1974

by Karen Tei Yamashita

  Macario’s impressed.

  “You know John died couple years back, 1968. You think that’s ironic? We start the grape strike, and he dies. All the time, Pinoys, Mexicans, we were there too. We were there first, before the Okies and the Arkies. Segregated camps, but still there. Nothing changes for us.”

  By the third day, Lee’s cousin is getting anxious. Even though I’m helping him, Samoans eating multiply two times three. And then we all chowing down too, after chasing wild boar. And nothing to show for. Chasing is an exaggeration. How fast can these guys run? Samoans run in slow motion with thunder feet. Old guys not far behind. Bunch of retired savages. I quit after the first night on the grounds I’m the cook. But then, I got to hear the stories.

  “Felix, you missing everything.”

  “So Claudio, he’s got the idea we climb into the trees, and sure enough, we can hear them grunting around, and got an entire herd of them, right there under him.”

  “So I come around other side, getting ready. How close am I? Really close. But then, what the fuck! Claudio comes crashing down.”

  “Lucky for him the branch is slow falling. Otherwise he got one broken head.”

  “But goddamn! Those piggies scatter, bunch of squealing rats.”

  Alfred says, “And I see these manongs with handmade spears going in every which direction. Incredible scene, man.”

  “Shiiit,” Claudio shakes his head guiltily. “We lost our chance.”

  “What about the traps?”

  “They must be working.”

  “What you catch?”

  “Raccoon.”

  Finally, the game is up. Fish and Game comes around. “You guys have a hunting license?” he asks.

  “See this tattoo?” one of the Samoans asks. “This is my hunting license.”

  “That’s a nice tattoo,” Fish and Game says.

  Next day, Macario and Alfred do some research. Drive up to a meat processing plant just outside Salinas proper. Make the guys choose the pigs. Haggle over the weight. Pinch the price. Pigs are clean, pink. No hair. No blood. Blue FDA stamp of approval. Tuck them in ice back of the truck and use them for counterweight. Throw in one of those decorative California banana trees never seen a banana. Throw in the bamboo spears that can double as spits. Stop for rocks. I pat Pio on the top of his box. Back of the Chevy, the butcher’s crew’s got their heads tossed in crooked directions. Everybody snoring.

  Back at the I-Hotel, roasting crews are getting anxious. “Shit. We think you never coming back. Run off with fifty bucks and get drunk.”

  “We did that too.”

  “Hey, man,” Alfred says. “We went hunting.”

  Crew examines the pigs. “Hunting for a butcher shop?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Roasting crews haul off their respective pigs to separate kitchens. Something going on about the basting sauces. It’s all top secret.

  I can’t be involved. I carry Pio upstairs and put him on my chair. I can’t remember when I fall into my bed.

  It doesn’t matter because it seems like it’s five minutes, and someone pounding on my door. “Felix! Wake up!” It’s Alfred. “Guys said I got to bring you over to the site. You got to supervise, you know, the imu.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Three a.m.”

  “Go away.”

  “Pit’s dug. I got a shitload of wood back of the truck.”

  I remember Pio on the chair. “Goddamn,” I say. “Who’s idea was this?” I never take off my clothes anyway. Roll off the bed. “Come on,” I say to Pio. “Let’s go.”

  Outside, it’s night. Street’s dead. Usual Barbary Coast neons. In the truck, I ask Alfred, “Where’s the pit?”

  “We found the perfect location.”

  “Golden Gate Park?” I speculate.

  “Couldn’t get a permit for a fire there.” Alfred shakes his head. “First, we thought about an open lot in the Western Addition, but it’s not clandestine enough.” He pulls the truck up under the hacked-off end of the Embarcadero Freeway. “This,” he points into the dark freeway underbelly, “is public no-man’s land. Hoboville. Skidrow guys always warming up around cans of burning material. Who’s gonna notice one more fire?”

  Out of the dark, the imu roasting crew emerges and runs off with all the wood on the truck. They got the rocks in the pit and the wood stacked up like a Boy Scout teepee. Pour a gallon of lighter fluid all over everything. “Watch out! Stand back!” Match gets tossed in and whooomp! That’s no hobo fire. Smoke is curling around the concrete ceiling, mixing in with the fog. Except for the smell, could be fog. Joining the cat feet.

