The Color of My Fears [COMPLETE]

Chapter 1 - Dare to Race [#5]

One day, I felt drowsy after getting tired of sitting on the back of our carabao while it was grazing. I might have fallen had someone not come along. It was Nilo, my boyhood buddy bakero, and with him his pet carabao that had an upper tooth missing. Tagging along was Edwin holding a stick cut from a thin bamboo branch at the portion near the tip (kagingking), walking beside the carabao. He carried a small plastic bag full of ripe, golden orange cape gooseberries (tino-tino).

We're all more or less of the same age, when boyhood ends and the particulars of character of a youth starts to manifest. I didn't know how they found me. Maybe it's just happenstance. But looking back at those times with the privilege of hindsight, I thought of it as destiny in the making.

Without so much as a greeting, Nilo dared me in a race of carabaos to Tio Berto's place.

"I'd rather not," I told him hastily. Not that I despised him, (he's my buddy bakero after all), but something happened that was still fresh in my mind. It was just a few weeks' ago that we nearly lost our carabaos because we played pirates and gangsters inside the rows of mature sugar cane stalks. We were so absorbed in our make-believe world of swords and guns that we lost track of where our carabaos had gone grazing. After nearly three hours of searching for the animals, we found them munching on tubo leaves inside the cane fields. The two carabaos were quietly feeding on tender tubo leaves to their hearts' content. We hurriedly left the place, lest we be caught and scolded by Tio Purdit, the hacienda's chief caretaker (encargado) for neglecting to keep an eye on our carabaos.

Nilo pleaded once more. "Come on, Junior. It's been a long time we haven't done this. You beat me by a few seconds the last time."

"Minutes," I corrected him.

"But he could beat you this time," Edwin butted in, stuffing tino-tino into his little mouth. "Nilo caught a bird," he added. I could see the enthusiasm on his face, feeling proud to be the first one to tell me, as if it really mattered to me. But it mattered to him at all.

"Yes, I would give you my pet bird if you win," Nilo offered. It seemed they had planned for this, I thought. I smelled a boyhood conspiracy.

"What bird?" I inquired, his boastful declaration got on my nerves but his offer piqued my curiosity.

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