1974

by Karen Tei Yamashita

  We put the labor of canning and picking together because that’s how we work. Move up the coast from the Imperial Valley on the Mexico border to the Wenatchee next to Canada, harvesting every fruit and vegetable along the way. You see us coming. A big army of hands moving north. From there, we ship out of Seattle to harvest the sea. Before I ship out in 1936, I’m in a Chinatown restaurant when I see Placido Patron take out his pistol and shoot Virgil Duyungan and Aurelio Simon. Placido’s an Alaskero contractor, and he don’t believe there’s enough work to go around if Virgil continues to do our union work. You always got your own people to take out a gun for money. That’s another lesson.

  Five years later, in 1939, back in Stockton, we take on asparagus, celery, brussels sprouts, and garlic, and we win something. Then in 1948, we go for asparagus again.

  And then in 1965, we take on grapes. First we win in Coachella. Then we go to Delano. This time in Delano, we gonna get a real union contract. We don’t call our union Filipino, but that’s what we are. So our union rep, Larry Itliong, talks to the Mexicans and asks, what gives? Dolores Huerta says yes, we strike. Helen Chavez says yes, we strike. All the women strike. What makes men men are women. Finally, Cesar Chavez comes to Filipino Hall, and the rest is history. Maybe that’s the last lesson. You could be starting something someone else has to finish. And maybe it is never finished. And maybe down the road they forget everything. Who started it? Why did it start in the first place?

  Later, our union leader, Philip Vera Cruz, comes into the kitchen. I make him his coffee like he likes it, very black. Then he spoons in the sugar and stirs. We sit outside staring into Sixto’s garden and talk.

  I say, “Now that Larry left, it’s not the same.”

  “Yeah. Maybe we argued, but I miss him.”

  “Those were the days I’m doing scout work. We get the numbers on the train cars going north, then Fred and I take his beat-up Rambler and chase them up the 1-5. Meet them at the pass going slow and take turns with a shotgun, shooting out the generator lines.” I cock my imaginary rifle. “Blam! Blam!”

  Phil shakes his head. “Grapes went over the high Sierras and arrived stone frozen.”

  “And how about Rudy doing all kind of undercover work. Never got caught except over there at Terra Bella.”

  “Never got caught that time either.” We both laugh, remembering.

  I’m in the car telling Fred to slow down and pick up Rudy. Rudy’s standing barefoot in the same booth where he phones us his SOS. See, he’s lost his shoes to hide his tracks. But Fred sees the cops on the other side. “The union can’t be involved,” he says, so he’s got to drive through. When we make the U-turn back, the cops have Rudy, so we leave. Later we find out, Rudy gets away. What’s Rudy’s story? He’s hitching a ride and gets picked up and propositioned by one fag, so he gets in a fight. His shoes? Well, the guy takes his shoes so Rudy can’t chase him down. Cops believe Rudy’s story and give him his ride home to Bakersfield. Can you believe it? Next day, Terra Bella vines wilting in the sun. All the water lines to the pumps destroyed by acid. Goddamn coincidence.

  I say to Phil, “Those days are over. After Larry, you the last one to fight. Keep the old spirit.”

  “Larry made a big sacrifice. He had his reasons for leaving.”

  “But look what happened. You win Delano but lose Salinas.”

  “Who’s the real loser? UFW? Teamsters? No.” Phil shakes his head. “It’s the workers.” He looks tired.

  “And Cesar. He went away too.”

  “Took the headquarters to La Paz.”

  I nod. “Boondocks. In the Philippines, guerillas go into the mountains, but this one’s some mountain retreat. If I were a saint, I go up there, too.”

  “No, Felix.” We look at Sixto’s garden and the dead terrain of Forty Acres. Must be ninety-five degrees in the shade. “We are not saints.” Phil and I laugh.

  I say, “How come you still here?”

  “Someone had to stay. Build this Agbayani.”

  “One day the job is finished.”

  “One day.”

  The next day, Macario pulls up with his station wagon. Taking his volunteers back up the 1-5 to San Francisco. I look in, and there’s a space for me. “Maybe I better go with you,” I say.

  Macario says, “Maybe.”

  “Go back to my roots.”

