Chicken feet for the Soul

 

The people in the village where I grew up felt lucky: the dike built a few years ago along its section of the Pasig River apparently served its purpose and largely spared the area from the floods that still covered several other riverside settlements three weeks after ‘’Ondoy’’ struck.  The water did rise in the village during the storm, but much of it was drained away in a less than week by the pumping stations that came with the construction of the dike.

 

And so the people thought they were lucky – until they took a closer look a few days ago and saw cracks in the dike in at least three different places. Last time I asked, over two hundred sandbags have since been rushed to the breaking portions of the dike, keeping the wall from total collapse and the leaks somewhat manageable.

 

Entire neighborhoods are now on edge, knowing what a full breach would mean: a flashflood probably more ferocious than the deluge that sank many parts of Metro Manila when ‘’Ondoy’’ was still around. And if disaster strikes this way — the flood being triggered not by a new storm but by a grave flaw in the infrastructure — the irony would be cruel: water from the swollen Pasig rushing into homes under clear skies.

 

At the peak of Ondoy’s fury, the river’s waterline rose so high that, if viewed from the street, fishing boats and ferries you wouldn’t normally see before are suddenly visible above the dike.  The tide had lifted the boats up, and it’s as if they were now floating above you. You may be totally dry where you stand, but beyond the wall a few steps away is a mass of water that could probably sweep across an entire town in minutes, a force just waiting for a weak spot to ram through.

 

That’s how much peril the sandbags – and maybe the prayers of those who keep watch — have so far held back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The man interviewed for this story died a year after this was published.

Just this morning, five years later, his son texted to say that he found

the clippings among his late father’s stuff — and that he

found my mobile phone number still stored on his old man’s SIM card.

‘Thank you’s’ were exchanged. We’ll probably never hear from each other

again or get to meet personally for beer or coffee. But I did tell him that it was one of those stories I really enjoyed doing; writing it was its own reward.

 

* * * *

 

Old Inquirer page spans generations

 

‘MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE’

 

By Volt Contreras

 

July 4, 2004

 

Page A1

 

EVEN when reduced to a wrapper for mangoes sold in the streets, an old,

crumpled page of the Inquirer never ceases to move readers and make minds

meet.

 

Coming home with fruit bought from a nearby stall last May, Wilvia Lao

Manatad, a college student in Bohol, noticed that the wrapper used was the

paper’s Letter to the Editor section dated Jan. 25, 2002.

 

A particular item made Manatad keep the newsprint long after she had

relished the mangoes: A letter from Ramon Alfonso Fuentes, a 75-year-old

former radio broadcaster, who sadly compared today’s radio-TV anchors and

news readers to those of his “Golden Age” in the ’50s.

 

This led to a remarkable correspondence between total strangers, between two

distant generations, between a youth looking for role models and a graying

mentor willing to share lessons about his fading craft.

 

Manatad, a mass communications student, immediately wrote Fuentes at the

address he gave in the Letters section, asking him to tell her more about

the “hefty and exacting standards” adhered to by radio personalities during

his day.

 

The letter reached Fuentes, now a business consultant based in Cubao, Quezon

City and an advocate of senior citizens’ rights, last June 1. He contacted

the Inquirer last week to relay the “unusual” chain of events set off by

that mango wrapper.

 

“What prompted me to write you this missive is your invitation to the

readers to get in touch with you if they’re interested to know the Golden

Age of broadcasting,” read the handwritten letter from Manatad, which

Fuentes showed this reporter.

 

“I’m a mass communications student and one of my upcoming major subjects

this school year is broadcast journalism,” she wrote. “Getting acquainted

with the Golden Age of broadcasting through you would probably prepare and

place me in a better position to understand the subject.”

 

Note-in-a-bottle saga

 

Manatad, who gave her return address at Dait-Norte, Buenvista, 6333 Bohol,

said she just “chanced upon” Fuentes’ letter to the editor on “old and torn

pages of the Inquirer used to cover the mangoes I bought from a nearby

store.”

