Under the Mango Tree PDF

Content warning: The following story depicts scenes of explicit death and suicide. Readers who may be sensitive to such elements, please take note. Under the Mango Tree Nigel Louis S. Ocang “Abangon si Laki! A...

Content warning: The following story depicts scenes of explicit death and suicide. Readers who may be sensitive to such elements, please take note. Under the Mango Tree Nigel Louis S. Ocang “Abangon si Laki! Abangon si Laki!”1 Frantic shouting from outside startled me awake. I sat up and saw that Abby was already leaning out the window. She turned to me as I tried to get up. “Stay here. I’ll be back in a bit,” she said. Then, she walked out of the room and shut the door behind her. I was left alone in the guest bedroom we had been sleeping in for the past week. It had been my idea to visit her family in Pangasinan after our honeymoon. I had never met them, and she had avoided talking about her family and where she grew up. I only knew that her father had passed away when she was young, and that her Nanay, her mother, had stayed to care for her widowed grandmother. They hadn’t even been at our wedding, though Abby said it was because they hadn’t been able to make the trip. When I finally convinced her to let me meet them, she had warned me that they might be “a bit strange”. I got up and leaned out the window myself to get an idea of what was going on. Two men were at our doorstep, talking with someone inside the house who I couldn’t see. They were speaking softly in Pangasinan, so I couldn’t make out what they were talking about. I ducked my head back in and checked my phone for the time. It was a little past three o’clock. We had been napping for less than two hours. I tried to recall the words I heard being shouted moments ago. ‘Abangon si Laki.’ From what little Pangasinan Abby had taught me, I surmised that the words meant something along the lines of ‘the old man is awake’ or ‘grandfather is awake’. Maybe one of the neighbors? Abby’s family lived in a small community of less than a dozen houses. They lived on a small mountain, about a twenty-minute tricycle ride away from the nearest paved road. The 1 “The old man is awake” or “Grandfather is awake” in Pangasinan houses stood in a loose circle around the community’s church. The ground here was all dirt, but the houses were concrete and sturdy. Trees surrounded the clearing where the houses stood, enclosing it in a ring of brown and green. During our stay, I had watched the farmers in the community descend the mountain on foot at dawn to tend to the fields below. Later in the morning, I watched others take off on their tricycles, presumably to go to bring the kids to school and to go to work at the town proper. Those who remained could be seen cooking over open fires in their yards or sweeping up leaves or chatting with the neighbors. The community was serene, relaxed. It made me wonder why an old man being awake in the middle of the afternoon would cause such a stir in this place. I was snapped out of my thoughts by the door swinging open. Abby stood in the doorway, a grim look on her face. “Come downstairs, Rico,” she said. “Bai wants you to come with us.” Bai2 Josefina was her grandmother, the matriarch of the house. From the stories I had heard from Bai and Nanay, I learned that she and her husband Dino were the first to settle down in this community. Laki3 Dino had actually built the community’s church himself. He had even planted a mango tree in front of it and, once it had grown, built a stone table and bench set under it. Nanay said the table used to be a de facto gathering place for their small community, a place to hold parties, discuss community matters, or just hang out. Once, I saw Bai standing under that same tree and staring up at its boughs. It must have reminded her of her husband. As I descended the stairs with Abby, I caught a glimpse of the small crowd that had now gathered outside the house. I also saw Bai and Nanay waiting at the front door. They both wore the same grim expression Abby had. When they noticed us coming down, Nanay took Bai’s arm and guided her out the door. I tapped Abby on the shoulder when we got to the foot of the stairs. “What’s going on?” I asked. I heard her let out a deep sigh before she turned to me. “Look, what you’re about to see is going to look extremely bizarre,” she said, “but I’m going to need you to trust me. Please promise me that, no matter what, you won’t interfere and you won’t say a word. I’ll explain everything later, okay?” 2 Pronounced ‘BA-i’; means “old woman” or “grandmother” in Pangasinan 3 Pronounced ‘LA-ki’; means “old man” or “grandmother” in Pangasinan  “O-okay but—" “Promise me,” she asserted. “Okay, I promise,” I relented. I could see in her eyes that she was worried, and that made me worried, but this was my wife. I had to trust her. We joined the crowd that had gathered outside. It seemed like