  “Thought you said your roots are here in Delano.”

  “This my grass roots. I-Hotel my brick roots.”

  “O.K., Felix, hop in.”

  Abra comes out with my old suitcase. “You forget this?”

  Macario looks at Abra and shakes his head.

  Kids think they know something. They don’t know nothing. If I leave it to them, my brick roots come down one by one. I get in the car and say, “Maybe I got this recipe.”

  Macario asks, “Can it kill you?”

  “If you greedy, eventually.”

  “That’s the one we want.”

  2: Halo-Halo

  “Manong.” The kid jumps out. “Take my seat in front.” He holds the door open for me. When I get treated like this? I got to take advantage. Macario turns to me from his driver’s seat. “Gonna ride shotgun?”

  “Why not? I’m the only one can shoot a gun.”

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  I look at Macario, but don’t say nothing. Kids think they preparing for the revolution. O.K., prepare, but I been here before. In fact, in this Chevy wagon chasing the heat up 1-5. History is repeating itself. But this is a different Macario.

  “What’s it been?” I ask. “Maybe I know you now five years?”

  “Remember? I came down to Delano in a caravan with Pete Velasco. We brought a load of provisions for the strike.”

  “Ha! Velasco’s Fiasco.” I laugh. “How many times that truck broke down?”

  “Met you at Filipino Hall. You were in the kitchen.”

  “Adding water to the soup. How long I’m waiting for provisions? Depend on you guys, we gonna starve.”

  “You always had food from that beautiful garden.”

  “I’m talking rice. Meat.”

  “Pete managed to keep some big fish on ice.”

  “How much ice left? Nothing but water when you arrive. Ha! I remember now. You struggling in with the cooler full of water.” I demonstrate him stumbling in. “I open the cooler up and pull the fish out. Leave you there with a hundred pounds of sloshing water.” I slap my knees. “Ha ha!”

  “Shit, I got all wet.”

  “Stinking fish water.”

  “But that fish you made was good.”

  “Bulonglong style. I got the recipe from Johnny Bulonglong himself. You too young to remember. Used to be Ilocano owned the Golden Gate, across from the hotel.”

  “Felix, I got a favor to ask.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t talk about food yet. We just got in the car.”

  “Don’t worry. I fill this car up with the aroma of food. You don’t need to stop to eat never.”

  Everyone’s groaning in the backseat.

  “O.K. O.K.” I’m quiet for a long time. But what we gonna talk about? I think about Macario, just a curious college kid come to check us out. That was back in 1968. That year we getting national attention for the grape boycott. Then Cesar stops eating. He’s going to fast like Mahatma K. Gandhi. Suddenly Delano looks like India. Farmworkers like Indian people under the imperial thumb of the Great Encyclopedia Britannica. That’s the stuff. The media eats it up.

  “Did you come to Delano before or after RFK?” I ask.

  “After. He was already dead. Assassinated in L.A.”

  “Robert and Ethel try my soup. Thin soup with handmade bread. That’s how Cesar breaks his fast.”

  “Felix.”

  “Thin vegetable soup. Cesar is vegetarian.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “What? I no lie. Strict vegetarian. No dairy even. Guy like that.”

  “How come we talking food a
gain?”

  “What’s the problem? You not vegetarian.”

  Grumbling.

  I change the subject. After all, I’m a peaceful guy. Just like Cesar. “That’s not the first time you come to Delano. Hey,” I remember, “next year you come with Ben San Pablo.”

  “Ben came with me to get Cesar’s endorsement for the strike at Berkeley.”

  “Oh yeah, you students striking too. What was that about?”

  “To get a Third World college.”

  “You get your college?”

  “No. That’s when I quit to work in the community.”

  I nod. I meet them all. Macario, Ben, Abra, Olivia, Ria. Kids are looking for something they can’t find. Hotel’s a magnet for them. Like Sixto’s garden. Digging and sweating. I say, “That time in Delano you work in the Pink House and stay at Philip Vera Cruz’s place in Richgrove.”

  “Phil talks with Ben and me all night, every night.”

  “I know the talk,” I say. “Phil can get into it. Smart kids like you and Ben.”

