by J. E. Park
“Doyle,” Mari asked as we walked up the stairs. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No, of course not. Why would you ask that?”
“I’ve been trying to see you for three days, and you keep staying away. Mommy also told me I need to stop bugging you.”
“Mari, I’m a grown man. I have things to do. I can’t sit around here all day playing with little girls. Don’t you have any friends to play with?”
Mari hung her head. “No.”
“What? Why don’t you…” I stopped myself from probing further. I remembered Tala telling me why the little girl did not have any friends. I would have liked to have had a heart-to-heart with Mari about that but reminded myself that her mother did not want me to make her my problem. “Look, we’ll talk about this some other time. Right now, you need to go to sleep.”
“Can we talk tomorrow?”
“We’ll see.”
I watched Mari’s shoulders slump as she hung her head even lower. “We’ll see. That means no.” Mari let go of my hand and started running up the stairway toward the door to her place. “I’m sorry, Doyle.”
“Sorry?” I asked as my little friend reached the top of the steps. “Sorry for what?”
“Whatever I did to make you not want to hang out with me anymore.”
Before I could tell her that she did not do anything wrong, Mari burst through her door, slamming it behind her.
*****
Tala got home at three, and I was lying in wait. Trying not to scare her, I paced about inside the gate, smoking, so that she saw me well before she tried to let herself in. “Halo, Doyle. What you do up so late?”
“Waiting for you,” I answered.
“Por me?” Tala asked. “What you want wid me?”
“Within the next couple of days, I’m having a barbecue for Sergeant Tejada, the policeman who helped me fix Mari’s teeth and took care of your ex-boyfriend.”
“Okay?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be right if Mari wasn’t there to help us thank him,” I told her. “Do you mind if she hangs out with us for a little while? If you want, I’ll pay your bar fine that day so that you can be here too to watch her around…”
Tala grimaced and held her hand up to make me stop talking. “You no pay my bar pine, Doyle. No one hab to pay me to spend time with my daughter.” Tala then buried her face in her hands. “Dat what you t’ink? You have to pay me to be wit Mari?”
“Hey, Tala,” I pled. “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.”
Shaking her head, Mari’s mother said, “I tell Mari to stay away prom you, Doyle. And now she hate me. She hate me. She no believe I trying to keep her prom breaking her heart.”
“Tala, I know that you’re trying to protect her. One day, she will too.”
“She never have anybody to take care op her but me,” Tala cried. “It no pair dat I have to keep her away prom people who be nice to her to protect her! I no know when she get dat chance again to meet someone who nice to her like you.”
Tala looked around for a place to get off of her feet, sitting herself down on the bench of our picnic table. I took a seat next to her and awkwardly put my arm around her shoulder, trying to comfort her. “She’s a special kid, Tala. She’ll be alright.”
After a long sigh, Tala took a moment to compose herself and then wiped the tears out of her eyes. “She be alright. Everyt’ing will be alright. Americans always say t’ings like dat. Maybe t’ings always work out in da US. Dey never work out por people like me and Mari. Not here. Doyle, when you leave da Philippines, ip Mari write you letters, you t'ink you can write her back?”
I flinched in surprise. “Of course, I would. Tala, I’d love that!” Despite my best efforts, my voice cracked. “I’ve been in the Navy for four years. I’ve never gotten mail before. Well, mail that wasn’t some sort of bill or official document, anyway. I never got a letter.”
“You never got a letter?” Tala asked. “Why not?”
I shrugged. “Well, I’m kind of an asshole and nobody likes me.”
Tala busted out laughing. “No, seriously, how come you no get mail?”
“I’m a foster child. I don’t have any family and my friends from back home, well, they’re not into things like literacy. They’re into punk rock.”
“What happen to you pamily?”
“That’s a long story and it’s too late to get into it now. Can I tell you all about it in a couple of days when we have our barbecue?”
Tala smiled and patted my knee. “Okay. I tired too. I gonna go to bed. I make you tell me everyt’ing at da party. Alright?”
“Okay. I’ll see you then.”
