One Night, Nine months, and Thirty-Three Years Later

Chapter 1

When I was a teenager, I gave considerable thought to what I wanted to become and knew even then—a writer. My head was bursting with ideas, but I hadn't had the time to write them down.  So when it came to the point that I had to enter college, I did what practicality dictated me to do.  I took up engineering and worked my way with numbers.  Later on, wearing an inexpensive long-sleeved dress shirt that I rummaged from a mall sale, with half my face covered with pimples, I found myself setting off to start my career as an engineer.

Thirteen years later and two dozen pimples ago, I found myself still working for a construction company that I joined right after graduation.    I got to be in charge of selecting the materials that we would use in constructing houses.  It became pretty easy in the end.  I would look at the design laid out by our company architect, and I could jot down every standard material that we would need, down to the tiniest details like how many nails, bolts, and meters of wire to use to build the house based on the customer specifications without having to compromise our company's desired margin.

Let me say that perhaps, being so familiar with engineering, and writing being so tempting, I found myself searching my heart, wondering if I'm in the right field.  So when the Holy Week came and there is a stretch of a five-day vacation, I decided to go back to that place I call home and clear my head.  Aside from that, I am carrying with me a compilation of short stories my Uncle Tony had written.  There's no ISBN, no sign that it was published.  All I did was re-type every story he wrote, including some poems, and had the printout bound.

I drove to a far-flung barangay in Batangas agonizing over the summer heat.  When there were no longer traces of air pollution that I had grown accustomed to in Manila, I rolled the windows down and was welcomed by the sweet, fresh air of our town.  After a few seconds of driving with open windows, I had to immediately roll them up as the horrid smell of pig's dung filled the air.  One whiff was all I could take.

The roads were cemented now, and the wheels of my car slid smoothly until I had come to the curb that led directly to our house.  I lowered the gear and softly hit the brakes, shifted my left leg at the clutch, and gassed up a bit.  I stopped when the bumper of my car was just a few meters from our doorstep.  A cloud of billowing dust gathered in the air resulting from my car's sudden stop.  I took a look around.  My dog wagged its tail at me and barked.  I caught it just as soon as it lifted its forelegs, preventing my khakis from getting all dirty.  The familiar cocking of the chicken greeted me.  It was at that moment that my mother came out.

At fifty, she is still beautiful.  There were small lines on the corner of her eyes, and a few pounds of unwanted fats had gathered in her belly, her arms, and her chin, but her eyes had always set her apart.  They were brown, and always warm.  I reminded myself that I should not mention the ungainly fats because it would make my mother upset.

"Why didn't you call?" she said.

"Don't you like surprises?" I said, teasing.

"Had I known, I would have cooked your favorite."

I laughed and she joined in because we both know what my favorite is—tuyo.  Whenever I go home, I would request her to fry dried fish for me and I would devour it as if it were the most delicious food on earth.  I like salty food, and well, dried fish is the closest I'll ever come to actually eating salt.  It just so happened that my wife didn't like cooking it—the small apartment that we are renting in Manila has a window in the living room that's only about one and a half meters wide and a meter high, which served as the exhaust to release all undesirable stench that the dried fish would cause, leaving us for days on end smelling disgusting if ever she did cook one.

"Where's Miranda?" my mother asked.

"She said she'd stay for a while in the apartment and will commute to follow me here, you know, burglars in the area—"

"I told you to move out of your apartment and get a house.  You've been working long enough and surely you can spare some of your savings for a down payment on one."

I nodded, considering. 

"Let me get you a drink so you could cool off," she said.

The house was the same as what I remembered the last I visited which was only a few weeks ago.  The same furniture was still carefully laid out in the living room to make it look spacious but I noticed that the television set was moved opposite where it once was, and the couch that I gave my mother as a gift was sitting on the other side. 

"You rearranged again," I shouted.  "I told you to stop doing that, these are heavy things you're moving."

My mother's laughter filled the room.  "It's exercise," she yelled from the kitchen.

I moved to the window, opened the curtains, and looked around, my chest filling with clean air.  My fingers took out a cigarette and like second nature, the stick ended perched on the right side of my lips, softly pressed.  I lit it, took a puff, and let my gaze wander outside.  That was when I heard the loud screech of tires from the road.  I looked out, trying to extend my neck and upper body outside the window to see what happened.  A loud crash followed, and shouts from our neighbors came next.  I couldn't see what happened from the inside, so I took one quick puff and threw the cigarette out—a waste of four pesos.  Then, I rushed outside to see the commotion.

The heat of the sun torched my skin, and sweat started to form on my neck and forehead but it wasn't enough to prevent me from joining the spectators who had gathered around the incident.  I watched as the jeepney driver tried to carry a man who wouldn't budge.  From my angle, I couldn't see the victim's face as it was obscured by his immense pot belly.  Blood spilled on the pavement. 

"You can't move him," I shouted, and I realized that the driver literally couldn't.  He was a frail man, and the man lying on the ground looked as if he had spent his years in abandonment filling his belly with whatever food he could swallow.  "Don't—"  I knew all too well not to move a person when he was hit by a car, any wrong movement could badly damage the person if something had been broken, and could render him crippled for the rest of his life.

The driver looked up at me, "I don't know what to do.  I swear, I didn't see him," his lips were trembling but not as bad as his hand had been shaking. 

Immediately, I fell to my knees and see to the man sprawled on the road.

"My dear Raul," he said to me—forcing out a smile, and then his eyelids flickered, and closed.

The color was drained from my face, and I felt weak.  The man who'd been hit was my uncle Tony, my father's brother.

I grabbed his wrist, trying to search for a pulse.  There was.  My eyes traveled all over his body, trying to assess if anything could be broken, there didn't seem to be any sign, so I gestured for the driver to help me carry him to the jeepney.  As soon as we were inside, I instructed him to go to the nearest hospital.  He took a U-turn and we were zooming away from the place in seconds.   I covered my nose as the wind blew hard, bringing with it an awful cloud of dust trailing after us.