I used to climb down these rocks and wash my hair in River. But someone’s there now. He flickers between the blades of grass where I go sssh and stick my knees like feet. He’s a Dry Clay. So Nanang will be mad. And she will tell Apong. Apong is scary!
“Anak, I’ll . . . but . . . near . . . ” Nanang muttered, whacking flapping duckies.
“What?” I asked.
She stood up and grew larger.
“I’ll let you wander by the river, but never, ever go near the men in dry clay clothes,” she repeated, her mouth whooshing straight to my right ear.
“Yes, Nanang!” I replied before scooting from Village to River when Sun’s shadow was still to my left earlier.
I don’t know why everyone in Village speaks to my right ear. When my hair was just long enough to tickle my armpit, Nanang said a Dry Clay man with a shooty stick hugged me in River. Tatang, she continued, tried to pull me from the Dry Clay man’s grip but a bam kaboomed from the left side of my head. She said my ear bled. But I remember nothing. Except that Nanang cradled me back to Village alone, and I felt cold on the way because I was naked.
But I like going to River. I think he smells musky. Nanang said only I in Village can smell River. She sometimes called him “Chico.” And told me he was prettier when he gave more fish to Village and streamed freely down Mountain without “The Dam.”
Anyway, I already smell duckies cooking from Village. It’s subtle but I know it’s duckies! It’s the same tang that wafts under my nose whenever I help Nanang prepare pinikpikan in our hut. And whenever Apong snickers because I couldn’t climb on the stool to see the pot. And the scooper’s gripper could barely fit in my hands. Apong’s so cranky. She makes me cry.
But I still love pinikpikan. We pok pok pok duckies until their faint quacks stop and we stick them to Fire to singe their fluffy things before my Apongs chop chop chop them to swim in the pot.
Er, what’s that puff of flying dust coming from Village? Is that Smoke too?
Whee!
That’s Big Smoke! She must be coming from all those duckies Manang and Manong brought to Village before Sun woke up earlier!
Sun’s shadow is under my feet now too. It must be chomping time in Village! Nanang won’t allow me to visit River again if I don’t get back now.
I step to boulders touched by Sun. Then to colder rocks. To dead trees. And their dusty toes. Because green ones are slippery. I creep beneath larger tree hairs to pause, my ears going nnnnng nnnnng nnnnng. Then I swoosh three balls of air to stop panting. I hop over dead birds and lizards and froggies. I hold my hair up from my hips. I don’t want it to swirl around a tree finger again.
Yippee! The scent of pinikpikan is itching my nose now. Village is just a few steps ahead!
And thump—
Odd.
Is it shush time in Village?
Sun’s shadow has shimmied just a tiny bit to my right. But it is quieter than each time Nanang, Manang, Manong, or my Apongs would try talking to me without their puckered lips at my right ear. That black fuming mound in front of our hut still smells like roasted duckies, though. Only weirdly pungent. Lumpier, like a sludge of warped doggy shapes, and kind of crusty, with charred skins scalping off into ash. It’s chunked almost as tall as our hut. Bunched with ropes like when Spider catches Moth.
Whoa! This can fill the tummies of Village, Neighbor Village, and Other Village!
But it seems everyone went away. I see steep tracks of zigzaggy patterns on the ground that trickle down to Mountain. The same ones that follow the Dry Clay men with shooty sticks when they broom broom a huge moving box with spinning feet along River.
–
During the onset of Martial Law in 1973, dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. attempted to construct four dams along the Chico River, a 175-kilometer livelihood resource for Cordillerans.
Marcos Sr. militarized the area to quell the protests of Igorots, leading to the arrests of around 150 people, including the brazen killing of opposition leader Macli-ing Dulag that bolstered resistance across the region and forced the despot to shelve the project in 1981.
