Although Grandmother had counseled me kindly to mind

my work at school, I went again and again to Pete Saez's house for rehearsals.

She had demanded that I deposit with her my earnings; I had felt too weak to

refuse. Secretly, I counted the money and decided not to ask for it until I had

enough with which to buy a brooch. Why this time I wanted to give Aida a brooch,

I didn't know. But I had set my heart on it. I searched the downtown shops. The

Chinese clerks, seeing me so young, were annoyed when I inquired about prices.

At last the Christmas season began. I had not counted on Aida's leaving home,

and remembering that her parents lived in Badajoz, my torment was almost

unbearable. Not once had I tried to tell her of my love. My letters had remained

unwritten, and the algebra book unborrowed. There was still the brooch to find,

but I could not decide on the sort of brooch I really wanted. And the money, in

any case, was in Grandmother's purse, which smelled of "Tiger Balm." I grew

somewhat feverish as our class Christmas program drew near. Finally it came; it

was a warm December afternoon. I decided to leave the room when our English

teacher announced that members of the class might exchange gifts. I felt

fortunate; Pete was at the door, beckoning to me. We walked out to the porch

where, Pete said, he would tell me a secret.

It was about an asalto the next Sunday which the Buenavista Women's Club

wished to give Don Esteban's daughters, Josefina and Alicia, who were arriving

on the morning steamer from Manila. The spinsters were much loved by the

ladies. Years ago, when they were younger, these ladies studied solfeggio with

Josefina and the piano and harp with Alicia. As Pete told me all this, his lips

ash-gray from practising all morning on his trombone, I saw in my mind the

sisters in their silk dresses, shuffling off to church for theevening benediction.

They were very devout, and the Buenavista ladies admired that. I had almost

forgotten that they were twins and, despite their age, often dressed alike. In

low-bosomed voile bodices and white summer hats, I remembered, the pair had

attended Grandfather's funeral, at old Don Esteban's behest. I wondered how

successful they had been in Manila during the past three years in the matter of

finding suitable husbands.

"This party will be a complete surprise," Pete said, looking around the porch as if

to swear me to secrecy. "They've hired our band."

I joined my classmates in the room, greeting everyone with a Merry Christmas

jollier than that of the others. When I saw Aida in one corner unwrapping

something two girls had given her, I found the boldness to greet her also.

"Merry Christmas," I said in English, as a hairbrush and a powder case emerged

from the fancy wrapping. It seemed to me rather apt that such gifts went to her.

Already several girls were gathered around Aida. Their eyes glowed with envy, it

seemed to me, for those fair cheeks and the bobbed dark-brown hair which

lineage had denied them.

I was too dumbstruck by my own meanness to hear exactly what Aida said in

answer to my greeting. But I recovered shortly and asked:

"Will you be away during the vacation?"

"No, I'll be staying here," she said. When she added that her cousins were

arriving and that a big party in their honor was being planned, I remarked:

"So you know all about it?" I felt I had to explain that the party was meant to be a

surprise, an asalto.

And now it would be nothing of the kind, really. The women's club matrons would

hustle about, disguising their scurrying around for cakes and candies as for some

baptismal party or other. In the end, the Rivas sisters would outdo them. Boxes

of meringues, bonbons, ladyfingers, and cinnamon buns that only the Swiss

bakers in Manila could make were perhaps coming on the boat with them. I

imagined a table glimmering with long-stemmed punch glasses; enthroned in that

array would be a huge brick-red bowl of gleaming china with golden flowers

around the brim. The local matrons, however hard they tried, however sincere

their efforts, were bound to fail in their aspiration to rise to the level of Don

Esteban's daughters. Perhaps, I thought, Aida knew all this. And that I should

share in a foreknowledge of the matrons' hopes was a matter beyond love. Aida

and I could laugh together with the gods.

At seven, on the appointed evening, our small band gathered quietly at the gate

of Don Esteban's house, and when the ladies arrived in their heavy shawls and

trim panuelo, twittering with excitement, we were commanded to play the Poet

and Peasant overture. As Pete directed the band, his eyes glowed with pride for

his having been part of the big event. The multicolored lights that the old

Spaniard's gardeners had strung along the vine-covered fence were switched on,

and the women remarked that Don Esteban's daughters might have made some

preparations after all. Pete hid his face from the glare. If the women felt let down,

they did not show it.

