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Slowly Pablo unhitched the carabao from the empty sled. He laid a horny palm on the back of the tired animal; the thick coarse-haired skin was warm and dry like sun-heated earth. The carabao stood by quietly, licking with dark-colored tongue the beads of moisture that hung on the stiff hairs around its nostrils. Dropping the yoke inside the sled, Pablo led the beast to a young tamarind tree almost as high as the nipa hut beside it. A bundle of fresh green zacate lay under the tree and the carabao began to feed upon it hungrily. Pablo watched the animal a moment, half-listening to its snuffling as it buried its mouth in the sweet-smelling zacate. A sudden weakness came upon him, black spots whirled before his eyes. He felt so hungry he could have gone down on his knees beside the carabao and chewed grass.

“Eat,” he said, in a thin, wheezy voice. “You can have all the grass you want.”

He slapped the animal’s smooth, fat rump, and turned to the house, his hand falling limply to his side.

“Sebia,” he called, raising his voice until it broke shrilly, “Sebia!”

No answering voice came from the hut. He bent low to pass under a length of hard bamboo used as a storm prop, muttering to himself how careless of his wife it was to leave the house with the door open. Toward the side where the prop slanted upward against the eaves, the hut leaned sharply. The whole frail structure in fact looked as though it might collapse at any moment. But this year it had weathered four heavy storms without any greater damage than the sharp incline toward the west, and that had been taken care of by the prop. As he looked at the house, Pablo did not see how squalid it was. He saw the sagging nipa walls, the shutterless windows, the rotting floor of the shaky batalan, the roofless shed over the low ladder, but these were familiar sights that had ceased to arouse his interest.

He wiped his muddy feet on the grass that grew knee-deep in the yard. He could hear the sound of pounding in the neighboring hut and, going to the broken-down fence that separated the two houses, he called out weakly, “Osiang, do you know where my wife and the children have gone?”

“Eh? What is it, Mang Pablo?” the loud voice of a woman broke out of the hut. “You are home already? Where are your companions? Did you not see my husband? Did you not come home together? Where is he? Where is the shameless son-of-a-whore?”

“Andres is talking with some of the men at the house of Elis. Osiang, do you know where Sebia and the children are?”

“Why doesn’t he come home? He knows I have been waiting the whole day for the rice he is bringing home! I am so hungry I cannot even drag my bones away from the stove. What is he doing at the house of Elis, the shameless, good-for-nothing son-of-a-whore?. . .”

Pablo moved away from the fence, stumbling a little, for the long blades of grass got in his way. “There is no rice, Osiang,” he called back wheezily over his shoulder, but evidently the woman did not hear him for she went on talking: “Mang Pablo, how many cavanes of rice did you borrow? Sebia told me you are to cook the rice as soon as you come home. She went with the children to the creek for snails. I told them to be careful and throw away whatever they gather if they see the watchman coming. God save our souls! What kind of life is this when we cannot even get snails from the fields? Pay a multa of five cavanes for a handful of snails!” Osiang spat noisily through the slats of her floor. She had not once shown her face. Pablo could hear her busily pounding in a little stone mortar.

“There is no rice, Osiang,” he whispered. He felt too tired and weak to raise his voice.

He sat on the ladder and waited for his wife and children. He removed his rain-stained hat of buri palm leaf, placing it atop one of the upright pieces of bamboo supporting the steps of the ladder. Before him, as far as his uncertain gaze could make out, stretched the rice fields of the Hacienda Consuelo. The afternoon sun brought out the gold in the green of the young rice plants. Harvest time was two months off and in the house of Pablo there was no rice to eat. . . .

That morning he and several other tenants had driven over with their sleds to the house of the Señora to borrow grain. The sleds had been loaded with the cavanes of rice. Pablo remembered with what willingness he had heaved the sacks to his sled—five sacks—the rice grains bursting through the tiny holes of the jute covers. Then the announcement: “Five sacks of rice borrowed today become ten at harvest time.”

“We have always borrowed tersiohan—four cavanes become six,” the men had repeated over and over. Although they used to find even this arrangement difficult and burdensome, they now insisted upon it eagerly.

“Tersiohan!” they had begged.

“Not takipan—that is too much. What will be left to us?”

“The storms have destroyed half of my rice plants. . . .”

“I have six children to feed. . . .”

“Five become ten,” the encargado said. “Either that or you get no rice.”

