Early Harvest

Bienvenido N. Santos
The Japanese soldiers were noisy when they came to our little barrio. Their laughter and their talk resounded through the Sinicaran hills, which lie at the foot of Mount Mayon. Below is the town of San Juan where we bought all the pretty things that could be had for money. The Japanese had taken the town and there was more shooting in the streets, no more pretty things to buy. We had kept to our homes when we heard that they were coming. We peeped through the windows and watched them come, expecting the worst. They were loud and bared their teeth in something that resembled smiles, and we were filled with fear. We had nowhere to go. Some of the people from the town had gone to the hills. My father's nippa house stood at the branching of the trails, squat and low and sturdy. Up that trail the soldiers marched, having alighted from a Graham car now parked in front of the spot where the chapel used to be until last month when a typhoon leveled it to the ground and the bell fell from the ceiling but did not break. Work had started on it when the Japs came. Many people were afraid, and we heard all sorts of news. The trail led farther inland beyond the waterless creek where the barrio schoolhouse stood. On both sides of the muddy trail are fields now planted to corn, hemmed on all sides by coconut trees. In our backyard are kilns for drying copra and heaps of firewood from the forests of Lafonte. My elder brother Cario knew that forest by heart. I had helped him gather firewood and he was not afraid of the dark. "Selmo," he would say, "you have a chicken heart and the memory of a turtle." I wondered where he was, my strong, big brother, as I watched the enemy soldiers go under the sheds which stretched on a long line to the west backyard. These were empty sheds now, but formerly on Mondays, which was a market day, they were full of products from the town, all the lovely things that money could buy: many colored print cotton for dresses and skirts, threads of all colors, dried fish and rice cakes, toys and black magic. The vendors shouted their wares or demonstrated the use of medicines and oils, and the whole place hummed with noise, and everybody liked it, and when folks showed their teeth in smiles, everybody else did the same and nobody was afraid. The Japanese soldiers stood under the empty sheds, smoking at ease and talking loudly. Some of them pointed at te smoke coming from the crater of Mount Mayon in the distance. Others were cleaning off the mud from their boots with bayonets. Father stood at the door, his white hair shining in the sun. Mother knelt before the image of Santa Rosa in the altar room in our house. They were married during the feast of San Juan a year ago in November. I stood at my father's side at the doorway, watching the sun on his hair and his lips that moved but said nothing. And I was thinking of my brother Cario, who knew the forests of Lafonte by heart. I didn't know where he was, and Father and Mother had been very sad about him. One Japanese soldier with a long sword at his side walked toward my father and spoke to him in the dialect. I opened my mouth in amazement. As he talked he looked very much like the Japanese we knew who sold bicycles in the capital of the province where Father often took us too see the movies. The man was smiling and saying how quiet it was in the town of San Juan, and how nice the afternoon was, and how victorious the Japanese army. "We are friends, "he said, but Father, ordinarily quick to smile and respond with a kind word, looked stern and said nothing. Then the Jap talked some more about living closer under the benevolent influence of the Emperor. He looked around him, standing beside Father - Father never looked taller - and he said, "You know, I have been here before." "Yes, I know," Father answered. "You still got those unbeatable roosters of yours?" he asked Then the Japanese looked toward the cornfield and waved his stubby arms as if to encompass everything around. "You don't plant corn all year round, do you?" "You have been here before," Father answered. "I know, the Japanese said, you plant rice. When do you start planting?" "After a while," said Father. "Where does the barrio lieutenant live?" "Beyond the creek." "Near the schoolhouse?" "Not far from there." "He has been told we were coming."

