microphone and podium





Summer 2007, Volume 3

Little Pearl
by Peter Basson

She lay across the barrel of Jack’s chest and in the half light he studied her: hair as oily black as his own, only purer, without the mongrel mix of his father.

These were the hardest moments; those last minutes before he picked up and headed back to Subic. But this was the worst, his sense of vacancy overwhelming. Today he would walk out the door and he wouldn’t come back. In two days he was shipping Stateside. For most sailors this meant a last Bacchanalian night out in the bars and clubs but for Jack it meant only a bitter taste in his mouth, a grinding knot in his stomach. He ran his fingers through the shoe-shine of her hair, like liquid, silky soft. And he bit his lip as he thought about closing the door one last time.

“Mmm, I like it when you do that Jack,” she said. Only she pronounced his name Jark, like his mother.

“Yeah, I know you do. You’re gonna miss me aren’t you girl?”

“I miss you already and you not even go yet.”

“Yeah,” he added spitefully, “You’ll never love another man. Gonna keep it on ice for me girl, aren't you?”

She stayed silent, knowing better than to provoke his quick temper.

But he wouldn’t let it go. “So tell me, how long you think till you’re back on top of the bar at the Cork Room? Soon as I’m behind the gate tonight?”

“Stop it Jark.”

He breathed noisily through his nose and stared up at the ceiling where a wobbly fan batted damp air around the room. “Fuck,” he whispered.

He didn’t want to go but the choice had been made. When he arrived home he was moving back in with his mother, making a bed on her rented couch where he’d be hemmed in by half a lifetime of cheap memories, petrified crap that lined the shelves and bookcases: plastic dolls never removed from their boxes, ceramic figurines, momento plates, old postcards, decorative candles, all of it crammed onto any available surface. The apartment was located in a gone-to-hell neighborhood in Modesto where Vietnamese and Mexican gangs fought over the scraps and proclaimed their victories by tagging the apartment block's carport. His younger brother Luke, the one who’d taken a couple of Saturday night specials in his left thigh during a drug deal gone bad, was due out of prison and Jack’s mother was sick with worry. Luke would make his way unsteadily to her doorstep and Jack needed to be there to stop him flattening her. There were two other brothers but they had their own problems–bad marriages, kids in trouble, booze, always there was booze, the lubricant of their dysfunctional family history.

“I wish you take me back with you, Jark,” she said.

He felt his blood boiling to the surface. “For crying out loud how many freakin' times do I have to tell you?”

She lifted her head and faced him, her pupils dark and massive in the gloom, like black olives in a jar. “What I suppose to do when you go then, huh? I suppose to beg on street? You don’t want me work, so what I do? Go on, you tell it.”

He didn’t answer. Their conversations were spiraling down to a point neither of them wanted to acknowledge. Last night he’d missed curfew, spending the night with Joy and a bottle of Tandua rum instead. She’d tried to get him to laugh, forced him through a few weary reminiscences but instead of cheering him the memories acted only as touchstones to the frustration and anger building inside him like the afternoon thunderheads over the mountains. He could hear them now; yet another signal at the end of their day. Late afternoon sunlight cut through the rattan blinds, streaking her body with tiger stripes of light and shadow. The tiny room reeking of sex and rot and humidity

Joy was 21 years old, not quite young enough to be his daughter but she looked the part. A red rose was tattooed above her heart, a thorny stem trailing across her tiny left breast. Her street name was Little Pearl. A year ago he’d broken a man’s jaw for her-- a drunken sailor who’d slobbered confidentially in his ear, asking him how much it would cost to rent the whore for the night. They'd given Jack three weeks behind the chicken wire for that. When he got out set him to work scraping barnacles off the ships in dry dock where he was guarded by a beady-eyed marine with a shotgun and a pimply neck, and had to ask permission every time he wanted a piss--the Jarhead mute as concrete, knuckles white around his gun, silently willing Jack to step over the line before he gave the okay. And as he grunted and sweated beneath the shimmering steel hulls he agonized over Joy; where was she, what was she doing, who was she with?, conjuring up twisty visions of her betrayal, exquisite tortures that burned his brain and left him dizzy in the mirror heat.

