FELIFPE GRANROJO

Sky Rose

 

THE SUN HAD already set by the last quarter moon still cast a pale light on the land.  From his bench under the sparsely-leafed borobo tree Rolly noted the shades of grays and darks in the hazy pall of early evening.  The ripening corn glistened before him.  Beyond more clearings carved out of the forest formed haphazard patterns on the gently rolling hills.  A few dead trees stood here and there like decorative driftwood in the middle of some fields.  The footpaths were laid  like silver ribbons on the grassy slopes.  Thicker forests brooded far off, a faint glow gilding the treetops.  Nearer to him, the banana leaves stirred in the breeze, casting demonic shadows on the ground.

Soon the crescent completely sank beyond the mountains.  It was a cloudless night and the stars shone brightly in the tropical dark.  The Small Dipper was visible and the Southern Cross stood aslant in the horizon.  But around him it was pitch black, accentuated by the sounds of forest creatures that had taken over.  Cricket chirps seemed louder.  Two or three fruit bats flapped in and out of the wild cherry tree.  With a little concentration, Rolly could hear the gurgling sound of the river, a mere stream now in April, snaking between the hills and tripping over a stony path at a bend below the first slope.  Somewhere there would issue the wackwacks of a night bird.

Rolly stood up and gave in to a luxurious yawn.  The mosquitoes were getting thick around him.  He splung his rifle over his shoulder and traced a footpath leading to hut concealed behind two star-apple trees.  The hut was raised knee-high on log posts and was ladderless.  Shafts of light radiated through the slits of bark walls.  He knocked once, paused, then knocked rapidly twice.

“Coming. Coming,” said on olds man’s voice.

Rolly listened to the creaks of the bamboo floor.  The door moved and he helped it up from its slot.  The old man held a tin can kerosene lamp over his head.

“Good evening, Iyo Juaning,” Rolly said. A smile came naturally to him, revealing a perfect set of white teeth that gleamed in the flickering light.

“Good evening, son.  Come in. Come in.”

He took one step and he was up on the floor.  The room was bare of any furniture.  The bamboo slats were too spaced out and complained under his weight.  On the wall was an advertisement calendar with a picture of the Mother of Perpetual Help.  Beside it was cross fashioned from coconut palm leaves.  A pile of corn was fenced off in a corner.

“Is the moon gone now?  Are you really leaving? Oh, I wish you could stay another day.  Well, why not?  There’s plenty to eat around here.  It’s nothing to worry about.  What’s more, there still rice.”  The old man keep nodding his head as he talked.

Rolly gave a short low laugh and put his arm warmly around the old man.  “I really would like to, Iyo, but we still have a long way to go.”

A young man and a young woman emerged from another roon curtained off by a plastic sack.   There were armed, and they had their packs on.  Rolly nodded to them in greeting and the woman  called out behind her:  “Okay, comrades. Time to move out.”

Six more young men filed out of the room, followed by an elderly peasant couple.  The man handled Rolly his knapsack.

“Good evening, Manong, Manang.”

“Good evening Berto.”  The couple answered simultaneously.

The man asked:  “Where do you go from here?”

“To Barrio Balagtas.”

“Belen,” said Iyo Juaning to the young woman, “do you really have to move tonight?”

“Well, it is really necessary, Iyo.”

“I think it’s going to rain. You’ll get sick.  It’s better to wait until tomorrow.  What do you think?” I was telling Berto not to worry about the food.  We still have rice.  There’s plenty to eat around here.”

“Hush, Tatay,” the man who handed Rolly knapsack said.  “There are stars in the skies so it is not going to rain.”  He turned to Rolly.  “He wants you to stay longer so he can boast of it to the neighbors.”

Iyo Juaning pouted.  “Well, I still have rice, that’s for sure.”

“We promise to come back, Iyo.” Interposed one of the young men in what was developing into an awkward situation.  “Then we’ll eat up your rice.”

There was laughter. The old man brightened.

“It’s a promise, ha, Tonyo? You’ll come again? When?”

“Very soon, Iyo.”

“Oh, that’s unfair.” The old man sighed.  “Well, okay. I guess that’s life, eh?  You come, you go.  Just like that.  Don’t you ever stay in one place?” He gently elbowed Rolly and said flippantly.  “Hey, tell me, where’s your camp?  I might join some day, who knows?  Inday, are they filled up yet?”

“Yes, Tatay.”

“We have the cooked bananas and camote, Iyo,” said Belen, patting her knapsack.  “We’re ready.”

“Take good care of yourself then,” said Iyo Juaning.

The guerrillas said their thanks and bade farewell to the family, each one bowing his head lightly in traditional sign of respect.  The stepped into the dark.  After some hesitation, Iyo Juaning went after the departing group and walked side by side with Rolly.  As they neared the cluster of banana plants, the old man suddenly slipped something in Rolly’s hand.  At the touch Rolly knew it was a piso coin.  He immediately handed it back as if the coin singed him, but the old man was quicker and had stepped a few paces back.

“You’ll need it, children!”  he said, walking backwards.  “God bless you.”  Then he turned and firmly retraced his steps back to the hut.

“Thank you!” Rolly shouted after him.  “We’ll…” But the old man was gone.

They circled around him.

“He gave me a peso,” Rolly said, and took the lead in the march.  The others quickly fell into line according to their assigned places.   The young woman took the middle position while the man called Tonyo was last in the line.

They crossed the cornfield, made a wide U-turn and proceeded in the opposite direction.  They marched in silence, avoiding the footpaths that cut through the cornfield.  When they emerged, Rolly turned to the one behind him and said: “Makahiya! Pass it on quick!”

It was passed down the line.  Betty and two others put on rubber sandals, while the rest just went barefooted as they traversed a grassy field thick with thorny weed.  Ahead was a strip of forest.  Rolly took out his penlight and searched for the path.  Once they were under its canopsy, the others also began to use their own flashlights.  The bigger ones were covered with rubber or soft leather with a tiny hole to allow only a thin ray to escape.  They used their flashlights sparingly, switching them on and off rapidly even when negotiating a difficult terrain.

