The man stopped and, lifting the bundle to his shoulder, started to walk away. Luis held the man’s load and dragged it down. Holding him by the shoulders, Luis shook the man viciously. “My mother and my grandfather and my brother — where are they?” he cried.
The old man shook off his hold and backed away. For a moment Luis expected him to draw the bolo at his waist, but the man did not. In Tio Joven’s eyes Luis saw no hatred and no fear — only that resignation of old people who have grown tired of living.
“What do you want me to say?” the old man finally asked, barely raising his voice above a whisper, his eyes throwing glances around him, as if he were afraid that among the dead trunks of palms, in the hot harsh day, someone was listening to the horrendous secret that he was about to tell. “You shouldn’t have come here,” he said, taking off his wide-brimmed hat and fanning himself. His eyes had grown warm. “It’s all too late now.”
Luis felt panic pounding his chest. “My mother,” he said. “Where are they? Can’t you tell me?”
Tio Joven put on his hat and wiped his hands against his faded trousers. “Nena — your mother — she is alive, but your grandfather is dead — and so are many others.”
Luis could not believe what he heard. “No!” he cried, and although fear, anger, and sorrow claimed him, no tears welled in his eyes. There was instead this choking weight that pressed upon his chest. “Only a few months ago …” He wanted to say that he had been here, but he realized immediately that he had quite forgotten the old folks, that he had not written to his mother at all or attended to her needs, that he had shut her and his grandfather conveniently out of his mind.
“My mother, where can I find her?”
The old man shook his head. “After it happened we did not really know who was alive and who was not. After a week your mother came to where we had evacuated. She was hungry and we fed her. She was dirty and we gave her some clothes. She would go to every man and say, ‘Victor — or Luis — you must go home now.’ Every young man was Luis or Victor. She had nothing else. Her eyes were red from crying. She carried a small bundle, which she used as a pillow. It contained nothing but old newspapers and letters. She would not part with it. She left at night, so no one noticed her departure. That was the last time we saw her.”
“Where could she be now? Where can I find her?”
Tio Joven looked far away. “Ask the wind,” he said. “She goes where the wind wills. She was in Rosales, I have heard — in the market, searching. She does not bother anyone. People are kind — they will always give her food, clothing, and a roof over her head.”
After a while, Luis asked, “Tio Joven, how did it start, how did it happen?”
“I do not know,” the old man said, “but your grandfather, he was among the first to fall. He was feeding the hogs, I think. Two days later — the fires hadn’t completely died down and the posts of the houses were still smoking — the dead were still there, where the bullets had found them.”
Luis covered his face with his hands and leaned on the buri trunk, his knees watery and shaking. “Only a few months ago—” he said bitterly.
“Time is swift.” The old man sighed. “Sometimes we don’t notice it anymore.”
“Tell me what happened?”
“You never heard about it in the city, not even from your father?” Luis did not speak.
“Three months ago, or less,” Tio Joven said, sitting on the bundle and fanning himself again with his hat. “It is not very clear to me now. Ask those who are in town. They know better.”
Luis leaned forward. “Tell me.”
“But what use is the truth now?”
Luis turned away. “I have to know,” he said quietly.
Tio Joven bent over, rested his elbows on his knees, his chin on his palms. “It’s very hazy now,” he said, looking at the yellowish blades of grass struggling up from where he had picked up the bundled pieces of wood, “but that afternoon — how can one forget it? The harvest in November was good. Your tia was planning to butcher a pig.” He turned to Luis and smiled.
“It was sunset. I was coming up the river, where I had lifted the fish traps. It was a poor catch. I had gone up the gully when the shooting started. I could hear the bullets whistling. I stopped, then I saw the people, the women and the children, running toward the river. I went back and fled to the delta with them, and we hid in the high grass. From there we saw the village go up in fire — all through the night. Then, before dawn, we started looking around for the others in the delta. I called my wife’s name, but she was not among those who escaped.” The old man’s face was inscrutable. His eyes had long been dried of tears, and the story he told had long numbed his senses to grief.
“Why did it happen?” Luis asked.
Tio Joven bit his lower lip and spat. “I do not know — how will I know? They came searching for us in Aguray — in the delta to which we had fled. The constabulary soldiers and Don Vicente’s civilian guards — they said that our village was evil, that there were Huks among us, and that they would continue to follow us. We returned here — some of us. We saw for the first time what had happened, and we knew we couldn’t stay here anymore. A few days afterward the tractors came.”
Luis stood up. Around him the newly plowed earth was waiting for rain and seed. “Grandfather,” he asked, “where was he buried?”
The old man pointed to the turn of the river. “There are twenty of them there.” The old man rose, heaving his load on his shoulders. Luis walked behind him.
“I am now in Aguray, too. That’s farther up the river — if you remember. There’s not much to eat there, and we cannot tell when we will have to leave. When the rains come we won’t know how the floodwaters will turn. The delta may be flooded, and all the houses of reed and bamboo that we have built will be washed away. They haven’t come down to drive us away. Maybe we will go to Manila if we can raise the transport money. We can try our luck there.”
Luis took his wallet, pulled out some bills, and handed them to the old man. The old man shook his head, but Luis tucked the bills into the old man’s shirt pocket just the same. “Thank you, thank you,” the old man said. “You will be going back to Manila? I hear it is very peaceful there.”
Luis did not answer.
“We do talk about you sometimes,” the old man said finally, “that you will be getting married. You will live in Rosales, of course?”
Luis did not want to talk about himself. “Are all the others in Aguray, too?” he asked.
“About five families,” Tio Joven said, shaking his head. “Life there is difficult. There are no fish in the river. We have planted some peanuts and watermelons — seeds that we got from the farmers there, who wanted to help us. We need many things. See, I come this far for firewood.” They walked with difficulty, stumbling over dry chunks of earth and deep furrows. The old man stopped before a thicket of shrubs near the riverbank. “Behind this,” he said.
Before the mound of earth Tio Joven flung down his load and wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt. “There are twenty here — we counted them, and we know all of them.”
Luis stood before the swell, his arms limp at his sides. Beyond, the river, the sparse growth of weeds motionless on its banks. Above, a smoky blue sky and the sun, which ravaged everything. I see them all before me now, all who have trusted me because I was one of them. This is my truth, and it would have been simpler if I were ignorant of it and could not trace myself to it. Here I am, the chief mourner, but I cannot cry. I see an ancient and craggy face and eyes that have also seen travail I will never witness. Grandfather — if you are here now, I will hold your hand to my brow and tell you that the world is evil and that not even love such as mine matters anymore. And Mother, you who cared for me simply, where are you? What do I have to offer you? You are here around me — alive as the air is alive and kind as the land that will continue to nurture the seed.