“Yes.” He’d never been actually afraid of Amang Tenio until this moment. He noticed his famous rooster sitting in a chair on the leader’s other side, as if the two had been conversing as they took in the view.
“Sit down here. Let us talk. Would you like a Coca-Cola?”
“Hindi po,” Emman said, shaking his head, though his dry mouth longed for what he’d just declined.
Amang Tenio waved two fingers in the air, and a housemaid quickly appeared with two Coca-Colas. “I can drink them both myself. You must say what you want in this life, or you get very little and miss out on much.”
Emman smiled. “I would like one, maraming salamat.”
“Very good. Now, Emman, you have been training beyond the regular disciplines.”
“Yes.” The cool liquid slid down his throat. He didn’t get his own can of cola often. He and the other children bought narrow plastic bags of Coke or Kool-Aid with long straws. Emman would slurp it up faster than he liked, sometimes sucking up part of the bag and clogging the enjoyment. But his own aluminum can . . . this was a treat.
“Emman, I must discuss something important. It is with regret that you cannot be a child as children should be. None in the Barangay Mahinahon can. As a young man, this did not bother me. As an old man, it is one of my greatest regrets. We are many good things here in our village, but sadly, we are a village of lost childhoods.”
Emman wanted to say that he didn’t care about lost childhoods; he wanted to be a man. But Amang Tenio continued talking.
“One of our young men is missing.”
“One of the men of the Barangay?” Emman tried to think of anyone he hadn’t seen lately.
“Artur Tenio.”
Artur was the boyfriend of Bok’s sister. “I just saw him a few days ago.”
“Yes. He was to drive Raul to Manila to pick up the American woman. But the car had trouble, and Raul went ahead while Artur stayed behind to fix it. No one has seen him since then. The car was found, but not Artur.”
“What could have happened?”
“We are trying to find this out. And we will.” The old man paused then, staring out at the view as if collecting wisdom and guidance from the sky. “There are things you do not understand yet.”
“I know that.” Emman shifted in his seat. “Like what?”
Amang Tenio grinned, and Emman saw his yellowed teeth and a sparkle in his dark eyes. “I might envy such youth if not for the struggle of life that all men have in their days upon this earth. That struggle for me is mostly over now.”
Emman had no response to that, so he took a drink of his cola.
“I need you to watch the American woman. There are many dangers for her. I know that already you have taken this role to protect her.”
Emman didn’t know whether to stand proud or be embarrassed. “Yes, Amang. I felt she might need to be guarded.”
“Very wise of you. Please select some others to help you in the task. I will be kept informed, and the hacienda as a whole will be under constant surveillance. But I’m giving you the direct protection of the American woman. It is children who can best do such things in these strange times.”
Emman winced.
“I meant children as the others whom you choose, Emman. I wouldn’t put you to such a responsibility if I considered you a child. You are twelve years old, nearly thirteen. Shake my hand. You are a man now, Emman.”
Emman squeezed as hard as he could to prove that he was worthy.
“There is something more.”
“What is it, Tito?”
“Don’t ever sneak into a cinema again. Ask me if you want to see a movie that badly. Perhaps I will go with you.” There was a slight smile in the stern expression.
Emman didn’t smile until Amang Tenio gazed back at the view. “Yes, Tito.”
“WHERE ARE THEY?” MANALO STOOD AT THE DOOR.
“Come inside, my brother.” Comrade Pilo opened the door wider, glancing out onto the dark and empty street.
Manalo remained just as he had when the housekeeper had urged him in before she went to find her master. “You are not my brother. My brother is dead for this great cause. I held his head and felt his brains through my fingers.” The words seethed through his teeth, and he shook from anger and fear.
“Calm down, Ka Manalo,” Comrade Pilo said, putting a hand of warning in the air. “Do not forget your place. Come inside.”