“A hole!” Rolly would whisper.  “A hole!” the next one behind him would echo and so on down the line.  They forded the dried-up river easily.  Ang thus they walked and walked in the dark, the silence broken only with the necessary warnings of directions from Rolly.   They crossed more open fields a coffee plantation, wooded gulches and strips of forests.

In the first two hours their progress was slow. Beyond an arm’s length they could no longer see the one in front, and frequently one had to thrust his arm forward to touch, and at times they walked that way touching each other’s shoulders.  They never used their flashlights in the open fields.  Only their feet guided them.  They walked sliding their feet, quickly feeling obstacles, depressions and tree stumps.  Sometimes one stumbled or stepped on sharp-edged rock.

“Stupid rock!” the young woman mumbled to herself.  She stopped to press the hurt sole and the next one behind bumped into her.

“Oops, anything wrong, Betty?”

“Just some rock,” Betty said.  “I’m all right.”

As the hours deepened, they dared the footpaths and used their flashlights more frequently.  Had any peasant been awake at such hours, he would have seen a curious file of the fireflies cresting some carabao-sled trail.

 

Betty awoke to the rhythmic sound of axe hitting the wood.  She rubbed her eyes.  The heat was intense.  Three of her companions were still sleep on the floor.  She peeped through a crack on the wall.  Rolly, wearing shorts, was chopping firewood under the one o’clock sun.  Sweat glistened on his well-formed body.  How he had changed, she thought. Well, everybody had changed.  If her friends from the convent school could only see her now! A gamut of emotions swept over her.  She felt like crying over nothing.

Why was it you suddenly became so sad while being perfectly content?  In her new world she had found fulfillment.  It was a life that was basic and so exciting.  She had experienced the widest range of emotions, from love to hatred, from gentleness to violence,  contradictory passions of the kind that could only be aroused when one was confronted with a life-and-death struggle.  Being a rebel, a real guerrilla fighter, gave purpose and meaning to her convictions, to her existence itself.  And yet something tugged at her.  She recognized it vaguely as a sense of nostalgia, a longing that had no shape, like a pain that was there but had no specific tender spot.  Perhaps it was just that changes had taken place so fast that a little reflection could be jolting.  Just now as she looked at Rolly…

She recalled their first meeting in the mountains, in one of those frequent reorganization of the unarmed expansion units.  Rolly was a new addition. She had heard of him being jokingly referred to as a B’laan kid, for he had lived with the fierce minority tribe for six months.  But when she saw him she had been quite frankly surprised.  He was very young and was extremely attractive of the mestizo type.  Malay and Spanish blood coursed through his veins producing what to her was a successful mixture.  He had high cheekbones, a finely chiseled nose and a sensual mouth set above a stubborn chin.  But most of all she noticed his eyes—large, mournful eyes that stared at you with unobtrusive intensity, locking you in a gaze that caressed and seduced.

She had thought at first that his shyness was because he was new to the group, was the youngest and the least experienced.  It was a natural trait.  He was the silent type.  Later she would learn to observe his face for reactions.  He had a most expressive face.   He frowned often, the frown of bafflement.  He also smiled often, so much like an impish grin.   His face passed from one movement to the other with child-like ease, his mobile brows knitting or arching according to the emotion of the moment.  Over-all he presented an ovine-like demeanor, and she remembered quite distinctly that he had stirred in her strong protective instincts, a matter she had found funny, for he was taller than most, and had a larger body build.

Could this be the same seventeen-year old boy two years ago who asked if she felt guilt, remorse of anything in killing in informer? It was after a meeting.  They were exchanging experiences and the subject of killing and dying came up.  He just sat there, listening, his eyes fixed on whoever was speaking.

“I’m not afraid to die, I think, but I don’t want to die if I could help it,” he had answered when asked his opinion.  They were amused.

Waldo, the commanding officer, talked about the informer who took too long to die.  “He was thick-set, strong as a carabao.  He had this bullet in his head and he was still running, making a lot of noise.  I shot him again and again.  And yet he was still running with several bullets in him.   When I caught up with him I finished him off with the jungle knife.”  He made the motion of cutting the throat.

When they were already lying down, Rolly nudged her.  She was sandwiched between him and Tonyo, already at the point of sleep.

“This killing,” he whispered, “How did it feel? I mean, didn’t it bother your conscience at all?”

“It’s his life of your life,” she answered, yawning.

“You’ll get used to it, Rolly,” said Waldo from across the room.  She was looking into his eyes, and he smiled sheepishly.

Rolly was to experience the first killing within two months of that meeting.  It was in retaliation for the deaths of Waldo and his teammate.  The pair had dropped in at a contact’s house, were feted, and when already asleep  were treacherously done away with.  The contact had turned out to be hidden bad element who loudly boasted of his evil deed.  That was how they learned the gory details—that Waldo’s hands and legs were cut off before he was buried, still alive.  The story stunned them.  It especially affected Rolly; it was his first experience with death, the death of somebody known to him.  As they met and discussed their next moves, Betty could feel the tension that gripped him.  It was he who strongly insisted that they get the culprit.  With the help of reliable peasants, they caught the man and brought him to a secret trial.  Rolly offered to kill the man himself, and with a trembling hand, looking deep into the panic-mad eyes of a condemned coward, he stabbed him again and again long after the man was dead.  He had to be restrained.  He washed himself more frequently after that or took long swims in the river.  There was also that grim air of determination about him, or did she just imagine it?, that gave the only hint of an inner ferocity behind an innocent face.

That was two years ago and many things had happened since.   There was that reorganization that would separate them.  She would remain with the unit, while he would join an armed group.  He had distinguished himself in his work, expanding the farthest from their initial base.  For that, the armed unit took him after it had swept in to consolidate and found his area the most stable.  The another reorganization a year later would find them back together again in one unit.

