Bandits

***

Bandits

My mother was very young when the war ended.

To her, the months following the end of the war were more horrifying than the war itself. With the Japanese eradicated from the islands, a new terror surfaced. This time the nightmare inflicted upon the citizens of the Philippines did not reign from an invading force bent on expanding its empire. It came from bands of roaming bandits.

Filipino bandits.

Described as bold and cruel, the bandits swept across the countryside on horseback, pillaging, raping, murdering, spreading like floodwater from village to village; home to home.

The night the bandits struck my mother's home, she had been asleep. She was roused by the barking of dogs. While she laid in bed listening to the agitated dogs, she heard something that sounded like distant thunder. The noises became louder. Realizing she was hearing the pounding of horses' hooves against the hard earth, my mother sat up in bed and screamed.

The bedroom door burst open. Her mother, the Grandmother, rushed across the room to the bed. She threw my mother's mosquito net aside, scooped my mother up under the arms, and hurried out of the bedroom down the wooden steps.

In the salas, the Grandfather had already pried the floorboards up. He was directing the other children down a narrow passage into an earthen hollow beneath the house. Still cradled in the Grandmother's arms, my mother felt herself plunge down the hole onto the packed earth floor. The Grandfather slid the floorboards back into place and darkness tumbled over them. He sat guard, huddled directly beneath the removable boards, his bolo held high.

Confined in the lightless pit, my mother wailed. She groped, sought out the Grandmother's face with her hands. To hush my mother's crying, the Grandmother placed a firm hand over my mother's mouth.

The entire family hunched motionless. No one could see anything. The only thing they could hear was each others gasps in the musty darkness deep beneath the house.

When the bandits entered the house their squawks of laughter and muted voices seeped down through the floorboards.

Below ground, rocked by the Grandmother, my mother remained as still and silent as she possibly could. Meanwhile, the bandits ransacked the house.

After what seemed a long time later, the bandits' voices and footsteps moved out of the house and into the yard.

Then just as quickly as the pounding hooves had stormed toward the house, they faded away.

For a long time after the bandits had left, the Grandfather kept his family down in the dark and the dirt and the silence.

Only when the crickets in the surrounding brush resumed their sawing did the Grandfather slide the floorboards away and hoist himself out of the hollow.

Once outside the pit, they surveyed the damage. The contents of the house had been destroyed. Priceless heirlooms, passed down from generation to generation, had been stolen.

Despite losing most all their belongings, the Grandfather crossed himself and led his devastated family in prayer, thanking God they were all alive.