Orchid House Read online

  The leader defended the young man, for he was ultimately responsible. “The man was a drug dealer and an addict.”

  “Will not his family look for him still, and cause us trouble? He was also a son and perhaps a brother.” Manalo felt his eyes drawn unwillingly to the corpse. The streak of blood was drying in a few places while the pool around the body inched wider like a thick crimson blanket growing around him.

  He needed out of this room of death, a feeling that surprised him. He’d been in many such rooms; sometimes it was by his own hand that a body lay crumpled on the floor or dangled from a rope or stared with open eyes with a throat slashed wide like a scream from the neck. Nothing of joy came from such vile tasks, only abject necessity for something greater, a higher cause. The lines of good and evil, right and wrong, integrity and depravity were often smudged. He hoped that by his necessary sins, his sons might one day walk a path of clear integrity without constant questioning and regret.

  “If he was only a dealer, only an addict, why was he questioned? And why bring me here?”

  The leader and Manalo stared at one another. They were equals as leaders of their respective men, but Manalo was the superior man. A flicker in the eyes, and the leader was caught in the lie.

  His words fumbled out in obvious fear. “This was the consensus from evidence we obtained.”

  “Tell me the truth, or I will kill you.” Manalo spoke softly, enunciating carefully. Inwardly he seethed with anger that this low-level man, who wasn’t even a Communist but wished to partner with them, would dare to conspire with his men to cover up their mistake. “Who was the boy?”

  “He’s not from here; he’s from Batangas.”

  A vibration rose within Manalo, a foreboding . . . what was it? Batangas. It couldn’t be. “You picked him up down there?”

  “No, we got him here, in Manila. He said he was searching for parts for a vehicle. They’d been following the car since—”

  “What was his name?”

  “Artur Tenio.”

  A coldness swept through the room; Timeteo pulled away from the wall in surprise as if struck by it.

  Timeteo walked forward. “Where was Artur Tenio from in the Batangas? Where was he from, exactly?”

  The leader went to the table for the boy’s ID card. “Barangay Mahinahon.”

  Timeteo and Manalo stared at each other. Timeteo looked ready to lunge. “Do you not know the men of Barangay Mahinahon?”

  “We are recently from Mindanao, one year.”

  Manalo turned from the others to the body and closed his eyes. There were definable turning-point moments in his life, four he could recall with clarity: his sixteenth birthday, when he had stepped over his unconscious mother and brother to put a pillow over the face of his sleeping father, ending a childhood of fear and making him a man; his brother’s death years later, which left him in mourning and with a leadership role to fill; the first time he made love to Malaya; and the birth of his first son—the only birth he was present for.

  Perhaps this began several nights earlier when he’d seen the stag in the forest, but just as those past moments were known to him, Manalo knew this event meant something great. He’d not be going back to what had been before.

  The leader had lost all composure now. “Boss, he is impetuous, a boy only.”

  Manalo found himself standing above the face of the dead man. But he wasn’t a man at all. “He couldn’t be more than twenty. And he is related to Amang Tenio, either grandson, nephew, or cousin. Amang Tenio is more than a respected leader; he is a leg-end. You have endangered more than you know with your actions. Remain here.”

  He turned and went for the door in the back of the room. Neon lights blinded him until his eyes adjusted. The metal door slammed shut; the men would be stunned by his abrupt departure. But that face of the dead boy, nose and jaw broken, blood covered . . .Barangay Mahinahon. His men were going to the mountains above the infamous “village of calmness” on the outskirts of Hacienda Esperanza. The boy was a driver, coming to Manila, looking for car parts. What did this all mean?

  Superstitious by heritage and nature, Manalo fought to reject its grip on him. He believed in the Communist Party of the Philippines, not in signs and wonders and foreboding feelings. He believed in the people, in a cause, in a better tomorrow for future generations. God did not exist to him. God was as fanciful as his childhood dreams.

  The bile rose to his throat. He leaned against a dumpster, sweat beading along his forehead. There was a dead dog in the corner; flies buzzed around it, and he held his breath to keep from catching the scent. Then he vomited beside the dumpster, emptying his stomach until there was nothing left.