That had been another surprise to her, seeing him again.  He stood there  on a hill, stripped to his waist, slim, tall and bronzed, his long hair tied with a strip of red cloth around his forehead, windtossed, tumbling hair the color of corn floss at harvest time.  Oh, how devastatingly more handsome he had become!  He had by that time acquired a reputation as a good guerrilla fighter, a battle-scarred veteran. Indeed, he looked so mature, and yet again, so innocent.  The easy smile was still there, and his large brown eyes remained baleful.  He was, in many ways, the same shy boy that she had met that first time.  But the change in him was only too real, for he now led the unit, which had been armed, and was also head of the newly-opened guerrilla zone.  Now, as she looked at him chopping firewood she wondered how much she herself had changed.  She had not given it much thought.   Neither had the others spoken of it to her, not even Tonyo, her husband of three years.  In their organizational life they talked of development in terms of their work.  That  was the main concern.  Improve in all fields in order to survive.  That meant undergoing personal changes too.  But in what way she has changed she couldn’t define now.  There was only one thing she was sure of—she had changed and it was for the better, for herself and for the people she had chosen to be with, toward the ultimate change of all: the revolution.

They were on the road again.  They went up and down the hills and wound their way along old bulldozed roads that hugged the cliffsides.

Presently, they came upon a wide river.  It murmured, growled and swished as the current hit the boulders.  They used their flashlights, spotting the rocks below to step on.

“There, Betty,” said a helpful comrade midstream, hi flashlights full on a dark object below the surface.  The water sprayed up against Betty’s thighs, and she felt the strong push.   She slowly brought her foot down.  The rock proved to be much farther down and she lost her balance.  She fell on her side with a loud splash.  Instinctively securing her rifle, she lost the flashlights. She sank ang bobbed up again.  The current tugged at her for some distance before she hit the bottom.   She dug in her toes in the sand, arranged her position sideward against the current and stood in breast-deep ice cold water. He long  hair covered her face.  Two men waded down to her and helped her to the other bank, the helpful comrade profusely apologetic. She didn’t say anything.  They began to fuss about her.  She went straight into the bushed. She peeled off her clothes.  She shivered as the breeze briefly played with her wet body.  She pulled out a new pair of jeans and dry shirt from her knapsack and dressed up hurriedly.  She wrung her hair and shook her head vigorously.  Then she went back to the group with a serious face.  The men offered her their jackets and she took Tonyo’s who then wore for himself a long-sleeved polo-shirt. Rolly gave the order to march.

Jesus! Jesus! It is so funny.  Two o’clock in the morning somewhere in the mountains of Davao and I’m wet as a hen.  Oh, it sure is cold.  I wish the idiots didn’t make so much fuss.  I’ll bite my lips.  Teehee. There. I can’t help it.  I’m getting hysterical.  Oh, Jesus. Hikhikhik. Oh, I must really stop.  I’ll bite my tongue.

Hikhik, she heard from behind.   Another picked it up.  A moment of silence.  Then another giggle.

That dit it.  She giggled again.  She couldn’t stop.   A staccato of suppressed giggles up and down the line like a pingpong ball.  The infection had set in and no matter one tried to hikhik always managed to escape. Now alone, the next a duet; a sudden burst, complete silence, and it started all over again.

“Stop that giggling,” Rolly said.  They all sensed a perfunctory command and did not heed it.

“There is a hut ahead!”  Rolly barked some minutes later. There was an edge to his voice that they only knew to well.  He was now the commander; and they fell absolutely silent, keen to his mood,  his sense of danger.  The house stood on the clearing through which the trail passed. It glowed with the cold fire of a low all-night lamp.  The tested the wind and corresponding executed a wide arc through the sloping cornfield.  The heard the hesitant snarl of a dog that did not progress.   The coasted down the slope till they hit a terrace, then they went up again, stopping and listening for a while when somebody stepped on dried twig or cornstalk.  They reached the trail again way past the house.

Stupid rock! Stupid river! Hihkhikhik, here it comes again.  My tongue really hurts.  Oh, sweet Jesus, I must really stop.  Hikhikhik.

This time the response  was in earnest.  The muffled giggles were prolonged. “Ssh! Ssh!” Rolly said, but there was definitely hysterical.  “Run!” Rolly shouted, and they ran.  Roy led them through the cogon grass, the tall talahib reeds, deep into the fallowed fields till he stumbled, and they stumbled piling on top of each other.  They laughed, slapping each other, pressing their aching sides, wiping their tears—the commander not exempted.  Betty laughed the loudest.  She was no longer laughing at herself but at her companions laughing there like mad. She laughed at the eerie sight of them laughing there, doubled  over, deep in the mountains of Davao, in the wee hours of a later April.   They laughed and laughed, she didn’t know for how long, till they were exhausted.  And they lay there on their backs totally spent, then smoked cigarettes lazily.

“There’s a moving star,” Rolly said to nobody in particular.

Betty looked up.  A galaxy of diamonds and he would notice a satellite.  He was strange creature.  For one quick instant she felt like hugging him, this lovable man-child.

 

At the communication drop house they found a package waiting for them.  It contained some old propaganda materials and personal letters.  Rolly also received a letter tightly rolled in cellophane tape aside from the official memoranda and directives.  He immediately recognized the scrawl and started on it first. It was written six months ago.  It read:

 

          Dear Dodong,

          This man claims to be from your organization asking for support.  I gave him P5.00 so hopefully he sends this letter to wherever you are.  We miss you terribly.  Papa and I don’t understand it. Have we done something wrong that you had to leave, not bothering to explain or anything all these three years?  As you probably know, our house was never raided at all.

          You’re not on the wanted list so it is safe to return and you can resume your studies and lead a normal life.  Please, my son, listen to me.  It is for your own good.  Please come back. Boboy, Nilo and Tessa send their love.

 

                                                                             Your mama

 

As was their usual practice, they shared the letters among themselves.  After reading Rolly’s, Tonyo stole a glance at him.  Rolly was absorbed in reading someone else’s letter, his large eyes betraying nothing in the lamplight.  The following day Tonyo observed Rolly more closely, but he didn’t perceive any change of mood.  During lunch, Rolly let the peasant’s scrawny child sit on his lap as they formed a loose circle on the floor round the cooked corn and broiled eggplants dipped in the brine of anchovies.  He fed the child with his own hand, encouraging him to eat.  He himself ate ravenously; he always had a big appetite, stuffing his mouth full in true peasant style.  From time to time he would wipe the nose of the kid.  Tonyo thought that he should learn Rolly’s methods.   He was great with children.  No matter how dirty they were he embraced them and played with them, allowing them to scramble all over him.  One reason why he was so loved by the peasants. He also had this prepossessing style with the peasants, never talking down, never lecturing, never bombastic as most activists were wont to do in excessive zeal and impatience.  Mostly he asked the questions and listened attentively, his eyes full with sympathy as the peasants recounted their endless problems.  Only then did he give comments or simple explanations rich in the metaphors the peasants understood. The effect was that of the peasants teaching Rolly, for he had simple, almost naïve manners, the way he looked at you with those large innocent eyes.

