BY BORDI JAEN
BUT WAIT. This story started with a day that went on as usual, no? Right.
I’m not going to continue babbling like a National Geographic documentary over here! Well, that usual day was a rather bad day really.
I had happened upon the bamboo apparatus on a low tide at noon so there wasn’t much to catch. The low tide also exposed the mudskippers who giddied along the shores. I felt too lazy to walk around as I did the previous day, so I staked my chances at staying in the bamboo apparatus in hopes of catching something.
Woe to me! Truly there was nothing. Not a crab, fish, nor any creature. I stayed in my position beneath the whipping rays of the sun, sweating arduously as I waited for any creature to fall prey into the bamboo apparatus. Sweat began collecting on my face to gather on my nose. Heavy enough, it dropped and splashed on the water. The day was still. Not a disturbance in the air but the gentle chirping of the birds, the rustling of the leaves provoked by the winds, mudskippers skipping on the mud, and the other rhythms in nature’s adagio. I could even hear the plopping of my sweat drops.
In frustration at the emptiness of my conquest, I stabbed at the stream’s muddy ground with the butterfly net. It only succeeded in disturbing the water and muddied it. In vain is anger. In solitude is frustration. However, I was determined to leave with something intact so I stayed still, hoping something would get in. However, the low tide was working against me. Rather than the stream nudging the creatures into the apparatus, the low tide ceased the gentle waving of the water and it sat still like a sulking child.
Seconds. Minutes. Breezes. They pass and yet, nil. I was as salao as Santiago. Suddenly, I heard my name called. It ceased my metronomic concentration. I placed down my butterfly fishing net carefully on the bamboo apparatus. I carefully treaded the bamboo walkway out of the apparatus and into the dirt path to where I was called. I came upon the sight of two mallard ducklings trapped in a large fishing device meant for mass harvesting fish. They were frantically paddling about, wondering how they became enclosed in this strange thing.
It was a sight to see the birds up so close what I would usually just see flying in the air or distantly with my binoculars. Poor birds. Trapped birds. Plumed magnificently and shimmering on the gleam of the Sun. Woe to them, I thought. How they were entrapped, only God knows.
My pondering of the birds ceased when my name was called again. The voice was more jubilant this time around. I wondered why. Coming back, my butterfly fishing net wasn’t nestled where I placed it. The worker, a wrinkly, sun-whipped man, held it up for me to see.
To my utter amusement, a large bangus, which must’ve weighed two kilos or more, was captured by my net. It, too, was frantic. As much as it wanted to escape, the entanglement of the net would not let it.
“What a marvel this is!”, I thought in excitement. It was a whole ass bangus! I was trying to comprehend how on earth that creature could have gotten entangled. I did see the occasional bangus in the stream. They were the trickiest fish to catch. One could easily distinguish them because they were the only ones that jumped so high; hence, they often escaped the Berlin wall that was the bamboo apparatus. How their silver majestically shined through with the sun’s rays. To have one caught in my butterfly fishing net was truly something.
The worker who saw my net claimed that the bangus had tried to jump inside the net. What was the probability of that, I wondered? Perhaps they had harvested bangus earlier and, seeing how I struggled with fishing for anything, placed that in while I was gone watching the mallard ducklings? How ludicrous! There was no harvest that day.
I don’t think the worker could have caught it while I was gone. That was improbable too given how tricky they are to catch; I doubt even such expert fishermen could have caught it in a not too long period. It, then, must’ve really got caught in the butterfly fishing net. I only reminisced on these things later. I do so occasionally at the present. But in that moment, I felt all too proud of myself.
Ironically, I felt all too proud of something that I did not do but chanced upon! However, I wasn’t going to let luck steal the moment. After all, Seneca says that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Had I given up on the catch and took a siesta or felt not so lazy as to take a walk, perhaps that would never have happened.
Perhaps it would have just been another plop in nature’s adagio. But it was not to be so. I marched to the bungalow where dad was reading a newspaper. I proudly exclaimed for him to look.
Dad put down his paper and stood up. He was an imposing figure wearing his white raincoat (which he sometimes wore even without rain), his shorts with many pockets, his Havaianas slippers on, his head which rarely tilted down, his cigarette sandwiched between his two oldened fingers, his chest out, his back which never slouched like a mighty sentinel, but most of all, his slight smile of a happy and content father.
He was examining the fallen bangus caught in the net. Even he couldn’t believe at the incredible luck of it. He let out one big puff from his cigarette and said, “Ah! A sign from the gods of you being a natural fisherman! Let’s see how your mother would prepare this one.”
He motioned for me to come in as the sun was almost setting, signaling the end of my fishing adventure for the day.
I felt happy. Dad felt happy. Dinner was great. All was well./PN
