Cargo leaned over the desk and signed the form.
"In addition,” the official continued, “you are being given the legally prescribed prisoner discharge money in the sum of two thousand three hundred Filipino pesos. Sign here to acknowledge receipt of this money."
Hardly worth signing for, Cargo thought as he signed a second form. Twenty-three hundred Filipino pesos was less than fifty U. S. dollars.
"It is also my duty,” the officer concluded, “to advise you that as a convicted felon without Philippine citizenship, you are no longer welcome in this country. Therefore, your passport has been stamped with a seven-day visa, requiring you to leave within that period. That visa must be validated at an airport or seaport point of exit within that period or a warrant will be issued for your arrest, and you will be required to serve an additional one year in custody.” The official nodded curtly. “Dismissed."
Money and passport in hand, Cargo joined the other four men as they were led to a clothing-issue room where they exchanged their yellow prison garb for identical white shirts and trousers. They were allowed to keep their flip-flop sandals, which were of hard black rubber made from recycled truck tires. Afterward, they were herded into a yellow prison van to be driven into Manila.
* * * *
It was a two-hour drive south to Manila, and because the city was situated at sea level and the prison camp had been about one thousand feet higher, Cargo could look down and see their destination when they were still half an hour away. From the road above, Manila looked like a pristine crescent of white block buildings surrounded by greenery on the eastern edge of Manila Bay, connected to a series of bridges leading across the Pasig River, which flowed around it, all of it backdropped by the South China Sea and its constant water traffic. On the page of a four-color travel brochure, it could be described as scenic, picturesque, resplendent. But that was only from the road above.
As the prison van descended and left the deceptions of altitude behind, the real Manila began to emerge. The first sign that the city was imminent was the landmark familiar to all of them: an infamous disgrace known as Smoky Mountain. A huge tower of garbage, infested with rats and maggots, the enormous dump derived its name from a gray-green methane mist that hovered over it. As the van neared the dump, what might have been mistaken for animals swarming all over it became, on closer observation, young children, adolescents, old people—all of them scavenging over the enormous mass of garbage steaming and stinking in the moist tropical heat.
"Roll up the windows,” the driver of the van ordered. “I don't want that stench in here when I drive back."
The five passengers obeyed at once; they did not want to smell Smoky Mountain either. But they could not make themselves look away; it was like witnessing a car accident, or a building on fire, or a homeless person dying in the gutter. The scene was ugly, but its observation somehow imperative, mesmerizing.
When the van reached the Manila City Jail parking lot, the driver cut the engine and rose from behind the wheel. “Okay, you're free to go,” he said.
Incongruously, the Manila City Jail was not situated in some remote, outlying area; it was squarely in the midst of central Manila, surrounded by shopping malls, lines of small stores, bus stops, commercial buildings, and all other manner of bustling city life. The five released men exited the van directly into society and went their separate ways.
As Daniel Cargo walked off the parking lot, he was immediately approached by a smiling street girl in hot pants and a skimpy top. “Hey, goo'lookin', how long you no have girl, huh? Me treat you super fine."
"No money,” Cargo said, without stopping.
"Bullshit!” she snapped, her smile fading to a glower. “I know you get two thousand pesos discharge money! You think I stupid? You lie, son of bitch!"
Someone else fell in beside him, prettier than the first. “Hey, guy, you like it jail kind? I give you jail kind pretty good.” One glance and Cargo knew it was a ladyboy: a male made up to look like a street girl.
As Cargo stepped around him, a boy who looked like a boy joined him. “You want some shabu, man? Good stuff. Cheap.” Cargo shook his head. Shabu was Filipino methamphetamine. What Cargo could have used at the moment was a bottle of gin and a bucket of ice.
