Expatriates by James Wesley Rawles Page B

prepaid telephone calling cards. He regularly made deliveries to the mission school, which was on one of his routes. Joseph only casually knew the Jeffords, but he approached Peter and asked, “Kuya, I hear you want to get to Luzon. My grandfather, Paul Navarro, says he will take us in his outrigger boat—a carag
boat called the
Tiburon
—if you can help buy the diesel fuel. It’s a big fishing boat.”
    â€œIs it big enough to carry us and all of our luggage?” Peter asked.
    â€œOh, yeah.
Ang Malaking barko
—a big boat. I’ve been helping him run her since I was twelve.”
    â€œHe’d really be agreeable?”
    â€œI think so,” Joseph replied. “We are really tight. I’m his
Tuazon
, you know, his youngest grandson.”
    â€œIt sounds like you are his favorite grandson, too.”
    Joseph, who was modest, nodded and looked embarrassed when he heard that.
    The Jeffords met Paul Timbancaya Navarro a few hours later. They learned that everyone called him Tatang (grandfather), even people who were not related. He had a strong reputation in the community, both as a fisherman and as an instructor of the Filipino Martial Arts (FMAs). Now in his early seventies, he had reduced both occupations to just part-time endeavors.
    Paul Navarro was sitting on his porch reading an
Abante
tabloid when Joseph and the Jeffords arrived. He gazed up from his paper and said quietly, “I heard you need to get to Luzon.”
    â€œThat’s right,” Peter answered.
    The old man set aside the newspaper and said, “This very familiar to me, from a long time ago. It is just like the Huk uprising, right after the World War Two. I was a little boy then. Our family originally lived on Luzon, but my dad decided to flee to Samar, in 1948. This was during the Huk Rebellion. Rumor had it that they were going to try to recruit my father by force, or that there was a price on his head. So he got wise and fled. He thought he would be safer if he moved our family completely off of Luzon. He chose to come here to Samar, where he already had a few relatives.”
    Peter nodded. “That was a smart thing to do.”
    â€œYes, when there is trouble like that, with hundreds of soldiers coming your way, you don’t try and stand your ground. That will just get you killed. What you do is pull up anchor and get the heck out of there. That is what my dad did, and it saved all our lives, in my family. This is wisdom.”
    From his history reading, Peter Jeffords knew that the Huk Rebellion had been a communist-led uprising of peasants, primarily on Luzon. The name of the movement was a Tagalog acronym for
Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon
, which was often shortened to
Hukbalahap
, or simply just
Huk
. The acronym stood for “People’s Anti-Japanese Army,” which was how the communist rebels got their start. The Huks were eventually defeated by the army during the presidency of Ramon Magsaysay.
    â€œEven after it was safe to return to Luzon, my father decided to stay on Samar. That worked out okay, too,” Tatang said.
    After a long pause, Tatang Navarro said, “I will take you.”
    Again and again, the Jeffords expressed their thanks. They wore huge smiles and felt tremendous relief in the knowledge that they would be escaping the ILF. They knew that Mr. Navarro’s generous offer had just saved them from almost certain death.
    They went to see Tatang Navarro’s boat late that afternoon. Peter and Rhiannon liked the look of the boat. It was thirty-eight feet long with a five-foot wide hull, and a thirty-inch draught. For stability, it had traditional double-pole outriggers called
carags
. The boat had a graceful upswept triangular transom, but its well-proportioned bowstem was incongruously tipped with an old car tire that had been painted white for use as a mooring buffer. Overall, the boat had attractive lines, but it was obviously built more for utility