My industrious father never ran out of productive endeavors to meet the needs of his family. He was a farmer, a carpenter and a fisherman. Fishing with my father was one of the fondest memories of the river of my childhood and adolescent years. With his cheerful disposition, fishing with my father was always fun even if we returned home empty handed, as can happened on rare occasions. I cannot forget the night we accompanied him fishing with our new gill net. We started that night’s venture with a ritual that would purportedly bring good luck and plentiful harvest to our nylon net. We paddled our small fishing boat close to the cliff not far from our house. Our father lighted the confetti of dried petals of roses and bougainvillea and put the burning incense below the bamboo slats that held the fish net and the aromatic smoke wafted through it. He concluded the ceremony by offering cassava cakes to the unknown spirits at the foot of the cliff above the water edge.
My brother Silvestre and I got the rose and bougainvillea petals at the sugat in the dawn of Easter Sunday. Unruly surge of adults and children scuffled for the confetti thrown by the little angels as they sang “Alleluia” at their multi-level dais. Ignoring the warnings and pleadings of our elderly American parish priest, the pushing and shoving crowd also divested the karosa carrying the Virgin of its ornaments of flowers and crepe papers.
With high spirits, we paddled downriver to the sea with a palongpalong (an improvised bottle lamp filled with diesel fuel) illuminating our way in the moonless night and overcast sky. As we paddled downstream we heard the cries of wakwak. Then, the cry of these nocturnal beings was so commonplace that their unseen presence was taken for granted. We were told that wakwak were people who eat people but I suspected they were a kind of rare birds. Was it a coincidence that their cries were becoming rare as the forests were dwindling?
In the sea, churning phosphorescence glowed as our paddles disturbed the plankton. Fast swimming fishes left streaks of phosphorescence in the dark water like comets falling in the sky. We dropped the net in the open sea not far from the mouth of the river. At the beach, we built a fire out of wood flotsam to ward off the mosquitoes and to warm our wet and cold bodies. I felt groggy in the undulating ocean so I remained ashore. At intervals, my father and Silvestre would return to the net but the fishes must have gone somewhere because not a single fish was ensnared in its countless meshes. The night was a total disaster and the absurdity of not catching a single fish after hours of vigil fueled our banters as we paddled upriver back home. The accidental leaping of a small mullet into our fishing boat as we paddled upriver, perhaps another joke by a playful river spirit, was a small consolation to our waiting cat.
“The river spirits are not happy with our cold and hard cassava cakes,” Silvestre hesitantly said as we proceeded on foot to the house after upending and securing our baroto at the riverbank.
His innocent remark slew all of us and another outburst of laughter ensued as he offered his thought of the fiasco. Our guffaws roused our mother from her sound slumber as we entered the house.