  “Some nights I think you were there, too?” He’s asking.

  “What time I got for philosophy? You forget I’m the cook. Got to get up around three a.m. Fix grub by four a.m. for the first contingent of pickets. Besides, Phil got that goddamn dog Aguinaldo, never stops barking. All night. Barking. Barking. Who can get any sleep?” I slap Macario’s knee. “That’s why you have to talk all night.”

  “Ben and Phil did all the talking. Mostly I listened.”

  I think, that’s Macario. Always listening. That’s his talent.

  “Those were the nights.”

  Maybe Ben’s the brainy one. Thinks and writes what he thinks. Phil’s like that too. But me, I got to cook. Otherwise I can’t think. Maybe Macario’s got to cook too. Could be. I say, “Now you and Ben got to practice what you talk. Like I say, ‘proof of the pudding.’”

  Macario remembers, “Then we got a call. Had to rush back to the hotel because of the fire.”

  “That’s right. I knew Pio Rosete, one of the guys who died in the fire. What you think? To this day, I know it was arson.”

  “Too much of a coincidence. Fire’s the night before Solomon’s supposed to sign a new lease agreement. Next day, he won’t sign.”

  Yeah, I make a quick decision and take the ride back with the kids. Phil comes too, but he’s already promised. He’s going to teach a class at Berkeley. Make some speeches for the UFW. I’m just thinking it’s time to see my old home before it burns down completely. I go to San Francisco, check into the I-Hotel just like old times, and for a while, I never leave. I get a room on the second floor. Not the burnt end. On that side, it’s all charred black. Whole place smells like smoke. Somebody thinks they saw Pio’s ghost. Maybe it’s just soot rising. Solomon says the place is a firetrap. Gives us three months to vacate.

  About a month later, it’s April 18 at 5:12 in the foggy morning, middle of Union Square. What are we doing at this goddamn hour? Mayor Alioto is about to start his Earthquake Party, sixty-three years after the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake. How many thousand San Franciscans there to feel the kick-off? This is one crazy city.

  But suddenly, there’s Macario and how many others rushing the podium. They pull out their banners: Save the I-Hotel! Fight the Eviction of Elderly Tenants! Shame on you, Simon Solomon!

  At precisely 5:12 a.m. Macario speaks: Mayor Alioto and the people of San Francisco. The Great Earthquake destroyed our city. It destroyed all of Chinatown, but we Asian Americans labored to rebuild this great city. Now another kind of earthquake seeks again to destroy our communities and to replace our homes and neighborhoods with financial buildings and parking lots for the rich . . .

  That’s the mayor’s Earthquake Party.

  I admit. I’m surprised. Life takes that kind of turn. A clumsy kid who just listens suddenly gets some guts. Spits out the cork in his throat. Maybe Phil’s thunder in his chest makes its way out.

  “Tell me the truth.” I say to Macario. “What you come to Delano for? Searching for something?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “First time, didn’t you have a girlfriend? What happened?”

  “Didn’t work out.”

  “She was a nice girl. Smart, too.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What was her name? I forget her name.”

  “So did I.”

  “You forget her name? I never forget my girlfriend’s name.”

  “O.K., Felix. You can talk about food again.”

  “Food and women. It’s all the same thing.”

  Back in the day, I know Lucy. Of course, Lucy is not the only one. I know Nancy, Mabel, Dorothy, Betty, Doris, Lilly, Marilyn, Greta. I got them waiting in every town up and down the Pacific coast. You ask anybody who knows. Anywhere there’s dancing, I got my special partner waiting. I buy up all her tickets for the evening, and we make the floor our floor and the night our night.

  Old Frankie and I, we reminisce about the old days. I say, “You remember Lucy?”

  “Oh yeah,” he smiles big.

  “She was my girl.”

  “Nah, Felix, I got to be honest with you after all these years. She was my girl.”

  “Frankie, I’m talking about Lucy Lightning over at Danceland. I could drive in from Delano or maybe Coachella on the weekend, and she would be waiting. Every other fellow had to fall away.”

  “That’s Lucy. You come in on Saturdays as usual.”

  “As usual.”

  “So you warm her up. I come in on Sundays.”

