Thursday, July 22, 2010
Chapter Five: Robbers!
They heard the noise even before they reached their home gate.
“The geese!” Mrs. Perez gasped. Even at that distance, they couldn’t mistake the loud angry honks of the gander. Andy jumped off the backride of the tricycle and ran to open the gate. Aian and Katrin were tumbling out of the tricycle even before Mr. Perez had cut the motor.
Bantay, like a shadow, came running to meet them from the direction of the poultry yard, his tail wagging furiously. He was not barking.
“Bad boy! Were you teasing the geese?” Katrin reproved. He whined and sank his head on his front legs, then deposited something at her feet. She shone her cellphone flashlight on the ground. “Papa, look!”
Mr. Perez picked up the scrap of wet denim.
“Looks like Bantay lived up to his name after all,” he said. “Someone must have a sore backside.”
“Good boy!” Katrin petted the dog, and Bantay licked her hand.
Aian and Andy came back from the poultry yard.
“Papa, looks like someone tried to get in there,” Andy said. “The lock on top is open, and the gate is a bit ajar, but the chain held. Good thing the gap wasn’t big enough for any of the geese to slip through. The gander is very angry.” The gate to the poultry yard was secured both by a padlock and chain in the middle and a figure-eight loop of wire that was dropped over the end of the gate and the fence-post.
“The roosters, too, and the drake,” Aian said. “All the hens, ducks and geese were fluttering around, but they are calming down now. I think Bantay and the gander frightened off the thieves.”
“I always said that gander was as good as a dog in its own right,” Mr. Perez said. “Since it is my week to be out in the field starting tomorrow, I’ll go and buy some lights before I go to work and we’ll put them in the yard. If only there were some way to catch those thieves!”
Meanwhile, Mrs. Perez was putting some scraps in a bowl. She put it on the ground beside the door. “Here you go, Bantay. Good dog!” she said. “Now everybody in the house before you catch your death of cold.”
Back in her bedroom, Katrin changed into her sleeping clothes, a matching tank top and shorts, and put her dress in the laundry basket beside her aparador or closet. The room had once been Andy’s when he was younger and the twins were still small enough to sleep in their parents’ room. When Mrs. Perez got pregnant with Kyle, Mr. Perez had had a room added on to their ground floor, off the sala, and had given Katrin the smaller room and the boys the larger room on the second floor. The room was only half as big as Pie’s, of course, and it had room for a single bamboo bed, a small study table and chair, the aparador, and some overhead shelves where Katrin kept books and her old toys. The wooden floor was worn smooth with age, and there wasn’t even a rug, except for a small mat by the door where she could wipe her feet coming in from the bath.
The ruffled yellow curtains framing her window was made of a cheap printed cotton, but Katrin had always loved its geometric design. She didn’t have a sleep-rite mattress like Pie did, but she did have a foam mattress on her bed, covered with a cheesecloth bedsheet printed with a monochrome green paisley design, part of a set her mother had bought cheaply in the market. The pillowcases were part of the same set. Her double-size malong –in that, at least, her mother bought the more expensive, bigger ones—was folded neatly on her pillow. The tube-shaped piece of cloth had replaced the one Katrin had been using since early childhood, after she finally kicked it to pieces a couple of years ago. It was the only kind of blanket she ever used.
Katrin checked that her windows, which were really wooden casements with panes made of tin sheets, were shut and barred, before turning out the light and getting into bed. She looked at her cellphone, which she had laid on the table beside her bed, and reached for it.
Pie, the robbers were here tonight, she texted. I think Bantay bit one in the backside.
Pie must not have been asleep yet, for the phone showed an incoming message even before she put it down.
What? You don’t say, Kat. Was anything taken?
I’m not sure, but it looks like there wasn’t any. We’ll find out in the morning. Well, good night. See ya tomorrow.
Goodnight! See you!
Katrin woke up to the sound of hammering. She opened one eye and looked balefully at her cellphone. It was eight-thirty in the morning. Yawning, she got out of bed and opened her window, which looked out over the front garden. No one was in sight, so she rubbed her eyes, made her bed, and went downstairs with her cellphone, which she laid carefully on the cabinet beside her mother’s bric-a-brac.
Her mother wasn’t in the kitchen, so she went outside. Andy and Aian had cobbled together their yard lights, with the help of Riverside’s resident electrician, Boyet. They put a makeshift shade, made of a sheet of tin shaped into a cone, on a light bulb, to which a long wire was attached. The shade and the bulb were then attached to a piece of a two-by-four. Andy was now hammering one of the two-by-fours to the trunk of a tree overlooking the poultry yard.
“You sure we got enough wire?” he called to Boyet.
“And then some,” Boyet called back. “When you finish putting those up I’ll start connecting the switches.”
Kyle sat on a bench, watching and occasionally scratching behind the ears of Bantay, who sat at his feet.
“Where’s Mama?” Katrin asked.
“At the co-op,” said Kyle.
“Oh,” said Katrin.
“I want some Milo,” said Kyle.
“Okay, come on and we’ll fix you some,” said Katrin.
Mrs. Perez had left sunny-side-up eggs, sausages, fried dried fish, and rice under the plastic dome on the table. Beside the dome sat their black cat, Whitney, purring like a motor. Katrin scratched him behind the ears.
“Hungry, Whit?” she asked. The cat’s green eyes slitted in contentment. He was one of those rare cats who could sit beside a plate of food on the table and not steal a morsel for itself, for which Mrs. Perez and Katrin were most grateful.
Katrin scooped out the Milo, milk and sugar into two mugs and added teaspoons and hot water. She gave one a few stirs and gave it to Kyle.
“Have you had breakfast yet?” she asked.