They had gathered around Elis. In the end every man had silently emptied his loaded sled and prepared to leave.

The Señora had come out, her cane beating a rapid tattoo on the polished floor of the porch; she was an old woman with a chin that quivered as she spoke to them, lifeless false teeth clenched tightly in her anger.

“Do you see those trucks?” she had finished, pointing to three big red trucks under the mango tree in the yard. “If you do not take the rice today, tonight the trucks will carry every sack in sight to the city. Then I hope you all starve, you ungrateful beasts!”

It was Elis who drove away first. The others followed. The sacks of rice lay there in the yard in the sun, piled across each other. . .

“Mang Pablo,” the loud voice of Osiang broke out again, “are you cooking rice yet? If you have no fire, come here under the window with some dry rice straw and I’ll give you two or three coals from my stove. I am boiling a pinchful of bran. It will do to check my hunger a bit while I wait for that shameless Andres.”

“Wait, Osiang,” Pablo said, and finding that his mouth had gone dry, he stepped into the kitchen and from a red clay jar dipped himself a glass of water. He could hear it gurgling inside his empty stomach. He came down with a sheaf of rice straw in his fist. Passing the tamarind tree, he pulled down a limb covered with new leaves, light-green and juicy. He filled his mouth with them and walked on to Osiang’s hut, munching the sourish leaves.

“Here I am, Osiang,” he said, but he had to strike the wall of the hut before he could attract the attention of Osiang, who had gone back to her pounding and could not hear Pablo’s weak, wheezy voice.

She came to the window, talking loudly. Her face, when she looked out, was a dark earthy brown, with high, sharp cheek-bones and small pig-like eyes. She had a wide mouth and large teeth, discolored from smoking tobacco. Short, graying hair fell straight on either side of her face, escaping from the loose knot she had tied at the back of her head. A square-necked, white cotton dress exposed half of her flat, bony chest.

“Whoreson!” she exclaimed, as one of the pieces of coal she was transferring from a coconut shell to the straw in Pablo’s hand, rolled away.

Pablo looked up at her and wanted to tell her again that there was no rice, but he could not bring himself to do it. Osiang went back to her pounding, scolding the absent Andres for not coming home with Mang Pablo.

Pablo swung ‘to and fro the rice straw containing the burning coals as he retraced his steps to his own hut. He could not swallow the chewed tamarind leaves after all. He spat out the greenish liquid. It reminded him of crushed caterpillars.

Smoke began to issue forth from the twisted straw in his hand. He was preparing to climb over the intervening fence when he saw Andres coming down the path from the direction of Elis’ house. The man appeared excited. He gestured with his arm to Pablo to wait for him.

Pablo drew back the leg he had lifted over the fence. The smoking sheaf of straw in his hand, he went slowly to meet Andres. Osiang was still pounding in her little stone mortar. The sharp thudding of the stone pestle against the mortar seemed to Pablo unnaturally loud. Andres had stopped beneath the clump of bamboo some distance from his hut. He stood beside his carabao—a much younger man than Pablo—dark, broad, squat. He wore a printed camisa de chino, threadbare at the neck and shoulders, the sleeves cut short above the elbow, so that his arms hung out, thick-muscled, awkward

“Are you coming with us?” he asked Pablo, his voice grating harshly in his throat as he strove to speak quietly. There was in his small eyes a fierce, desperate look that Pablo found hard to meet.

“Don’t be a fool, Andres,” he said, coughing to clear his throat and trying to appear calm.

Andres breathed hard. He glared at the older man. But Pablo was looking down at the smoking straw in his hand. He could feel the heat steadily increasing and he shifted his hold farther from the burning end. Andres turned to his carabao with a curse. Pablo took a step forward until he stood close to the younger man. “What can you do, Andres?” he said. “You say you will stop the trucks bearing the rice to the city. That will be robbery.”

“Five cavanes paid back double is robbery, too, only the robbers do not go to jail.”

“Perhaps there will be a killing. . .”

“We will take that chance.”

“You will all be sent to Bilibid.”

“There will be rice in Bilibid.”

“What will become of the wives and children left behind? Who will feed them?”

“They are starving now right under our very eyes.””

“But you are here with them.”

“That is worse.”

The smoke from the burning rice straw got into Pablo’s mouth and he was shaken by a fit of coughing. “What do you hope to gain by stealing a truckload of rice?” he asked, when he could recover his breath.

