Damn It

If there’s one thing I hate, its nuisance in the wee hours of the morning.

At 1:50am today, Mar. 14, I was still wide awake as I had developed a slight case of insomnia. It’s a curable case, I suppose, since sleeping pills have become a constant companion of mine along with other pain killers and anti-depressants.

Outside, I heard a trivial commotion: Dogs barking incessantly and blatant sounds of footsteps and unashamed murmurs. At first I thought they were the night-shift neighbors coming home from their call center jobs in Makati, but the persistent snarls of our street’s resident dogs gave just cause to my suspicion.

And how right I was.

I saw some kids heave-hoeing lumbers that belonged to my uncle next-door. Now fully alarmed and aware of the predicament, I picked up the phone and immediately called my uncle next door. As the phone next door rang, I heard the delinquents scurry in their confusion as they began to drop their tow. Then my uncle answered the phone and I said that there are thieves in his backyard, and that he should not go out of the house.

In fact, those juvenile bandits must have been startled by that phone call that they abruptly went their way, their footsteps moving from moderate trot to full sprint. But, really kids these days. One still had the gall to go in front of our house and actually ring the bell in a malevolent, almost mocking way. It suddenly sprang to mind: The bastard fools know who we are; how my family thinks and what our daily routines are. There’s certainly no reason in hell for them to put two-and-two together that the one that rang my uncle’s phone came from the house next door. Nope, these kids aren’t that smart, unless, of course, they have ample knowledge of how our family works.

Then it hit me. Nobody knows the inner workings of my family’s estate; nobody, except the ‘pakyawan’ workers contracted by my uncle to repair the ancestral house next door. And with all the loose construction hardware lying about, it certainly is, to these rascals, a good enough venture to tempt fate. The pieces just fell into place in the big puzzle.

Mental Note: I should keep watch over these guys and remember their faces, just in case. I know it’s forcing the argument to suspect these workers are involved in some way, albeit they hail from the slum areas, but still one can’t help but think.

I stayed up the whole night keeping guard. At 6:10am today, my uncle said that they didn’t take anything important aside from a couple of coco lumbers or so. Still, there’s the need to be vigilant and he will do a loyalty check of the workers when they report for work today.

It’s close to philanthropy to give employment to those who really need it, but it sucks to give the least bit of chance to wolves that use poverty as an excuse to carry out their predatory ways.