A Stream at Dalton Pass
Edilberto K. Tiempo
Manuel Rueda, a Filipino sergeant in the 74th American Infantry
Division that was just then fighting for the vital mountain pass
commanding Central Luzon and Northern Luzon, was hugging his
Garand against the mossy bank of the stream. He had taken off
his shoes to dip his feet in the cool mountain water. All around
him were the tall gnarled jungle trees but he knew there was no
safety even here. It was usually during a heavy barrage that
unseen Japanese snipers got busy.
“If I get out of this,” he said aloud to himself, “if—“ He ended
there, indefinite, because abruptly the dream in the deep silent
interval was choked by nightmarish music: snaredrum machine
gun fire not too far away, and in between, the percussive boom
of artillery. This was Tchaikowsky's Overture 1945. He should be
here, Tchaikowsky, to synthesize the star-spangled banner and
the Philippine national anthem and the dying banzai. High for the
throat the spangling stars were fluid on the lower neck of the
violins, land of the morning was not too spirited for the clarinets,
and the bloody banzai would be snuffed out in the finale by the
thunder of General Dalton's howitzers. No, not Dalton's anymore,
but a general two days dead half a kilometer away could be very
close. And this was the puzzle, how the whole war, even the
gunfire, could get so impersonal, and at the same time so
perishingly close. If I get out of Tchaikowsky's 1945. . . .
The barrage stopped and he relaxed. The coolness of the water
flowed to his body. He laid his gun on the bank and stripped
himself. The stream was only knee-deep but behind a huge
boulder he found a trough-like section hollowed out of the rock.
It was a little deeper and he immersed himself, holding his breath
for as long as he could to take in the refreshing coolness. He
turned on his back and lay there exposing only his head. This was
something after the battering of Tchaikowsky's 1945 Overture.
He could imagine 1812—a French peasant from Navarre
dreaming of his fragrant summer orchard as he lay in Russian
snow. But this was not Russian snow, it was cool water from
mountain stream. And this was his land again.
It was strange coming home this way, following long broken arcs
halfway around the world to this disputed mountain pass,
strange to be only an hour on a crow's back to the little town
where he was born. San Francisco, New Caledonia, Buna,
Hollandia. Bloody islands to the north, and by the time he got to
Leyte he was still seven hundred kilometers to this mountain
pass. At each stop the dream became more keen and compelling.
Because the dream had to do about rest and a home, rest in a
home he would build, a rambling one-and-a-half bungalow in the
A semiautomatic rifle
Knobbly, rough, and twisted,
especially with age
Extinguish or put a sudden
end to
The action of striking
repeatedly with hard blows
Very sharp
middle of an orchard. Coffee trees, avocado, papayas, citrus of all
kinds, mango, tamarind, guava, tampoy, balimbing, nangka,
anonas, cerale. In the September dusk the rich fragrance of the
coffee flowers reaching in through the east window. A twig
tapping against the glass shutter. Outside the edge of the orchard
one hundred twenty hectares of rice land, and good irrigation
from Magat bringing in two crops of rice a year.
After seventeen years in the States he was home and had only
the dream, nothing to show to his people when he went back to
the little town. No degree—his father had sold one big rice land
so he might come home with a degree. Two years of college
wouldn't mean anything to his father who had his own dream of
hanging up his son's framed diploma in the living room for all to
see. One job after another, that was how it was in the States,
mostly waiting on tables and spending one month's earning for a
few nights at some joint with dim lights and smoky rooms and a
sad voice—sometimes enough left over for a record or two of
Brahms or Beethoven. The records were good for the nerves, you
sat in a world of twilight darkness and walled yourself up against
emptiness. You saw the emptiness everywhere in the cities. Palm
Springs, the winter resort, became the pivot of his wanderings.
From October to March he waited on millionaires, prima donnas,
movie people who had run away from the burden of their lives
apparently for renewal in the miracle of sunshine and the
blossoms springing from an arid land in winter time. Perhaps
there was renewal but the emptiness was also there. His earnings
for six mouths, mostly tips from people with six-seven figure
bank accounts, took care of his needs for the rest of the year and
he went wherever he wanted, because Palm Springs between
April and September was a parched desert again.
