He was tallish, maybe 6’1’, and a good athlete. He played both basketball and volleyball in high school. He was what we call here in Hawai‘i, hapa, meaning half-half: Asian-Caucasian. Filipino-Portuguese in his case. A good-looking young man.
I met him when I taught his 11th-grade English class. That class worked hard on their writing. Over the 39-week school year, they wrote 37 papers for me. I gave them Thanksgiving week and Good Friday week off from drafting.
Back then, there was an annual writing contest sponsored by the Hawai‘i Education Association. This was a statewide contest for students of all ages in both public and private schools. That year, I entered a piece he wrote in the 10th-12th grade short story category.
The story, entitled Manok, Manok!, is about a young boy and his friends who attend their first cockfight. The bloody scene he witnesses horrifies him, and the story ends with the ceertain conclusion that the boy never ever wishes to see one of these cruel fights again.
Manok, Manok! – in Tagalog meaning “Chicken, Chicken!” – is the cry heard at the moment the two cocks are set at one another. The story won first place in the statewide contest.
Many years passed. I’d never seen him in person, but I’d see his name on real estate leasing signs all over town. He’d done very well as a commercial space realtor.
One evening, as I was heading into Pali Longs Drugs, he was coming out. He recognized me immediately.
“Mr. Lee!” he cried as he practically leaped at me. “Check this out!”
I was startled. Twice. First by the vigor with which he came up to me, but even more by his pulling up his T-shirt to expose his chest to me. Not what I’d been expecting.
Dazed, it took a moment for me to realize that he was showing me a long, ugly scar that ran down his breast to his bellybutton.
“Oh my, that scar. What happened?”
“Cancer!” he said, beaming. “And I beat it!”
Still overwhelmed, I had difficulty processing this.
“This is my wife,” he said, introducing the woman I’d just then noticed at his side.
“Oh, how do you do?” I said, recovering myself and extending my hand. “Did you know that your husband is a published author?”
I’d written an 11th-grade English textbook, Literature of the Americas, and I’d included in the anthology, a good number of student pieces. Manok, Manok! was one of them. Whenever I’d run into one of those published students, I’d ask the same question of whomever they were with, be it a spouse, one of their children, a parent.
“Oh yes, Mr. Lee,” she said. “He has that book, so I’ve read the story.”
One thing I made sure to do once the textbook was published, was to get copies to all the former students whose work was included.
“And,” I continued, “did he tell you that it won first place in a statewide writing contest?”
“Oh yes, Mr. Lee, he told me that, too,” she said, smiling.
We exchanged a few more pleasantries, and while I wasn’t sure how memorable the experience had been for them, it took a good while for me to geet that image of the long, jagged scar out of my mind.
I’ll never forget that day. It was maybe two years later, and I was out in the yard trimming my mango tree. The phone rang, and as I hurried to my lānai to answer it, I thought how this had better be worth taking me away from my work.
“Hello, Mr. Lee? I don’t know if you remember me, but this is . . . ”
It was his wife.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Mr. Lee, but I wanted to let you know that . . .”
He had passed away.
“I’m so sorry to hear that. How did it happen?”
I knew the answer already, and she confirmed it. The cancer had come back, and this time it had won.
Whenever I look at my mango tree, I think about that day, about that student, and about Manok, Manok!
Lanning Lee 