Satellite of Love

Young Love in the Pacific War

Now I’ll tell you how my father met my mother, and how the two of them made it out alive. Ned was a foreign correspondent in Manila in the early ‘40s. My mother, Julieta, had been whoring. They met at a Cabaret on October 3rd, 1941, two weeks before the Japanese invaded.

But, for that fortnight, they were inseparable. They ate every meal together, learned words in each other’s native tongues, laughed like teenagers. They enjoyed every second of each day, every inch of each other’s bodies.

The dream ended and their lives changed forever in the dawn hours of December 8th. Suddenly, we were at war. The Imperial Japanese Army invaded the Philippines within hours of the attack on Pearl Harbor. They would reach the capital within days.

Manila throbbed in anticipation. Nervous laughter peppered the streets. More and more people wielded suitcases. Milk became scarce. Everyday a new restaurant would fail to open its shutters. The GIs disappeared from the bars and the whores sat idly in the dark with unassuming eyes.

Next came the evacuation. American civilians crowded the western road, kicking up red dust with every step towards the Army base at Bataan. Filipinos were left scratching their heads, wondering how to greet their latest round of invaders, the Japanese, following in the footsteps of the Americans and the Spanish before them. How would the people fare under a new colonial power? Few felt secure.

“I worry, Ned.” My mother cooed while my father paced around his single room.

“Japan men are no good. Americans are good. You are good.”

“Don’t worry, baby.” He answered, pausing to watch flares potmark the night sky over Manila harbor. “I won’t let the Japs get you.”

“You love me, Ned?”

He told her loved her. They were married by a Catholic priest on Christmas Day as the tanks closed in on the city. With a marriage certificate, Julieta could follow Ned onto the base, where they would await further evacuation. Seated on the last transport out of Manila, they saw smoke rising from the jungle along the western road as the Japanese burned their way towards Bataan. No one had anticipated their swiftness.

Bataan was hardly the safe haven the Americans expected. The Imperial Navy had blockaded the entire East Coast. Cut off by sea, the Americans were left stranded in the Philippines, the Air Force having been crushed at Pearl Harbor. On land, every member of the Imperial Army of the Pacific was spearheaded at the American base, paving their way in flames and flesh. Trapped outside the base walls were a million panicky men, women, and children, Americans and Filipinos both, sitting like Easter eggs to be snatched.

My parents might have died had it not been for Joson Flores. It was while Ned interviewed wounded GIs fresh from the front lines that Julieta met the man who would save their lives. Joson was a smuggler with piercing black eyes and tattoos of roses across his forearms. He was selling spots on a thirty foot fishing boat that would leave the Philippines on New Year’s Eve, slipping down the coast through the barricade, all the way to Australia.

“Two thousand a piece is too much.” My father complained upon his introduction to Flores. “We don’t have that kind of money.”

“Your call, chief.” Flores was cool. “But you only got a few days to change your mind. Japs coming soon.”

My father took my mother aside. “I’ve spoken to some of the troops,” he confided. “They said there’s no stopping these Nip bastards. We’ve got our backs to the wall, honey. Is this guy our only option?”

Julieta stroked Ned’s angry shoulders with her soft dark hands. “Maybe I can make deal with him.”

Ned agreed with a flushed face. His head pointed to the dirt while Joson Flores led my mother to the edge of the shanty town where he fucked her on a patch of grass overlooking the South China Sea. When they returned, the price was eight hundred dollars a head.

“We leave from Bagac, five kilometers west of here, okay?” He smiled. “Midnight. Don’t be late, chief.”

They had the cash. My mother escaped Manila with four hundred dollars in small bills. My father had fifteen hundred in cash bulging out of his socks. This was all money they had in the world. My father didn’t want to arrive in America defeated and broke. His wife hadn’t just fucked Joson Flores so that she could go hungry in Minneapolis.

“I need to get back to the front lines.” My father said, rubbing his temples.
“Don’t go, Ned.” My mother worried. “You get shot.”

“Don’t worry about that, baby. The front is where the money is. If I can get two more rolls of battle action, I’ll have enough to buy you a house when we get back to America.”

“America?”

“You know it, sweetheart.”

That night, my father kissed my mother goodbye and left for the front with his Nikon L41. “If something happens,” my father said to Julieta, “get on the boat. I love you.”