Then suddenly he had enough of cities and living off people's
crumbs. This was a good way to come home, a good excuse for
returning empty-handed. He was coming home not with
dishonor, in a soldier's uniform.
If I could get out of this. . . .
A little distance from the boundary of his father's land stretched
the foothills of the Sierra Madre. After harvests, all the hunting
he could want, all the wild boar, all the dear. . . .
He got out of the water and stood on the bank and rubbed the
drops of water from his body with his hands.
A rifle shot pinged and a bullet ricocheted from the boulder to his
left. Another shot just as he ducked behind a rock. This is it, he
thought. After Buna and Leyte he should get used to it. But it was
always there, the fear like a ball rolling up and down in the
marrow of his spine. This was more terrifying than the
anonymous machine gun barrage cracking sporadically across the
ridge. Here you were singled out, someone's bullet marked you
out. And seldom a fighting chance, nothing like a branch moving
The soft glowing light form the
sky when the sun is below the
horizon
The central point
Dried out with heat
A small fragment of bread,
cake, or cracker
Rebound one or more times
off a surface
or even the general direction of this sniper's fire. So it was just
wait like a trapped rat. Wait behind your rock and pray for a
break. Since his first jungle in New Guinea he had belittled
himself—he couldn't call it praying, this undignified haggling with
an invisible power. Strange, could the God he had not really
known or understood or just vaguely through incense smoke and
a lifted chalice—or through the miraculous imprint of three faces
on the cloth held by the wooden figure of Veronica who had
wiped the bloodied face of the Christ dragging a cross to
Golgotha—could that God be also the God the regimental
chaplain said was a buddy? No, he bargained with a fearful Being
whose dice were loaded, whom he also addressed as God for lack
of another name, a dark hovering Presence who seemed most of
the time to be siding with the enemy. He must confront him, too,
him and his elusive and capricious will.
For long minutes he crouched behind the rock, aware of the
finger on the unseen gun, of the man waiting with alerted nerves
in some concealing foliage. He knew he should be doing
something about his awkward position, any time the man might
open fire on him. But imperative above all else was to keep still.
To his right, a dozen feet away, was a rock shelf that could give
him good cover. He slid sideward to reach out for his clothes and
shoes by the water's edge.
A sudden rifle fire and a bullet cracked the rock into fragments
two feet above his head.
Almost simultaneously a tommy burst out nearby and a Japanese
cry grated among the forest trees. Thanks, Joe, he. said to the
tommy.
WHEN THE WAR was over, Manuel Rueda asked for separation
from the U.S. Army in Manila. Then he got his share of his
father's land.
Only six of the one hundred twenty hectares of rice land could be
cultivated for lack of work animals. The Japanese had slaughtered
the carabaos for food. The six hectares were a little too big for
the two carabaos which were all the work animals he could
afford. It yielded surprisingly more than he had expected. He
talked to the one congressman of the province, a third cousin of
his, about an irrigation project in Nueva Vizcaya to produce two
crops in a year. Yes, the congressman promised, he would see
about it. The following year the congressman reported that
irrigation works were given priority in bigger rice areas like
Central Luzon and Panay. Vizcaya had to wait. Meantime there
was talk of forming a Rehabilitation Finance Corporation to help
farmers through government loans, but it would take a year or
maybe two before the corporation could really start lending
money, especially for small distant towns like Bayombong.
Wait, wait. You have waited seventeen years to come home. You
can wait.
Dispute or bargain persistently
A large cup or goblet, typically
used for drinking wine
A representative of a religious
tradition attached to a secular
institution such as prison
Given to sudden and
unaccountable changes of
mood or behavior
He cleared three hectares for his orchard, and more to follow in
time. The land was flat, and so he made a deep p around and
across it to keep it dry during the rainy season. He dug a well for
the plants and for the house. It was a small house he built in the
middle of the orchard, thinking to let it ramble when he could get
money—for he was running low.
For three years the house bleached in the sun in the hot months
because the first trees that could have given shade were slow to
grow; in the rainy days the ditches failed to drain away the water
from the paddies and in many places the orchard was flooded.
Still, there were other things to keep the land from lying idle
while waiting for more carabaos and for the government to start
irrigation: hogs and poultry, chicken coops, fences, truck
gardening.