"I know," Father answered. "Goodbye," said the Japanese soldier, smiling still. "We are coming back." Then he marched his soldiers toward the creek where lay the barrio farther inland. The dogs barked at the sound of the marching feet. Soon the sound of both dogs and men was hardly audible. Father walked in the sun and stood among the cornfields, and I went along and watched him. "When do we gather them, Father?" I asked "Before Christmas maybe, Son," he replied, his voice so soft and kind and I wanted to cry. Before the dusk the Japanese soldiers came back, the dogs barking after them. One soldier held crumpled in his hand the American flag which they had hauled off the bamboo pole in front of the schoolhouse. Another soldier in the rear carried on his left shoulder a short Christmas tree around which dangled tinsel and silver stars. I remembered how every year before the Christmas vacation, our teacher in the barrio school make us go to the peak of Sinicaran hills for the agoho trees that looked like pine tree. We used empty gasoline cans for the base and placed stones and rocks in the can to keep the trees steady. We decorated the trees with tinsel and stars. We wrapped little gifts and sang Christmas songs all week. When we sang "Joy don't the world," Miss Nasol put her fingers on her lips and stopped us, saying, "You don't have to shout." It was fun. We exchanged gifts and ate ice cream and cookies on the last day of school. We had been looking forward to all this when the enemy came. There was shooting in the town and men came hurrying in the night with frightful stories that made men bite their lips and the women murmur their prayers faster and louder and in tears. Then my brother disappeared like most of the young men in the village. A great sadness was everywhere... As the Japanese soldiers piled into the truck waiting near the chapel, the soldier with the sword waved the little Christmas tree at the people who had come out of their houses to watch them go. He waved it at us and the silver stars fell as he shouted in English "Merry Christmas." A few days before Christmas we gathered the corn from the fields. The days were cold in spite of the sunshine that flooded the hills. And at night it rained briefly and after a while the moon shone. There were many tiny moons on the wet green leaves in the meadows, among the ungathered cornstalks. Father did now want brother Cario's wife to work, but she insisted. She had grown pale and her eyes were always red from weeping. Brother Cario had not returned. Every time a strange man came to our door, she would rush to meet him nervously, hoping there was word about Cario and fearing the man carried bad news. "Nena," Father told her, you do not have to work. Stay home and see that the maid does not burn the rice." But my brother's wife preferred to stay in the fields. Father cut the ripened cornstalks, it was better, he said, than burning it later, and we gathered the ears and piled them in heaps. In the evening I was going to haul them in a cart to store in the bin south of the bathhouse. At midday when the sun shone directly above us, I told Nena, "Look, we have no more shadows." She smiled wanly. And then the maid shouted from the doorway of our house, "Come and eat!" Her voice filled the hills and I ran toward home, watching the little formless shadow right beneath my feet. And I heard Father say. "When it comes to eating, Selmo is always first." In the afternoon Nena did not stay home either. Her shadow looked very big and she was very quiet. There was still much to do. Even the maid had joined us. Evening was coming on Mount Mayon loomed blue and mysterious in the distance, a thin smoke from its crater curled like a ribbon and lost itself among the clouds. Then came the sound of airplanes. They swooped low, skimming the treetops, the red rising sun on their wings visible in the afternoon light. Their shadow darkened the fields as they flew above us. After a while Father bent down once more and started cutting the cornstalks with vigorous, angry strokes. Nena had to run the nearest coconut tree, very pale and trembling as she stood in the shade. "Let me take you home." Said mother as she went to her and held her hand. "Get the carabao now and the cart," Father," said to me, "and don't stand there like an idiot." I was still looking at the planes that had circled around the volcano, the drone of their machines fading in the distance. When I came back with the carabao-driven cart, the sun had almost disappeared behind the Sinicaran hills. And evening closed in completely on my way to the bin south of the bathhouse. That night we gathered around the doorway under the shed in front of the house and made your mouth water - if you liked roasted corn. And we did. The entire ear is thrown. The husk is burned black and cooks the grain just right. I always looked forward to nights such as this after a heavy day, the corn hot in the hand and the tiny grain particles sticking between the teeth, and the men telling stories I did not quite understand.