The overture shuffled along to its climax while five men in white shirts bore huge

boxes of goods into the house. I recognized one of the bakers in spite of the

uniform. A chorus of confused greetings, and the women trooped into the house;

and before we had settled in the sala to play "A Basket of Roses," the heavy

damask curtains at the far end of the room were drawn and a long table richly

spread was revealed under the chandeliers. I remembered that, in our haste to

be on hand for the asalto, Pete and I had discouraged the members of the band

from taking their suppers.

"You've done us a great honor!" Josefina, the more buxom of the twins, greeted

the ladies.

"Oh, but you have not allowed us to take you by surprise!" the ladies demurred in

a chorus.

There were sighs and further protestations amid a rustle of skirts and the glitter of

earrings. I saw Aida in a long, flowing white gown and wearing an arch of

sampaguita flowers on her hair. At her command, two servants brought out a

gleaming harp from the music room. Only the slightest scraping could be heard

because the servants were barefoot. As Aida directed them to place the

instrument near the seats we occupied, my heart leaped to my throat. Soon she

was lost among the guests, and we played "The Dance of the Glowworms." I

kept my eyes closed and held for as long as I could her radiant figure before me.

Alicia played on the harp and then, in answer to the deafening applause, she

offered an encore. Josefina sang afterward. Her voice, though a little husky,

fetched enormous sighs. For her encore, she gave "The Last Rose of Summer";

and the song brought back snatches of the years gone by. Memories of solfeggio

lessons eddied about us, as if there were rustling leaves scattered all over the

hall. Don Esteban appeared. Earlier, he had greeted the crowd handsomely,

twisting his mustache to hide a natural shyness before talkative women. He

stayed long enough to listen to the harp again, whispering in his rapture:

"Heavenly. Heavenly . . ."

By midnight, the merrymaking lagged. We played while the party gathered

around the great table at the end of the sala. My mind traveled across the seas to

the distant cities I had dreamed about. The sisters sailed among the ladies like

two great white liners amid a fleet of tugboats in a bay. Someone had

thoughtfully remembered-and at last Pete Saez signaled to us to put our

instruments away. We walked in single file across the hall, led by one of the

barefoot servants.

Behind us a couple of hoarse sopranos sang "La Paloma" to the accompaniment

of the harp, but I did not care to find out who they were. The sight of so much

silver and china confused me. There was more food before us than I had ever

imagined. I searched in my mind for the names of the dishes; but my ignorance

appalled me. I wondered what had happened to the boxes of food that the

Buenavista ladies had sent up earlier. In a silver bowl was something, I

discovered, that appeared like whole egg yolks that had been dipped in honey

and peppermint. The seven of us in the orchestra were all of one mind about the

feast; and so, confident that I was with friends, I allowed my covetousness to

have its sway and not only stuffed my mouth with this and that confection but

also wrapped up a quantity of those egg-yolk things in several sheets of napkin

paper. None of my companions had thought of doing the same, and it was with

some pride that I slipped the packet under my shirt. There, I knew, it would not

bulge.

"Have you eaten?"

I turned around. It was Aida. My bow tie seemed to tighten around my collar. I

mumbled something, I did not know what.

"If you wait a little while till they've gone, I'll wrap up a big package for you," she

added.

I brought a handkerchief to my mouth. I might have honored her solicitude

adequately and even relieved myself of any embarrassment; I could not quite

believe that she had seen me, and yet I was sure that she knew what I had done,

and I felt all ardor for her gone from me entirely.

I walked away to the nearest door, praying that the damask curtains might hide

me in my shame. The door gave on to the veranda, where once my love had trod

on sunbeams. Outside it was dark, and a faint wind was singing in the harbor.

With the napkin balled up in my hand, I flung out my arm to scatter the egg-yolk

things in the dark. I waited for the soft sound of their fall on the garden-shed roof.

Instead, I heard a spatter in the rising night-tide beyond the stone fence. Farther

away glimmered the light from Grandmother's window, calling me home.

But the party broke up at one or thereabouts. We walked away with our

instruments after the matrons were done with their interminable good-byes.