“Jark, I need it true, you think we see each other again?”

“Yeah,” he lied. “I just gotta take care of business back in the States.”

“Then you come for me?" Her voice plaintive, filled with the melancholy of her dependency. "You come back here and we get marry?"

"Sure," he said. "We'll be married. You can wear a white dress."

But Jack knew how these things went. He had family history--his father with his own Filipina bride. Together they’d knocked out four kids in six rage filled years before his old man drove off one night and never came back. Jack wouldn’t make the same mistake. He was 34 years old and Joy was the only woman he’d ever loved but the future was impossible. He’d paid her bar-fine for the last 3 years--sixty bucks a week to the mama-san at the Cork Room just to keep her off the silver pole. But he knew what would happen once he shipped out. His Cherry girl--she wasn’t 17 anymore, and she’d have to find someone to pay her way one way or another. He thought about staying another night, making tomorrow his goodbye and screw the consequences when he walked back onto Subic. He closed his eyes and rubbed his fingers around his temple, the slight shift in vision herald of another migraine. He took a long draw on the bottle of rum. Felt it burn its way down his throat. There were tears in his eyes, a lump in his throat, but he forced them down.

"You come back for sure, Jack. I need to know. You promise?"

“Look, I told you how many fuckin’ times? I get things straightened out I’ll be back. Just give me a break tonight, alright? I need some time, that's all.”

But the time he needed was here in Subic, because what little he had left was running out fast and he knew he’d never make it back. Once he was gone he was gone for good. He heard the distant signal of the liberty horn—sailors and marines lining to get off base and onto Magsaysay Street where they’d cruise up and down the strip breathing in the heady mix of Jitney exhaust, salty air, barbecued meats, cheap perfume and sex.

“Remember that time we go to Banawee?” she said.

“Yeah, yeah that was great,” he answered, but instead of seeing the mountainside terraces he thought of another time, a solo trip he took out to Baguio where the wood carvers lived. It was the dry season, scorching hot, the track through the forest baked hard and white. As he pogoed up and down in the back seat he saw something moving in front of them, a black band cutting across the road. As the car hurtled towards it he realized it was a python, its head hidden in the parched undergrowth on one side of the road. "Stop!" he shouted, but the driver, worried about armed bandits, ran straight over it, no more concerned than if he’d bumped the truck over just another pothole. Jack wheeled around, saw the snake coiled up and writhing in the powdery white dirt, its body twisted like some great question mark, and slowly fading away in a cloud of white dust.

She ran her hand over his stomach, played with the fuzzy hair that ran from his navel to his crotch. He choked off another tear, felt it sting in his eye.

“Sit up straight sweetheart,” he said. “I wanna get a good look before...” his voice trailing to silence.

She hitched herself up onto his gut, her long black hair falling across her breasts as she leaned forward, hands pressed onto his broad shoulders. The bars of light played against her skin as she moved, like some caged animal, sleek, taught, vaguely leonine.

“You’re so fuckin’ beautiful,” he said and she gave him a face-full of her perfect white teeth. “Beautiful,” he whispered beneath his breath, “and I don’t know how the fuck I’m ever gonna let you go.”



BIO: I'm 46 years old, and have been writing for about 6-7 years, though only in the last couple of years have I started to take it more seriously. I live in Long Beach, been married for 16 years and have a 13 year old daughter. I grew up in UK, just outside of London, but have been in US for the last 18 years, (outside of a year spent teaching English in Mexico). I also spent a short time living in Spain.
I've had stories, travelogues and some essays published in three ex-pat magazines in Mexico, but that was because I knew the editors. Other than that I've been too lazy to send out stories, so don't really have a bio here in the states.
Favorite authors include - Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, Barbra Kingsolver, Annie Proulx, Ian McKewan (kind of boring and conventional now I see it written down, oh well!!). Hmm? - also Carlos Fuentes, Juan Rulfo, Jeanette Winterson.....okay, that's better."



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