  “Kamusta?” Timeteo had followed him out.

  Manalo rose slowly and wiped his mouth. “Must be something I ate.”

  Timeteo laughed awkwardly and slapped him on the back, taking any shame from him. “Something finally cracked the stomach of steel, eh?”

  “Yes, I think your wife’s dinner last night.”

  Timeteo laughed harder. “If we had eaten my wife’s dinner last night, then that would do it.”

  They both chuckled at that. Timeteo often jokingly referred to his favorite prostitute as his “wife,” though he hadn’t seen her in longer than Manalo could remember.

  Their laughter died quickly, and Timeteo said, “We might have made war with a very unpleasant enemy. They will blame us even if the act came from the ‘friends’ of the Communists.”

  “Yes.” Manalo’s mind was busy considering possible solutions. “We must proceed warily.”

  He strode back to the building to knock, but noticed the door had caught on the latch. He swung it open to see the tall leader and another man huddled at the table, and several others gathered around the body in the corner. One spat and laughed, then turned with a grin that froze upon seeing Manalo in the doorway. It was the young man—a boy himself, really—who had killed the boy from Barangay Mahinahon.

  Manalo strode the steps between them and smoothly pulled the knife from his belt. “We do not disrespect our dead,” he said as the blade entered the young man’s stomach, slicing through his liver and back out with such ease that Manalo was reminded how without even a thought, a man was so easily dead.

  The other men jumped back as blood spurted from what looked like the splitting of an abdomen, they’d been so close.

  The boy held his stomach, blood spilling between fingers, then went to his knees. His mouth gasped like a fish pulled from the water. Manalo thought of Timeteo’s desire to fish more in retirement. They would never get to retire.

  The young man fell beside the corpse. Turning his head, he stared into the empty expression of his victim. It could take time, this young man’s death. Manalo thought to finish him, a cut to the heart or neck, but now it was too late. The brutality would turn the other men’s shocked fear to terror if he jumped on the kid for another blow, however merciful his intention.

  The suffering was excruciating. The others stood staring at the young man dying on the ground. None moved to help him. The boy cried tears but not words.

  Manalo knelt down and took off his jacket, pressing it into the boy’s wound. The boy gasped, and his body shook beneath Manalo’s hand. Warm blood quickly soaked through the material. And then the boy was dead.

  Manalo stood in the silent room. He knew all eyes were staring at him, but he didn’t look toward any of them. “Do not let anything like this happen again. Discipline your men.”

  “Yes, Comrade Manalo.”

  “Take a photograph of your man there, and in two months’ time send it to the family of the boy at Barangay Mahinahon. Do not sign it from us, but make it evident without confession that we have done this for the innocent slaughter of their kin. It will not help, not really. A terrible mistake was made here today, and we may all pay for it. But do what I say nonetheless.”

  Everything in its box, he thought. Organized mayhem.

  Or perhaps nothing was organized
at all, but all a form of mayhem.

  Manalo and his men walked for a long while without speaking; then their spirits slowly roused and the mood eventually changed. They had participated in and seen too much death for it to cast lasting clouds over them.

  They stopped for a Coke, and Manalo used the comfort room to wash his hands. He returned to hear Frank telling some animated story.

  “Let’s go,” Manalo said.

  “Back to the safe house?” Paco asked.

  Manalo shook his head and slapped Paco’s back. “No, to see Bruce Willis and Die Hard 2.”

  FIVE

  They stood beside a rural highway with Julia’s luggage stacked in the tall grass as the bus spewed out a hefty burst of exhaust before deserting them there. From the windows, dark eyes stared and an old woman waved good-bye.

  “Where are we?” Julia looked from one end to the other of the long stretch of asphalt road. The dark gray highway cut through a path of lush vegetation that crept along both shoulders. Behind the shrubs, rows and endless rows of tall coconut trees dwarfed the foliage that grew taller than her own height.

  “We are at the outskirts of the hacienda,” Raul said.

  Julia felt a flutter through her stomach. That close.

