Small Town Vignettes

Jake is a second cousin on my mother's side and although he is two years older than me we are close friends. He is a really nice guy, very good-natured and considerate and to top it all possessed an artistic and sensitive soul.

His passion was for wood carvings of all kinds and his bedroom is awash with them, from small tokens and bric-a-bracs to several large pieces ranging from intricately designed wooden shields and native sword replicas to free standing decorative pieces resembling Grecian columns complete with carved leaves and vines with plump berries.

All were products of his artistic nature and dexterous hands. And on his headboard was a large, rather flat box, carved wood of course, that contained his most treasured possessions, his custom built wood carving tools, knives and chisels.

On the box cover, intricately done in bas relief, was the image of a young woman with flowing black hair, small yet well proportioned nose, round and mischievous eyes and a generously smiling mouth. And on the side of one cheek was the merest hint of a dimple.

Some years ago when I first saw the carving, I immediately ask Jake who she was. "Nobody," he answered. "Just a woman in my dreams." He then laughed self-consciously and we moved on to other things.

Jake's family owned a small plant nursery and orchid farm which did very well and he helped manage the business. He had a talent for growing plants, a "green thumb" as most people would say, but most of his free time was spent in a small shed in the back of his family's ancestral house in the outskirts of my hometown where he would spend hours carving decorative designs on wooden panels for walls and doors but he never sold any of them. A lot of people would have paid dearly for them but he had more than enough money and had no interest in selling his work pieces.

Then four years ago, he finally decided to get married to a girl who was a distant relative. The courtship was a stormy one, with both of the parents of the prospective bride and groom deeply opposed to the union of their offspring who, although could be legally married, had direct blood links to each other.

The wrangling became heated and threatened to split the whole clan apart as there were relatives who also were rooting for Jake and his love and who saw how deeply devoted they were to each other

Then Jake and his bride-to-be settled the matter by eloping. They fled to Cebu, got married before a judge and then stayed for a time with a uncle in Mandaue City where the bride managed to find work in a business office while Jake helped out in his uncle's restaurant.

Tempers among the feuding families eventually cooled down and Jake with his wife finally came home after several months. The two lovebirds settled down in the house by the plant nursery and the orchid farm and eventually had a baby girl a year ago.

Before that and just a month or so after they returned, they had a small church wedding in my hometown which I attended. Jake looked uncomfortable in formal dress and was ill at ease with the ceremonies but the bride was radiant and glowing.

I got my chance to greet them both after the ceremony and managed to steal a dance with the bride during the reception. I looked at her and wondered. It was all there, the flowing black hair, the small but well formed nose, the mischievous eyes, the generous mouth with the dimple in the cheek. And the musical and infectious laughter that tickles and makes the listener laugh also.

Weeks after the wedding, Jake gave me a magnificent wood panel on which he carved, in high relief, a glorious Chinese dragon posed with five claws in the imperial Chinese manner. I was speechless with gratitude for such a treasure. But I would have exchanged it without hesitation for the cover on the wooden box that contained his carving tools.

I have not had the courage to ask my cousin about the image of the woman on the wooden cover. And chances are perhaps I never will.


Cedric: "All these carvings and not a single, full sculpture in the round of a person. Not even a bust of a person."

Jake: "I don't like doing sculpture portraits. I don't have the patience to deal with a live subject and carving from pictures can be difficult at best."

Cedric: "Would you carve a bust of me, if I ask you to?"

Jake (laughing): "I could but it would not do you justice. Besides I have never done a portrait of a person in wood."

Cedric (teasingly): "Never?"

Jake: "Never."

I was driving home from a visit to a relative across town when I saw groups of people excitedly talking among themselves in front of the town plaza. An atmosphere of excitement was in the air and I saw a large number of children and young adults running about and gesticulating in the direction of the sea whose blue-green waters could just be seen beyond the outline of some houses and coconut trees on the other side of the plaza.

I braked the car, parked on the side of the street, jumped out and ran to the seashore about a hundred meters away. There seconds later, I joined a group of agitated bystanders standing on a portion of a long stretch of reinforced concrete seawall that protected that part of the town from the often violent waves of the Pacific Ocean.