Then, to the tune of "Joy to the World," we pulled the Progreso Street

shopkeepers out of their beds. The Chinese merchants were especially

generous. When Pete divided our collection under a street lamp, there was

already a little glow of daybreak.

He walked with me part of the way home. We stopped at the baker's when I told

him that I wanted to buy with my own money some bread to eat on the way to

Grandmother's house at the edge of the sea wall. He laughed, thinking it strange

that I should be hungry. We found ourselves alone at the counter; and we

watched the bakery assistants at work until our bodies grew warm from the oven

across the door. It was not quite five, and the bread was not yet ready.

How My Brother Leon Brought Home A Wife(American Colonial Literature)By Manuel E. Arguilla

She stepped down from the carretela of Ca Celin with a quick, delicate grace. She was lovely. SHe was tall. She looked up to my brother with a smile, and her forehead was on a level with his mouth.

"You are Baldo," she said and placed her hand lightly on my shoulder. Her nails were long, but they were not painted. She was fragrant like a morning when papayas are in bloom. And a small dimple appeared momently high on her right cheek. "And this is Labang of whom I have heard so much." She held the wrist of one hand with the other and looked at Labang, and Labang never stopped chewing his cud. He swallowed and brought up to his mouth more cud and the sound of his insides was like a drum.

I laid a hand on Labang's massive neck and said to her: "You may scratch his forehead now."

She hesitated and I saw that her eyes were on the long, curving horns. But she came and touched Labang's forehead with her long fingers, and Labang never stopped chewing his cud except that his big eyes half closed. And by and by she was scratching his forehead very daintily.

My brother Leon put down the two trunks on the grassy side of the road. He paid Ca Celin twice the usual fare from the station to the edge of Nagrebcan. Then he was standing beside us, and she turned to him eagerly. I watched Ca Celin, where he stood in front of his horse, and he ran his fingers through its forelock and could not keep his eyes away from her.

"Maria---" my brother Leon said.

He did not say Maring. He did not say Mayang. I knew then that he had always called her Maria and that to us all she would be Maria; and in my mind I said 'Maria' and it was a beautiful name.

"Yes, Noel."

Now where did she get that name? I pondered the matter quietly to myself, thinking Father might not like it. But it was only the name of my brother Leon said backward and it sounded much better that way.

"There is Nagrebcan, Maria," my brother Leon said, gesturing widely toward the west.

She moved close to him and slipped her arm through his. And after a while she said quietly.

"You love Nagrebcan, don't you, Noel?"

Ca Celin drove away hi-yi-ing to his horse loudly. At the bend of the camino real where the big duhat tree grew, he rattled the handle of his braided rattan whip against the spokes of the wheel.

We stood alone on the roadside.

The sun was in our eyes, for it was dipping into the bright sea. The sky was wide and deep and very blue above us: but along the saw-tooth rim of the Katayaghan hills to the southwest flamed huge masses of clouds. Before us the fields swam in a golden haze through which floated big purple and red and yellow bubbles when I looked at the sinking sun. Labang's white coat, which I had wshed and brushed that morning with coconut husk, glistened like beaten cotton under the lamplight and his horns appeared tipped with fire.

He faced the sun and from his mouth came a call so loud and vibrant that the earth seemed to tremble underfoot. And far away in the middle of the field a cow lowed softly in answer.

"Hitch him to the cart, Baldo," my brother Leon said, laughing, and she laughed with him a big uncertainly, and I saw that he had put his arm around her shoulders.

"Why does he make that sound?" she asked. "I have never heard the like of it."

"There is not another like it," my brother Leon said. "I have yet to hear another bull call like Labang. In all the world there is no other bull like him."

She was smiling at him, and I stopped in the act of tying the sinta across Labang's neck to the opposite end of the yoke, because her teeth were very white, her eyes were so full of laughter, and there was the small dimple high up on her right cheek.

"If you continue to talk about him like that, either I shall fall in love with him or become greatly jealous."

My brother Leon laughed and she laughed and they looked at each other and it seemed to me there was a world of laughter between them and in them.

I climbed into the cart over the wheel and Labang would have bolted, for he was always like that, but I kept a firm hold on his rope. He was restless and would not stand still, so that my brother Leon had to say "Labang" several times. When he was quiet again, my brother Leon lifted the trunks into the cart, placing the smaller on top.

