Occasionally, I’ll write something and then leave the project behind, never to be touched again. Attention span of a gnat, this one; heck, one time, I think I wore two different types of shoes at the same time. STORY FOR ANOTHER DAY. Anyway, this was a story with concepts that later fused into another novel, and while I’m not quite sure if I’ll ever pick it up again, I thought I might as well share it with you today.
It stood against the fog like a silvery thread of a web, a skeleton in the dark. Leafless, the tree did not sway when the wind blew past, and if not for the creaking of the dew-sodden branches the boy might have taken it for a ghost, long past in its haunting.
He knew that tree, as it happened. It had been a fortress when he was younger, a castle of straw-bundle and bottle soldiers, and he used to be the fastest to race up its sinewy limbs. Every scar, every foothold, every smooth and rough surface of its trunk had been to him as every word and page of a well-loved book might have to another child. But now, standing in the cold, his feet soaked, it all felt like a distant dream. What else was there but this darkness, but that misshapen shadow looming over him? Even his chest felt empty, his heart strangely silent, as if time had locked him into place.
Raindrops fleeted across his shoulders. He remembered what he had come all the way out here for, and found the door where it had slammed open minutes after the rain began. He returned inside, pulling the door behind him, and wrapped the rope clasp several times around a nail on the inside wall. He heard the wind press against it and smiled in satisfaction as the rope held.
He returned to bed. Allio had taken the opportunity to occupy the warm space against the wall and wrap the blanket around himself several times in his absence. Frowning, Talin grabbed his shoulder and rolled him to the edge of the bed. Allio began to cry.
“Shut it,” Tallin said thickly, covering his brother’s mouth with his hand. “Don’t make me hit you.”
“Kuyang,” Allio gasped, pushing him away. Talin took this time to jerk the blanket from underneath him.
“You’re such an idiot,” he said. His mother might hit him for it later, but he didn’t care. He climbed into his rightful side of the bed and covered himself with the blanket. The smell of the rain seeped through the shutters above him, and he started to drift off to sleep.
“Kuyang.” Allio’s voice grated, like the scratching of a mouse’s nails. “Tatang is home?”
He ignored him.
“Kuyang,” Allio repeated.
Talin reached out behind him, his open palm connecting with Allio’s jaw. Allio cried out, and he hit him a second time, and then a third, until his brother cowered in silence behind him. “Can’t you keep quiet?” he hissed. “I’m trying to sleep here.”
“I’m telling mother.”
“Oh, you stupid…baby. Shut up or I’ll make you sleep out in the cold.” He curled his head into the nook between the wall and the bed. He had barely dozed off before he heard Allio roar and begin kicking him, his little legs grinding against his own. Talin swung the pillow and caught him in the face.
Allio burst into tears.
Talin jumped off the bed in a sweat. Their mother would wake up and would not care who started what. She hadn’t even discovered the dead cat under the basement yet, and she’d been complaining about the smell for days. He looked at Allio and opened his mouth to say a calming word, but the boy smashed a fist into his knee, and he kicked him away and stormed out into the darkness, where the wind was stronger than his brother’s wail.
Monsoon rains always began at night, Talin’s father used to say back when they owned the farm uphill. Talin could still remember waking up in the morning to darkness, hearing the pitter-patter of rain on the cogon rooftop and smelling wet earth from underneath the bamboo floor. It was nicer to sleep in such weather, where the humid air didn’t bother as much, and you could curl underneath blankets without sweat pooling under your neck and arms and watch the raindrops gather like ripe fruit underneath the windowsill.
His father would sometimes come home with a bag of treats from the village—fresh, sweetened bread, canned fish, a toy for him and Allio. He had a smile on his face back then, low and beaming. They would eat the bread for breakfast, dipped in steaming rice coffee, and his father would tell of how he might take one of the roosters down for a big fight, and how the baker’s daughter’s husband’s sister had a son in the city.
It felt like such a long time ago. They lived in the village now, in a small, flat house tucked neatly between two other houses. A storm had destroyed their rice crop before they could pay a debt, and their farm was taken in turn. It wasn’t worth much anyway, he could remember the man saying, with his printed white shirt and a red cap on his head, a cigarette in his mouth, the stink of the city on him. He remembered wanting to take a rock to throw it at the man’s head. He might have even picked one up, but his father’s hand held him.
Where was his father? The wind clawed at Talin’s wet shirt, and he shivered a little underneath the guava tree some distance from their house. Did Talin need to fetch him later on, head smashed from a fight, dried vomit and beer on his clothes, in some random house further down? He pressed his lips tightly and gazed at the faint blur of rooftops and coconut trees in the distance. He could not really tell them apart in the dark.
The rain started to pour in large torrents. Talin rubbed his soaked head and left the poor shelter the tree provided. Mud climbed up the rubber sandals to his toes. He was not sure where he headed. Certainly not around the store, where someone might wake to see him and tell him to take his father home. He rubbed water from his eyes and turned back to see their house with the single bright window. His mother would be awake now. Allio would have never fetched a lantern on his own, not even when he wet the bed. He started to wonder if his brother was being scolded, but he dismissed the thought as soon as he remembered he would get the worst of it either way.
He started to shiver. It was not particularly cold, but he had been out in the rain long enough. He took one more step and slipped. Mud slapped against his face and chest and one foot crumpled underneath him. He swore and picked himself up, and swore louder when he realized the thong of one of his sandals had snapped.
There was no point to continue on now. He would have to go barefoot, and he could no longer see where he headed for the rain and his uncontrollable shaking. He tried to think, and not to think. What he thought about was the big half-blood horse old man Dodon had brought with him last week. What he tried not to think about was his father, and Allio speaking Raon’s name as if he was some kind of monster.
“Talin!” A voice, perceptible even in the storm. Loud enough not to be his mother’s. He looked up, but he could see nothing. Foliage hid his house from view. He thought about calling back, but then he turned away, his hands clenched, and walked deeper into the rain.
He remembered now that his father did come home last night, before he even slept. Allio already had been snoring beside him. “Ines,” he had said, voice thundering. “Fetch me water.” Then Talin heard him vomiting on their kitchen floor. After he had finished, their mother chiding him softly underneath her breath, he spoke of gold mines.
“We can invest our money…they’re starting a new one up at Asaela, you know? I’d have to dig myself but…” His voice was low and slurred, but the excitement was clear in his voice.
“What!” his mother had barked. “You would feed your children on dreams? Why not find a job in town, like any normal man would do?” And Talin heard a crash, closed his eyes, and felt stiffness down his throat, down his heart, as if it all had frozen. He dreamt of a long, white cigarette after that, burning steadily in his mouth and tasting of ash, and then he woke to the sound of the door banging against the wind.
“Hoy,” he said, calling out in a singsong voice. “Hoooy.” He had realized he was barefoot in the mud and standing in front of a stone-marked grave. There were flowers around it, a little wilted and drenched now from the rain. The day of the dead had only been a week ago.
“Hoy,” he said again. “Raon. Good evening to you, sir.” He laughed at his own joke.
A moment later he said, “Bet you wanted me to bring you good news. Fat chance of that. They burned down the tree house. Priest didn’t like it. Said it felt strange. Will keep you quiet, they said. Make you angry, more like.”
Raindrops slithered down the tombstone. Talin snorted. “Bet you’d laugh if you were here. Bet we could do something to scare them off their misery. I saw this hole near the altar in church, you know, could fit both of us. We could’ve gotten Allio to cover us up with a rug and—and make noises during the sermon, or something.”
He paused, dropping his hands to his side. The grin on his face faded. “Hoy, Raon,” he murmured. “Why’d you have to go and die?”
