HELPLESSNESS

It was a Monday morning when our tenant knocked at the door of our front gate motioning to the aging lion that the latter approach him at the roadside. The cat could only display his amputated leg and in the vernacular shout that it should be the former who should enter the premises as he still had to undergo the ceremony of either getting his crutches at the backdoor or install the prosthesis to his right leg if only to enable him to do what the farmer wanted.

Getting in with his wife, he asked for the “cartilla” and said they are delivering six sacks of palay as our share in the harvest, and when asked, replied that it was already dried and therefore can already be milled..

Soon the lion tamer arrived from church as was her habit and after reimbursing them the cost of freight and also giving the man a polo shirt, the two excused themselves and left

The lion tamer and her pet then discussed what should be done. There’s no more rice in the container and since rice had to be cooked for lunch, they decided to hire the two maids of the neighbor to dry the 8 sacks of palay that was delivered three days before and are still in the bodega, have one of the dried palay milled, and later in the afternoon, sell the remaining 13 sacks which the aging puma estimates is valued somewhere in the range of P5,000. Not a bad share as it will tide them over for the rest of the month as it can surely add to the meager pension that the limping lion monthly receives.

Soon the lion tamer hailed a pedicab and with the driver’s help went to the rice mill that the palay may be milled. The two maids of the neighbor on the other hand, went their way to dry the palay on plastic canvass that these may be dried under the heat of the sun, and after a lapse of about an hour, the lion tamer returned and the pedicab driver unloaded the rice inside the rice container. The aging cat could only watch in silence. The tasks that he previously do, like drying the palay and having it milled are now being done by another. What an irony!!.

By eleven o’clock however, clouds suddenly hovered on the horizon. The aging lion suddenly realized that at this particular season, rains come without the shortest notice. The night before, for example, rains poured worse than cats and dogs, it seemed even the carabaos came rampaging at the rooftops and so instinctively, he thought will the situation this time be different? And he shouted at the two maids to do something drastic immediately.

Hastily, the three girls (and that includes the lion tamer) gathered the grains still in the canvasses and hauled them inside the bodega, a place that formerly served as a garage and now converted as warehouse of sorts.

But the job was done by the three ladies and with them drenched in purified water courtesy of the Almighty, and with the three smiling when the task was finally over.

That night, the lion tamer broached upon the idea that instead of selling the produce as palay, she intends to convert it into rice and asked how much will she gain from it. Her pet, still endowed with mathematical skills estimated that she stands to earn P300 more than the P2,700 that she expects to receive from the 5 sacks of rice that were already dried. Smilingly, she said she will do it the next day and thereafter hit the sack and went to sleep.

The aging puma can only shake his head in silence but confident that he may still wake up the next morning still with reserve energy on his breast. The fight for survival for the limping lion is indeed tough and had to be done daily and he sure is glad the lion tamer had him for her pet!