  Raul carried the heavy pieces of luggage, struggling with their weight across the street toward a small wooden structure nearly overgrown by the encroaching jungle. Julia followed with her own purse and satchel, feeling the ache in her shoulder of two long days of travel since she left San Francisco International Airport.

  Inside the shed, Raul picked up a walkie-talkie from a slot beneath a lone bench and talked into it, then got a staticladen response.

  “Our ride will be here shortly. It is unfortunate, your entrance to Hacienda Esperanza. Your grandfather would be most disappointed, and I do make my apologies. I could leave you here with Abner and fetch one of the cars, but then you would be waiting longer. And evening comes soon enough.”

  At that very moment the bushes across the highway shook violently, and a creature materialized onto the road. It was a man, primitive or poor or both, with a long wooden pole on his shoulders that supported a bundle of about ten green coconuts on each end. When he spotted Raul, he smiled widely, revealing several missing teeth, and nodded his head in greeting.

  Raul waved him over. His deliberate steps reminded her of a llama or camel crossing the road with a slow glance in both directions. He wore a thin white shirt with half the buttons missing, revealing a brown chest of skin-covered bones. His trousers were folded to his knees, and his barefoot heels looked as tough as the paved highway. But it was the wide jungle knife dangling from his waist to his ankle and swaying as he walked that kept Julia’s attention.

  “Magandang hapon.” He spoke to Raul and offered the headnod greeting to Julia, which she returned with a smile.

  He then put his bag down and selected two coconuts. Setting one on the ground, he opened its thick shell with deliberate slashes of his long jungle knife. He cut off the hairy outer shell and created a good container to hold while drinking the coconut juice inside. He then cut a small utilitarian spoon from the husk itself and handed it to Julia, motioning that she could scrape off the white meat inside if she desired. He smiled proudly through the entire process.

  “Thank you,” said Julia, amazed at his expert handling and admiring the cute little spoon he had made so easily. To Raul she asked, “How do you say thank you in Tagalog?”

  “You can say salamat, and that will be enough for him to understand. Every region of the Philippines has a different language, and many dialects within that language. Although most people speak Tagalog or English, some from certain villages do not.”

  “Salamat?” she asked, and at his nod, Julia repeated it to the man, receiving his smile and nod. He reminded her of a figure only Walt Disney could create, and she wished to ask if he was part of the hacienda or he lived in the jungle. . . . What was the story of a man like that?

  Raul’s coconut was as easily opened as the two men talked. Julia tasted the watery milk, which wasn’t as sweet as she expected, but it quenched her thirst. She gazed at the overgrown fields and trees.

  The men’s conversation was interrupted by the explosive whine of a two-stroke engine that grew louder as it came down the road that connected with the highway. The small vehicle with its chrome and angular features reminded her of a vehicle from Star Wars as it came zipping toward them.

  These odd vehicles had jammed the streets in Manila and the road to Batangas. It was a motorcycle with a two-person aluminum sidecar attached to its flank.

  The driver, a middle aged man in shorts and a faded purple T-shirt, waved at Raul and gave her a curious look with his nod and smile. A young man hopped from the sidecar and motioned them inside with a “Mabuhay, welcome to the Philippines.”

  “Thank you,” she said, hesitating to get inside the metal contraption. “Salamat.”

  “This is a tricycle,” Raul said, catching her questioning gaze. “They will bring your luggage next. Abner will remain here to keep your belongings secure. Again, Miss Julia, I apologize for such an arrival to the hacienda.”

  “It’s okay, really. An adventure for me,” she said and realized how often she was using that “adventure” line to bolster her anxieties.

  The driver welcomed her aboard with a smiling, “Hi, mees.”

  With one last glance at her luggage, she slid into the seat and held her purse and satchel beneath her feet and the coconut on her lap. Her shoes were muddy and her skirt wrinkled, but suddenly she was filled with a sense of giddy discovery. Raul squeezed partway in beside her, holding the frame as the driver whipped around to return down the narrow road.

