“You are too old for that, David,” Father said, smiling wryly.
“And too slow,” Tia Antonia chimed in, “and too drunk.”
Cousin Andring stood up and faced the old man. “Well,” he said, gesturing with his fat hands. “Since you seem to have no more use for David here, we can bring him with us to the city.” He turned to Father. “What do you say, Tio? You don’t know the trouble with the servants we are having there. You cannot trust anyone except those whom you have known long and well. Tell Tio, Mother, about our last maid who ran off with the houseboy across the street, bringing with her your pearl earrings and some of the silver. David drinks too much, more than he can hold, but …”
Tia Antonia nudged Father. “It is true,” she said gravely.
“I’d rather stay here, Apo,” Old David said, his eyes pleading. “I was born here. I’ll die here.”
Father grumbled. “Don’t worry about dying, David. You’ll live to be a hundred. You’ll still be around long after we are turned to dust.” Father turned to his sister: “I have no objection.” Then to the old man, “You’ll go, David. Maybe just for half a year—”
“My days are numbered, Apo. I feel it in my bones, in the lungs that are dried in my chest,” Old David said.
“Who wants to live forever?” Cousin Andring asked. “Drink, David.” He extended another glass of Scotch. “There’s more of this where you are going. None of the cheap nipa wine and gin you have here.”
But the old man did not even look at my cousin; he turned and shuffled out of the hall.
The next morning the house was quiet again. Several women from Carmay stayed behind, and, after the guests had gone, they swept the yard, then scrubbed the narra floors. The stable was being torn down by the boys. Earlier, the horse had been dragged to the nearby field and buried there.
I lingered in the stable, waiting for Old David to go. He was dressed in his best denim — a little faded on the knees and on the buttocks but still quite new because, unlike his other pair of pants, it was not patched. He watched the planks being torn down. The dirty harnesses cluttered up a corner together with those that he had cleaned, their bronze plates polished to a sheen. His battered bamboo suitcase, lashed tight with abaca twine, was beside him.
“When will you return?” I asked.
His eyes were smoky red as they always were. He gazed at the ground, at the black streaks of molasses, which the boys had carelessly spilled in their hurry to dismantle the stable. Upstairs in the house, Cousin Andring traded parting pleasantries with Father. Then they came noisily down the stairs.
“Must you really go?” I asked the old man again.
Old David’s voice was hollow and distant. “So it must be. This is the time for leaving. Just as there was a time for beginning, planting, growing. I watched them all grow — your uncles, your father — all of them. Your grandfather — he was a spirited young man. I remember how he dared his father’s wrath, how he would flee to the forest with me in search of game. We swam the swollen creek together, even when logs hurtled down with the current. Ay, he was not born to the wilderness, but he defeated me in almost every contest except running. We would race to the edge of the river, but my legs — they were young and agile then, and they always carried me there first. He could shoot straight with the bow or with a gun. But he died, too.” A long pause. “Then your father — I would carry him perched on my shoulders, just like you. I used to drive him around, just the two of us, in the calesa to Calanutan and Carmay. I remember we spilled out once when the wheel fell into a deep rut and broke. I carried him to town on my shoulders, and never once did I put him down. Balungao it was, and that’s five kilometers away.”
“You are drunk again,” I said.
He dug his big toe into the sawdust and shook his head. “Ay — I knew them all. I watched them grow into big men, learned men. But no one lives forever — that’s what your cousin said. I can die here, where I saw them all grow. There is nothing like the land you belong to claiming you back. But everywhere the earth is the same.”
Father, his hands on the shoulders of Tia Antonia and Cousin Andring, walked idly to the gate where the jeep was parked. The servants were loading it with vegetables, two sacks of rice, chicken, and bunches of green bananas.
Cousin Andring turned to us. “And why isn’t David moving yet?” he shouted. “Is he drunk again?”
The old man stood up and tried lifting his valise, but it was cumbersome. I grasped its lashing at one end, and we carried it to the jeep.
“Does he have to bring all that junk to the city?” Cousin Andring asked, looking apprehensively at the jeep that was now overloaded. “I’ll bet anything it’s all bottles of nipa wine. A year’s ration, that’s what.”
Father smiled. “Let him,” he said.
“Hurry, David,” Cousin Andring urged the old man, “we’ll miss the train.”
We raised the suitcase, but the old man’s hold was not firm enough and the trunk fell. I stepped aside lithely just in time to avoid being hit by it. Its lashing broke, and out spilled his things — an old prayer book, his clothes, a leather case in which he kept his betel nuts, and a bottle of nipa wine. The bottle broke when it hit the ground, and its contents were spilled.
Tia Antonia buckled over laughing, but Cousin Andring was angry. “God,” he cursed, “can’t you be more careful, David?”
Pushing the old man aside, he picked up his things and dumped them into the open suitcase, then heaved everything into the jeep.
Old David’s face was pale and expressionless. He was the last to board the vehicle, and as it started, he turned briefly to me. I could not tell whether what glistened on his cheeks was beads of sweat or tears.
CHAPTER 16
Shortly after Old David left to serve in Tia Antonia’s house in the city, I, too, had to pack my bags. I always knew that someday, after I finished high school, I would proceed to Manila and to college. In my younger days I had looked ahead to the event, but when the moment finally came, leaving Rosales filled me with a nameless dread and a great, numbing unhappiness. Maybe it was friendship — huge and granitelike — or just plain sympathy. I could not be too sure anymore. Maybe I fell in love for the first time when I was fifteen.
Her name was Teresita. She was a stubborn girl with many fixed ideas, and she admonished me once: “Just because you have so much to give does not mean it will all be accepted. Just like that. There’s more to giving than just giving.”
She was sixteen then, and looking at her made me think of moments bright and beautiful, of the banaba in bloom.
I did not expect her to be vexed when I brought her a dress, for it was not really expensive. Besides, as the daughter of one of Father’s tenants, she knew me well enough, better perhaps than any of the people who lived in Carmay, the young folks who always greeted me politely, doffed their straw hats, then closed-mouthed went their way.
I always had coins in my pockets, but that March afternoon, after counting all of them and the stray pieces that I had tucked away in my dresser, I knew I needed more.
I approached Father. He was at his working table, writing on a ledger, while behind him one of the new servants stood erect swinging a palm-leaf fan over his head. I stood beside him, watching him scrawl the figures on the ledger, his wide brow and his shirt damp with sweat. When he finally noticed me, I could not tell him what I wanted. He unbuttoned his shirt down to his paunch. “Well, what is it?”
“I’m going to take my classmates this afternoon to the restaurant, Father,” I said.