everyone in the community was there. A young boy approached me and offered me a lit candle, which I accepted. Abby took one as well. Around us, people were restlessly murmuring to each other. I took Abby’s hand in my free hand and gave it a squeeze. A few moments later, a hush fell over the crowd. Then, everyone, even Abby, began to sing. The song sounded like a church hymn, in Latin, I think. The crowd then began to march toward the church at a solemn pace. The mid-afternoon sun shone down on us as we walked, but the breezy mountain air kept us cool. I kept Abby’s hand in mine as we walked. Soon, we reached the mango tree. The crowd stopped walking but kept singing. I furrowed my brow at the sight before me. Under the tree stood the two men who I had seen at the house. They flanked the stone table, upon which lay what appeared to be a skinny old man. He lay on his side, his arms limply hanging over the table’s edge. The skin on his arms was saggy and speckled with dark spots. He wore a plain white shirt, denim jeans, and no shoes. His head was covered by a cloth sack, and around his neck was a thick brown rope. I turned to Abby, hoping for some sort of explanation. She squeezed my hand, but kept her eyes on the man on the table. Glancing around, I saw everyone else’s gaze was fixed on the figure as well. Looking back at the man, I noticed that he had been trying to move his head and arms, but it seemed he only had enough strength to flail them weakly. I then also noticed the muffled groans that were coming from under the sack that covered his head. As I listened more intently, the groans began to sound more like garbled, gurgly speech, though it wasn't anything I would decipher. All around me, the people kept singing. The candles we held bathed us all in a pate orange glow, an unnatural contrast to the rest of the sunkissed clearing. I caught a glimpse of Nanay as she guided Bai to the front of the mob. While they shuffled through the crowd, my attention turned back to the scene under the mango tree. I saw that the men had thrown the loose end of the rope over one of the mango tree's boughs. I stood in disbelief at what I was witnessing. This was an execution. I saw that Bai had reached the front of the crowd. As she emerged, the two men gripped the dangling end of the rope and stared at her expectantly. Bai stared at the man writhing on the table in front of her. I could not see her face from where me and Abby stood, but I could see from the movement of her shoulders that she was breathing heavily, perhaps even sobbing. Her gaze then shifted to the two men, and her breathing steadily slowed. After a heavy sigh, she gave the men a nod. The men nodded in acknowledgement. Then, they began to pull. The old man’s writhing intensified, turning into a panicked flailing as his body was gradually lifted off the table. His gurgly speech grew louder, though the words remained unintelligible. The community increased the volume of their singing in response, seemingly wanting to drown out the hanging man’s noise. The old man was pulled higher and higher, until his feet had completely lifted off from the stone table. At this point, his arms and legs were thrashing about wildly, and his words had devolved into a mix of choking, screaming, and growling. My stomach turned as I watched the man thrash about. My ears were bombarded by both the guttural noises that emerged from under the sack and the relentless hymn emanating from the choir of onlookers. I wanted to run. I wanted to cry for help. I wanted to sever the noose. Yet I also wanted to watch on, to take in this morbid sight. Some primal instinct must have taken over my body in that moment, for I felt myself lurch forward in the direction of the hanging man. My movement was immediately halted by a hand grabbing onto my arm. Abby was glaring at me, stone-faced. “You promised,” she muttered. That I did. And so I just stood there, for what I’m sure was only seconds, but what felt like hours. I looked on at the thrashing silhouette of skin and bones hanging from the mango tree. I allowed myself to drown in the clashing chorus of pain and piety coming from all over. The hanging man continued to thrash violently, with more vigor than any man should have had after hanging by the neck for so long. His barrage of grunts and growls was just as loud and ceaseless as the singing that enveloped me. I grit my teeth and balled up my fists, forcing myself to weather the overwhelming onslaught on my senses that I thought would never end. Until it ended. The hanging man’s limbs suddenly shot out as far as they could go, stretching so much that I heard his joints crack like twigs. From under the sack came one final cry — a guttural, animalistic, agonized shriek. Then, the body fell limp. The processional hymn ended just as abruptly. I saw that everyone was now looking towards Bai, as if waiting for her reaction. The matriarch heaved another sigh, then turned to face the crowd. “Asumpal la,” she declared. A wave of relief washed over the crowd. It didn’t take me too much thought to figure out what she had said. ‘It is over.’ *** After the hanging, Abby brought me into our room to try to explain the situation. She said that the old man that had been hanged was her grandfather, Laki Dino, or at least they believed it was him. She told me how one day, when she was five, she had seen Laki being carried by the neighbors into their house with a sack over his head. She had seen Bai weeping and wailing as she knelt by Laki’s body. When she got older, she would learn of how the neighbors had found Laki hanging from the mango tree on that day. She would hear the stories of how he had become unstable, lashing out at the neighbors and breaking down crying in the field. She would find out that they had covered his head with a sack to hide from Bai the terrifying physical deformations that were brought about by such a gruesome death. She then told me how, a year after Laki’s passing, her father had run into their house hysterically, claiming that Laki, with a sack still over his head, had called to him while he was down in the fields. No one believed him, of course. At least, not until the other neighbors began reporting seeing Laki as well. The sightings all came to a head when, during a party under the mango tree, the body of Laki suddenly dropped from one of the boughs, suspended by a rope around the neck. Abby’s father had gone to the town center when this happened. A week later, he was found hanging from the mango tree. He was the first of several deaths that followed the appearance of Laki. Mang Tony who had gone to town to deliver rice, Aling Paring’s daughter who had gone to Manila to take a college entrance exam, Aling Jojo’s seven-year-old boy who had gone for a sleepover at a friend’s house— all of them had reported seeing Laki, all of them were outside the community when Laki emerged, hanging from the mango tree. The remaining residents caught on to this pattern, and thought of a way that they might circumvent this curse that had befallen them: if they hanged Laki while everyone who had sighted him in the community was present, no one would die. Abby said she saw Bai burst into tears when she heard of this plan. However, after her tears had dried up, she acknowledged that it was necessary. The next time the figure of Laki appeared, the men of the community set out to capture him at once. Laki’s lanky, aged body could not resist their might. However, nothing they tried could tear or take off the sack that covered his head. After the hanging, the community waited nervously for any sign that their ploy had worked. As weeks and months went by, no new corpses were found dangling from the mango tree. Eventually, the Laki appeared again. Everyone was ready this time. And the next time. And the next. Eventually the singing of hymns and the procession would be added to the hangings. Abby believed these were simply to help the community feel more at ease. She said that maybe the addition of God to the proceedings helped shield everyone’s consciences from the gruesome acts they had become accustomed to performing. Then, she began apologizing. “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…” over and over and over. When I asked her what was wrong, she turned to me with a look of… fear? pity? guilt? I could not tell for sure. “You… you weren’t supposed to see Laki,” she finally said. “What do you mean?” I pressed. “No one outside of the community has ever seen Laki. We had become confident that the hangings would work because Laki only ever showed up within the community. Only people from around here would see him, so gathering people up when a sighting occurred was easy.” “But you left,” I replied. “Laki had never appeared to me before hanging,” she answered. “I felt I could be safe as long as I was away from the community. But then, when you insisted on coming here, I just thought: what are the odds? We should be safe, right? It’s only a week. The last sighting of Laki I had heard about was years ago… It couldn’t… I couldn't possibly have…Why now out of…” She could not finish her thought, but I already had. “You saw him, didn’t you?” Her eyes grew wide in shock. Then they welled up with tears. “I’m sorry, Rico. I’m so sorry. It was on our first night back. It was dark and I thought I was seeing things, but… outside our bedroom window…” Her sobs drowned out the rest of her words. *** On the bus ride back to Manila, my mind was abuzz with a million thoughts colliding with each other. How could I get Abby back? What was the cause of the curse? Was he even safe? What if he saw Laki in the city? However, above all these, a peculiar thought prevailed. What drove Laki to end his life in the first place? Decades of torment were birthed from the release of one man from his agony. His pain did not end with him.