Tala stood up to walk back to her place. After a couple of steps, though, she turned to face me again. “Doyle, porget what I say you about Mari. Ip you want to see her again, it okay.”
That made me much happier than I would have expected it to. “Thank you, Tala. Good night.”
Waving at me, Mari’s mother wished me sweet dreams before walking away. As she ascended the steps, I found that I could not take my eyes off of her. It defied belief that a woman subjected to so much hardship could be so stunning. I wanted her, but I worried about the potential I had to hurt Tala and Mari.
I needed somebody, though. I thought about Yukiko back in Japan. She might not have been as heart-stopping as Tala was, but she was certainly no slouch. She was exotic and sophisticated. My physical attraction to her aside, I could see the two of us enjoying long, meaningful conversations together. Yukiko and I had more in common, not to mention we shared a traumatic experience, having both witnessed the murder of David Miller. The two of us would be far more compatible than Tala and I would be.
Mari’s mother was no idiot, but she never had anything other than a rudimentary education. As intensely as my body longed for her, I had a hard time imagining us ever connecting on an intellectual level. I feared that once the sexual novelty wore off, she would end up more a servant than a partner.
I could not imagine Yukiko ever falling into a role like that and wished I had a way to get in touch with her. I remembered her reaching out to me as she was led out of the park the night Miller died. I asked if she would meet me when we got back. “Yes! I will!” she said. “We’ll go see the monkeys!”
Playing that memory over again in my mind, I felt that maybe there was something else there. The two of us saw something horrific that night, but I also thought we made a connection. Perhaps she saw something in the way I handled myself that made her reconsider how she felt about me. I was not sure, but I wanted to get back to Japan soon and find out.
I doubted that I could wait that long, though. That became crystal clear as I caught the silhouette of Tala's body as she ducked into her apartment.
*****
CHAPTER 17
I suspected that things were going to go sideways when Anna, Tony Bard’s girlfriend, dragged a plastic kiddie pool into our living room. I knew it for sure when Dixie's girl du jour, Elena, started filling it with booze. They must have poured six bottles of rum in there. Then they added another half dozen fifths of cherry brandy, at least twelve cans each of Red Horse Beer, Coca-Cola, orange soda, and 7-Up. Finally, they finished it up with a couple of jugs of pineapple juice and ice. It was delicious, though a bit reminiscent of the Bullfrog that knocked me comatose during my first night in town.
“That’s good,” I told the girls, complimenting them as I licked my lips after my first sip. “What is it?”
“Mojo,” Elena told me, giggling. “You betta be carepul wid dis stupp dough! It get you bery drunk, bery quick!”
She did not have to tell me twice. I had one cup and spent an hour on the couch, content to watch the geckos running the walls until our guests started showing up. That was my reminder to start cooking Tejada’s ribs.
The turnout for our party was incredible. Lorna, our master chief’s girlfriend, was able to get us a great deal on meat from the grocery she managed. We were not only able to feed our e
ntire division, but every resident of the four apartments in our building as well. In addition to Sergeant Tejada, his wife, Mayte, and his three kids, we also hosted a few of his PNP colleagues. A pair of them were in uniform and on duty. We even had a troop of matsing, the local species of Philippine macaque, show up and take seats upon the wall in the rear of the complex.
Claude Metaire, who I had not seen much of since landing in the Philippines, saw them first and got very excited. “Doyle! Doyle! Look ovair zhere!” he exclaimed in his thick Guianan accent. “Monkays!”
“Monkeys!” I said as I spun around. “No shit?” Up to that point, I had heard them chattering but had never actually seen them.
I grew up near Detroit, Michigan. Because of that, some things would always seem exotic to me, no matter how often I saw them. One of them was palm trees. The other was monkeys. I was grilling when Claude told me about our visitors, but I could not stop myself from dropping everything to look at the matsing with him.
“Mon Dieu,” Metaire said as he took a couple of steps to get a closer look at the animals.
“Be careful, Claude,” I tried to warn him. “Don’t get too close. And whatever you do, don’t look them in the eye.”