To get away from the jailhouse street hustlers, Cargo cut his way against traffic across the busy street, and on the other side melded into the pedestrian flow. As he walked, Cargo thought about Carli. Carlotta Gomez, a nurse at St. Luke's Hospital in nearby Quezon City. Cargo had met her while being treated in the hospital's emergency room for a broken thumb. He told the hospital admissions clerk that the injury occurred while helping a friend move a heavy bookcase. Actually it had happened when he and another man were loading slabs of fossil stone onto the back of a pickup. The two men had bought the fossil stone on the black market to sell at a profit to a freighter captain on the docks, who would then transport it to Hawaii to be used as tabletops for very expensive furniture. The activity was illegal, since fossil stone could only be found on the Philippine island of Mindanao, and its mining, processing, and distribution was strictly controlled by the Philippine government.
When Daniel Cargo and Carlotta Gomez met in the hospital emergency room, there was an immediate attraction between them. Carlotta was one of those subtly sultry young Filipina women with flawless caramel skin, naturally florid lips that never required cosmetic enhancement, and eyes dark as a raven's. Cargo, who was nothing if not direct, had asked what time her shift ended. And Carlotta, just as directly, had replied midnight. When they met outside the hospital that night, they kissed as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do, as if they had known each other and been kissing for a lifetime.
Cargo and Carlotta lived together for eighteen months. Then one night the Philippine National Police ambushed a pickup truck loaded with fossil stone just outside Rutulo. The driver, Danny Cargo, was caught. The other man escaped in the darkness. A month later, Danny Cargo was sentenced to prison for a year.
* * * *
Down a little alleyway off Roxas Boulevard, Cargo found a secondhand clothing store and went in to buy a pair of worn khakis and a cheap black pullover shirt. Those, and a pair of decent cloth deck shoes, cost him four hundred eighty of the twenty-three hundred pesos he had, but it was worth it to Danny Cargo. He did not want to go see Carlotta wearing prison-issue release clothes, which he left for the merchant to sell to someone else.
Back on the boulevard, Cargo boarded the first bus with a destination sign for Quezon City. When he tried to pay his fare, the bus driver stopped him for more money. The fare had increased. The driver looked at him as if he might be trying to cheat the bus company.
In Quezon City an hour later, Cargo got off at Rodriguez Avenue and walked several blocks to St. Luke's Hospital. At the information desk, he inquired whether Carlotta Gomez was on the day shift. A young volunteer intern checked her computer, frowned, and said, “She no longer works here, sir."
Cargo went to the personnel office. A clerk there said, “Miss Gomez left our employ six months ago. I believe she took a job at Makati Medical Center up in Manila."
Back on another bus, now knowing what fare to pay, Cargo returned to Manila. Not being a Philippine citizen, while in prison he had no civil rights, no visiting privileges, and could not send or receive mail. Still, it had not once occurred to him that he might lose track of Carlotta. For some reason, wishful thinking perhaps, he had simply assumed that when he was released, Carlotta would be right where he had left her. Now that he had learned to the contrary, he began to worry about not being able to find her.
The bus driver gave him directions to Armosola Street, where he found the Makati Medical Center. There, he received similar news.
"Carlotta Gomez left our employ three months ago. She was only with us a short time. Someone said that she went to work for a free health clinic somewhere."
As he was being told this, another clerk came up. “Are you a friend of Carli's?"<
br />
"Yes. I used to work with her down at St. Luke's in Quezon City,” Cargo lied easily. “I just got back from an overseas job in Borneo and wanted to say hello."
The clerk who had asked the question studied Cargo for a thoughtful moment, then said, “I think you'll find her at the Mary Magdalene Orphanage Clinic over in the Tondo district. It's near Smoky Mountain."
"Thanks. Which bus line goes there, do you know?"
"None. The government stopped bus service to Tondo. Too much trouble over there: robbery, drugs, prostitutes, everything bad. You'll have to use a jeepney to get there."
Thanking her again, Cargo went outside to look for a jeepney. Cheap, unauthorized public transportation, the jeepney was a contraption built from used Isuzu engines, reconditioned Toyota transmissions, and retreaded tires, attached to a metal-pipe frame with a stretched metal-plate floor that had two facing wooden benches bolted to it. Passengers got on and off at will, usually for a fare of three pesos, about seven cents in U. S. money.
