Game of Wit and Chance_Beginnings Read online

  His thoughts continually wandered back to the love of travel his wife brought into their partnership. She looked forward to each of their trips around the Philippines and the fun the family shared during those trips. The visit to Zambales province, where they all experienced the Mango Festival, kept flooding his mind with memories.

  Gilberto even had a lucky charm from that trip.

  After a day particularly full of festival sights and foods, Sophia had asked for a quiet beach day. Gilberto took the five of them to a remote area for exploring and playing on the beach. When Sophia and the newest baby, Katie, had settled on the beach with some shade, she had refused to move and suggested that the men go for their own walk.

  Exploring with a two and three year old wasn’t easy, but Gilberto had made it fun. They had found an abandoned building off the beaten trail and Boris had been very excited when he picked up an old coin. “It’s a lucky charm, Papa,” he’d told Gilberto in his child speak.

  Gilberto still had it tucked away someplace for Boris.

  Relocation 1950

  Gilberto was a cook in the Navy, where he learned to cook for large groups of Filipinos who were away from home. He was outgoing at his core and would spend his free time talking to other young sailors about home and family. It was during this time that the strong connections between emotion, family and food were emphasized in him. Talking for hours with other sailors he would encourage them to describe their favorite family dishes and then he would try to recreate them in the kitchen. These experiments weren’t always successful, but he enjoyed them and the comradery they created with the other men.

  Now that he was alone, Gilberto wanted and needed to leave the Navy to care for his children. It seemed natural that he would make his living by entertaining and cooking.

  He decided to go to Zambales and combine the two talents. He rented out the little house in Manila, borrowed every peso he could and sunk the last of his money into a small bistro in San Antonio catering to tourists from Manila in search of beaches and relaxation.

  Relocating himself and four children under six proved more challenging than he anticipated, but he would either make the move work or succumb to his depression.

  Resort life, and the work associated with it, was either around the clock or non-existent.

  The constant work suited Gilberto, as he quickly lost himself in creating inexpensive food for hungry visitors. In the off hours he entertained anyone who would listen by singing the soothing lullabies for which his youngest child, Julia, always begged.

  Visit from a Childhood Friend 1951

  A few short months after Gilberto moved his family to Zambales, a miracle walked into his tiny bistro in the form of Marge. She and Sophia had been corresponding and scheming since before Julia was born, trying to figure out a way for Marge to visit and Sophia's sudden death left her childhood friend devastated. Marge knew Sophia needed to be rescued, but Gilberto was her worst enemy for a long time after taking Sophia away from Portland. Marge finally earned enough money to get herself to the Philippines, but was now in time only to grieve with her friend's widower.

  After an hour of crying and introducing children to a nana they had never seen in person, the two acquaintances started to catch up and try to get to know each other. Marge was twenty, had finished business college and had been working in the diner that her parents now owned.

  "I'm sorry I didn't get over here soon enough to see Sophia again. We wrote constantly of what we would do… the places she would show me when I visited. San Antonio was one of the top on the list. I understand why you moved here, Gil," Marge said.

  When she took Gilberto's hand in hers she felt the wetness from his tears and knew that Sophia had done the right thing in coming here with him. Sophia and Gilberto’s love affair had been too short, but Marge knew Sophia had been loved and was now mightily missed by this outgoing and vibrant man.

  "I want to do what I can to help you move on and make life for these gorgeous babies happy again," She said.

  "Stay with us then. At least through Christmas. It's October and the rainy season is over. The Christmas season starts here in the ‘ber months and the tourists will be visiting constantly," Gilberto replied.

  He continued. "Together we can fix this place up and make a good home for Sophia's babies."

  Squeezing his hand, her childhood scowl came back to her eyes, but this time she softened it with a gentle smile.

  "Gil, I want to help in every way I can, except one. Both of us have too much of Sophia in our hearts to try to replace her with each other. I, for one, don't want to try," she told him.

  "Margie, I know you're right, I can’t replace her, but I'm blessed to have you as a friend and my kids are your kids, auntie," Gilberto said.

  Marge gave him a quick kiss on the forehead and turned to the four children.

  "Okay you kids, come over and give your new nana a hug. She might be able to find some Hershey bars in her suitcase, if they haven’t all melted and turned into a puddle in my bag."

  A short while later the time difference had taken its toll on Marge and the kids had succumbed to their chocolate induced sugar rush. Everyone but Gilberto was sound asleep.

  #

  Gilberto stood in the doorway to the little bedroom he had given up for Marge.

  He thought, "Sophia, I never believed in much until you came along, then you made me believe in love. Why you had to leave me so early…I'll never know, but thank you for sending Marge all this way to remind me of what's important now. These kids, this home…life has moved on without me. I need to catch up."

  Christmas in Zambales 1951

  October passed by quickly with preparations made for the holiday season. Gilberto was preparing for what he hoped was a successful business season full of tourists that wanted to escape the hustle and hassle of the metro area and relax and celebrate with family and friends.

  Gilberto provided mostly lunch and dinner at his little restaurant, but he made it his business to learn everything he could about the variety of tourist attractions available in the nearby area.

