Death in a Sawmill

By DJ Workz - November 27, 2017








DEATH IN A SAWMILL
Rony V. Diaz
1       You can cleave a rock with it.  It is the iron truth. That was not an accident.  That was a murder.  Yes, a murder.  That impotent bastard, Rustico, murdered Rey.
2       You have seen the chain that holds logs on a carriage in place. Well, that chain is controlled by a lever which is out of the way and unless that lever is released, the chain cannot whip out like a crocodile’s and hurl a man to the wheeling circular saw.
3       I was down at our sawmill last summer to hunt.  As soon as school was out, I took a bus for Lemery where I boarded a sailboat for Abra de Ilog.  Inong met me at the pier with one of the trucks of the sawmill and took me down.  The brazen heat of summer writhed on the yard of the sawmill which was packed hard with the red sawdust.
4       My father met me at the door of the canteen. He took my bags and led me in.  I shouldered my sheathed carbine and followed.  The canteen was a large frame house made of unplanned planks.  My father’s room was behind the big, barred store where the laborers of the sawmill bought their supplies.  The rough walls of the small room looked like stiffened pelts.
5       My father deposited my bags on a cot and then turned to me.  “I’ve asked the assistant sawyer, Rey Olbes, to guide you.” 
6       The machines of the sawmill were dead.  Only the slow, ruthless grinding of the cables of the winches could be heard.
7       “No work today?” I asked my father.
8       “A new batch of logs arrived from the interior and the men are arranging them for sawing.
9       “They are ready to saw,” my father explained.
10    The stream machine started and built solid walls of sound of sound that crashed against the framehouse. Then I heard the saw bite into one of the logs. Its locust-like trill spangled the air.
11    “You’ll get used to the noise,” my father said,” I’ve some things to attend to.  I’ll see you at lunch time.”  He turned about and walked out of the room, shutting the door after him.
12    I lay on the cot with my clothes on and listened to the pounding of the steam engine and the taunt trill of the circular saw.  After a while I dozed off.
13    After lunch, I walked out of the canteen and crossed the yard to the engine house.  It was nothing more than a roof over an aghast collection of sot-blackened, mud plastered balky engines.  Every inch of ground was covered with sour-smelling sawdust.  The steam engine had stopped but two naked men were still stoking the furnace of the boilers with kerts and cracked slabs.  Their bodies shone with sweat.  I skirted the boiler and went past the cranes, tractors, and trucks to the south end of the sawmill.  A deep lateral pit, filled with kerts, flitches, and rejects, isolated like a moat the sawmill from the jungle.  Near the pit, I saw Rey.  He was sitting on a log deck.  When he saw me, he got up and walked straight to me.
14    “Are you Rustico?” I asked.
15    “No, I’m Rey Olbes,” he answered.
16    “I’m Eddie,” I said; “my father sent me.”
17    He was tall, a sunblackened young man.  He had an unusually long neck and his head was pushed forward like a horse’s.  His skin was as grainy as moist whetstone.  He stooped and picked up a canter and stuck it on the ground and leaned on it.  Then he switched his head like a stallion to shake back into place a damp lock of hair that had fallen over his left eye.  His manner was easy and deliberate.
18    “Your father told me you wanted to go hunting,” he said slowly, his chin resting in the groove of his hands folded on the butt end of the canter.  “Tomorrow is Sunday.  Would you like to hunt tomorrow?”
19    “Yes, we can hunt tomorrow.”
20    Inside the engine shed the heat curled like live steam.  It swathed my body like a skirt. 
21    “It’s hot here,” I said.  “Do you always stay here after work?”
22    “No, not always.”
23    Then I saw a woman emerge from behind one of the cranes.  She was wearing gray silk dress.  She walked toward us rapidly.
24    “Rey!” she bugled.
25    Rey dropped the canter and turned swiftly about.  The woman’s dress clung damply to her body.  She was fair; her lips were feverish and she had a shock of black electric hair.
26    She faced Rey, “Have you seen Rustico?”
27    “No,” Rey answered.  There was a small fang of frenzy in his voice.
28    “Tonight?” the woman asked.
29    Rey glanced at me and then looked at the woman.  He reverted to his slow, deliberate manner as he said: “Dida, this is Eddie.  The son of the boss.”
30    Dida stared at me with frantic eyes.  She said nothing.
31    “He’s a hunter too,” Rey continued.
32    Then I saw a man striding toward us.  He walked hunched, his arms working like the claws of a crab.  Tiny wings of sawdust formed around his heels.  He was a small squat man, muscle-bound and graceless.  He came to us and looked around angrily.  He faced the woman and barked: “Go home, Dida.”