Manalo hesitated, then entered the house. The floor was of expensive tile, and a chandelier lit the entryway. He followed the older man into a small study with furnishings of the finest woods. Manalo and his men were nomads of the jungle so that the privileged Communists could live like this? Comrade Pilo didn’t understand how little he cared for place and position right now. “Where is my family?” he asked again.
Ever the politician, Comrade Pilo motioned him to sit and ordered the housekeeper to make some iced tea.
Manalo struggled to restrain himself.
“I greatly apologize, brother. It was unavoidable. During the hours of your journey we had reason to believe your family’s location had been compromised. They were moved in the night. We feared someone would hear the message if we radioed your transport, so nothing could be done. You were gone before we could get someone out there.”
“No one came,” Manalo said.
For over twenty years he had trusted men like Comrade Pilo without question. But everything was changing. Within the Communists, new groups were going off on their own. The Red Bolos had pulled off from the larger Communist Party of the Philippines, and for a time Manalo had thought that the best route. But lack of organization and miscommunications were becoming alarmingly common. It was hard to know whom to trust.
“My report said they brought a truck in for you at 0900 hours.But you weren’t at the house, nor at the closest safe house.”
“The closest safe house I knew about took me two days to reach.” He stood up in anger. “I watched for a day at the house. No one came.”
The housekeeper walked in with a tray of snacks and iced tea. Comrade Pilo took his time preparing his tea with scoops of raw sugar while Manalo stared at him.
“I don’t like discussing business with someone staring down at me. Now sit down, and enjoy a drink and something to eat.”
Manalo chose to obey, suppressing the urge to shove the tea glass into Comrade Pilo’s face. Comrade Pilo was a politician, not a soldier. And certainly not a guerrilla fighter.
“Manalo, we are a proud lot. Close men who are bonded by our beliefs like a brotherhood. You see the inner working here in the Philippines. But much is beyond here, on an international basis. There are Communists in Korea, in China, in Russia, and in Eastern Europe. It is not the same there as here. And we have seen great disorder in the various factions. Sometimes I think we hold such little semblance to each other that we should not all be called Communists at all. But at the core, most of us want one thing—our people to work together for the common good.”
Manalo slammed down his hand, spilling tea from his own untouched glass. “I don’t care about these things.”
The expression on Comrade Pilo’s face shifted from calm teacher to angry dictator. And still Manalo didn’t care.
“Where is my family?”
“Do you want me to tell you?”
The reminder that Comrade Pilo held their well being firmly in his hand shook him back down, though he did all to keep from showing it.
“If you want to know, then you must also care about these things. Your life and the lives of Malaya and your children are not your own. We all belong to something greater than ourselves. Our individual lives matter little. Do not forget that.”
EIGHT
From his place in the tree Emman dropped the yo-yo, let it “sleep,” then flicked his wrist to bring it back. He had a long string, and it zinged far down through the branches without touching. Even in the tree he could do Loop the Loop, Hop the Fence (or rather Hop the Branch), Over the Shou
lder, Walk the Dog, and Around the World. Reverse Loop the Loop he was still unable to master—which annoyed him to no end.
His mother had started his hobby, or maybe it was his father, or maybe it was just because he was Filipino. Some said the pastime came from the Chinese, others the Greeks. Others told of primitive Filipinos who sat in trees as he did and used a heavy rock on a string that “rolled up” as a weapon against enemies and as a hunting tool for food. Emman liked to think of that while yo-yoing in his tree.
His mother said his father had used his yo-yo to entertain his friends and impress the girls of the Barangay. His father died before Emman’s birth, when he was hired as a bodyguard to some diplomat from China. His box of yo-yos was saved for the son who came a month later.
Ever the soldier in training, Emman had devised a tactical signaling system he called “yo-yo code.” When he and his friends were younger, it had been great fun to use it in their games. Although Emman thought military communication by “yo-yo code” was rather ingenious, he knew the men would either laugh or scold at such antics. Now that he was a soldier, with a real gun given to him by Amang Tenio, Emman would try weaning himself from yo-yoing as his mother had once tried to stop smoking.