Often he paused during the repair of a washed-out bank to look
at the misty ranges of the Sierra Madre where he fought his last
battle, and at these moments he would assess himself again,
what he had done against what he had hoped to do. A
comfortable house in the midst of a fruiting orchard, a rattan
hammock stretched between two trees, bees among the fragrant
coffee flowers, a steaming cup of coffee on a two-inch-thick table
top. The table had a place in the assessment because it was made
from the cross-section of the stump of a huge narra tree,
probably half thousand years old, which hís father had left to
him. Beyond the orchard were the houses of his tenants, a dozen
families, one tenant for every ten hectares, each one getting a
decent enough share from honest work and able to send the
children to school. A benevolent landlord, different from others
in a land where the tenant was no better treated than a beast of
burden. Once in a while a hunting trip to the Sierra Madre with
some of his men, going as far as the stream of Dalton Pass.
The past summer he had hunted in a forest five ridges before
Dalton Pass. He had a rather strange hunting there. He and two
of his tenants were resting one noon beside a stream wider than
the one at the Pass. He was leaning against a rock and feeling
good after a lunch of canned pork and beans and rice. His
companions lay on bent fern fronds by the bank, their eyes
closed against the spotty sunlight through the leaves. After going
up and down the deep declivities for one and one-half days they
felt very weary; it was not so much from exhaustion as from
seeing nothing but the day-old tracks of a wild boar. The three of
them shared only one shotgun, a double-barreled one which
Manuel carried together with his knapsack. The pack contained
among a few other items, a light poncho tent. The two men
carried most of their provisions for a three-day trip. In the matter
of provisions, he was known to be the first and only hunter who
deposited canned goods wrapped in oilcloth along the hunting
trails. At first people thought this queer but they quickly saw the
Made white or much lighter
A narrow channel dug in the
ground for drainage
State of being foggy
A long narrow hilltop,
mountain range, or watershed
A bag with shoulder straps
and carried on the back
sense of it. For instance when a group was lucky and bagged a
couple of stags or more there was no sense lugging back any
uneaten provisions all the way home.
While his companions slept Manuel eased himself against the
concave side of the rock. The tin cup of coffee after lunch had
kept him from drowsing; in fact it gave him a sharp awareness of
even the small movements and sights and sounds and smells. At
first it was the gurgle of the amber-colored water reflecting the
leaves high above it; the flow arched smoothly, a Iiving thing,
over a rock and into a tiny pool formed by a rugged semicircular
boulder three feet below him. It was a muted happy sound,
nothing like it in a musical instrument or combination of
instruments, a sound strictly from a jungle pool. These were the
rewards of the hunt and no matter if you failed to get a deer, you
had looked for him in the mornings, noons, and afternoons of a
heightened world. The jungle was a prism of sensibilities if one
only bothered to pay attention. As he listened to the water, he
also smelled the woven coconut leaves that had wrapped up the
rice into fist-size lumps for cooking. There was something
fragrant about the leaves and the rice cooked inside them, and
the rice cooked this way kept for as long as three days. The boatshaped pattern of the weave was sliced clean diagonally. As he
bent to examine it, he saw a movement in the fern leaves about
thirty yards downstream.
His heart beat fast; a deer was emerging from a tall fern.
He crouched and reached for his gun. There was going to be
venison after all. He smiled to himself, thinking how he was going
to surprise his sleeping companions with a blast and a deer.
As he brought the gun in position he noticed that the little breeze
was coming from downstream. His finger crocked on the
hammer. The deer was in the gunsight now as it bent its head to
the water. It was a fawn, he calculated it was an eight-month-old
fawn, mouse-colored with light blotches on its fur. It had started
drinking and it was all unaware. What a beauty it was!
His finger touched the trigger and he withheld his breath for the
kill. His finger tightened, but he delayed his fire. Let him drink
first, he told himself. The fawn lifted his head and seemed to sniff
the air. Now—! At that instant the fawn bent its head over the
water again. Now—now!
Filled at last, the fawn turned its head slightly upstream,
listening, and then it bent its snout to nibble on the fern.
