I stared at them, at my father, at the unexpected spectacle of his pleasure. I would have liked to laugh too, to share the joke, but instead I watched and, without really understanding why, I felt rebuffed.
A House on Wheels
The last boats always departed earlier on a Sunday and they waited now, surging gently, loaded up and ready, for anyone who might fill the remaining seats. While the light lasted, the boatmen would hang on for as long as they had the patience, regardless of the official timetable on the noticeboard outside Jonah’s office. I knew my father wouldn’t leave until the last one had been pushed out into the waves, and so I sat, quietly, savouring the grainy lilac light that washed the jetty, the soft flare of boat lamps.
Along the sea wall the jetty boys stirred suddenly in the middle of a hand and I turned to see Subong, on his feet now, cards and cigarettes momentarily forgotten, pointing along the coast road. In the near distance a man pushed a cart along the edge of the traffic stream, a handkerchief tied across his face like a bandit to shield him from the road dust that swirled up around him. The occupants of the cart, a woman and some kids, waved in our direction and, seeing them, Jonah started whistling and waving back. Everyone craned to see. ‘Trouble on wheels,’ Jonah said, but loudly, as if for the new arrivals’ benefit, though they were still far out of earshot.
‘I don’t want to hear later that you’ve been playing,’ my father said to me.
Lottie and Lando’s House-on-Wheels was a mobile casino and — though my father, Jonah and most of the boys enjoyed an evening spent at its tables — in deference to a promise he said he’d made to my mother, my father vetoed all such pleasures for me. The House travelled up and down the coast, returning every few months to Esperanza, moving on as soon as people started getting careful with their money again. Its usual stay was about a week. Lando had designed and built the House, which was really a cart, himself. It incorporated fold-away gaming tables that blossomed out like a lotus so that punters could bet on all four sides, though when packed up for the road it was no bigger than the watermelon vendor’s cart, compact enough that Lando could push it by himself with Lottie and all the children aboard. When the tables were out, Lottie and her eldest daughter Lorna sat back to back in the centre of the cart with the number trays and the rolling balls and a feather duster to keep the trays clean. Lando kept an eye on the younger kids, whom he’d post at street corners to tout for gamblers and look out for cops, ready to close up and push the cart away at the first sign of trouble. Packing up was a smooth operation and they had it down to less than a minute. I’d seen Lottie and Lorna haul the tables back in as Lando pushed the cart at full speed, the kids running barefoot into the alleys to rendezvous around the corner. The House was, of course, unlicensed, and if they were caught unofficial overheads could run high, especially to keep Lottie or Lando — and now Lorna, who was fourteen and almost a woman — from being arrested.
The House-on-Wheels was also their home: they slept under it and washed beside it and kept their food and cooking pots in it. On top of the bedding and the cooking pots and the half sack of rice and the folded gaming tables, Lottie kept a tray of cigarettes, which she sold individually, and a shoe-shine kit.
Of the children, Lorna was the eldest, thin and small for her age as they all were, followed by Luis, Lenora, Luke and finally Buan, because their parents had tired of the joke by then. Lorna had left school after elementary, though the younger children continued to attend sporadically.
The House-on-Wheels drew closer and I saw that since its last visit Lando had added foot-rails along both flanks of the cart and carved a design like coiling snakes along its top edge. The youngest children stood on the rails, clinging to the sides as the cart rolled along, too big now to all fit inside it.
‘He could probably make anything,’ I said, eyeing the snakes.
‘He really has some talent, eh?’ Jonah nodded.
‘Talent’s nothing without money,’ my father said, and there was a murmur of agreement.
‘Kids keep you poor,’ Subong broke in. ‘That’s what my mother says.’ Subong was only a few years older than me. He lived with his mother and some nights he didn’t go home, sleeping down by the jetty on the floor of Jonah’s office or, at the height of summer, in the shadow of the sea wall. He always wore a cap with a neck guard but never wore a shirt.
‘Sex keeps you happy,’ said someone else. ‘Blame the Pope.’ There was a ripple of laughter.
The House-on-Wheels pulled up and Lando helped his wife and elder daughter out of the cart as the younger kids slid down to sit on the foot-rail and inspect their surroundings, already bored. The jetty boys fell silent for a moment, for Lorna, at fourteen, though she barely looked that, was pregnant.
‘Congratulations,’ said my father, but it came out sounding like a question. Lorna flushed. The boys all tried not to look at her belly.
‘Made your fortune this time?’ Jonah said to Lando.
‘What do you mean?’ Lando said hotly.
‘I didn’t mean … ’ Jonah glanced at Lorna.
‘He’s just being nice. He doesn’t mean anything,’ Lottie said. ‘It’s Jonah.’
Lando licked his lips and looked round the jetty boys. There were some new faces since the House had last been in town.
‘Aw, they’re all right,’ Jonah said. Lando nodded. Lottie patted her husband’s back and then rapped her knuckles on the wood of the cart and smiled round at the boys. ‘We bought our mansion, but we prefer life on the road,’ she said.
‘Really?’ Subong said.
Lottie threw him an incredulous look. I looked at the House kids. Their clothes were grey from the street and patched. Lorna’s dress was thin, the print faded. She’d left it partly unfastened at the back to accommodate her pregnancy. Lottie, ignoring Subong now, turned to Jonah, who said, ‘We didn’t expect you back so soon.’
‘We don’t stay so long in each place now. Better to move on before we get conspicuous,’ Lottie said.
‘There’s always someone who notices when somebody’s making a little money,’ Lando said. ‘Last night we were down near the ferry terminal. You know, close by the twenty-four-hour café.’
‘Eddie Casama’s place,’ Jonah said.
‘Sure, him. There was talk. About this place being demolished. Some big development. You heard anything?’
Jonah puffed his lower lip out, gave a harsh sigh. I imagined his Margie: You can’t stem the tide of progress. And almost immediately I imagined Pepe Pimentel and then, for no reason, a Pomeranian with Pepe Pimentel’s hair.
‘Drinking talk maybe,’ Jonah said hopefully.
‘Maybe. We didn’t stick around to find out. Lottie didn’t like the look of a couple of the customers. Drunk, you know. Looked like they’d be happy to find trouble.’
‘Who’d we go to if anything happened?’ Lottie said. ‘The police?’
‘They probably were the police,’ Subong said. My father hissed under his breath.
‘Got enough to worry about right now.’ Lottie stared at her daughter, who pouted and looked away over the water. ‘Who’d know to miss us?’
‘It’s a big ocean,’ Subong said. Everyone shot a look at the horizon. ‘Full of secrets,’ he added and giggled self-consciously.
My father looked at Lorna’s belly and frowned at Subong. ‘It’s not good to talk like that around unborn children,’ he said. There was a silence while people considered, perhaps, what kind of mischief might come as a result of careless talk in the earshot of foetuses.