This was, of course, deceiving as he too was deceived sometime ago.  Rolly  did not impress him at first glance.  In fact, Rolly was decidedly his intellectual inferior.  But Tonyo never felt any resentment that Rolly, three years younger, now outstripped him in rank.  He even felt secure to be under his command, for he knew his job.  He knows how to survive in these hilly and forested regions.  That was what mattered in revolution.  To survive, to grow in strength, to win.  He had at first been skeptical when Rolly was given the command of the zone, bypassing a handful of senior cadres, including himself.  He had even opposed his first plan to expand the army, saying that they should concentrate first on expanding their mass base.  But Joey, who had worked closely with Rolly, supported the new commander and he was outvoted.  They huddled around a large map and Rolly, with quick professional movements, drew lines  indicating where to attack and where to withdraw.  The two squads temporarily merged for the task.  He was meticulous; every ambush was well-planned and well-executed.  They swooped down on isolated outposts and attacked small patrols in quick succession over a wide area, and by the time the authorities noticed a patter of tactical offensives and sent up reinforcement, they had withdrawn far and safe, with newer guns and two more guerrilla squads at the cost of two lives.  One had approached to recover the guns too soon and was killed when a soldier in his death throes fired wildly.  The other had foolishly jumped on a boulder, fired away cowboy-style at the patrol and got hit by a bullet in his head.

“Carelessness!, Pure carelessness!  Never be rash! We should value our lives for we live only once.  We have offered sacrifice it, so let’s make it good sacrifice.”  Rolly had said in a rare voluble outbursts during the memorial meeting.

Tonyo had already been convinced of Rolly’s capability after the very first ambush, the way he made the men respond to his command; the way  he changed tactics in the very heat of battle.  Such was the men’s trust in him after the series of successes that some even developed a certain degree of over-confidence, an over-confidence that resulted in unnecessary deaths.  At the memorial meeting, when Rolly spoke against rashness, Tonyo’s faith in the commander became complete.  They were in good hands; Rolly was utterly fearless, but never impetuous.

The child had slept, and Tonyo watched as Rolly gently extricated himself from his embrace.  He watched him talk to the door and out of the house.  He stood under the sun for several minutes and then walked off into the woods, a lazy, languid walk, the grace of a cat.  He wondered if Rolly could really so be unaware of his extreme physical beauty, never becoming self-conscious of it.  In truth, that was his main liability, his mestizo skin only secondary.   There were also several mestizo guerrillas among them, and they did not necessarily stand out even among a peasant crowd.  Rolly let the sun punish him so, but acquiring a bronze skin only succeeded in heightening his good looks, the kind that immediately hit you in the eye without being jarring.   The Tisoy, the handsome one, the people referred to him everywhere, rendering his presence strongly felt.  No matter how he kept himself unobtrusive, regardless of his innate shyness, he exuded pure sensuality that was all fire, a seething rage for life.  That, he thought, explained the childlike quality in him, they way he delighted over many things Tonyo considered pedestrian.  He was interested in wild flowers, shiny stones, colorful insects.  He would gaze out long, seemingly in deep thought and would suddenly say something about the flight of the hawk being the most graceful of all movement.  It was in these moments, while the magic lasted, that Rolly’s face took on a glow that triumphed over the sad look in his eyes.

 

Rolly has meanwhile reached a spot in the woods that he liked.  He sat on the edge of a low cliff, swinging his feet carelessly. He drank deep of the scene, his eyes scanning her slowly, observing.  A brook gurgled below, in a pool by its side tiny paitan fishes darted in circles, now and then flashing silvery undersides.  He noted the thick undergrowth around him, a disorder of giant ferns, rattans, vines, bushes and secondary growth trees shooting pitiable poles under the umbrella of towering trees.   A stunning damselfly, glossy green and tinged gold at the wingtips, hovered momentarily above the water, flicked its tail and alighted on a thin stalk weighed down by a cluster of tiny scarlet flowers that grazed the water.  It folded its wings and  turned into a dull immobile object.   A curious specie, he thought.  He would study insects yet.  But more important, he should increase his knowledge of edible plants.   It could come in handily.  The struggle was escalating, and their mass base might be evacuated forcibly, depriving them of support.  He should really start asking the local peasants.  He was sure they could add more to the knowledge he had acquired from the B’laan.  Unfortunately, he had been busy.   Nowadays he had been busy.  It was terrible to shoulder such a heavy responsibility.  You had to consider many things and you couldn’t do what you wanted to do.  First things, first, and oftentimes you forgot the little things that were important too.

He sighed. Five nights more of walking and they would gather for the zonal meeting.  That was the first thing now.  He felt excitement rise in him.  The first part would be dreadful: giving the opening talk that was his prerogative as zone commander.  Rather unpleasant. Anyway, when the reports came in… He rather regretted that they had to skip many barrios.  They were pressed for time.  They had been travelling for over two weeks now for the meeting.  If they cut straight, skipping some more barrios, they would make ito to Three-Peaks Circle on schedule.  Three-Peaks Circle was their code name for a large area dominated by three separate peaks ringed by an old logging road.  It was the most stable area of the zone; each household in the eleven barrios within was a contact or sympathizer.  It was the safest place to bring in the four squads for a three-day meeting.  He was happy with meetings—that is, he is asked the questions instead of being expected to give answers.  He could learn them; he wanted most to learn how advance the level of their present work.  He felt so inadequate.  Good thing he had so many comrades who were brilliant thinkers, who saw far ahead.  He could get their suggestions.  He brought the cigarette to his mouth. A strange hand came closer.  Startled, he shook it off, and his cigarette fell into the brook below. A bolt of sudden realization: it was his own hand.  He smiled.

