by Shelby Hiatt
"I go through the entire population of workers one by one. I'm doing a human accounting of this great dirt-shoveling congress," he says and laughs.
It makes me smile. This is a turn of words no common Midwesterner would use. I'm struck. It's not love—I don't have a crush on Harry. I'm knocked out by what he is because it's what I want to be and it's sitting beside me in the flesh, talking and laughing. It's unassuming and leading the footloose life I want so badly.
"So you meet all the workers?" I say.
He nods. "Much more interesting than digging," and he goes on, seeing our interest. He talks about the people, the work they do, what their world is like, and about himself.
"Found out I could go almost anywhere steerage and it's cheap—free if I do a little work on board. I can go where I want if I'm willing to work, and I am." That big grin. He's a vagabond.
We eat, talk, get into a short conversation about our families back in the States, and Father makes the offhand remark that Mother's people are from Kentucky.
Harry grins. "My grandfather was a telegrapher for the L.H. & St.L. Railroad in Irvington."
Father's surprised. "Well, for heaven's sake," he says. "That little town's just down the road from my wife's folks."
With that Harry becomes the rare man Father can trust with his firstborn or his life savings. It's not wandering freedom that gets Father—that's what gets me. It's Harry's roots—where a man comes from—that Father puts his stock in.
"Irvington man, eh?"
"Grandfather was."
A lull. Our plates are cleared by the quiet black man. I seize the moment.
"I'd sure like to come along when you enumerate."
Harry doesn't hesitate. "That's no problem, but it's almost always at night—only time the workers can talk."
"Can I go, Father?"
Harry: "There's a lot of climbing through brush to get to the labor camps..."
Me: "Great, great." Father doesn't know what to do. "I'll write about it for school. Please, Daddy, can I go?" I haven't called him Daddy in a decade.
Hesitation. Small dishes of pineapple sherbet are placed before us.
"I'll have to speak to your mother."
Thirteen
Mother could stop all of this if she decides to. Harry's my ticket to freedom, but Mother's not keen on adventure, not in a jungle, not at night with someone she doesn't know.
A Harry/Mother meeting is arranged. It goes well, of course. What's not to like about Harry? His clean-cut looks, his manner, his background? He's from Kentucky and a sometime teacher—Mother taught until she married. He scores big with her on every point and yet, when he's gone...
"It's just not proper for a man in his midtwenties to be out with a girl of sixteen in the middle of the night." Does she think all men are predatory animals except for Father? "It's a temptation and it doesn't look right."
"He wouldn't lay a hand on her."
"It's not right."
Father hangs in, defends Harry, and because Mother trusts Father's judgment and really does like Harry, she doesn't say no, just that she wants to think more about it.
I go up to my room, jittery. I can't sit still. I need an answer. I need it to be yes. I need to throw something, hit something, make noise, break things, do something wild and out of control, but I don't. I'm trained not to. I look in the mirror. My face is breaking out.
Downstairs an hour later, when she gives permission for me to go, I literally jump for joy, give her a hug, and bound back up the steps two at a time.
In my room I dance a jig, quietly. Soundlessly leap on my bed and pump my legs in place, my arms in the air, eyes squinting. I throw back my head in a silent howl of joy. This is how victory sounds in our house. My diary gets the noisy announcement: Guess what I'm going to do?!!! Harry's going to save me! He's going to make things all right!
Freedom, Sort Of
Fourteen
It's eight o'clock in the evening on the appointed Thursday. I'm in fevered anticipation, wearing jodhpurs and high-top shoes, ready to go out with Harry, feeling great. This is what I want, what I thought I'd get all those years of waiting and thinking about Panama. A great adventure in the dead of night. After supper, anyway.
The jodhpurs are what I wore when I went to Huffman's pasture with the boys—practical but hot. Loose pants or khaki shorts like Harry's would be cooler but Mother won't hear of it. "Scratches and insects and snakes," she says. I have to cover my legs, wear lace-up leather footgear. I'm too happy to complain.