Ned was captured by Battalion 33 of the Imperial Japanese Army a few hours after leaving the shanty town. As he’d wandered into Japanese territory unarmed wearing street clothes, he was able to convince the enemy troops that he was a civilian, a journalist, and posed no threat. Taken to the command tent by sentries wielding bayonets, he was presented to a Colonel named Masahiro Homma. The Colonel took a liking to my father, and refused to let him out of his sight. On the morning of December 31st, my father was taking pictures of Colonel Homma in a meeting with his top advisors, on a battlefield littered with American and Japanese corpses.

Homma, standing six feet two inches, towered over the other Japanese officers. His proud chin surveyed the landscape with a confident approval. Educated at Cambridge, his English was flawless.

“Ned, my new friend,” Homma bellowed. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. Though I don’t consider you to be a spy, I must concede that I could be mistaken. Should you stroll back into American territory and walk straight into your General MacArthur’s office to share intelligence, I should feel rather a fool. Wouldn’t you agree?”

My father agreed. Sweating under the tropical sun, he thought of his wife. “I don’t care about MacArthur, sir. I don’t care if Bataan falls after the New Year.”

Colonel Homma nodded. “You worry about your Juliet?”

“Julieta, sir.”

“No, Ned, my friend. She is your Juliet.”
My father smiled weakly. “I just need to get to Bagac, Colonel Homma. If you let me go to Bagac tonight, you will never see me again, I promise.”
Homma scanned a unit of young soldiers heading for the front. Their skin was black with smoke and dirt, their uniforms torn at the seams. Some of them glanced quizzically at the Westerner speaking with their commander. Colonel Homma nodded as the group filed past. “I will take you to Bagac.”
Battalion Thirty Three veered west of the battlefield, cutting around Mount Samat to attack Bataan from the North West. This gave them the element of surprise, as the Americans were concentrating their dwindling firepower on the Japanese troops heading due South. For Battalion Thirty Three, Bagac was on the way. My father left at noon on the first truck of the convoy, sitting in the front seat between Colonel Homma and Private Katsu, the driver.

The road to Bagac had been shelled mercilessly by the Japanese Artillery Divisions in the early stages of the campaign. As the truck bounced towards the coast, my father took pictures of the Colonel. To the south, Mount Samat rose from the lush jungle, and gracefully sloped towards the indigo sea.

When night fell, flares illuminated the countryside in yellows and reds. My father worried that he was too late. As the truck neared the sea, he scanned the sunken faces shuffling down the road. When they came to a wooden dock, my father asked Colonel Homma for permission to leave the truck.

“Certainly, Ned.” said the Colonel. “I just need to see your transport. You understand, don’t you? I want to be sure you’re not going to escape on a US Navy submarine.” Homma laughed at his own joke.

My father scanned the single vessel at the sleepy dock. “Alright, sir. Would you excuse me if I go and find out where my boat is?”

“Certainly.”

My father slowly walked away from the Imperial Japanese Army trucks towards a man sitting on the dock smoking a pipe. “Joson Flores?” He asked. Taking one glance at the convoy behind the American, the pipe smoker pointed south. My father thanked him in Tagalog – Salamat – and jogged back towards the Colonel.

“It’s waiting just down the beach, Colonel Homma.” My father explained as he looked up. “But, sir, would you mind terribly if we walked the rest of the way? I hate to trouble you, but I think that my being seen with this truck might jeopardize my spot on the boat.”

Colonel Homma stared at my father from the window of the front seat.

“You see, sir, it might leave me behind. I would never see Julieta again.”

Colonel Homma’s eyes held steady, seeming to pierce into my father’s heart. Gently, his chin began to lift. “Certainly, Ned.” He spoke to Private Katsu in Japanese, opened the door, and hopped to the ground with a thud.

Joson Flores was guiding people onto his boat, two hundred meters down the beach from the dock. Rich civilian Americans and Filipinos clutched leather suitcases and wobbled aboard the brown timber vessel. My mother waited on the beach, her eyes darting down the road in both directions.

My father pointed at the boat. “That must be it. I can feel it.” As they inched closer, he caught sight of his wife. Her sad eyes glowed in the moonlight, her cheeks pinched by uncertainty.

Colonel Homma nodded in approval. “Just a fishing boat.” He sighed. “You know, Ned. This is a terrible violation of Imperial Army Policy.”

“I know that, sir.” Ned looked at his feet. “But you’re doing a great thing, Colonel Homma. You’re bringing me back to my wife. Do you see the girl standing on the beach, there, with her back to the tide? That’s my Julieta.”

The Colonel squinted. Then his eyes erupted. “She’s gorgeous, Ned.” He placed his hand on my father’s shoulder. “She’s stunning. But, as I was saying, yes. This is a terrible violation. I could be executed for this, you know? I need something in return, Ned.”

