The Ark

Copyright © 2020 by VeryWellAged

What was and what will be...2

Author's note: These chapters are NOT stand-alones...The story starts here.

What was and what will be...3

I sleep in on Saturday morning and lollygag around the house until noon, before enjoying a lunch at MickeyD’s. I’m told that there will be an appraisal on the house and following that, the paperwork I need to sign with the real estate agent will be ready. The appraisal will occur this coming week.

There are many small things I’ll do in the coming days. Things like placing a classified ad in the Tri-City Herald for my firearms. It makes no sense to go into all the details, but these things need to happen. This act of leaving the country is far more involved than moving to a different State.

By half-past four in the afternoon, I have a text from Cincer.

[Cincer] Hoohoo. She is a smart one, truly. You right. She asked about how many and ages. You not tell her how many?

I didn’t tell her anything other than I was not marrying and bringing to the USA.

[Cincer] OK. She figure it out. Yes she smart. She ask if you good to us. Of course I tell her yes.

[Cincer] She ask how many before me. I ask her why she ask that. She say because if I the first then I am stupid.

What do you think of that?

[Cincer] How I know? You not like her husband I think. That what I tell her.

[Cincer] Ira, she say you nice to her and keep her secret. She will do the same for you. What secret you keep?

Hard to explain, but she hid things about life in the Philippines from him.

[Cincer] I think she believe some of us are young. I not tell her this.

[Cincer] She ask your cell number. I give it to her. Do not let her trick you.

[Cincer] She try to trick me. But I not allow it.

Why does she want to know my number?

[Cincer] Hard to know my love. But be careful. She ask for the numbers and names of the other girls.

[Cincer] I tell her, if you want to give that to her, it up to you, not me. I not give it.

OK. How are you?

[Cincer] OK lang. We all OK. No problem here.

The text exchanges with Cincer and the other gals continue on and off for hours. If it were just two of us, I would have suggested the use of Yahoo messenger as my tablet is there, but there isn’t any way to do that with six of them¹.

I have some surprising news. There’s interest in all three parcels I own. They are adjacent undeveloped lots. The offer is too low and I’m rejecting it. I’m in no rush on them.

On Sunday, about the time I and, I assume, Tom, are watching an NFL game, in this case, the Seahawks against the St. Louis Rams, I get a text. It’s late in the game and we are losing. It’s possible that one of the gals is texting. I can’t think of who else would, so I pick up the phone.

[509-378-xxxx] How many Filipinas?

Who is this?

[509-378-xxxx] Elena

How many? How old?

Why are you asking?

[509-378-xxxx] Want to know.

Why?

[509-378-xxxx] Maybe bad for me.

You mean bad for your marriage to Tom?

[509-378-xxxx] Yes. That why. He ask me what you doing. Why I not tell him.

How is anything you learn from me going to help you with Tom, unless you are intending to hurt me?

[509-378-xxxx] Ha! You have young ones!

I hate to lie. It goes against my gut, but there are times when you just really don’t have a good option.

No. Not like you think. There are four gals. The youngest is only eighteen, but her mother approves. Another is only nineteen

So yes, they are young. Maybe too young. But not illegal. Still it embarrasses me.

[509-378-xxxx] They too young for you.

Maybe, but they are with me by their own choice. Stay out of my life or I will make trouble for you.

Leave me alone, I leave you alone.

[509-378-xxxx] What I tell Tom?

Tell him my love is a Muslim woman and I don’t think it would be smart for me to bring her here. There would be prejudice.

Tell him, that is why you warned me it might be dangerous.

But tell him to keep his damned mouth shut. I don’t need any problems while I am here.

[509-378-xxxx] OK, yes, OK. I do that.

[509-378-xxxx] Why you want four?

I didn’t.

[509-378-xxxx] I not understand.

It is complicated and I am done explaining.

[509-378-xxxx] OK, OK. No more.

Seattle has lost… to a team that should be in LA.

The next two weeks are pretty much the difficult part. The selling of what I can. The giving away some and throwing away the rest.