33    “I was looking for you, Rustico,” Dida remonstrated.
34    “Go home!” he commanded hoarsely.
35    Dida turned around, sulking, and walked away.  She disappeared behind the boilers and the furnace that rose in the shed like enormous black tumors.  Rustico set himself squarely like a boxer before Rey and demanded almost in a whisper: “Why don’t you keep away from her?”
36    Rey looked at him coldly and answered mockingly: “You have found a fertile kaingin. Why don’t you start planting?”
37    “Why you insolent son of the mother of whores!”  Rustico screamed.  He reached down to the ground for the canter and poised it before Rey like a harpoon.  I bounced forward and grabbled with Rustico.  He pushed me.  I sank to the sawdust; Rustico leapt forward to hit me on the jaw. Rey held him.
38    “Keep calm,” Rey shouted.  “This is the son of Mang Pepe.”
39    Rey released him and Rustico dropped his arms to the side.  He looked suddenly very tired.  He continued to stare at me with eyes that reflected yellow flecks of light.  I got up slowly.   What a bastard, I thought.  Rustico wheeled about and strode to the whistle box.  He opened it and tugged at the cord.  The steam whistle screamed like a stuck pig.
40    “All right, men,” he yelled.  “It’s time. Load the skids and let us start working.”
41    Rey picked up his canter and walked toward the log carriage.  Rustico was supervising the loading of the log deck. He was as precise and stiff as a derrick as he switched levers and pulled clamps.  He sparked like a starter and the monstrous conglomeration of boilers, furnaces, steam machines, cranes, and winches came alive.  I walked away.
42    When I reached the door of the canteen, I heard the teeth of the circular saw swarm into a log like a flight of locusts. 
43    The next day Rey, carrying a light rifle, came to the camera to the canteen.  He pushed open the door with his foot and entered the barred room.  He stood near my father’s table.  His eyes shifted warily.  Then he looked at me and said: “Get ready.”
44    “I did not bring birdshot,” I said.
45    “I thought you wanted to go after deer?” he asked.
46    I was surprised because I knew the here deer was hunted only at night, with headlamps and buckshot.  The shaft of the lamps always impaled a deer on the black wall of night and the hunter could pick it off easily.
47    “Now? This morning?” I asked.
48    “Why not? We are not going after spirits.”
49    “All right.  You are the guide.”  I dragged the gun bag from under the cot and unsheathed my carbine.  I rammed the magazine full with shells, pushed it in, and got up.  “Let’s go.”

