Back to Summer 2024

A Chance Encounter
Under a Redwood Tree

E.P Tuazon | Fiction, Summer 2024

There are episodes of Boy’s Park Archie cannot get out of his head. Like the one where Boy’s Lola makes him an ube cake but it’s sugar free because she’s diabetic. Or the one where they try to put Boy’s pig down because she killed the town mascot (a wily rooster) in self-defense. Or the tearjerker episode, the one that even made his old man cry.

It’s a cartoon of simplicity, except it’s got a main character that’s Filipino just like Archie so it’s not that simple at all. It’s got flavor, the kind he sweats and others smell. Ok, it’s more like an odor. But that doesn’t sound as appealing.

____________

One of his best friends, Jupiter, comes over to his house to watch the show with him every day it’s on. That’s five times a week. A full-time job. Except it’s fun and it doesn’t pay and you can have all the butong pakwan you want while you watch. She commutes by bus an hour away because school lets off at three and Boy’s Park doesn’t come on until six and it would be awkward if she just went directly home with Archie.

They watch a rerun, an episode from season eighteen where Boy turns a Balikbayan box into a submarine and joins Antifa. It’s a topical show with an aggressive political pen of artists and writers. They make it easy for kids to swallow, even though most of their audience is sixteen and above.

Jupiter flicks more empty shells into their bowl of empty shells they both share. Unlike Archie who eats the watermelon seeds right after he breaks it open, Jupiter saves a dozen of them before eating them all at once.

Archie remembers introducing the real butong pakwan to her the first time. It was in the second episode of the first season. Boy cracked it open with his front teeth because it was easier to animate, but the real way to do it was with the teeth you got in your cheek. They laughed, drooling with fingers in their mouths, then Jupiter started her pile.

“Why are you putting yours down? You’re supposed to eat it,” Archie said, chewing on his seed.

“I want to savor the flavor,” she said, cracking open another one in her cheek.

He thought it odd, but, hey, to each their own.

____________

Jupiter is not Filipino. Archie is not sure what she is so he doesn’t ask. Neither does he ask why she comes to his house all the time. Once, during Season seventeen’s finale, he kissed her, but her eyes were so glued on the screen he doesn’t think she even noticed or remembers. It’s best not to mention it, he’s learned, for situations like these.

____________

Boy’s submarine is about to implode when Archie’s old man comes through the door. He’s nursing a bucket of KFC in his arms as he slips out of his shoes. He lets Boy escape to the surface right beside the Santa Monica Pier before interrupting. “This show’s still going?”

Archie doesn’t turn his head. “Any Honey Barbecue this time?”

His dad laughs the way someone laughs when someone’s cutting in front of them in a busy line. “Anak ng daga! You know it’s all Original Recipe. If you want barbecue, just put spicy banana ketchup on it!”

“Hello, Mr. G.” Jupiter raises her hand as another crack comes from her mouth.

“Jupiter, how’s your mom?”

“Her feet still stink but other than that she shouldn’t complain.”

“I told her to use the Vicks’ and Doctor Scholl’s,” Archie’s old man says, his voice trailing after him from the kitchen. They hear him lift and lower the lid from the rice maker as Boy marches on shore lifting his trademark tabo in his hand: a bucket Filipinos use in the bathroom to both clean and save their asses. “Rice is still good. Time to eat.”

____________

Archie’s old man and Jupiter’s mom work in the same pharmaceutical company like most of the other adults in town. Their chemistry teacher jokingly called their town a “Pharm Town” before igniting a Bunsen burner and turning a black liquid clear. Most adults in town worked the same hours and talked the same shop. Most kids went to the same company picnic. Take-your-kid-to-work day was a district-wide field trip. There were internships, scholarships, and work-study programs. Archie and Jupiter knew they didn’t have to try hard to follow in their parents’ footsteps and they weren’t the only ones. It was just a matter of time for everyone.

____________

When the episode is over, the chicken is soggy from being in the bucket too long. The skin is limp and slides off the meat in a way that makes Archie just have a drumstick and Jupiter just have a thigh and a wing even though they are very hungry. Archie’s old man eats the rest because he’s always hungry and can’t think about what food looks like. They all eat the chicken and rice with their hands. Archie didn’t have to teach Jupiter how to do that. She had already learned how from episode one.

In between bites, Archie’s father asks about school. After they mention their geometry test and Fahrenheit 451 quiz, Archie’s father goes on his usual rant about what he’s been cooking up at the lab. Even though it’s sensitive information, most people in town have already signed an NDA and therefore, if no one can talk, you’re free to talk as much as you want.