 

To a visibly amused Fuentes, “this is a wee bit like the saga of the

note-in-a-bottle thrown out to sea. After many years, in a faraway land, the

note is retrieved and a story unfolds.”

 

“Don’t you think it exceedingly delightful?” he told the Inquirer. “Has

there been anything like it before? I shall cherish and treasure the

letter.”

 

“For the Inquirer, it proves that no matter that the pages are torn and

tattered and old, the contents leap out at the reader and are appreciated,”

he added.

 

Fuentes said he mailed his reply to Manatad last June 2.

 

‘Total anarchy’

 

In the Inquirer interview, he gave a sampling of what he imparted to the

Boholana student.

 

Compared to the discipline and “tact” observed by his generation of radio

men, he said, “there is total anarchy in broadcast today.”

 

For example, he and fellow anchors at the time would be reprimanded or

sometimes “fined” by management for grammatical errors, wrong diction, or

mispronounced words.

 

But today, radio or TV scriptwriters easily get away with “monstrosities,”

like __th year anniversary, or “weirder” terms, like month anniversary,

week anniversary, monthsary and weeksary.

 

Anchors then delivered the news in a more “sedate, professional style”

rather than in a “news bark,” he said. “News (then) was never meant to be

shouted.”

 

Tips from a master

 

He’s concerned that Manatad and other masscom students are “getting the

wrong idea of what newscasting is all about. Don’t forget that when you are

on radio, you are a guest in a person’s home and you’re not supposed to

shout at that person.”

 

Back then, he added, a news reader would never make side comments or

wisecracks in between reports. A field reporter would also “not address the

news to the anchor” but make it clear that he’s speaking to the listeners.

 

“We were not allowed to mention any commercial brand, otherwise the station

will bill us according to the corresponding (advertising) rate.”

 

Worse, “we could get fired.”

 

Today, he noted, anchors thank their shoes and clothing sponsors or even

their hairstylists on air.

 

“The greatest anarchy is in time management,” he lamented.

 

War-time voice

 

How come, he wondered, today’s radio stations seem to give time-checks that

are “totally different” from one another? It was also a no-no during his

day for programs to exceed their alloted airtime.

 

Manatad has, no doubt, asked pointers from the right man-what with Fuentes’

wealth of broadcasting experience.

 

The native Ilonggo was already going on-air just before the end of World War

II.

 

In April 1945, at age 17, he was hired as an announcer in a radio station

operating from a US military camp in Iloilo City, where he also served as a

mess boy.

 

Having worked for American troops and later obtaining an economics degree in

the US after the war largely explains Fuentes’ command of the English

language.

 

Axed during Marcos time

 

From the ’50s, he alternated his stints as a broadcaster with his work in

his consultancy firm. He did newscasts for Manila Broadcasting Co., and

later over DZAQ-TV, which then operated Channel 3. In the ’60s, he managed a

radio station he put up with a compadre in Bacolod City.

 

In 1978, under the Marcos regime, Fuentes began hosting “A Message to the

President,” a syndicated public affairs program on DZMB-FM. The 15-minute

show, which aired comments coming from the audience regarding public

services, got the ax “upon the orders of Malaca¤ang” in 1982, he said.

 

He would return to the radio booth 20 years later, this time as a voice for

his fellow elderly: Fuentes hosted the weekly “Senior Citizen Speaks” on

DWSS-AM. The program was stopped last Jan. 2, however, due to a change in

the station’s ownership.

 

Not just anybody

 

In his January 2002 letter to the editor, Fuentes described himself as “one

of the last few living relics” of a period in Philippine broadcasting when

networks put a high premium on work experience and seniority and “did not

pick just anybody off the street and make him [do] newscast like they do

now.”

 

“There were many nuances of professional discipline then that are sadly

taken for granted today by the so-called new-wave broadcasters,” he wrote.

 

Fuentes said he hoped to meet Manatad soon to personally thank her for ”a

most unusual experience” of having his ideas picked up even two years after

coming out in the Inquirer, the page recycled by a street vendor-and

literally bearing fruit.

