Hunter School. Sakinu Ahronglong

before the Wolf and I arrived at the field. The ragged sound of the exhaust scattered the birds that were stealing millet and playing. They flew every which way, like they were fleeing from a disaster. For a moment there, it was like the big and little birds were trying to steal part of the sky. But soon the millet field was as quiet as a sleepy little child who has just finished a meal. I realized for the first time how big and wide the field was. I dismounted and walked to my grandfather’s tapau, a Paiwanese word for shed, a place to rest. But I did not see my grandfather.

      “Grandpa!” I called out into the millet field. The heavy grains of millet weighed down on the stalks, bending them almost all the way to the ground. Sometimes a breeze would blow, and it was like the stalks of millet all understood what I was saying and were swaying in reply. When I called my grandfather’s name again, they swayed another few times.

      Suddenly from far away I heard his voice, speaking the “national language” – which is the name for Mandarin in Taiwan – in the distinctive twang of mountain folk. Call it “Mountain Mandarin”.

      “Ah’m over ‘ere!” My grandfather was waving at me. He was so short he was almost drowning in the millet. He was wearing khaki clothes like he always likes to do. He was standing at the very top of the slope.

      “Hey there, you’re back. When did’ja roll on in?” The redness of his eyes told me how much he missed me. The old-timer, seeing me now, could lay down all of his worries about me. Like he was putting down a big mountain boar weighing hundreds of pounds that he had been carrying around for a long time.

      “Grandpa, what are you doing up here all by yourself? When did you start planting millet? Why did I not know?”

      “Well it’s been a right while. And it’s been a long time since anybody planted millet in our village. I dunno how many more chances I will have to see the millet grow. So I went to plant our family millet in our family field that the ancestors left to us. See how good I planted it, how big and tall and strong it’s grown? See how many children the ancestral seed has yielded? From a long time ago, for generation after generation, we planted millet on this piece of land. The VuVu of the millet you see here now, all their ancestors all the way back to the beginning of time, grew ripe on this same slope years ago. We have depended on this land and on the millet that grows out of it from the past to the present. When your kama got married and got ready to have a family, I gave him our family millet for him to plant. Planting the millet represents the continuation of our family life and our tribal culture.

      “When I was young, everyone planted millet in the mountains. Now I am old, and I spend half my days making friends with millet. From the time I planted it, I have walked the road here every day and every path in the field, many, many times. My kama died when I was young and I planted millet with my ina, my dear mother, right here. I remember the times when we worked all day and I had no time to play. I had to weed the field and watch it to ensure that the birds didn’t come eat the harvest. We especially worried about the birds when the millet gave birth. It was such hard work and it was all for our mouths,” by which he meant: we had to have something to fill our bellies.

      Grandpa looked at the millet field a long time, apparently lost in thought. He picked up a rock and threw it into the field and did the same thing again and again into different parts of the field. The millet stalks with their heavy grains swayed here and there. Suddenly clouds of birds from different parts of the millet field were scared off. Clouds of birds carpeted a far off fruit tree. Strange, I was thinking, I had not seen any birds fly over or heard a sound. Grandpa is amazing! How did he know?

      “This kinda bird is very smart. It got a pair of legs stronger than other kindsa birds. They did not fly into the millet field, they walked. When I was young, I often got yelled at by my old mom when I failed to spot them. They often come to eat the millet, and they come in big groups. They’re the same colour as the millet when it is about to be harvested, kind of dull yellow. They’re hard to see. If you don’t pay close attention around harvest time, you will be short a lot of grains of millet. They’re so hungry we call them ‘hungry ghosts’,” he said, meaning gluttonous.

      “I never did like getting yelled at, so I learned me how to look hard, and I became very sensitive to the hungry ghost. Kids today are all lazy, not like in the past. Not like us kids who were true Paiwan. When my family started to plant millet, I had to go up the mountain every day to take care of it. I left before the sun had risen and I had to walk. At noon I cooked some rice that I had brought. And in the afternoon I had to wait until the sun had set before I could come home.

      “Tending the millet used to be kids’ work. Going on harvest time, they used to take bamboo poles with iron cans and strips of fabric tied to them and go into the millet field and wave them around. To scare away the birds. You had to go wherever the birds flew to with your pole, to keep them flying, or better, keep them out. In the past birds were less afraid of people, but they were dumb, not like birds today who have all gone to school. Birds today’re keener. They’re afraid of traps in the millet and don’t dare to fly right in. They only fly down when they sure it’s safe.”

      “Grandpa, why do you want to plant the millet?” I asked.

      Grandpa said, “I’ll give you another reason. I’m planting the millet so I can return to when I was a boy. Now I’m old, but I can see the millet that I planted. I feel a sense of accomplishment. I remember the past. It makes me think of the friends I had when I was a boy, chasing away the birds and playing in the field.