“I told that idiot that if we use the precise amount of nootropic valproic acid to the right base we have for NH292, we’d hit the mark.”

Archie and Jupiter shook their heads with his old man. It was foolish to deny the empirical evidence presented in UC Santa Cruz’s 2022 field study of Cognitive Enhancers. Everyone and their mom knew that.

“So, you’re saying this can change the neurobehavioral patterns of a person to make them more susceptible to picking up languages?” Jupiter’s glass of coke slides down her greasy palm as she talks. She’s always been interested in smart drugs.

“Despite the studies, it still sounds a little crazy, Dad.”

“It’s not crazy,” Archie’s old man exclaims in a blizzard of spittle and chicken bits. “And it won’t just make it easier for someone to pick up a language. They’ll pick up the mannerisms, the tastes, and the whole mindset of another ethnicity.”

Archie looks at his old man’s grin, the way his glasses seemed to cloud his eyes in a blinding white. He knew that when his old man got like this he was going to make something a reality no matter what the cost. It was why his mother left. “You can’t just turn on culture and ethnicity in someone like it’s got a light switch. You can’t turn on what’s not there.”

Archie’s old man makes the shape of an “o” with his greasy hands in front of him. He looks through at Archie in it. “Of course you can’t, it’s more like a tunnel for culture to come through. It lubricates the empathy gap.”

Archie cringes at his old man’s use of the word “lubricates” but Jupiter is so absorbed she doesn’t notice the glass fall out of her hands. It shatters on the ground into thousands of pieces and Archie cannot help but think of the old nursery rhyme about Humpty Dumpty. There was a good episode of Boy’s Park about that too, but all the Park still couldn’t put them back together again.

____________

Boy’s Park has been going for more than thirty years. Despite being on the air for that long, it has never reached mainstream success. The show has changed with the times but at its core has stayed the same. Boy is still Filipino. There is still a park.

In the park, the characters and landscapes change. Sometimes there are park rangers named Sally or Jeff or Steve. Sometimes there’s an albino bat named Brac. Sometimes there are lush green mountains. Sometimes there are flat empty expanses. Sometimes they go outside of the park but it’s always there like in the episode where Boy goes to Antarctica, and he pulls out a picture of the park to help him think of warmth or the episode where Boy is in another park and they mention missing their own park. They never go to the Philippines though. It’s not that kind of show.

____________

After a year, Archie’s father’s smart drug goes to animal trial. After another year, it goes to human trial. The drug still doesn’t have a name, just a designation. Something where the numbers rattle on that makes it sound like gibberish. Boy’s Park is in its twenty-eighth season. If not for the pandemic, it would have been their 30th. Jupiter and Archie are in twelfth grade and still not dating. Archie has had two girlfriends in that time. None of them watched Boy’s Park. None of them knew or cared what ethnicity he was. Most people in town were color blind to that stuff anyway. Most people in town couldn’t even tell you what they were. Suffice to say, the relationships didn’t work out. Jupiter, on the other hand, never stopped going to Archie’s house every day Boy’s Park was on. She never stopped eating the butong pakwan. She never stopped making her piles.

____________

It is at the mid-season finale, right at the start of college application season, when Jupiter and Archie’s old man tells him Jupiter volunteered for the trial of his dad’s smart drug.

An old Boy from the future kicks the young Boy from the present out of a portal as the credits roll. It should be the perfect cliffhanger, but Archie is distracted. “Why would you do that?”

Jupiter adds the eleventh seed to her pile and cracks away as she talks. “I thought’d be cool.”

Archie’s old man is standing behind them with a bucket of KFC. Archie could smell the Honey Barbeque this time. “Don’t worry, it’s totally safe and not addictive. Side effects may include some nausea, headaches, abdominal pain, imposter syndrome, generational trauma, late car payments, gas—”

“But you don’t need something like that,” Archie says to Jupiter and, without thinking, he puts his hand on hers. The credits read off fake names for the animators. They are anonymous to protect their identities.

Jupiter makes twelve with her other hand. She doesn’t take her hand back. She lets Archie have it. “Which makes me perfect for it, don’t you think? It pays $400 a week for eight weeks. Easy money.”

“That’s right. Easy. How’s your mom, Jupiter?”

“She’s smelling better now, thanks to you,” she says and takes her hand away from Archie to pick up her pile and drop it into her mouth.

