Read Online Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson - Free Book Online Page A

widow following the death of the father in a tragic accident of some kind, I’m sorry I don’t remember what kind, but I’m sure it was heroic. I’m sorry you didn’t give me a warning to consult with my grandmother! But in any case I’ll try to remember the tale. Two young children, a brother and sister, and now I apologize once more, because it was a pair of orphans, both their parents had been killed, and it was not after all their mother, but their mother’s old aunt who was caring for them in a hut some distance from one of our villages in Luzon. Perhaps our own village of San Marcos, I’m certainly not ruling that out. The boy was strong and brave, the young girl was beautiful and kind. The great-aunt was—well, you can predict, I’m sure—she liked to torment the two fine children with too many tasks, too much harsh language, and blows with a broom to get them to hurry up. The brother and sister obeyed her without complaining, because in fact they were quite dutiful.
    “The village had been happy a long time, but lately a curse had fallen, and a bloodthirsty aswang fed on the lambs, also upon the young goats, and worst of all it fed on the little children, and especially on the young girls like the sister. Sometimes the aswang was seen as an old woman, sometimes in the form of a gigantic boar with savage tusks, sometimes even as a lovely young child to lure the little ones into the shadows and suck their innocent blood. The people of the region were terrified, they failed to smile anymore, they stayed in the houses at night near their candles, they never went to the forest, to the jungle, to gather the avocados or any beneficial plants, or to hunt for meat. They gathered in the chapel of the village each afternoon to pray for the death of the aswang, but nothing helped, and, even, they were sometimes suddenly taken in a bloody murder while walking home from these prayers.
    “Well, in the manner of these things, a saint appeared to the brother and sister, Saint Gabriel in the rags of a wanderer one day coming along in the jungle. He met the children at the well when they came to get some water, and he gave the boy a bow and a sack of arrows—what do you call that sack?”
    “A quiver,” Pitchfork said.
    “A quiver of arrows. That’s rather a beautiful phrase. He gave the lad a quiver of arrows and a very strong bow and charged him to stay all night in the granary at the bottom of the path, because there he would slay the aswang. Many cats gathered in the granary at night, one of whom was in fact the aswang, who assumed this form in order to camouflage. ‘But, sir, how will I know the aswang, because you haven’t given me arrows to shoot every cat?’ And Saint Gabriel said, ‘The aswang will not play with its rat when it catches one, it only tears the rat in pieces instantly and revels in its blood. When you see a cat do that, you must shoot him right away, because that one is the aswang. Of course, if you fail, I don’t have to inform you you’re going to feel yourself being torn apart by the fangs of the aswang, and it will drink your blood as you die.’
    “‘I am not afraid,’ the boy said, ‘because I know you are Saint Gabriel in a disguise. I am not afraid, and with the help of the saints, I won’t fail.’
    “When the boy returned to his home with these arrows and such, the aunt of his dead and departed mother was refusing to let him go out. She said he must sleep in his bed every night. She attacked him with her broom and confiscated his weapons and hid them in the thatch of the hut. But for the first time, the boy disobeyed his guardian and stole them back that night, and crept away to the granary with one candle, and waited in the shadows of the place, and I will assure you they were very eerie shadows! And silhouettes of rats scurrying among the shadows. And silhouettes of cats creeping everywhere, about three dozen. Which one would be the aswang? Let me just tell you that a pair