  “Listen. After we finish on Saturdays, she got to get new shoes. She got to observe Sunday as a day of rest.”

  “I tell you, Felix. You just make the floor smooth for me.”

  “When I arrive, the crowd on that dance floor parts for me, and Lucy is right there walking to me with her open arms.”

  “On Sunday, I meet Lucy at Pershing Square, and we stroll around. I buy her ice cream at the soda fountain, then we make our entrance at Danceland.”

  Now I know Frankie’s lying. Mostly because he’s still alive and he’s still wearing the same suit without evidence of ever being roughed up, or better yet, shot. How many fights I get in to keep company with Lucy? Those days, a Pinoy walk down the street with a white woman has to be ready with some bravado. Maybe Frankie had himself a pistol. Oh yeah. I can believe it. But the ice cream soda fountain thing, no way. I romanced my Lucy with halo-halo.

  I take my time with Frankie. Explain about the halo-halo. Give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, Frankie’s been around the block more than once. Course these days, all we doing is circling it. He’s got his stories. I got mine.

  O.K., most tropical fruits not available at the time. But I don’t go with no can of fruit cocktail. Substitute succulent peaches for mangoes. Peeled grapes for macapuna. I make the sweet beans and corn myself. Maybe banana. A dollop of tapioca. Squares of lime Jell-O. Shaved ice. Make it rich with thick sweet cream. Top it off with a maraschino cherry. You make it to the bottom of the parfait glass, could be a surprise of rum or brandy.

  Frankie says, “Felix, we talking women or food? Lucy or halo-halo?”

  “All the same thing. When I think about those dancing days, I think halo-halo.”

  Frankie shakes his head. “You come up to my room. I show you something.”

  I follow Frankie upstairs. His room’s same like mine, just down the hall. Narrow two-by-four gets you room for a single bed, chest of drawers, standing closet, little sink. You get your window overlooking Jackson or Kearny or maybe the alley on the backside. We paying fifty dollars a month. What you expect?

  Frankie takes off his jacket and adjusts it on a hanger behind his door. Then he sets his hat on a hook up on the wall. He rolls up his sleeves and pulls out a small suitcase from under the bed. I sit in the chair. Frankie sits on the bed. Suitcase is filled with envelopes and postcards with foreign stamps.

  “Love letters?” I ask.

  “Look how
many,” he says. “I got another suitcase filled.”

  He fingers through the old papers, some of them going yellow. Pretty soon I see what he’s looking for, but his eyes are bad. He misses it and gets down to pull up the second suitcase. While he’s busy going through that one, I pick up some postcards and read them. “Francisco,” I read. “Since when you called Francisco?”

  He takes a close look. “See, this one signed Maria Carmen.” He points to the picture on the other side. “Rio de Janeiro. Sugar Loaf.”

  “What’s this say?” I ask.

  “She writes to me in Portuguese. ‘Beijos,’” he reads. “Means, you know.” He smiles and puckers up. He closes his eyes like he’s remembering. But then he says, “But that’s not the one.” He throws the card back into the pile and continues to rifle through another stack.

  When he’s not looking, I tug out the envelope that has the return address on Temple Street in Los Angeles. You can’t mistake the letters, L. L., in curlicues. I slip the envelope into my jacket.

  I pick up another postcard. “You go to Macao? I was there too.” I pick through the stacks. There’re cards and envelopes from every port city in the world. Nagasaki. Hong Kong. Singapore. Madras. Karachi. Cape Town. Lisbon. New York. Montevideo. Lima. Honolulu. Brisbane. To name a few. Talk about circumnavigation.

  I stick around a bit more while Frankie gets lost in his love letters. Spread out all over his bed. Pretty soon I think he forgets why he invited me up. He’s reading them one by one like it was yesterday. I make my quiet exit with Lucy Lightning. I don’t know why I take Frankie’s letter. Can’t be much to it. Lucy don’t have much education. Poor Okie girl rides in on a jalopy out of the Dust Bowl. Guys like Frankie spend their days washing dishes and busing tables on the ocean, got a girl in every port and nothing left but two suitcases of correspondence to prove it. I don’t know why.

  Macario nudges me. I’m back in the car. “You asleep?”