"But what happened to the Americans?" asked Ambo, one of the listeners, his face red and wrinkled in the lamplight. The papers from Manila say the Japanese are winning everywhere, and the Germans stand on Russian soil," said another man whose face I could not see. But he was an old man. Everybody was old. The young men were gone. Only the boys and women were here and the old men whose sons had not come back. "I don't believe anything," said Father, speaking for the first time. Later that night, after all the med had gone, we went into the house to go to bed. Father blew out the lamp on the table, and suddenly, to my eyes, it was brighter outside on the hills. The lighted wick, half-buried in oil in a deep sea shell at the foot of the image of Santa Rosa gave out a faint glow, and from where I lay, I could see the painted flowers at the feet of the saint. The glowing embers on the stove sizzled and died as Nena sprinkled water to extinguish the fire. Then she went over to the open window and sat there, her head in her hands against the window sill. "Come to bed, Nena," Mother called. "What are you doing there?" But my brother Cario's wife sat there saying not a word. She sat there for a long time. I felt so heavy inside me, I could not sleep. I shouldn't have eaten so much of that corn. In a few days it would be Christmas, but there were more pretty things in town, and the schoolhouse beyond the waterless creek was closed and there was not much fun any more. People looked very sad and quiet. Their eyes were sharp and no longer full of mischief and laughter. Father, who had always been gay and who used to sing at night, was tight-lipped and unsmiling. Since brother Cario had gone, no one had touched the guitar on the wall. Mother prayed most of the time, ever since the fighting in the town began and Japanese soldiers kept coming and going all the time. Nena, was always looking out towards the trail that curved down the hill and disappeared in the forest. "Look," said Nena suddenly, her voice shrill and excited, "men are coming up the hill from the forest of Lafonte. I can see a torchlight coming up this way through the trees." Father went to the door quickly and true enough, there was torchlight coming up this way. And the dogs started barking. I shall light the lamp," said Mother, "Give me a match." "Don't be crazy," father replied, "How do you know they aren't Japs?" "Must be Cario and the boys," Nena cried as she brushed against us crowding the doorway, wanting to go out and meet them. But Father held her back."Cario will not come by torchlight," he said. We could see the group now. They were not the enemy. Some men and a child... and soon we knew who they were. There was a girl. We knew Maria and her little brother Bundio. The man who held the torch was their father. Tiong Matias. Then another man, tall and thin. They stood directly in front of our house and greeted us loudly. Father gave Mother a match and lighted the lamp. Tiong Matias blew out the torch he was holding. Father asked them in. In the days before the big shooting in the town and the bombing of the capital of the province Tiong Matias and his children came frequently to our house. On market days Maria took one of the stalls in the backyard and sold cakes while Bundio and I roamed around aimlessly. Tiong Matias managed Father's roosters, arranged bets, and tied the spurs around the rooster's legs. "Tiong Matias bring me good luck," Father would say. This was not only true, because he sometimes lost, and Mother would tell him, Tiong Matias certainly brings you good luck." And Father would reply, "Of course, but it's you, meddlesome woman, who brings me bad luck." And Tiong Matias would laugh and pretty soon the three of them would be laughing. But that was long ago, and these days our people seldom laughed. Only the maid, she was always giggling. Anyway, I think she was crazy. Tonight, for instance, she kept staring at the stranger who stood tall and lean near the doorway. The maid bent down to me and whispered, "He's a red man." The red man had not yet spoken, but he smiled at us warmly. Tiong Matias introduced him. "This is Father Julian. He was parish priest of Catmon before the Japanese took over the town." "Oh, cried the maid and looked as if she would faint. I wanted to tell her, Now you are forever doomed, for you have made fun of a priest." But she looked miserable enough. "God bless you all," Father Julian intoned in the dialect, waving his hand at us in blessing. The women came to him and kissed his hand. The maid was trembling as she approached him. She didn't giggle very much any more after that.

