The C-47 plane crash

The recent crash of a C-130 plane in Mindanao triggered memories of a similar plane crash in my childhood spent in Basa Air Base, Pampanga.

That morning, I saw a strange paleness in Papa’s face when he came out of his room. He said he was in a hurry, then walked quickly to Mama. They talked briefly, in hushed tones, and then I think I heard Mama stifle a sob.

After breakfast, Papa cleared his throat. When I looked at his eyes, I knew something was wrong.

He said, “A C-47 plane crashed outside the air base an hour ago. I heard it from the commissary. The passengers are now being evacuated to the hospital.”

When I looked at Mama, she seemed to wilt in her uniform. Her shoulders were hunched and her eyes lined with red. Papa stood up and turned his face away. In a bitter voice he said, “That C-47 plane should have been thrown to the junk ages ago!”

Sweat began to break on my back, even if it was a cool morning. I ran after Papa who was already out of the house.

As I sat behind Papa in the motorcycle, I felt the morning like a cold knife against my skin. It was already March, but the wind gusting from the Zambales mountain range made the mornings still shivery. The sun was still rising, balancing itself on the mountains. And the rest of the Military Air Base was still asleep.

We reached the main road that forked in two directions. On the left it swerved to the main road hemmed in by big acacias and white buildings. On the right, the road led to the small, well-equipped hospital. Papa stopped the motorcycle. I got off, intending to kiss him goodbye.

But just then, the siren of an ambulance broke the silence of early morning. Papa and I looked to the left almost at the same time. An ambulance loomed, its siren screaming, sped past us, then wound its way into the hospital’s driveway. It screeched to a halt before the lobby.

Papa restarted the engine of the motorcycle and I climbed back on the seat. In a few seconds, we reached the lobby just as the ambulance doors were beginning to open.

A hospital attendant in green cotton uniform got out, then lifted a stretcher whose other end was carried by another attendant. I saw the face of Papa’s friend, the one who loved to play chess under the star-apple trees in our backyard, his eyes alive to the pieces on the board, plotting the moves in his mind. But now his eyes were shut. His khaki uniform was torn to shreds around the elbows and knees.

“Pablo!” Papa shouted as the attendants rushed back to the ambulance. The next stretcher that came out carried Mrs. Medina, Mama’s friend. Her body was limp, as if all of her bones were gone. Blood clotted on her white dress.

Another ambulance siren wailed. Just then, I felt something huge and burning in my stomach. A bitter gorge suddenly rose to my throat, flooding my tongue. I shut my eyes and when I opened them, I saw my vomit through a film of tears. Papa bent down, wiped my eyes and lips quickly with his handkerchief. Then he led me away, back to the motorcycle, back to home.

I had fever on and off for several days. I could only sleep when my eyelids had become as heavy as stones. In my dreams, broken glass panes tried to hold themselves together, their patterns shaped like cobwebs. Then when they could no longer hold back, the veins of glass finally burst, turning everything into blood...

By day, I began reading King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, which Papa had long wanted me to read. It was part of a set of children’s books that my father had asked his brother, who was then working in Bahrain, to send to us. After the set of children’s books, my father requested his brother for a complete set of the Encyclopedia Brittannica. I sometimes read parts of the encyclopedia, especially enjoying the pages dealing with the theater of war in the Pacific between the Americans and the Japanese.

But that week when I was sick, I lost myself in King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, marking the pages where Merlin appeared. After closing the book, I would sometimes scan the white ceiling, wishing I could talk to Merlin.

When I went back to school, the accident still burnt on the lips of my classmates. They brought to school copies of the newspaper which had bannered the news on its front pages. Forty-five killed in Pampanga plane crash, the headline said. I turned away from my classmates, thinking that those were mere words: they did not capture that morning’s terror.

After the lunch break, my classmates talked about the wake. The countless stands of frangipani flowers smothered the chapel such that some of them were already displayed outside. A young man just stood quietly for days beside the coffin of his girlfriend, all of 18 years. Children roamed in the chapel and the grounds, wondering aloud when would Daddy wake up. And then, my classmates talked about the dead, their faces locked in pain, this woman whose limbs were found hanging from a nearby tree...

Papa and Mama did not bring me to the chapel, or bring up the topic of the accident in my presence. Even Ludy had been ordered to shut up. I knew they must have slipped into the chapel when I was asleep. They must have even gone to the burial, but I never saw them grieving again, until I looked at their eyes and saw everything there.

That was the day I learned what grief was.

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