MAIKLING KUWENTO
Gold from the Fields
By Felicia Sanchez

(Continued from v20)

IT IS A Saturday, and from in front of the bank where he waits for his son Jun he can see the busy wet-and-dry market across the street. Several vendors on the sidewalk block his view of the market's entrance: an old woman sitting on the entrance's steps with a large basket of chicharon by her side, a legless man in a makeshift wheelchair holding a bundle of Sweepstakes, a scrawny middle-aged man squatting on the ground beside a boxful of fake jewelry-

His right hand flies to his pocket as he remembers his daughter telling him that the rice bin is almost empty. He turns back towards the bank in time to see his son stepping out of the ATM booth.

Jun is tall and lean, like most of the Cigres men, but unlike his cousins from the province he has fair, unblemished skin and a freshness of movement that verges on airs. Mr. Cigres watches as the boy, cocking his head, holds the door out for a young woman entering the booth. He greets her with "Your turn, Miss!" even though she is a stranger, and the girl freezes, wondering perhaps whether she must say something back, then she frowns and glides past him into the booth. Jun's smile is wide and he glances into the glass door before stepping away. He is eighteen years old, smooth-browed and clear-eyed, and even his father finds it difficult to see beneath the subtle swagger and the big-toothed grin.

"Boy, it's hot out here," Jun remarks, putting on his RayBan sunglasses. "Should've stayed in there longer."

Mr. Cigres holds out a hand. "Well?"

The corners of Jun's mouth turn down. He takes out an ATM card from his pocket and hands it to his father. "Nothing."

Mr. Cigres stares at the card before keeping it in his wallet. His right hand touches his pocket. "Your mother's company has delayed for two months. When your mother called yesterday she said she could only come home this weekend if they would finally give out the salaries, but they-"

"It's all right, Pa," Jun says. His dark glasses gleam as he shrugs. "It's the company's fault."

Mr. Cigres mulls over his son's simplistic logic: It's the company's fault. Viola Cigres works in far-flung provinces for an international firm that does not know how to manage its debts, and so the company bank refuses to release the salaries on time.

But at the textbook company where Mr. Cigres is finance officer, there is no such thing as "the company's fault". Employees are always the ones under pressure. His division, for example, is currently working on a government-funded project, and people in the administration want figures in the logbooks changed. They have been asking him to do it for weeks now, promising him a raise and other privileges, but he simply cannot, although he is well aware that his refusal has everything to do with the annoyed, mysterious glances that the people at the office have begun to give him. He feels his stubbornness will get him into trouble soon, and with his last salary already spread thinly over the bills, he wonders if he can afford it.

"Let's go," he says, ignoring the glare of his son's black glasses. He grasps his pocket and starts to walk around the side of the bank.

"You know, Pa," Jun says, his oversized polo shirt flapping in the air as he jogs after his father, "Tita Minda told me the other night that if we just ask her to, she'll finance my second semester. And Tina's too, since her scholarship makes her tuition really cheap, anyway."

"No," Mr. Cigres tells him. Viola's older sister works for UNESCO and is about to take up residence in France. But he and Viola already owe her a five-digit sum, and, to be perfectly honest, he is not ready for the snide silences that accompany her generosity. "No, as long as we can manage, we won't ask her."

They walk to a small, narrow building down the side of the bank. In the harsh sunlight, the gilded letters of the pawnshop's name glower down at Mr. Cigres, and again, strangely, he drowns in remembrance of a bright morning three decades ago. How different, how pleasant, was the warmth of that day...

Then he feels his son's eyes on him.

"It's the heat," he tells Jun, wiping off the sweat from his forehead. He stares at the gleaming black glasses and he knows his son cannot understand. The boy has never walked long miles to buy and sell chickens, nor has he ever plowed, scared birds with a pagakpak or harvested rice for food. Today, despite the biting sunlight, he does not even sweat.

Jun nods, but Mr. Cigres can tell that he is watching him, judging him, and he understands that his son is losing patience. The boy needs the money for school, after all, and Mr. Cigres has the gold in his pocket, so why doesn't he simply do what he has to do?

