He sighed and then nodded to himself a couple of times, working out the agenda in his head. “C. G. and the kids are going to Bangkok for the long weekend. You can take her car on the way up, but you and Inchoy will have to take the bus back.”

“Won’t C. G. mind?”

“Yes, she’ll mind.” Chet checked his reflection in the mirror and found nothing to adjust. “But I pay for that driver, and he works for me. Where are you staying?”

“We’re staying at the convent.”

“You’re not staying at the convent.” He put on his jacket. “You’re staying at Camp John Hay.”

“But I like the convent.”

“So what? I don’t.” Chet put his hands on my shoulders. “This is martial law.”

“But it’s okay for me and Inchoy to take the bus back?”

He gave me a look to let me know that I was pushing my luck, although I didn’t know how I was doing so. “Ting, you stay where the Americans stay. You stay where I know it’s safe.”

My first thought was to remind him that Laird had been an American, and Ridsdel and Hall.

“Ridsdel and Hall were Canadian,” said Chet, unprompted, and then summoned to action by the ringing of his phone, he left the room.

VI

VI

Timicheg, chief of the Bontoc tribe, awoke early that morning. His ears were ringing. The previous evening, his wife (wife’s name?) had cracked an egg for the evening meal (do Bontocs eat eggs for dinner?) and found a spot of blood, a dark clot with tendrils of red circling into the yolk. “An omen,” she had said. Good or bad? Who knew? But in the chill air of morning, he was overwhelmed with a sense of expectation. He rose from his bed (bed? Sleeping mat? Sleeping platform?) and went to stand on the threshold of his hut. Stretching out beneath him was the spectacle of the Banaue Rice Terraces, often called the Eighth Wonder of the World (POV—in Timicheg’s world, there was only one wonder, and he was staring at it), the terraces that he and his tribesmen had carved over two millennia (they must have been very old) and maintained with care, a system of such engineering genius and irrigational know-how that it was on par with the Roman aqueducts (who’s to judge?). But still, that feeling of apprehension was impossible to shake. Perhaps today a signal would be sounded and he and his brothers would hear the call of the gods, prepare with dance and chant, arm themselves with ax and shield, and march the well-worn tracks, so often traversed in pursuit of deer, but on this morning perhaps they would be inspired to hunt that delicate prey (too Bowlesian?) and follow the trail to the east in pursuit of heads.