Charlie Chan Is Dead 2

by Jessica Hagedorn

  Strange but it happens.

  Maybe if I start from the very beginning nothing will be lost and it would be okay. I think that if my body were a boat, to describe the ocean around me will mean that nothing will ever sink. Don’t you agree?

  Once there was an island that felt so alone it stopped. Got too involved with folding waves and how nothing happened to end this. It grew deaf and then violent. Then it could not tell the difference between land, flesh, blood and water. Coldness of a flame so far below the peacefulness of the Arctic Circle, it burned itself down to the wick just to spite the watchful eyes of time.

  Wait a minute. That was drama. But this wants to be a story about semblance and difference between the object and subject of desire, the difference between a statue and a play, text and skin, music and motion, or an incredibly long sentence that says nothing about how one brief moment can go on to mean the world for a very long time.

  So.

  Soon the millennium will turn itself over and until then, anything can happen. The placement of the story, in the geometry of inclining angles, becomes strangely fixated into acute and recurrent sections. Where once was science, you distill chance. Whatever the call, you leave messages and send letters from the storm. Hope that if anything, they will find a course of reference beneath the cooling images, between the colorfully televised warnings of hurricanes and psychology. Maps were never useful in defending against tempests.

  So you write if you can, you say:

  wait.

  or

  Dear Miranda,

  nobody told me this world

  would be nothing but islands.

  that you lived on an island around me.

  that you would leave.

  Sign it.

  Once I was walking down Sixteenth Street, heard a nocturne being played from a car at a stoplight and actually looked to see if it was her. It was the same nocturne that I asked her to teach me. Her father was a pianist, grew her around the mathematics of music and so notes would nestle into the corners of her ears. Like painters’ eyes could absorb degrees of paint. She had this ebony baby grand piano and would play it at night after she thought I had gone to sleep. Three thousand miles and still I see her face in the sheets of glass, ceiling, walls of wood and plaster, cups of water, curved up like a glance. I don’t want to think it, but sometimes I feel there is no such thing as land anymore. That maybe there are just boats who believe they are on rivers. Drifting on the same ocean all of the time.

  It’s so late. To some people it is just early enough. The sun is going to reappear within a matter of minutes. It has to. Motion as the habit that surrounds things that happen.

  When I brush my teeth I realize that I am thirty-three years old. It is a very human feeling.

  Run the faucet, then you don’t. In an adult body, walk through the short hallway and into the angles assembled for an immediate future. Turn out the light and lie down.

  It is a long fall into the fact that it is so late and uncomfortable, but you are accustomed to levels of tepidness. When it was too warm you grew fascinations. In these deepening days all you have are those feathers again. And you wander in them, months of curved knives.

  I can’t go to sleep. I don’t have to. So then I will have to watch. You know, the earth is nothing but fire contained within itself by tons of ocean and degrees of cooled thickness, acres of rock. Every plot of land, horizontal then vertical, began as an island. They say that biology began on this planet as reaction to the accident. Survival. A self-taught, half-expected emotion whose logic was not understood until millions of afternoon proved enough to hold into evening.

  I called her three days ago. Saw her a month ago in the post office. Then I saw her at a bus stop. She was standing in a Chinese take-out shop. Then sitting on the dryer in a laundromat. Then I remembered. It was so strange, but after I turned off the shower, parted the curtains and reached for my towel, I thought I saw her walk out of the bathroom. She left the door open.

  RICO

  Peter Bacho

  When I was growing up in Seattle, Rico Divina was the baddest Filipino I ever knew, and I knew them all. Vietnam killed him. Not there, but it killed him nevertheless.

  The last time I really saw him was August 1967, just before the start of my senior year in high school. I never thought those days would seem as distant and foreign as Burma, or Myanmar as some now call it, or even Vietnam. I was almost seventeen then, and Rico was a little more than a year older. We were both just starting to peer beyond the boundaries of the poor neighborhood that tied us down but also protected us and made us strong. It was home to Rico and me, and in my view, he ruled it.

