by Shelby Hiatt
One excellent thing: I get to wear my out-with-Harry clothes—no skirts allowed in the Cut during working hours. Maybe because of that and Father's enthusiasm I actually do forget about Federico ... for a short time.
So I stand with Father early in the morning and he plunges in, gestures toward the various machines and work sectors: "...midnight supply trains bring in coal for the shovels..." I take notes. "...they're kept running twenty-four hours, eighty-five of them running at any given time." Impressive. "Blasters send down rocks and the diggers go to work breaking them up. The shovelers move in and put eight tons of boulders and dirt onto a car in a single bite. My job is to keep those cars running and carry the spoil away..."
How could I take this lightly? I'm impressed all over again. I like the mechanics, the nuts and bolts of how things work. Got that, no doubt, from working with the boys and from Father—genes don't discriminate much by gender.
And something else. Down inside the canal with the workers, it's different from a Sunday stroll there with Zoner families. That's a sightseeing tour, benign and touristy. In the sweat and noise of a workday there's a frightening aspect, a looming threat, as if the whole thing might decide to swallow us, then spit us out, like a gargantuan serpent fed up with the relentless grinding on its gut. It makes me uneasy.
Not Father, though. He's in his element. He's calm and happy, hard at work. He keeps talking and I write as fast as I can.
He points to the trackshifter. (Yet again.) The giant mantis is parked as usual by the wall, waiting.
"Every night it repositions the rails—picks them up and lays them down in a new spot. Have to move the whole operation along, tracks and all..."
I think it's the humanness of the machine that gets him, the way it behaves like a child with a train set, rearranging the track at will, easily. It's a giant human. But aren't all machines? I'll make that part of the essay, what giant machines do. How like us they are, the trackshifter with its giant arms and giant prehensile claw. It's all we know, our puny human bodies, so we copy them and make machines. This is the kind of thing that gets me top marks and I know it.
I glance around at the workers, pick-and-shovel fellows, glistening in the heat. I want to have a word with them. But Father goes on talking and I write and boulders crash onto flatcars, steam shovels grind, and warning whistles scream before every blast. I think I can't take much more, then Father finishes speaking and stands thoughtful in the deafening inferno. I have to ask him:
"Doesn't the bedlam wear you out?"
"Noise means it's progressing the way it's supposed to. Doesn't bother me a bit."
That's why he's boss, I think, and make note of that, too. "I need a break," I tell him.
"Sure."
I make my way across dirt clods and gullies to a group of workers, scores of them that line the canal wall breaking up the larger boulders. There's just a chance...
"Hay Castellanos aquí?" I say.
"No. Antillano solo." No Spanish, only West Indians.
I look on down the length of the canal. As far as I can see there are workers, forty thousand of them at any given time. I've just queried a dozen and Federico is not among them. This is folly.
I take a good look at the canal, a rare view from the floor, andfinish off my notes: shovels are stacked one above the other; seven different levels; seven parallel tracks, moved to new positions every day; dirt trains moving back and forth with no snarls. This is my father's job, overseeing all this.
I'm done, or think I am. But then something remarkable happens.
Thirty-Three
From the corner of my eye I see the impossible. I take a good look. A steam shovel is sinking.
There's no doubt about it—the shovel is sinking. A barely perceptible movement.
I nudge Father. "Look."
He's busy, doesn't respond.
I poke him again. "Look!"
He turns his head. Shovel number forty-nine is sinking.
Father's jaw drops. Seconds pass. The shovel lowers and we watch. Blasting noise continues around us.
Father calls over to another engineer and he, too, watches, all of us in disbelief. The shovel descends, still swinging eight-ton buckets of dirt to a waiting railcar, both engineers on board totally unaware.
Several pick-and-shovel workers now see the phenomenon and call out to fellow workers, "Mira! Mira este..." and there's minor panic.
Workers drop their tools. They back off, spooked. We all are. It couldn't be happening. The steam shovelers notice, too, and suddenly stop, which signals all the other workers and everything comes to a halt.