Strange how the mind travelled so fast, flitting from the present to the past just like that.  It was the letter of course.  It had intruded into his train of thought, transporting him into a segment of his past.  It is Christmas time.  He is in his house with some friends listening to Simon and Garfunkel.  His mother ruffles his hair the second time upon passing him from the kitchen back to the bedroom.  He flushes with embarrassment.  His mother treats him like a child and he is already sixteen years old.

He studied his hands and his feet.  The nails were chipped, his cuticles hid the half-moons.  There was a bloodclot under the nail of his right forefinger.  His palms were yellowed with calluses; his toes were splayed; his soles thick and cracked.  His skin was burned down.  He was no longer Dodong.  He was Rolly, Berto any name except Dodong.

He felt wrenching sense of remorse.  He had been inconsiderate.  He hurt his mother deeply, she won’t didn’t deserve such negligence.  He had really intended to write.   Many times he had started to write, but then he would feel himself at a loss, and would put it off.  He disliked writing.  He couldn’t express himself well.  How was he to explain things to himself only vaguely understood?  He never went into things deeply.  He saw truth at first glance.   He just felt it.  It would strike him suddenly; he would see a course of action that he would immediately sense was correct, without subjecting it to thorough reasoning.  How did one explain that?  He just knew that it was more than impulse after impulse that finally led him to where he was now.  He knew that deep inside him.

How dit it all start anyway?  With great effort, Rolly tried to recall the momentous events of his life and find the meaning of it all in the jumbled recesses of his mind.

First, there were the demos.  He saw highly-charged street plays and heard the speakers shout invectives at the local officials.   He attended discussion groups.  He understood foreign domination.  He understood the peasant’s demand for land.  The other topics he found beyond his grasp.  But shorn of all verbal and theoretical intricacies there was beauty in those dreams worth, for example, cutting classes for.

On the terrible day, he was in his house.  The radio announced that their headquarters were raided and that there had been several arrests made.  Then it went dead.  He went to school and found it closed.  Downtown the people  hurried to and fro, excitedly discussing the new dispensation.  There he met a regional office who was fleeing.  What was his plan?  Nothing.  Was he ready to go to countryside?  I guess so.  And he was off.  Now as he collected his thoughts, the reason was simple.  He didn’t want to stay in prison.  Not for a day, a month—or as some of his friends had experienced, for over a year.  Prison was death, the worst kind of death.  He wouldn’t allow some vague authority to tamper with his life, shut him off where he could not smell the wind, watch the sunset or swim naked in the sea at night.  Just because he attended some demonstrations.  Wasn’t there free speech in the first place?  Of course, it now turned out he wasn’t hunted.  Anyway, it was the principle of the thing.  He had no regrets.  He understood the cause.  He had learned much in working with the peasants, shared with pains, their joys, their hopes, their struggles. He was one of them.

The beginning was difficult.   He was at first frightened by the new surroundings, the forbidding forest, the hard peasant life and the primitive world of the B’laan to which he had been hastily sent.  Expand northeast, that was the instruction, and he didn’t know how.  His teammate returned to the city, complaining of being left there in the lurch. He didn’t want to return.  It was a matter of survival.  He didn’t know what political work among the masses consisted of; he had indeed come unprepared, but he would keep himself alive in the mountains.  That much he could and would do.  Stay alive and reach the northeast.  So he moved from one farm to another offering to do framework—weeding, plowing, planting and harvesting and later felling trees.  Unused to manual labor he ached all over those first few weeks.  But after the initial torture he had rather found farm work invigorating.  He developed muscles.  And then he began to like his new world.  The earthly language of the peasants,  the secret treasures of the forests, the rituals of the B’laan.  He was free, wildly free!  Free to trudge up and down the hills under to moonlight, watch the fog above the mountains, seek unviolated springs to drink.  He made friends on the way.   He told the peasants he was an orphan.  To explain his skin he invented a Spanish priest for his errant grandfather.

Further up, he encountered the B’laan and befriended them.  The datu took a liking to him and adopted him as a son.  He circled round and round their territory.  And before he knew it he had stayed too long, not noticing the passing of months in his world of constant search for food—hunting, fishing, trapping, and the accompanying sacrifices to the woodland spirits.  He had almost forgotten the purpose of his being here.  With a heavy heart he left the B’laan and resumed his search for settlements in the east, north east, north. After over a year the armed unit found him.   Their paths had finally crossed.  He wept with joy.  They thought he was dead.

Oh, Mama! he heard a sob inside him.  How will you understand?  He resolved to write her anyway, tell her he was all right, and not to worry about him.  That would suffice.  He would write just that.  Also, to tell her to loved her, and papa, his brothers and sister.

 

They dropped in at Iyo Inteng’s house and slept the whole day.  The long walks were exacting their toll.  They woke up to eat a late lunch and went back to sleep.  The old peasant was all understanding. He saw that they were tired, too tired in fact to help around as they always did when they visited him.  So he decided to keep a big problem to himself.  Like all peasants he was shy in the presence of superiors, even if these, like the guerrillas, said they were  there to help.  A solution would somehow he found, he thought and went about with his  work.  The guerrillas, meanwhile, did not notice anything amiss.  But when twilight came they heard a woman’s cry that pierced the silence of the farm.  It was stamped with the unmistakable signs of madness.

Iyo Inteng rushed into the room, Betty closely following behind.  The woman was curled up in a corner.  “Busaw!” she shrieked at the sight of Betty.  Her eyes were aflame and her mouth foamed.   Iyo Inteng embraced her.

“Hush! Hush! It’s all right.”

“Busaw! Busaw” she shouted again in the Manobo tongue.  Evil spirit!  The others entered the room that was lighted by a low-night lamp.  “Mga utaw to kadikloman! Panaw nu! Panaw nu!” Dark spirit! Go away! Go away! She cried.  Then she laughed.  Iyo Inteng motioned for them to leave the room.  Betty fetched a coconut bowl of water, took it inside and immediately rejoined her comrades.  They heard the woman sob piteously and laughed hysterically.  She kept mumbling incoherently, interspersing her Cebuano with Manobo words.