When the Japanese took over Catmon, Father Julian said he left for the hills. He knew the dialect well, having been in these regions long before I was born. "But there are still priests in town," Father said. "Spanish priests, mostly," replied Father Julian, "but me, I'm an American." "The Japanese fight Americans," said Tiong Matias, as if we did not know. "The Japanese come here quite often," Mother warned the priest. "I know," he answered. "But they don't know I'm here, and I can always hide, can't I? They learned I was in Lafonte, so it became very dangerous for me to stay there longer. Tiong Matias comes to me and says, "I shall take you to Bariw. I know a good man there." And he looked at my father. "You must be hungry," Mother said. "We have a can full of boiled corn." They were hungry. Mother gathered around the big table and talked as they ate. As I watched Bundio's teeth sink into the grain, I wanted to eat also and my mouth watered. But still I felt heavy inside me. So I looked away. Marta was not smiling, she was sad and didnt seem hungry at all like Bundio. She was much younger than Nena, but they looked like twins in their grief. Father Julian wanted to know whether there was a chapel in the barrio. "The November storm destroyed it," Father said. "We were beginning to repair it when the trouble started." Soon there were many people in the house, and Mother passed around basins full of boiled corn, and the people ate and listened to the priest. Their voices low as they talked. "The boys are all right, but they need food and medicines," Father Julian was saying. Before I fell asleep that night, I saw Father Julian cross himself as he knelt before the image of Santa Rosa. In the morning when I woke up, Father Julian was saying mass in front of the image of Santa Rosa. The house was full of people, kneeling on the floor. It was like a real mass, except there was no bell ringing and no choir singing. The sunshine lay on the green hills outside and I wondered if there was still corn left after last night. Several children were baptized that day. Everybody moved here and there, and except for the people who didn't smile and laugh, it really seemed like Christmas. Sick old persons went to confession in the evening. Father Julian sat on a stool in the farthest corner of the room and placed his head in his hand as the patient knelt at his feet, his head near the confessor's lap. Father Julian went to the house of the sick who could not move from their mats and shrived them. Farmers fed their carabaos near the edge of the trail overlooking the town and lingered, keeping watch. Every time they saw a car coming, they ran toward the houses and told the men. There was a long drought the following summer, and we feared the December harvest would be poor. Men had nothing to do but sit in the shade of their crumbling houses, watching the heat simmering in the air and the dust thick and blinding in the wake of trucks, often loaded with Japanese soldiers patrolling the neighboring hills. Often, in the afternoon, clouds would suddenly darken the skies and great gusts of wind would sweep over the parched land. The farmers would put out their hands for drops of rain. Some would exclaim, "It's raining," but it was not true. Actually there would be a few drops and hopes would rise again in our hearts, and we would thank God deeply. But it was only a few drops, nothing more. When I let the carabao graze on the grassy sloped, I stayed long under the tamarind tree where it was cooler. The back of the carabao was hot; even the grass seemed dry and less green. It was terrible, indeed, especially in August. We could not sleep at night. In the daytime, the heat of the sun was like a slap in the face. The wells in the hills had dried. Spring water trickled weakly through rocks. Babies died in their mother's arms. That August my brother Cario came, looking very ill. He had a mass of long hair and a black beard and ragged clothes. At his side he wore a sheathed bolo. He came in the night and asked for water, and we let him in. He stood in the darkness looking at his child. His wife Nena had given him a son now he was seeing the boy for the first time. Nena stretched out her thin hand to him, and he bent down and held it hard. Nena sobbed, "How long is this going to last?" "Our son," said Father and Mother, "is truly a leader of men." But what will come out of this?" my mother asked. "Cario," cried Nena, "Cario... Cario..." she kept repeating and my brother was telling her many things I could not hear. Sweat stood on his dark brow and only his eyes looked like my brother's, the brother I knew. "Killing and dying... blood, blood..." my mother was saying. And Cario turned to her, still holding his wife's hand.

