The Blooding by D.G. Grace
Olongapo changed everything. Neither Daniel belonged there.
I wanted to go out and dance and drink and carouse and
debauch with my buddies, but I was too busy convincing
myself of my loyal and abiding love for my first
wife, pregnant with my daughter on the light side of the
world, to feel more than a warm rush when the Philippine
honeys sat to rub my knee, my thigh, and whatever came up.
I tried getting drunk, but the formaldehyde in the San
Miguel made me ill well in advance of intoxication, and the
sweet toxic stench of the stuff the bartenders called Mojo
kept it well away from my lips. I even tried just dancing
when the honeys asked, but they would slither up against my
crotch and I couldn't keep time. I set to try getting
drunk again, but a scantily clad foursome crowded my chair,
two of them trying to crawl into my lap.
"Stationdido," I said, raising my voice over the band's Styx
imitation ("Jew know it CHEW, BEBB!"). It had become my
mantra: "Stationdido." Every Subic Bay hustler knew they
couldn't work the GIs stationed there, but I don't know
whether it was naval lore or just good politics. Steeled by
two days experience in Olongapo's converted warehouse
superclubs, I chanted my Tagalog abracadabra and refused to
let my eyes light on puckered nipples as I yelled, "Peddle
it somewhere else, honey," and waved their little terrycloth-pantied
butts away with my beer bottle. For better or
worse, the four honeys moped off to flypaper other sailors.
One of them with crows-feet and a plunging mini-dress, which
just covered her stretchmarks, winked and shouted back, "I
love you no bullshit, Joe." Her mantra, apparently. She
laughed off into the crowd and left me sipping my uriney San
Miguel and listening to the snotty inner voice that accused
me of being a counterfeit boy scout who was just afraid of
the clap.
Daniel and the other machinists were sitting at the next
table, barnacled with young women. Daniel was too Mom-and-
Apple-Pie for the Philippine scene to register on his psyche
as anything but a sight: a Grand Canyon of slums, a Space
Needle of debauchery. When Chalmers in Sonar pounded the
table, bragging that he'd picked up two honeys and a flat
for the week at a price of three fresh oranges he'd swiped
from the galley, Daniel just shook his head and giggled. When
Parker, the electrician at the next table, paid a girl--who
looked all of thirteen--fifty pisos to play Smile with him
and his three torpedomen buddies, Daniel watched confused as
Parker and the torpedo boys unzipped their flies and leaned
back in their chairs while the honey spread a table cloth
and crawled under the table. When it finally dawned on him
why Parker called the game Smile, Daniel covered his eyes
with a blushing hand and turned his head.
"Oh, man!" He laughed but looked like he would throw up any
minute.
I reached up to touch his elbow. "You okay, Daniel?"
He spun smartly and smiled. "Why, yes, Daniel. And
yourself? Say, Daniel, how'd you like to do some shopping
with me? Maybe pick up some monkey-pod or silver trinkets
for the little woman."
I'd about reached my limit of vicarious debauchery anyway.
"You're on, Daniel."
Out in the squinting noonlight, we stopped to get our
bearings. I was about to suggest walking in any direction
that was away from the stench of Shit River when a roving
peddler tried to sell me one of the "real gold no bullshit"
watches strapped to his sweaty arm. Simultaneously, a sloe-eyed
shoe shine boy--couldn't have been more than nine--popped
up in front of Daniel. Normally, we would have just waved
both away and continued walking. Eventually they get tired
of following and look for another target. This time, the
two of them and the bar behind us had us in a tripartite
blockade.
"Not interested," I said. "Look, kid, they're basketball
shoes. You can't polish suede, man."
"You know how much these worth, Joe? Swiss. I give you
good deal."
"I clean good, you see. Ten piso."
"Is waterproof, show moon and date, time in seven time
zones. Forty-five piso."
"No, really."
"Okay, I clean shine, five piso, five."
"Please, I don't need--"
"Forty piso. Two watches. You robbing me, Joe."
"Two piso. Just two piso."
"Stationdido. No watch, man. Stationdido."
My hustler waved a disgusted hand at me and scurried off
after a freckled face, and I saw Daniel place one resigned
foot on the boy's portable shoe shine box. As the child
toothbrushed away groove-grit, bleached Daniel's shoe-rubber
back to white, and curried the suede back to supple, he
stopped occasionally to look up at the sunshadow of Daniel's
face, dropping precise verbal hooks:
"I do good, no?"
"I surprise you, yes?"
"I make shine, you give tip, no?"
"Is worth more than two piso, eh Joe?"
By the end of the job, Daniel's Adidas looked newer than any
two-year-old shoes I'd ever seen. Daniel smiled and, his
face seeming large with his own impending magnanimity, took
out his wallet to give the boy a ten piso note.
"Good job, kid. You were right, it's worth more than--"
But the little boy shook his head and turned his shine box
around to show the ad painted on a side of the box we hadn't
seen: GOOD SHOE SHINE CLEEN 20 PISO. Daniel's smile fell
over, and I looked around to see if any Olongapo police were
hovering. The city of Olongapo had a hundred laws designed
to fleece sailors. If a business operator performed a job
for which he carried prominently advertised prices, the
prices always won in a court of law. Walking the streets, I
had seen "prominent advertising" with letters in pica type.
If the boy had a pet cop working with him, any refusal on
Daniel's part would immediately be labeled an attempt to
swindle the boy, and we'd both be in jail in an hour.
Somehow, jail terms for sailors always ended in a five-
hundred-dollar fine. Daniel just stood frowning, apparently
also mulling over the local laws.