50    We entered the forest from the west end of the sawmill and followed a wide tractor path to a long station about four kilometers from the sawmill.  The forest was alive with the palaver of monkeys, the call of the birds and the whack of the wind.  Then we struck left uphill and climbed steadily for about and hour.  The trail clambered up the brush.  At the top of the rise, the trail turned at an angle and we moved across the shoulder of an ipilipil ridge.
51    Rey walked rapidly and evenly, his head pushed forward, until we reached the drop of the trail.  I looked down into a valley walled in on sides by cliffs that showed red and blue-grey gashes.  Sreaks of brown and green were planted across the valley.  Islands of dark-green shrubs rose above the level rush of yellow-green grass.  On the left side of the valley, a small river fed clay-red water to a grove of trees.  At the north end, the valley flattened and the sky dropped low, filling the valley with white light and making it look like the open mouth of the jungle, sucking at one of the hot, white, impalpable breats of the sun.  We descended into the valley.
52    Rey’s manner changed.  He became tense.  He walked slowly, half- crouched, his eyes searching the ground. He examined every mound, bush, and rock.  Once he stopped; he bent and picked up a small rock.  The rock had been recently displaced.  He raised his hand to feel the wind and then he backtracked for several yards and  crept diagonally to a small clump of brush.  I follow behind him.
53    “Urine,” he said.  The ground near his feet was wet. “Work in a cartridge,” he told me, “and follow as noiselessly as possible.”  I pulled back the bolt of my rifle.
54    We crept on half-bent knees towards a grove of trees.  Rey, carrying his rifle in the crock of his arm, was swaying gently like a weather vane.  I looked around. I saw nothing save the trees that rose to the sky like smoke and the tall grass that swirled with the breeze.  Rey was intent.
55    Then he stopped and stiffened. 
56    “Remove the safety,” he said in a low voice.  We were still crouched. “Near the base of that tree with a dead branch.  Only its head its visible but it should be somewhere near that dry patch of leaves. Shoot through that. Do not move until I tell you to do so.”
57    I did not see the deer until it moved.  It turned its head toward us.  Its antlers were as brown as the dead branch of the tree.  The deer regarded us for a long time.  Then it dropped its head and quickly raised it again.  We did not move.  The deer, reassured, stepped, indifferently out of the shadows.
58    “Now!” Rey said, falling on his knees.  The deer stopped, looked at us, its antlers scuffling against the leaves.  I raised my rifle and fired.  The deer went high in the air.  Then, dropping its head, it crashed through the trees and vanished.
59    “Your aim was too high,” he told me quietly.  He was still on his knees. “Too high,” he said softly.  “But you got him.”
60    He stood up slowly, pushed down the safety of his rifle and walked toward the grove of low trees.

61    We found the deer.  It was stretched out on the ground.  Its neck was arched upward as though it had tried to raise its body with its head after the bullet had ripped a hump of flesh off its back.  Blood had spread like a fan around its head.  Rey sat down on the ground and dug out of his pocket a small knife.  He cut an incision at the base of the deer’s neck.  He stood and picked the deer up by its hind legs.  Blood spurted out of the cut vein.
62    “You got your deer,” he said. “Let’s turn back.”
63    Rey hauled the deer up and carried it around his neck like a yoke.
64    I felt my nerves tingle with triumph.  The earth was soaking up the blood slowly.  I had a crazy urge to wash my body with the blood.  I felt that it would seep into my body and temper my spirit now forging hot with victory.  I looked at Rey.  He was smiling at me.  In a strained voice I said: I’ll try to do this alone.”
65    “You’ll learn,” he said. “The forest will surely outlive you.”
66    We walked out the valley.
67    After about an hour’s walk, we came to a kaingin.  Rey was sweating.  We crossed the charred ground.  At the edge of the kaingin, Rey stopped.  He turned around.  The deer had stiffened on his shoulders.
68    “This used to be deer country,” he said.  We surveyed the black stumps and half-burned branches that lay strewn on the ground.  The bare soil looked rusty.
69    “You know these parts very well, don’t you?” I asked.
70    “I grew up here.  I was a logger for your father before I became a sawyer.”
71    His rifle slipped from his arm.  I picked it up and carried it for him.
72    “It is the sawmill,” Rey continued.  “It is the sawmill that opened the forest.  The sawmill had thinned the jungle miles around.”  I stared at him.  He continued meditatively, veins showing on his long powerful neck.  “But I do not think they can tame the forest.  Unless they can discover the seed of the wilderness and destroy it, this place is not yet done for.”
73    “Don’t you like your job in the sawmill?” I asked.
74    He shot a glance at me and grimaced.  “I do not complain.  You do not have to tell this to your father but Rustico is making my stay very trying.  You saw what happened yesterday.”
75    “Yes,” I said.  “What made him so mad?”
76    Rey did not answer.  We crossed a gully and worked our way to the end of a dry river bed before he answered. The shale crumbled under our feet.  The trees that grew along the bank of the river were caught by a net of vines.  Rey, yoked by the deer, was now panting.  Under a kalumpit tree he threw his burden down and sank to the ground. 
77    “You know why?” he asked.  “Because his wife is pregnant.”
78    “Dida? So?”

