Shock in the Shacks
by Axle Cano
There’s a hole inside Antonio’s room. No one knows why it’s
there, but the only explanation that they know is that, Antonio wanted his room
to be cleaned up after the storm surge devastated the shack village a week ago.
Her mother screamed indiscriminately in sleeping Antonio, “Antonio! What have
you done with the plank-pile!?” He get up as quickly as possible, wear the
tattered shorts he had and answered his mother, “Mom, I don’t know, I will not
even noticed it myself?” a puzzled kid wandering why there’s a hole.
Underneath the hole is garbage… full of garbage from the
neighbors, from the other shack villages, from the near canal establishments
carried by the flood. News’ are crowding the airwaves with what’s in and what’s
not. For the shack people, what’s in is finding new materials for repairs of
their houses. An army of kids below 13 are on their way to find scrap lumbers
from the construction sites nearby. Scouring the newly flooded metro is hard,
because of the pile of dirt flood has brought. But for them, it’s a new way to
find living. All those scraps, garbage, plastics and other spoilage of flood
are worth gold in their eyes.
“Tonyo, have you seen istak?” an asking woman around 18
approached Tonyo.
“Nope, not a trace… why’re you looking for him”
“He didn’t come home for the last few days, after the storm
hits our boat-house. That is our concern right now.” Nearly sobbing as she
continues.
“Hmm I will tell you as soon as possible, anyway got to go.
There are so many things to do”
Antonio pushes his cart as quickly as possible. Every pile of
dirt, he searches for materials they need, and for him to fix the mysterious hole
in his room. After hours of searching, he nearly full his cart with some soaked
mattress, few books that are nearly dried, coco-lumbers, tarpaulins of
politicians who promised his mother and deceased father some good relocation
site (their faces are in better use if they will put it on their shack). All of
those ‘knick-knacks’ filled his cart.
On his way home, there’s a crowd going loco about a pile of
garbage. Scavenging their way for good ‘trade’, some of them pushing each other
in order to get the nice spot, and Antonio is not that interested to get in to
trouble. He just continued to walk until he reached his favorite ‘fishing spot’.
On that spot, he can get good stuff; the television that they’re using in their
house is a big-fish from that canal.
Wandering and digging the petrified garbage is hard if it’s
not rainy season, but after the flood, scavenging here is easy. While searching
for precious ‘fish’, Antonio realized that the hole in his room is a part of an
old oak barrel that his fathered salvaged from the pilings of Manila Bay. After
some afterthought, he noticed something’s floating near his rope, the
barrel!
When he lifted the barrel, he saw Istak floating and all
swelled up.
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