Home: Part 5

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Do not expect anything, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for awhile.

July 1974

There was rain. Outside the hotel, I watched Narcie hurry through the afternoon crowd, her shoulders hunched toward her ears. My luggage, a single leather Samsonite suitcase, rested against my leg as I stood beneath the hotel's awning and waited for my driver. I did what I could to stay dry, but the rain was warm and would stop soon enough.

"You will be back?" Narcie had asked as we left the room and started down the hotel's narrow staircase.

I did not want to lie to her, but I did. "In a month," I said. The lie, really, was not about my return, but about seeking her out if I did. I gave her most of the Pesos I had left. She hugged me before we stepped outside, and then she was gone.

A car stopped at the curb in front of me. "The airport?" the driver called through the open window. He helped me with the Samsonite, and then we were an anonymous part of the traffic. I was glad to be going home. In her previous letter, my mother had written that my father had been ill--nothing specific other than "not feeling especially well these days." I did not know if the affliction was mental or physical, for my father had spent much of his life depressed, and that depression often seemed to manifest itself in physical ailments. I was also somewhat weary of traveling. Though I'd been in the Philippines for nearly a month, I had been away from home for the better part of a year.

"Checkpoint," the driver said, and he pointed ahead where several Filipino soldiers stood beside a truck. "You legal?"

"I am," I said. I had my passport ready in case the soldiers asked to see it. But I also knew that the driver was making sure I had no drugs on me. The driver stopped the car.

While two soldiers leaned against the truck, their weapons resting against their hips, a third looked through the driver's window, looked me up and down, then grunted and waved us through. I knew that if my hair had been longer, I might have been questioned about where I was going, and why. I couldn't change my skin color to a shade of brown, but I could keep my hair short enough to appear like one of the sailors simply headed out of town.

"Easy one, today," the driver said as we continued on.

"Very easy."

"The rest of the ride, no problem."

I was glad. I wanted simply to get home.