Now, behind us, a railcar pulls up and Colonel Gaillard hops off and comes striding forward with great authority—he's our lead construction engineer. "Ah, you've seen it."
"What's going on?" says Father.
"It's happening all along the Cut, about a foot a minute, all morning."
"What is it?"
"We're rising." He waves toward the canal center. "We're on soft strata here in the middle so the slides along the walls are pushing us up. The shovels aren't sinking—they're near the wall. We're rising."
Father looks over the situation and sees that what Gaillard says is true. "How far will it go?" he asks him.
"We don't know. But it's nothing to worry about."
He's never seen such a thing. Nobody has. Nobody's ever done anything like this before, so everything is new. How does he know it's nothing to worry about?
Gaillard goes back to his transport car. He sits observing the phenomenon until it stops. Then he gives Father a little salute and he's on his way.
Can-do Americans—there's no stopping them.
Father calls out to the workers that everything is okay, to go back to work. They trust him. Pick-and-shovel men begin swinging their tools. Steam shovelers give their idling engines a throaty roar and everything resumes. Tons of lava rock blast to the canal floor and shovels deposit the tons into a waiting railcar. My father is boss of that. That's what he does in the canal.
Thirty-Four
At supper Father knifes the air with his hand.
"Like pressing down on the side of a pan of dough—the dough will push up in the middle. The slides on the sides of the canal are making the soft floor in the middle rise. It has nowhere else to go."
"Terrible," Mother says.
"No, only the slides are terrible. We may never stop them."
"What then?"
"We keep digging."
Father keeps saying these words and it disturbs me. I don't want to think of everything moving forward while my dilemma remains—his success to my failure. The work goes on in spite of slides and yet I can't reach Federico. I might never see him again.
"We'll dredge when it's full of water if we have to," Father says. "That's what matters—keep going, keep working. Gaillard and Goethals, you never see them shaken. Canal center rising—they're calm, tell us to wait till it stops and then go on. Nobody's ever seen anything like it, but we do as we're told and we're fine. Most important thing—attitude and endurance."
It's important, all right, and it's admirable, but to me it's disturbing.
Father takes a bite of beefsteak. All's well in his world.
I include Father's remarks in the essay and my own remarks about machines made in our likeness. A few days later I get the highest grade in class and an extra nod from Mrs. Ewing. I stare out the window and don't hear anything more she says. A student starts reading: "My father's work in the Cut..."
I can't bear to listen. I have bigger problems—I may never see Federico again (that dark feeling is back). I know where he lives and I have no excuse to go there. It's simple. It's not a question of attitude or endurance or even of learning from failure. I'm failing again for lack of imagination and my positive attitude is gone. I've lost hope, this time for good. Horse sense is telling me I won't see Federico again and it's a fact I'd better accept.
I sit in class hot, bored, and numb.
&nb
sp; Muchas Gracias, Dr. Freud
Thirty-Five
We meet in front of the Tivoli! Luck. Pure luck.
It's early one evening, Mother's inside the hotel, and I'm sitting on a bench reading The Interpretation of Dreams. It's tough going and I'm concentrating, probably frowning. I turn back a page to reread something and realize there are rope-soled shoes in front of me. They're at a respectful distance but definitely pointed toward me—the shoes of a Spanish worker. A voice says, "Pardon," and I look up.
It's Federico.
He's dressed in clean clothes, politely holding his beret in front of him. I'm completely calm (and aware that I'm calm), and I can see he doesn't remember me. He's thinking—probably about approaching me, and the book, and what to say. Then his expression changes and he does remember. He smiles and looks relieved.
"Ah. You were with the enumerator."
"Yes."
"I'm sorry to bother you. I noticed what you're reading ... Did you get the book here?" My plan is working! Weeks of thinking about him, conniving to meet him, dreaming of him day and night, giving up hope, and now he's standing in front of me and wants to know where the book came from. The book!