You're a fool, he told himself. A huge sniffling idiot would have
done better. But even as he locked the hammer he felt he had
owned the fawn and let it go, and this gave him an almost
bubbling joy and relief. It was just a fawn after all. Not a doublebarreled shotgun for a fawn, he thought, at the same time glad
his companions were asleep.
A hollow bubbling sound like
that made by water
A young deer
The projecting nose and
mouth of an animal
Take a small bites out of
something
He made it up to them next day near the foothills. They were on
their way home, still empty-handed, when they came upon a
group of wild boar rooting out the tubers in the dampish ground.
He shot down a tusker, a fierce, bloody-minded fellow standing
almost three feet high. The tusks, uncommonly white against the
coarse black hair, were like scimitars curving from the corners of
the snout and were not, he was struck anew, for masticating but
for goring.
He gave the boar to his companions.
“What about you, sir?"
"All I want is the skull—Hand keep the tusks intact."
THREE YEARS, AND still very little progress. There was, too, the
irksome attitude of the little town, Folks thought, and told him
so, that coming from America he shouldn't soil his hands in mud,
it was work for any unschooled bumpkin. For him it should be
some other useful occupation, something in a big office where
one dictated letters to a secretary and gave orders to personnel.
The townsfolk pointed out a second cousin of his who had also
come home from America without finishing high school and was
now governor of the province.
What they didn't know was that the governorship had been
offered to him first. Immediately after the liberation of Nueva
Viscaya and the Cagayan Valley provinces, it was the policy of the
American occupation command to appoint a Filipino to serve as
acting governor; it was only a temporary appointment until the
first postwar elections were held. Manuel wasn't sure he wanted
the position. He knew he wasn't prepared for it, by training or by
temperament. And there was his father's land. "I’ll give you two
days to think about it," said the American colonel in charge of
civil affairs.
If l accept it, he told himself, I’d be in a good position to get what
I want to develop the land. He needed carabaos which had
become scarce because the Japanese had slaughtered them for
meat, farm equipment for the province, irrigation ditches
through provincial appropriation. But there was going to be a
conflict of interests which was sure to keep bothering him. On
the other hand, there was the prestige of the position, something
much more than the college diploma his father had wanted him
to bring home. The governorship would compensate for coming
home not in dishonor in a soldier's uniform. Still, at the back of
his head was the nagging taunt: you aren't prepared or the job,
you aren't made for it. He had come home to rearrange his life,
to seek peace in a home he was going to build. If he failed as
governor, how would he face the town where he was to live the
rest of his life? There was the challenge, yes, but he was not
going to be completely honest with himself.
He told his second cousin, Carlos, about his dilemma. Carlos
listened quietly, and Manuel guessed that his cousin must think
Slightly wet
An elephant or wild boar with
well-developed tusks
A short sword with a curved
blade
An unsophisticated or socially
awkward person from the
countryside
he was slightly batty for not grabbing an offer like that. "Make up
your mind," Carlos said finally, looking at him with speculation.
“That's my trouble, I can't make up my mind."
"Well, no one can make up your mind for you." Turning away his
face. he went on, "If this was offered to me I'd take it. I'm in a
different position from you. You see, there's nothing for me here,
absolutely nothing. All I have—and there's not much of it—is out
there." He waved his hand to indicate the other side of the
Pacific.
Manuel turned to him and said earnestly, "But there's my land. It
isn't much but it's really what I want to do. When I think of how it
had been for me all the years back there—"
"If you're chucking it, put in a good word for me. I’ll try to prove
to the folks here I can do something."
To Manuel the tone of his cousin's voice was almost like an
appeal. His cousin wanted the governorship for himself. There
was no sound of boasting in the man either. For years Carlos had
been headman of the Filipino community in Stockton where a
number of Pinoys were college graduates and professionals.
And so it was Carlos who made up his mind for him. Manuel had
recommended him highly when the time came. Now his cousin
seemed to be doing well as governor.
TO THE TOWNSPEOPLE Manuel Rueda was a failure. What do I
care, he told himself. They didn't know what it meant to drift, to
run away from oneself to some raucous joint or to some strange
woman's room and then go back to a shabby apartment feeling
utterly empty, where the only reality was the muted music in a
darkened room. The day came when his father's land was his one
chance to salvage himself, to take root.
