It was a moonlit night. On a night like this, going out to play a game of hide-and-seek was the cool thing to do in those days. The air was hot and humid, my sando stuck to my back like a leech and beads of sweat were draining down my eyebrows, stinging my eyes. It did not matter, it was always fun. And I was good at this game. None of my cousins have ever found me-- not Olan, not Cho-cho, not Chuck, nobody! I've hidden in the most unlikely places and sometimes I just stood motionless in the shadows and let stray moonbeams filtering down through the tree branches to cut me up in unrecognizable parts. But, that night I did something more radical, I climbed up the Duhat tree. It was the best idea I've come out with thus far; nobody ever looks up, they won't find me, ever.
I climbed on a fairly large branch, sat on it and after a while brought out my Zippo; I was tinkering with it when something snuffled and snorted behind me. I blinked my eyes and stared up at the stars. Then I looked down to the ground and then on my side. It moved from behind me to my side. I blinked my eyes again. It was still there; beside me; it was blocking my way down and I was too high up to jump down. I could feel its presence, I didn't have to look. But, I did look; well, not exactly, I took a sneak through the corner of an eye without turning my head. It was there alright. I searched my mind to pigeonhole the creature beside me.
"Ano 'to?..."
" 'di kaya isa 'tong--" I thought to myself, then tried to push the thought away by thinking of something else; it didn't work, panic seized me.
I was a young boy then and would have been afraid if it didn't looked more afraid of me than I was of it. With a hangdog face it spoke gently; it sheepishly said it meant no harm and was even apologetic of how scary it looked.
It was a man's voice. A voice that, amazingly, sounded like the deep baritone voice of a news reader I listened to on the AM radio.
Maybe it was his demeanor and his gentle voice for I do not remember being scared. It is not that I was inherently plucky as a child and I must admit I was afraid of the dark (still am) but I claim kinship with all things that thrive on moonlit nights. Besides, you could see in moonlit nights; it isn't technically dark.
He kept looking at my Zippo; seemed to be fascinated by it.
I told him I found the Zippo wedged between Dada's food cupboard and the kitchen wall; it was quite old and a bit battered; the hinge a bit twisted. The upper lid doesn't line up with the body and it doesn't close right. He asked if he could take a look. I wasn't exactly sure what happened next; maybe I had a brain fart or something, as if a sliver of memory had been yanked out of my brain. The next thing I saw was that he was holding my Zippo in his hand. I fought off the urge to try to grab it back. Nobody touches my Zippo! His strong hands looked human though, but they were hairy and had overly long sinewy fingers and dirty rending fingernails. He held and caressed my Zippo as if it was a delicate Faberge egg.
I grimaced as he took a sniff at my Zippo; told me that it belonged to a private in the U.S. Army; a WW II soldier who fought the Japanese here; who had dysentery and later died of a gunshot wound.
"Lahat ng 'yun nalaman mo sa isang singhot lamang?"
Then he whipped out a glass bulb; he took off the lid and waved it about; in a few seconds it was full of kulisap; he hanged the glowing bulb on a branch; so he could see, he said. He said the Zippo was manufactured in 1941. Then he held out a humongous locket attached with a spinner ball to a thick chain he wore around his neck, an octagon shaped puzzle box with a mechanical trick lock. He deftly operated the opening mechanism: shifted a few panels and rotated a few pins then held it up in a certain way for a few seconds till it opened up to reveal an assortment of tools and other attachments stowed within the hollow that could be manipulated via a pivot point mechanism much like that of a Swiss Army knife but a lot more complex. Upon opening, a miniature cylinder-- with minute pins on it, started to revolve which then struck the tuned teeth of a metal comb, a tiny drum and a set of small bells to play a tune. He said he adapted and integrated the mechanism of a carillon à musique into his take-anywhere "tool box" because he was intrigued by the workings of it; the tune was Debussy's Clair de lune, he added. He pulled out what looked like a mechanical grab and a tool that looked like pliers. He worked on the lid of the Zippo; replaced the wick and put a flint in; polished it and handed it back to me. I flipped the top lid open then flipped it closed, it clicked. It was like new again. I stole a glance at him and saw his eyes glistened with pride. We talked in whispers for a while longer; then he said he’d seek me out again when I was older.
Sensing that he was about to turn around to go, I gathered up enough wits to ask him or it what he or it was. But, he seemed to have anticipated the question and didn't wait for me to finish. He grunted. It sounded like he was suppressing laughter. It was enough. It confirmed what I had in mind. And with that, he disappeared into the darkness of the night.
It took me quite some time to get down from the Duhat tree even as it took me less than a minute to climb up. And when I did got down, everybody had gone home. It seemed I spent only a few minutes up the tree but when I looked up the sky, it already had a tinge of orange on it, it was almost daybreak. And even as the tree was just a few steps from Dada's house it took me sometime to find my way up the stairs. Curiously too, everybody in the house was in deep sleep when I finally got to my bed. I must have lost track of time.
galing ng pagkasulat!
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