Wild Song, page 5
We found ourselves walking onto a large, grassy field. The road skirting around it was lined with even taller buildings, decorated with carved screens, stone urns, glass globes, windows, columns, arches, and doors three times the height of a man.
‘We will rest under these trees,’ Kinyo announced, but everyone was already surging towards two huge stone bowls filled with water, with sprays of water spouting out of the middle. Some children had already leaped right in, splashing about as if they were playing in the Chico River.
‘Hey!’ Truman Hunt yelled. ‘Hey, come back here!’
I wasn’t thirsty. I lay myself down in the cool shade and watched the frenzied rush.
I heard a man shouting, ‘Not allowed! Not allowed!’ and then sharp screams. Men in blue uniforms were moving through the crowd, swinging wooden canes – the children, who moments before had been laughing and splashing, were now howling with fear and pain. It was pandemonium, people and belongings scattered across the grass like seed.
Truman Hunt ran right into the chaos. ‘Enough!’ he bellowed, grabbing a cane from one of the blue uniforms. ‘Leave them alone!’
Our attackers paused as one, staring at the American. Mother, Truman Hunt was not as tall as other Americans I’d seen, but at that moment, he pulled himself up so that he seemed to stand a full head and shoulders above everybody else. His voice, deep and powerful, rose over the field. The blue men looked at each other in dismay and dropped their canes.
‘Sir!’ one sputtered. ‘We are security, sir. For the hotel over there.’
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Hunt cried. ‘These people are under my care.’
‘Sir, sorry, sir! Igorot. They bad for hotel.’
‘Well, these people are wards of the United States government, and I am their manager,’ Truman Hunt bellowed. ‘How dare you beat them! I brought them here to rest and you have treated them like dogs.’
Several of our men had snatched up their spears, and were advancing on the blue uniforms. Without taking his eyes off the blue men, Hunt called, ‘Kinyo! Tell them to stand down! I can handle this.’
And he did, Mother. The blue men cowered as he cursed at them. Our people resumed collecting water at the stone bowls. The children returned to their splashing.
But somewhere in the distance, I heard a child scream.
It was Sidong, Mother, on the far edge of the field. She must have gone off to draw. Two men were bent over her and I could see her feet flailing.
Tilin was already racing across the field. She lunged at one of the men, but he pushed her away easily, with a smirk.
I dropped my pack and set off after her. ‘Help!’ I yelled, over my shoulder. ‘Kinyo! Truman Hunt!’
One of the men began to drag Tilin across the street by the arm. The other man tossed Sidong over his shoulder and followed his friend into an alley between two buildings.
‘Kinyo! Truman Hunt! Help!’ I panted as I ran to the alley.
But nobody came.
9
Lost
The gloom of the alley blinded me. But I could hear them jabbering away in lowlander, laughing and grunting as Tilin screamed. The alley had a sweetish smell, like there was something dead in there. I clenched my fists.
Tilin screamed again, but the sound was abruptly cut short. I gagged to think of their dirty hands over her mouth. No time to wait, I launched myself into the darkness, crashing into one of them.
He whirled round, swatting to get me off him, but I already had my legs wrapped tightly around his waist. I sank my teeth into his stinking neck and dug my fingers into his face. He screamed, thumping my leg with his fist. But I didn’t let go. You can’t, once you’ve got a grip on your prey.
The other man screeched. Tilin was doing her own good work. A loud thump and I felt the jolt of a body slamming into us. I jumped clear as the two men collapsed against the alley’s dirty brick wall. Fingers closed around mine. ‘Quickly, quickly,’ Tilin hissed, but the groaning lump of men blocked the route back. ‘This way,’ Tilin grunted, tugging me in the opposite direction. Sidong was whimpering somewhere on the left. ‘I’ve got you, Sidong. This way!’ Tilin murmured.
The other end of the lane was blocked by a tower of stuff – baskets? Rubbish? We couldn’t really see, but it disintegrated after a few kicks. Light, hot and dazzling, tumbled into the alley. We ran out. All at once, we were surrounded by women, baskets of goods, children, men and horse carts. A market.