  Her skirt fluttered in the rush of air. From airplane to taxi to primitive bus to tricycle—it felt as if she’d traveled back in time, or down some primitive social ladder. Next they needed a carriage or donkey ride, she thought with a smile.

  The road was damp, and the leaves of ferns and trees at the side of the path were wet from a recent rain. The high whine and gear changes of the tricycle engine cut out all other sounds. The wind pushed back her hair, ruffling the material of her shirt and skirt, cooling the sweat on the back of her neck. Minutes passed as they drove by endless palm trees and a landscape that extended into fields gone wild with brush grown high and occasional piles of empty coconut husks.

  “I’ve arrived,” she whispered, wondering how many times her grandfather had traveled this very road.

  In flashes through the palms, branches, and bushes, Julia caught glimpses of structures far ahead. As the road curved around, an old majestic arc, a gateway, came into view. Its strong, solid posts were made of orange layered bricks, and its wroughtiron gate was opened for their arrival. Their driver slowed the tricycle to a crawl as they approached.

  Beside the gate Julia saw an old man, stocky but frail with age, standing proud and austere. A brightly colored blue bandanna was tied around his head, and he wore a bright red shirt over dark canvas pants. A plume of smoke came from his thin black pipe. And in the crook of his arm rested a large red rooster that he stroked lovingly from head to tail feathers. The rooster appeared as proud as the old man, staring with black beady eyes at the approaching motorcycle.

  A boy stood at the old man’s side as if the prodigy of something great. And yet, despite the man’s arresting bearing, he appeared so shockingly simple and primitive. A savage nobility of a bygone tribal age, Julia thought. Perhaps . . . a witch doctor?

  Raul nodded his head in respect. The old man gave a slight nod in return, then turned his gaze to Julia, his eyes literally sparkling. With a warm smile, he nodded to her as well.

  Julia smiled and nodded in return.

  “Who was that?” she asked loudly as their tricycle accelerated again.

  “He is Amang Tenio. Leader of Barangay Mahinahon. You will meet him another day. I imagine he was standing at the gates to be the first to greet you. Now we proceed to the clan house of
your family, which your grandfather and grandmother and their ancestors before them called home.”

  EMMAN RAN THROUGH THE JUNGLE WITH THE SPEED OF A LEOPARD, his feet so quick he thought perhaps he’d be viewed only as a blur through the leaves. He knew the shortcut to reach the hacienda before the tricycle arrived, but only if he was fast enough.

  He’d seen her.

  Miss Julia, the granddaughter of Captain Morrison. An American woman on the very road he’d walked a hundred times. And not just any American woman, but one who looked as though she could be from television or a movie.

  As he ran, he remembered hearing a field-worker whose cousin lived in the States tell how few American women looked as the movies depicted. He said many were fat and ugly or from mixed-up races and looked nothing like the actresses of TV and movies.

  But Miss Julia did. She even had blondish hair. Or close enough to blondish.

  His first glimpse at her was like a scene from a movie. Julia’s hair fluttered around her heart-shaped face, and one hand held her skirt against such beautiful fair-skinned knees. His heart pounded as it only did when watching a cockfight—or that time he’d been caught sneaking into the cinema and was taken to the police station.

  Emman had stood beside Amang Tenio as the tricycle slowed and passed them. Miss Julia’s expression was something between curious awe and nervousness; Emman wanted to run up beside the tricycle and tell her not to worry, he would protect her. But his feet wouldn’t move until it was too late. Her cheeks were flushed pink. Pink! He wondered how such skin felt to the touch. He supposed the same as his own, but to touch white skin—Emman ran faster to rid such an inappropriate thought. He was sure her eyes were blue as she’d stared at him and Amang Tenio on the roadside. Blue eyes! He wondered if he could sneak up and look right into them, but how did a person sneak up and view another’s eyes without her knowing?

  A sharp pebble cut his foot as he ran across the road, and he hopped on one foot and yelled, “Owie!” It didn’t sound very manly, but there was no one around to hear. He gasped for air to soothe the stinging in his lungs. The high whine of the tricycle was coming from behind—Emman was ahead already, with such leopard feet.