“No, Mama said she’d be back soon,” he answered, and went outside with his mug. Katrin looked in the refrigerator and saw a block of Dari Crème. She licked her lips and washed her hands.
She opened the loaf of bread sitting on top of the refrigerator and took out a slice, which she placed before the cat on the table. Whitney sniffed at it, meowed, and looked at her unblinkingly. Katrin laughed.
“Couldn’t fool you, huh?” she said, taking the piece of bread and stripping off the brown crust around the slice. She gave the crusts to Bantay, who was sitting in the doorway, his tongue lolling, looking hopeful. She then put the crustless slice in front of Whitney again, and this time he bent his head and nibbled at it.
Katrin then took out two slices of bread and slathered one lavishly with Dari Crème. Taking this makeshift sandwich and her mug of Milo outside, she sat down beside Kyle.
“Torturer,” Aian accused. “You know we haven’t had breakfast yet.”
“Sorry!” Katrin said. “But breakfast is waiting, once you finished that.”
“Aian was telling me that you had the robbers here last night,” said Boyet to Katrin.
“Yeah, but Bantay and the gander scared them away,” Katrin said.
“Luckily for you!” Boyet said. “There’s talk in the purok center about starting a ronda at night to keep these robbers away. We have to talk to the barangay officials though.”
“Ah, so that’s why Mama went to the co-op,” said Katrin, enlightened; her mother was the Purok secretary.
“That, and the fact that the co-op was missing some things after Manang Betya finished tallying and inventorying things yesterday,” said Boyet.
“Oh, no!” said Katrin. The co-op had been organized by her father about five years before, and her mother was also its current secretary. Almost all the families in the purok had invested in it, patronized it, and took turns helping to run it. For three out of those five years Manang Betya ran it, and had never suffered so much as a stolen piece of candy. It sold everything from softdrinks to cooking oil to bread and rice, and was everybody’s pride and joy, especially when they received their annual dividends every Christmas.
Andy finished putting the light bulbs in trees around the yard, and even in the gazebo on the pond, and began stringing out the wire. All of it led under the roof of the house and to a series of switches on the wall between the kitchen and the sala, where Boyet was doing complicated things with the wires.
“I hope this doesn’t blow our fuses,” Andy muttered.
“What do you take me for?” Boyet said. “Okay, boys, go look if the switches work.” He put on the switch cover and began tightening screws, then flipped switches.
“They work,” Aian called. “I only hope that if we do turn them on the poultry won’t think it’s already morning.”
Their mother came home just as the boys and Boyet were cleaning up. She took off her wide-brimmed straw hat and hung it on a hook by the door, and put her purse on top of the refrigerator.
“I took your Aunt Anna to meet the purok officials, so they’d know someone was living in the mansion now,” she said to Katrin. “And I hope the barangay officials approve of us setting a ronda at night. Manang Betya was distressed over losing a case full of beer, a can of kerosene, and her slippers, all of which were often left just outside the co-op door.”
“Everybody leaves things outside their houses even at night,” said Katrin thoughtfully. “We figure that no one will take them, as long as they’re in our yards, or obviously aren’t trash.”
“Which is why having these robberies around here are so bad for us,” Mrs. Perez said. “We’ve always trusted our neighbors. Now everybody is angry, and I won’t be surprised if people started accusing one another soon.”
“It can’t be anyone from here,” Katrin said. “Boyet, are there any new people in the purok?”
“Aside from the Nolascos? Who aren’t exactly new, since the Seromines family has owned that mansion like forever,” said Boyet. “There are always the laborers at the rice mill, of course, and the carpenters who are building the Dungcas’ new house.”
“Most of those are local boys anyway,” Mrs. Perez pointed out. “Still, I guess everybody will be looking suspiciously at strangers from now on. Shall we go have breakfast? I’m starved.”
“Kat, you’re going to town this afternoon with Pie?” Mrs. Perez asked after breakfast. “I need some crepe paper and ribbon and cartolina for a funeral wreath. Isang’s grandmother died yesterday afternoon, and the wake begins tonight.”
“Oh,” said Katrin. Isang was another of her batchmates. “Okay, Mama. When are we going there?”
“You and the boys can go tonight, of course, after we finish the wreath,” said Mrs. Perez. “Your Aunt Anna says you can stop by for Pie and Michael, if you promise to come home at eleven.”
“All right, Mama.”
“And in case you forgot, our fiesta is next week. Eddie and Toffee have been asking if Aian and Andy will play basketball on their team, and the other girls have been asking if you were going to be a fiesta princess.”
“Awk,” was all Katrin said to this last.
“I said perhaps when you were already in fourth year,” said Mrs. Perez, laughing.
“Yeah, maybe Pie will have brainwashed her into wearing skirts by then,” Andy muttered, and Katrin kicked him under the table.
Mrs. Perez missed this, as she went out to do the laundry, and Katrin and Aian cleared the table and washed the dishes.
“I wonder who we can get on the team,” Aian said out loud as he wiped the table. “With Toffee and Eddie we’re only four, and we need one more and at least two subs.”
“Why not ask Michael Nolasco?” Katrin suggested. Aian made a face.
“Him?” Aian said. “He was positively rude to us last night.”
“Why? What did he say to you?” Katrin asked.
“Nothing. He completely ignored us!” Aian said, aggrieved.
“So that’s why you left him and went to talk with Mama and Aunt Anna!” Katrin said. “I saw you from the window when Pie and I were going upstairs.”
“Got it in one, sis. I can’t think how such a sweet girl as Pie could have him for a brother.”
“I can’t think how such a sweet girl like me could have you for a brother, either,” Katrin said with a straight face, and Aian snapped the rag he was holding at her.
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