The house is appraised at four hundred and forty thousand dollars. That’s what happens when you are single, don’t have kids, have money and can buy a nice large place on a decent amount of land as an investment, even though you don’t need anything that fucking big. I always saw it as a safe investment for when the wheels came off the economy and the stock market crashed.

Did I need that large a house otherwise? No, of course not. And it didn’t cost me anything near half of what it has been valued at. I always intended to sell it for a good bit more than it cost to build. The appraisal number is in line with what I suspected it’s worth, based on what things have been selling for lately. But then, it’s a strong market right now. And so, while I’m not downsizing in Kennewick, as I expected to do in my later years, I’m going to benefit from my plan.

On November 26^th (their 27^th in the Philippines) I get text messages from the girls. There’s a big storm there called Winnie. There’s flooding and school has been cancelled. They are OK and wanted me to know that.

For the next couple of days I track Winnie. It continues to gather strength, but it has moved north of Samar where it pretty much transforms from a major tropical depression to a typhoon.

In the end, the storm causes the death of over fifteen thousand souls and massive loss of property on the island of Luzon. It was a surprise and a bit sobering.

Life for my gals seems to be OK. They were more inconvenienced by the storm than anything else.

My next three weeks continue on, much as the two previous ones had. I’ll move out of the house on Wednesday, three days before Christmas. It’s not too cold today. Right now it’s 42F and they say it may get as high as 55F later today. I can only hope it’ll be as warm later in the week. I’m bringing very little with me to the rental in Richland, so… so long as it isn’t snowing, all will be OK.

I’ve had a few interested parties in regard to the sale of the house. Interest rates are low and banks are lending. I’m crossing my fingers.

The texting with the gals continues every day, but I can tell they are getting increasingly stressed out.

Elena has not been a problem, but Tom has avoided me and, if that is the worst of it, I can live with it. Elena is one version of the mistake that I might have run into if I just found one gal over there. At least, it doesn’t look like she is taking Tom for a ride and then dumping him. But even that assumption is a guess. She has just recently gotten her two year green card. She will have to wait at least close to two more years to get her ten-year regular card that is without conditions. I’ve no way to know what she will do then.

There’s no way I can leave until after the New Year, but I need to leave as soon as I can. Other than the last bits to get out of the house, just about everything else is resolved. I’ve worked out how to handle the bills for the utilities that will accrue before and up to the sale, but for which I’ll only be billed for after the house sells. The bank has legal paperwork for sending funds to my bank in the Philippines on a quarterly basis via wire transfer, plus the funds from the sale of the house if it doesn’t sell until after I’m gone.

I’m told that the house may not sell until next August, close to the start of the next school year. I hope that is not the case. There are a few last items to get out of the house and I’m sure I could get it out before New Year’s, but the plane fares between Christmas and New Year’s are very expensive. It just isn’t worth paying double for travel to get back that fast. But with any luck I’ll be out of here by January 15^th.

Another week has passed, and there have been major developments. Christmas was yesterday. This morning I received word that we have an offer on the house. It’s a bit under the asking price, but if the house doesn’t sell until August, the cost of utilities will be close to the difference. I’ve forty-eight hours to chew on it. I’ll take that chew time.

The other piece of news doesn’t affect me directly, but it’s a warning I need to pay attention to. The news is that there has been a tsunami that wiped out a bunch of shit in Indonesia and appears to have cost many thousands of lives.

I knew, from what the gals said, that there were earthquakes and monsoons in the Philippines, but maybe I didn’t give it enough consideration.

As I’m currently just sort of sitting on my ass, I decide to read up on these things. As I do, all my ideas for what I wanted to build are trashed. I learn that monsoons can come with storm surges. Surges of ocean water that can be as dangerous as tsunamis.

I read up on the 1881 typhoon Haiphong, which is said to have caused twenty thousand deaths in the Philippines. The 1991 storm Thelma hit the middle islands of the Philippines, called the Visayas. Santa Rita is in the Visayas. Thelma caused maybe eight thousand deaths. The really bad ones are not every year or even every decade, but they do come. If this climate change shit turns out to be real, things might get nasty. Clearly, even a storm that never made it to typhoon status can cause massive problems on our island. Winnie is a prime example of that.