My father swallowed a lump in his throat. “What do you mean, sir?”

Colonel Homma pursed his lips, his eyes still on the beach. “I need a gift from you, Ned.”

“Sir.” His voice cracked. “Sir, please don’t ask me for my Juliet.”

Homma stared at my mother. A crimson flare burst in the south and bled across the beach. “Don’t worry about your Juliet.” He looked into my father’s eyes. “Kiss me, Ned.” Said the Colonel. “Kiss me like it’s the end of the world.”


My father walked down from the shelled out road and caught my mother’s eye. She ran for him, kicking sand behind her in bursts. Their lips met, their arms enveloped one another, and tears dropped in the moonlight. Joson hollered as he untied his vessel, and the newlyweds came running. As the ship cast away from Bagac, my mother and father clutched each other’s hands. A hush came over them as the vessel motored south past Bataan. Flares exploded overhead and heavy artillery echoed off the mountainside. As the Battle for the Philippines raged on the shore, my mother and father floated along under cover of night, smiling the smiles of young love.

The Wolf

You wouldn’t believe the balls on Eduardo. He was throwing down two thousand pesos on the trot, without even a peek at his dominoes. I’d met him the week earlier at the Hotel Pacifico and he seemed like our people. He told me his family ran steel out of Nicaragua in the 90s, but now he survived bankrolling internet call centers in San Jose. The man wore a hundred thousand peso suit, if I know anything about suits, and he made a sleek impression when I first shook his hand, over a marble ashtray in the lobby bar.

His Nicaragua link intrigued me, as there’d been some noise about another revolution in the works over the last few months. The whispers we’d all been hearing were of a group called Lobo, fully stocked in the hills outside the capital. News like this will give a man ulcers because, as my colleague Memo was fond of saying, civil unrest spreads quicker than dengue in the summertime. Memo, who owned most of the dairy farms in the country, and Little Piqui, who did well managing a couple of distilleries, persuaded me to invite Eduardo to our weekly, at my house in Monte Verde. Few have ever declined this invitation, and in that respect, Eduardo was no different.

But once he was in my games parlor he became a closed fist of a man, who within three rounds was ready to wager his second mistress on a double-blind bet.

“I don’t want your second mistress,” I told him with a peer into in his dark eyes, which seemed to float above sandpaper cheeks and a plastic mustache. He flapped a limp wrist from across the table and snorted at me. Then he suggested a new bet: “My cost to the Peruanos, back in ’98 – seven hundred thousand pesos.”

With a smirk on the side of his dark face, Memo reckoned to Eduardo that seven hundred thousand wasn’t so much. “I paid seven hundred for my cousin Maricela, once,” he recounted. “You know Maricela, Oscar,” he reminded me. “Anyway, seven hundred was nothing. I didn’t even need to take it in a briefcase; it all fit into one of those brown manila envelopes. Easiest handoff I’ve ever done.”

Eduardo sneered and reminded the table that the Peruanos had nabbed him almost a decade ago. Taking into account the hyperinflation at the end of the century, as well as his vertical progress since then, Eduardo bragged that his price must have appreciated at least tenfold, as he loosened his blue tie.

“The Peruanos got me, once, too,” Little Piqui buzzed, “they weren’t so bad. They let me shower, and I mostly just sat on the porch and read the newspaper.” He rubbed the corner of his eye with his knuckles.

“How about the food?” Memo asked, heavy brown palms shielding his chips.

“It wasn’t great,” he moaned with a shake of his round head. “Those guys eat peasant food. They stole chickens from the nearest farm and that would last a week.”

“One time,” I began, “I was taken by the Calderon cartel, and you know how they run the ports, right?” Eduardo nodded. “They kept me in this little shack on Playa Negra, where the guys had nothing to do but go fishing till it got dark – yellowtail, bass, one time a barracuda. And they had this thug, Puno, he was an artist in the kitchen.”

Little Piqui grinned. “How long before the money came?”

“I was there five weeks,” I told him. Eduardo was stroking his hair, greasing a gold pinky ring. “It was a long one, but I didn’t mind. I could have stayed another week with Puno on the grill.”

“And what did you cost?” Eduardo hastened. “How much for five weeks?”

Two million, I admitted to whistles around the table. “That’s why it took so long. My brother had to wire in accounts from Dallas, Miami, Antigua… It was a mess.”

A beat passed before Memo asked, reaching for a humidor of freshly lined Cubanos, “Eduardo, when you were in Nicaragua, did you ever hear of Lobo?”