People looked up. The children stopped playing. There was a sharp smell, as if everyone had suddenly broken into sweat at the same time. They began to murmur. Igorot. Igorot. Igorot. Oh, that hateful word. It rippled around the market as if carried by the wind.
What did Mister William always say? ‘That is what the rest of the world calls you. Don’t expect them to know that you are Bontok.’ It wasn’t just the word though. It was the way people said it as if they were biting into maggoty fruit.
‘Watch out!’ Tilin cried.
Something tiny and sharp hit me on the cheek. A stone, thrown by a small boy wearing trousers too large for him. He pawed the gravelly paving for another.
A man wearing a straw hat left his horse, and stepped right up to me, so close I had to throw my head back to look up at his face.
‘What do you want?’ I was amazed the American words came so quickly to my lips.
But he didn’t speak American.
The man’s mouth was working and chewing. Then with a great throaty noise, he spat a great gob of saliva onto the front of my blouse. You might have expected me, the best boar hunter of my village, to strike back promptly, stamp on his instep, punch his stupid face. But no. The corners of my mouth began wobbling uncontrollably. Tears sprang in my eyes. To my shame, I began to cry.
But Tilin was not having any of it. She rushed at the man with a terrifying roar. ‘RAAAAAAH!’ He backed away, terror on his face.
‘You coward!’ Tilin shouted, not caring that the man would not understand a word of Bontok. ‘Spitting is what cowards do!’ She pulled Sidong onto her back and yanked my elbow. ‘Move, Luki. Let’s get out of here.’
Tilin marched us out of there, pointing. ‘If we walk around that building,’ she said, ‘we will get back to the others.’
But the two men we had just escaped appeared at the corner, faces bruised and bloody where we’d scratched them, caked in the grit of the alleyway. They wanted revenge.
We turned and ran back into the market, the paving jarring under our bare feet. We pushed through bodies and knocked baskets of fruits into their path, but they managed to keep up, leaping over the obstacles we threw in their way.
‘This way,’ Tilin called, slipping into another alley.
But they were right behind us. So close. Until we ran into a street.
A sharp neighing and a screech of iron wheels. It was a busy one, and we were right in the middle. Horses, a carabao, even oxen clattered back and forth pulling their carts and carriages. Our tormentors hesitated by the side of the road.
‘This is dangerous,’ Tilin cried. ‘We need to get out of here!’
‘No!’ I said, throwing my arms around Tilin and Sidong, holding them in place. ‘They can’t get to us here.’
Horses shrieked, carriages swerved around us, drivers bellowed with rage. The two men shook their fists at us, but, spitting on the ground, they turned back towards the market.
‘Over there. That must lead back to the field,’ Tilin murmured, as we slowly made our way to the other side. I couldn’t tell anymore which way was where, so I followed.
But it was the wrong way. The road turned into an arching bridge spanning a broad river, choked with small boats. We walked up the bridge, thinking we would be able to see our way back from a height. But Manila just looked like a confusion of alleyways and carts and people.
‘Look! What is that?’ Tilin pointed.
On the other side of the bridge stood great blackened ramparts. We could just make out a small city within the walls, with church towers and red tiled roofs. A great big American flag fluttered from a pole at the top. The ramparts plunged right into the river on one side. Inland, the other walls were guarded by a stagnant pool, green with water muck. We could smell its reek from the bridge. The shore fronting the pool looked pleasant and grassy, with several stands of trees. It was surprisingly empty of people.
Tilin looked at me. ‘We need to rest, Luki. I can’t go on. Aren’t you tired?’
She was right, Mother. We’d been walking all night. We hadn’t eaten. My muscles felt like brittle firewood. I was utterly exhausted.
Tilin pointed at the trees on the other side of the bridge. ‘We can rest there. Out of sight.’
We made our way down the bridge, turned our backs on the traffic and walked to one cluster of trees. Sidong slid off Tilin’s back with a loud sigh and we all sank down onto the grass.