  Like many Filipinos, Rico was short and wiry, but he made up for it by being strong, fast, and clever—traits that earned respect even from the bloods, and they were always the hardest to impress.

  White girls were a lot easier. He made them his specialty, particularly the long-legged blondes with ratted hair and heavy makeup. There were always a few at the weekly dances at the community center on Empire Way, hiding in the shadows of the dimly lit halls, their pale skin and high bouffants shining like beacons in the dark.

  PETER BACHO was born in Seattle in 1950. He is the author of Cebu, Dark Blue Suit, and Nelson’s Run, and one nonfiction work, Boxing in Black and White. Awards include an American Book Award, a Washington Governor’s Writers Award, and the Murray Morgan Prize. Bacho is currently completing his third novel, Entrys.

  Rico would always show up at dances alone, resplendent in his tight black slacks, matching black jacket, and felt hat with a narrow—the bloods called it “stingy”—brim. He also wore pointed Italian boots and a pink shirt with a high collar pressed to a sharp, thin edge. All that was missing was the Cadillac, which he wanted but couldn’t come close to affording. So he arrived by bus, riding it like the prince of public transportation. I knew he didn’t have a car, but it made no difference to the girls he left with, even if they had to pay their own fare.

  According to Rico he was bestowing a favor. They were in it for the danger, he explained.

  Filipinos always hired black bands; they carried a horn section in addition to two guitarists and a drummer. The extra section shrank each musician’s share of the profit. But no matter; this was black music, not white, and the horns made it raw and powerful, something white bands could never do.

  Rico loved the horns and the sweating black angels who played them. They were his rhythm-and-blues heralds, and once they kicked in on a tune, he’d scan the room and choose his partner. He never said anything, just looked at his girl for the night and nodded in the general direction of the dance floor. Invariably she would follow, because she knew who Rico was and she understood the rules. Out on the floor she could move and match the rhythm, and maybe even do it really well, as some white girls who were trying to pass for something else were able to do. But it was Rico’s show, and he was its dark star.

  If the music was slow, he’d hold the girl tight and softly sing the lyrics of lost or impossible love. With the horns setting the mournful mood, he’d roll her rhythmically with his right thigh between her legs, using it like a rudder to guide her, inches off the floor, as he leaned back. I told him once that I could always tell his dance partners; they walked funny, like they’d spent the day on horseback.

  Rico changed with the song. To an upbeat tempo he’d skate halfway across the hall on one leg like James Brown, never a single pomaded hair ever out of place. He’d stop suddenly and do the splits, from which he’d just as suddenly rise to continue his journey to the other side. He defied gravity, just like James.

  And just like James, his most obvious talents weren’t suited for college. He had other skills, other potentials, but by the time public school was through ignoring him, I’m sure he wasn’t sure what they were or even that they were.

  Rico could dance and he could woo white girls. And there was one other thing: the boy could box. He was still an amateur, but the old guys like Tommy sai
d he had “pro” written on the knuckles of both hands. Tommy, a part-time manager, also ran the Masonic Gym in downtown Seattle where Rico worked out. He’d once been a decent pro fighter, but, as Rico had put it to me, that must have been years ago, before electricity and pan-fried pork chops had turned his belly into mush. Fighting was something well-adjusted white folks didn’t understand, but it was what the kids in my neighborhood did. Or even if they didn’t, they thought about it all the time. I was more the thinking type, unlike Rico. As far back as I could remember, my mom had said: Think of your future, get an education, go to college. The future, from the day I began to read, was my own map. For Rico, Tommy was the first one to point him to a future, but the map, it turned out, was Tommy’s.

  The last time I saw Rico, he was honing his skills on a scared-looking Mexican kid in the small ring at the Masonic. I went down there that day because I’d heard a rumor that Rico had enlisted. He’d never said anything to me about it, and I wanted to find out.

  I walked in at the split second Rico threw a perfectly timed right-hand counter at his opponent’s head that, even with headgear and fat sparring gloves, managed to knock the kid hard against the ropes. It was the kind of punch that loosens your eyeballs and rolls them back under your brain. It was even more devastating because Rico threw it just as the Mexican was leaning into his own jab, the effect being doubled because he came onto the punch.

