Moondogs - Alexander Yates [66]
“A hit!” Efrem jumped at the voice behind him, a new stone already clenched in his little fist. “You are lucky boy,” the Holy Man said, kicking off his sandals and taking a seat beside Efrem on the rotting log. He ran his hand over the hard soil, fingers closing on a jagged bit of quartz. “My turn,” he said. “What do I aim for?”
Efrem stared at him. He pointed at a nearby branch.
“You are gaming on me? I mean challenge!” The Holy Man scanned the beach. “There,” he said. “Empty oil drum, down by the huts. You think my stone goes inside?” He paused and Efrem did not answer—he was unaccustomed to being spoken to. “You are skeptical? I will reform you!” He stood, pulled his arm back and threw. The stone landed a few meters in front of the drum, skipped across the ground and banged loudly against the base. “Close!” He shot his one fist into the air, a smile parting his beard. “Your turn. In the drum.”
Efrem threw his stone and it disappeared clean through the mouth of the drum. The Holy Man slapped his knee over and over like clapping. He handed Efrem another stone and told him to do it again. He cheered the second time, but not the third. Or the fourth.
“How are you doing that?” He sounded almost angry.
Efrem didn’t know.
“Can you throw farther?”
Efrem didn’t know.
The Holy Man stood and walked about. He found another stone, handed it to Efrem and pointed to a coconut at the far end of the beach. Efrem threw and it shattered wetly into shards of husk. The Holy Man pointed back into the woods where a spotted gecko nodded its head on a tree trunk. Efrem threw. The gecko was a smear of blood on pale bark. The Holy Man sat down and stood up again. He didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally he handed Efrem one last stone and pointed at a pair of shearwaters circling above the cove.
“Which one?”
The Holy Man struggled to make words. “Whichever you like.”
Efrem considered which bird he should kill. He took his time because he liked the way the Holy Man was staring at him—with admiration. With a father’s love. Finally he threw. One of the birds—the darker, the drabber, the one that had not flown as high—stopped flapping as though caught suddenly between an invisible thumb and forefinger. It fell into blue waves. The Holy Man let out something between a laugh and a shout. Tears trickled out from under his dark, round lenses.
“How long have you been this way?” he asked.
Efrem didn’t know.
“That’s all right,” the Holy Man said. “That’s fine.” He patted the back of Efrem’s neck and returned down the cliff. He paused for a moment, on the beach, to poke at the dead crab. Then he walked to Efrem’s mother’s hut. She was atop the roof, mending thatching and did not seem surprised to see him. They had a short conversation.
AS MUCH AS EFREM GREW to love the Holy Man, he loves Reynato Ocampo more. He rushes to the Davao market and meets the hero of his childhood on the roof of a Christian butcher’s shop. Reynato leans against the back of a billboard to stay hidden from the market below, eyeing Efrem bemusedly. “Describe yourself to me,” he says. Efrem stares dumbly, sure that he’s misheard the question. “Imagine I can’t see so well,” Reynato says, “and tell me what you look like.”
So Efrem describes himself. He’s squat, and dark. His chin is narrow, his forehead broad. His black hair is short, but in the week since he’s left the Boxer Boys it’s grown past regulation. Reynato listens thoughtfully and then waves him off, as though everything he’s just said is nonsense.
“That’s not what you look like at all,” he says. “Not to me, anyway. When I look at you I see eyes as big as windows. So big, so clear that I feel like I could step through and walk around inside your head. And you’ve got this glow, like smoke. You stand out to me,” Reynato