 

 

 

SHE did me a great favor, bought a couple of thick binders over the weekend, and neatly compiled clippings of my news and feature stories from way, way back.  The clippings came from the office library, which last year began disposing of old materials after having them encoded in the digital archives. Thanks to a timely word from the staff, I was able to sort through the heap before it got hauled off to the recycler’s bin, and retrieved several brown envelopes containing what amounted to be my humble body of work.

 

Yellowing and dog-eared, the clippings covered my bylines from the second half of the ‘90s — from the time I started out in the Metro police beat to my earliest political reports during the short-lived Estrada presidency.  These ‘’souvenirs’’ certainly made for nostalgic reading, often drawing a knowing smile but also sometimes a serious pause (as you would read on later), for I happened to have covered not a few gruesome crimes and other shades of urban blight in those years. Each page brought back long-lost memories. Sinulat ko pala ito!? Kinober ko pala ‘yun!?  How did I even get there? With some stories, it took me moments to recall.

 

I have to give to it to my editors at the time – among them the gritty yet always lyrical Recah T and the late Elvis S of the Metro page, as well as my mentors Carlos H (now Hong Kong-based) and Gerry L of the city desk – for coming up with angles and headlines which, over a decade later, could really make me sigh and say: ‘’Those were the days…’’

 

Here’s a sampling:

 

‘’Man kills mom, sis, dog, puppy’’

 

‘’Only 16 toilets for 300 families’’ (A report on a squatter relocation site)

 

‘’How much is P10 in flies?’’ (About a local government pest-control campaign)

 

‘’Drug lord framed me, says priest nabbed for sex in car’’

 

‘’Drugs sent my kids to school’’

 

‘’2 sisters convicted of murder’’ (They poured boiling water on their housemaid and got caught dumping the body)

 

‘’He tries to kill her, then says ‘Sorry’’’

 

‘’From marketplace of ideas to marketplace of flesh’’ (About a Pasig City plaza that used to host balagtasans and political gatherings but had turned into a shadowy hub for pimps)

 

‘’Videoke bar ‘sales force’ invades DILG’’ (About GROs who were allowed to walk in and hand out business cards to DILG employees during office hours)

 

‘’There’s money for horses but not for workers’’ (Labor unrest at the National Stud Farm near UP campus)

 

‘’‘If you can’t lick ‘em, tax ‘em’’ (About a proposal to impose taxes on gun owners)

 

‘’La Nina blamed for disaster in village named Sto. Nino’’

 

‘’Can the Pasig be a poem again?’’ (A feature on those on-and-off initiatives to clean up the river)

 

‘’Ex-Executioner’s Song’’ (An interview with a retired Bilibid prisons guard tasked with turning on the electric chair during the Marcos years)

 

‘’Spoiled egg pie sends 23 factory workers to hospital’’

 

 ‘’Where Santa will have to take a banca’’ (One of several feature stories I wrote about the perennial flooding in my hometown Taguig)

 

 ‘’Captured rebel pregnant, loses fetus; military blamed’’

 

 ‘’ ‘Pregnant Virgin Mary’ in Muslim dress graces Sept. 21 rally’’

 

 ‘’Caught having shabu session inside mosque’’

 

 ‘’Edgar Mortiz squeezes into council seat’’

 

 ‘’It’s jail for Joko’’ (Joko Diaz was a young action star then, booked for hitting a Sultan’s son with a baseball bat)

 

 ‘’Chiquito is dead’’ (Yes, I reported on the great comic’s passing)

 

 ‘’Namfrel pushes computerized poll’’ (This was reported in August ‘97, or 12 years before reality finally caught up)

 

 Joker accuses Villar of 10 Charter violations (This was written in August ‘98, and Joker reminded the people about this recently at the height of the C-5 road controversy hounding Villar)

 

‘’High EI (emotional intelligence) is Erap’s secret’’ (This was before juetengate.)