A security guard sits in a shade some yards in front of the pawnshop, looking bored and irritable. Mr. Cigres walks past him to one of the pawnshop's windows and waits for someone to attend to him. The windows are fortified with iron bars, covered with glass panes that have rectangle holes for transactions. Jun stands next to him and rests his elbows on the narrow brick counter. At the next window, standing beside Jun, is an old woman. Her thinning white hair is in a neat bun at the nape of her wrinkled neck. The light-brown duster she has on is too large for her, but her back is straight and her sandaled feet are steady. She puts on thick black-rimmed glasses and takes out a piece of paper from her purse, and then she counts some one-hundred and five-hundred bills onto the counter. In front of her, on the other side of the iron grills, a young man with peroxide blond hair taps his fingers noisily against the window.

Mr. Cigres watches his son study the old woman. The boy has an eyebrow raised; he is trying to deduce, perhaps, what terrible financial errors she might have committed, what debts she owed to how many lenders. Has she, too, suffered infinite problems from work, and has she, too, rummaged through everything in the house in the hopes of finding temporary answers to immediate needs?

But now, she is getting her gold back. The old woman pushes the money into the window, the piece of paper from her purse sitting atop the pile. The young man with fake blond hair pushes a clear plastic sachet towards the lady, and the sachet's contents glitter in the sunlight. The old woman's creased face conveys nothing as she makes sure that everything is inside the sachet, and then she leaves.

The young man in the pawnshop shifts to Mr. Cigres' window. Jun takes off his glasses as his father digs into his pocket and brings out a crumpled letter envelope.

The poorly dyed young man faces into the pawnshop and yells, "Ate, sanla!"

They hear only a woman's indecipherable reply from the inner office, so the young man leaves the window to fetch the "Ate".

Jun asks his father, "You brought mine and Tina's?"

Mr. Cigres can barely hear his own voice as he answers, "Necklaces get more."

"That's great, then!" Jun exclaims. "I hope you went through all of Ma's jewelry boxes- the more the merrier, after all."

He will not look at his son, even as he wonders about the suspicious music in the boy's voice. He wishes that it were Tina with him instead. Mr. Cigres was at first warmly surprised that Jun volunteered to accompany him, but now he is weary with the thought that his son is mocking him, the nuance of his young words an insincere attempt at encouragement.

He says nothing, and Jun too falls silent. They hear voices from the inner office of the pawnshop, the laughter of conversation, and then the passing of vehicles out on the street. The bank and the market seem very far away. He casts his son a furtive glance and sees the smooth face set forward, eyes glued to the light-skinned hands resting on the counter. Mr. Cigres looks down at his own hands, of a slightly darker tone than Jun's but as unscarred and hardly calloused, and he grips the envelope tighter.

His son is quiet but it is not his father's fault. Jun can smile widely and walk as if he owned the world, but he will not tell his father stories, and Mr. Cigres in turn cannot help but regard him in nervous silence.

And then all of a sudden, Jun speaks.

"That woman," he says, his eyes crinkled in a smile as he looks at his father, "She reminds me of Lola."

His father does not respond, so he goes on, "The way that old woman carried herself-she looks strong, doesn't she?"

Mr. Cigres' mouth goes dry when his son adds softly, as if only to himself, "Almost as strong as Lola looked during Lolo's funeral some years back."

Naturally, because the living should be stronger than the dead, Mr. Cigres tells himself, even as the fingers that clutch the envelope tremble. We need to eat and go to school, don't we? There is nothing left to do but to value what they gave us in life.

Because we need to eat and go to school.

"I'm pawning your Lolo's ring."

He immediately remembers that it is Tina who knows and understands the ring's story. The rice fields- they would mean nothing to Jun. Jun knows nothing. He realizes his error and searches for something else to say.

"How many gold bars can two hundred rings, one hundred twenty bracelets and ninety necklaces make?" Mr. Cigres beams at his son.

Jun blinks, then grins quickly. "All right, how many?"

"None, if the jewelry is made of silver!"

"Ngyek-ngyek-ngyek," Jun says.

The door of the pawnshop's inner office opens, and a hefty, curly-haired woman comes out. She sits in front of Mr. Cigres' window. In a booming yet nasal voice she asks, "Sanla?"

Mr. Cigres pushes the crumpled envelope towards her. She takes out a calibrated lens and then opens the envelope, her movements easy and deliberate, her brown arms jiggling only slightly. She takes out a thick gold necklace that Mr. Cigres' cousin Enteng bought for him from Saudi. The "Ate" peers at the links through the lens and then sets the chain aside. She does the same with Viola's necklace, Tina's choker and Jun's chain-strung crucifix. Next she looks at Tina's bracelet, and then at Viola's diamond ring, and then at the ring that Tatay gave Mr. Cigres. The purplish stones are larger than the diamonds on Viola's ring.

