Celo

In Surigao, the tragic incident begun as it always happens, with simple reality.

I had a friend whom I used to meet at the park. His name was Celo. He was eight years old, yet his body was so small and his face was so frail and pale that you would guess him for three or four. Whenever I come to the Bermuda grass yard, where he usually plays with other boys, he would immediately leave the game and run to me, arms wide open, calling my name, "Manong Lino".

When I took him in my arms, he would cling to me for a while, then he would beg for me to sit down and tell his stories about his hometown - how far it was from Surigao, and what sort of people lived there, and what dialect they spoke and what birds were there and others.

While we are talking, the others would gather around us, and I would find myself in the center of the group of boys, with open mouth, curious, as if they are watching a movie in a wide screen. Whenever a new one would join us, Celo would introduce us, with all the excitement in his face. Whenever I got up to leave, he would hold my hand and trot beside me on his rickety little legs and beg to carry my books and notebooks, so that he would be with me for a few minutes longer. When I walked down the narrow street, between the small store and drab lines of laundry, I would look back and wave, and he would too, and my heart would be clothed with pity and tenderness and with deep, deep shame.

For Celo was homeless, loveless child of the back alleys of Tondo.

He didn't belong there; he came from Butuan. He made the journey on bare foot, sleeping in ditches, scavenging like an animal for food, and dressed on filthy rags. When reached the outskirt of the city, he made a frightening journey through the mazes of the cemented road, and had finally rested on the doorstep of the Cathedral. He joined the gang of the waifs who lived by scavenging and begging to the movie-goers and church-goers and sometimes meddling with the school girls.

Each night he sleeps on the bench on the park with feet closed and the ankle against his elbow while his hands was folded like a shivering man who has just come out from a cold bathing. Sometimes, he slept on the parked jeepney or on the sidewalk of a commercial building. Until one night, he was picked up and was brought to the Boys Town.

He was safe there, showered with love and affection he had never experienced before. His frail body begun to strengthened and his tormented mind begun to be calm and developed. But he would never be a child again, and when he grows up as a man, because the scar of the street was there and the sunless days and the terror of those loveless nights would always haunt his subconscious mind.

In the Boys Town, they would try to make him forget. But he could never do so because he knows that one day, he would go out again into that old and pitiless city.

One night, a moonlit night, chill and dreary, I came out late from a movie. I shivered to the coldness and stillness of the street, I saw a ten wheelers truck, whose speed was so fast. There was a child. Sometimes he would stumble then picked himself up and limp forward again. My heart went out to him with love and pity, but when I called him up, he begun to run.

I followed him, calling all the while, begging him to stop, warning him of the danger that lurked on his way. Now the yellow light blanketed the street. The locomotion is getting nearer. I shouted to warned him, but he would not stop. He was running to his death but he did not seem to care. Then I saw the headlamp of the locomotive, and in the light was the face of the child. I saw his tiny distorted body like a wounded animal from feet up to the belly.

Later on, I found out that the child was Celo. At that very moment, I silently cried because I had learned to love him, cared for him... but now his gone.

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