"But mother," he said, "we must fight on, it is the only way. Everything will be all right, just keep praying for us." As he talked, his eyes, very bright in the half darkness, moved around the room and rested on the image of Santa Rosa, the painted roses at her feet, visible in the light of the burning wick. "God forgive us all," Mother said, crying, "this bloodshed and killing...!" "Mother," said my brother in a voice that was full of kindness, "these are not men; they are beasts in men's clothes. They not only kill, they torture, ripping off one by one the fingers of their victims. They stab them in the back with bamboo sticks, or tickle them to death with wire, or beat their bodies until nothing is left but pulp. They have taken some of the women in the capital, and those who would deny them they hung upside down and burned with gasoline. "But suppose something happened to you, Cario," Nena said. "Keep praying," Cario said, "I shall always keep in touch with you. Father Julian tells me everything. Where is he tonight?" "At Celo's house, attending to Cardo, Celo's only son. His stomach is bloated and he is thin all over." "Father Julian is a brave man, he knows much. He tells us the Americans are coming back." "They have been away long, Son," Father said. As quickly as he had come, brother Cario disappeared. He had told me nothing much. He did not even hold my hand and I wanted him to feel his strength - my brother who was a leader of men. The only time he noticed me was when Mother asked me to say good night and go to bed. "How's Selmo," he asked, "the future governor of Albay, with the memory of a turtle? Lucky boy, you don't understand anything." "Good night," I said, feeling a little hurt and sleepy. And the rains came after. They came sudden and strong, and the hillsides seemed green and fresh again, the baked earth, pools of mud, and the fields ready for the seed. I ran around, cupping the rain in my hands and letting it spill over. Some of the boys lay on the fallen logs by the wayside and closed their eyes as the rains fell. Father was not smiling, but his voice was kind and the lazy maid was giggling again. "Thank God," said Mother. Nena was up. She held the little bundle in her hands and left it face the open window, and she said, pointing outside," Look, Nonoy, how it rains." The rice blades responded quickly to the rain, and in a few days they were green and upright and full of promises, and the men who gathered about the house talked about the harvest. "God still remember us," Mang Celo said. His boy Cardo's bloated stomach was better now, but he had to remain home while all other boys ran and bathed in the rain. I seldom saw the American priest, and it was not often that he stayed at home for the night. When he did, he spent much time in the room where the altar was, reading a bible or listening to the peasants confess their sins. He did not dress like the priests I knew, and he did not look like them. "He looks like a Filipino now," Mother said of the priest, for she was very fond of him. "God give us a rich harvest," the peasants asked. "It's all that would keep us alive." But in December, when the harvest was ready, it was poor. And then something happened. It happened quite suddenly, like many things in those days. Suddenly, like tears, after news of death from the forests of Lafonte. Like laughter in the eyes that quickly faded as news reached the village of destruction by the enemy. Now I hated them, but it was more like feat. I knew it was because of them that I could not be in school and read the books I loved so much and sing the songs that were sweet to the ears and lovely in my dreams. Often I dreamed of singing in my sleep, but as the days went on, I would wake up screaming. Mother would come to me, brushing with her cool hand my hair soaked in sweat. "Hush, my son," she would say. And I would cry on her breast saying, "The Japs, they were running after me..." I hated them but it was more like fear. And then something happened. The Japanese soldiers came in trucks and took away the harvest. It lay there already gathered and piled in stacks all over the fields. They piled the harvested grain into their trucks and drove away. "They have killed us. We are dead people now. We might just as well make dead men out of them," said men whose faces I could not see in the dark.

"Be patient, my sons, you shall be avenged." The voice sounded like the American priest's. "But Father Julian..." My father sat near the doorway and he was very fearful to behold. "Father Julian is right," he said. "Let us be patient." And the priest put his arms around the shoulders of the men in the dark. They moved there and talked like shadows. Behind them lay the green slopes of Mount Mayon and the field were bare, the stubble pointing darkly to the sky. "Many things grew in the wild woods, fruit and vegetable and root crop, and we fed on these. The fields lay bare many months in the sunshine and the rain and green things shot upward from the fertile earth. "We shall not till the fields," the peasants said. The men sat in front of their house and watched the rich green earth giving forth to men who asked for nothing but peace and chance to walk the earth without fear. The American priest appeared now and then, disappearing when the Japanese came around. He ate anything with us, and the people gave him everything they had, and they had very little except what the earth gave them, and the earth was kind to the people. On a Sunday morning in the rain, many peasants gathered at our house, and the priest said mass as usual and blessed us all. We felt light and happy with blessings. There was sadness in the village because Tiong Celo's boy had