Auring led the footpath, passing cropped and fallowed lots. It was an intermittence of steep and mild descents to Porang’s house at the foot of the hill. Her abode was a configuration of cement hollow blocks, lumber and galvanized iron sheets. The floor was compacted earth. The roof had no ceiling. Outside, my eyes feasted on the beautiful landscape – huts scattered on hillsides, a bending valley at the foot of the mountains. The top of the mountains was capped with white clouds, engaging sights. Nature is a great equalizer, I reflected. It was still a couple of hours before nightfall.
Porang was not around when we arrived but she heard the calls of Engrasio. She emerged at the other side the rice fields that dovetailed with the contour of the narrow valley. The fresh levees were soft so she had to walk the tortuous route of firmer grounds.
It was sultry inside, with the metal roof and small windows abating the greenhouse effect, so we conducted our conversations standing outside. Earlier, Auring told me that the widow was suffering from some cancerous abscess on her back, so I was not surprised to see her wearing a shawl in spite of the heat. Her wrinkled face, brown leathery skin and lean physique testified to a mother’s struggle and toil to raise her children.
In the yard, a mother hen was scratching the earth for insects and worms. Her newly-hatched chicks hovered about and scrambled for whatever bits of edibles unearthed.
“If I recall, you have six children. How are they?”
“All our six children have families except Gerry. He lives with me here.”
I met Gerry earlier when her mother was still out. The boy had left with his friends to play basketball somewhere. I had also talked to Dodo’s namesake son, Engrasio. He lived with his common-law wife and infant child in his one-room hut nearby.
“Engrasio wants a church wedding this coming May but a birth certificate is required for the marriage contract.” Porang said and asked for my help.
“I’ll get his birth certificate and send it here, including photos of Santa’s burial.”
She did not know of her mother-in-law’s death. Her relatives did not bother to inform her or assumed others did.
I veered our conversation to Dodo’s arrest, incarceration and death in 1983.
“Dodo was arrested while he was tapping tuba. He was brought straight to the municipal jail still in his work clothes. That morning before his arrest was the last time we saw him. I was not able to visit him. I was afraid. The policemen sent to arrest him brought him to Kibawe. There he died.”
“Dodo was accused of involvement in the activities of the NPAs, what about it?”
“He was forced to accept the rebels’ errands for fear of our lives. What can he do?”
“What particular errands?”
“To report sightings of incoming soldiers, when the rebels are conducting teach-ins or just dropping by.”
“Did he collect rebel taxes or carry arms?”
“No.”
“How about your neighbors?”
“All our neighbors in Apolang gave food to passing rebels or attended their lectures or did some guard duty. But they confessed or surrendered to the military. Dodo was afraid and fled with us here. We were better off in Kibawe but he wanted peace.”
I knew about Dodo’s involvement from previous interviews with his immediate family in Kibawe but I wanted confirmation from his wife. On the failed jailbreak, I based this account from my interviews with several people. More than twenty years had passed and I noted gaps and grays in their collective memory of what really happened that tragic day. A prisoner entrusted to clean the police office picked up the keys recklessly left by the policeman guarding the jail. The jail was inside the police station, a one-story building close to the two-story municipal hall. While the guard was still inside the comfort room, the prisoner opened the armory and took a gun. He fired at the returning guard. The policeman, armed only with his service pistol, fled unharmed. The prisoner then opened the cell nearby. Four other prisoners rushed out and raided the assorted firearms in the armory – a BAR and a few M1s and Armalite rifles. It was still dark. At daybreak gunfire cracked as the town’s police force tried to recapture the police station. The prisoners, ensconced at the armory and protected from direct hit by the concrete walls, refused to surrender. The Philippine Constabulary rangers riding in an armored personnel carrier arrived to help resolve the standoff. The prisoners refused to give up even after the APC blasted a hole in the building’s back wall. The deadlock was eventually resolved when a PC ranger scaled the sidewall and dropped a grenade from the roof, killing all those holed inside the armory. In the casualty list was a drunk who landed at the wrong place at the wrong time. He was detained that night for protective custody and was running out of the jail before the final assault but was told to turn around. Perhaps out of confusion he went to the armory instead of returning to the cell. I am not sure how Dodo entered the scene. His relative would swear that like the other inmates he was obliged to take arm. There were three hardcore rebels in detention and one of them reportedly led the raid in the armory. Whatever, the assault was an overkill against a holed up, desperate inmates. It was martial law time so nobody raised a cry of protest. Crying foul was not popular at that time, unlike now when militants, cause-oriented groups and even former presidents of the country march to the streets to denounce the incumbent president. The relatives of Dodo kept their mouth shut and suffered in silence for his meaningless death. Only Perio was in town during the failed jailbreak He only heard the gunfire and the grenade blast. The other details he heard from other people. Perio had not even seen the remains of his elder brother since the six corpses were buried that same morning in a common pit.
I heard about the jailbreak attempt and its bloody end on the following day but my memory of the event is muddled by the passage of time. In those days, more gruesome things were happening in my town.
Dodo’s fate was not an isolated case or the most brutal, but its pathos rend my heart every time I remembered my visits to Apolang before the communist rebellion robbed the place of its peace and serenity. One particular picture is tragic because of its simplicity. I saw a young man with a promising lunch dangling in his hand – a cockerel he hunted at the cornfield with his slingshot. Uncle Blas family raised native chicken in his tenanted farm, then a fertile upland that needs no fertilizer to produce big ears of corn. Dodo was a sharp shooter with slingshot.