Mr. Cigres exhales slowly as the Ate peers at the ring. During the decades that he has owned the ring he has worn it only once, on his wedding day, and the rest of the time he kept it in a box away from sight, to be looked at whenever trouble came and he wanted to remember the faraway things of his youth, when the rice stalks still grew as tall as a young boy who liked to stare up at the endless sky.

He casts his son a sidelong glance. Jun is watching the Ate, his face smooth and open, and suddenly he hopes that the boy's face will remain that way for always, smooth-browed and clear-eyed. Then he wishes his son had tried to be good friends with Tatay. Perhaps Jun could have succeeded where Mr. Cigres had not.

The Ate is still bent over the ring, and Mr. Cigres' thoughts continue to run. Why did Jun come with him? He knows for sure that the boy hates errands, especially if it means having to leave the house for any reason other than hanging out with his friends. Did Tina tell him something last night to make him volunteer? His two children are always talking about anything. How he loves them both, and he has always tried his best to provide for them. It is only recently that money troubles have begun to crop up, and because he talks to Tina he knows how she feels about the pawning. He does not know about Jun, but maybe next month Viola's salary will come at last, and when it does, he will go straight to the pawnshop to redeem everything.

"Seven three," proclaims the Ate. It is not quite the amount he has been counting on, but it is almost enough to cover the children's fees. As for the electric bill, maybe it can wait until another week; hopefully Viola's long-due salary will be in by then, and---

The Ate places Tatay's ring in the envelope and pushes it towards Mr. Cigres. She begins to make out a receipt.

Mr. Cigres stares down at the crumpled envelope. "Excuse me," he says in a low voice.

The Ate misunderstands him and shows him the breakdown of the amount. "Seven thousand three hundred pesos," she clarifies.

He says nothing. Jun straightens up and gestures to the envelope. "Miss Beautiful," he flashes her a smile, "what's the problem?"

The Ate returns the smile, then raises her eyebrows. "With the ring?"

Jun leans closer to the window, and Mr. Cigres takes a tiny step back. Jun raises his voice slightly. "Yes."

"The karat is too low."

Jun lets go of his smile. "Well, don't the stones cost anything?"

The Ate's arms jiggle as she shrugs. "They're just glass, boy. But if you really want to pawn that ring I can give you one hundred pesos for it."

From behind Jun Mr. Cigres says, "Never mind, thank you."

Jun steps aside. His father stares at the receipt pad, nods, then watches as the Ate counts out the money in five-hundred and one-hundred bills. The Ate shows him where to sign his name.

Out of habit, he makes sure that he writes his name and signature beautifully.

The transaction is over. The Ate returns to the inner office and the young man with peroxide blond hair comes out and turns a small television on. Mr. Cigres pockets the money and turns away, but he stops because he has forgotten the envelope.

Jun has not, though. The boy picks up the envelope and holds it out to his father. Despite himself Mr. Cigres smiles faintly, because the boy is holding the envelope with both hands, as if what is inside is the most valuable thing on earth.

"I'll keep it," Jun says suddenly.

His father stares at him, a million memories lighting up his mind, and it is only now that he begins to understand.

One morning, a man looks up from his seat under a camachile tree and sees that his son is there, standing in a glistening shower of thumbnail leaves that speckle the ground with shadows. He takes the boy to the warmth of the rice fields, to the maya and the clattering pagakpak, to reach across the fathoms of sky for the one bright thing that a good man will ever want.

"No," Mr. Cigres tells his son. This time he puts the envelope in his left pocket. "Not today."

Jun tosses his head and grins, his teeth big and white.

They walk past the security guard in the shade, and they make their way back to the bank so they can cross the street to the market. Both of them remember that the rice bin is almost empty at home. The sun is in its zenith, the concrete road shines almost blindingly in the light, and people everywhere are beginning to sweat the noonday heat. Mr. Cigres watches Jun walk as if he owned the road, the world, even, and as he wishes it were so, he wonders how much his son knows of that one late morning, when he himself was a boy beside the rice fields rippling in a warm breeze, when his tatay promised him all the gold he could ever want, under miles and miles of blue sky and the white, shimmering sun.

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