died in the night, and the priest had come back to the village to say a prayer over the child. This morning we felt glad again in his presence. Some of the farmers and their families stood by the door waiting for him to go out. The house was full. They had bundles in their hands, sweet potatoes perhaps or seed or just anything "for the kind man of God," as they called him. From the altar in the middle of the mass, the priest spoke to us again in the dialect. "My brethren," he said, and I remembered how the younger boys made fun of him, for he looked and sounded so funny when he spoke in the dialect. "My brethren," he repeated, "you are God's suffering people. You have not complained, and you have smiled in the face of disaster. It shall not always be this way. Once more you will walk the earth with glad faces and music in your stride, and this green earth will be truly yours, the green things growing, the fertile fields and the bountiful crops. Meanwhile, you keep suffering in silence. You have endured privation in your great faith for better things to come. It is coming. I have lived among you; I am now one of you. Greater love I have not seen elsewhere. In your great need you have not forgotten God you have not turned your weary head away from the stranger, lost in your midst. I have seen you part with the little you had and go hungry thereby, but you have shared with your neighbor. I have walked among you, and wherever I went, you gave me food to eat and you had little to eat yourselves. You protect me from the enemy at the risk of your life, and you ask nothing in return. I wish I were more worthy of such loyalty, such love, but God in his kindness will reward you soon." Then he looked toward the window, pausing as if to hold back tears. He looked so old and weak, he seemed to totter as he stood with his back toward the image of Santa Rosa. Then he pointed to the hills outside. "Your fields are bare," he said, "but if you have seed, go forth and plant, and harvest will be yours." He spoke as if he were alone and talking to himself, as if his voice were God's voice and the farmers looked at one another and wondered. After mass he walked out of the house, and the peasants whose children he had baptized walked beside him, offering their gifts of food which was all they had. Then he walked down the trail to say a prayers over the body of Cardo, Tiong Celo's boy. Cardo and I had a fight shortly before Christmas and we had rolled down the waterless creek and both of us went home crying. One or twice I saw brother Cario back in the house, holding his son in his arms and looking at him in the dim light. He was shabby and ragged, there were cruel lines in his face even when he smiled, and I was afraid of him-my brother who was called the leader of men. He came in the night and disappeared in the night. The next day Nena would stand at the window looking at the trail leading to the forests of Lafonte. "Lafonte is the graveyard of the Japs," my brother Cario said one night, and the woman trembled to hear him say that. When he saw the fields bare because the farmers refused to plant anything, he said. "It will not be long now, there will be waving grain everywhere in our country." And the farmers went forth and sowed the fields. In a few months the rice stalks waved in the sun and received the rain in the splendor of green and yellow ripeness. The harvest would be unusually rich, anyone could tell from the lush growth and the tall, heavy blades burdened with grain. The Japanese came frequently and watched the hills turn into green and waited for the fullness of harvest time. They smiled as they walked among the quiet men of the village, saying. "We are so happy, you have realized the Emperor's will," But the men said nothing and watched for the first sign of golden grain in the rice paddies. And then my father spoke, "In three days we shall begin to harvest. Wednesday is harvest day. "Yes," said the peasants, "Wednesday is harvest day. There will be song and there will be feasting."

"I love your music," the Japanese soldiers told us. It is sometimes like Japanese music, so sad, it moves the heart." Then they left promising to return on Wednesday. Much of what happened that night has never been clear to me. There was full moon in the sky. Mother said the women knelt in front of the image of Santa Rosa and prayed long. Then figures moved about and faces appeared here and there in the moonlight. Under the moon in the yellowing fields men and women were harvesting the grain. All your boys who disappeared in the forests of Lafonte were back again and now were silently cutting the ripened blades, and the women were placing them in heaps, and slow-moving carabaos carted them away into the night. It was just like a dream, and we stood watching it all, little understanding what it was all about. The next day it rained and the farmers worked on. They are together under the trees, and some of the men stood on the roadside watching for the trucks moving up from the town of San Juan down the hill. Everybody worked in the rain, and when the sun shone, as sometimes it did, the women came out of their houses bringing water in earthen jars and food in little baskets. And the slow-moving carts went down the trails, bearing harvested grain. And the shadows lengthened; darkness came upon the hills again, but everybody kept working harvesting the grain, and hiding it away. Before Wednesday much of the crops had been harvested, and now the men and women stood tense and waited. The Japanese will be angry, they will shoot us all," said a little man who was thin as a skeleton. The younger men said, "Do not be afraid, we shall fight them here when they come as we have