Tulatulahan, Part 5

Published by Vartan Koumrouyan at March 4, 2025

This is a serial. Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 first.

Daisy’s beer shack no longer exists by the Pristine Beach. Like Api and Jason and the rest of my life in Puerto Princesa, Daisy is gone, giving me one more reason to return as quickly as I can to my home in the jungle.

But while that jungle gives me a chance to live unencumbered, the necessary day spent in the city gathering supplies floods me with memories. Here at the beach, I close my eyes and see Jason again, standing by the tanod post. The young boys around the sari-sari store are smiling at him. They recognize the shape of Jason’s Emperador bottle through its paper bag wrapping.

“My name is Gaisone,” he says in greeting, emphasizing our shared Mediterranean origins. The fact unites us quickly in that different part of the world, and I walk a short distance with him, talking until the road meets the impasse of a compound and our paths split.

I see him again often after that, especially when I’m with Api in Daisy’s shack. Jason usually leaves alone and with a bottle in hand, as if he has too many thoughts on his mind and isn’t sure where to begin or finish.

But Jason is too sensitive — or too innocent — to ever share those thoughts. He tells me other things instead. He tells me his parents divorced, that his father and he do little together, and that he doesn’t like tall buildings. And he tells me of the one time that he drove his car from Perth to Sydney, almost 4,000 kilometers in a single stretch, just because.

In those days we also talk a lot about philosophy. We work our way through Spinoza, Hume, and Kant and consider their ramifications on Europe, but our conversations always end short of conclusions. Without a fuller analysis of the period, we can only theorize as we finish our bottle.

We’re good drinking partners. But then one day, I leave for the jungle. And each time after that, when I return for new supplies, something has changed.

One late summer afternoon on one of those visits, Jason and I sit on the tiled floor of my rented room, talking at random and sharing a bottle. We have nothing to do, and no intentions to do anything either. It’s the last time we’ll talk, though we don’t know it yet.

“Bro,” Jason says, “Api, poor man, I miss him. Maybe it was Rica’s fault to let him smoke and drink all day, maybe not. He just sat on that sofa with the ventilator in his face all the time. But he cared for her children like his own. Sent them to school, left her the house and some money, I guess. Good old man.”

He raises the bottle in a sort of salute, and we’re silent for a few minutes.

Then I sigh and say, “Listen, Jay, I’m going back to the jungle, you know. And staying for good this time. I can’t stand Puerto anymore. Too many people. Did you notice how much the island has changed in just four years?”

“Bro,” Jason says again with an angry, emphatic nod of his head. He tells me then what’s been happening in the local beer bars, and how his relationship with his Filipino neighbors in San Raphael, where he’s bought a plot of land, has soured.

“Someone stole my water hose and machete,” he says. “And maybe the same thief messed with my kitchen. I found my frying pan out in the bamboo bush! And the guy I bought the land off of cheated me — the deed of sale lists 38 coconut trees, but there’s not a one. Gone.” He shakes his head again and tips the bottle back.

“Sheryll’s uncle is building a house for us now, you know,” I tell him. “But he wants to cut down that big ipil tree to make doors and windows with it. I warned him not to go near it with that chainsaw! I bought the land because of that tree. You know what it means to own a hundred-year-old tree, knowing it’ll be there for another century at least?”

Jason laughs and gets up. “There’s always something to do out there. You can cut bamboo, make a bed or a bench. Not so much in the city, I guess. Can’t have it both ways.”

We head for the door and cruise slowly down the street as we finish the bottle.

But I feel squeezed by the city and all its people. I find a bench to sit down on, and Jason joins me.

“You know I saw a millipede as big as my hand at that place?” he says. “And a tarantula half the size of my foot? I freaked out and ran to the bus shelter and waited all night!” He laughs again. “Not so much in the city! But hey, I’ll have some goats soon, fence in the land, use all that bamboo and build a shack. It’s a good start to a new life.”

I glance around. “Just mind the checkpoints as you travel, ok? The Marines are looking for the Mindanao rebels in the mountains.”

Jason frowns at me, confused.

“They don’t talk about it on TV,” I say. “Don’t want to frighten tourists. But there was an ambush on Roxas Pass. Rebels killed a Marine and stole some arms and ammunition. So be careful, yeah?”

Jason shrugs and stands up. “I’m ready for a second bottle,” he says, grinning at me.

“I can’t,” I say. “Gotta wake early.”

“Seriously, Bro?”

“Long trip, Jay, you know that. Look, maybe you should ask Edwin to lend you his pistol. You remember that night when we went to swim at midnight with the jellyfish, and that Colt he showed you? Take that with you when you go back.”

Jason shrugs, too innocent to care, maybe.

We walk to the parapet wall, gazing at the white clouds as they form fantastic shapes and rainbow sunset stripes over the sea and the mountain range beyond. The trees across the path, near where he left his motorbike, sway in the breeze.

“I think I’ll plant some dwarf coconut,” he says with a smile. “Prim it up a bit. Half a hectare’s not bad for a restart.”

***

I blink, and Jason is gone. I’m back on Pristine Beach, alone amidst all the people of the city. Jason had died some while after that in Perth. He’d gone back to Australia to work and save money for those goats and trees, and one day someone found him dead in his room.

We were drinking partners. But then I left for the jungle.

I stand up from the sand. There’s nothing here for me now, and the jungle calls me.