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forest that is kind. It belongs to no one and anyone who goes into it soon loses fear of the dark. You become part of the forest, they say, your veins grow out of you like roots seeking the soil. In the forest, you can live even if you do not hunt. A new life awaits you there.”
    Istak listened, intoxicated and believing every word. He had heard of the new land, too, not just from the traders who had gone to the coast then backtracked through Pangasinan but from the Igorots whom he had met when he and Padre Jose had gone all the way to Natonin, and there, at the top of the mountain, they had looked down at God’s country.
    “If we could only leave,” he said. “Here, we are fortunate if we own a farm as big as the palm of our hands. All the land we till is not ours.”
    He stood up and walked to the tamarind stump where she sat. The fireflies that had ignited the dalipawen tree had taken flight and disappeared in the bowels of the night. The air had become crisper and it filled his lungs with sweetness. Soon it would be light. “But what does the future hold for us? We are tied here forever,” he said, rubbing his palms; they had begun to harden. They were soft once, almost like a woman’s, because he had not held a plow for years and what he held were books, pens, and an occasional broom. And Dalin’s hands—were they also as rough as his mother’s? He took her hand. It was rough, as he knew it would be, and she did not draw it away.
    “Do not worry,” he told her, freeing her hand. “Although a widow, you are still very young.”
    “It was not my wish to be one,” she said. “He knew I cared for him, that I tried to give him back his health. I wanted to make him happy.”
    “He is a handsome corpse,” Istak said. “When we bury him in the morning, you will know what I mean. I was a sacristan and a teacher, too.” He wanted to tell her more but he held back. He did not want to sound boastful. “Even if we do not take the body to church for the priest to bless—I know all the prayers. Do you believe that?”
    She nodded.
    “I could beg the new priest,” Istak continued. “Maybe he will not let us pay.”
    She suddenly stood up. “I will not take him to the church,” she said stiffly.
    “That will be a sin.”
    “It is his wish, not mine,” Dalin said shrilly, walking away. He followed her.
    “I am only suggesting what is right,” he said.
    She turned to him. “But we must respect the wishes of the dead. Even before he became sick, this was what he told me, that there should be no church ritual for him, that it was enough that either the sea or the earth claimed him back. If God is everywhere, we don’t have to go to church, do we? He knows where we are, and if He is a just God, He will also forgive.”
    He would have to believe her. For the poor, there is only God’s bounty to pray for. He had long known that God’s ministers could usurp the Word and twist it for their gain and comfort or, as it was clear to him now, for their merest whim. All of them in Po-on and in the other villages of Cabugaw—they could all be banished from the land they had claimed from the forest and farmed all their lives—all of them who were dark of skin, who were not adorned with titles of power, who did not wear the cloth.
    In the grass that surrounded the yard, crickets started again and a gecko in the buri palm announced itself, its
tek-ka
keen as a whip in the still air. “He knew he was going to die,” Dalin continued. “He had this wish and I promised I would fulfill it.”
    The east had paled and the cocks that roosted in the guava trees and among the fish traps under the house started to crow. The narrow cracks of the split-bamboo wall framed strips of light. In a while, he heard his mother stirring in the kitchen. Breakfast would be ready soon—fried rice, perhaps, and coffee brewed from roasted corn and flavored with molasses.
    Dalin walked back to the cart, Istak behind her. “You must get some