Moondogs - Alexander Yates [60]
And he did.
Chapter 11
EFREM’S CURSE
Efrem Khalid Bakkar remembers it all. He remembers drifting. An unpainted badjao boat. Running aground on the island that would become home. It was a bad tide, overhigh, stranding parrotfish and jellies on the doorsteps of thatched huts. The waves carried his boat up past the tree line and left it near the center of the village; a new house sprung up overnight. Efrem remembers noontime, villagers returning from their dry cliffs to account for washed-out gardens and drowned hens. From his hiding place he watched them circle the boat, listened to them wonder aloud how long the dead aboard had been that way. The old woman who would be his mother was first to climb in. “No rice or fish,” she said, “maybe they starved.” A still older man, he would be Uncle, shook his head and fingered little round holes in the knotted decking.
“Not starvation,” he said. “Army.”
Everybody nodded. Their village lay some miles due north of Tubigan, itself north of Jolo in the Sulu Archipelago. The short year since martial law had brought gunboats to this place, wakes crisscrossing like chicken wire on the strait. Manileño soldiers inspected cargo and crew. Nervous at the prospect of actually discovering Moro fighters, they were known to shoot out of panic.
Nothing to be done.
The villagers uncircled and saw to their houses, mending pressed bamboo with palm twine. It wasn’t until dusk, when they pulled the dead badjao from their boat so as to better salvage the wood and nails, that they discovered Efrem under burlap in the stern. He screamed and so did they. The old woman, new mother, jumped aboard and took him up. She laid him on a cot above her still-wet floor and fed him starfish.
Talk of curses started that night, before moonrise. The villagers didn’t know he spoke their language and mingled just beyond the walls of his new mother’s home. Boy from a deadboat was no good luck, they agreed. Lying there for weeks while the sun turned his people into leather, eating God-knows-what. No good luck at all. His new mother and uncle talked it over while he feigned sleep, and they agreed with the frightened neighbors. Efrem—the intended name of a neverborn that his adoptive mother carried for eight or nine months as many years ago, a hand-me-down name that replaced his old but not forgotten one—was cursed.
Days later, when he grew stronger and chased after children old enough to be playmates, they said the same thing. They called him deadluck and threw razor-clams at him, defending their tidepool kingdom. “Your new mother’s so old she’s burned up down there,” they jeered. “And your uncle’s the worst fisherman in three provinces. Risking us all because they’ve got nothing to lose.” Efrem answered with shells of his own, sending even the oldest boys home with bleeding heads. His mother promised theirs that Efrem would be beat for it. But she didn’t have the heart, and his uncle didn’t dare.
TODAY EFREM SITS IN A JEEP as it makes slow progress from the Fuentes family plantation to Davao City. It is thirty-one years since he ran aground north of Tubigan to be adopted by the old, childless woman. In that time the dictator has been exiled, has died, and has had his family’s request that he be buried in the heroes’ cemetery declined. The war in the south is mostly on hold and Western Mindanao has autonomy. Though no longer master soldier-killer among rebels, nor master rebel-killer among soldiers, Efrem is still cursed. He’s felt alone in this until today. But Reynato, steering with one hand and sucking his unlit cigar, explains that they’re all freaks—all bruhos. Every member of Task Force Ka-Pow has some kind of magic.
“This motherfucker is the worst,” Reynato says, jabbing a thumb at shirtless, rainwater dappled Elvis. “His trick’ll make you shit, when you see it. He’s a mountain boy of Baguio, the real outdoorsy kind with not a little Ifugao in his blood. He’s loyal as a dog, and smart as one too. Probably because he is a dog. Turns