His trips to Manila became frequent and more extended. At first
they were purely for business: he needed chicken wire,
galvanized iron, a well pump. Once when he read an item in the
paper about a symphonic concert, he decided it was time to get
an extra plow. What was wrong with that? A man had to relax.
On one trip an old friend who had become an executive in an
insurance company offered him a job, a good-paying job. You'd
make a first class insurance man, the friend said. After a year
getting the hang of it in the field he would have an important
desk in the central office. He had a farm, said Manuel. Let
somebody do the dirty work for you, said his friend; you could
see the farm once in a while. Let me think about it said Manuel.
Back in the farm he thought that holding the insurance job would
be a good thing while waiting for the irrigation ditches. He could
use his earnings to make improvements on the land. One of his
tenants was a reliable man who could make a fine overseer. And
so Manuel became an insurance man. There was easy money in
it, people had money then. And once every three months he
visited the farm. In the middle of the year he brought a new
Crazy or insanse
With sincere and intense
conviction
Give up
Making or constituting a
disturbingly harsh and loud
noise
Harmonious or symphonious
A person who supervises
others
shotgun for his encargado, to make the man feel good. On these
trips he always stopped the bus at the stream at Dalton Pass and
also at the monument of General Dalton. A peso to the driver got
the fellow to stop the bus anywhere. As the visits to the farm
became infrequent he made his stops at the stream longer, as
though in wry penance for his repeated return to the life of the
city and to remind himself he was still loyal to his dream.
One afternoon at coffee break Alfonso Duarte stopped at his
table. He was the insurance executive who had persuaded Rueda
to work in his company.
“Hope you don’t mind my joining you.” He hailed a waiter.
“Boy—! A cup of coffee."
The waiter’s back was turned, but he wheeled around robot-like
and walked over to their table. "Yes, sir. Anything else, sir?"
Not looking at the man Duarte flicked his hand to dismiss him
and almost simultaneously in a bigger gesture reached out in his
inner breast pocket for a cigar. There were two fat ones sticking
out from the outside pocket, badges of his success, like a Phi Beta
Kappa key or war decoration. When he offered one of the cigars
from his pocket it was as though he was detaching his own
decoration to present to a client or a friend. He bit off one end,
extricated the bit of tobacco from his mouth and placed it on the
ash tray with the solemnity of a churchgoer depositing his tithe
on the plate. Next he applied a gold-plated lighter and as he
sucked at his cigar to draw the tongue of fire, one eye caught the
record album on the table to Rueda's left.
“Long-beard, isn't it?"
Rueda nodded. It was Berlioz’ Harold in Italy which he had picked
up at a large music store two blocks away.
“Don't go in for that stuff. Give me Sousa—you know, trumpets
and cymbals and drums.”
Rueda couldn't resist doing a little exploration of the man, who
had bulled his way up in a business that demanded gazelle grace.
“What do you do for relaxation? Movies, maybe?”
“Once a week, yes. Two times, even three—when there's fellows
like John Wayne or Gary Cooper. You know, he-man stuff. None
of these neurotic characters for me, or the delinquents, or those
who look inside and backward too much. You know what I mean.
I want the bang-bang, go-go kind. Talking of go-go, there's a nice
burlesque show tonight. French girls. They're here for only a
week. Cleans out the liver, sweeps the cobwebs off the mind.
Believe nme, I do better work after a burlesque show.”
Oddly enough there was no intentional vulgarity in the man.
Everything he did had a function, like Cheracol for a sore throat.
The waiter came with the coffee.
“Service too slow, boy.”
“I'm sorry, sir.”
He turned to Rueda. “How's things with you?”
A duty manager
Using or expressing dry,
especially mocking, humor
Make a sudden sharp
movement
Free from a constraint or
difficulty
“No complaints. But I could do better. By the way, I remember a
remark you made onetime. You thought I'd make a good
insurance man. Why did you think so?”
"There are two kinds of insurance people. Those who use the
battering ram, theu frontal attack. I am that type. The other is
the stiletto. You dance around the customer, beautifully, and at
the proper time drive in the blade. Takes more time than the
other. You're that type."