"It's from the American library. Here, take it." I hold it out to him. I'm calm and bold.
"No, no, no, no ... I only wanted to know where you got it."
"The library. Go on, take it. You'll be doing me a favor."
"I only want—"
"Take it. Really." I hold the book toward him again and he sees I mean it. "It's a little over my head. Read it and tell me what you think." I lightly touch his hand with the edge of the book. "Please." (I amaze myself.)
Federico takes the book. He opens it, scans the pages, and eases onto the bench beside me, totally absorbed. I feel the warmth of his body next to me and then there's his scent—the soap used in Panama. He's been in the shower. The shower. Concentrate.
"I have a Tolstoy at home," I say. "The Death of Ivan Ilych."
He looks up quickly.
"A beautiful story."
"Do you want it?"
"Well..." Hard for him to resist.
"I can get almost anything. I put in a request and it comes on the next boat. Just tell me what you want." I shrug at the simplicity of it and don't care at all if he knows what I'm doing, that I'm making myself available and attractive to him. But really it's the books that interest him. I know that.
He smiles. He's got to be astonished at this piece of luck—an evening like the others, when he's walking along, and what comes into his view but Dr. Freud's book, which he must know about and want but doesn't have a prayer of getting. "You're too generous," he says.
"Not at all. I'm always at the library..." I smell the wool of his beret. (Wool in Panama!)
"Yes. Then, yes," he says. I've changed his life in half a minute. "I won't keep it long."
"Keep it as long as you want."
I've got to revel in this—it's too good to be true. And I'm so calm; where did that come from?
He starts talking about what books he wants, but I'm drifting and hear only the clipped English accent, and I relax in the closeness of him. I am myself. I don't think I've ever been myself before, not like this. He's talking about books, of course, and he's enthusiastic and at ease, not like he was when Harry and I first saw him so cool and aloof in his cabin. I picture him in his makeshift shower, enjoy visualizing that awhile, then his voice comes back.
"...Melville ... I haven't read all of him. And Rousseau and the French classics, of course..." He's holding the Freud, gesturing with it, and suddenly he stops. "I'm sorry, I'm running on."
"No, you're not. I don't have anybody to talk to about books—I love it."
Another smile and then it turns awkward. Our little exchange is suddenly finished—no place to go with it unless he wants me to rattle on about Dayton.
"Well..." he says. He stands, a gentleman ready to take his leave, formal again and proper.
The Freud is folded in his arm against his chest. He stands there like a character from an English novel, ready to bid me adieu. Then (I don't know why I do it) I break the spell.
"This'll be fun," I say, light and easy. Wait, yes, I do know why. I'm creating an ongoing relationship and it will be fun.
He has to laugh a little. "Yes, it will."
He doesn't know what else to say and neither do I.
I think he's as happy as I am.
"Our book exchange," I say, giving it a name, lest he forget what we're establishing here.
He looks at me with curiosity for a few seconds, and I hope he's seeing something more than the seventeen-year-old daughter of an engineer, who he must suppose is a spoiled American, part of the mob.
Trusting he's seeing more than that, I say, "They'll think I'm a genius at the library, such a prolific reader." Another chuckle between us. (Cripes, I'm good at this.) "Promise to tell me what you think." I nod toward the Freud.
"Of course."
He gives the book a wiggle in the air, then a little bow from the waist and he turns away.
He walks into the crowd hugging the Freud close like a professor. I watch until he's disappeared.
Thirty-Six
I breathe deep and look around.
The hotel must have installed extra lights, because everything looks brighter and the people are better looking than I remember, or maybe I'm just noticing things. Maybe the hotel lights are stronger—that could be it. But everything really is light and bright, the whole world, everything, everybody. The white clothes everyone wears makes them glow, and the kids running around seem exceptionally smart all of a sudden—bright, intelligent kids these Zoners have. Everything shimmers.
It's peaceful, too. And so am I. (They must have put in more lights.)
