it was just a week after my grade three classes were over. i was finally getting cushy into my rote of waking up as late as nine in the mornings, the latest my puritan mama would allow me to during school breaks.
then at six something one morning, my best friend tapped quite briskly on my window. he told me we had to bike to the next barrio immediately. he didn’'t tell me why.
i snuck out of the window as furtively as i could. as I knew mother would be busy reading her bible and her daily meditation guide at that hour, i just left her a note saying i had to finish some boy scout thing we should have accomplished weeks ago.
i remember the wind smelling like a freshly washed beached boat that morning. straddling the back seat of my best friend’'s bike, i remember hearing his tinny grunts as he pedaled furiously, our bike zooming, i thought, as fast as that of the hot bread delivery boy.
after about half an hour of no talking, he yelled at me to hold on to him tightly. quickly thereafter, the road precipitously dipped and off we went yelping like crazed, tick infested dogs.
as we started to get hoarse, the road suddenly turned more gravelly and we couldn’t take the jolting ride anymore. as he dragged his squeaking bike along, i asked him what it was we came here for. he didn'’t say anything.
he didn’t have to. after we navigated the slimmest of the road bends, the gleaming coastline almost blinded us. treed in the maze of the mangrove root forest are three shiny but now waterlogged bodies of dirty blue dolphins.
i was dumbstruck upon seeing the floating dead giants. my best friend just raised both of his hands the way superman did and smiled like our town's idiot.
we were not the only ones milling by the coastline that morning. several fisher folks, most of them with mile long knives, were lolling around, too. after an elderly person shouted something like okay, the horde of knife wielding mob forded the easily agitated swamp water towards the bobbing dead dolphins.
in less than an hour, the fat bodies were quartered to pieces that could easily fit the rattan flat baskets most of them tied around their waists. the black murky water in the swamp turned red quickly from the blood spurting out from the dolphins’ guts.
i remember one of the younger fishermen yelling at us. my friend and i, we were floored that someone friendly could come from a crowd that had been hacking the lifeless creatures relentlessly.
he offered us the snubbed snout of one of the dolphins which we saw he axed in one smooth kung fu motion. my friend told him we didn’'t bring any container to hold it. the fisherman grinned then shrugged his shoulders. he went back to hacking parts from the littlest of the dolphins as if he was clearing a patch of land ran over by wild grass.
the last time i was in our island for holy week was the year i failed to snatch a desk editorial position in a manila broadsheet with the most negligible of circulations.
i watched the baroque carros floated by from the veranda of my best friend'’s house which conveniently was along the procession route.
a childhood favorite since was that of the carro bearing the pieta, a poor, wooden copy of michelangelo’'s legendary work in rome. on the float, an out of proportion, fully-grown jesus was cradled full-length in diminutive mary’'s lap.
despite the not so garish lighting of the carro, i could still see the subtle crucifixion nail marks made by the local sculptor in jesus'’ exposed side. i could also see the imprints of the nails in the dead man'’s feet. splashes of red paint were studiously applied around the gaping holes.
with me by the porch, my best friend was showing his first born child, a sickly daughter, the floats, well lighted like fishing rigs from taiwan. i remember asking him if he still remembered those butchered dolphins we saw one morning when we were still at grade school.
he didn'’t hear me as he was busy cooing some unintelligible phrases to his daughter. i remember him pointing to his daughter something at the passing carro. his daughter started screaming and his wife had to come and get her.
my best friend and i were left alone in the veranda and we kept on staring at the undraped body of the limp jesus. and i didn’t know why but I remember feeling cold suddenly, apprehensive perhaps that a mob would ascend the carro to hack the body of the now dead christ.