Daba-Daba

By Leoncio P. Deriada

Dansig is seven years old. He is a Bagobo. His father is Asan. His mother is
Anyaw.

Dansig’s parents grew up on the plateau. It is called Tamugan, one of the most
beautiful places in old Daba-Daba. Daba-Daba is now called Davao.

Dansig is not like the Ata children. He is not dark. He is fair and handsome, even
handsomer than his older brother. Msaglang is sixteen. He is brave and strong like a
durian tree. His face is like the durian too. It is rough with pimples.

Dansig’s family lives in a house made of bamboo and cogon. The house stands
on the edge of the plateau. The house is overlooking the big Tamugan River. Dansig
loves this river as much as he loves the forests and his father’s house and the tall durian
tree that Asang’s great-grandfather planted long ago. The tree stands on the cliff a
camote patch away from the house. It is so tall that it almost touches the sky. Once in a
while, the huge bird that eats monkeys perches on the topmost branch and whistles to its
mate.

Asan works in the abaca plantation of Mr. Ventura. Mr. Ventura is a rich Visayan
who owns the plateau on the other side of the Tamugan River. He is tall and fair with a
mustache and a cigar. Dansig cannot understand why a stranger
Like Mr. Ventura owns a big abaca plantation. Datu Elid, a powerful old man with
hanging earlobes, does not even own a stripping machine. Neither does Datu Duyan, the
chief of the tribes in the forests and mountains beyond Panigan River, on the northern
side of Tamugan Plateau.

When it is not the stripping season of abaca, Asan plants crops around the house,
like camote, gabi, and cassava. Anyaw plants vegetables. Then Dansig’s sister keeps
the chicken away. Ogaret is four years old. She has long wavy hair. When she grows up,
she will be married to Anani, one of Datu Elid’s numerous grandsons. Anani is eight
years old, and he can speak some words in English. He has been in Grade One for two
years at Gumalang Elementary School.

Dansig’s family owns a carabao, two goats, a dozen hens, three cocks, and a
hunting dog named Ul-ul. One of the cocks has been trained to fight in Malagos. Every
morning Dansig takes the carabao to the pasture. He rides on Tibak, the carabao, and
joins the Cebuano and Ilongo boys on the grassy side of the plateau. Tibak has a wire
ring in his nose. A strong abaca rope is attached to the ring, and as Dansig pulls the rope
while guiding Tibak toward the Tamugan River, he feels like Datu Elid riding his horse to
visit Datu Baguio or to attend the cockfights in Malagos.
Masaglang does not work in the abaca plantation. He has a kaingin just below the
durian tree, along the tortuous path of Tamugan River. He alternately plants palay and
corn in the kaingin. Now the corn ears are just sprouting hair and MAsaglang expects an
abundant harvest before the heavy rains flood Tamugan River.

Tamugan River floods easily. A downpour in the mountains in the west swells the
river in a couple of hours. The onrush of the brown water – washings of the fertile
mountainsides and plateaus – makes the river both monstrous and magnificent. Dansig
and the Visayan boys always enjoy watching the oncoming flood from a precipice beside
Masaglang’s kaingin. Five of them – Dansig, Kalaw, Nardo, Onyot, and Mundo – give out
whoops as the dark-brown swell from the river’s tributaries at the foot of Mt. Apo pushes
downward the clear water. After watching the flood’s coming many times, Nardo, who is
an Ilongo, has given up hope of seeing a gigantic monkey leading the brown current.
Dansig and the other boys laugh at this fairy tale. Ilongos are so superstitious. Onyot the
Cebuano says. Yet Onyot is morally afraid of some creatures in the dark like wakwak
and the sigbin.

One afternoon, while Anyaw is alone digging camote and Ogaret is feeding
Asan’s fighting cock, three men come. One has a long gun. The other two are carrying a
roll of barbed wire.

The men do not say anything, but they start putting up the fence. The barbed wire
fence runs across Anyaw’s camote patch. For a long while, Anayaw stands gaping, not
knowing what to do.

“But – but this is our land,” Anyaw protests. “You are building a fence on our
land!”

“This is not yours anymore,” the man with the says gruffly. He is a Tagalog.

“Not ours anymore? Why? - why?” Anyaw is about to cry.

“Mr. Ventura has just bought it,” says the darker one of the barbed wire men. He
is unmistakably an Ilocano.