But not tonight. He’d be alone till after dawn and could practice his yo-yo and smoke cigarette butts to keep him awake. Then he’d get to see Miss Julia on her morning walk before he went home to sleep till noon.
Emman had seen a light in her window for some time now. He wondered what she was doing. Did she brush her hair in long, slow strokes? Was there a television in the house, and if so, what did she like to watch? What kinds of things had she brought from America?
He grew uncomfortable and restless in the tree. He dropped the yo-yo again and again, practicing his tricks until a calm returned to him. Then, as if a breeze that wasn’t there had shifted directions, Emman knew he was no longer alone. He eyed his rifle held on other branches within a swift and practiced reach.
A man came through the forest with little stealth; he was not trying to hide himself. His steps were confident, perhaps annoyed. Emman would’ve thought him a boy except for a harsh curse spoken beneath the man’s breath before he actually came within view. He was following a path that would bring him near to Emman’s tree.
The man drew closer, then stood at the jungle edge staring for a long while—a very long while, so long that Emman thought that an hour had surely passed, and still he remained.
Emman kept his gun within his peripheral vision, his sight ever on the stranger staring toward where Miss Julia slept, and his yo-yo in his hand. After a time, the man simply walked away in the same way that he came, leaving Emman with the greater knowledge that Miss Julia needed his protection. He must guard her well.
LIGHT AND COLOR.
Footsteps up the wroughtiron steps of the veranda interrupted the vast peace of the morning, filled with light and color. Julia sat drying her hair in the sunshine and gazing across the immeasurable hues and variants of the hacienda grounds.
“Well, you look lovely this morning,” Lola Gloria said as she reached the top.
The morning was lazy and calm in a way Julia hadn’t experienced since childhood at Harper’s Bay or during the few days she and Nathan had spent at the lakeside Gasthof Simony in the Austrian Alps.
When sleep had again evaded her in the night, Julia had made a list of her most pressing concerns, writing her notes and ideas in the last of Grandpa Morrison’s logbooks.
Hacienda Concerns:
—Meet with Mr. Santos about Hacienda legal matters. Do I
actually decide the future of the Hacienda? Could the land be
sold to the people who live here?
—What happened in the fields yesterday? Ask Raul.
—What preparations are needed for Grandpa Morrison’s wake
and funeral?
—What is the “secret of the orchid”? Grandfather’s musings or
something real?
But sitting on the second-story veranda after her “shower” with the pail in the bathtub, the questions and concerns encompassing the night simply fell away. The hacienda had such enchanting powers.
Lola Gloria bent down by the stairway. “Look, once again, a gift from your admirer. A mango.” Lola Gloria picked up the fruit and brought it toward her.
A teenaged Filipina girl who helped in the kitchen followed the older woman with a wide tray. She set it on the glass-and-iron table, smiled at Julia, and disappeared soundlessly down the stairs.
“That’s a mango?” Julia asked, taking the soft yellow fruit from Lola Gloria. “The ones at home are usually green and reddish and much rounder.” Around the mango was a crocheted yarn necklace with beads woven within it. “Are you sure this is for me?”
The old woman chuckled. “Of course it is for you.”
Julia gazed out across the long stretching lawn, looking for a gift giver to appear. The hacienda gleamed in brighter hues than the night before. Vibrant reflections of colors—greens from the lawns and encircling jungle; reds, pinks, and yellows from the flowers; blues from the sky.
“You like our humble home?” Lola Gloria said with a proud smile.
“It is . . . breathtaking.”
Julia put the necklace over her head.
“There were two ways to eat a mango,” Lola Gloria said. The constant twinkle in her eye spoke of a mischievous spirit. “The civilized way and the messy way.”
“It feels like an uncivilized morning to me.”
“Let me show you then.”
