The Package That Wasn't Mine

Previously on the Chicken Chronicles... Chester followed a treasure map from Divisoria to Baguio, and the treasure was a brass key that didn't open anything — and a photograph of a rooster who might have been a son. On the seven-hour bus back to Manila, Chester held both. Henrietta didn't say a word about the money they'd spent. Then a package arrived at the address from the map's edge. It was not addressed to Chester Cluck.

The Package That Wasn't Mine

The package was just sitting there.

No knock. No rider waiting for a signature. Someone had set it down against the door frame, neat as a temple offering, and left. Henrietta almost kicked it when she opened the door for her morning walk. She stopped. Picked it up. Read the label.

G. Añonuevo. Unit 4-B, 22 Lakandula Street, Tondo, Manila.

That was Chester's address. Or rather — the address Chester had copied, months ago, from the edge of the treasure map. The one that had started all of this. The one he'd never fully understood why it was there.

She turned the package over. Brown kraft paper, a little worn at the corners like it had been sitting somewhere before this. Handwriting in blue ink, neat and deliberate — and something about the way the letters sat on the paper made Henrietta stop.

She'd seen that handwriting before.

Chester was still asleep.

Henrietta went inside, set the package on the table, and pulled out Chester's notebook — the small one he'd been carrying since before the jeepney incident. She flipped to the page where he'd copied the map. The address. His handwriting was round and soft, full of wobble from writing too fast. The handwriting on the package was nothing like that.

She looked at the map copy. She looked at the package.

G. Añonuevo was written in the same hand as the map itself. Precise. Slightly forward-leaning. The same ink blue.

"Chester," she said.

He didn't move.

"Chester."

A sound from the next room. Feathers rearranging.

"Chester, there's a package on the table and something is wrong with it."

He appeared in the doorway, notebook crease on his face, brass key still in one hand — he'd been sleeping with it, which she had decided not to comment on. His eyes went to the package. Then to her face. Then back to the package.

"Who's G. Añonuevo?" he asked.

"I was hoping you knew."

The package was light. Not empty-light, but personal-light — the weight of things that matter to one person and no one else. Chester held it with both hands for a while without opening it, the way he sometimes held the brass key. Henrietta let him. Some things processed faster without her commentary.

"The old woman," Chester said finally.

"It's not from her. The postmark is Manila."

"Not from her." Chester set the package down and looked at the map copy again. "She said her son left Baguio and never came back. The address on the map — she said this was where he went. Unit 4-B, 22 Lakandula."

Henrietta was quiet.

"This might be his address," Chester said. "Not ours. We just happened to be here."

"We did not happen to be here," Henrietta said. "We moved here. Three months ago. I signed a lease."

"The map is older than three months."

She looked at him. He looked at her. The package sat between them on the table like it was waiting for someone to make a decision.

"Open it," she said.

"It's not addressed to me."

"Chester. Open the package."

Inside was a letter and a cassette tape.

The letter was two pages, handwritten in ink darker on the first line where the pen had been pressed too hard. Henrietta picked it up, turned to the first page, and her expression did something complicated.

"I can't read this," she said.

Chester peered over her shoulder. The writing was neat, the letters linked and rhythmic, but the words — not Tagalog. Not English. Something rounder at the vowels, different in its stresses.

"Ilocano," he said. He'd grown up hearing it from his uncle. He couldn't read it. He couldn't have managed five words.

The cassette tape had no label. Just a plain black plastic body, the kind that came in packs of ten, the kind people used when recording yourself onto things was still common.

Chester put it on the table.

"Peping reads Ilocano," Henrietta said.

Chester looked at her. "Peping the tricycle driver?"

"His family is from Vigan." She said it the way she said things she'd already worked through — presenting the conclusion, not the process. "He told us. In Divisoria. When we were looking for the jeepney."

Chester remembered. A broad man, a red tricycle, the smell of exhaust and hopia. Peping, who had found the ukay-ukay cart and pointed them toward the map without being asked.

"You still have his number?" Chester said.

"I have his number."

She called while Chester rewrapped the package, carefully, exactly as it had come.

Peping answered on the third ring. His voice was the same as the Divisoria version — slow and direct, without the usual Manila-speed urgency. Henrietta explained: Chester's name, the address, a letter in Ilocano, needed a reader.

Then she read the name on the package.

Three seconds passed.

"Where," Peping said, slowly and very carefully, "did you get that name?"

Henrietta looked at Chester.

Chester looked at the package.

Neither of them said anything.

Next week on the Chicken Chronicles: Peping knows something about G. Añonuevo. He won't say what over the phone. He tells them to bring the cassette tape. He gives them an address — not in Manila. Episode 12: "What Peping Knows." Next Thursday.