“Bought? From whom? We haven’t sold our land!”

“Samok ‘ning bayhana,” the third man says in Cebuano. “This woman asks too
many questions.”

Anyaw is now on the other side of the fence, separated from her cogon house.
She crawls under the barbed wire and faces the men, her body trembling in anger and
confusion.

“This land is ours,” Anyaw is now crying. “Please remove the fence. My husband
will be very angry.”

“And what will your husband do, ha?” snarls the gunman. “Scare us away?”
 “We’ll be back tomorrow,” says the Cebuano. “Tell your man to behave, or else…”

The three men leave the woman beside the wire fence. Anyaw wipes her face
with the flared sleeve of her multicolored blouse. She breathes deeply and then calls her
sons, her voice shrill but strong, penetrating the still afternoon. In the west, the sun is
bloody red above Mt. Apo.

Soon, Dansig comes, riding Tibal like Datu Elid’s horse. Behind him is Ul-ul,
barking and playfully biting Tibak’s hind legs. The carabao trots awkwardly towards the
house but suddenly stops, arrested by the newly constructed fence.

Before he can ask questions, his brother Masaglang is beside him. Masaglang
looks dirty after working in the kaingin the whole day. The brothers stand by the fence,
their mother on the other side.

And Anyaw tells them everything about the three men and Mr. Ventura.
Masaglang spits on the ground in intense anger. Then he draws his big bolo slung
on his waist and cuts the barbed wires. The taut metal lines resist stubbornly but soon
they snap and curl with a hiss towards the closest wooden stake. Dansig picks up a
piece of raw branch and strikes each wooden stake until the stake loosens from the
ground. Then he and his brother pull out each pointed wood and hurl it into the tall cogon
beside the camote patch.

Before dark Asan comes home from the abaca plantation on the other plateau. It
is Saturday and he has just received his weekly wages. He has dropped by Eng Nga’s
store and he has brought some cans of sardines, a kilo of salt and two of sugar, some
dried fish, and pieces of coconut candy wrapped in colored paper.

Around their supper laid on the bamboo floor that evening, the family talked about
the men who put up the fence.

The next day, Sunday, the men do not come. They must have gone to Calinan to
visit their church where a white priest mumbles strange words at the foot of the altar. Or
they must have attended the cockfights in Malagos.

On Monday, Asan does not report for work. He stays at home and sharpens his
panumbahay and taksiay. The panumbahay is a huge but light blade used to cut abaca
trunks close to the base. An expert has to strike only thrice and the plant crashes to the
ground with a rich thud somehow cushioned by the wide, thick leaves. The taksiay is
double-edged knife shaped like the tip of a spear. It is used to strip the abaca stalk of the
fiber-rich outer layer. Aside from their function in the abaca plantation, the panumbahay
and the taksiay are deadly weapons.

The family do their accustomed chores without a word. Anyaw resumes her work
in the camote patch, digging up the fat yellow tubers and depositing them in a bamboo
basket. Masaglang goes back to his kaingin. Among his blossoming corn plants, he feels
something odd – an anticipation of some terrible happening. Ogaret keeps the chickens
away from the vegetables, her lips red with coconut candy wrappers she has used as
lipstick. Dansig takes Tibak to pasture, but now, he does join the Visayan boys.

In the afternoon, just as the shadow of the house touches the nearer margin of
the camote patch, the three men come. On Tibak’s back, Dansig sees them climbing up
the twisting path from Tamugan River. Dansig whistles. From his kaingin, Masaglang
hears the signal and hurries home to his appointed place behind the house. On the
cogon wall, are two spears and a dozen tusked boar skulls – trophies of the previous
year’s abundant hunt.

The three men face Anyaw. The scared woman freezes. Ogaret runs towards her.
The girl trembles, clutching her mother’s soiled patadiong.

The Tagalog still has the long gun. The other two men do not have guns but they
are just as armed. The Ilocano has a long jungle bolo dangling from his waist. On the
Cebuano’s side, Anyaw can see the hilt of some knife the kind of which she has not seen
before.

“What have you done to our fence?” demands the Tagalog who is obviously the
leader.

The woman opens her mouth but cannot say anything,

“Didn’t we tell you to behave?” says the Cebuano. “Now tell your husband and
sons to put back our fence.”

The Ilocano says something in his language. Anyaw does not understand him.

