Don Jacinto held the reins for a while and patted his favorite horse on the head. Before he let go, he whispered to Istak: “Do not worry about your family.”
A chill wave collapsed on him. He might never return; how would he tell Dalin this? She had understood why he had to work for the Cripple for days. And how exhilarating it had been — to have the mind soar again, to speak again with someone who could scale those ethereal heights. He had forgotten the feeling, although on occasion something akin to it would lift him from his mundane self, when he brought back color to faces already marked by Death, when a bony arm still and numb responded to his touch. Kyrie Eleison! Christe Eleison! Would Dalin understand? For all her intelligence, she had never really thought much beyond what was circumscribed by Cabugawan. Nights he would lie awake, his arm laid across her breast, and they would talk not about what the Cripple had said but about the ripening corn, the sick, and why he had to see all who came to him as if a compulsion possessed him. How would he explain to her the sickness which he had survived, which ordained him to do what he was doing? And now, no dream hastened him, nothing but a cripple’s words — yet they were all that mattered.
Even without Istak’s telling her, Dalin knew how much he had enjoyed writing again. The time would come when the words he shaped would spring to life, and these same words would claim him — not as words but as a promise, as Vigan in the past had been, and perhaps, someday, Manila — all the evocations that the Cripple had made. Manila, where people could appreciate better what he did with words and prayers; Manila, where there were more men like the Cripple. But it was not to that Queen City he was headed. He was going back to the north, to the beginning.
Later: How would he tell his sons? Antonio was not even ten and though the boy already knew how to plow straight furrows and control the plowshare so that it did not sink too deep, still he was just a boy. And Pedro, who could help in the transplanting of rice, in the pasturing of the carabaos, who was as proficient as his older brother at reading and writing — what would happen to them? They would not starve as long as Dalin was alive, that was true. He regretted that he had spent so little time with them.
Kimat cantered through the narrow lane bordered with flowering madre de cacao trees. The jute-mat saddle held the letter sewn within, the silver pesos were in his pocket. Slung across the horse’s back was the bag with cakes of cane sugar. He would add to his pack rice, salt, and dried beef. It would suffice. With money, he could always buy provisions on the way.
Antonio’s dog, Kebaan, barked in greeting when he approached; the barking frightened the horse, which reared, but only for an instant. Kimat became still as soon as Istak smoothed his mane and said a few soothing words. All the boys in the neighborhood who had heard the neighing rushed out of their homes to look at the beautiful beast, bigger than the ponies which pulled the calesas. Though Don Jacinto had been to Cabugawan a few times, Kimat always drew attention from the children. Their own uncle astride the steed impressed upon them all of their uncle’s importance, that something unknown, exciting, was happening.
Dalin came down the stairs. Through the open door, the kitchen fire reached out to them with its warm glow. Istak, tying Kimat to a gatepost, could discern at once the anxiety in her face as she approached. He held her by the waist and drew her up to the house, leaving the boys in the yard to admire the horse.
“That is Don Jacinto’s mount,” she said. “Where are you going?”
He did not reply; instead, he kissed her softly on the brow. It was moist with perspiration. “Do not be angry, Old Woman,” he said affectionately. “Just do not forget that you are precious to me and that I will always treasure you in my mind and heart.”
The concern in her face deepened. He told her everything without any embellishment, and when he was through, she embraced him and cried, “I may not see you again. I have waited for this day, I knew it would come.”
She had always been brave. Like the house posts uprooted from the Ilokos, she was also sturdy. She would be able to withstand the long wait, the uncertainty, he assured himself as he held her, feeling the quiver in her body, the trickle of her tears against his cheek. “I will return, just wait,” he whispered.
He left her so she could finish her cooking, the smell of the vegetable stew clinging to his nostrils. This was the pleasure of home he would certainly miss, and briefly, he wondered where he would have his breakfast; the road to Bayambang was not within his compass and he did not know of a single eating place along the way.
At his instruction, his older son had gone quickly to the neighbors, to Bit-tik first. Now the men, the women, and children were gathered in the yard, sitting on their haunches, on the long wooden mortar where the sheaves of rice were pounded.
To them, he entrusted his family. He was leaving, he said, on a journey to the north. They knew of the Cripple’s presence in Rosales, this great man whose wisdom they could not fathom. He was tempted to tell them he would go across the Cordilleras and that he would probably try and see Po-on again. Po-on where they came from and where it all began. Po-on which clung to them tenaciously as memory.
In the afterglow, he recognized all the faces raised to him. The soft light hid the lines of care and hard work just as it hid from them, too, the glaze of tears in his eyes.
He was valuable to them — teacher, healer, patriarch; now he realized with searing sharpness that they were valuable to him not only as cousins and neighbors — they were the earth, the water, the air which sustained him.
He asked Bit-tik to stay after they had gone; he would have a last word with him. They stood in the yard talking, while above, the stars swarmed and the cool harvest air filled the lungs. He wrapped an arm around his brother’s shoulder. “How do you think the weather will turn out in the next few days?”
“You are the one who knows more about the ways of God, Manong,” Bit-tik said. “I hope that it will be good, not because the harvest season is upon us — but because you will be going on a long journey.”
“Yes,” he murmured. “It is a long trip. And the boys — you know, they cannot yet take care of the farm or of their mother.”
“Do not insult mc,” Bit-tik said. “If we cat, they will eat.”
Istak did not speak again. Before he turned to leave, he tightened his arm around the broad, strong shoulders of his younger brother.
Supper was waiting in the house; the stew was steaming on the low eating table, on top of it a big black mudfish which had been broiled. The new rice in the open pot was red and fragrant. A small coconut bowl was beside the rice pot; it was half filled with salted fish sauce flavored with lime juice and roasted red pepper. A plate of boiled camote tops completed the meal. The two boys ate quickly with their hands; they were growing and they always seemed famished. He watched them — Antonio, who was older, who had already handled the plow, whose brow was wide like his; and Pedro the younger, who had inherited his mother’s handsome features. He had delivered them himself — held them up to his wife, their umbilical cords still uncut, their bodies still wet and shining with the juices of the womb. They were such tiny, wailing things then, and now they were big. Three more harvests, just three more short years and Antonio would be circumcised, and Pedro after him. Would they be able to take care of their mother? Would they stay in Cabugawan, or would the call of far and exotic distances bewitch them as once he himself had hearkened, had longed for the distances he would traverse? Now, there was this long and perhaps perilous journey. What new wisdom would he extract from it?