fought them in the woods these many months." "God have mercy on us!" the women wailed. I was afraid too, and I wanted to cry. The fields were bare and ugly under the rain, and tragedy hung over the hills; I could feel in the stern faces of the peasants, in the unsmiling features of my father, and Cario and the boys who said they were ready to die. The Japanese were expected the next day. It was a miracle they had not appeared earlier. But for many long years after, the people of these hills would be talking of a greater miracle. Some would be saying that the American priest was a watching saint, for it was he who said that we must keep praying to God, and God would answer our prayers. Everybody would be saying that God was good and had never forgotten us. Suddenly that night, before it was even time for a supper, the skies grew dark and there were distant rumblings. We all looked toward Mount Mayon. A few years before, the volcano had erupted suddenly and Father carried me on his back to a place higher than these hills, while rivers of flame cascaded down the mountain and boulders of fire shot upward in the sky. A little town at its base was partly buried. Under the houses in San Juan the sand had piled high, and there were cracks on the roads and boiling water ran through them. All I did was cry. Besides, I was sick that summer and everybody thought I was going to die. That night I remembered it all, and grew pale, but no fire came out of the burning crater. Could it be shooting again. But the little town of San Juan was quiet. The skies over the capital city were dark with low-hanging clouds. Then lightning flashed, the hills shook with thunderclaps, and the rain fell. It fell so hard that parts of our nipathatched roof leaked. Soon the fields were flooded, and it rained on and on. The next day it was still raining. Even the trails leading from the town were flooded. A heavy whiteness covered the hills. "Now let them come. We shall say the floods have swept the grain away!" The voices of the peasants were jubilant. The strong boys marched down the trail singing English songs, and their voices disappeared in the rain over the forest of Lafonte. The women knelt weeping in the altar room. Father turned to me and smiled and patting me on the head, said softly, "Now go out in the rain, Selmo, and stay there as long as you want. It's God's rain, my son." God's rain was cold and heavy and it was everywhere.

INTERPRETATION:
The story took place in a time where Japanese invaded the country, Philippines. Albay is a province in Philippines and the life there was not what it really was when the Japanese came. Cario is a man from a family who was featured in this story. He was never home because he went out to fight the Japanese. That made their Mother, Father and his wife, Nena sad. Nena's grief had made her grown pale.

Life was so different for Selmo (Cario's brother) when the Japanese came. Market was full of people selling all kinds of stuffs, people walking around and buying something and when Christmas season came, how they prepare for the decorations and practice Christmas songs. There's not much fun any more. All they experience then was shooting in the town and cruelties of the Japanese. The Japanese is quite a bad news to the people, they kill people and took away their harvest and left them with nothing. Selmo hated Japanese for it was because of them that he could not be in school anymore, read books and sing sweet songs. It was always a bad dream to him as he wake up crying and running to his mother. Their little barrio became quite different when Father Julian who was an American priest came. Days rose in hopes as he said mass to the people, lots were baptized, there were confessions going on, he gave words of wisdom when the people don't know what to do anymore... He was like a saint in the barrio. The people was always good to him, they gave him food which was not even enough from them and protected him from the enemy. Father Julian felt great love from the people. From those deeds, he knew God will reward these people. Cario left home and never came back and stayed there like he lived there but he comes home every now and then. He would sneak into the house at night and would leave that night too. Cario is a leader of men, fighting the Japanese bringing on killing & bloodshed made them worried about Cario. His mother didn't want this for him but that's the only way. They had to fight for their fellowmen. There was that time when the people lost hope and had not planting anything on the fields but Father Julian encouraged them. So they planted. The Japanese would come every now and then to check on the crops. People knew they would come back and get their harvest. So they mentioned that the Wednesday was the harvest day. The people had a plan. They harvested before the said date and rain came after. They knew that the Japanese would come to get their harvest so they were so worried of what might the Japanese do to them when they see the harvest was gone. Father Julian was there to help the people spiritually, prayers are always a great help. Indeed. people prayed. The Japanese didn't came back. That's good news to them. Good thing it kept on raining after the harvest day, they could say that flood just swept it away. That made everyone so happy. They feel like they won over the Japanese.

MORAL LESSON:
In times of despair and situations when you couldn't handle the problems, never lose hope because God will never leave us, he is always there to help us. Sometimes faith would be a great weapon when theres nothing left to do, prayer is powerful. The faith within you gives you hope and courage to face any problem that comes along.