 

Sex Triangle: Makati strip is new Ermita (A two-part special report, for which the office gave me a food and beverage budget of P2,000 so that I could go bar-hopping and do a little ‘‘research’’)

 

 Girl files rape charge vs Jalosjos (A scoop, I recall)

 

 ‘’Death toll in Payatas trash avalanche rises to 85’’ (‘’The stench of death grew stronger than the stink of garbage at the Payatas dump site in Quezon City two days after the disaster.’’)

 

 But for some reason, the most striking story for me out of the compilation was practically a mere newsbrief, a simple, faceless, amoral tale of life’s random turns:

 

 ‘’Grass fire burns 3 cars’’  

 

 

A pleasant surprise: One of my artworks from college turned up (of all places) on Facebook, posted a few days ago by a dear classmate Pie, who earlier picked it out from an online photo album kept by one of our juniors in Journalism class. It was a drawing of a winged human figure in a pensive, seated pose, head bowed in reflection but with the wings (fashioned out of newspaper clippings) already spread out and picking up some wind and confidence for his maiden flight. The aspiring flyer also holds a giant quill. And any alumni would easily recognize that the platform – the launching pad — on which this Icarus rests sported the design and inscriptions of the Journ dress pin.

 

‘’Thoughts Before Take-Off,’’ the tagline read. Meant as a symbol of our graduating batch, the pen-and-ink drawing adorned the cover of a souvenir magazine we put together that final summer of our heady UST days.

 

And so it was really great to see the whole thing retrieved from someone’s collection of campus souvenirs and ‘’reissued’’ on the web – the magazine now yellowing and all – 17 years later.

 

Indeed a welcome development because 1) I seemed to have lost my OWN copy of that souvenir mag along with my copies of The Flame, our college journal where I had short stories, poems, feature articles, and, yes, maybe around 20 more drawings published; and 2) the past of couple of weeks have had me wondering whether I still possess the lightness of pen-in-hand, the steadiness of line and curve, to revive a long-unperformed art.  One of these days I should pick up a sketchbook again and find out how shaky or stiff the strokes would go. (No doubt I’ve been shaky or stiff in some other endeavors, but of course that’s another story and has no place in a decent, service-oriented, and utterly self-effacing blog such as this.)

 

For now I’m just glad to see, courtesy of a thoughtful friend, a personal memento from a time when we still worked largely the old-fashioned, freehand way, unaided by Photoshop, etc.; a cool download from my sticky, ink-stained past.

 

 

THE broom finally has to go, she says, because the more you now sweep the floor with it, the more the floor needs sweeping. The straws would break easily into loose strands, leaving more litter rather than cleaning them with each brush against the tile.

 

But elsewhere in the house a lot of other things have endured. An old dusty set of Christmas lights – the bulbs set on a bushy wreath the size of a dinner plate – brightens up our doorstep for the eighth straight year now.

 

The fridge has far outlasted the warranty, though it now makes churning, rattling sounds from its belly, and a pattern of rust has crept up about an inch from the bottom of the door, eating away at the white coating. The PC has continually defied age and viruses after three or four trips to the shop, bringing home a refreshed memory for newly downloaded games from each trip.

 

The gaunt face of Christ with eyes closed shut – an oil painting I did five or six years ago – still rests on the floor, leaning on the wall at the stairway landing, still without a proper frame or hook for hanging and perhaps better off with none. For just by being there, not far from the foot rug, it has made me watch my step. After every few months or so I would find the necessity to wipe dust off the canvas, after which the deep reds and grays and whites on the bony cheeks would reemerge, and so would that streak of blue on the brow and the blackness of hair. The Nazarene’s eyelids would again seem heavy with prayer and fatigue.

 

Bottles of wine received in excess two to three Christmases ago continue to age in the cupboard. An old stack of IHTs still crams the legroom under the computer table. Certain books appear to have taken permanent residence in the backseat of the car. And gladly we have never had the need to use the fire exit; the hinges may now need oiling.

 

Each yearend, for many a celebration of life starting anew and throwing out the old, can also be a good time to look back and appreciate the fine things that have lain undisturbed or undiminished.