79    “He’s impotent.”
80    The revelation struck me like a slap.
81    “And he suspects you,” I asked tentatively, unsure of my footing.
82    “He knows. Dida told him.”
83    “Why doesn’t he leave her then?”  I said, trying to direct the talk away from Rey.
84    “He wouldn’t! He’d chain Dida to keep her!” Rey flared.
85    I shut my mouth.  It was noon when we reached the sawmill.
86    Late that afternoon we left to shoot fruit bats.  Rey knew a place where we could shoot them as they flew off their roost.  He had several tubes of birdshot and a shotgun.
87    It was almost eight o’clock when we returned.  We followed the road to the sawmill.  The shacks of the laborers were built along the road.  Near the motor pool, a low grass hut stood.  We passed very close to the hut and we heard suppressed angry voices.  “That is Rustico’s hut,” Rey said.
88    I heard Rustico’s voice.  He sounded strangled.  “I want you to drop that baby!” The words were spewed out like sand. “Let me go!”  Dida screamed. I heard a table or a chair go. It crashed to the floor.  “I’ll kill you,” Rustico threatened.  “Do it then!” the yellow wings of light that had spouted from a kerosene lamp shook violently.
89    Rey quickened his steps. He was carrying a bunch of dead bats.  One of the bats had dropped, its wings spread.   It looked like a black ghoul on Rey’s side.
90    The next morning, I heard from the men who were huddled near the door of the canteen that Dida ran away.  She had hitched a ride to town on one of the trucks.
91    I was eating breakfast in the store with my father when Rustico entered.  He approached my father carefully as though his feet hurt.  Then he stood before as and looked meekly at my father.  He was gray.
92    “Mang Pepe,” he began very slowly, “I want to go to the town.  I will be back this afternoon or early tomorrow morning.”
93    “Sure,” my father said. “Inong is driving a load of lumber to the pier. You go with him.”
94    “Thank you,” he said and left at once.
95    After breakfast my father called in Lino, the foreman.  “Tell Rey to take charge of the sawing today.  Rustico is going to town.  We’ve to finish this batch.  A new load is arriving this afternoon.”
96    “Rey left early this morning,” Lino said.  “He said he will be back tomorrow morning.”
97    “Devil’s lightning!”  my father fumes.  “Why didn’t he tell me! Why is everybody so anxious to go to town?”

98    “You were still asleep when he left, Mang Pepe,” Lino said.
99    “These beggars are going to hold up our shipment this week!”  my father flared.  “Eddie,” my father whirled to face me, “look for Rustico and tell him that he cannot leave until Rey returns.  We’ve to finish all the devil’s logs before all these lighting struck beggars pack up and leave!”
100 I walked out of the canteen to look for Rustico.  I searched all the trucks first and then the engine house.  I found him sitting on the log carriage.  He was shredding an unlighted cigarette.
101 “My father said he is sorry but you cannot leave until Rey comes back from the town.  We have a lot of work to do here.  A new load of logs is expecting this afternoon.”  I spoke rapidly.
102 He got up on the carriage and leaned on the chain that held the log clamps.  He acted tired.
103 “It is all right.” He said.  “I’ve plenty of time.”  He spat out a ragged stalk of spittle.  “Plenty of time.”  I turned about to go but he called me back.
104 He looked at me for a long time and then asked: “You are Rey’s friend.  What has he been saying about?”
105 “Nothing much!” I lied.
106 “Why?”
107 “Nothing much!” he screamed, jumping of the carriage.  His dun face had become  very red.  “He told you about my wife, didn’t he?  He delights in telling that story to everybody.”  He seized a lever near the brake of the carriage and yanked it down.  The chain lashed out and fell rattling to the floor.
108 Rustico tensed. He stared at the chain as though it were a dead snake.  “Now look at that chain,” he said very slowly.
109 He mounted the carriage again, kicked the clamps into place and pulled at the chain.  The chain tightened.  He cracked the lever up and locked it.
110 He was trembling as he unlocked the lever and pulled it down with both hands. The chain lashed out again like a crocodile tail.
111 “Just look at that chain,” he mused.
(1954)


Meet the Writer

RONY V. DIAZ is an award-winning Filipino short story writer. He has won several Palanca Awards. He is now the publisher of Manila Times. He has taught English at U.P. Diliman and has worked for the Philippine government as a foreign service corp.

Born in Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija but moved to Mindoro after the bombing of Clark Field. (http://en.wikipilipinas.org/index.php?title=Rony_V._Diaz)

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