Sidong nestled in Tilin’s arms. ‘Tilin, do you think Mister Hunt has our packs? I want my drawing book.’
Tilin put her arms around Sidong. ‘I’m sure he has,’ she whispered. Then we must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, something was prodding my cheek. I opened my eyes. Standing over me was a grinning boy with a twig in his hand. Two girls peered over his shoulder.
‘GET AWAY FROM ME!’ I bellowed. The three children squealed and ran back towards the road.
‘That was easy,’ Tilin said softly.
‘I’m fed up with being chased, spat at and poked.’
‘They’re just afraid,’ she murmured. ‘We look different, I guess.’
‘Pah!’ I grunted.
Tilin sat up, stroking Sidong’s hair. Her face was smudged with dirt and drooping with tiredness, but when she spoke, she sounded determined. ‘We’d better go back over the bridge and look for the others.’
I nodded. I wondered how long we’d been asleep. Whatever, it didn’t feel long enough. I got to my feet and stretched. The sky was pinking up, the walled city had turned into a looming shadow. Distant roosters were crowing. It would be dark soon.
Then I felt it. A breeze. Cool and fresh, washing the heavy heat of Manila from my limbs.
I turned towards it, willing it to blow harder.
And then I saw it.
There, under the pink sky.
The sea.
And where the sky met land, there was a bright glow, like someone had built a hundred fires on the shore. I could hear a soft rumble of voices. And music.
‘Luki, where are you going?’ Tilin called.
I was walking towards the lights, the sea, the music. I couldn’t help it, Mother. I reached the end of the grassy field and I could see now that the lights came from the tops of hundreds of tall posts, glowing like giant candles. They lit up an open space filled with people, more people than I’d ever seen in one place. Horse-drawn carriages pranced slowly, round and round. At the centre, on a raised platform with an elaborate tiled roof, sat about thirty men playing music. A band! I’d seen pictures of bands and musical instruments in Mister William’s magazines, and we’d listened to band music on his wind-up music box. But this was the first time I’d heard it being played in real life. Mother, it was strange and enchanting.
‘What is going on?’ Tilin had caught up, Sidong following reluctantly, rubbing her eyes.
And then my blood cooled. A figure had appeared in the shadows. A man, striding towards us. Not again, Mother. I couldn’t bear another chase … but he was upon us before I could tell Tilin to run.
It was a young man, hair cut close around his head and dressed in the uniform of a soldier. ‘Buenas noches,’ he cried. He was smiling and he held his arms out, as if to show that he would do us no harm. ‘¿Hablas Kastila?’
Tilin and I looked at each other. He was speaking in yet another tongue.
When we didn’t respond, he tried again. ‘Speak English?’
‘Yes,’ I said reluctantly. ‘A little.’
He nodded and pointed to himself. ‘My name is Johnny. I am Philippine Constabulary.’
We nodded. We knew the Philippine Constabulary. They were a kind of police … The Americans had recruited many mountain men to join it, arming them with guns and dressing them in uniforms.
‘You are Igorot?’
I flinched at that word, but I nodded.
‘And you are looking for Truman Hunt?’
This time I was so surprised I couldn’t nod.
Johnny laughed. ‘Os está buscando. He is looking for you.’ He clapped his hands, ‘And here you are!’
10
All Aboard
Someone had found our belongings scattered in a corner of the field. That had led to a frantic search. Someone had seen me dart into the alley. Someone else had seen two men chasing us in the market. Truman Hunt had jumped on his horse and galloped to the police station to ask for help.
And that – Johnny explained – was how he happened to be out looking for three lost Igorot girls. He pointed at the musicians playing on the bandstand. ‘That is where I should have been. ¡Toco la trompeta!’ he said. ‘I play the trumpet.’
He walked us across the circling track and through the crowd, arms out wide so that people had to make way. I have to admit, Mother, after the day we’d had, I was nervous to be in the midst of so many people. But it was practically night-time, the crowd was a confusing jumble of shadows and people couldn’t really see us properly even if they tried to. Besides, they were too busy concentrating on the music.