 

My first cell phone was about 7 inches long.

 

But before that, as reporters we were issued pagers, which, for the information of some of you children, refer to those pocket-sized gadgets that allow you to receive the early example of what we now know as ‘’text’’ messages.  Just about the biggest thrill one could get out of a pager was in adjusting the alarm mode: Do you want a beeping sound, a vibration, or both? Wow! For more thumb action, why not review your last 10 messages — two words at a time! But since pagers were basically just receivers, you still had to rely on that other telecom marvel — a.k.a. landline phone –  if you wanted to reach another subscriber. You had to go through a live ‘’message handler’’ by dialing 141 (if I remember right). Once acknowledged, you state the pager number you want to contact, dictate your message within a limited number of characters, and then just hope the well-meaning guy on the other end of the line would correctly type ‘’4 to 8’’ and not ‘’48,’’  or ‘’the whole system’’ and not ‘’the hole sister.’’ We all had a great deal of fun.

 

But even before we got pagers, we worked the beats equipped with hand-held two-way radios, which I think would still look cool on our hips if we were using them to this day.  There’s always something cocky about heavy things you can clip on your belt; a simple walk becomes an uneven swagger. What we had back then were not those ‘’mini,’’ toyish, ergonomic types you can almost hide in your palm, but those solid, half-kilo hunks you can club someone to death with. What’s more, with the radio, one can eavesdrop on the others as they ‘’shout’’ their ‘’2-Zero’’ (location), or just goof around across the airwaves. If you want to join in, you can always ‘’break’’ and throw in a witty, smart-alecky quip or two. Fruitful, hearty exchanges would always end with a ‘’roger’’ – which I suppose served as the short-wave equivalent of today’s smiley.

 

Until finally came the cell phones.  My first purchase was a Nokia, an introductory model which I remember to be thicker than my own wrist and had keys bigger than what I now see on my TV remote control. There was a day when I inadvertently brought the TV remote pad to work, instead of the cell phone. But that’s another story.

 

Today yours truly is just happy with a phone that can snugly fit in the pocket – and which need not be of the fanciest model (so as not to tempt pickpockets). For some reason, I have gladly managed to keep my old Easycall pager as a relic from those relatively simpler, unhurried times. Looking back, I won’t be surprised if some of yesteryear’s message handlers, pioneers as they are of a bygone era, have since evolved, adapted, and risen to the upper echelons of today’s call centers.

 

And yes, to this day I sometimes still find myself replying to a text message not with a curt ‘’ok’’ or a cute ‘’J,’’ but with an earnest, wholehearted ‘’roger.’’

 

 

WE marveled at the high-tech, high-wire spectacle at the Bird’s Nest last week, but for yours truly nothing still beats the Olympic opening ceremony of the 1992 Games in Barcelona, where an archer shot a flaming arrow into the night sky to light up the towering cauldron.  So low-tech (actually no-tech at all), the whole act relied solely on sheer marksmanship, yet it makes you wonder why nobody had ever thought of doing it that way before. It also had an element of real danger which no mechanical contraption or computer program could override: what if the archer missed? A low, wayward shot would have impaled – and instantly barbecued – some unlucky hombre in the bleachers.  Or the arrow could have gone over the stadium, probably torching somebody’s car in the parking lot.

 

My memory of watching Olympic inaugurals on TV could only go as far back as the 1984 Los Angeles Games. (Only much later, thanks to YouTube, did I get to see the 1980 Moscow ceremonies, which mainly involved thousands of cardboard-flipping Soviets.)  Expectedly, the LA cauldron lighting had some Hollywood thrown in: The flame first traveled a route tracing the Five Rings of the Olympic logo before igniting the cauldron. The timing, however, diminished the intended ‘’wow’’ effect; they did it while it was still daytime, hence the flame was only faintly visible in the afternoon light.

 

The 1988 Seoul opener was also a daytime affair and involved three torch bearers who were simultaneously elevated to the top of the cauldron tower. Accounts later told of several doves — which were released earlier in the ceremony but decided to hang around and found a good perch on the edges of the cauldron – being roasted on the spot by the sudden burst of flame.