  Rico, the old-timers said, was a natural counterpuncher. It’s a rare gift that the boxing gods give to a few which allows them to attack when they sense an opening created by an opponent’s offensive move. Rico had again displayed his gift; the sound of the punch, his perfect form, the sharp backward snap of the Mexican’s head followed by his body’s collapse into the straining ring ropes, all testified to it. The blurred sequence of events, witnessed by myself and the small circle of Masonic regulars, drew our collective “ooh.”

  We all knew an assassin was at work and, like any good assassin, Rico knew his work wasn’t done. Seeing the Mexican draped helplessly against the ropes with his hands down was too good an invitation. He almost skipped like a schoolgirl to close the distance between himself and his prey, and he held his right hand back a bit more than usual. He had enough torque in that right to launch his victim on a straight trajectory, like one of Henry Aaron’s line drives, to some southern point where Spanish was spoken. I knew it, and evidently Tommy did, too. Quickly, and despite his girth, Tommy scrambled into the ring and slid like a fat snake in what he had to know was a vain attempt to beat Rico to his launching spot. “Stop!” he screamed from his prone position as the right-hand rocket took off.

  “Goddammit!” Tommy muttered a second later, still on the canvas. The Mexican’s torso sagged deep into the taut ropes that strained and flung him face forward onto the canvas. The kid was out even before he landed on his nose and lips, not his landing gear of choice, around which a pool of blood quickly started to form. At the side of his face lay his mouthpiece, knocked loose by the impact.

  Tommy was livid. He just lay there for a second, stunned and furious, looking at the prostrate body; his assistants, armed with smelling salts and towels, were already entering the ring. The old man rose, positioning himself close to Rico and in front of him. “Get outta’ here!” he screamed, flapping his stubby arms for emphasis, slapping them repeatedly against his sides. With each smack, his heavy tits shook more than a stripper’s. I started to giggle; he looked like he was trying to fly.

  “You got it,” Rico said calmly as he turned to go.

  “And don’t come back,” Tommy added.

  “Got that too,” Rico said as he climbed between the ring ropes. He paused, one leg in the ring, the other out, and turned toward Tommy. “Too much garlic in that last batch of chops,” Rico said in the same flat tone. “Smell like a gypsy queen.”

  “You’re outta’ here!” Tommy screamed, stung by the truth.

  Rico started to walk toward the dressing room. “Startin’ to look like one too, fatso,” he said without looking back, but loud enough to be heard.

  It wasn’t the first time Tommy had yelled at Rico for losing control, for fighting instead of sparring. But I thought this really might be it—not because Tommy wouldn’t take him back, a fight manager almost never turns away a potential moneymaker, and Tommy loved my friend’s talent more than he loved pork chops—but because Rico himself had decided it was over. He wanted to leave with a bang. That was his way.

  I wondered what he’d have to say as I followed him back to the dressing room. I opened the door slowly and saw him in the dim light, sitting on a stool, slumped in front of his locker. The cool of the room collided with the heat from his body, creating steam that covered him like morning fog. It was a little eerie. I stood by the door, waiting for him to turn and speak or do something to bring us back to more familiar terrain.

  Finally, he looked over his shoulder and nodded at me. It wasn’t much of a sign, but it was enough for the moment. “Goin’ up in smoke, buddy,” I said, trying to sound steady.

  Rico paused and looked at himself. He chuckled. “Sure am,” he said.

  “What happened?”

  “Fucker uppercut me,” he said, “but Tommy didn’t do shit. He knows the rules for sparring. Break clean. No cheap shots. Goddam Tommy. Can’t count on him for nothin’.” Rico pointed to a discolored spot on his neck. “That fucker nailed me,” he said angrily. “He wanted to fight, so I fought. Nailed him back, too. Stapled his face to the floor.”

  I nodded. Rico laughed at the thought. The laugh almost put me at ease. I raised the question that had brought me to the gym in the first place. “I heard, man,” I said quietly. “True story?”

