Страница 42 из 81
The gander, noble fellow that he must have been, ignored his fallen enemy with a champion's poise, puffed out his magnificent breast as if to receive a medal, and with a measured, heroic step herded his maidens in the opposite direction.
The next day Qui
Watching Qui
John brought my crab shortly after the field had cleared. I explained that I had never eaten crab before, and asked if he would show me how to break it open. He seemed oddly pleased. I supposed it was good as crabs go, but like a man it carried its skeleton on the outside, and resisted my prying attempts beyond death. I finished clawing, paid a sullen Billy Boy whose mascara had run in the heat, and sauntered to the bus. I picked up my gear, the book Morning had recommended, and a basket of beer. Then, as I said to myself, I, lord of the manor, retired to my chambers peacefully content to dream of past victories and future conquests, not at all sorry I hadn't bunked with the others.
Morning woke me at the very hottest part of the afternoon.
"Hey, animal, you want to take a swim?"
My neck and shoulders were slimey with sweat and the bed was wet underneath them. I poured the half-finished beer through the gaps in the bamboo-strip floor, shut the novel without marking the three pages I had read, stretched slightly, and started sweating again.
"Too hot, jack."
He waved two coolie hats and two wine bottles with the straw bases cut off and explained that we were going swimming because it was too hot. After a bit I realized that he was trying to apologize, so I rolled off the lumpy mattress and swapped my shorts for a swimsuit while Morning hummed "Meadowlands." I followed him into the sun which filled the sky like a malevolent overcast above the pristine reflector of the sand. The water, a pale even blue, seemed flattened by the heat, compressed into a level sheet of glare marked only by slight irregular swells which died half-noticed against the baked finger of sand like faint pulses. Morning and I joined the others and sat neck deep in the water, cooled in it, shaded by our hats and anchored by the wine bottles tied to our wrists. As the heat of the day continued and the wine expired we drifted around the point into the estuary as the panting tide came in like a tired ru
We found a bit of shade under the village pavilion where a wedding reception was in progress. The Filipinos had seen us walking past, called to us and, laughing and patting our sun-tendered shoulders, invited us in for a beer. We should have felt foolish attending a wedding reception in swim trunks, but their greeting was so warm, so unpatronizing, we felt truly welcome. It has been a long time since any stranger had a friendly word for us, and these short, happy people embarrassed us with their warmth. Beer and sweet greasy roast pig and purple rice and fried chicken were pressed upon us with champagne smiles. They were humbly polite, turning down the rented jukebox to introduce us to the milling crowd, but also shared their laughter with us, even at us in that fine way old friends have. An old withered man kidded me about my beer belly which had grown like a tumor since football season, and I returned the favor with a motion at his egg-bald head. His face disappeared into a mask of wrinkles, and a happy cackle flew from his toothless mouth. I shook hands with the now joined families, then with the slight, handsome groom and his shy bride who hid her smile with a dip of her head. I sailed once more into the tumbling maze of people. Each way I turned, smiles bloomed like flowers photographed in time-lapse; brown buds of faces burst into blossoms under the sun. I spoke with a man who claimed to know all about Texas, about cowboys and Indians, and when I told him that I was both a cowboy and an Indian, he laughed and laughed until tears rimmed his eyes. I didn't know what was so fu
I rested at a table, sitting next to a white-headed Filipino. He looked to be fifty or so, but his hair was full and bushy, his face firm and his body held in a vigorous, controlled strength. He wore a starched light-blue pin-striped shirt like I remembered my father wearing before the war, and a dark-blue pair of trousers which obviously belonged to a double-breasted suit; but his shoes were brand new, a stiff almost metallic brown, and he had sat them on the bench next to him as if displayed for sale or trade. His dusty calloused feet, broadened and toughened by too many barefoot years to count, splayed across the packed dirt under the table. He nodded politely, but neither smiled nor spoke. He mixed a drink: one part Black Dog Gin, one part orange soda-water and one part beer poured into a thick water tumbler. He drank hunched over the glass, slowly, like a man on a long road between drinks. I watched him and his ugly feet which clawed the earth like stubborn toads, then finished my beer and walked away.
In ten minutes I was back, sitting across from him, smiling and inquiring, "How are you today, sir?" He had moved his shoes on to the table.
"Fine, thank you," he said, looking up. The voice was as worn and rough as the skin of his feet. "You are in the Army?" he asked. His tone was soft and deep and weary, his English exact.
"Yes, sir."
"That is good. I, too, was once in the army," he said, staring back into his glass as if time were telescoped there. "A very long time ago, during the war. The Japanese took my sawmill and I went to the hills to fight with Colonel Fergit on Mindanao. I was a major."
I wasn't surprised: I hadn't yet met a Filipino male born before the war who did not claim to be a guerrilla. (But no one had even heard of the Hukbalahap rebellion of the fifties.) A restaurant owner in Angeles, a woman, had told me, "They all lie. They hide in the hills and call it fighting. They should be a woman and learn about fighting."
The old man pulled a battered wallet from his pocket and showed me a picture of himself, three other Filipino officers, and General Douglas MacArthur. Other bits of tattered paper were taken from the leather sheath: his college diploma, folded and faded, showing his degree in civil engineering; pictures of the wife and children killed by the Japanese in '43, and his sawmill, and part of his outfit; his commission and various citations; a membership in an engineering society, dated June 2, 1936; a smudged dollar bill with the fuzzy red ink signatures of all the Americans in the band; a barely recognizable snapshot of Betty Grable's ass. He laid his very life out before me, faded, flaked at the edges, torn in the creases, scattered like wasted time around his new shoes. In a voice as ragged as the edge of a shell-ripped jungle, quiet from too much whispering, he explained how he had been cheated of his pay for the five years of fighting, shorn by crooked politicians and apathetic Americans. He told me, an American, but the blame and bitterness held a very dull, chipped edge in his voice.