She looked down once at her high-heeled shoes, then she gave her left hand to my brother Leon, placed a foot on the hub of the wheel, and in one breath she had swung up into the cart. Oh, the fragrance of her. But Labang was fairly dancing with impatience and it was all I could do to keep him from running away.

"Give me the rope, Baldo," my brother Leon said. "Maria, sit down on the hay and hold on to anything." Then he put a foot on the left shaft and that instand labang leaped forward. My brother Leon laughed as he drew himself up to the top of the side of the cart and made the slack of the rope hiss above the back of labang. The wind whistled against my cheeks and the rattling of the wheels on the pebbly road echoed in my ears.

She sat up straight on the bottom of the cart, legs bent togther to one side, her skirts spread over them so that only the toes and heels of her shoes were visible. her eyes were on my brother Leon's back; I saw the wind on her hair. When Labang slowed down, my brother Leon handed to me the rope. I knelt on the straw inside the cart and pulled on the rope until Labang was merely shuffling along, then I made him turn around.

"What is it you have forgotten now, Baldo?" my brother Leon said.

I did not say anything but tickled with my fingers the rump of Labang; and away we went---back to where I had unhitched and waited for them. The sun had sunk and down from the wooded sides of the Katayaghan hills shadows were stealing into the fields. High up overhead the sky burned with many slow fires.

When I sent Labang down the deep cut that would take us to the dry bed of the Waig which could be used as a path to our place during the dry season, my brother Leon laid a hand on my shoulder and said sternly:

"Who told you to drive through the fields tonight?"

His hand was heavy on my shoulder, but I did not look at him or utter a word until we were on the rocky bottom of the Waig.

"Baldo, you fool, answer me before I lay the rope of Labang on you. Why do you follow the Wait instead of the camino real?"

His fingers bit into my shoulder.

"Father, he told me to follow the Waig tonight, Manong."

Swiftly, his hand fell away from my shoulder and he reached for the rope of Labang. Then my brother Leon laughed, and he sat back, and laughing still, he said:

"And I suppose Father also told you to hitch Labang to the cart and meet us with him instead of with Castano and the calesa."

Without waiting for me to answer, he turned to her and said, "Maria, why do you think Father should do that, now?" He laughed and added, "Have you ever seen so many stars before?"

I looked back and they were sitting side by side, leaning against the trunks, hands clasped across knees. Seemingly, but a man's height above the tops of the steep banks of the Wait, hung the stars. But in the deep gorge the shadows had fallen heavily, and even the white of Labang's coat was merely a dim, grayish blur. Crickets chirped from their homes in the cracks in the banks. The thick, unpleasant smell of dangla bushes and cooling sun-heated earth mingled with the clean, sharp scent of arrais roots exposed to the night air and of the hay inside the cart.

"Look, Noel, yonder is our star!" Deep surprise and gladness were in her voice. Very low in the west, almost touching the ragged edge of the bank, was the star, the biggest and brightest in the sky.

"I have been looking at it," my brother Leon said. "Do you remember how I would tell you that when you want to see stars you must come to Nagrebcan?"

"Yes, Noel," she said. "Look at it," she murmured, half to herself. "It is so many times bigger and brighter than it was at Ermita beach."

"The air here is clean, free of dust and smoke."

"So it is, Noel," she said, drawing a long breath.

"Making fun of me, Maria?"

She laughed then and they laughed together and she took my brother Leon's hand and put it against her face.

I stopped Labang, climbed down, and lighted the lantern that hung from the cart between the wheels.

"Good boy, Baldo," my brother Leon said as I climbed back into the cart, and my heart sant.

Now the shadows took fright and did not crowd so near. Clumps of andadasi and arrais flashed into view and quickly disappeared as we passed by. Ahead, the elongated shadow of Labang bobbled up and down and swayed drunkenly from side to side, for the lantern rocked jerkily with the cart.

"Have we far to go yet, Noel?" she asked.

"Ask Baldo," my brother Leon said, "we have been neglecting him."

"I am asking you, Baldo," she said.

Without looking back, I answered, picking my words slowly:

"Soon we will get out of the Wait and pass into the fields. After the fields is home---Manong."

"So near already."

