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One late afternoon after a heavy downpour that drenched the mines I was caught up with a couple of boys in the grandstand below the gymnasium. If it wasn’t for the untimely rain that poured on a Saturday in mid November I should have been home and sleeping soundly at the attic until early evening.
The softball game which was scheduled to be played by Section 3 and 4, the usual protagonists, was called off. The players had gone home, the crowd had dissipated and we were left waiting for the rain to stop while telling jokes and talking about the new movie ‘Jaws’ that we saw the night before at the gymnasium.
Nevertheless, when there was no hope as to when the rain would stop an angelic-looking girl caught our attention. And, like most boys at age 14 would have experienced, I was fascinated instantly. She was walking slowly down from the curve of the road in front of the gymnasium towards the commissary store and avoiding the slippery rocks and muddy soil so she won’t slip.
I believed she was new in the mines as I hadn’t seen her before. She could be a fairy from the woods and loitered around the camp, we thought.
‘She must be Liza,’ the other boy said.
‘…the niece of the elementary teacher,’ the next boy had seconded.
As usual I was the only boy in the mines who’s always behind with good news.
She was tall, skinny, fair complexion. Since then I had been bothered by that look every time I stepped out of home for school, to meet up with friends in the gym or beside the market road, hoping for a chance to meet her.
But she was a rare kind of girl, like a real fairy that disappeared untimely. And to look around for Liza was like finding the rare kind of chrome ore even with a miner’s lamp attached to my head.
Liza’s place located at the farther row of cabins in Capatazes had been deserted now. There used to a wide road leading to her place and flowering plants grew abundantly in front of the cabins. Yet, I couldn’t distinguish between what delineated the woods and the houses as wild flora and trees’ elongated branches had covered the grounds.
Then, as the jeepney honked to move away again in front of an old cabin we bid goodbye to a woman resident after unloading her boxes of goods that were brought in from the town market. The old cabin’s brick wall was still intact but fading. Its door was made of wood which was as old as the cabin itself. I could feel the bricks as cool like still air than they were used to, warm and inviting.
The sun’s orange rays had slightly peered through the trees, and soon, the darkness. In a matter of minutes we will be at a friend’s home, and it’s time yet to look for Liza.