Lola Gloria selected a mango from the tray and set it on her plate. “Civilized” required peeling with a paring knife and cutting the mango into long connected cuts until it reminded Julia of a blooming yellow flower.
“And now, the fun way. Just put your fingers through the peeling at the top and start pulling it away.” Lola Gloria gestured for her to use the mango gift.
Julia peeled off the skin, and juice immediately dripped over her fingers.
“Peel it away and just eat it.”
At the first bite, Julia’s chin was dripping; she and Lola Gloria laughed as Julia leaned forward and drips fell over the tile floor. The sweet flavor languished in Julia’s mouth and filled her senses. Soon her hands, mouth, and face were covered with the sweet juice as she scraped the long white seed with her teeth.
“It’s delicious,” Julia said, embarrassed, and yet not embarrassed enough to stop. She found a linen napkin and shared it with the older woman, who was eating a mango of her own the “uncivilized way.”
Across the lawn, a curious sight caught Julia’s eye. Five small boys were sitting in the arms of a huge tamarind tree. They were laughing and pointing at Julia and Lola Gloria.
“Ah, the boys are pleased that, at least in eating a mango, we are as barbaric as they are,” Lola Gloria said, dabbing her fingers with a napkin.
Julia noticed that on their shoulders the children carried what appeared to be over sized rifles—she hoped they were sculpted from wood. They dwarfed the small bodies that bore them. The vision was such an oddity that it was almost comical. She went to the veranda railing for a better look.
“Those aren’t real guns, right?” The rifles looked very real, resembling stocky World War II rifles from old war movies.
Lola Gloria poured some water over their hands and found several more linen napkins for them to clean up. “No, they are wooden. The boys of the Barangay Mahinahon train with wooden guns until their coming of age. Then they get a real gun and begin their service.”
“What service is that?”
“Oh, all that will be better explained by Raul.”
One of the boys, a round, healthy-looking one wearing a red shirt, waved at her. They all stood in the branches or clung at odd angles on the tree.
“Hi, good morning!” shouted a boy in a striped shirt.
Julia waved back and shouted, “Good morning,” after which the children just stared at her, smiling expectantly, making
her uncomfortably embarrassed.
I can’t very well carry on a shouting conversation from way up here, she thought. She excused herself by calling down, “’Bye.”
The boys waved with their guns on their shoulders and shouted, “Good-bye!”
The rest of her breakfast consisted of eggs sunny-side up, bacon, and rice. Julia was surprised by how much she enjoyed the white rice with the eggs, and was nearly finished when the sound of a vehicle approached the hacienda.
“That will be Markus.” Lola Gloria clapped her hands and smiled widely. “I can’t wait for him to meet you.”
“He’s this early?” Julia hadn’t expected the lawyer to arrive for several more hours. “What happened to Filipino time?”
“Markus is unfortunately a little too like you Americans. That boy is always on time or early, and he does not relax half of what he should. Come downstairs and let’s greet him.”
As she rose to follow Lola Gloria back to the railing, Julia noticed drips of mango on her yellow-and-white sun dress.
They leaned over the balcony and saw the top of Markus’s shiny black hair. He’d stopped on the pathway, and several of the boys came running across the lawn with giant smiles at the sight of him.
An older boy whom Julia had seen earlier stepped out of the jungle and stared in their direction. He wasn’t much older than the others, but his demeanor made him seem more mature. Ah, she remembered that one. He’d been with the strange old man with the rooster when she’d first arrived.
Julia’s attention returned to Markus, who was handing something to the kids. He then called a greeting to the older boy. The younger boys ran with their hands cupping what appeared to be candy. Once they reached the older boy, they all turned and disappeared into the jungle.
“We’re up here,” Lola Gloria called down to Markus.
His quick footsteps up the veranda stairs brought a surprising tremor through Julia’s fingers and the coffee cup she held. And then he was there, smiling and exuding a carefree strength she hadn’t expected from the hacienda lawyer—a relaxed sort of confidence.
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