“Food,” Andres said tersely.

“Is that all?”

“Food for our wives and children. Food for everybody. That is enough!”

“What will happen when the stolen rice is gone? Will you go on robbing?”

“It is not stealing. The rice is ours.”

The straw in Pablo’s hand burst into sudden flame. He threw it away. It fell in the path, the fire dying out as the straw scattered and burning coals rolled in all directions.

“I must get some more rice straw,” Pablo said in his thin, wheezy voice. “Osiang, your wife, is waiting for you.”

As he turned to leave, Andres whispered hoarsely to him, “Before the moon rises tonight, the first truck will pass around the bend by the bridge . . . ”

Pablo did not look back. He had seen his wife and three children approaching the hut from the fields. They were accompanied by a man. He hurried to meet them. A moment later, the loud voice of Osiang burst out of the hut of Andres, but Pablo had no ear for other things just then. The man with his wife was the field watchman.

“They were catching fish in the fields,” the watchman said stolidly. He was a thick-set, dull-faced fellow, clad in khaki shirt and khaki trousers. “You will pay a fine of five cavanes.”

“We were only gathering snails,” Sebia protested, sobbing. She was wet. Her skirts clung to her thin legs, dripping water and a slow trickle of mud.

“Five cavanes,” the watchman said. “I came to tell you, so that you will know,” speaking to Pablo. He turned and strode away.

Pablo watched the broad, khaki-covered back of the watchman. “I suppose he has to earn his rice, too,” he said in his wheezy voice, feeling an immense weariness and hopelessness settle upon him.

He looked at his wife, weeping noisily, and the children streaked with dark-blue mud, the two older boys, thin like sticks, and the youngest, a girl of six. Five cavanes of rice for a handful of snails! How much is five cavanes to five hungry people?

“Itay, I am hungry,” Sabel, the girl said. The two boys looked up at him mutely. They were cold and shivering and full of the knowledge of what had happened.

“I was just going to get fire from Osiang,” Pablo heard himself say.

“You have not cooked the rice?” Sebia asked, moving wearily to the ladder.

“There is no rice.”

Sebia listened in silence while he told her why there was no rice.

“Then what were you going to cook with the fire?” she asked finally.

“I don‘t know,” he was forced to say. “I thought I would wait for you and the children.”

“Where shall we ever get the rice to pay the multa?” Sebia asked irrelevantly.

At their feet the children began to whimper.

“Itay, I am hungry,” Sabel repeated.

Pablo took her up in his arms. He carried her to the carabao and placed her on its broad, warm back. The child stopped whimpering and began to kick with her legs. The carabao switched its tail, struck her with its mud-incrusted tip across her face. She covered her eyes with both hands and burst out crying. Pablo put her down, tried to pry away her hands from her eyes, but she refused to uncover them and cried as though in great pain.

“Sebia,” Pablo called, and as his wife hurried to them, he picked up a stout piece of wood lying nearby and began to beat the carabao. He gripped the piece of wood with both hands and struck the dumb beast with all his strength. His breath came in gasps. The carabao wheeled around the tamarind tree until its rope was wound about the trunk and the animal could not make another turn. It stood there snorting with pain and fear as the blows of Pablo rained
down on its back.

The piece of wood at last broke and Pablo was left with a short stub in his hands. He gazed at it, sobbing with rage and weakness, then he ran to the hut, crying, “Give me my bolo, Sebia, give me my bolo. We shall have food tonight.” But Sebia held him and would not let him go until he quieted down and sat with his back against the wall of the hut. Sabel had stopped crying. The two boys sat by the cold stove.

“God save me,” Pablo said, brokenly. He brought up his knees and dropping his face between them, wept like a child.

Sebia lay down with Sabel and watched Pablo. She followed his movements wordlessly as he got up and took his bolo from the wall and belted it around his thin waist. She did not rise to stop him. She lay there on the floor and watched her husband put on his hat and go down the low ladder. She listened, learned he had not gone near the carabao.

Outside, the darkness had thickened. Pablo picked his way through the tall grass in the yard. He stepped to look back at his house. In the twilight, the hut did not seem to lean so much. He tightened the belt of the heavy bolo around his waist. Pulling the old buri hat firmly over his head, he joined Andres, who stood waiting by the broken-down fence. In silence, they walked together to the house of Elis.