  Everybody standing around that pit with their eyes on fire.

  How many hours later, you got perfect oven conditions? Someone takes a machete to the banana tree. Lines the pit. Sets the hot rocks inside the pig carcass.

  “Wait,” I say. I run to the truck and open up Pio’s box. Dip my hand into his ashes and grab a handful. Run back.

  “What’s that?”

  “Special pepper and herb seasoning,” I say. “Trust me.” I sprinkle it into the carcass with the rocks.

  “Is this cheating?” Someone asks.

  “No way,” I say. “I do the same for the spitters.”

  Wrap up the pig in leaves and wire and set it into the imu. Bury everything. By then, the sun’s up, but crew’s buried too, inside their sleeping bags around the imu. Ready to catch some Zs.

  But that’s when the spit crew arrives.

  “Hey, where you figure they buried their pig?”

  “Can’t you tell? Over there.” Points to the sleeping bags. “They circling it like covered wagons.”

  They kick the guys in the sleeping bags and open their beers. “Hey,” they yell. “Surf’s up!”

  Some in the bags roll over, but others get up and like to punch the daylights out for some nightlight.

  “O.K. O.K. Calm down. Go back to bed.”

  Spit operation is simple. Pretty much cement blocks and two empty quart-sized cans. Dent the cans to make two rests for the bamboo spit. Pull the spit through the pig. Get your coals white hot. Prop the spit up on the cans on the blocks and turn. Keep turning and turning.

  For my part, spit pig gets the same pepper and herb treatment. I slap my hands together, and Pio flies around the pig like pixie dust.

  Macario arrives around ten a.m. He smells the air and says, “I’ve seen it on the way. The Tenderloin is emptying out, and every hobo is walking in this direction.”

  Band arrives. Guitars, ukuleles, banjos, violins, flutes, accordions, and drums. Once they get going, they never stop for nothing. One guy can leave to eat, but someone always replaces him. And Frankie’s already managed to find a girl to dance with.

  The ACC is busy pulling a banner over the side of the freeway. Says: Celebrate the Rise of the I-Hotel!

  “Where’s it rising?” I ask.

  “Don’t you get it? Like a phoenix from the ashes.”

  Not to be outdone, the CPA pulls another banner over the other side of the freeway. Liberate the Holiday Inn for Low-Income Housing! Long Live the I-Hotel!

  I see Abra. She makes these blue ribbon pins for the three impartial judges and pins the damn badges on them like this is going to be their finest moment. It says: Save the I-Hotel Roast Pig Judge. Got to be some kind of joke. She winks at me.

  Meanwhile, Julio comes by with a wad of cash and a notebook. “Pit or spit?” he offers. “You might as well put in the pool like everyone else.”

  “What are the odds?”

  “No odds. How we gonna know a thing like that? Split up the winnings with the winners.” He nudges me. “Come on Felix, your opinion counts. If someone knows it, it might help one side of the pot. Your opinion might be the odds.”

  “Are you kidding?” I wave him away. “What I got to do with that kind of trouble?”

  Now that they got the badges of courage, I can see the judges are in trouble. Everybody going up to them and
toasting them like the grooms in some wedding. “Hey, Jack,” someone says. “Here’s to pit cooking!”

  “Jack,” someone else says, “You drink to pit, you got to drink to spit.”

  “Fair is fair.” Another toast.

  “Hey, Ken! Looks like you need a drink, warm up those taste buds.”

  By the time Ken is looking very happy, Julio even tries to get him to join the pool.

  “Julio,” I say. “Ken’s a judge. He can’t be in the pool. It’s a conflict of interest.”

  “What’s the conflict? Either he wins or loses, depending.”

  “That’s right,” Ken agrees. “Depending.”

  I shake my head. Ken is a student at Boalt Hall, knows how to argue all the sides. So I can already tell he’s never gonna be a real judge. Real judge’s got to go with blind truth, not various possible truths. “Hey,” I pull Ken over, “you wanna hear some stories about this guy?” I point to Julio. “How many years he makes it as a bookie?”

