Panama

by Shelby Hiatt

  "You know when your train leaves?" he asks. (Always the good uncle.)

  "Yes, I'm fine."

  This is where Harry and I split up. I plan to go back without him.

  "Be careful."

  "I will."

  His questionnaire ready, he goes to the laborers lined up at a station window for their paychecks—yet another way of reaching them for enumerating. I go to see the locks as Mother has instructed.

  She doesn't know my real plan.

  Thirty-Eight

  I was there the year before with Father but the change is enormous. Gigantic is a better word.

  It's nearing the end of construction, and the size is so monstrous, it looks like aliens landed and tried to dwarf their machines to fit planet Earth but didn't manage to shrink them enough.

  There's a giant aerial tramway swinging buckets of concrete to sky-high steel forms. These are for uprights that stand hundreds of feet in the air. And inside the unfinished walls I can see an enormous bull wheel lying on its side. I've read about that, and Mrs. Ewing has talked about it. That bruiser will open and shut the lock gates—Tinkertoys for God's children.

  The gates themselves are half completed and look out of proportion, they're already so big, thousands of cubic feet of poured concrete soaring into the sky. Dazzling.

  It comes together for the first time how the whole thing will work—the course of the Chagres River altered and hundreds of acres of land inundated because it's easier to float over the lavarock than blast through it. Blasting is necessary only in Culebra where Father's working and the mountains are so high, no lake can rise above them. It all makes sense. It's a perfect plan.

  The colossal scale of it moves me. My eyes tear; my chest swells. I've been pretty disinterested up to now, but spread out before me like that, seeing what puny humans with their invented machines have done, I'm overwhelmed.

  This is relentless will and endurance, the stuff of Goethals and Stevens before him. The tough, commanding majesty of it gets to me and, any injustice to locals aside, I'm staggered. It's a match for continental drift, and man didn't take centuries to do it.

  I take notes, do sketches, see everything I can, then get back to business. My business. Federico.

  I hurry to the station and catch an early train. I have to be back in Culebra by midafternoon to carry out my newest scheme.

  Thirty-Nine

  On the train I sit alone at a window looking out, antsy. Everything moves too slowly for me now in this new life with Federico.

  I want to be where I'm going, do what I mean to do, with no waiting or delays. A long train trip, days at school, endless social gatherings, are tedious. Life is tedious unless it's oriented toward Federico, and here I am stuck on a slow train. It isn't really slow, of course. There are stops, which makes the trip feel long.

  I take out a letter from Dayton. Mother says it has news from Katharine that will interest me.

  I read: The boys are occupied with patents, no longer solving problems of aerodynamics. (This seems remote, like some other lifetime.) Nine years since that first flight and they're dealing with patents and inaccurate statements and tangled misinformation about their work. There are more issues of a mechanical nature, dates and misconstrued facts, all business and law, no more inventing. Poor Wil. Poor Orville. Glad I'm gone—the fun's over.

  "The flying machine is challenged everywhere," Katharine writes, "copied with reckless impunity." She says their discoveries are not completely protected and "they've given up on the president and the secretary of war. They can't be convinced a flying machine is practical for defense and the government doesn't want to invest in it." I want to care about this but I can't. "The boys have to keep the Army rejection under covers since it will make negotiations with other governments difficult." I can see that problem but I can't see them dealing with it. No tinkering? No experiments? No adventure? All is not smooth in Dayton. It may be as complicated and slow there as my life in Panama.

  Through Tabernilla again. Flatcars with lumber move in the opposite direction, the town being carried away.

  Katharine says Wil wrote from Paris: "Been to the Louvre. Liked da Vinci's John the Baptist better than his Mona Lisa." Just like Wil to see a painting through his own eyes and not accept some critic's impression. No matter where he goes, he's his own man, has his own thoughts. That much hasn't changed. "A sign of character," Mother says. "Not going along with the herd."

  We pull into Culebra station. I put away the letter. It's still early afternoon and my plan is on schedule. I start walking but I don't head for home. As I walk, I question my strategy:

  Is this the right thing to do? For my purposes it is.

  Is there a better way to get what I want? Possibly.

  Is this even smart? What difference does it make? It's the best idea I have.

  Would I do it again if necessary? Sure.