Harry has told me that in the field he carries a white canvas bag with his field notebook, red cards to tag the canvassed buildings, and a certificate to show he's the official census taker. Not many workers can read, but the sight of him in police uniform with the certificates makes him look official. That's what matters. All this is more than I could have hoped for and better than helping Wil and Orville. Harry is my new Wright brother, a more worldly one.
Mother and Father see us off, standing at the top of the stairs. "Be careful."
From down on the track we give them a wave and start walking fast along the rails in the moonlight. This is the road to everywhere, used by everyone, on foot or by train.
"Stay close," Harry says.
He walks in front. We hardly exchange a word, only stride along in the sultry night. We pass a few individuals who nod or greet us in Spanish. "...buena..."
Looming ahead, the abandoned French locomotives appear ghostlike, rusted, the remains of their fiasco a decade earlier. Beautiful old machines, vines growing into them. They look like sunken vessels. I slow briefly to sketch and Harry calls back: "Come on, stay close."
We hustle along for nearly half an hour. It's pitch-black. The heat is oppressive but for the first time I don't care.
Finally we come to Cunette, the laborers' camp. Barracks and dim lights.
"Stay behind me," Harry says. We approach the first barrack. He moves the canvas flap aside and steps in.
Fifteen
Quarters for the common laborers, all of them black. It's little more than a tent with a wooden floor. I can't see anything for a few minutes—Harry's figure in the door blocks my view but I hear his voice.
"Buenas noches..."
In fluent Spanish he tells them who he is, what he's doing. I've had lots of Spanish and know it well, but I can't speak like Harry. No American accent at all. It rolls out of him fast and easy like a mother tongue. I see why he was hired on the spot.
There isn't a sound from the men inside—their animated talk has stopped. Harry holds his questionnaire clipped to a board and starts with the closest worker.
"Name?"
"David Providence." The man speaks English—he's clearly from the islands.
"Metal number?"
He recites his number. The others are mute.
I want to see all this and I move closer. I peer in: two rows of double-sided three-story bunks—strips of canvas on gas pipes that can be hung up like folded swinging shelves when they aren't in use. At two tables, eighteen or so Negroes are in undershirts and trousers—their card game suspended, anxiety in their eyes, looking at two white faces usually seen only when there has been a crime. Harry isn't threatening. He's respectful, but they still look uneasy. They sit barely moving.
Harry finishes with David Providence and starts with a new worker.
"What's your name?"
"Levi McCarthy."
"Metal-check number?" McCarthy recites his number. "Haven't I seen you in the Canal Club, McCarthy?"
"I am a waiter."
I take a closer look. There is our waiter from the day I met Harry. He lives here in Cunette.
I'm shocked. I don't know how I pictured him. Going home, maybe, to a nice little house or apartment somewhere, the way a waiter might in Dayton, but not like this.
He speaks with dignity, answers Harry's questions. But it looks all wrong. In the club he is tall and quiet, seems perfectly correct. But here, among the hanging canvas cot
s in a laborers' barrack, he seems displaced. In his uniform he's impressive—could pass for the leader of an African nation. Here, in an undershirt and loose trousers, his skin shining with sweat, he's diminished, unimportant, his footprint on planet Earth a few square feet of cot and belongings.
Harry moves to the next man. I don't take my eyes off McCarthy.
Harry's voice: "Your name?" The man doesn't understand.
"Cummun t'appelle?" Harry switches to Cajun. It works. "Caje-vous?" His age, the kind of work he does, how long he's been there—Harry gets it all with his easy authority.
I don't say a word. I stand behind him trying to be invisible, watching McCarthy and the others. From time to time the eyes of laborers flick toward me. Who is she? Why is she with Harry? His woman? His daughter? His tightlipped assistant?
Mostly they watch Harry going from man to man. They're all from different locales, speak various languages. Some don't understand the simplest queries, but Harry is efficient. He finds some hybrid of dialects that works and every man responds.
"Beresford Plantaganet." (No need to ask if he's a British subject.)