I don’t think I made a mistake settling in Santa Rita, but I think it’s fair to say that I’m less complacent now than I was before. We don’t get hurricanes or typhoons, much less tsunamis, in Kennewick, and I wasn’t really paying attention. When I noticed the building for impermanence I didn't really understand the why of it.

Nothing I saw in Tacloban or Santa Rita would survive such an event. There’s talk of climate warming. I’m not sure I believe all they say. Folks cry wolf a lot. Al Gore is going hoarse crying about it. They say that there will be stronger storms related to this and that the oceans will rise. So far I’m not seeing any signs of that, but shit happens. The Indonesians weren’t wiped out by climate change. It was an undersea earthquake and subsequent tsunami.

It’s January 15^th and I’m sitting on my damned ass still here in Kennewick. We have a closing in nine days. As everything will go smoother if I’m here, I have tickets to leave out of Sea-Tac the day after the closing. I should be back in Santa Rita on the twenty-seventh, a day before Reyna’s birthday.

Everything is out of the house. I spoke to Elena a while ago about how to send things to the Philippines, and she kindly guided me through a process called balikbayan². I shipped nine large cardboard boxes of stuff. The cost was under one hundred dollars per box. I sent a bunch of my small kitchen appliances, a computer, keepsakes, linen, pictures and artwork I’ve purchased over the years, some tools, a silver service I inherited years ago, a complete china dinner service for twelve, and a bunch of good distilled spirits that I didn’t see in the stores in Tacloban when I went looking.

Elena warns me that I will make it back long before the boxes get there, and so not to stress out if I don’t see them for a while.

As I sit here and look around at this town I lived in, it becomes clear. What was holding me here was inertia and little more. I had my routine, places I’d go at different times; MickeyD’s three or four times a week for lunch. The café for supper three times a week; the movies once or twice a month; the library; the morning coffee in my breakfast nook while reading the Tri-City Herald; tinkering with fixing small engines for friends when needed; messing around with my fishing boat, a 1973 Bayliner, which sold fast; keeping my firearms in good condition; sighting in at the range in the fall and hunting in the winter.

OK, so that was my life. It filled the time, but did I need to be in Kennewick? I could have been in a hundred other places. It’s just where I was. And, in truth, I was just treading water. Nothing more. I was comfortable, but empty and lonely. Nothing much would change until I died, except that one thing after another would fall off the list as I became too old to do the thing. I was marking time until my passing.

Now, the house is gone; the firearms are gone; the boat is gone. That which I made use of to fill my days is gone and I’m ready, no, itching, to leave.

As I know when I will be leaving, I contact Verizon. I gather I have to buy out the remaining time on my two year contract. When I call the company I am getting a lot of pushback, but I do finally get an agreement. The cut-off date is set for the day after I leave. It’s not too bad. There are only three more months left on it. They can charge my debit card one more time and close the account. It’s the very last bill issue I have needed to resolve.

Finally! The day has come. The house is sold and I deposit a cashier’s check in my Wells Fargo account, fill out the paperwork for a wire transfer of about one-fourth of it now and another fourth each quarter.

My Social Security checks and pension arrive in this account as well.

I’ve arranged to sell my Suburban, though I’ve been driving it. I’ll drop it off and get a lift to the Avis car rental at the Pasco Airport. Returning to the bank, I deposit a cashier’s check for the Suburban. That is the very last thing. I’m done.

I’m on my way and travelling light again. All the other stuff is in the boxes that will arrive later. Most of what I have in my bag are small presents for the gals.

I’m not coming back and so I didn’t need a round-trip ticket, but because of a rule, I had to have a ‘return flight.’ I chose a cheap flight out of the Philippines to Penang as my ‘return ticket.’ I’ll not use it, but a foreigner is not allowed to fly into the Philippines without a ticket to leave it. It does not have to be a return from where you came from. It just has to be a ticket to leave. So a ticket from Manila to Penang gets me on the plane in Sea-Tac. It’s a game, but one I have no choice but to play.

The gals know I’m coming and they know exactly what flight I’ll return on. It has been a long separation in their minds. In truth, it has been only seventy-two days. I’ve accomplished a shitload of stuff in a very short period of time… and, because of all I did, I do not need to come back, ever.

