We were snugly sleeping in our big bed, nearly midnight, when I was awakened by a long mournful cry coming from under our living room. Papa suddenly woke up. I turned toward my two children, sleeping soundly under our large sinamay mosquito net. They too, were awakened by the noise.
We opened our door towards the balcony and there was my sister Corazon, slumped on the bamboo stairway. She could hardly talk and breathe. She was alone. In stuttering words, she cried, “Susing, our mother is dead”. Then she fell down on the ground. She has just walked and ran for four hours from Bueabod.
I was speechless for sometime. My two young kids returned to sleep. Papa rushed to our relative’s house to hire a car to go to the police station in poblacion Malinao, wherein one of the farthest barrio is Bueabud. It took a lot of time to the travel 15 kilometers to Malinao, go back to Kalibo, turn to Banga and then to barangay Polo, Banga. There was no direct link from poblacion Malinao to Rosario and Bueabod. The four policemen, my husband and my cousin Dr. Modesto Villegas arrived at Rosario at dawn.
Right along the shallow Bueabud River, they saw a young man struggling on the riverbed, awaiting death. At this time, the policemen just waited and waited for people to come out of their homes to tell what had happened the evening before.
We had a neighbor whom we treated as good friend. For several years, we usually looked after each other’s homes if one goes out to town or to attend to some important business in the Municipal Hall. This very close relationship was shattered by the tragic behavior of one member of our neighbor’s children.
A 23 years old son named Maximo has decided to get married to Diday Idolog of barangay Rosario. Weeks before the wedding day, he requested her mother to borrow money from my mother to be used for church fees, clothes for the bride and groom, food and drinks for the simple reception.
My mother readily produced the money for its purpose. Maximo took the money and he promised his mother that he would take care of the things needed to purchase for the coming family affair. However, instead of going to town, he went to another sitio to have a taste of playing cards with older men who were good in the game of chance. He lost all the money that her mother borrowed from my mother. For this loss, Maximo got into a very heated argument with his mother, and he beat his mother until she got limp and got many bruises over her frail body. This happened past noontime. Around five thirty in the afternoon of the same day, he went to our house and tried to look for my father.
Not seeing him, as my father was supervising work in the sugar mill, he went out of the house. My mother was sitting near the “grafonola”, listening to some classical music that the box was playing. He didn’t notice that Maximo has returned. With a very sharp jungle bolo, he hit my mother twice. On his way out of the house, he saw my youngest brother, Ciriaco Jr., carrying a gas lamp who was on his way to ask my mother to teach him how to write the alphabet. He attacked him. Our big dog tried to bite back, in an effort to protect the six year old boy. He slashed the dog, but the tips of his jungle knife hit my brother’s face near his ears. Maximo got scared after hitting the dog and fell on our stairway.
Brandishing his jungle knife, he ran down to Rosario to the house of his fiancee. Diday had no idea what had happened in Bueabud, but sensing queer in Maximo’s behavior, she ran towards her kitchen door and jumped over the window, thinking of going to her elder brothers’ house, a hundred yards away.
But Diday was overtaken by Maximo. He hit her several times until she was limp and fell over the side of the mountain. Maximo left her and ran towards Delfin’s house, the elder brother of Diday. He was sitting on the bamboo stairway resting after the day’s labor among the rice field. Suddenly Maximo appeared behind his back and slashed his left ear.
Leaving Delfin, Maximo run back to Bueabud. As he was crossing the river, he saw my grandfather sitting by the riverbank. He hit my grandfather at the back. Grandpa fell into the deep river. Running again, he returned to our barrio Bueabud around seven o’clock. There was my Uncle Narciso who was crying and looking for Maximo, to avenge what he had done to his beloved sister (my mother). He did not know that Maximo was near his back hiding among tall talahib grasses. He slashed Uncle Narciso, killing him instantly.
Sensing his crime and his hunger for dinner, he ran towards his cousin’s house in Sipac, a sitio near Bueabud. He cursed his cousin, who hesitated to dress up a favorite rooster he reserved for the barrio fiesta. This was a prized pet that he is grooming to fight against other roosters in the forthcoming cockfighting affair. But, Maximo had his wishes followed.
So the chicken was dressed and cooked. Having a sumptuous dinner of chicken “tinola” soup, he went out of the house and headed to the deepest area of the Bueabud River. He soaked himself for several hours. People pulled all their bamboo ladders inside their houses for fear of their lives on Maximo’s death spree.
Meanwhile Papa Beato and four policemen were on their way to Rosario. Since they could not cross the swift Aklan River, they needed a boatman to maneuver the empty wooden boat lying beside the riverbank. At four o’clock in the morning, the boatman was still asleep in his home across the Aklan River and so they fired their guns to awaken the boatman. In the stillness of the countryside, the sound of the several shots may have made Maximo fear for the arrest. In this state of apprehension, he slashed his abdomen, pulled out his entrails and floated lazily on the current of Bueabud River.
That was his state of life when people saw him dying on the shallow streams of Bueabud River but near barrio Rosario. He died right there along the riverbed, a place where most people pass by on their way from Rosario to Bueabud.
In the accounting of this gruesome event, Maximo killed my mother Pansay, my Uncle Narciso, his fiancee Diday and himself, and wounded fourteen of the people