fate or choice?

Antonio drove a van for a shuttle service. He was a relatively new driver; been there for only a few months. And although his van was often hot and problematic, he was usually courteous and cheerful.

But because of a pending issue with his membership fee, he had to discontinue driving for a while. It was expected that he would return.

After a couple of weeks with nothing to do, he teamed up with a motorcycle-riding buddy and snatched bags from unsuspecting women waiting for a ride: the famed riding-in-tandem snatcher modus operandi.

One night, they snatched the bag of an old woman by the highway. It should have been easy: women mostly held their bags loosely, and they couldn’t chase you. But the old woman held on to the bag, and Antonio was pulled off the motorcycle. He fell, and he hit the old woman to make her let go of the bag. The he mounted the motorcycle again and they sped off.

The bag had no money. He threw it away and they rode on. After a while, for some reason or another, Antonio asked his buddy to turn back.

Antonio returned to the bag he had thrown on the roadside, while his motorcycle buddy stayed a prudent distance away. And while he was busy, the townspeople came, carrying weapons. Antonio ran. The open land on both sides of the highway was very dark, dotted with trees, and covered in tall grass. The riding buddy heard a couple of shots, and he went away. After a while Antonio’s phone would just keep ringing.

The following morning Antonio’s friends started going around the police stations to find out if the robbery—or the possible lynching of Antonio—had been reported. It was not. On the fourth day someone tipped off the family that a body had been found in another place, far from where Antonio was chased down. So the family started checking the funeral parlors.

And they found Antonio. His body had been discovered on the side of another highway the morning after he disappeared, a short distance from a police station that they had checked before. He was shot several times—all in the back of the head. The mortician tried to repair his face with wax and makeup, but it was misshapen and still bulged in the wrong places.

There was no blotter report in any police station of a body being found. There was no case.

At the wake, you could hear the whispered conversations. The woman who was grieving was not the wife but the girlfriend, and it was she who would not stop searching until he was found. The wife was abroad, and he had a son. The riding buddy was still around, and do you think he would just get another partner and go on snatching bags merrily?

Some say Antonio didn’t have too many breaks, and life had not been kind. Some said not everyone who faced the prospect of unemployment became outlaws. And still some shook their head and said that in Cavite, justice was often swift, and nameless, and silent.

Antonio was buried yesterday, along with his van-driving days and his hopes for a good life. And the circumstances of his death would be just a story told in the future, on nights when his former friends would drink beer and wonder whether his fate was sealed that night, or if he could have made another choice and lived.