“What?” Metaire asked. “Why you no look zhem in zee eye?”
“It’s a sign of aggression,” I had seen that on National Geographic once. “It means you’re challenging their position in the group’s social hierarchy.”
“Wha? Zhat sounds like merde.” To prove me wrong, Metaire went as close as he dared to the biggest monkey on the wall. He then made the goofiest face he could and looked the animal right in the eye, barking like a seal to get its attention.
All of us had, at one time or another, heard the term “going ape-shit.” Until Claude Metaire accidentally challenged an alpha macaque’s mating privileges, however, none of us had ever seen it in a literal sense. We were impressed. With an ear-splitting shriek that stopped all conversation, the creature leapt from the wall. It then bared its teeth and charged what it understood to be a six-foot-tall romantic rival. Metaire shrieked too, though at an octave that was far higher than the monkey’s. He then ran for his life.
What followed next was pure pandemonium. People were screaming and running in all directions. They were not that afraid of the monkey but had to move fast to keep from being plowed over by Claude. The children sought shelter beneath the picnic table. The adults ran up the stairs and through the gates into the street. Metaire ran everywhere else.
Claude was an athletic man. I watched him circle the courtyard three times in mere seconds. He then got halfway up the steps before leaping back to the ground when he saw his little beast gaining on him. There was no way that Claude could outrun the monkey, but I suspected that the monkey did not really want to capture Metaire, either. The matsing had the upper hand, but looking at it from the monkey’s point of view, Claude Metaire was four times the creature’s size. He was also ten times its weight. It seemed wise enough to know how much damage it could sustain if it actually caught his quarry.
After several laps around the courtyard, Claude decided that he needed out. He dashed for the gate leading to the street, but the monkey cut him off and forced him in the other direction. With a running start, Metaire then demonstrated an amazing feat of parkour. He stepped on a chair, pushed off against the side of our building, and landed atop the back wall of our yard. As the rest of the monkeys scattered out of his way, Claude then bounded up into one of the trees for safety.
Like the matsing, humans are primates. We instinctively know that when something is chasing us, our safest course is to seek higher ground. We rush for the treetops. This makes sense when you’re being chased by a saber-toothed tiger, a Shi-Tzu with attitude issues, or your girlfriend’s irate husband. It makes less sense when you are being attacked by a long-tailed macaque, however. They live in trees.
By the time Claude stabilized himself on a branch big enough to support his weight, his pint-sized assailant was waiting for him. It gave my man a second good look at his fangs, let out another shriek, and charged once more. Metaire lost his grip and fell on his back atop the wall. He screamed out in agony, then let gravity make him its bitch, dropping violently onto the turf head-first. It was a brutal fall and I thought for sure that Claude had killed himself. The females of the monkey troop then decided to add insult to injury. Screaming a chorus of simian insults at Metaire, they celebrated his defeat by tossing feces at the guy. It was one of the harshest rejections I had ever born witness to.
Claude should have been dead, but aside from a few scratches on his back and shoulders, he was otherwise unharmed. Once we saw that he was alright, the party roared with laughter.
None more so than Tala. She usually had a smile on her face. That was part of her job. There was never any genuine merriment behind it, though. This time, however, she laughed like she meant it. She was gasping for air with her arms around her belly, trying to contain herself, but failing spectacularly. She was gorgeous, and I found myself unable to look away from her.
When Tala could catch her breath again, she caught me staring at her. Seeming not to care, she wiped the tears from her eyes, gave me a little wave, then walked over to the picnic table to share the laugh with her daughter. She had dressed down, wearing denim shorts, a simple tee shirt, and no makeup, but never had I seen her more desirable. I started to walk over to talk to her but stopped myself. I remembered what getting involved with a bar girl did to Randy Green. I turned around and forced myself to go back to cooking my ribs.
Decomposing manatees.
Eyeballs pierced with darts.
Richard Nixon naked blowing bloody liquid farts.
*****
Claude Metaire’s fight with the monkey set the stage for the rest of the day. The music went loud and the bar girls in attendance called their friends. Before we knew it, our little place on Harris Street was livelier than the nightclubs on Magsaysay.
