BAREFOOT BOY AND THE BUFFALO GIRL

BAREFOOT BOY AND THE BUFFALO GIRL(L DOUGLAS ST OURS) BAREFOOT BOY AND THE BUFFALO GIRL



The barefoot boy walked
beside the family's sole water buffalo
pulling a two wheel cart laden
with rice, breadfruit, papayas,
coconuts, and melons almost as fat
as the impaled hog the villagers
slowly roasted over a pitfire
from sun up till supper.


His little sister of milk chocolate skin and black licorice hair
sat astride the bovine's massive shoulders.
Thanks to that buffalo
she would not be balancing on top of her head
a home weaved basket of produce half her weight
on the four mile trek into town.


At the town's coastal market
in a babble of crouching women
behind stalls full of the exotic and the fresh,
the boy dickered and bartered his rice and fruit
for kerosene, matches, and fish.
All sizes and shapes of fish
scooped by the thousands
in vast nets cast on the pirate plagued waters of the Sulu sea.


As he journeyed home he smiled
remembering how he smoked out and
hacked to death the King Cobra
nesting under his father's bamboo chicken shack.
It was that little girl who discovered the viper
rising, hissing, and terrifying her
when she went to collect eggs.


Her story blew my mind.
Her sibling rescuer she had not seen in over a decade
and she was that child on the buffalo.


I met her in the modern world
on the tail end of the sixties.
I had relationships with white and black girls
but I had never seen anyone like her before
and I must have watched and stalked her for a month
before another girl aware of my secret longing
tricked me into finding the courage to introduce myself.
But when the matchmaker went to get her, I chickened out
slipping away to hide in the men's bathroom
till I figured it was safe to come out.


The matchmaker was puzzled and while I tried to explain
this dark caramel angel returned
and I felt like a fool clumsily trying to be cool.
I was spellbound by her petite lovely figure,
waist length silky hair, miniskirt and knee high boots.


She demurely smiled at everything I said.
the first time I took her out
I was reluctant to touch her,
she seemed so delicate
like those few precious eggs
the snake had threatened
and her brother had spared.


I picked her up in the morning
and we drove sixty miles
to the Blue Ridge Mountains.
We hiked the spine of Old Rag
where I turned over a stone
to reveal a hibernating snake
and she panicked and ran with fear.


I reassured her that she was safe.
She calmed down and described her
indelible encounter as a child confronted
by a Cobra like a Satan emerging from hell.


I hungered to hear more about her life.
But my inquiring at first made her modest and diffident
about revealing any more about her growing up.
I unintentionally embarrassed and insulted her
when I suggested her grandparents
might have been bare breasted loin cloth headhunters
based on what a white explorer wrote in a 1912 issue of National Geographic.
My ignorant speculation merely spoiled the purity of her stories.


As a child she kept a pet monkey
that once pissed on her from a mango limb.
She chased, grabbed, strangled, beheaded, and plucked chickens
with her bare hands.


They washed their laundry
on a river bank where one day
a woman was taken and devoured
by an estuarine crocodile.


During the dry season
locusts swarmed in clouds
blanketing crops and clothes.
They would swat and kill the bugs with palm fronds
and then cook the locusts into crunchy snacks,
but her favorite treats were sugarcane, guava, and plantain.


Their village was a cluster of Christian settlers
in a land long ruled by the Moslems.
Christmas was the highlight of her youth
playing Mary in a nativity play
followed by gifts of cookies
wrapped in elephant leaves.


No doors, no locks, no keys, no clocks,
no wallets, no cars, no telephones,
no powerlines, no paved roads, no shoes,
no radio, no television, no one wore shoes,
no doctors, no hospitals, nothing to come
between them and the ruling two season cycle
of the monsoon and the drought.


From her thatched roof house on stilts
to the clothes on her back...her family
of nine siblings grew, raised, harvested, slaughtered,
stitched, mended, built or traded for everything they had
which was only what they needed.


From a hand dug well
she carried water
in a weaved bucket
balanced on her head.


Her family had migrated to the rain forest
and cleared the jungle and toppled trees
then the women and girls stooped, planted, and cultivated
rice paddies while the men and boys constructed
deck high dwellings out of teak, mahogany, and palms.


By the time she was eight both of her parents
and three of her brothers died literally in her arms.
Funerals presented that rare opportunity
for a family portrait, a melacholy gathering
of somber faces grouped around
a primitive wooden coffin in which
a dead youngster seemed asleep in a cradle.


This wasn't deprivation...it was her magnificent life.
A rich, fertile, uncomplicated life of toil and toll
and I wanted more of what she was about.


She and her surviving siblings
were scattered among foster homes
and orphanages on different islands along the chain.


By the time she was the same age I was when I lost my brother,
she was sponsored and brought to this country,
adopted by an aunt with assistance from a local church.
Several years earlier the aunt arrived in America
as a mail order bride to start a family with a Filipino fieldhand
who earned his citizenship by fighting under the Americans against the Japs.
The new daughter pitched in picking apples and strawberries.
Her stepfather rescued her from a tree after her ladder fell from her feet.
They said as a girl she picked strawberries faster
than anyone in the entire Pajuaro valley.


The choices I made,
the rules I had broken,
the tragedies I endured,
the extremes I experienced,
the risks I had taken,
the fights I had won and lost,
and the luck I made and squandered
all paled before her childhood stories.
I was both diminished and enthralled.
My life's adventures seemed little more than crumbs on cellophane
upon absorbing her exotic, peasant, orphan, toiling, wandering existence.


And who was I to be surprised or begrudge
her desire for a sleek shiny car
in the driveway of a cookie cutter house
with a backyard garden behind a white picket fence.


It was nightfall when we returned from the Blue Ridge,
and because she could not remember
which road led to her apartment...as she was new to DC like me
we lost our way...my gas gauge was near empty
and we were running in circles.
Under the surface my frustration grew
though this being her first impression
of me, I hoped it didn't show.
However, she sensed my change in mood
and the absurdity of it all
and she started to giggle
modestly covering her mouth
with her little hand which
was something the island women did.
That's when I felt an overwhelming urge
to embrace her and squeeze some
of her holy innocence
into my jaded soul.



by L DOUGLAS ST OURS
June 2010