MR. HOBBIT MAN
Mr. Hobbit Man was an old gnarly gnome of a trisikad driver at DB Ledesma Street who practically lived in his trisikad. He goes through other people’s garbage and finds “treasures” with which he transforms his trisikad into a fully ornamented mobile christmas tree. He’s like a character right out of old Filipino folklore. Those duendes who live in anthills and curse travelers with some incurable illness or other when they unknowingly step over those anthills without the necessary prayers of “excuse me’s”.
Sometimes I ask myself why nobody is taking care of him.
Sometimes I feel sorry for him.
Sometimes I imagine my own father in his shoes and I feel terrible.
At other times I admire him for his willingness to earn his keep no matter how meager.
For holding his head high despite the bent of his back.
For standing tall despite the fact that his bike is actually taller than him.
Just like the fictional characters, he invoked a certain kind of introspection.
And among their band of sikad drivers in that street, I believe he invoked the spirit of camaraderie too. Not that I claim to know the person behind Mr. Hobbit Man (I don’t even know his real name). But I have witnessed other sikad drivers giving him a “push” when Mr. Hobbit Man got stuck in the road, not because of any pothole, but because all his muscles put together simply couldn’t carry the two nursing students and their luggage no matter how he tried.
And he does try.
Again and again.
He’s very endearing that way.
He drove me home one day and started apologizing when he saw me noticing the other trisikads zooming past us. He’s the only one among them who ever started a sensible conversation with me in the two years I lived in that street. Although they were short and impersonal, they were far better than the wolf whistles and the dirty remarks from the other smart alec sikad drivers who patrol the street. For that, I usually pay him twice the usual fare. And always, he would refuse. And always, I would insist. And always he would say thank you.
Then last month, when I accompanied my dad to Iloilo, I didn’t see him anywhere. The dirty sikad driver with the long greasy hair and the bright red ponytail was still there. He was still annoyingly smug. But Mr. Hobbit Man was nowhere to be seen.
A friend once told me that he was a walking conversation piece. A story waiting to be told. So I’ve always wanted to take a picture. For posterity. But just when I had the camera, he was simply not there.
When I asked my sisters about him, they told me he had died in the typhoon. That gay typhoon Frank who brought in the flash floods. They said someone gave him a new sikad, which he again transformed into a christmas tree, and that he was allowed to live in the barangay station, but that he was found lifeless after the storm.
Carried somewhere by the currents.
Like a leaf.
Tragic.
. . .
I prefer telling myself he simply went home.
They say that the feairie folk never forget their own. Some even claim that the rock mountains in the town of Pilar, Capiz, with their endless cave tunnels and beautiful glittering caverns, are the Filipino versions of the Seelie and Unseelie courts. Rumor has it that the part of the highway that falls between the two rock mountains has been labeled an accident prone area despite the fact that there are no bends or forks or sudden curves in those parts. Just straight road.
A story waiting to be told.
Mr. Hobbit Man is probably in some cozy anthill that he’s decorating with other people’s trash transformed into ornaments, cursing some stranger for stepping over his cove without the usual litany of excuse me’s.
.. . and I that I still owe him a 5 peso coin for that free ride from long ago.
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