He took several puffs of his cigar, exploding little smoky breaths
from his pursed mouth. He reminded Rueda of an ape eating ant
eggs. He laid his arm on the table; the cigar, he held like a pencil,
looked like another finger. "You have refinement, a quiet way,
your aura of confidence gives the prospect a confidence, too. You
withhold yourself and this softens him, opens him up. But you
give him too much leeway, you're too much on his side. Just as
his defenses are down you pause too long before you stick in the
blade, and then his arms are up again. God, man, if you had my
punch-you know, the instant reflex, you'd be unbeatable. As it is,
let me be frank, you're only potentially dangerous, and that's not
enough in our business. Maybe in any business."
He returned his cigar to his mouth but immediately plucked it off
again, holding it vertically as though pointing to himself. "O yes,
I've flubbed rich diggings too but the better the average's on my
side. On my side, man, and no doubt about that."
He was ramming the cigar back into his mouth, but the
movement was not completed. He was pointing again, this time
at a man entering the door behind Rueda, “That's the fellow
now." Duarte stood up. "He's worth a quarter of a million in life
and at least three million in group. Excuse me."
Rueda followed Duarte with his eyes. The man worth a quarter of
a million in life insurance didn't seem, Rueda thought a little
sadly, to have a chance against Duarte's battering ram. He turned
to his coffee, not really seeing it; he was thinking about Duarte's
evaluation of him. It was uncomfortably accurate. But he knew
he wouldn’t be happy to be in Duarte's place.
The government got the irrigation canals going at last. That was
about the time he met Solita Mendez in a music store two blocks
away, a plush store, well-stocked, the biggest in the city. He was
returning a defective record of Concerto No. 5 for Piano by
Prokofiev, and the salesgirl said she couldn't take it back, seeing
he had kept it more than twenty-four hours; besides there was
no other copy to exchange for it. "I had no time to test it here,"
he said, "and I played it only last night." She referred him to Miss
Javellana, the manager. In the office, he explained about the
record to the lady seated at the desk.
The hand that received the album startled him a little. It was
perfumed and trim and the long fingernails looked streaked with
A short dagger with a tapering
blade
To smoke from a cigar,
cigarette, or pipe
Botch or bungle something
blood. A sensual, predatory hand. “Prokofiev. We never sell any
Prokofiev, except probably Peter and the Wolf."
"But I got that here two days ago."
"I mean nobody ever wants to buy Prokofiev. I had ordered two
albums of the Fifth—establishment must be respectable, you see.
A try, anyway, for sophistication."
Her voice was cool as the white sheath of her sharkskin-draped
figure. She looked an indeterminate age, probably not younger
than thirty-three or thirty-five. The precarious three-inch heels
hoisted her up so that the knot of black hair piled like beehive on
her head was on a level with his chin. Everything about her
seemed forcibly uplifted. Even the mouth, too undeveloped for a
woman but looking mysteriously moist, was made bigger by the
overlap of lipstick.
"Miss Javellana has gone out. I am Solita Mendez." She turned
the record over in her hand, her lips puckered. “You and I are in
the midst of Philistines. Strauss and Cole Porter and moonlight
and blue lagoon and Doris Day—they're the moneymakers. I'm
going home now. If you love Prokofiev enough, I’ll give you my
own record. You can come home with me now or stop for it here
tomorrow."
"No, no," he protested, concluding simultaneously that she was
not bad-looking at all. You're most ungallant," she said. "Or
afraid. I'm not going to eat you.”
But she did, piece by piece. Without too much resistance from
him she made him give up insurance to manage her music store.
When he told her of his farm, of his dreams for it, she laughed.
"You're not a farmer, Manuel, and I've no desire to live on a farm.
Why worry? You're running the store and doing well." To mollify
him she made a concession. “We can go to the farm once in a
while. We'll make it a vacation place."
She did go with him two years later. Some of the fruit trees had
grown as tall as the eaves of his house and were bearing fairly
well. But the house itself was in bad shape. The water pump
wouldn't work, the summer heat in the mountain-walled valley
was oppressive after Solita's air- conditioned rooms. She was
restive and did not try to conceal her dissatisfaction. She thought
it a big private joke when he introduced her to his people as his
wife. Later, stopping the car at Dalton Pass on their return to
Manila, he led her across the boulders on the left side, the more
accessible bank of the stream.
