The ladies launched murmurs in the puroks Felomina, Saeg, Bayanihan, and Estrella. The habal-habal drivers marked in their minds the horrifying stories about the secluded shore of Icepop, or what locals call Ispaf or Spap. I asked my mother about the coast’s toponymy, but she, and the people of Barangay Calumpang, thought its name came from the sea there, which was as cold as an ice pop.
Since I was a kid, rumor has it that hundreds of dile-ingon-nato inhabited the trees, hills, and waters of Icepop. The sighting of santelmo, tree-dwelling agta, and processions of engkantos—name it, these stories live there. I had heard of such eerie encounters, and they always came from my father, Papa Nonoy. He was once the security guard of a private seaside property near Icepop. He had many spine-chilling experiences there, and this one was one of his most memorable.
One night, as he was heading home, he met a lady near the baybay. He did wonder why she was there, but he just shrugged it off since many people were using that property as a shortcut. Judging by her uniform, he thought it was a cannery worker on her way home after a tiring night shift at nearby canning factory. Innately kind, he offered the lady a ride. The lady was dead silent as she aboarded his motor. He pried into the lady’s life, asking why she was waiting in the dark, and why she left her work early.
Although he felt the weight of the woman and the coldness of her touch, he heard no sound but only the calm sea rustling from the clashing sea glasses. It was starting to become high tide, so he revved his motor.
They traveled the length of the shore. Since there was no other way to reach the common road but to take the sandy coastline, they took the risk as the water level rose. They did make it before the sea devoured them, but when he looked at his back, no traces of a being remained. Thinking the woman had fallen off, he went back. But he only saw the roaring high waves, and that’s when my father realized it was time to go.
Faster than the spread of the winning 4-digit lotto numbers, his nail-biting story coaxed the puroks and nearby. This had been a pulutan in every kanto, and words spilling over between sips of soft drinks in every sari-sari store.
My father’s name became the latest buzzword. He was a lay cooperator in Holy Cross Parish-Calumpang, and that story became his sermon in one of his bible services. Every time he reported to the church, the priests there would ask him about the white lady and his other supernatural encounters. And every story would always end with how his unwavering faith in God saved him.
I was always there, listening and taking it all in. Sometimes, my short temper got the best of me. I’d roll my eyes at every stop he made just to repeat his usual litany, asking when it would finally end. Little did I know, the end would come sooner than I anticipated.
A cold wind blew through the window in early June of 2017, just one week after my birthday. I was watching the raindrops slowly dripping down the glass as if they were in a race, trying to forget, even for a while, the quiet anguish of losing someone.
Papa Nonoy died a week ago in a vehicular accident. At first, he was fine since it was a sideswipe accident; however, his diabetes worsened his case, and his wound got infected. Papa had encountered many near-death experiences before, fighting every battle he had. But this time, death made sure to wipe its feet before coming in. I was not at the hospital when he bade his last goodbye because the school days had already started. I just woke up one morning, and my Ate’s husband told me Papa had already passed away.
That day, I felt the gravity gripping my back as a salt stream ran through my eyes. I was drowning as I washed the rice, still doing my household chore, believing he might come home hungry. I questioned everything. I even questioned my faith—the one that my father had left for me.
After several tormenting and nauseating visits to the funeral homes, the coffin of Papa Nonoy arrived. My family, religious yet superstitious, did not let the coffin enter where it would exit, or else my father’s spirit would be trapped in our house. So, they wrecked the wall of my room and removed my curtain-draped doorway to let him in. I chuckled at the thought of my father haunting us. That very man who had toughened himself all his life would scare the thing he had sworn to protect.
Just as we settled him in, people started to crowd his wake as if it were a mass event. I never thought that my father knew this many people. Although he was an ordinary man, everyone I talked with had always said that they knew my father through his words. They told me how his stories cautioned their children about the lady at baybay.
I would also chip in my father’s other tales that he had only shared with me. Since I was his junior, people were curious if I had experienced the same things. I told them about my fair share of nail-biting encounters. I realized, then, that I might never possess his bravery, but, no doubt, I was truly his successor—we were both tale-tellers.
It was a dismal morning of late June when the white hearse finally arrived. Before it even rained, people’s tears had already flooded our house. In the church, I heard the priest’s voice crack many times while trying to deliver his homily. He then called us, the family, to deliver a eulogy. My mother couldn’t speak between her heavy sobs, and my siblings were unable to find their strength. As my father’s namesake, I braved the podium with my somber eyes and recounted the life of my Papa Nonoy.
That’s when it dawned on me how ephemeral my days with my Papa were. Yet, if there was one thing that he taught me, it was that beautiful things are often short-lived, so I need to savor every moment they exist.
At the end of my speech, my heart is still aching for his presence, and I could not quite fathom how I’d live my waking days without him, and his silly little jokes, and his, of course, supernatural stories. I looked up at the stained glass depicting Christ’s crucifixion on the ceiling. In the light it beamed, I sobbed a sigh of relief.
My Papa was an unsung great rhapsode of our time, and I’ll be the epicist of his lore. I will continue his legacy of macabre tales as a security guard, a layco, and a father. I’ll live to revere him and continue our stories—heard and unheard, mundane and supernatural. I’ll blur his life with mine, and he’ll live forever in me.
I always imagined my father as a guardian of the living and the elementals. He was the real-life Edward Bloom, the protagonist of Big Fish. My Papa Nonoy was the manifestation of folklore meeting reality.
I stared at my father’s still face, for the last time, to etch what he had left, immortalizing him once more amid the black wicks and dissolved candle waxes scattered on his concrete boneyard. Truly, the dead man and his tales never died, and I was satisfied knowing that there was beauty in the weight of what remains.
Rogelio Jenson Jr., also known as Arshee, is a budding writer from General Santos City.