Defying belief, we drained the pool full of Mojo in two hours. It was quickly refilled, though not at all to the recipe. It seemed that everyone that arrived brought something to add to it: vodka, whiskey, soda, beer, or some sort of fruit juice. At times, what was in the pool tasted better than the Mojo. At other times it could, and did, induce vomiting.
At about seven, when the punch was at one of its low-water marks, Rick Hammond noticed a dead lizard lying in the bottom of the pool. Our best guess was that one of the geckos had fallen off the ceiling and drowned in it. Our party came to a screeching halt as we fished the reptile from our beverage and put it in a makeshift casket repurposed from a discarded matchbox. We then wrapped it in an American flag bandana we stole from Clay Fordson and took it outside on a funeral procession around the block. The PNP officers at the party rode in front of us with their lights on while we marched. Holding the tiny little coffin over our heads during the procession, we beat our chests, tore at our clothes, and pulled our hair to show our grief.
When we got back, we brought our cold-blooded comrade to the bathroom and held him over the toilet. Dixie then played “Taps” for him on a kazoo that Mari lent us before rendering the creature a crisp salute and flushing it down the commode. It was a proper burial at sea. After that, we spent forty-five minutes figuring out how to unclog the toilet without a plunger when the matchbox got lodged in the pipes.
Once we had a successful flush, we went back to drinking. In honor of our dearly departed guest, we rechristened the living room hooch “Gecko Stew.” That pool full of booze stayed on the living room floor for almost the rest of the time we were in Olongapo. It was replenished continuously by nearly everyone who walked through our door.
Despite teetering on the edge of alcoholic psychosis for much of that day, I did spend some quality time with Mari and a couple of Tejada’s kids. I bought my little friend a board game the day Tala told me I could see her again. At a point when the antics of our guests started exceeding the bounds of what was appropriate for children’s eyes
, I snuck the youngsters up to Tala’s apartment and played Sorry! with them a few times.
When I emerged from Tala’s place, I spotted Master Chief Darrow and Tony Bard arguing over the merits of the submarine versus surface fleets. Bard was a former submariner. The USS Belleau Wood was the first vessel he served upon that traveled above the waves. Our master chief had spent three decades attached to the surface fleet. It started as good-natured ribbing. As often happens when highly intoxicated people kid, though, someone crossed a line and it stopped being fun.
After Darrow made a comment about 100 sailors descending to the depths only to come up as fifty couples, Bard turned red. Tony was not a fighter, so he decided to end the discussion by turning around and walking away. Before our LPO took two steps, though, Darrow dropped to his knees, grabbed Bard’s shorts, and ripped them right down to his ankles, underwear and all. Tony was mid-step when it happened, so his feet got tangled up, and he fell to the ground. This allowed Darrow to rip his shorts completely off, which he then tossed over the gate and into the street.
At first, Tony looked mortified as the party once again erupted into laughter. After a moment, though, he just shrugged and started dancing his way to the street to get his clothes back. Adding to the hilarity, Bard would wave his pecker threateningly at anyone who got too close. When he came back, Tony was dressed and laughing with the rest of us. He strolled right up to Master Chief Darrow with his hand outstretched. “That was a good one,” Bard admitted. “No hard feelings.”
“No hard feelings,” Darrow said back, reaching out to shake hands. Before he could stop it, though, Bard dodged and went to pants the master chief.
Tony did not get the full article as Darrow did. He just got his outerwear. Still, he took the master chief’s shorts right down to his ankles, leaving him standing there in a pair of pink Hello Kitty boxer shorts. Again, the crowd melted down, roaring at Darrow’s choice in underwear.
Lorna, the master chief’s girlfriend, was gasping for air. “Oh my god,” she cried, trying to explain things to Tala. “He gonna kill me! I bought dem por him por joke and I tell him por days, ‘Why you no wear dose underwear I buy you?’ He pinally wear dem por da pirst time today!” She was laughing so hard that we could not understand the rest of what she said.