The woman is trembling now, but the sight of her husband coming from the house
steadies her. Asan is in double steps, the huge scabbard of the panumbahay ominous
on his side.

“Put back the fence,” the Tagalog orders Asan. Mr. Ventura’s man stands solid on
the ground, his right hand holding the gun like a support.

“This is my land,” Asan’s voice soft but keen in primitive fury. “You cannot drive
me away from my land.”

“Pisti!” the Cebuano hisses through his stained teeth. “You don’t own this land
anymore. Didn’t your woman tell you?”

The Ilocano utters something incoherent. From his place behind the house,
Masaglang can see how dark the Ilocano’s nape is, like the color of any Ata warrior.
 The Tagalog steps forward, his hand strong around the barrel of the gun. Asan
does not move an inch. His legs are spread straight and firm on the earth like a pair of
lanzones trunks.

“Get out of this land!” the Tagalog is shouting now. “Get out you brute, or you’’
have a taste of this! The gunman raises his arms and Asan feels the butt of the gun on
his chest.

The Bagobo falls to the ground, in the Tagalog’s shadow. From where he is
among the creeping creatures of the field, he looks at the towering figure above him.
With the instincts of a beast that can see every detail of the enemy at one sweep of the
eyes, Asan glares as the gunman moves closer, pushing his shadow in front of him. First
Asan notes the rubber boots, then the tight khaki pants that hug the legs sensually,
showing generous folds where the sex is. Asan’s eyes linger in a split second at the slim
waist where a belt of ammunition clings loosely. The man’s body is tough and hairy: the
unbuttoned shirt shows a chest that has both power and cruelty. Were the face gentle, it
could be handsome – but now there is no beauty there, not even a trace of humanity.
The Tagalog leers with an awareness of the strength in both his chest and his gun.

From the ground, Asan looks at the towering body that is both menacing and
vulnerable.

The man raises his arms again and Asan anticipates the blinding closeness of the
gun butt. Quick as a jungle beast, the Bagobo springs to a crouching position, his right
hand tight around the sarimanok hilt of the panumbahay. With all the might of the arm,
that has felled countless abaca trees, Asan attacks the human trunk in front of him. A
single swish of the large, light blade finds its way sure and clean across the groin that is
both sensual and vulnerable. Red, warm blood spills into Asan’s face and the Bagobo
has a momentary taste of salt.

The man shrieks and drops the gun. He shrieks again, clasping his front. Then he
falls…

The Bagobo is on his feet now. Cursing, sweating, panting, and blood-thirsty like
a hunting dog, he kneels between the fallen man’s legs, clasps the panumbahay
sarimanok with both hands, and with all the anger in his body and soul, plants the lethal
tool in the Tagalog’s heart.

“Aieeee!” Anyaw screams, her hands scratching the afternoon wind. Ogaret clings
to her mother’s sleeves, mute with terror.

Momentarily stunned by the happening, the two men find their senses now. As if
on cue, both pull their weapons. The Ilocano brandishes his jungle bolo above his head,
and from behind, Masaglang finds him funny like an inept huramentado.
 Asan has pulled his blade from the Tagalog’s heart. Hotter than ever, he faces the
two, this time with a fiercer heart and a firmer hand.

Masaglang lets go of his spear. The javelin hisses in the air to find its target. The
spear- killer of a dozen boars in the mossy valleys of Tamugan River – hits the bull’s
eye: the Ilocano’s nape. The dark Northerner crashes to the ground with a thud
somehow cushioned by the thick, purplish camote tops. The spear’s blade shot through
the man’s neck. The Ilocano grimaces darkly, then expires.
“Aieeee!” Anyaw screams again. This time Ogaret joins her.

The dog Ul-ul, whose instincts have been sharpened by the numberless boar
hunts, rushes to the fallen quarry, but sensing the impaled body unmoving and lifeless,
foregoes the customary bite in the throat. Instead, the dog licks the blood on the spear
tip, then points his nose at the sky and howls his canine joy.

The Cebuno turns towards the cogon house. Masaglang is poising the second
spear, but before the hunter releases the bamboo-bodied lance, the third man darts
blindly toward the snaky path to Tamugan River, leaving his almost inhuman shout
behind him.

Meanwhile, father in the west, rain is falling in the forests of the smaller mountains
at the foot of Mt. Apo. The sun has darkened.

