They are all colored, the ones who come in, which makes it simple. Hod doesn’t care, it’s all business, but some of the white soldiers and the leftover Spanish do and they are the customer, who is always right. The locals, whatever their color, tend to wait for the time in between trains to come in and he has decided not to put up a sign or make a policy. Let them work it out on their own. He catches the sergeant looking between him and Mei while they handle orders at opposite ends of the counter, the troop with maybe a half hour before their transport is serviced.
“This place has gone through some changes since we last come through,” says the sergeant. It’s clear he means San Fernando, not the lunch room, which has been open just two weeks.
“Earthquakes, Spaniards, American gunboats—” says Hod, “not the first time it all come down.” The sergeant has ordered a hamburger sandwich like most of the others, like most of the Americans who come in off the train. The carabao beef is a might stringy so he has Chow mix a little duck fat into the grind. “But you can’t leave it just sit. Hell—I heard them folks back in Galveston already built their downtown back.”
“Never understood why people want to stay there,” says the sergeant. “I’m from El Paso—the river don’t flood and the earth don’t shake.”
“On your way home?”
There is a looseness to these men, a lightness, that he remembers from when the Colorados got pulled off the line for good. Had your chance to kill me and now it’s gone.
“They send us to some fort,” says the sergeant, looking down the counter at his laughing, shouting soldiers, “and we’ll sort it out from there. Not like you vols, walk off the boat and that’s the end of it.”
Mei touches his arm and tells him she’s going back to help Chow fix the orders. He can feel the sergeant watching them.
“Where you been garrisoned?” he asks. It is no skin off his ass what people think, it really isn’t, but some of them act like if you married a Chinese it’s their business to say something.
“Zambales.”
“Sittin on the beach.”
“Ever walk ten miles over loose sand with your full kit on?”
Hod grins. “Wasn’t any picnic where we was either. How the people up there?”
“Not so different than here. Got some different languages, some folks up in the mountains still carryin spears.”
“I heard about them.”
The sergeant swivels around in his seat to look out the front window. The window cost more than anything else, that much glass a rare item in earthquake country, but the swivel seats were a steal after Hod told the workmen what he wanted, the head fella having seen the real thing on a visit to Manila and able to copy it.
“It’s no wonder my boys just give up and called em all googoos,” says the sergeant. “So many kinds to keep track of.”
“I suppose.”
“The Mexicans, they got names for every kind of mix. Mestizo, castizo, mulato, morisco. Even got something called a salta-atrás—a jump backwards.”
“Which is—?”
“Chinese man and an Indian woman.” The sergeant shrugs. “You figure these folks have their own words for all of it.” He points out the window. “Like what would you call that?”
He is pointing at Bo, who stands on the porch holding himself up by the bamboo roof support watching the other boys hustle their peanuts and cigarettes and bananas next to the steaming locomotive. Mei has scared him enough about the tracks that he will stay there for hours, following the action in the station like it is all a show put on for his enjoyment. He doesn’t look like the other boys here, who could all go for twins, and Hod has never thought before about what name to give. He told the major he’d applied to be British so they’d let him stay, but has let it slide and once the ship sailed with the regiment nobody has questioned him. Bo turns to look inside, and, seeing Hod, lights up with the smile he does with his whole body.
“That,” says Hod, reaching for the water jug to serve the colored infantry, “would be a Filipino.”