“Hush! Hush! It’s all right, Tinay!”  Iyo Inteng kept saying.

Much later, when the woman had quieted down, Iyo Inteng emerged from the room, and they saw a broken man.

“It’s coming back,” he said softly, as if drunk. He slowly down and squatted on the floor, covering his face.  “My son, Pedro, has left us.  He said he was tired of  the hard life here.  I do not have the strength anymore.  Who will help in the farm?  That was her worry.  She kept saving we’ll go hungry again like when we started here.  There was nothing to eat.  Nothing! And she lost her mind.  Now the fear returns, because Pedro is gone.  I can no longer work the way I used to.” His voice cracked.  He rocked himself involuntarily.

They looked at Rolly, and Rolly looked back at them, brows knitted in uncertainty.  The southwest monsoon was coming; he had noticed that the field remained untilled.  If the peasant did not plow and plant soon…But if they tarried a single day they would be late.  First things first.  His mind said go; his heart wept.

The others murmured among themselves in assent.  And so they settled down for another night. Rolly took a long time to sleep.  He was excited.  Here was the next step!  Organizations that would promoted mutual aid and exchange of labor.  It was not a wasted night after all. He would discuss this with his comrades.

Early the next morning, they were out in the field.  They took turns in plowing the field, pushing the slow carabao to its limits.  As the slade turned up the parched earth, someone would sow the corn.  The others gathered firewood and weeded the vegetable patch of green pepper and eggplants. By nightfall they covered almost three-fourths of the field.  The old man was very grateful and shed tears unshamedly as they disappeared in the dark.

 

The meeting started two days late.  When Rolly’s unit failed to arrive on time,  the three others squads immediately withdrew to the neighboring barrios and another half-day was wasted to fetch them.  As everything turned out well, nobody was bothered by the delay.  They eagerly went ahead with the business on hand.

Joey glanced up at Tonyo and winked at him.  They both smiled in the manner of two people amused by a joke.  Rolly had just finished his talk and was wiping beads of sweat from his upper lip.  His sense of relief showed too plainly and Joey had seen this, hence his amusement which he communicated to Tonyo.

Rolly was utterly an uninspiring speaker.  He spoke deliberately, slowly, mincing his words even in saying the simplest of things.  He wrestled with the international and national political situations painfully.  He stressed the fact that revolution was all over the world. He was cheered when a proof he cited their assemblage of around forty guerrillas and activists tucked in a site protected by surrounding screens of talahib, bushes and woods.  In ordinary speech he was laconic, but there was ease and fluidity in it that was lost when he spoke before a crowd, large and small.  The only good thing was that Rolly was always brief, never pretended, or he would have been unbearably boring.

In action though he was altogether a different animal.  He was swift, decisive and possessed of an energy that one did not suspect he could possibly have.  Joey would always remember what happened a year ago.

They had been lost on their way and strayed into unfamiliar territory.  Dawn  was upon them and they were forced to seek shelter in the first house they saw.  Well-off by rural standards, it was owned by the overseer of the hacienda on which the house stood.  The man was very friendly and hospitable.  After a breakfast of cooked bananas and coffee the owner asked to go to the barrio to buy provisions.  They had a brief discussion on it.  Rolly said it  was unnecessary—they could eat camote of cassava.  But the man looked innocent enough; besides he had his wife and children in the house, and he gave the nod.  He was the commanding officer; Rolly was then an ordinary member, and his decision was followed.  They had corn and canned sardines for lunch.

It happened at around four o’clock in the afternoon.  They had been waiting impatiently for the dark, sprawling lazily on the sala floor.  There was this defining burst of gunfire and a voice boomed over the megaphone.

“This is the PC! You are surrounded.  You must surrender.  Throw down your guns and come out one by one with arms raised.  We will count up to ten!”  This was repeated and the count began.

He shook. He shook all over uncontrollably.  His knees knuckled under.  His mind was blank.

“Jesus, there are twenty of them in front.”

“Three…”

“Comrade, what shall we do?  We’ll all be dead!”

He heard their whispered agitation, waiting for this action.  He couldn’t speak.  He had often thought of situations like this, played them out in his mind, responding magnificently. But now, confronted with it in real life, his wits deserted him.

“Five..”

“To the kitchen, quick!” It was Rolly.  The young, silent Rolly.  His voice trembled, but it was firm, determined.  They all followed.

A quick peek.  There were three soldiers in front.  A few others were spread out.

“Well break through here.  You, you, you, this side!” You, three, face left!  Fire away as you run. Joey let’s take the lead!”

Rolly kicked the door and they rushed out, surprising the soldiers completely.  The three in front of them immediately fell.  Joey remembered that he just kept firing, firing blindly.  The soldiers on their sides were cut down.  A thud, a cry behind them.  They dove into the grass.  A guerrilla lay very dead beside them.

“Boyet, take care of the right side! Notnot, the left side!”

The soldiers poured out from the sides of the house, firing over their heads.  Four crumbled. The other soldiers hesitated, turned back and ran, some leaving their rifles behind.

“Come back! Come back!” Idiots! Fools! Bastards!” They heard from behind the house.   But panic had taken over the troops and the officer also fled.

Silence.  An eternity of silence.  A sob.

“My God! My God!” said Boyet, lying on his back, tears streaming down his face.  Two others began to weep.

He felt nothing.  No joy, no relief.  Only an overpowering numbness. He wanted to sleep.

“Let’s get their arms!” Rolly said.

He looked at him.  A transfigured man.  There was a steely look in his eyes.  His nostrils flared.  He sweated heavily at the excitement and terror of the moment.  He looked alert, taut as a spring, fully in command of the situation.

They got up cautiously.  A soldier was writhing.  Boyet ran up to him, raised his rifle but to bash his face in.

“Stop!”

Rolly came over.  He looked at the man.  A broken left shoulder.

“Have pity, sir, I have children!”

Rolly tore up the man’s shirt and bandaged the man swiftly, crudely.  “Why do you allow yourself to be used?” he asked.