Dansig jumps off Tibak and joins his family around the intruders sprawled over the
camote patch. Wordlessly, each stares at the bloody bodies. Dansig feels his heart
pumping wildly inside his little breast – awed by the bravery of his elders and terrified by
his first experience of death. He looks at his father’s face and there he sees the valor
that must have been in the face of the most illustrious bagane among Datu Elid’s
ancestors.

Suddenly, anxiety covers Asan’s face. Fear begins to take shape in his eyes. He
and his son have just killed two men.

“Go! Go!” he gasps. “Go back to the house. Let’s get out of here!”

His wife and children understand him. Anyaw picks up her basket of tubers and
drags Ogaret to the house. Dansig goes back to Tibak and ties the carabao to a kamansi
tree. Masaglang pulls his spear from the Ilocano’s neck. The spearhead offers some
trifling resistance. Masaglang strengthens his pull. The dead man’s face upturns and his
mouth opens into an obscene grin.

Asan stands on the edge of the plateau. The path is empty. He looks down into
the valley below, at the river. Clearly, he can see the Cebuano fording the Tamugan in a
maddening hurry.
 The sky has darkened. Asan looks at the west. The rain in the mountains at the
foot of Mt. Apo has become heavier.

Ul-ul has left the two bodies in the camote patch. Now the flies are hovering over
them.

Asan goes back to the two bodies. He stands above them for a moment. He is no
longer shaking with anger. Instead, pity and fear have taken possession of him and he
shakes anew. The Tagalog’s face has become serene in death; indeed the face is
handsome. The Ilocano is still grinning and his eyes are open. The flies are now
humming over the dead.

Asan picks up the men’s weapons and hurries to the house. His family is huddled
in the main room, anxious and afraid.

Asan strikes the huge agony by the door. He strikes it loud and long, with a
regularity of beat that is at once a call and a signal. The full sound of the brass
instrument echoes in the cliffs of Tamugan and into the marang and lanzones woods
beyond. In a short while, Asan’s relatives, and Anyaw’s too, will come.

Asan has decided now: they have to leave.

The next hours find the family speechless and busy. In Asan’s inner eye, he sees
the Cebuano climbing up the other tortuous path from the river, towards Mr. Ventura’s
plantation house. He sees the man screaming through the abaca fields, running in horror
toward Mr. Ventura’s iron gates. It will take him five minutes to be understood: that his
companions have been murdered by a mere Bagobo and his son. The father is one of
those dirty laborers on the plantation. Then Mr. Ventura will strut out of the house, biting
his cigar to call his security guards and other armed protectors. One of the men will drive
the service jeep to the police outpost in Calinan. The nearer outpost is in Gumalang, but
it is most unlikely that the lone policeman is at the station. He must be at home training
his fighting cocks. It will save time to drive to Calinan instead.
The police and Mr. Ventura’s men will not come before sunset. But Asan is sure
of one thing: the flood caused by the rains in the smaller mountains at the foot of Mt. Apo
will swell the Tamugan within an hour.
The flood will stop the police and Mr. Ventura’s men from crossing the river. There
will be enough time to leave the cogon house the camote patch and the durian tree for a
safer place in the mountains beyond Panigan River. It will be safe to join Datu Duyan’s
men.

Asan knows. There will be no mercy from these Christian landgrabbers. The only
wise thing to do is flee. He and his son have killed two of them in actual combat. In
ancient time, that was more than enough to make him a bagane, a hero, a protector of
home and tribe. But now, he is afraid.
 From their own homes in the various parts of the plateau come Asan’s relatives
and friends. Old man Garong is with his teen-age son Masteda. Masteda is newly
tattooed and he would like everybody to see the snakeskin design around his wrists and
biceps. Then Asan’s cousin Dumpit arrives panting, one hand gripping a Muslim
kampilan. More relatives and friends come Atoy and Amolong and Rasid and Anggawod.
And Anyaw’s brothers and uncles: Bunglay and Unday and Amilhasa and Kurukudo.
Even the bastard Mikoto is there. Mikoto’s father was a Japanese gardener who turned
out to be an officer of the Imperial Army during the War. His mother was Anyaw’s
unmarried sister who drowned in Panigan River during a December flood.

Asan stops beating the agong and addresses the excited relatives and friends.

