- Chapter 26 - end - Page 239

States. I didn't even know about him until he was dead. Then you. Jesus. And more people dying.

     It was supposed to be a bonus, fifty thousand, icing on the cake. I told Precy before I left the States, anything happens to me, I want you to use the money to get Mama and the family out of the province. Everybody, right through second cousins. Buy a couple big houses, maybe in Cebu. A few hectares, two or three little businesses to keep money coming in. It would be enough, fifty thousand. Over here fifty thousand dollars is a fucking miracle. It will buy you anything. Including freedom.

     He said he'd been captured in the NPA camp when it was overrun. One of the vigilantes was from Lanao, recognized him, and knew that Luis would want him.

     “A good thing, too,” he said. “Otherwise I'd be in little pieces now. It might still happen, but, hey, small favors.”

     “Nobody knew you were alive?”

     “The Nice People, that's all.”

     “And Nonoy.”

     “Never. He'd be the last I'd tell.”

     I told him about the note that said LITO LIVES. To understand that he had to hear the rest, so I told him about the names, the girls, Father Dado and Collins, through to Bembo. I talked a long time, a ghastly recounting in the damp darkness.

     He took it with an equanimity that shocked me at the time. I suppose I understand now. Those were my deaths. I had claimed them for myself, felt the hurt, nursed the anger. But when deaths pile on deaths, miseries upon miseries, who can assign any of them a particular outrage, bestow on any one a special grief? Who is entitled?

     And when I had finished, and it still seemed incomplete, I told him about Vangie and me, up to Rosita telling me to go away. He listened hard without interrupting.

     “The girls,” he said when I was finished, “the names, I