“People didn’t crowd the delta then, nor was it planted with crops. Deer and wild pigs roamed it freely, scared not by the sight of men. They nibbled at the corn; like disciplined soldiers they drank at the riverbank without muddying it. The river was very clear then, like a spring, and the land wasn’t dead. But more people came, sapped it dry of its milk. The animals fled to the deeper hills. Then there was no more place to flee to but here. Everything was cleared. The hills. The mountains.” Old David’s ancient face looked wistful.
“You must love going to the delta,” I said. “Year after year, you go there.”
“So does your father,” the old man said. He smiled enigmatically, then whacked the rump of his mare with his rattan whip. The animal doubled into an awkward trot, and sensing the prospects of a race, I whipped my pony, too, and in a burst of speed I passed him.
The wind whipped my face; the road exploded in a blaze of orange and green. Then the dike loomed, a high mound that followed every turn of the river’s bank. At the base of the dike, I stopped and waited.
Old David rode up to me, and we went together, without speaking, our horses straining up the path. Now, atop its narrow crest, I could see the whirling waters of the river and, beyond the tufts of grass and camachile brambles, the vast green spread — the delta sprawled toward the sun.
“Your hunting ground.” Old David nudged me. Then down the patch of land below the dike we saw Father signaling us to hurry.
“The river is not deep,” Old David said as we trotted to where Father waited.
“And what if it be a hundred bamboos deep?” Father glared at the old man. “You said he can take care of himself. Hurry with the pack, and no more talk.”
The old man alighted slowly and helped me down. He unstrapped the pack from the saddle, unholstered the gun, and laid it on the grass. I held the barrel up and asked Father if I could carry it.
Father shook his head. He pointed to the saddle pack that contained our lunch and the water bottle. Leaving the horses tied to knots of grass near the dike, we walked to the riverbank and down a narrow gully; at its bottom, a bamboo raft swayed with the current. A tenant setting fish traps in the shallows told Father that the first cucumber and watermelon seeds in the small clearings were planted the other day.
“So it’s like last year, eh, David?” Father said happily. “Pray that the birds haven’t been frightened away yet. We should have come earlier.”
Old David strained at the raft line that stretched across the river. The raft moved closer and hugged the muddy river edge. Father leaped into the raft, and I followed him with the lunch bag and the water bottle. The raft swayed giddily.
“You come back for us at sunset with the horses, David,” Father told the old man. “This time, since you aren’t coming, we may have better luck.”
Old David pulled the line, and the raft slithered with the current. We balanced ourselves on the dry bamboo floats, safe from the waters that lapped and swished at our perch. With Old David’s every heave at the line, the steel wire above us sang. The land and the mossy reeds jutting up the waterline drew near, and in a while the braced prow of the raft smashed into the delta. The tamarind tree, on whose trunk the steel line gnawed deep, quivered with the impact.
I leaped into the sandy landing, the bag and the bottle narrowly missing the tree. Father followed; he wasn’t much of a jumper. He splashed into the river’s edge, and I turned just in time to grasp the gun, which had slipped from his hand.
“I’ll hold it, Father,” I suggested. I raised the bottle and the lunch bag. “These aren’t heavy.”
Father grabbed the gun from me and did not answer. He started out immediately on one of the paths that forked from the landing, Swinging the lunch bag and the bottle over my shoulders, I followed the measured drift of his steps. He did not speak. We plodded on until the trail we followed vanished into a high, blank wall of grass that fringed a small brook.
“Shall we stay here, Father, and wait?” I asked, wiping the sweat on my forehead. I had begun to tire, and I had not seen a single bird. “Old David said the delta birds usually roost near the mudholes.”
“We rest here,” Father said. He parted the grass and the undergrowth with the muzzle of the gun.
“But won’t we go deeper?” I asked. “Old David said we have more chances of finding something to shoot at … if we go deeper.”
Father scowled at me. My other questions remained unasked. “We stay here,” he said firmly. “Maybe the herons weren’t driven away by the tenants yesterday.”
I sank on the dank black earth. My legs started to numb, and my throat was parched. I opened the bottle and took a hasty gulp.
Father saw me. “And what will happen if you are lost with no drinking water?”
I hastily screwed the bottle cap. This was no hunt at all; we were sitting on the edge of a stagnant brook, just waiting. After a long while, when nothing stirred in the grass, Father stood up and threw the gun over his shoulder. “Let us move,” he said without turning to me.
“Where do they really stay, Father?” I asked, following him.
“Anywhere.”
Were they in the high grass that rustled with every stirring of the wind? Or in the shade of the low camachile trees?
We came upon untidy clearings that were already planted and lingered in the empty watch houses at their fringes. The sun scorched the sky, and on and on we probed into the grass. Once, I listened to a faint, undefined tremolo — perhaps a birdcall — but nothing came out of it, no quarry taunted the sight of Father’s gun. Only tiny rice birds and still smaller mayas twittered and shrieked in the green.
Our shadows became black patches at our feet, and I felt the first twinges of hunger. I did not open the lunch box. As we walked on, I nibbled at the cheese Old David had given me, and its salty tang heightened my thirst. We reached the fire tree at noon. It would be some time before it bloomed. Old David said it was a landmark we could not miss. It rose above the monotony of rushes and thorny saplings.
“You never notice a fire tree that’s young,” Old David had said. “Not until it’s in bloom. You never see it as sapling or seed. You see it just like the way God had planted it and meant it to be, a blazing marker on the land.”
“I know this tree well,” Father said, pointing to his rudely carved initials on its trunk. “I did that years ago.”
I unslung the lunch bag and the water bottle. “Old David and Grandfather spared this tree when it was still small,” I said.
Father did not listen to me. He ripped the lunch bag open and handed me two cheese sandwiches. He ate hastily, and when he drank, small streams trickled down his chin. He smacked his lips contentedly as the water ran down his neck and drenched his shirt front. After eating, Father slumped on the big roots that crawled up the trunk and lowered his wide-brimmed cap over his face to shield off a piece of sun that filtered through.
“I’ll steal a wink,” he said. “Try it, too.”
Father took his hat off and fanned his face. He looked at me quizzically, then laid his head back against the trunk.
I laid the empty bag on a gnarled root beside him and perched my head on it. Above, hemmed in by branches and the grass, in the blue sky, swallows circled slowly. When I turned on my side, I saw that Father’s jaw had dropped. He was snoring, and a small line of saliva ran down the corner of his mouth. Later, when the sun shone through the branches on his face, he stood up. His eyes crinkled. Tightening the cartridge belt around his wide waist, he bade me follow him.