***
That night I picture Federico at his desk reading the Freud. I see him talking to his roommate about how he got the book, the coincidental meeting, the girl who was with the enumerator dropping into his life again from the sky.
I picture him at his desk taking notes, reading with one foot propped on the other chair and later reading on his cot and falling asleep, the book open on his chest—I can't close my eyes thinking about it. My diary entry is brief: Met him at Tivoli. I'll add to that later. Maybe not. That says it all. I feel so alive, I never want to drift off. Our meeting runs through my mind over and over.
I try to imagine how we look to others, how we sound when we talk. Endless scenarios. Brief encounters, long ones, all of them easy and comfortable, like the meeting in front of the hotel. We're kindred souls. I'm convinced of it.
The next morning I get up without a minute of sleep feeling refreshed and full of energy. My life has direction and I'm not alone; Federico is in it.
Surely there's nothing I can't accomplish.
Simply put: there's nothing I can't do.
Thirty-Seven
Harry and I take the 10:10 train to Gatun, the town by the dam site. He has to do his enumerating there because much of the territory is going to be covered by water. Mother says I should go with him and see what's about to disappear forever—part of the learning experience, she harps on. I'm happy to do it but I have my own agenda.
We sit in a half-empty passenger car. The wooden seats are polished and lacquered, silver metal fittings everywhere, the glass windows sparkling clean. The Panama Railroad is a model of efficiency, no doubt about it, and it's always on schedule. Our train slips out of the station at ten past, exactly.
Harry is my tutor in politics, geography, and language, whether he knows it or not. He points out the villages on the way.
"Matachin, named for a Chinese man who killed himself. That's what they tell the tourists."
"Sounds like a play on words to me," I say. "Mata, 'kill'; chin for 'Chinese.' Probably Indian, don't you think? Some ancient glyph on a rock somewhere?"
"Probably." He gives me a sidelong look. "You're good with language, you know that?" I look away, embarrassed. That's a big com
pliment coming from Harry. Federico wafts through my brain.
Bas Obispo rolls by.
Jungle after that.
We go through Gorgona, the Pittsburgh of the Zone, acres of machine shops working on some of Father's tracks and engines, Federico's face and words doing a lot of wafting at this point. Then we go through stations that are small and wasting away: Bailamonos and San Pablo and Orca L'garto. Harry knows them all and points them out. I take notes and sketch.
"Tabernilla—look," he says. What used to be a village is now stacks of lumber being loaded on flatcars. "Moving it toward the Pacific, they'll build it again."
The same thing is happening in Frijoles when we pass it—dismantling, loading, moving the entire town with everything from police station to homes, five years after founding it. Creating, destroying, re-creating on higher ground, whatever it takes to build the canal. Make way for the encroaching waters of man-made Lake Gatun. Already the jungle vines and foliage are crawling in, taking over the one-time towns, and soon man's visit will be sunk deep by progress. At least, that's the plan, and it's not likely to go wrong.
I write this in my notes, not to please Mother but for my new self: the injustice and inevitability and helplessness of the locals being warned and moved and warned again, stripped of planting grounds, of dwellings, village communities split and scattered to make way for progress. Harry teaches me well.
It is beginning to get to me, even while I concentrate on Federico and my new world with him.
"It'll all be flooded," Harry says. "They're closing the Gatun spillway in February."
"Will these tracks be under water?"
"Tracks, railway, all of it on the bottom of the lake. Steamers will be gliding over those palm trees and mangoes and big ferns. They'll all still be standing in the water, ships steaming back and forth over them until they die."
"That's eerie."
"Yeah."
***
An hour and we don't see the canal, only jungle and the occasional group of huts, then we burst out of the growth and onto the lake. The water is licking at the rails under us. The Zone city of Gatun is on the hillside, to my left the locks and the dam. I don't bother sketching—it'll be there for a long time. So will the station we're sliding into; it's stone, not meant to be moved. It's permanent and out of reach of the flood, built to stay. We get out, look around.