I did not say anything more because I did not know what to make of the tone of her voice as she said her last words. All the laughter seemed to have gone out of her. I waited for my brother Leon to say something, but he was not saying anything. Suddenly he broke out into song and the song was 'Sky Sown with Stars'---the same that he and Father sang when we cut hay in the fields at night before he went away to study. He must have taught her the song because she joined him, and her voice flowed into his like a gentle stream meeting a stronger one. And each time the wheels encountered a big rock, her voice would catch in her throat, but my brother Leon would sing on, until, laughing softly, she would join him again.

Then we were climbing out into the fields, and through the spokes of the wheels the light of the lantern mocked the shadows. Labang quickened his steps. The jolting became more frequent and painful as we crossed the low dikes.

"But it is so very wide here," she said. The light of the stars broke and scattered the darkness so that one could see far on every side, though indistinctly.

"You miss the houses, and the cars, and the people and the noise, don't you?" My brother Leon stopped singing.

"Yes, but in a different way. I am glad they are not here."

With difficulty I turned Labang to the left, for he wanted to go straight on. He was breathing hard, but I knew he was more thirsty than tired. In a little while we drope up the grassy side onto the camino real.

"---you see," my brother Leon was explaining, "the camino real curves around the foot of the Katayaghan hills and passes by our house. We drove through the fields because---but I'll be asking Father as soon as we get home."

"Noel," she said.

"Yes, Maria."

"I am afraid. He may not like me."

"Does that worry you still, Maria?" my brother Leon said. "From the way you talk, he might be an ogre, for all the world. Except when his leg that was wounded in the Revolution is troubling him, Father is the mildest-tempered, gentlest man I know."

We came to the house of Lacay Julian and I spoke to Labang loudly, but Moning did not come to the window, so I surmised she must be eating with the rest of her family. And I thought of the food being made ready at home and my mouth watered. We met the twins, Urong and Celin, and I said "Hoy!" calling them by name. And they shouted back and asked if my brother Leon and his wife were with me. And my brother Leon shouted to them and then told me to make Labang run; their answers were lost in the noise of the wheels.

I stopped labang on the road before our house and would have gotten down but my brother Leon took the rope and told me to stay in the cart. He turned Labang into the open gate and we dashed into our yard. I thought we would crash into the camachile tree, but my brother Leon reined in Labang in time. There was light downstairs in the kitchen, and Mother stood in the doorway, and I could see her smiling shyly. My brother Leon was helping Maria over the wheel. The first words that fell from his lips after he had kissed Mother's hand were:

"Father... where is he?"

"He is in his room upstairs," Mother said, her face becoming serious. "His leg is bothering him again."

I did not hear anything more because I had to go back to the cart to unhitch Labang. But I hardly tied him under the barn when I heard Father calling me. I met my brother Leon going to bring up the trunks. As I passed through the kitchen, there were Mother and my sister Aurelia and Maria and it seemed to me they were crying, all of them.

There was no light in Father's room. There was no movement. He sat in the big armchair by the western window, and a star shone directly through it. He was smoking, but he removed the roll of tobacco from his mouth when he saw me. He laid it carefully on the windowsill before speaking.

"Did you meet anybody on the way?" he asked.

"No, Father," I said. "Nobody passes through the Waig at night."

He reached for his roll of tobacco and hithced himself up in the chair.

"She is very beautiful, Father."

"Was she afraid of Labang?" My father had not raised his voice, but the room seemed to resound with it. And again I saw her eyes on the long curving horns and the arm of my brother Leon around her shoulders.

"No, Father, she was not afraid."

"On the way---"

"She looked at the stars, Father. And Manong Leon sang."

"What did he sing?"

"---Sky Sown with Stars... She sang with him."

He was silent again. I could hear the low voices of Mother and my sister Aurelia downstairs. There was also the voice of my brother Leon, and I thought that Father's voice must have been like it when Father was young. He had laid the roll of tobacco on the windowsill once more. I watched the smoke waver faintly upward from the lighted end and vanish slowly into the night outside.

The door opened and my brother Leon and Maria came in.

"Have you watered Labang?" Father spoke to me.

I told him that Labang was resting yet under the barn.

"It is time you watered him, my son," my father said.

I looked at Maria and she was lovely. She was tall. Beside my brother Leon, she was tall and very still. Then I went out, and in the darkened hall the fragrance of her was like a morning when papayas are in bloom.