“We cannot fight them,” Old man Garong says, shaking his white head. His
distended, pierced earlobes shake, too.

“We are men of peace,” says Dumpit, fondling the blade of his kampilan. “But if
they push us farther, we will fight.”

“They have guns! Anyaw gasps. She has now bundled her clothes of brightly
dyed hemp woven with dumdum beads.

“And money and power,” continues old man Garong. “They will kill you, us! So,
leave now while there is time. Go and join Datu Duyan’s men. You will be safe there.”
Suddenly from the river’s direction comes a muffled, rolling sound. The flood has
come. Asan cocks his ears, mentally measuring the swell of the Tamugan. He smiles.
The river is too deep and too swift for any man to cross. Those Christians with guns will
not dare defy the flood.
“We’ll help you carry your things across the Panigan,” Dumpit says. “Nobody
should be here when the men arrive.”

“No,” answers Asan bitterly. “Nobody will be here. Nothing will be here. For I will
burn this house and destroy all my plants. They can have my land but not my animals
and my trees. I’ll destroy them first!”

Anyaw weeps loudly, shamelessly. Ogaret cries with her.

Asan gives Dansig the Ilocano’s jungle bolo. “Go!” he orders the boy.
“Destroy the tree!”

Dansig stares at his father in horror. He looks at his father long until he sees
again the bagane in that face. He understands.

The boy runs to the tree at the edge of the cliff. In the camote patch, more flies
are hovering over the dead men. Dansig looks at them momentarily, and in his
bitterness, he spits on them.
 Below the cliff, the Tamugan is moaning steadily. It is late afternoon.

Dansig looks at the durian tree looming above him. It is so tall that it seems to
touch the sky. The first blossoms of the season crowd the branches of the tree. In the
pale, purple flowers, the boy pictures the future fruit. And on the topmost branch, he
pictures, too, the huge bird that catches monkeys for its food. The bird is whistling to its
mate.

Anyaw’s anguished cry startles the boy. He looks towards the direction of the
house. Asan has set it on fire. Flame and smoke curl upwards like an offering to the
ancient gods on Mt. Apo. Under the kamansi tree to which Dansig ha tied Tibak, are
piled the simple wealth of the house: baskets and mats and agongs and bolos and
spears. There are assorted bundles of clothes and sacks of grain. And also Masaglang’s
hunting trophies of boar skulls and tusks.

Ul-ul barks at the fire.

Dansig squirms at the sight. He feels his heart jump and his muscles tense. His
little hand is tight around the bolo’s hilt. With all his little man’s frustration and pristine
rage, the boy strikes the tree. The bark gives way and soon the boy has made a ring
around the massive trunk. He makes another ring under the first. A final stroke of the
bolo’s point removes the bark between the two rings until the tree has a fatal wound
around its trunk.

Again, Dansig looks at the burning house and then at the tree looming above him.
He sees the pale, purple blossoms. A few days from now, all of them will fall. Then the
glossy leaves, too, will fall. He sees the tree sapless and dead, its gnarled branches
clawing the sky, a sinister sentinel on the highway of the spiral winds…

He cries.

Appendix B

About the Author

Leoncio P. Deriada published 10 books, two of which were novels and the rest

were composed of his short stories, plays, and lectures. With seventeen Palanca

Awards emblazoning his name, he made enormous contributions to Philippine

literature, such that he became the recipient of Gawad CCP (Cultural Center of the

Philippines) Para sa Sining for literature (2015); Kampeon ng Wika Award from the
Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (2014); Taboan Lifetime Award for Literature from the

National Commission for Culture and the Arts (2013), National Book Award for the

Novel in English (People in Claveria Street) from the Manila Critics Circle (2004),

Palanca Hall of Fame Award from the Palanca Foundation (2001), Gawad Lopez K.

Santos from the UP System (2000), Gawad Pambansang Balagtas from the Union ng

mga Manunulat Pilipinas (2000), and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National

Commission for Culture and the Arts in 2013 (Dacanay “Palanca Hall of Famer Leoncio

P. Deriada”).

Aside from his numerous awards in the literary world, Deriada was also awarded

by the Metrobank Foundation as Most Outstanding Teacher in 2002, and by the Civil

Service Commission as the 2003 Lingkod Bayan Awardee (Villa, “Leoncio Deriada,

eminent Ilonggo writer”).