"It's a huge fish!", cried a youngster of about fourteen. "Nonsense," said a middle aged man carrying a child in his arms. "It's a small whale." I pushed my my way through the crowd and then I saw what was causing the commotion.

It looked like a fish indeed, some seven or eight feet long and seemingly circling on a shallow patch of the sea just some thirty feet away from where we all stood. I looked at the creature as it started swimming parallel to us and something about its distinctive silhouette meshed with a picture in my memory.

Tursiops truncatus. It was a Pacific bottlenose dolphin and it was in some sort of distress. The reason became clear as it swam closer to the seawall. From our vantage point, we immediately saw clearly that it had a wound on its left side near the belly which was bleeding and leaving a small trail of dark blood. Clearly, it was not a bite wound but probably made by a harpoon or some other stabbing weapon.

By this time, guys from the municipal government and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources were rushing to water's edge. The town's coastal waters were mostly shallow and the rocky bottom often exposed to the air during the low tide. That meant that dolphins and other exotic marine animals who favored deeper water were seldom seen near the shore. Any attempt, therefore, to rescue or treat the dolphin would have to done soon before the waters receded and carried the wounded animal to sea.

To the surprise of those who went into the water, the dolphin seemed to tolerate their presence well and even stopped swimming while allowing two guys to sling a piece of sturdy cloth underneath its belly to support its weight. It may have been too weak to protest anyway. Surrounded by a circle of onlookers, a government veterinarian examined the wound while helpers bore most of the animal's heavy weight and made sure that it was able to breath the air through its blowhole. Another guy tried to shield it from the harsh mid-morning sun with an umbrella while still another kept splashing water over the dolphin's exposed back in order to prevent it from drying up.

I rushed back home, changed clothes and jumped in to join the small group that was attempting to rescue the distressed animal but when I got there the I immediately realized that the dolphin's chances of surviving were very slim. There was simply no one there who knew anything about treating a wounded animal like this. The veterinarian was a big animal and cattle specialist and all he could determine was that the would was deep and that damage to the dolphin's interior organs was highly probable. They had medical kits and antibiotics in hand but did not know how to administer treatment. Suturing the wound would have been useless unless one knew and managed to treat also the internal injuries.

We all stood there in mute frustration and anger at our inability to prevent such a senseless death of a beautiful and friendly animal. I ran my hand over the dolphin's side and as I marvelled at the slick softness of it, like the wet inner tire of a wheel, a wave of anger and revulsion swept over me as I thought of the human being who could be so callous to do this gentle creature harm. And to think that in its moment of pain and helplessness, it would seek the company and help of the very same beings who, in many cases, bore a collective responsibility for so many of the instances that members of its own species have been harmed or slaughtered for fun or profit.

The dolphin took almost two hours to die and all of us on that sandy and shallow water stood vigil. We talked occasionally but spent most of that time in silence while checking that the animal was as comfortable as possible. Speculation on who inflicted the injury was avoided as if each of us there felt a collective guilt.

When it finally died, we asked a fisherman in a motorized boat to bring the body to deep water and then let it go back to where it should have belonged. That, in our minds, seemed appropriate.

In the heat of the sun at just part high noon, we all watched the boat with its cargo covered with a piece of canvas leave the dock and set out to sea. In minutes, it was just a small speck in the distance, another seemingly black dot in the brightness of the horizon. Then it was gone.

As I walked home, wet and tired, a friend came rushing to me. He just came in after hearing all the news. "What happened?", he asked, out of breath and chest heaving. 'Where's the dolphin?"

I merely shrugged my shoulders and walked past him. "Dead and gone," I said. "Dead and gone." The I went home without another word.


In the midst of the attempted dolphin rescue.....

Bystander Man: "They say that dolphin meat tastes like beef."

Bystander Woman: "Really? Who said so?"

Bystander Man: "I had relatives who have eaten some."

Bystander Woman: "If this one dies, will they slaughter it, you think?"

Bystander Man: "They always do."

Bystander Woman (musing): "I wonder how much they would sell it for? I could be tempted to buy some."