Quartered!

By Emmanuelle

Many had lamented that justice is such a slowpoke in coming, if at all. It takes deliberately small measured steps, and it simply refuses to be hurried along. Interminable is a mild describe of the years it takes before the presiding judge harrumphs a pronouncement. By that time, the original judge had retired, the trial layers are themselves judges, the parties involved are senile, too dead, too tired or too drained to care.

Help has more surprises up its sleeve. Sometimes it comes rushing at first shriek. More often it comes delayed by hours or days, but it comes and is much welcomed just the same.

If you were to choose a hand stretched out to you in periled times, which one to choose first? One reaches out for the merciful hand no matter where from. This way, one survives the teeth-grinding anger, the wrenching gnawing grief. Then, when the tears had been wrung-out dry, one uses the anger and the grief to demand, to work for justice. And prayers shall take care of the rest.

Truthfully, there is no getting over this kind of anger, this kind of grief. The beloved deserves a decent grave, not the mindless battering of the waves. Nor the anonymous mounds.

But then, there are no better caretakers of the mounds than the islanders. Of which this writer is one, in spirit and in the silence of great distance.

In countless of those summer dawning, I am one of them. They jump from the bed. They do not waste precious time for morning rituals of stretches, of yawns. They rush out barefoot from the house. Then cross the graveled road, run through a short strip of grass, and voila! The beach is there, the widest frontyard of all.

These are what naked soles are for, to crunch on shells and pebbles and sand. To climb up the nearest hillock of green rocks. No, it is not moss or lichen warping green colors to the rocks. The rocks are really colored green, tumbling in artful piles from the foot of the mountains, to the wading waters to the deepest blue beyond. These rocks had been there since time began for our great fathers. And it is the only place in this area where one can receive Globe or Smart calls and texts.

Stand on top of the seemingly steadiest green pile. With hand shielding the eyes from the brightening rays of the morning sun, look across. There, butt up, is the former Princess of the Stars. There is no more modesty in her; she burrows her head in shame and dread. Her sins – hundreds of them, listed and unlisted – peer through holes unseeing, unfeeling.

Summers ago, the islanders remember a liner that had developed engine trouble almost at the same spot. Most probably, it was similarly owned as the present ill-fated ship. Their ships are prowlers of the seas hereabouts.

It took more than twenty-four hours to transfer the passengers, their luggage and the ship cargo. It floated two days more for repairs. At night, the ship would light up festively, and music would waft over to the shores. The island youths and kids would keep bonfires burning all night to keep the machinists company.

They are kind-hearted, these islanders. They would have buried the bodies with the words of the last rites. Almost every barrio has a chapel by the seashore, built of coconut trunks if not of cement blocks donated by absentee-landlords or the smattering of overseas contract workers and merchant marine sons.

These islanders would not have recoiled from the rotten flesh or its smell. They would have shrugged off the squeamish in their hearts. This is once a life, too. And here it shall rest, sands for a blanket. In this not so lonely place, the fresh hanging-amihan or the salted hanging-habagat keeps on stirring the breeze for a song, a lull-a-bye.

These souls wait for a little while more.

(Readers may reach columnist at jingmil@yahoo.com. For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/feelings/
For reactions to this column, click “Send MESSAGES, OPINIONS, COMMENTS” on default page.)

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