North Luzon Monitor

North Luzon

The Fisherman

George Babsa-ay Jr.
Latest posts by George Babsa-ay Jr. (see all)

In whatever age – to the Fisherman, the lake is family. A brother, he most hours of the day wrestled with for one more day with the oars. His boat was a brother, too.

Like his fathers before him, the lake made him more than a man. In a hut he shared with his love Cita, the Fisherman, too, paddled the oars for three kids. The lake made him a better Father, which gave him deep joy.

So when strange men came one night, as he hummed on a hammock held by coconut trees, and told him, “We have come for what is rightfully ours,” the Fisherman laughed so loud that it startled the crabs and the crickets. Bunso peeked from the hut.

“Friends…sadly, there is nothing to own here, but callus and a sore back,” the Fisherman had to explain. “Laughter, too, if you wish.”

“That lake,” one of them said, turning. “It is ours. It belonged to our ancestors.”

To laugh anew would have been rude. A quiet village is about good neighbors, the Fisherman told himself. “But the lake belongs to no one,” he said as kindly as he could.

“The fish, the reeds, the clay…they are the lake,” said Cita from their hut, tugging bunso by the ear. “Its worth comes from not being owned.”

“She’s my counsel,” the Fisherman said.

“We’ll be back,” their mouthpiece said, not-so-Arnoldly.

For the first night in his life, the Fisherman slept a rich man.

By morning, the Fisherman learned from fellow oarsmen that the strange men came from afar and came for their oars, too.

“The elders must know this, at once,” the Fisherman said.

Around a crackling fire at the village hut later that night, “Those men that you speak of…very, very powerful men,” said the eldest elder as soon as the Fisherman said his last word. The younger elders nodded.

Flames flickering on his eyes, the Fisherman stood. “I don’t see why that counts here, Ama,” he said. “We only ask for what is right.”

“Right? Who tells who is right?” sneered the eldest elder, his balls bulging funny. “Surely, the one with the most arms?” The younger elders looked away.

The Fisherman froze. This is bullshit. We are fucked.

“Are your bolos sharp enough?” added a voice from behind the eldest elder. “Do you even own one, Fisherman?”

The Fisherman leaned, and looked closer into the eldest elder’s eyes and saw the strange men. Behind him, the voice was a man, louder than fat. It was the voice of the strange men.

The Fisherman felt them swirl, in wait, in the bushes, in the dark.

The Fisherman slept another rich man’s night. By the candle, the kids were growing an appetite. He couldn’t lose family.  Not one. Not when the lake has grown kind to him, sharing whatever it can.

But years of wrestling with the lake honed in him a sharp eye and a keen mind. And the Fisherman woke up grasping what the strange men wanted: Wealth. And that they were greedy.

As Yùnqì would have it, the strange men agreed to the Fisherman’s call for a meet, seeing the village’s eventual submission.

That night, amid wisps of smoke, the Fisherman pointed and said to the strange men, “In exchange for our lake, we meet to give you all of our wealth, what you call as wealth.”

The strange men looked at the eldest elder and his loud echo.

And the crickets did not protest that night.

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