The Color of My Fears [COMPLETE]

Chapter 1 - Dare to Race [#4]

We had all the time in the world when the hot season arrived, except when our mothers sent us on errands sometimes. Usually, we spent the afternoons playing beside the creek, dirtying ourselves by making mud dams (tambon) across it and then draining the water out of the little dams (panag-a). This way we caught a lot of fishes of different varieties – catfish (pantat), mudfish (haluan), chichlid fish (tilapia), shrimps (balaskugay), eels (uldok), and even the lowly gurami – enough to fill one large tin to the brim. We sometimes quarreled among ourselves over who would get the larger part of the catch but eventually found some means to settle the childhood squabble. Sometimes we did it through a swimming contest, like who could swim the fastest downstream or jump the farthest from the banks of the creek, especially when it was high tide (taob).

Frequently, after the morning task of herding our carabaos in the pasture (pasto), we brought them to the creek for their bath. We let the animals wallow in the brown waters which were occasionally mixed with debris from fallen croton leaves and banana (saging) trunks thriving on the banks of the creek. We scrubbed the grime and dried mud off the animals' skin, splashing water onto their exposed parts. It didn't take a long while for us boys to enjoy the creek for ourselves. We tried desperately to stand erect on the animals' slippery backs and jumped into the muddy water or trying hard to sit tight on felled banana trunks which kept on rolling while throwing mud balls (lutak) at each other. Our laughter could be heard a good distance from the creek and some old folks passing by would get our attention and remind us to keep quiet lest we disturb creatures not of this world. After the bath, our bodies reeked of mud, rotten saging, and the pungent smell of carabaos.

During summer school was over, and I found myself assigned the childhood task of tending to our carabao (bakero). I brought our tamed field carabao to feed (pahalab) on the verdant grasses growing beside the ditch (kanal) that surrounds each plot of cane field. It was one of those times when I reached into my pocket and got a piece of paper hastily torn from one of my notebooks (cuaderno) which I kept meticulously. (I hid my notebooks away from my siblings. They sometimes tore several pages to be used as kindling material (gatong) when they could not start a fire to cook rice). I tried to find my direction from the sketches drawn on the paper. It was Father's drawing of the map of several kampo in the area. It gave me instruction where I should bring my carabao to graze. Father must have known by heart the lay of each kampo; he had been a laborer all his life and he worked on these fields countless of times for as long as I could remember.

Since that early times in my youth, I have known how to follow directions if I wished it and skipped those if I willed against it. I just couldn't bear to bring my carabao and myself to places in the hacienda far from the houses and which were enchanted (mariit). Next to the fear of the labaha, I feared approaching an enchanted balete (lunok) or acacia tree, standing alone clothed in a long-sleeved maong shirt in the middle of the kampo under the blazing heat of the afternoon sun. Goblins (kama-kama) and elves (tamawo) inhabited those trees, and occasionally abducted people, especially children who found sleeping in the afternoons a bore and instead went out of their houses to play (defying their parents' commands) and unknowingly strayed too far.

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