  “I always come through for you, Felix.” Julio gives me his smile.

  “I met you first time over at La Plantera,” I say.

  “Oh yeah. Benny was the bartender. Kept that bar polished like he owned it.”

  “He did.”

  “Downstairs was where the action was. Gambling twenty-four hours.”

  “Max Duling was always there. Remember?”

  “Card hustler,” I explain to Ken.

  Julio expands. Points to his eyes. “Max Duling was cross-eyed. You looking at his eyes, you don’t know where he’s looking, but his hands were moving fast.”

  “You remember the red light?”

  “Upstairs, Benny had a button on the bar. If the cops come, he pushes it. Downstairs we quick put away our money and the cards. When the cops come down, all they find is a bunch of men watching boxing movies on an old projector.”

  “That’s how come I met you.”

  “That’s right. I took your bet on the Bolo Puncher that very night. The movie convinced you. You see?” He nods to Ken. “I make him a killing.”

  I say to Ken as I point to Julio laughing, “Don’t trust him.”

  Suddenly, there’s a commotion. Looks like the bamboo spit is on fire. Guys running around frantically trying to save the pig. Running with the spit and the two-hundred-pound pig this way and that. Red cinders flying everywhere. I see it before it happens. Cinders rain on the sleeping bags, and a couple catch fire. So now we got a pig and two sleeping bags on fire. We pull the kids out of the bags. Everybody’s yelling.

  “Water. Where’s the water?”

  “How come we got a fire going and no water?”

  “Try beer!”

  “Try your fucking pee!”

  Someone thinks they can take another sleeping bag and snuff out the pig fire, but now it’s on fire too. Fire’s flying up.

  The phoenix from the ashes banner catches fire and flies off into the street. I see the kids running around the street stomping out the new pieces of fire.

  Now you can hear the sirens coming our way. When the fire truck gets here, the fire fighters run out. They’re all decked out in their heaviest uniforms, ready for a conflagration. A tribute to Coit Tower. They laugh, but the spit crew is yelling. “Save our pig! Save our pig!” So they hose it down.

  I go over to examine the pig. Steam is coming up all around. You would think it would be soggy, but actually the steam helps.

  The spit crew is hovering over their pig, holding their hearts like they the fathers at the end of a long, tough labor. Claudio hands me a knife, and I make a critical incision. I announce like the doctor on the scene, “Skin is still crispy. Maybe this is an improvement. You got the effect of the imu without the imu.”

  “It’s done!” someone yells.

  “We did it!” The spit crew is dancing around like the fire was their idea.

  Somebody in the back says, “I think Felix is saying it’s edible.”

  Meanwhile Team Pit is unearthing their baby. They pull back the banana leaves, and already I know. The bones have collapsed inside the meat. It’s that tender. Hard to say it has the look of a pig. Even the head has disintegrated. As a chef, I’d say poor presentation, but what the heck. “Very tender,” I say.

  I get up, and everyone is dancing around me. The firefighters are eating. The Samoans are eating. The judges are too drunk to eat. For some reason the band never stops playing. Like it’s the Titanic. The musicians just back away from the fire and keep playing. Play through the whole goddamn fiasco. Jubilant fiasco. I see Frankie over there dancing with Abra. Abra’s twins dancing too. Alfred dancing with Macario.

  I watch the pork roast slip into hungry mouths. See the happy crunch of the burnt skin and the flaked feathers of meat slip away. Shiny grease coating every lip. Pio’s magic making them remember. Remember every goddamn song they ever heard or sang in their lives. And they will sing and sing and sing until the night falls and the fog creeps back under the Embarcadero.

  4: Empty Soup

  This particular year Abra’s twins are maybe five years old. After you get to be my age, you start counting again. My case, it’s Abra’s twins keeping count. Year number five and we still sitting tight in the I-Hotel. Boy is Emilio. Girl is Andrea. For Abra, it’s all about history: Emilio Aguinaldo and Andres Bonifacio. I call them Emil and Andie. It’s a twin life. Those two are never apart. Stuck together like some kind of glue. Got to do everything together. Get everything equal. Wake, eat, play, sleep together. Sometimes they’re hugging. Sometimes they’re fighting. You see them rolling around in the corridor like cat and dog. I yell, “Andie! Emil! I got something for you.”

