He had not cried when his mother died, and now Istak wept, the tears burning in his eyes. All the bruises that had hurt in the last few days became this vise clamped upon his chest.
His mother. His father. They had paid dearly. Their flight had come to an end.
It did not rain that night, so they did not go to Don Jacinto’s storehouse to sleep; it was wide and empty until the next harvest season, when it would be full again with the rich man’s share of the harvest.
After supper, they gathered around Dalin’s cart, now Istak’s as well. Above it, from a low branch of the balete tree, a lamp dangled and lighted up their faces, work-weary — yet alight with hope. The children had all been put to bed, but the older ones were awake, trying to listen to what was being said.
“You have seen the forest,” Istak said. “It will take us years before we can clear it.”
“We will burn the trees during the dry season,” Kardo, the youngest brother of Ba-ac, said. He had some experience clearing the forest beyond Cabugaw.
“We will plant whatever we can in the land we clear,” An-no said. “We will trap the wild pigs and deer that will come to destroy the crops, and we will raise our families here,” he continued, his eyes touching Orang, beside Dalin at the other end of the circle. She had overcome her shame and no longer kept to herself. Dalin had drawn her out slowly. In the tawny light of the lamp, her long hair shone.
Orang’s voluble father did not say much this time. “Though we did not start with you in Cabugaw, we have shared many things — we traveled as one family. I think we should continue this way. When we start building our houses, we should all be neighbors.”
“What shall we call our village? Shall we name it after a saint? Or after a flower the way this town is named?” Bit-tik spoke eagerly.
“I should not have brought posts from the old house,” Blas continued. “They remind me of where I came from.”
Indeed, there was enough mature bamboo for posts. There were the trees in the forest to use as timber. And cogon for roofs. They would just build huts now; the planting was more important, and after the harvest, they would build their permanent homes.
“Our village should be close to the creek. We could bathe our work animals there. We should have a street which we hope will someday be wide enough and long enough to lead to town. We have to sell what we cannot cat or use,” Istak said.
Kardo added: “We will dig a well in the middle of the village, and when we have enough money, we will line it with brick so that it will not cave in.”
“And we will have a fiesta, too, don’t forget that.” Blas started to gush. “And we will have a patron saint, just like Rosales has San Antonio de Padua. This is Istak’s choice — I will sing the dal-lot and compose new poems. I will celebrate our journey, retell vicissitudes we suffered and how we surmounted them all, no matter how sad and painful. This, after all, is our own calvary, is it not so, Istak? And during the Holy Week, I will sing the pasyon in a way you have never heard before. Orang — daughter of mine, are you listening? She has the best voice in all Candon and she can sing very well. I have taught her well …”
“But what will we call our barrio?” Bit-tik was insistent.
“Cabugawan,” Istak said simply.
PART TWO
CHAPTER 10
And so the rains came, and the typhoons and the floods as well, and after the rains, the drought — a cycle blessed with God’s bounty and damned by His negligence.
They persevered. In the evenings, the cogonal distances crackled with huge bursts of fire which quickly died, for that was the way the wild grass burned. That was the way — so the Spaniards said — the Indios also behaved, with rash and easily spent enthusiasms. The cogonals they cleared yielded to their will. These lands had never been plowed before — the roots of the wild cogon had bored deep and wide into the soil and many a time a plowshare would snap as it lost in the constant wrestling with the stubborn mesh. All of them also worked parcels in Don Jacinto’s land, and here they did not have too many difficulties; the land had been planted before and had merely lain fallow; the soil yielded smoothly to the plow.
The rats did not multiply as fast as they were warned would happen. For one, the rats were herded into bamboo traps — lured there with grain and beaten to death. They were as big as cats, and were skinned carefully, dried in the sun or broiled in open fires, their fat sizzling on the coals. Like chicken, they all said.
They rose earlier than the sun and, having vanquished the wild grass, pushed the forest farther. What they could not cut they burned, leaving some trees as markers of their property.
Snakes lurked in the mounds which dotted the plain. Some of these mounds were spared as markers, too, and the others were leveled after the appropriate prayers so that there would be more land to till.
At night, if there was a moon, they plowed or harrowed, and dug the ditches that would bring water to the fields. In the flooded paddies, frogs were plentiful and they filled the night with their croaking. It was easy to catch them — they seemed mesmerized by the light of the lanterns and they were brought back in strings for the women to skin.
Even in a year of bad weather, the harvest was abundant in the lands of Don Jacinto; half was theirs, which was good. The harvest was niggardly in the newer land, but all of it was theirs, which was even better.
With Istak, time hardly mattered anymore, only work. The blisters in his palms had long since hardened into calluses. He had ceased wearing slippers after he left the sacristy; his soles had thickened and could no longer be easily punctured by thorns. His muscles became hard as stone and he sometimes marveled at his strength, how he could now lift the wooden mortar all by himself and how long he could endure the sun or the continuous rain that sent the other farmers home shivering, their skin wrinkled by the cold. He liked the cold more than the heat; the water dripped through his palm-leaf hat and palm-leaf cloak, his lips lost their color, but he worked on, sometimes thinking of what awaited him at home, steaming ginger broth flavored with cane sugar. And Dalin — the sweet peace with which she always welcomed him.
As in the planting and harvesting, they helped one another build their permanent homes near the creek. The houses were bigger than their first huts, with posts of sagat, some of which they dragged down from the foothills of Balungaw. They fenced their yards with split bamboo and planted fruit trees in them. Farmers in Carmay whom they befriended helped in the harvest. They gathered the ripening gelatinous grain and roasted it over slow-burning strips of old bamboo that had rotted and dried.
Istak and Dalin were married the month they arrived in Rosales, and a year after, An-no and Orang. There would have been no wedding feast, for Istak had nothing, but Don Jacinto, who was their godfather, gave them a goat to butcher.
An-no was better prepared. Not only had he built a new house by then, he had also raised two pigs for the wedding feast.