"'Rasmus Iggleston." (From Montserrat.)
"Smith." (From St. Vincent.) "Married, but my wife and child haven't arrived yet—a baby born last week." Harry moves his pencil to a new spot on the form.
"Will they be living with you?"
"Yes, in the married quarters."
"What's the name of the child?"
"He was just baptized..." Smith has to refer to an entry in the Bible by his cot. "Hazarmaneth Cumberbath Smith."
Not a flinch from Harry. The impressive name goes on his record. He gives the man a nod and moves on.
I look again at our waiter, McCarthy. He's watching all this silently with the others.
Sixteen
So my new Panama life begins, what I wanted all along. Very nearly.
Eyes wide open I see men from Costa Rica, Guatemalteco, Venezuela, Trinidad. From barrack to barrack that night for hours, I see and hear more different kinds of humanity than I've ever seen or read about in my life.
In the early hours of morning we're at the last place, a small cabin. We wake five Punjabis. They're drowsy, can't make out what Harry is all about. He says three words in their language and they spring to life. They can't believe their ears. We're invited in, lights go on, we're offered tea. They smile and talk, but Harry keeps it respectful and businesslike—census work only, not a social call. He completes their forms, and they stand at the door watching with wide grins as Harry tacks a red completion tag on the outside of the cabin. The whole thing has taken no more than a quarter of an hour.
"They're going to think they dreamed the visit from a white man who spoke their language in the middle of the night," he says.
"No, they won't."
"I mispronounced the Punjabi."
"Don't think they noticed."
We hurry along the track toward my house. I can't get the workers out of my mind. "Why aren't there any American blacks?"
"Canal Commission doesn't want them. They only want men from the islands and Europe and the Orient. Skilled whites from the States only, no blacks."
"Why not?"
"They call them 'corrupting States niggers.'" He glances at me. Sees I'm shocked. "You never heard anything like that in Dayton, did you?"
"No."
"American blacks might expect too much, being free now," he says. "Labor has to be cheap, keep the cost down. Desperate men work for nearly nothing—for food if you give them a little." We're walking so fast that I'm out of breath, and my real education has begun, the one about the world. Maybe that's what took my breath away. He talks some more about the poor black workers, then at my back door I say: "I want to come again. Can I? Please?"
He smiles at my enthusiasm. "Sure, just let me know." He says goodbye and starts back down the stairs.
He likes me, I can tell—likes my questions. I'm not a pest and I'm earnest. And he won't mind my company from time to time.
Mother is in her robe in the kitchen. "It was wonderful," I say. "Did you wait up?"
"No. I heard your voices." That's it. She's satisfied—I'm safely home. "Take a shower and jump in bed." This is not the time to negotiate more outings.
I go up the steps two at a time. The 4:30 whistle sounds for the laborers—another hellish day for them in the Cut. More than ever I wonder how they do it.
Seventeen
School. I make an announcement to Mrs. Ewing: "I've been to the workers' camps with the enumerator." She looks at me a little shocked. "Cunette and some others. I'm doing an extra-credit paper on it."
"How in the world...?"
"My parents allowed it. I want to go again, a lot more times." She's perplexed. Her sullen but dutiful student has come to life. "I've only seen a little, so I need to go again and learn more."
"How did you arrange it?"
I tell her about Harry—meeting him through Father, what he's doing. She's impressed and I pop the question.
"Would you encourage Mother to allow me to go a few more times? Teacher to teacher—you know, send a note?" She hesitates. "It's good research training and I'm going to need that in college..."
"Yes, you certainly will..."
***
I skid into the kitchen and lay the note on the counter next to Mother, who's kneading dough. I know the letter's contents.
• A unique opportunity.
• The loss of sleep well worth what she'll learn.
• Safe with the enumerator, a respected member of the police force working directly with the quartermaster's office.
(Mrs. Ewing's husband works there—she knows all about Harry. A huge bonus.)