  There were always activities like island hopping and beaches, but there were also mountains to be hiked, fish to be caught, waves to wade in and historical architectural sites to be seen. An easy side trip for one day might be to visit an old Spanish lighthouse from the 1800's that stood out on a cliff overlooking the sea. Another might be a visit to pristine white sand beaches, and if one was young or at least daring and a good swimmer, yet another could be to try out a surfboard in an area known for some of the best surf in the Philippines.

  Gilberto's hope was that every time a tourist visited a new site or relaxed by exhausting themselves through physical activity, they would eat a delicious, large, and expensive (well expensive for him) lunch or dinner at his restaurant.

  Marge had done a great job softening the interior with a few simple decorations. Not only that, but she'd instilled a bit of responsibility in the boys for helping their dad where possible. The girls were still a little young to wipe and set a table or wash dishes, but the boys could handle some responsibility.

  If they could keep from bickering long enough.

  Being the first born, Steven took responsibility seriously even though his capabilities were pretty limited. Boris, on the other hand, was very head strong and simply would not do what didn't suit him. It wasn't that difficult to outwit him, but if there wasn't immediate gratification Boris wasn't going to do it without a fight. Most of the time neither Gilberto nor Marge were up for the argument and it ended up being Gilberto, Marge and Steven doing most everything.

  Christmas in the Philippines looked very different than it did in Portland. The area did have some trees that were of the pine variety, but there were more coconuts, palms, bananas and mango trees than pines.

  Marge figured tinsel would look weird on a palm tree. Nevertheless she was determined to decorate for Christmas.

  She spent hours on the beaches telling the kids to co
mb through rocks in search of the ones that most resembled little balls.

  Finding leftover paint that the neighbors were willing to share wasn't that difficult.

  Combine the two and stones became unbreakable colored Christmas balls.

  Boris came back one afternoon with his pockets full of discarded fishing pole string. "Oh! Come here with that!" Marge perked up when she saw it dangling out of his pocket.

  Boris took off running, yelling, "It's mine, it's mine, I didn't steal it!"

  Marge caught him before he could get out the back and said, "Boris, honey, nana didn't say you stole it, but where did you get it?"

  "I found it in the alley by fisherman Deft's place. He was calling it bad names and then he threw the whole thing out the door. I just picked it up. It took me all morning to get the kinks out of it." Boris answered.

  His lower lip stuck way out as he defended both his virtuosity and the hard work he'd put into making something of what someone else thought was nothing.

  "Honey, this is great stuff, I'm proud of you. You had a lot of patience to untangle all that string." She patted his head and continued, "How'd you like be in charge of hanging the Christmas balls we've all painted? If you do it, nana will give you a sweet that she made today."

  Boris perked up, but could smell a trap. "What do I have to do?"

  "Well, my dear, that fisherman's string will work wonders if it's tied around a Christmas ball and then hung around the restaurant. You're pretty good at sailor knots, aren't you? Maybe you should be the high commander of tying string to rocks!" Marge answered.

  Gilberto was watching from the kitchen doorway. How Marge could make tying string to rocks sound interesting, let alone fun, was beyond him, but she had done it. Boris was already planning and assigning Steve and Katie areas to measure so he could cut the proper length of string for decorations.

  For her part, Marge figured she'd have to influence where they hung the decorations or only the lower four feet of the restaurant would be decorated.

  The only thing the cat would get if it took a swipe at these Christmas balls and knocked one down would be a sore head or paw.

  In addition to colored Christmas rocks they had a few cardboard stars decorated with a little paste and some pristine white beach sand.

  Marge also had to place the books she brought to read on the highest shelves in the house. The kids made paper chains out of any paper that they could get their hands on. They would cut the pages into strips before gluing them back together into unreadable chains.

  There were mostly newspaper chains, but there was a long chain made out of a section of the cookbook she had brought for Gilberto. Katie had opened the book randomly and made several pages worth of rings from the section on potatoes. Marge put a stop to this right about at the section on French Fries. Katie hadn't really gotten that far, and "really, who was ever going to need a recipe for potatoes in the Philippines, anyway," Marge thought.

  Julia, being the youngest of the four, was pretty limited in what her three plus year old fingers and coordination could accomplish. However, one thing she could do was copy a tune when she heard it. This time of year, between Christmas being what it was in the Philippines, Gilberto and Marge, not to mention the children's late mother Sophia, all spending significant time in the US, Christmas carols were the standard. Julia was constantly humming and singing carols. Most of the lyrics were either jumbled or totally made up, but the tunes were unmistakable.

  Zambales 1961

  "Wash, scrub, tote, sweep, deliver, sleep, repeat." Steven whispered. He was tired of it.

  "Papa, I'm gone for a few." He yelled in his dad's direction, tossing the grey apron and heading out the back door of the tiny cafe. He quickly side-stepped the trash and trotted down the alley to be sure he didn't hear his dad's response.