“Where are we going?”
“I’ll show you a spot.”
“How far is it?”
“Just a bit more upstream.”
She had a difficult time trailing after, but he sensed a growing
excitement in her. She
A cover for the blade of a knife
or sword
Not securely held or in
position
Tightly gather or contract into
wrinkles or small folds
Not marked by courtesy or
valor
Appease the anger or anxiety
of someone
A thing that is granted or
conceded
Unable to keep still or silent
thought this was going to be a mischievous adventure.
Finally they stopped before a huge boulder. It was ten or twelve
feet high—and along the
sloping side of it, facing the bank, water trickled from the top and
flowed into the stream. "Darling, what a wild beautiful spot!" She
pointed at the falling. water. “Where does that
come from?"
“There's a spring a little farther up.”
“Can we get up the rock?”
He led her to a loamy slope alongside the boulder and slowly
through the undergrowth to
the top which had flattened to form promontory.
"Why, darling, this is wide enough to build a house on. This is it,"
she said with pretty
firmness. "An ideal summer place. The stream—it's running
water for the house. Look, we can clear a path to the road, just a
tiny bit of a path so we can have all the privacy we want. How did
you know this place?"
"During the war," he pointed at the stream below them, "I was
having a dip there one noon when a Jap sniper almost got me.”
"So this place means a lot to you. I suppose all this jungle country
around is still government property.”
"Oh, yes."
"You know what, darling? We can apply for a lumber
concession—there must be at least fifty thousand hectares of
timber country around. They can be yours and mine. It doesn't
mean we have to put up a lumber mill immediately. Because I'd
like the place to ourselves for a while. Why don't you sell the
farm—if that will make you happy—for a summer house here?"
This was no indirect hint. He was called upon to make a shareand-share-alike contribution to the comfort she had been
providing all along.
“Wouldn't it be a pretty twist, darling, if you really lived here
where you almost got killed”
He looked at her. "Quite a few did get killed here." He felt a silent
rage he had not known before. “Won’t you be scared of their
ghosts?”
"They'll be wonderful company. Make the place cooler and that's
what we need during the summer days."
Then he knew he was breaking away. No, not at once. He could
be calculating about it himself. After all she was happy with him
and he did earn his keep running her music store—but he was
going to save whatever he could, and in six months goodbye to
her and Manila.
Half a year passed but he thought he needed a little more time,
three or four months at the most. In July he made plans to stay at
the farm for a week. He went alone. He bought himself a highpowered rifle for a hunting trip with his tenants.
A point of high land that juts
out into a large body of water
It was a crisp, chilly morning when he took the bus from Manila.
At ten they were in Cabanatuan, at eleven they started climbing
the zigzag at San Jose to Dalton Pass. “Take it easy," someone
called out to the driver. “We're ahead of schedule." Go ahead,
driver, Manuel thought. There was always the exhilaration in the
heavy throb of the motor underfoot, trees racing past the turns
on the road, the cold inrushing mountain air.
A U-turn in Kilometer 212 and he saw the obelisk, like a
matchstick, on the peak of Dalton Pass. In a couple of minutes
now—.
A tire screeched and the bus careened to the side of the
precipice, keeled over, and smashed against the trunk of a giant
pine. It lay there cradled among two other trunks thirty feet
below the road. A car seat pinned him down at the waist and
pressing down the car seat was the rear section of the bus. He
heard a woman moaning behind him, to his left he could see his
seatmate's crushed skull, the brains and the blood splattering the
seat that pinned him down. He closed his eyes. God, how
long. . . . His legs were dead. He tried to move his feet but
couldn't make any connection: he wondered if his legs were still
there. His chest was free but he felt a great deadening weight
bearing it down. Slowly his breathing was getting difficult and he
knew any moment he was going to black out. The next bus was
still two hours, two impossible hours away. Perhaps a chance
truck or car . . . but it might not even know there was this wreck
thirty- forty feet below the highway. Some lucky devil might
manage to clamber up the road.
A pretty way to die. The Japanese bullet would have meant a
more respectable death. He had crouched by the rock in the
stream—it was cool water, God, he was thirsty—the stream was
just a few minutes' walk away. He closed his eyes and by a
supreme effort of will he pushed away the threatening fog. . . .
