Charles Willeford_Hoke Moseley 04 by The Way We Die Now

Author:The Way We Die Now [Now, The Way We Die]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Hard-Boiled, Mystery & Detective
ISBN: 9781400032501
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1988-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

10

MRS. ELENA OSBORNE, NÉE ELENA ESPENIDA, LIVED IN the Lucky Star Trailer Park with her son, Warren, about nine sparsely settled blocks away from the cafeteria. As they walked together, Elena told Hoke a few things about her life. She was from San Fernando, Luzon, in the Philippine Islands, and had married a retired army staff sergeant. One of her friends in San Fernando had obtained a copy of a magazine called Asian Roses. The magazine was published and edited in Portland, Oregon. The subscribers were Americans, Australians, and New Zealanders who wanted to marry Asian women. Girls and women from Hong Kong, the Philippines, Japan, and Hawaii sent in their photographs, short biographies, and five dollars and were listed in the magazine. She and her girlfriend both had sent in snapshots, biographies, and five-dollar money orders. Her girlfriend had received three letters, and Elena had received only two. Her girlfriend was too timid to answer her letters, but Elena had answered one of hers. She hadn’t answered the other because it came from a seventy-one-year-old man who had recently lost his wife, and he had merely wanted a young woman to keep him warm at night. But the other letter, from Sergeant Warren Osborne, was very persuasive. He was a very handsome man who wanted a mother for his children and a companion to share his life in Immokalee, Florida. He had been retired from the army for two years, owned his own mobile home in the Lucky Star Trailer Park, and worked as a checker for Sunshine Packers. He also owned a Toyota pickup, only two years old, and he had never been married before. His mother had lived with him in the mobile home, but she had been dead for more than a year, and he was very lonely. He also felt, now that he was forty, that it was time to get married and have a son to carry on his name. He had told the truth about Immokalee, explaining that the town was in a rural area, with the same climate as the Philippines and that there were cities nearby—Naples and Fort Myers—where they could go and shop on weekends and see first-run movies and major-league baseball games during spring training.

They had corresponded, and after a few airmail letters back and forth, and discussions with her mother, Elena had agreed to marry him. She was twenty-one years old, and although she had an eighth-grade diploma and could read and write English very well, her opportunities to find a husband in San Fernando as well-off as Sergeant Osborne were nonexistent. When she agreed, he made all the arrangements for her visa through a lawyer in Fort Myers and sent her two hundred dollars and her airplane ticket from Manila to Fort Myers, Florida. She had given her mother one hundred dollars of the two, packed a suitcase, and made the long flight, changing planes in San Francisco. He met the plane in Fort Myers, and they were married three days later in Immokalee.

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