 

As to the 1996 Games in Atlanta, the only memorable scene for me was that of Muhammad Ali as he took hold of the torch, his hand and body shaking because of Parkinson’s. At the 2000 Sydney Games, the cauldron was initially concealed in a pool of water, and once set ablaze it slowly rose into final position atop a cascading waterfall. Things even got simpler in Athens 2004: a giant torch was made to bend over to draw the flame from the final runner, before slowly returning to upright position.

 

And then last ‘8-8-08,’ the Beijing Games tried to top them all with video wall technology rendered in jaw-dropping scale and suspension-cable acrobatics (a staple of kung fu movies) done in graceful slow motion.

 

But for the coolest, most elegant cauldron lighting ever, my vote would still go to the unerring archer of Barcelona.

 

Which finally brings us to the day’s obvious question: If we Pinoys are to host the Olympics someday, how are we going to light things up at opening night?

Here are some early suggestions:

 

- For maximum thrill and dramatic effect, shoot the flaming arrow from the bow of a Sulpicio Lines ship – seconds before the vessel sinks and disappears completely in the dark waters of Manila Bay.  The identity of the archer, of course, is to remain a mystery since he’s not on the ship’s manifest.

 

- Another second-hand Chinese import wouldn’t hurt, anyway, so why not just buy the same cauldron used in Beijing? With the right broker and a few rounds of golf, maybe we could even secure soft loans and afford the used cauldron plus the flame, too.

 

- For good measure, give the torch bearer his (or her) ‘’cut’’ from the cauldron deal to make sure he would finish the job. If he turns it down and threatens to blow the whistle, initiate a smear job by, say, leaking to the press his secret, smelly case of athlete’s foot. If a replacement is in order, just take a pick among old, tested allies from the long roster of has-been torch bearers.

 

- Should the torch bearer still prove unreliable down the stretch, the President can always make an urgent phone call to somebody manning a ‘’Fire On / Fire Off’’ switch wired to the cauldron from an undisclosed location.

 

- But then, we can always aspire for a clean, graft-free lighting ceremony. Just set off a piece of watusi in the middle of the stadium, and with enough street rallies and pastoral letters to boost our collective will, hope that this watusi would somehow find its way and jump right into the cauldron.

 

The latest sea tragedy, or our daily coverage of its chilling aftermath, reminded yours truly of an out-of-town assignment in February 2006. For about a week our team – myself and two photographers — stayed in St. Bernard, Southern Leyte, at a house offered by the first man we met on the street as we asked around for lodgings. Such were the kindness of strangers in that part of town, at that particular time.

We got there a day after the neighboring hillside village of Barangay Guinsaugon, all six hectares of it, disappeared in an instant. Survivors remembered first feeling an earthquake, a crack on the ground, an explosion sending tons of loose earth down the slopes. As in all calamities, the cruelty was indiscriminate. An entire school was entombed while classes were underway, and with it some 200 children. A man on a bike, fortunately heading out on some errand, froze on the spot as he turned and saw his neighborhood for the last time before it all became rock and mud.

Still, in the next four days, rescuers with their sophisticated sensors reported hearing sounds of ‘’scratching’’ and ‘’knocking’’ coming from beneath. Late-night press briefings at the town hall offered hopes of a miracle and made the newspapers in Manila wait. On the fifth day the sounds were no more.

But then, there were things reported, remembered, and described for the benefit of those like us who merely parachuted into the scene. And then there were things I actually saw or heard: body bags and bulldozers, body bags on bulldozers; US relief choppers thundering in the sky at 3 a.m.; rescuers ultimately outnumbering the missing; cramped evacuation centers and the smell of canned sardines that won’t go away.