Cargo flagged down five jeepneys before agreeing to pay ten pesos to a pockmarked teenage driver willing to make a run to Tondo. The trip, through increasing late afternoon traffic, took more than an hour, with a dozen riders getting on and off along the way. The closer the jeepney got to the Tondo district, the more poverty Cargo saw. Shanty towns began to crop up here and there until, eventually, there was nothing else: only thrown-together shacks or cardboard hovels, people living under bridges, along abandoned railroad embankments, in makeshift family camps among burned-out buildings. The sewage system was a ditch that was a median down the center of the street.
And in the middle of it all: Smoky Mountain, its greenish-gray haze rising up and wafting out to hover over the destitution like lingering death.
Cargo began to feel slightly nauseated. Part of it was because of the stench starting to reach the jeepney from Smoky Mountain, part because since early that morning he had been riding, riding, riding, and he had eaten nothing except the rice, black beans, and moldy bread fed to the prisoners in the penal camp at daybreak before they went into the bean fields to work. Several times he thought about getting something to eat at one of the dozens of kiosks along the way, whenever the jeepney was stuck in traffic, but he knew the driver would leave him if he did not get back on in time, and he did not want to try looking for another one. If Carlotta was working a day shift, he might miss her. And he wanted desperately to see her.
The Mary Magdalene Orphanage was in a very old white brick building in a cul-de-sac down a side street. Only three stories tall, it nevertheless seemed to soar over the landlocked impoverishment that surrounded it. A single-story wing jutted out from one side of the building like a skillet handle, ending in double doors over which a large red cross was painted. Inside that wing, Cargo found a medical receiving room filled to capacity with young mothers and children waiting to be seen by a doctor or nurse. All of the children, he noted dismally, had cleft palates or harelips.
At a sign-in desk, Cargo said to a very young woman wearing a white summer nun's habit, “Excuse me, Sister, is Carlotta Gomez on shift, do you know?"
"Gee, no, you just missed her,” she smiled up at him. “But you can probably catch her down the street at Rose's. It's a bar where a lot of staff hang out."
Slightly taken aback by her candor, he said, “Ah, okay, Sister, thank you."
The young woman blushed slightly. “I'm not really a sister yet. Just a novitiate."
"Oh.” Cargo hesitated, not knowing what else to say. Finally he managed, “Well, good luck. And thanks anyway.” Quickly, he left.
He found Rose's Bar and Grill in a surprisingly well-preserved storefront building between an open vegetable market and a bicycle repair shop. Inside, the bar was semi-cooled by four ceiling fans that circulated over half a dozen small tables on one side, a bar and bar stools on the other, and an unwalled, open kitchen in the rear. Cargo saw Carlotta at once, sitting at the bar with another woman. He went over to them. Carlotta was raising her glass to drink when he said, “Hello, Carli."
Unnerved at seeing him, she spilled a little of the drink on her hand. “Danny—my god—"
"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you—"
"No, no, it's all right,” she said, taking a paper napkin handed to her by the woman sitting with her. “It's just such a surprise—my God—when did you, ah—"
"This morning.” He smiled at her. “You're a hard lady to find these days."
Carlotta laughed, a little nervously. “I have moved around a bit in the last year. Oh, Danny, this is my friend, Angie O'Brien. She runs the clinic pharmacy. Angie, Danny Cargo. I've told you about him."
Cargo shook hands with a slim, red-haired Anglo woman in khaki slacks and blouse that looked almost military next to Carli's light blue scrubs. After they exchanged greetings, Angie immediately finished her drink and slid off the barstool.
"If it's been a year, you two must have a lot of catching up to do, so I'll run along—"
"Oh, Angie, no, you don't have to leave—"
"I've got some things to do anyway. I'll call you later. Nice to meet you, Danny."
Cargo took Angie's seat at the bar. He and Carlotta awkwardly got through a long moment of silence.
"You look good, Carli,” he finally said.
"You don't,” Carli replied. “You look—I don't know, Danny—tired. Almost gaunt."