The boy suddenly took off running, leaving Daniel staring
open-mouthed at his empty hands. "He took my wallet."
"Daniel!" I yelled, but he took off running after the boy. I snatched
at his arm and missed. "Daniel!"
"Stop, thief!" Daniel chased the kid to an intersection and
through an open-sided jeepney. "Stop, thief!"
As I ran after Daniel, laughing brown faces closed in around
us: mango and barbecued-monkey-paw peddlers, leather and
knife vendors, three-card-monty hustlers, sky-blue-uniformed
Olongapo police holding up doorframes, high-heeled and
lipsticked strutters, wrung-out raggedy bag women in alleys.
Half-naked children with bellies like basketballs hooted and
threw clumped wetbrown street trash at Daniel. Scooter and
jeepney drivers burped their horns. Every mouth stretched
around wide volumes of laughter; every eye squinted; every
voice joined the traffic noise. Even the sailors and
marines on the street were holding ribs and rocking and
howling. Every face on that street rejoiced in the
citychild outrunning the rich American, and I began feeling
foolish.
As Daniel and his small prey wove through food carts, I
stumbled to a halt. Stop, Daniel, I thought to shout. Let
him have the wallet. It's not worth it. Two minutes later,
I wanted to go back in time just far enough to shout those
shouts.
"He's got my wallet! Stop that stinking little thief!"
Stop, Daniel.
Then I saw a face not smiling. A National Guardsman, one of
President Marcos's boys in green fatigues and spit-shined
boots, appeared in the center of traffic. A split second's
side glance of his mirrored shades halted the oncoming
jeepneys, and his left hand released a spring-loaded bolt.
It snapped into place with a clang that deafened the whole
city. He dropped his right forearm parallel to the ground
like an usher ready to receive your tickets, but of course,
an usher wouldn't have that AK-47 wedged in the crook of his
elbow. Then he clenched, and bullets drew a dashed line up
the boy's back, popping crimson buttons out his front.
Emptied, the child rag-dolled to the sidewalk, a red cartoon
boy running on ahead of him a few feet before it, too,
collapsed. I heard the wallet plop into the babyblood.
The Guardsman strolled past toppled fruit carts and,
stepping on one small still thigh, reached down and plucked
the wallet from the blood with thumb and forefinger. As he
handed the thing to Daniel, the Guardsman tipped his Castro
hat and flashed a brief Thank-You-For-Shopping-At-K-Mart
smile. He strolled off without a word.
I heard traffic moving again, and I vomited a quart of beer
on a T-shirt vendor's table. The vendor silently wadded up
his wares, folded his table, and just walked away. Daniel
dropped to his butt on the sidewalk and cried, rocking and
hugging the wallet, smearing blood all over his face and
polo shirt.
Back on the boat, after I'd told this story seven times over
in crew's mess, Parker said, "Whoa, he's gotta keep that
wallet. It'll bring him luck; it's got a life in it,
y'know. It's kinda like in the middle ages: when they
first killed someone with a sword it made the sword more
powerful. They even named the swords when that happened. I
mean, that kid dying for that thing has to make it worth
something."
We didn't see Daniel drag himself from the bow compartment,
but suddenly, there he stood, black eye-circles eating away
at his cheekbones. He dropped the wallet on the table in
front of Parker, and brown flakes dandruffed off and settled
onto the formica in a rough circle. Daniel looked at Parker
with round empty eyes, like a shark just before it strikes
or a Guardsman before he fires.
"It's imitation leather," Daniel said, "and it's got a
picture of my mother in it, along with my expired California
driver's license and twenty four pisos. All together it's
worth about six bucks. Keep it."
Chief Treeter, the head cook, stuck his head out of the
galley and pointed at Parker. "Parker, you a friggin'
ghoul, you take that damn' thing," but Parker took it.
The next night, while Parker was on watch, I broke open his
bunk lock with a pair of bolt cutters. I took the wallet
topside and chucked it well out into the bay. Goodbye,
babykiller. Parker complained, of course, and the XO opened
a theft investigation. I figure at least twenty people saw
me, either breaking the lock or walking through Ops with the
wallet in my hand, and the topside watch stood by me and
watched it frisbee into the night. A month later the XO
closed his investigation, unresolved due to a lack of
material evidence, including a complete absence of
witnesses.
Daniel and I had very little in common. Oh, we looked
enough alike, same age, same height (average) and weight
(not much), same gray eyes and olive skin and brown hair,
and of course the same first names, but who selects friends
based on that? As far as anyone on the boat was concerned,
Daniel Sandusky and I were exact opposites: I was married
with a child on the way; he planned for a planless bachelor
life. I spent WesPac reading The Brothers Karamazov and
The Faerie Queene; he, armed with maps and magazines, snorkel and
Adidas, drew detailed hiking, biking, and scuba schedules
for our layovers in Yokosuka, Perth, and Guam. I'd worked
hard to know everything about the ship's engineering spaces;
he couldn't tell you at any given time which sump he was in
the process of not scrubbing. The whole crew thought him
taller than me, younger than me, beefier than me (which he
was not). I guess I could fall back on dusty electric-
particle-interaction metaphors, but in the three years and
seven cities in which we two opposite Daniels had been
acquainted, we had never been drawn together for so much as
a shared beery moment ashore.
Steeled by two days experience in Olongapo's converted
warehouse superclubs, I chanted my Tagalog abracadabra and refused to
let my eyes light on puckered nipples as I yelled, "Peddle it somewhere
else, honey," and waved their little terrycloth-pantied butts away with
my beer bottle.
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