Johnny took us to the back of the stage, where he sat us down in a walled-off little space, with chairs and a flickering lamp. Then from out of nowhere he presented us with bottles of water and a paper bag full of small round loaves of bread.
Mother, we fell on the food like dogs. We had not had a single bite to eat since sunrise.
When I finally sat back, belly full and head clear, the music had gone silent and there, standing in the opening of the enclosure stood another man in a Constabulary uniform. He was a whole head and shoulders taller than Johnny, and broad where Johnny was slight. I could see that a thick moustache draped over his top lip. Because of his height, I would have guessed he was an American, but he didn’t look like any American I’d ever met, because his skin was as black as the boulders in the mossy forest back home.
‘Sorry to disturb,’ Johnny was saying.
Tilin straightened and Sidong buried her head in my lap.
‘This is my boss, Lieutenant Walter Loving.’
I had not heard that word, ‘boss’, before. But it was obvious it was someone to defer to, the way Johnny bent his head and lowered his eyes.
I was trying to work out how to greet him, but the man wasn’t even looking at us. He just turned to Johnny and in a low voice began to speak rapidly in Kastila.
Johnny nodded, muttering, ‘Sí, sí. Yes, sir.’
Then Lieutenant Walter Loving clapped a hand on Johnny’s back and, without another glance at us, walked out into the darkness. We could see that the other musicians followed in his wake, carrying their instruments.
Johnny turned to us and explained, in slow English, that the ship that was going to carry us across the ocean to the United States was moored out in the bay and that the other Igorots and Truman Hunt had already boarded it. We would have to spend the night in the Constabulary barracks, where Johnny and the other men lived. He would take us to the ship early the next morning.
I felt Tilin’s hand searching for mine.
‘What?’ I said. ‘What is it?’
‘They’re already on the boat,’ she whispered. ‘And tomorrow, we will be too!’
Her fingers were trembling.
Mother, I could not possibly tell you the route we took to the barracks, though it was lit by more of those tall candle poles. We made our way there, the paving hard under our feet, and we were so tired that if we had stopped to stand still for even a moment, I’m sure we would have fallen asleep. The barracks turned out to be a long building with many rooms. Johnny put us in an empty room with beds raised high off the floor on iron legs. We had never slept on American beds before, so when Johnny wished us good night and left us alone, we pulled the blankets off the beds and laid them out on the floor to sleep on.
It seemed I’d barely closed my eyes before Johnny was knocking on the door again. We followed him back to the river, where he bought some rice cakes from a street vendor for our breakfast.
I had not paid much notice to the river yesterday. But this morning it had my full attention. The water was yellow with the morning sun. It smelled of fish and mud and rotting vegetables. And bumping up and down on the waves were dozens of boats – some were dugouts like the ones we had back home on the Chico River, but there were also rafts that sat low in the water, boats topped by what looked like little huts, boats with smokestacks and towering ships with tall masts.
‘¡Aquí! Over here!’ Johnny was waving from a long boat with a huge funnel blowing a column of smoke into the air. Inside were rows of benches. A faded American flag drooped from a pole on its tip and a man stood on each end pushing long poles into the riverbed to keep the bobbing vessel pressed against the shore.
Johnny hopped into the boat and help us across the watery gap. We tottered across the tilting wooden floor to a bench, where we sat down, with Sidong safely wedged between us.
‘Your ship’s name is the Shawmut,’ Johnny said. ‘This launch will take us out to where it’s anchored.’
There was a shout and the pole men began to push us away from the embankment. The boat made an awful grating noise. We looked at Johnny, horrified.
‘No hay problema,’ Johnny cried over the noise. ‘It’s a motor! It is what moves the boat!’
The men tucked their poles away and the boat swung out into the middle of the river, just missing two small boys paddling by in a hollowed tree trunk. A man raised his hat as he floated past on what looked like a raft made of coconuts. We sailed down the river.