He shrugged. “A year in the bean fields up in Palayan will do that.” He took a sip of her drink. Carli held up two fingers for the bartender to bring two fresh ones. “I missed you, Carli,” he said, his voice catching a little. “I missed you a lot."
Reaching out, she put a hand on his. “I tried to visit you, to write you, but—"
"I know. I was a foreign prisoner: no privileges.” He covered her hand with his. “I thought about you every day, every night—"
"Danny, before you say anything else, I have to tell you something.” She glanced down. “I'm with someone else now."
"Oh.” He forced a spiritless smile. Swallowing, he cleared his throat. “Sorry, I, ah—wasn't prepared for that."
Their drinks were served and their hands parted.
"I didn't mean to hurt you, Danny."
"No, no, it's okay,” he was quick to assure her. Now he managed a more sincere smile. “I don't know why I'm even surprised. Great-looking gal like you can't be expected to stay unattached too long. You, uh—you happy?"
"Very."
Cargo raised his glass. “I'm glad for you, Carli. Cheers."
They toasted.
"Do you have any plans?” she asked.
"Most of my plans,” he told her, laughing softly, “involved you. I've got a week to get out of the Philippines or go back to jail for another year. I was hoping to hide out with you until I could get something going and maybe bribe somebody to get the exit visa lifted. I guess my best bet now is to find a way to get out. Trouble is, I've only got about fifty bucks U. S.” Embarrassed, he looked away before asking, “How would you feel about lending an ex-boyfriend some money?"
"I'd do it in a heartbeat, Danny—if I had any to lend."
"But you're still working as a nurse, aren't you? Making good money?"
She shook her head. “The place I work now is a charity clinic, Danny. I get room, board, uniforms, and forty-five U. S. dollars a week. I haven't got a cent in the bank."
Cargo shook his head in dismay. “I don't understand, Carli. How'd you end up in a job like that?"
"I didn't exactly ‘end up’ here,” she replied, her tone stiffening a little. “I made a conscious decision to come to Mary Magdalene.” Carli took a sip of her drink. “Let me tell you a story. When I was at Makati Medical Center, a little girl, probably not even a week old, was left in a dumpster behind the hospital kitchen. A cook found her. She had a cleft palate, so severe that it was almost impossible to feed her; we had to use an eye dropper and it took two hours. The clinic had no facilities to keep her, so they called the offices of severa
l social services. Every place they called referred them to someplace else. No one wanted to accept the responsibility of taking care of a baby girl with a grotesquely deformed face. Finally the clinic's Catholic chaplain called the Mother Superior of Mary Magdalene Orphanage. She told him to send the child to her. I was the nurse selected to take the baby there. The center provided an ambulance. What I saw when I got there—"
Carli's voice broke. Pausing, she took another swallow of her drink. Exhaling deeply, she then continued.
"What I saw when I got there was an orphanage full of children of all ages, from toddlers to teenagers, all with harelips and cleft palates of one sort or another. Some had already undergone surgery and were in the healing stage; others were waiting their turn. There is a cadre of corrective surgeons all over the Pacific Rim who volunteer their services and come to Manila to operate on children like these. It's a fairly simple procedure, actually; most operations take only thirty or forty minutes.
"While I was there delivering the baby, the Mother Superior asked if I knew of any nurses who might, or if I myself might, consider volunteering a few hours a week in the orphanage's clinic. I told her I would ask around. That night I was unable to sleep at all. I kept seeing images of children with horribly deformed mouths, lips, and noses. I was haunted by those images. The next day I left my well-paying job at the clinic and went to work full time at Mary Magdalene. I've been here ever since. And I intend to stay here."
Carli fell silent and neither she nor Cargo spoke for what seemed like a long time. Each of them sipped from their glasses. They exchanged constrained glances.
"I suppose you think I'm a fool,” Carli said at last. “Giving up a well-paying job and a far more comfortable life—"
"I don't think that at all,” Cargo interrupted. Now it was he who touched her hand. “As a matter of fact, I'm proud of you, Carli."
EQMM, December 2008 Page 3