• Please allow the visits with Harry to continue. The class will benefit, et cetera, et cetera. (Straightforward, clear, persuasive.)
Mother looks up at me. "How often do you want to go?"
"Twice a week."
"You'll be half asleep in school the next day."
"I'll nap on the train."
She thinks it over. Rolls out the dough.
"A pie?" I ask. She doesn't hear me. I see her thinking hard. Then:
"We'll try it. But only once a week."
Eighteen
Once a week and now there's momentum.
Every week I go with Harry barrack to barrack, and he tells me what he's learned firsthand in his years of wandering—my education continues. He talks about how hard it is for the poor. How the destitute outnumber the rich. How "someday they'll rise to justice, but not in my lifetime, or in my children's, even. The rich are too strong. They have all the advantages." I've never heard anybody talk like this. It's a wild world I'm learning about, and it's not just in books.
"...peasants in every country," Harry says, "and their back-breaking labor is what makes the aristocracy rich, even in America." This grinds inside him. He'll go on and on about it if I encourage him, which I always do. I need to hear it and he must need to talk about it, because he has plenty to say.
"I've seen cruelties you wouldn't believe. Thousands of workers doing soul-crushing work to blast a road through a mountain, or a tunnel through some elevation"—flings his arm toward the Cut—"or a canal through igneous rock that's not meant to be split by anything but continental drift, and all so commerce can make the privileged richer." We walk toward my house, the end of another night's work. "Americans are reaping the profit of cheap labor all over the world—I've seen it." He shakes his head. This eats at him the way being sequestered from the people ate at me.
I want to say something, put in my two cents, but I don't. I'm a student. A provincial girl from Dayton, Ohio, and I listen. On nights like this I want to be just like Harry; gender has nothing to do with it.
At the end of the long evenings, Mother meets me in the kitchen. She shakes her head and says nothing. I'm sweaty, unladylike. It disturbs her. The furrow between her eyes deepens—this is no way for a young lady to grow up. She hopes I'll lose inte
rest but I don't.
And then, though I couldn't ask for anything more, more finds me.
Harry and Ruby
Nineteen
It begins with Mrs. McManus.
Harry becomes a regular at our house for dinner, an avuncular presence. It's clear he sees me as a student, a good-natured niece. He's family. And we learn more about him, some rather unexpected news. He tells us he's seeing Mrs. McManus from Nebraska.
"She was widowed last year, wasn't she?" says Mother.
"A locomotive went wild." Harry holds a forkful of green beans in midair. "He was crushed between two flatcars."
Father looks up, knows all about this incident.
"They tried to keep her from seeing the body but she insisted. That's why she took it so hard, I think, seeing her husband that way." He chews the bite of beans, studies his plate.
Mother leans forward. "And she had some kind of ... breakdown, was it?" Even Mother can't resist these further details.
"I wouldn't call it a breakdown." Those are neurotic-sounding words to Midwestern ears, even to vagabond Harry's. The scent of Mother's just-baked lemon pie hangs in the air. Harry ponders a moment longer, then says, "She was grieving is all, no breakdown. I'm not sure how much she's over it. She feels things ... deeply."
"Of course."
He shakes his head, swirls a neat chunk of pork in the sauce. "We are..." He wants to go on but hesitates, then says, "I find her a very bright woman. We have people in common, friends of mine that know her people." Another swirl in the sauce. "I've been calling on her. It's a comfort for her to have a friend." The chunk of pork goes into his mouth and he chews, thoughtful.
So Harry's got a quiet love affair. Secretive. Revealed to us in confidence.
"Of course," says Mother.
I have goose bumps on my arms.
***
A few days later I find out her full name standing in line at the commissary. The cashier calls her Ruby and she pays keeping her eyes down. Ruby McManus, about thirty, is extremely pretty, and she doesn't look at me or anyone else directly. It gives her a mysterious appearance, something that's not at all Midwestern. I can see why that attracts Harry. Mystery is seductive. To some of us, anyway. Good for Harry. His relationship with the widow McManus is about to work in my favor.