  There was no answer.

  “Your mom called my mom and she don’t want you to . . .”

  Rico interrupted me, staring at the floor as he spoke. “Can’t help it,” he said. “Got nothin’ goin’ here.”

  It was the answer I didn’t want to hear. I glanced around the room looking for someplace to sit. I felt heavy, like a bunch of men each the size of Buddha had jumped on my back and stayed there. I spotted a bench across the room and walked toward it.

  “Damn,” I said to myself as I sat down and buried my face in my hands. I’d known a lot of Filipinos from the neighborhood. Most were drafted; some enlisted. Most went to Vietnam. Some returned; others didn’t. I knew our time was coming. That’s just the way it was, and I accepted it. We all did. In that sense, we were like our fathers and uncles who had fought in Europe or in the Pacific—and if they were lifers, in Korea, too. Like them, we asked no questions; couldn’t even think of one to ask, much less expect an answer. For us, Vietnam had no moral ambiguities; the government called, and we went. Simple as that.

  We vaguely hated communism, although we didn’t know why. Fats Domino/the domino theory; knew one/heard about the other. Maybe related, but we weren’t sure how. I didn’t learn until much later that boys from poor neighborhoods like ours carried the flag into dangerous places for powerful, arrogant, and profoundly foolish old white men. But that was later. At sixteen I thought I’d go, too. I just wanted Rico to wait for us to do it together.

  “Had to, Buddy,” he said, using my nickname and interrupting my morose reverie. “Got no school. Got no job. Ain’t colored, so I ain’t got no black power let-your-hair-grow-out-don’t-conk-it shit.” I looked at him blankly. “What we got?” Rico asked angrily, referring to Filipinos in general and himself in particular. He got that way sometimes when he talked about his future, the one he was sure he didn’t have. Rico stared at me straight and hard.

  I scratched my head and scrambled; I wanted to throw a curve and back him off. “White girls,” I finally said. “ ’Specially blondes, tall long-legged ones.”

  Rico’s laugh broke the momentum I’d thought was building to an uncomfortable point. “Yeah,” he said, grinning. “Devil bitches, but I love ’em. Most bloods don’t mess with ’em now, ’ceptin Sammy Davis.” He smirked, then shrugg
ed. “Leaves more for me,” he said finally.

  I felt confident enough to try to turn it serious again.

  “Rico,” I said quietly. “Don’t go, at least not yet. There’s ways . . . you know, deferments. White guys do it all the time. Like marriage . . .”

  He shook his head no and looked at me like I’d lost it.

  “Like college . . .” I said, trying again. I knew I was grasping, and I knew he knew.

  He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, like I’m a perfect candidate, a goddam summa, whatever.”

  I was making no points and was getting a little desperate. “Your mom,” I blurted.

  That hit home. He gave me no quick answer. “I love her,” he said finally. “But I’m eighteen, I’m signed, and I’m gone. The Marines own my butt now, not Mama.”

  So it was over. I knew then he’d closed the matter before I’d even had the chance to open it. I felt the Buddhas get heavier, and I sagged just a bit more.

  Rico sensed this and tried his best to cheer me up. He smiled. “Hey, man, every Flip wants a gunfight,” he said with bravado. “You know, our heroic dick-expandin’ tradition, more shit to impress the ladies with and tell our kids and grandkids.” His effort to cheer me didn’t work. Undeterred, he tried another route. “I thought about leavin’ and what I’d leave you,” he said solemnly as he reached into his training bag. He found what he was looking for and handed it to me; it was a small black book. I looked at the book and reached to take it.

  “Man, what’s this?”

  Rico feigned surprise. “Yo’ mama raise you in a cave or somethin’? That book there’s my address book—full of white girls, ’specially blondes. Ain’t gonna be needin’ it where I’m goin’. Gettin’ me a new one anyway, full of Vietnamese writin’ and female Vietnamese names.” He mimed a drum roll with his hands. “I’m changin’ my taste,” he said. “Expandin’ my horizons to find new pussy, goin’ like Columbus where no Flip’s ever been . . .”