WITHOUT LOOKING BACK he followed the road for about a
kilometer until he came upon the culvert that siphoned the water
of the stream across the road to the precipice. He knelt on a flat
boulder on the left bank, bent down to scoop water with his
cupped hands. The water was cool in his mouth and it had the
soft taste of rain. He dipped in his hands again and again. Finally
refreshed, he stood up and went across the boulders along the
bank until he stood before the rock promontory. As he sat down
to unlace his shoes someone called out to him. Startled he
looked up.
"Hello." A man was standing on the other side of the stream. A
hunter. Beside him was a dead stag.
“What are you doing here?"
Fresh and cold morning
A feeling of excitement
Make a loud, harsh, squealing
noise
Move swiftly and in an
uncontrolled way in a
specified direction
A very steep rock face or cliff
Hold gently and protectively
Splash a liquid over a surface
Causing a loss of force, vitality,
or enthusiasm
A male deer
“We must be thinking the same thing. A hot day like this, where
can you find a better place?" The hunter began to strip himself.
His shirt was wet around the armpits.
"How did you know this place?"
The hunter looked at him smiling. "Part of my hunting ground. I
feel a bit possessive about this stream."
The hunter had stripped himself completely. He was like a bronze
statue. He looked down at the stream running over the hollowedout rock.
“It's much too small for the two of us," he said. "Why don't we
take turns? Go on ahead. You seem to be in a hurry. I can take
my time."
"l just want to dip my feet. Go ahead."
The hunter placed himself in the trough-like part and immersed
himself there for some time, almost motionless and taking in the
coolness of the water with little breaths of pleasure. Then he sat
up and got a cake of soap. "Don't think I'm a sissy," he said,
turning around to grin at him, “bringing soap on a hunting trip. I
feel cleaner that way."
“That buck, where did you get it?”
“About two hundred meters upstream. Many times I let them
alone—I can be foolish that way. But this one. Seven whole years,
and then I get him. You don't find eight pointers every year. This
is my biggest yet. That head will hang on my porch for a hat rack.
Then people will really see I can do a man's job, something more
than just listening to Brahms."
He rubbed the soap all over his arms and chest until the white
suds covered his body.
"I play many records loud—you know you don't really hear the
drums and the basses otherwise—and the piccolo. Odd thing
about the piccolo. It's like laughter, innocent laughter or a happy
spirit, it comes rather rarely in a musical composition." He was
quiet for a moment and then he said, "I have a beautiful record
player at home—gives concert hall fidelity. Sometimes I play it in
the middle of the night. The little town thinks I'm crazy.”
The hunter scrubbed his face and hair vigorously so that the thick
white lather covered his head completely and he looked
grotesque against the jungle trees. He lowered himself into the
trough once more.
"Another thing I like. I come here after the rice harvest—that's
twice a year now. It's a hard day's hike from my farm but it's like
a ritual, coming here, I mean. You see, a Jap sniper almost got me
where you're sitting now. Seven years ago, I was with the old
man himself. I'm going to his monument from here, about a
hundred meters away. Part of the rite."
The hunter reached for fresh drawers from his knapsack.
"I was the second Filipino in the 74th Division. I was General
Dalton's orderly. Perhaps that was the most dignified job I ever
Rocks that have been
hollowed out and have items
store in them
Faithfulness to a person,
cause, or belief
In a way that involves physical
strength, effort, or energy
held in seventeen years. They picked me out in Leyte. They said it
was a promotion. No more fighting, they said. I think there were
two reasons they got me for the General. I come from this place.
And then they understood my English. And then maybe they
knew I had waited on many big people."
The hunter was dressed. It was a sergeant's uniform. “Well,” he
said, “I’ll leave you here.”
“Wait a minute. What's the hurry?”
The hunter smiled. “As they say—it's high noon.” “What about
your buck?”
“I'm coming back for it.”
“Can you carry it to your place by yourself?”
“I have companions—my tenants. They're camped a kilometer
away. They don't come here. They understand my little didoes.
They accept this stream as mine. Bye now.”
“Wait—look here!”
The hunter stepped over a boulder to the bank and in a moment
disappeared among the tall trees.
Philippines Free Press
May 3, 1952