They had killed eleven soldiers.  They took their rifles, including four others that had been thrown down by the fleeing soldiers. Inside the house, cowering in an upstairs room, they found the man huddled with his wife and three young children.

“Manong Lito,” called out the youngest kid to Rolly.

“I’d like to talk to you,” he said to the man.

The man swallowed hard.   Panic in his eyes.  Rolly took his hand and pulled him up not urgently.  When Boyet took his other hand the man wailed like an animal.  Only then did the wife understand.  She grabbed Rolly’s legs.  “Ayiaaah!”  she screamed.  Several guerrillas had to restrain her as the man was brought down.  Behind the cluster of banana plants Rolly stabbed the informer three times.

Joey learned to live down the shame and humiliation of his weakness so blatantly exposed, although nobody actually took him to task for it.  Just inexperienced, his comrades said.  But he understood more.  The incident taught him about himself that frightened him, because the truth he saw ran against his philosophical grain and the cause he had embraced.  He did not believe he was a coward.  He was worse: a fatalist. He learned this after taking a new long look to Rolly beyond this handsome face, beyond the unassuming carriage, beyond the uncomplicated mind.  He saw clearly a man full of silent joy, a man full of life, a brimming love for life.  The essence of simple, primitive survival.  Bewitched by the moon, awed by a sunset, fascinated by a butterfly.  The world of a savage child that he would defend at all cost.  That, Joey thought, explained the wounded animal that took over his whole being in moments of crisis: swift, precise, deadly.  While he, between panic and instinct for survival, had given in to the former—he would have allowed himself to be butchered like a helpless lamb.  The whole affair lasted less than ten minutes: it revealed his entire life.  Thus he had smiled at the way Rolly delivered his speech.   He was thinking who would Rolly fool by that awkwardness.

 

The meeting ended in the early afternoon of the third day.   The zonal leadership then met to finalize the report to the Front Committee and the new program that set among its priority targets the bridging of the separate areas and the initial introduction of mutual aid and exchange labor organizations.  And thus the units dispersed to start on their long treks back to their respective areas with a new enthusiasm that summing-up meetings always generated.

It was seven o’clock in the evening and Rolly’s unit was all packed-up  Outside, the half-moon shone too brightly.  To while the time, they retold that sad and funny experiences of the guerrillas that were traded during the  meetings.  They were in a happy, bantering mood.

“Iyo Mentong! Iyong Mentong! Tino! Tino!” it was the voice of a boy.

“It's Tikyo,” Iyo Mentong said. He opened the door.  “What’s the matter?”

“Soldiers! Soldiers!” The boy said between gasps.  “Soldiers coming this way.  They’re in Barrio Talamdan now!”

“How many?” asked Rolly.

“I don’t know.  Tatay Mando didn’t say.  He said there are many.  And that there are two truckloads more in Anungan.

“Thanks! Iyo Mentong, you know what to do. Okay, let’s go!”

Rolly worried that the other squads might also have waited for darkness within.  Three-Peaks Circle.  If this was an encirclement they would be vulnerable.  It was not their area and they had to rely on guides for the trails leading out. His group itself must get out, even if they knew the terrain well.  There outside, they would be safer.  There were no roads anymore, no quick reinforcements and they would be on the advantage.   Anungan lay to the north of them so he led the group south, planning to turn west and up again to their area.  It was too bright.  He look up. He beheld the sky rose, the damned  beautiful half-moon ringed by petalled clouds.  They would have to use forest trails.  He wished the dark clouds would hurry up and shut out the moon.

Presently, Iyo Mentong returned to his hut.  He had gone to warn his nearest neighbor, who in turn would do his duty.  He asked his wife in any soldiers had passed through and got a negative answer.  He breathed hard from the exercise.  The wind was now getting stronger; the cogon roof  rattled.

“The monsoon is rather early,” he said to his wife.  “It’s good the soldiers didn’t come earlier.  Pwe! Come here at night, eh? They’re just showing off.  They’ll back, you’ll see, what with this coming rain.”

He heard the howl of the wind above the trees.  He heard the unmistakable pounding of the rain sounding like a distant stampede coming nearer.  He smiled.  They’re safe, he thought.  He heard the report of gunfire. Brat-tat-tat-tat! Ping! Ping!, He perked his ears.  The wind played on the echo and he could not place the direction.  Probably some trigger-happy soldiers firing in the air.   But that was close.   The crickets even stopped their noise.  Then the hesitant chirp sounded after a while.  Then another.  But before they could resume fullblast the rain came full force on the cogon roof and drowned out everything.

 

In a week’s time, people who were in the know in the guerrillas zone that comprised twelve towns had heard the rumor of Rolly’s death in Barrio Casupang.  The shocking impact no doubt generated the extra-ordinary speed by which the news spread in the mountains that relied mainly on word of mouth for information.  Another piece of news that originated from nearby Barrio Tubigon about heavier government casualties barely got any notice;  the many peasants who had known Rolly did not find any comfort in it.

According to the story that made the rounds, Rolly’s body and those of two other guerrillas were found deep in the woods.   He was found two days after that innocuous shooting that had ushered int the first rains of the monsoon, too early yet in the middle of May.  The rains had stopped then, and a peasant boy and his dog stumbled upon the bodies.  They were hastily buried in shallow graves by the local peasants. It was taken for granted that the soldiers killed them.  But when pressed for details, the excited purveyors of the rumor could not add anything new to the well-known fact that there had been a large-scale government operation thereabouts.

 

The full moon floated in the sky with majectic splendor.  Out in the yard the guerrillas sat lazily under the wild cheery tree.  Someone strummed a guitar and sang a plaintive revolutionary song.  A few picked it up or hummed the tune.  Joey sang along mechanically; he was watching the moon.  Swift clouds crossed northeasterly.  The moon. How so predictable.  The phases came so inevitably, its rising and setting regulating their night movements.  Moonlight hampered them, and tonight was their night of rest.  It could be beautiful, the moon, but they had no time to appreciate it.  Not now anyway.  He knew of only one man who.  Pain shot through him with staggering impact.  He closed his eyes.  Powerful emotions raged inside him.

          “Putangina!”  he cried out and smashed his fist into the tree.