____________

After the mid-season finale, Boy’s Park goes on hiatus until January, so Archie doesn’t see much of Jupiter. They talk at school but most of their time is spent so focused on college applications that their minds pass each other like ships in the night even while they are sitting next to each other in class and lunch. At home, Archie’s old man doesn’t bring home KFC because Jupiter is not there and starts making his home-cooked Filipino food. While they sweat over some spicy sinigang, Archie asks how the trial is going and all he mentions is that it is going according to schedule and picks the bok choy from his teeth.

____________

Before winter break starts, Jupiter gives Archie a Boy’s Park shirt for Christmas and Archie gives her a $25 gift card to KFC. “Nice,” Jupiter says, “like a real Japanese Christmas,” and she kisses him while his eyes are open staring down at the shirt she’s given him. On it, Boy is wearing his tabo on his head, and all Archie can think of is that’s gross and this is amazing, but he can’t help but also feel disappointed that Jupiter said KFC reminded her of Japanese Christmas and not the time she spent with him. He couldn’t help but feel like he gave her the wrong gift as he closed his eyes and kissed her back.

____________

Before the year is up, the writers go on strike and Boy’s Park is on indefinite hiatus. Archie texts Jupiter about it but she doesn’t answer back until New Year’s Day when she gives Archie a call right after the ball drops on TV in Madison Square Garden.

“Happy New Year!” She says and, as he’s feared, she already sounds like a new person.

“Happy New Year. My dad says happy new year to you and your mom as well.”

“She says the same to you and your dad.”

Archie looks at his old man, but he’s already passed out with a cup of bilo-bilo in his hands. It was tradition to make the balls but this year they were store-bought. His mom made the better balls anyway, he thought. “So, what do you think is going to happen to Boy’s Park?”

On the other end, it sounds like Jupiter laughs, but it wasn’t the kind of laugh Archie enjoyed. “That show’s gone on for too long.”

Archie feels himself get warm. On television, it’s snowing in New York. Ryan Seacrest’s eyebrows are frozen. “But you love that show.”

“Archie, come on. That show? It took me a long time to realize it, but the only reason I ever watched that show was because of you.”

“And when did you realize that? After the trial?”

“Yeah. So what? Are you implying I didn’t feel this way until after taking the drugs?”

It was hard to admit it, but he had to. His teeth hurt as he spoke. “Yes.”

The silence was immense on the phone, as if the word had created a thousand-mile gap between them. It took a long time for Archie to register the dial tone and even longer for Archie to register what what he said meant.

____________

When school starts again, the two avoid each other. Archie gets into three of the colleges he applied for and choses to go to the one farthest from home. At National Signing Day, Jupiter declares she will be going straight to vocational school with their parent’s pharmaceutical company. A week after that, Archie’s old man asks Archie if it would be awkward if he started dating Jupiter’s mother over a bucket of Honey Barbecue chicken. Archie says it was inevitable and gives his father his blessing before going to his room with an empty stomach.

___________

The week before graduation, the writer’s strike ends, and Boy’s Park returns with reruns of the classic episodes with the promise that new episodes would continue in the fall. Even then, however, Jupiter does not return. The day before graduation, he texts her that he is sorry while he watches a rerun of the infamous tearjerker episode from season twelve.

____________

In the episode, Boy and a Space Pirate fall in love but Boy does not know the Space Pirate is a Space Pirate and the Space Pirate does not know Boy is the protector of the park. The day they meet, they promise to have a date with each other under the old rosewood tree the next day where they met, not knowing they will be battling each other over control of the park that night. During the battle, Boy and the space pirate command two giant fleets of spaceships and both sides take heavy casualties. The hate for each other grows and grows as death and destruction surround them. Then, because Boy is the star of the show, he launches in a giant robot and plunges a giant beam saber into the Space Pirate’s starboard window where she is sitting. Before she disintegrates, her last thoughts are of Boy. The next day, Boy is dressed up under the rosewood, holding flowers, the sun going down on the park, waiting for her.

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Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?

“When people look back at my writing, I hope it expresses how much fun I have conjuring a literary spell.”

E. P. Tuazon is a Filipino-American writer from Los Angeles. They have work in several publications and their newest book is called A PROFESSIONAL LOLA (Red Hen Press, 2024). They were chosen by ZZ Packer as the winner of the 2022 AWP Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction. They are a member of Advintage Press and The Blank Page Writing Club. In their spare time, they like to go to Filipino Seafood Markets to gossip with the crabs.