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Ba-ac turned to where the sound of creaking wheels came from.
    The bull cart rolled past the other houses and headed for them. A couple sat on the bar before its bamboo canopy. As the cart stopped, An-no jumped down and went to Ba-ac at once, held his father’s good hand and pressed it to his brow in salutation.
    “You went to town on foot,” Ba-ac said.
    In the dark, the woman greeted them. Istak could not see her face, but her voice was warm and accented. The cart had a canopy; the visitor must have come from afar. She got down after An-no. Even in the dimness, although her face was indistinct, Istak could see that she was young. She did not have the stoop of an old woman. “She is Dalin,” An-no said, introducing her. He was younger than Istak by two years, but though younger, he was bigger; the work on the farm had made him stronger, too. “They came from the land of salt,” An-no announced.
    “They?” Ba-ac asked.
    “Her husband is in the cart,” An-no continued. “Sick. He did not even speak all the way from the fork of the road where I saw them.”
    “He is dying,” the woman said. Istak could make out her face now—a young face, with a full mouth and eyes that were large and bright.
    “I am grateful to your son, Apo,” she told Ba-ac. “I could not find the way. We have to hurry to anyone who knows how to care for the sick. My husband—since yesterday, he has been talking without reason and is very hot with fever. I must hurry.”
    Ba-ac ordered An-no to unhitch the bull cart and invited the woman up to the house, where a bowl of chicken broth awaited her. Having heard the voices, Mayang came down and joined them. She held a burning pine splinter and in its smoky glow, her face was serene. Now, Istak could see Dalin’s handsome face, her shapeless cotton blouse, the full breasts underneath. In a glance Istak knew, too, that she had not yet known childbirth. She looked around her, at the family that welcomed her, and her voice quavered. “Thank God, I am with good people.”
    “You are very young,” Istak said, amazed he had spoken the thought aloud at all, and when he turned away in embarrassment, his younger brother was glaring at him.
    Istak took the torch from his mother and went to the cart. In its red glow, he saw what was inside—the sacks at one end, the figure stretched motionless on the bamboo floor—an old man with a pinched face and eyes closed.
    “He is asleep,” Istak said, peering briefly at them from the opening of the canopy. In that instant, a gust of wind snuffed out the light. Istak bent low to feel the man’s pulse. In the last few years that he had worked in Cabugaw, Padre Jose had taughthim what he knew of sicknesses, how to look at a person and from the feel of his pulse, his warmth, deduce what ails him. Istak’s hand rested on the man’s arm and he found no wrist or hand—just a stump that had grown cold. Like his father, the man did not have a right hand!
    I have seen men die as Padre Jose recited the last unction and I stood beside him, holding aloft the cross before the eyes that sometimes could no longer see. I have seen the dead in repose, in wooden coffins, or just wrapped up in old blankets, buri mats, or even bamboo slats from fish traps. I have stared at their sallow faces even as the holy water was splashed on their ashen skins like rain upon stone. I have seen them, but touched them, never.
    A chill came over Istak and he pitched out of the cart, the splinter smoking in his hand. “Your husband is dead,” he said.
    Dalin sank slowly to the ground. She did not speak. Moans were ripped from her—animal sounds that were not a wail, but the horrible nameless sound of grief.
    Before the cocks crowed, the neighbors already knew. An-no had gone to them asking for old bamboo that could be made into a pallet for the corpse.
    Dalin had objected. “We can just wrap him in a blanket and let the earth claim him,” she said.
    “We have to bury him correctly,”