I began this journey four months ago… a lifetime ago. I’m not the man I was when I left in September. Not close to it.

A couple of hours before I board the plane to Manila, I get a text. The gals really should be sleeping, and so I guess, though I would have looked at the text anyway, I’m curious. It’s Elena.

[Elena] OK, you gone now, right? I not tell anyone. What is the truth?

Truth about what?

[Elena] You really have four girls or you just bragging?

It could hardly be bragging as I wasn’t telling anyone.

[Elena] What the real reason you staying there?

There aren’t four.

[Elena] I knew it! Why you try to act big. Two is plenty!

If it were only two, that would have been fine with me. No, there are six. Their names are Cincer, Princess, Nelia, Lorie, Shaniel and Reyna. And yes they are every bit the reason.

Two from Manila, two from Panay, and two from Tacloban/Samar area.

[Elena] How old?

Old enough.

[Elena] Thank God you not tell Tom. I think I will lose him!

I really doubt that. There is no way to bring them to the States and I truly doubt Tom would be happy in the Philippines. It’s the rice! 

I think you were worrying about a nonissue. I know why you did what you did, but it was probably not needed.

[Elena] Maybe you right. Maybe I worry too much. I do love him.

I’m glad you do.

[Elena] Have a safe trip, Ira. Be good to your girls. Too many bad men I think.

For once in my life, I booked a first class seat. I’m actually able to lie down! When I get to Manila, I feel fine, and the flight to Tacloban leaves in just four hours.

I stop off at a Philippines airlines counter while at the airport and exchange the ticket to Penang for a round trip from Iloilo to Tacloban in the name of Lorie’s mother, Lillian. I’m sure she would like to see her daughter. The reticketing cost is minimal.

Having crossed the date line, it’s the twenty-seventh, a Thursday. Reyna’s birthday is tomorrow, a Friday, and I’ve no doubt we will have a large party.

Ninety minutes after we take off from Manila, we are landing in Tacloban. It’s only 2PM, and so Cincer, and Reyna will not be here to meet me, but I expect to see all the others.

I walk out of the airport to find not four gals, not six, but eight!

Of the eight, I know all but one. Clearly, Cincer has taken the afternoon off and Reyna has stayed home from school. Reyna’s older sister is here. That’s a surprise, but a sweet one. She has been supportive of Reyna’s life with me. My returning for her sister’s birthday will not have gone unnoticed.

But who’s the eighth female? She can’t be any older than Reyna. No one is introducing her. The kid stands a little back from the group and isn’t engaged.

I’m getting hugs and kisses from my six plus Reyna’s sister, Jessa. Maybe Jessa’s hugs and kisses are a little more enthusiastic than I expect from her, but maybe she’s just relieved to see me for Reyna’s sake.

That eighth face, who isn’t seeking hugs or kisses, who the fuck is she?

There are nine of us here and three motorcycles. In the States it would be a problem. Here it’s not. With two riders behind the operator of each bike, we ride back to Santa Rita and home.

As we approach the house I notice that Reyna’s sister’s place looks deserted. I wonder where she is living now. They must be living close by or she wouldn’t be here today.

We put the bikes up under a roofed over area attached to the house. I guess you might call it a carport, but it doesn’t look like it in a formal way.

I was half expecting to see the signs of an imminent party in progress, and was going to comment on just that, but there are no signs. That’s OK with me and I’ll say nothing, but I seem to have jumped to an unwarranted conclusion, as Cincer points out, Ira, it a long trip. We know you are tired. So we will be quiet and you just go to sleep, unless you want to eat first. What you want? Food or sleep?

I got a special type of seat on the flight from the States and was able to lie down and sleep. I feel fine. I had a meal at the airport before my flight here less than three hours ago, so I’m not hungry. If I feel tired later, I’ll lie down, but for now, I have some presents to hand out!

I think that takes them by surprise, though the presents will be welcome, I’m beginning to feel like there are a couple of things I need to know.

But before I hand out the presents, tell me, Jessa, as I see you have moved, where are you and your husband living?

§ § §

§ § §

What was and what will be...4