  And just like the revolutionary generals they are, they get up to attention and run down to me. By now, they know I got some treat for them. This is proof that the cook is the most powerful personage in the nation.

  Abra says, “You’ve got to stop it, Felix. They think they can get rewarded for fighting.”

  “After five years of life, they pretty damn smart. Who gets reward for being good?”

  “Seriously, Felix.”

  “Look,” I say. “They fight because they’re hungry. Maybe starving. Get it? Remember what Imelda said. ‘Let them eat cake.’”

  “Felix, I don’t think it was her who said it.”

  “Trust me. I’m there when she says it.”

  “Serving her cake in the Malacañang I suppose.”

  “Chocolate cheesecake. My recipe, but now the infamous Imelda cake.”

  “That’s not your recipe. That’s my mom’s.”

  “But where did your mom get it?”

  “Ladies’ Home Journal, I bet.”

  “That’s right! How long your mother reads the Journal?”

  “How should I know? She was a Filipino war bride.”

  “I been reading it since Jane Addams was a columnist.”

  “You are so full of shit.”

  “If I could vote at the time, I vote for women to vote.” I pause and look Abra in the eyes. “Abra, I got to ask you a personal question.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Are you a feminist?”

  “Is this a trick question?”

  “All questions can trick you.”

  “What do you mean by feminist?”

  “That’s what I want to know.”

  “Can we talk about this another time?”

  “My days are numbered.”

  “How many days you got?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” I sigh.

  She smiles. It’s a beautiful smile. How can you resist?

  “I got a plan,” I tell her.

  “What’s that?”

  “I take out a million-dollar life insurance plan, and we run away and get married. We have the best honeymoon. I make you the Imelda cake and anything else you love to eat. Then, I die happy. Leave you and the twins with all the money.”

  “Felix, you’re gonna live forever.”

  “Don’t forget I make you this once
-in-a-lifetime offer.”

  “Crazy manong.”

  “You hear from your mother? Where is she?”

  “In Cebu.”

  “What does she say?”

  “I can’t talk to her anymore. Remember?”

  Now I remember. Abra’s father dies last year. Abra goes with her mother and her little brother back to Cebu. Takes the father’s ashes. What happens? Martial Law. Tanks coming down the streets. Mother and brother stay in Cebu, but Abra has to come home to her kids.

  “They almost got you in Manila. You got lucky. They take you, and I never see you again.” Fifteen soldiers with machine guns surround my beautiful Abra, escort her off the plane.

  “I’m an American citizen,” she says. “I demand my right to counsel with the American Consulate.”

  “Why did they pick you?” I wag my finger at her. “You looking suspicious?”

  “I don’t know. I thought there must be spies. Suspected I had those papers in my bag.”

  I shake my head. She’s got newspaper clippings from before censorship and a summary from the CP. Shit like that. Lucky for her it’s in an envelope marked in big letters, INSURANCE.

  “What’s this?” Soldier’s interrogation demands.

  Abra’s got balls. “Can’t you read?”

  Maybe he can’t. Any case, some papers with numbers on top, so he says, satisfied he can read, “Oh, yeah.” Fifteen machine guns hustle Abra back onto the plane. Mother’s in the crowd watching, but she can’t know. Can’t wave. Can’t even look. Can’t say good-bye. Can’t write or telephone. How long it’s gonna be? That’s last year. Why does Abra remember fifteen machine guns? Not three. Not seven. Memory’s like a dream. I don’t tell her, but I have a suspicion—could be fifteen years.

  “I know your father.” Sam Balcena was a fountain-pen boy like me. Came to study about the same time at Berkeley, then dropped out in twenty-nine with the Depression. Ran around with the great author Carlos Bulosan, both card-carrying Communists. Sam’s writing for the New Tide in those days. Friends with union guys like Chris Mensalvas. Maybe that’s why Abra’s got the bug.

  “What if they arrest you that day at the Manila airport?” I ask. “Who is going to take care of the twins? Do you think about that?”