The Gamble

by:Terranya Tiamson

The sun is about to set and it shines across the horizon of the sea giving it an orange gold color, sometimes of clouds with different hues before dusk. Everyday he watches this spectacle which reminds him that life is like the sun. It brings hope whenever it rises and when it sets, there is always a fulfilled promise of rising again.

As he can recall, back in Sta. Rita they own a lot and a two-story house. Not really grandiose but much comfortable to live in compared to their dwellings in Balete, a relocation site thirty minutes drive from the port. He was eight year old then but he vividly remembers how the lahar engulfed their town and everything they own. Since then, they never saw their father and he became fatherly to his younger brother and sister. He kept helping his mother raised them while she work as a housekeeper. Now, he looks much older than his age. He is tall and big framed like his father. His skin darkened by the sun and calloused by heavy work.

“Here,” the woman said that disrupted his thoughts, she handed him a fifty peso bill, he nodded and walked jadedly out of the port. “Probably it was fate, for no one is to be blamed for that adversity”, he thought. Aling Maria greeted him gaily, “Dalawang lingo na lang, papasok kana”. He returned a brazen smile. He recalled what her friend Mutya told him, that though life can be affected by the inevitable, we must not loose hope. It kept him hopeful. He will go to college under the government’s scholarship program. He was very lucky to pass. “Here take it”, a man shouted as he hurled a bag on his hand. He was stunned, he can’t move nor speak. A crowd rushed toward him, a man snatched the bag from his hand, beat his head and he fell down. He saw one of the guards shove the people away and he was left alone. Something hot oozed down his face but it doesn’t matter at all. Someone called his name, “Jerry, Jerry” then he saw a familiar face. He gazed to the horizon to see the sunset and it warmed his heart. The clouds just above the sea turned red? crimson? orange? He cannot tell but he knows it was never green.