Startled, the other guerrillas stopped their singing.  Betty and Tonyo stood up and rushed to his side.

“Comrade,” Tonyo said.  “Take it easy.”  He put his arm around his shoulders and led him to the hut.  “Take it easy.”

“I’m… I’m all right.” Joey said.  “I’m sorry. I want to be alone.”

Joey dashed off into the cornfield. Beyond he found a rotting log and sat on it.  He laid his head on his folded arms supported by his knees and wept.  It helped ease the pain of remembering.  That night. Three months ago.

His group had also encountered several patrols along the southern routes leading out of Three-Peak Circle.  They withdrew further up, intending to slip out through the east.  In the most ironic of all situations they met Rolly’s withdrawing unit a tangle of forest, and in the dark, both squads mistook each other for the enemy and had exchanged brief gunfire before they realized their error.  But damage had been done.   Rolly and the one immediately behind him were killed, while his unit, which had fired first, suffered one dead.  There other guerrillas were slightly wounded. With no time for regrets or reflection, the enemy being so near, they abandoned the corpses after stripping them of their military effects.   That was when the rain began and they made their escape without further incident. Outside the Three-Peaks Circle they nursed their wounds, bent on scoring a victory to boost their badly-shaken morale.  They had the chance two days later.  They pounced on an isolated patrol and annihilated it completely.

It took long before Joey calmed down, drained of all emotions.  Guilt still haunted him.  He knew nobody was to blame.  Everybody assured each other of that.  But not matter. His unit had killed Rolly.  Was it a bullet from his own rifle?  That fatal shot that tore through his chest?  This possibility tormented him no end.  It was unthinkable.  To think that he might have killed a close comrade whom he admired deeply.  Rolly. So young, so full of life.  He was bitterly inconsolable.  As Rolly’s death sank into h is consciousness those first few days he had almost gone to pieces.  What was the point of fighting if it could end like that?  He had toyed with suicide.   When alone his pistol mocked and challenged.  A single shot. Just one bullet in the mouth or the temple.  “Wouldn’t it be sweet justice?  But always, when on the brink of self-destruction, something would hold him back.   He couldn’t bring himself to do it. He knew that ending his life would be another senseless act—more unforgivable because done consciously.  Torn between guilt and common sense he clung to the cause desperately.  That was what carried him through the most critical period of his life.  The cause. Rolly’s cause. He decided that if he should die he would choose to die fighting.  That much he had settled in his mind.  Sometimes though, like now, he would suddenly feel crushing guilt, but it was no longer as consuming as before.  He allowed it to ravage inside him; he never pushed it back in his mind, but faced it squarely, like a penitent demanding punishment.  Each time he would emerge stronger.   There was the future to worry about.  The revolution.  That was what mattered most now.  Presently, he stood up, feeling refreshed and revived.  He looked up. The full moon glowed with cool brilliance.   A large cloud formation covered it, broke and for an instant ringed the moon before scattering past. 

 

Betty stared blankly at the bark walls for a long time. She couldn’t sleep.  Joey’s outburst had affected her, and she felt Rolly’s presence pervading the atmosphere.  Without warning, hot tears started to roll down her cheeks.  She closed her eyes.  She tried to picture him those mournful eyes.  Only those were what she could capture of him now.  She had finally accepted the fact that he was dead.  That had seemed but a nightmare.  That night as they quickly assessed the situation: feeling his pulsed and listening for his heartbeat; feeling his warm blood seep through her clothes.  Then the delayed shock.  As the days went by she would suddenly start, bewildered.  Something was missing.  Where was Rolly?  She would feel panic rise in her.  A terrible realization would seize her.  He was gone.  No! No! But he was gone.  Gone forever! And how she would weep bitterly.  Even now she would suddenly be overwhelmed by an inexplicable sense of loss.

“What’s the matter?” Tonyo asked her, sleepily. She had awakened him.

“Nothing,” she stammered.

Tonyo gently turned her over to face him.  “You’re crying,” he said. “You can’t sleep?  You want to go outside?”

Outside the moon now hung suspended in the western skies.  Betty and Tonyo sat closely together under the tree.  They did not talk; they just sat there feeling each other’s warmth, listening to the night sounds dominated by the angry thunder of a swollen river beyond the first slope.  Betty had stopped crying, and Tonyo was glad that her sadness had passed.  Her weakness was that she developed too strong an attachments to things, places and persons.  Otherwise she was a sensible woman and he did not fear for her.  As for Joey he saw that he was recovering.  His depressions were no longer violent now.  He was proving to be tough man; he would pull through.  And Tonyo was glad of that too.  The death of any comrade was cause for deep grieving.  In Rolly’s case it was more painful.  But he took everything philosophically.  He had seen many deaths,  capitulations, betrayals.  That was life.  That was revolution.  You killed. You got killed, sometimes even by a stupid, costly mistake.  He feared nothing anymore.  The worst of deaths had already happened.  He had come to the conclusion that the manner of death in the end didn’t really matter.  What mattered was how you lived your life.  For that decided how you would be wept and remembered in the world of the living.  By the standard Rolly was assured of immortality.   He left behind a legacy that would perpetuate his memory:  a reliable guerilla zone with a peasantry who deeply respected and loved him.  After his death, all baby born within Three-Peaks Circle and many more beyond were named after him, replacing the calendar saints for the honor.  They bore many names, for he used many aliases.  The people knew it too.  Could there be a better measure of one’s worthiness?  As a consequence too, many peasants youths clamored to join them.  The incident then, with all its cruel irony, he accepted as just a story of the revolution, a better lesson to make necessary improvements in their methods of work.  He did not dwell too much on it.  He did mourn too, as bitterly as the others.  But to engage in endless self-recrimination was counter-productive.  For life went on.  The revolution kept marching; her and there setback; here and there a victory, but it kept marching.

“Let’s watch the sunrise,” Betty said.

He looked at her. She was still sniffling a bit, but she was herself again.

“It will still be long.”

“Aren’t they all?”  She looked at  him.  Their eyes met.  Hers teased, catching him at a game.

“Okay,” he said, and they awaited the dawn through the long night.