And then there were things I saw or heard but which never saw print: details that probably got buried deep in my notes, overlooked in the margins, or ‘’overtaken’’ by the next bulletin, the next quote, the next imagery. I once reported how a barangay multipurpose hall served as a makeshift morgue for bodies retrieved from the landslide. That evening, seemingly untouched for hours, about four or five of them lay covered in sheets on top of tables, while on one side of the dimly-lit room stood a stack of empty coffins. To this day, more than two years later, there remains something in my head from what I saw that night which, for some reason, never made it to my copy: Up there, hanging from the ceiling, catching the faint flicker of candlelight that illuminated and sanctified the dead below, was a disco mirror ball, probably last used during a Valentine or Christmas party.

Finally returning home on a weekday afternoon and with time to spare, there was a moment’s impulse to shake off all that and restore everything with a leisurely trip to the mall: perhaps score a new shirt or CD, or just slow things down browsing at Powerbooks. But no, it took about two days before I listened again to rock music or opened a book. Until then the hours just stretched in between snatches of small talk, quiet meals, and lingering thoughts of regional Math champions forever trapped in the rubble, a ‘’text’’ message for help sent from maybe 10 or 30 feet underground, and a motionless sphere of a thousand mirrors, barely aglow.

Yours truly once wrote in college (in a short story, I think) that having vivid dreams in your sleep can actually be planned. One way is to have a light dinner, so that technically you begin to ‘’starve’’ while still asleep, for dreams tend to occur when the digestive system is no longer busy.

Which brings me to today’s real topic: Dogs.

This is because I recently had a dream about a pet dog long departed. I can put her real name here, but for fear of slighting a former classmate who may be just a ‘’text’’ away from retaliating with blackmail, let’s just call her ‘’Tecla.’’

Tecla had a sister named ‘’Tutti,’’ the neighbor’s dog. In their beloved time, Tutti and Tecla offered a study in contrast: The former was a natural-born guardsman, showing no pity and expecting none, while the latter was a charmer, part of the household’s welcome party. Tutti sported a dark brown coat that had known no human touch but that of her master; while Tecla was almost beige, and when she would lift a friendly paw for attention you notice her fur sharply turning white at the feet. Compared to Tutti snarling in her stark, sentry’s uniform, Tecla skipped and sashayed like a papaya-bleached belle in low-cut gym socks.

Our backyard is, by now, an unmarked graveyard for long gone pets. And for some reason Tecla leaped back from the buried years of my memory circa 1980s and appeared, tail wagging, in that strangest of dreams.

Was she trying to tell me something? Have we just disturbed her bones? Do dogs have souls?

The last question I managed to answer satisfactorily when asked in class by a Philo 101 professor in UST. The absolute crap I said back then now escapes me, but years later my wife and I arrived at a much simpler theory: Everything that passes gas, dogs included, must have a soul. But that’s another story.

Only on two occasions has yours truly thrown a punch in rage or agony. First was in a street fight with a gradeschool classmate named Andy.

Second was when a carabao stepped on my right foot.

The first had Andy’s lip bleeding, the second proved to be a futile
engagement with the stubborn buffalo. It was sundown, and I had earlier tagged along with a cousin as he brought home his kalabaw
from pasture. We were capping the day’s task with the usual farm boy banter, cousin hitching the rope to a steel peg driven deep into the ground, me stroking the carabao’s thick sinews when suddenly, perhaps to shake off mosquitoes now swarming about, the normally stoic beast lifted an itchy leg and then planted the hoof right on my bony toes.

A girlish scream tore through the fading light. I remember punching the damn brute’s tough hide about three times and then hitting it with a rock before it stirred, finally, ending my few second’s foothold in hell.

Andy now runs his own bakery. Cousin is now a school teacher in Bulacan. The clearing where the carabao used to retire for the night is now just another empty lot holding a perpetual pool of ditch
water from neighborhood baths and kitchens. The pasture has since given way to a plant producing pre-mixed concrete, a Smart cell site tower, a Roman Catholic parish built using funds donated by a losing mayoral candidate, and three-storey houses with roof decks that echo with videoke song on weekends.

Never again was the hand lifted in anger. The foot, however, with the sore, sweet memory of rural childhood, never forgets.