Silence, sworn enemy of any good host, roared through my games parlor. Eduardo was expressionless, alternating glances between Memo and his dominoes. “We don’t talk about him where I come from.”

All the ears in the room perked at the word, ‘him.’ Little Piqui raised his eyebrows at me with a schoolboy grin. I smiled as Eduardo vacantly scanned the cigars and chose a Cohiba.

Memo, undeterred, pressed, “it looks like you know something maybe the rest of us don’t.”

Eduardo’s eyes were aimed at the center of the table. He lit and smoked his cigar without expression of enjoyment, which I found insulting, as these were gifts, as well as fine cigars. But at the time I couldn’t have mentioned it, having just witnessed him clam so tightly at the sound of a nickname. The lamp glow behind him obscured his expression and cast a shadow over the games table. “I’m sure you’re all very curious about him. Worried he might sneak over the border, maybe.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But I can assure you he’s only interested in my country.”

“What makes you so sure?” Memo pushed, leaning over his chips.

“I know,” Eduardo said plainly. “I knew Lobo, once. He’s got his eyes on Nicaragua, but he’ll never make a good deal outside the country. Too volatile.”

Little Piqui’s eyes opened. “What was he like?”

“He’s a smart guy. Hell of a gambler.” He nodded, before telling a story which, in retrospect, I’m not certain I believe. Eduardo and his family had been booted out of Nicaragua City, he recounted, when the Sandinistas took over. This much I bought. But the next move his family made was a sweetheart deal with the leftists in Managua – rivals to the Sandinistas. El Lobo, he explained, was their head man at the time. To simplify a lengthy sob story, it only took a few months for Lobo to tire of Eduardo’s influence, and oust the family from Nicaragua by way of an armed escort and a decrepit Sacramento school bus through the mountains. Lobo neglected, of course, to return any capital on the family’s investment.

I found myself wondering why such a family of influence would ever tie their lot with a band of socialist jungle rats. It seems silly now that I think about it with the luxury of hindsight, yet at the time, the thought didn’t occur. Perhaps I was too startled by what Eduardo revealed next: a black steel baton, which he flicked open with a jolt of his wrist and held with the tip pointed to my ceiling, the veins on his right hand pulsing. Fully extended, it was the length of a crowbar. It was thin at the tip, a nickel in diameter, maybe, but you could see the heaviness, the power stored in the dark steel. The entire incident had taught him to never let himself get fucked, he told us, and it seemed that the metal pole in his hand was his insurance policy. He smiled as he put away the baton.

At this point I was worried my games party would be remembered as a long-faced and awkward one. Luckily, though, my guests surprised me. Little Piqui was dealt double-nines twice in a row, so he swept Memo of thirty thousand in less than five minutes. Memo joked that he’d have to layoff ten dairy workers just to break even. Eduardo bet stoically, though he cracked a smile now and then. After he got a large pot calling my bluff he quipped, “There’s enough in there for a chief justice!”

I was four hundred up when we ran out of ice cubes, so it hadn’t been a bad night for me. When luck finished dancing around the table, it was Memo who was the big loser, and it showed. There was sweat pushing through his undershirt to his monogrammed V-neck, despite my new air-conditioning.

“Don’t worry,” Little Piqui counseled, “maybe Hugo Chavez will start his revolution this year, and then you can get all your money back from me.”

“Don’t even joke about that.” I hushed. “I need at least two more terms with this shit-for-brains before a revolution can work for me.”

Memo sat, greasing a gold pinky ring in his brown hair, counting his chips. “Don’t wait for the revolution,” he balked. “If this guy wants to win his money back he’s going to have to do it himself.” The table hushed at the finality of his tone. Memo clenched. Little Piqui looked to the floor.

Raising my glass, I smiled, “if you want to do something right...”

“I’m in for seventy five,” Memo interrupted us as he laid his forearms on the table. “Single hand, six dominoes a piece. Who’s in?”

I counted my chips. Memo always had the tendency to push his losses, and I’d made a point in recent years to cut him off early. Not everyone shared my restraint, though. Eduardo was still willing to throw chips down, raising Memo’s bet to ninety. He said that he liked Memo’s attitude; that Memo was acting like “a fighter.” Little Piqui had to tag along, betting forty grand on Memo beating our guest.

Eduardo bared his teeth with a tilted smile, and laughed out a breath. “We’ve got another fighter, do we?” He slapped the table jovially. “Of course I’m in. There’s nothing like a big win to end the night. Forty grand it is.”

