“Fiction is history… or it is nothing. But it is also more than that; it stands on firmer ground… whereas history is based …on second hand impression.
– Joseph Conrad
At night on Main Street—red lights
string muted rubies in the Tule fog,
histories of Three Card Monte, Acey Deucy, in Mochi’s Bar,
shy visits to Lola’s place behind the Starlight bowling alley,
cock fights, and knife fights retold in Tagalog and Pidgin English,
Escrima dreams, Bahala na, whatever happens, happens.
Lucky Lucay, Julian Balidoy, Rudy Sulite, Angel Cabales,
winners of purple hearts, silver stars and government commendations,
those scouts, point men, and coast watchers,
those slick haired boys who jitterbugged in pre-war Manila,
who dove for oysters with goggles made from glass bottle bottoms,
in the lagoons of Cebu and Mindanao,
who led G.I.’s from Texas and South Philadelphia
through the bamboo jungles.
Now they walk toward vanishing points and perimeters,
pruning shears slung over their shoulders instead of carbines.
The straw boss can’t get their names right.
Asparagus knives and Texas shorties
in hands as hard as the soles of your shoes.
They water gardens of winter squash and bitter melon.
Men without women, behind the barracks in the labor camp,
cook adobu in outdoor kitchens in Earlimart and Delano,
field pack the ladyfingers, ribeiras and flaming reds.
It’s piece work, Little Rudy– pick them and pack them fast,
then nail the lugs shut and swamp them
into cold storage, reefer trucks, to go south over Tejon Pass
through Castaic Junction into another valley.
Angel Cabales could hammer the fruit crates shut
faster than the machine that killed John Henry,
the seeds still warm, the flesh of the fruit still trembling.
Now in winter, in the thick Tule fog
They walk the picket lines in army surplus parkas,
outside the entrance to the Di Giorgio Ranch.
Anting Anting tatoos fade on their calves and chests.
Blood tugs from their limbs back to their hearts.
They huddle around fires in fifty gallon barrels,
remembering their women, they dream
histories of Lapu Lapu, the warrior king,
who killed Magellan in his armor, in the shallows,
with a fire-hardened wooden stick and a bow and arrow.
During the strike, I hung around the edges of their fires,
warmed my hands, darkened my face over the smoking drums,
installing in my silent ear the braveries of others.
Now I try and reconstruct it all, try to get it right,
But I was a boy looking at the world of men
through his thick horn rimmed glasses.
But they still tell the story in Mochi’s bar
of Angel Cabales in the Giumarra cold storage,
fighting his way through five Anglos
and laying them out cold
with a twenty two inch bamboo escrima stick.
Rudy Sulite, Julian Balidoy, Lucky Lukay,
those slick haired island boys who carried
their silver stars and faded purple hearts
in beat-up wicker suitcases from labor camp to labor camp,
are as real, now, as this poem,
which stand on firmer ground than history.
_________________
The Delano Grape Strike was started by the primarily Filipino Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee. Cesar Chavez and his farmworker association joined the strike shortly after, and the rest is history.
Escrima: Filipino Martial Art.
Anting Anting: Religious/Good luck charms.
Texas shorties: Short handled hoes.
Bahala Na: As God wills; also used to mean one will meet any challenge; the motto of
One of the units of Pilipino soldiers that was part of the American army during WW II.