  The summer of his fifteenth year had been a difficult one so far. Steven’s angst with his particular life had begun to wear him down and he thought he'd been stuck in a rut forever with no hope of escaping. Like an eaglet going from the joy of feeling its wings spread on the edge of the nest to being unhappy unless it’s soaring a mile above the ground, he was feeling left out and held back. The kids with more money, namely those that came and looked bored as they sat in the restaurant with their parents, seemed better dressed, louder, smarter, sexier… hell, they seemed all around luckier.

  He'd gotten to know a few of them. Some were interesting and showed an interest in the things he knew about Zambales, but most were dull and thorny once he got beyond the loud voices and clothes. Most had seen things he'd never seen. Mostly in Manila, but some had been outside of the Philippines. To Indonesia, Kuala Lampur, China or even Australia.

  A tourist this spring had given him a large, folding map of the Asia Pacific region and Steven studied it all the time. He felt like he put up with a lot of abuse simply to hear visitors talk about their various experiences outside of Zambales. Steven had inherited Sophia's adventurous spirit, as well as her amazing ability to retain details.

  At the end of his sprint to freedom this morning, Steven found himself back at the edge of the world, as he called it. It was a rocky beach with a little, protected cove at the southern side where Steven drew maps of the places he wanted to go and often watched as the sun set. The maps in the sand were mostly based on paper maps he'd seen, but a few were simply drawn from his imagination.

  Today he was working on a place from his imagination. A place he called Kiemogama. He placed it in Northern Japan, in a coastal area edged by mountains, trees and snow, the latter of which he'd only ever read about in books. He did complicated dioramas using what he found around him. Rocks, twigs, tree bark, the shells of nuts and dried leaves all became building materials for coastlines, forests, mountain ranges, volcanoes, fields, and of course beaches and shorelines. Every time he slipped away and found himself at the edge of the world he would make some kind of map. They were all made during low tide, and each time he left and returned his imagination was wiped clean, leaving him to start over again. As he preferred.

  "Hello."

  Steven nearly came out of his skin as he whipped his head around to see who just greeted him. "Jebus, you surprised me!"

  The skinny kid standing behind him just chuckled and grinned down on what Steven now thought of as child's play in the sand. After a few moments, he commented, "Looks like a map. What's it of?"

  Taken aback, but pleased that his dabbling was recognizable, Steven answered, "It is a map. It's a place called Kiemogama. In Northern Japan."

  "No it's not," the kid said.

  Steven shrugged his shoulders and replied, "Yeah it is." He could see the worn spots, covered with blacking and polished to a shine on the kid’s shoes. They looked uncomfortable, especially here on the beach. He didn't know any kid that wore black shoes. There might be a couple that wore them to church on Sunday, but seeing as how he'd never gone to church, he wouldn't really know. Catholicism was one piece of Filipino culture his mother had never acquired from her adopted country. She explained it to him by saying, “I don’t believe Jesus would take the last peso from a destitute, single mother in order to guild earthly buildings for powerful, fat men.”

  The kid was also wearing long, pressed pants and a button up shirt. With a belt. "Where are you from?" Steven asked. He knew he wasn't from around here.

  "Japan," the kid replied.

  "Oh." Okay, maybe the kid did know there wasn't a place called Kiemogama.

  "My name's Steven, but you can call me Steve, alright?" He stuck his hand out to shake, as his father had taught him to do at the restaurant for the foreign guests.

  "If you’re drawing the North part of Japan, it should be rougher. That is, if you want the map in correct dimensional proportion," the kid replied.

  Steven had no idea how the kid knew that, but he took it as a request to join his map drawing game and simply shrugged his shoulders.

  For the remainder of the afternoon, the two worked in near silence, joi
ntly creating a map of a fictitious area called Kiemogama in the very real setting of Northern Japan until the edge of the incoming tide started to eat away at the very Northern tip of the landscape. At this point his, as yet unnamed, friend from Japan straightened up from his squat and asked, "Do you want to suck my cock?"

  Steven turned from his mapping, looked at the kid's face, then at the bunched up cloth at his crotch and grinned. Looking back up to his face, Steven saw the first grin come over his new friend's face as well and in a few minutes they were both rolling on the beach laughing as hard as they could.

  When the laughter had all been released, the kid that Steven had mapped with all afternoon finally told him his name. "I'm Benjiro, but I'd prefer it if you called me Benji." He was still laying on his back on the sand looking up into the deep blue of the late afternoon sky. He didn't extend his hand to shake.

  "Nice to meet you, Benji. I'm starving, you wanna head back to my Dad's restaurant and get something to eat?" Steven asked.

  "Sure. I know where it is because my mom and I are staying close by. I'll check with her and see if I can come." Benjiro replied.

  #

  Slipping in the rear door, Steven's ears were accosted by the crash of the wash bucket as it hit the kitchen sink. He looked up just in time to see fourteen year old Boris making a bee line for the door Steven just entered.

  "Boris!" he heard his dad yell at Boris' back.

  Steven just had time to say "Hey…" before Boris used both hands to shove him to the side. Boris slammed out the door and Steven sat down hard on a bag of rice just as his dad came around the corner.

  "Okay, who needs him, you're back. Wash your hands and get back to the tables." Like no time had passed, Gilberto simply assigned him back to his duties.