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Mr. Blatchley visited us often. During his visits, I learned that he devoted himself to collecting debris of animals found in coastal areas or in jungles of places I had never heard of. He told us about his adventures, his finger trailing around his palm as he spoke. He looked like he was locating new bones to find on the map of his palm.

On some days, he would bring a couple of bread for us, tearing and spreading the paper bag on our table so that all of us could have a share. Bottles of fermented fish and a plate of burned rice didn’t disturb him as he sat with circles of light spat by the holes of our roof. I wished I had the courage that time to ask more about the complications he had survived before reaching this city. But I was more eager to know how he knew where we lived. Was our house a random spot in his never-ending map of discovery for bones?

Even before the bone collector heard about my Lola’s small business, we had already nailed a recatangular signage at our fence facing the road: For Sale: Frog Skeleton, Frog Alive. It was inscribed with a fancy depiction of stick drawings on both sides of the signage.  It was something I was never ashamed of. Lola had been doing this business before my siblings and I were born, with a help of a man suffering from a polio, who taught her how to debone. She had taught this skill to Mr. Blatchley who eventually became dear to us even if he never asked for our names.

He also became a friend of my half-brother, who sooner worked with him. They visited places and seas where whales and other trapped animals were found dead. A few years later Mr. Blatchley built his own museum at Bucana. It was named D’Bone Collector Musem with over 700 specimen. It instantly became a tourist spot here in Davao City.

One afternoon, during the celebration of my newphew’s christening, in a resort, I surprised to see the bone collector, bringing his family with him. It was the last time I saw him. My half-brother had stopped working in the museum, when he caught by the forbidden madness of this city.

I didn’t want to look for him. Maybe Lola would think that I miss the things that he had given me or the money he had offered her. So I kept my thoughts to myself and stared at our signage as often as I could, as if it was the landmark that the bone collector used to find us, and maybe, he could find us again.

What the signage kept reminding me was its message that our very own survival was rooted into something private. We have been surviving on our own with this peculiar business even before Mr. Blatchley came and gave us a taste of what could be a better life with higher business income. Or a better life with a father-figure.

I was often told by Lola and my half-brother to visit the museum, to look at how each animal, once lost in the entanglement of time and place, had been gathered for humanity to witness that life matters.

The bone collector had discovered a place where children wanted to escape from the misfortunes created by their fathers, the way I and my half siblings suffered. I had wondered what it felt like to be complete as a child, but it cannot be, even how many times I imagined it to happen. Some pieces of myself fell before I was aware of it.

Has something in me died? Did I need to be saved to tell people how dangerous or sad my younger years were? The only thing I am sure of is this: I am a person lost in the wildlife of my foolishness and happiness because some parts of me are still missing. My wholeness is yet to be found.

***

Neil Teves is a young writer from Davao. His two previous works of nonfiction appeared here Dagmay. He essay “Paghanaw sa Iyang Anino” will appear in the second volume of Libulan Queer Anthology of the South. He is involve in poverty alleviation charity.

I met the bone collector when I was six or seven years old. He was tall. He wore a black shirt tucked in his loose brown cargo pants. On his belt, assorted keys along with tiny bones and sharp fangs of unknown creatures made clinking sounds as he moved. His body loomed over me as he dragged the dead crocodile inside our house to meet my Lola.

“Mao ni akong ipatrabaho, nay,” said the bone collector. He spoke in Binisaya which surprised me. I had never met a foreigner who could speak my language fluently. “Pila man imong pangayo nay?”  he  asked as he spread his wallet that bulged with papers bills.

“Baki ra man intawn akong ginaihaw dong. Kon kani, medyo dako akong singil,” Lola told him, assuring that she would be paid as soon as she would  be done deboning and assembling.  Then, the bone collector handed Lola a couple of one-thousand bills before he instructed lola to buy all the materials she needed.

I later found out that his name was Darrel Dean Blatchley, an American Marine Biologist who had been exploring the wildlife from different countries for a very long time. I wondered how he came here to Mindanao and settled particularly here in Davao City aside from the fact that he had married a Filipina.

Maybe someone had told Mr. Blatchley about my Lola—that she used to debone frogs and other animals for students taking medical courses like Nursing. Although the process had always been laborious for her part, the money paid to her was generous enough to support us.

No part of the bone must be lost, even the thinnest, tiniest on, I heard my Lola explain. She even  added that the arm, leg, and tail of the crocodile must be boiled to make it tender for deboning. Mr. Blatchley was attentive but he chimed in with a light joke once in a while. During his visits, I learned that he devoted himself to collecting debris of animals found in coastal areas or in the jungles of a far away place. He told us his adventures, his finger trailing around his palm as if it was a map.

It wasn’t too long before the crocodile was assembled. Each part was placed back from where it was taken. I could see he was amazed. When he left with the skeleton in his cab, I felt my heart sank. What if we would never see him again? What if Lola would never be paid with that kind of amount?

But Mr. Blatchley came back, bringing a black disposable bag that held a dead reindeer.

“Nagtuon naman diay imong apo,” Mr. Blatchley when he saw me gathering the plywood filled with bones of frogs.

Lola had always commanded me to separate the parts that were all scattered on a round wooden plank: limbs on the upper left; arms on the upper right; heads and pelvises at the center, making sure that they were lined accordingly to their sizes. I was often tasked to separate the bones, so lola wouldn’t find it difficult to match them.

Meanwhile, Mr. Blatchley asked if he could do it on his own. He reached for the Elmer’s glue and snatched a piece of cardboard from the pile next to me. He began to place the spine at the center, dropping a dew of glue at its two end points, so that the head, particularly the jaw would be attached to it. But the head was too large for the spine. I picked the smaller one, slowly putting it on his cardboard.

“Kini and maigo diha kol o.” I blurted out. I should have not spoken to him, but it would have been a mistake if he forced those pieces to fit. I should have realized at that time, that some things were not meant to be pieced together.

Neil Teves is a young writer from Davao. His two previous works of nonfiction appeared here Dagmay. He essay “Paghanaw sa Iyang Anino” will appear in the second volume of Libulan Queer Anthology of the South. He is involve in poverty alleviation charity.