I skidded twelve dominoes to the center of the table, face down, and let the men pick their hands. Memo was meticulous in his selections – darting his hand around the pool like a chef picks burnt rice out of a dish. Eduardo watched with his hands folded on the table, until there were only six dominoes left.

They were dead even to the fifth flip, but I knew Memo’s victory face – how he tried to hold back that kindergarten smirk, but could never calm down those gloating eyes. He laid down a six-eight combination and dropped his shoulders. Little Piqui leaned back in his chair and smiled subtly, calmly. Eduardo stayed motionless, scanning the domino train.

I always fear the sore loser. I’ve had too many nights when men slam my parlor door on their way out, and the tension always lingers. Eyeing Eduardo in the silence, I wondered if tonight was going to end the same way.

“How about that?” he asked slowly with his eyes squinting. “How about that shit?” And gently his cheeks began to lift and his eyes closed while laughter pierced the quiet. Not belly laughs, mind you, but laughs like from a knock-knock joke. We chuckled calmly. “I believe the expression is,” he switched to flawless English as he began counting his chips, “you win some and you lose some.”

In a detonation Memo and Little Piqui amplified their laughter, shoulders shaking as Eduardo grinningly made stacks of ten thousand pesos with his chips. The mood was lifted, and the relief must have shown on my face like a black eye.

“Ninety thousand pesos for you.” Eduardo said as he slid a stack of red and blue chips across the table, a curious grin still plastered under his mustache. “Fucking animal. Worse than any revolution, wouldn’t you agree, Oscar?”

“Oh, sure,” I nodded my head coyly, “Memo’s a bigger threat than Castro.”

“This guy.” Little Piqui slapped Memo’s shoulder. “He makes mean Mr. Lobo look like a flower vendor.”

“Just like a flower vendor.” Eduardo agreed with a gentle shake of his head, as if awakening from a day dream, his smile flinching. “Just like a fucking flower vendor,” he repeated, tapping the table heavily. Then, as his smile evened out, he said, “I’m a bit embarrassed. I’m afraid I’ve run out of chips.”

“This is embarrassing,” Memo said with a friendly laugh.

“Piqui,” he started, “I could pay about twenty out of my pocket, but I’m not the kind of man to leave a debt in the wind. Could I offer you a trade?”

“Don’t sweat yourself, Eduardo,” he hushed. “What do you have in mind?”

“How about my watch?” He asked as he held up his wrist and pulled back his grey sleeve. “It’s a Tag Heuer, bought in Mexico City two years ago, genuine. You know how you can tell a Tag is real?”

“How?”

“It’s silent. You’ll never hear a tick or a tock.” He held the watch to his ear and shook his head with an inviting smile. “Not a fucking sound. Here, listen for yourself.” He extended his arm towards Little Piqui, who leaned his body forward to hear the silence for himself.

The sound, I’ll never forget the sound, was like an apple falling off the kitchen counter. Little Piqui never saw anything coming, a curious look still painted on his face when the steel connected. I can’t say I saw it coming, either. I didn’t notice the weapon until it was crushed against Little Piqui’s skull. Memo seemed to spasm in his chair like an epileptic as blood splattered over the white dominoes. After the first hit, Eduardo stood up and swung the baton again, like a gavel in the hand of an angry judge. He hit him thrice and each time the sound was the same, an organic squish. By the third hit, the blood had pooled on the table on was already dripping onto my sheep skin rug. Then, sweeping his chair leg expertly, he sent Little Piqui’s body collapsing to the floor, where it landed with a finite thud. I sat paralyzed when Eduardo was finished. I didn’t even have the sense to run for my life.

He didn’t say another word. He took a white handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his baton, then gently collapsed it, and fixed it to the holster at his belt. Then he lifted his jacket off his chair and looked at me, though my eyes never met his. Turning to Memo, he smiled, the way you smile when you say something clever. Putting on his jacket, he took one last look at Little Piqui, but made no further expression. He didn’t take any money when he walked out the door. Neither of us would ever see him again.

I tried to stand up, but my legs wouldn’t move. Trying to force myself with my arms, I began to feel as if I were going to vomit, and remained seated. Memo was the first to act, reaching for a cell phone in his coat pocket. When I finally stood, I moved to Little Piqui. If there was anything I could have done to save him, the instinct never came.

Memo was calling the police, not the ambulance, and I knew why. Our friend was already dead. All I could do was stare at the gash in his head, showing a skull like a cracked Ming vase, and a river of blood that seemed to spring from some infinite reservoir inside our friend’s little body. By the time the police got to my house, the blood had already seeped into the hardwood floor, while Eduardo was running away in the moonlight.