Inflammable [On Indefinite Hiatus]

Chapter 3: Don't Send Me Away

Chapter 3: Don’t Send Me Away

***

Welcome to the fallout
Welcome to resistance
The tension is here
Tension is here
Between who you are and who you could be
Between how it is and how it should be

- Switchfoot, "Dare You To Move"

***

Emilio recalled his mother calling this gentleman Mang Antong. He was middle-aged, medium-built with graying hair, who smoked and chewed on tobacco quite regularly enough for Emilio to smell him a distance away when the gentleman would drop by their home. He would usually have a basket of fruit with him, and he never failed to bring a copy of the day’s newspaper tucked in with the fruit.

Josefa would greet him happily, and would offer him coffee. They would chat for a bit by the open windows, seated comfortably; sometimes when Emilio would arrive home from school (on days when he deftly avoided brawl challenges; he was still under Maestro Ferrer’s jurisdiction) he would find Mang Antong already seated in their tiny receiving room where the guests can be entertained.

It had crossed Emilio’s mind more than once to corner the man in the most polite way he can muster, and when his mother wasn’t looking, inquire of the guest: “Are you courting my mother?”

Of course he wouldn’t do that, although he could already picture how Mang Antong would look: startled, maybe confused, with his cigarette positively askew.

Instead, he asked his mother.

To which Josefa provided him with a very stern glare, but with laughter in her eyes.

“You are a very mischievous boy, Ilyong! Setting your nose on grown-up affairs?”

Emilio, in return, provided her with a look of pure knowing.

Josefa sighed. “Once, yes, he had let his intentions be known.” The smile didn’t leave her eyes, however.

Emilio deduced the situation almost immediately. “Mang Antong had only been a widower for less than a year, so you decided to turn him down.”

Josefa was fighting back the urge to pinch her son’s nose fondly, and in half-reprimand. “You are impetuous, you know that, dear?”

Emilio smiled. “I’m sorry, Inang.”

Josefa countered it with an equally knowing, “You’re not sorry at all!”

Emilio suppressed a smile of devilish glee, affirming his mother’s remark.

“Anyway, Mang Antong and I remain good friends. No ill feelings, none whatsoever. He also knows you like to read the daily.” The “daily” was the newspaper; while Emilio didn’t get the daily everyday, he made it a point to read a copy whenever he could.

Mang Antong had once left his copy of the daily in one of his visits some time ago, and when he returned the next day with a fresh paper, he found Emilio poring over the previous day’s copy on the dining table, engrossed, brows knitted, like a little don with a cup of salabat sitting right next to an elbow, untouched.

It wasn’t everyday you found a mere ten-year-old swallowing up the news as if it were candy. Seemingly bitter candy, as the boy held an expression far from delight when he went through the pages.

Still, the image of a little boy drowned among large crisp pages never left him, and as part of humoring Josefa’s little son, Mang Antong brought a copy with him every time he visited, and sometimes even had copies sent straight to their home for Emilio to gobble up at his leisure.