  Forty

  I walk along the track toward Federico's cabin. Mother won't expect me for another hour. I'll drop off books for him—simple enough, except that he's not expecting me. We haven't set up this type of exchange. It's a delivery.

  For weeks we've been meeting on Sundays at some designated spot—my new secret life. It's actually innocent enough. I show the usual respect for my parents, do excellent schoolwork, and meet Federico regularly with books. Sometimes we meet at the Tivoli in the evening. Sometimes below our house at the bottom of the steps—a daring exchange before supper.

  But it's always friendly—we say a few polite words, then he moves on. This delivery to his cabin is something new and personal. I wonder how he'll take it. I want to reach him where he lives, that was the real reason for going to Gatun with Harry.

  Mother, without knowing it, suggested the whole thing. Shemade it possible. "You have to see that area before it's flooded," she said. I agreed, knowing I'd have to change my schedule for one day, which is exactly what I needed.

  ***

  Trudging along the track in midafternoon heat, I hear a single locomotive engine behind me coming at high speed; I know a fast-moving engine is the Zone's ambulance. If the worker inside is dead, he goes to the morgue; only injured, he'll go to the hospital. He might even recover.

  The engine speeds by and I glimpse three workers with the engineer, all of them bent over an injured body. One of the workers is Federico.

  Forty-One

  I stop walking and stare.

  A hundred yards ahead, below Federico's cabin, the engine comes to a stop and the men lift the body out. As the engine pulls away, they carry it up the steps, an awkward business; nobody notices me watching from down the track. I creep closer. The men have finally managed to get the body up and into the cabin.

  At the bottom of the steps I don't know what to do. I want to see in the cabin but it's too risky. I won't have an opportunity like this again soon and I can't bring myself to abandon my plan, so I decide to at least get a look. I start up the steps, books for Federico in my arms, stretching my neck to get a glimpse. I can hear intense voices. A few steps higher I can actually see in.

  A dead body. I've never seen one before.

  The man is lying on Federico's cot, his face half blown away. Part of his arm is missing and some of it hangs by flesh or splintered bone—it's hard to tell which. He's mangled, mutilated, dirt-blackened, and bloodied. I stare.

  They're trying to clean him, but his clothes are ripped to car-boned shreds and the bone is bare and glutinous with gore. The dangling arm makes him look like Marat in his bath but with half a face.

  They stop talking or trying to repair the body any more, and there's silence. I stay still, crouching on the steps looking in. Two of them sit on the empty bed, and Federico kneels beside the dead man and lowers his head onto the edge of the cot. I think he's going to pray, which surprises me for some reason, but he doesn't. He weeps.

  His shoulders shake.

  I don't move. No one in the cabin does, either. Minutes pass.

  Death by premature explo
sion—it happens all the time and it has to be what I'm looking at. Reports are in the paper every few days:

  At the Culebra storehouse a porter gets impatient with opening a box of dynamite and tries to knock off the cover with a machete—three men blown away.

  A dozen men killed in the Cut when they tap a clogged charge to get it in position.

  Five killed and eight wounded when a tooth on shovel number 210 hits the cap of an unexploded charge.

  Nineteen dead and forty injured at Bas Obispo—that one in the Canal Record this morning. And now death from dynamite in front of my eyes.

  A hand comes down on my shoulder. I stand up so fast, I fall off balance.

  A Zone policeman catches my arm and steadies me.

  "What are you doing here?"

  "I saw trouble; I thought I should help..."

  "Do you know these people?"

  "Not exactly..."

  "Then go on home. You shouldn't be here at all." I hesitate and this burly fellow gives me a hard look. "Don't wander around this area."

  "All right." I can't think of anything else to say and I go down the steps.

  The policeman watches and I start along the track toward home, still carrying books meant for Federico. He keeps watching so I can't turn back.

  All I wanted was to talk to Federico, and now what I've seen has changed everything. Something has happened to him, and I wonder if it changed us. I don't know who the dead man is, but he has to be important to Federico. They allowed him to take him in the cabin before going to the morgue. I don't know what I'll say about it or if I should say anything or even admit I was there. I've never seen a man sob, or a dead man, or mutilation.

  I walk home, wipe my dripping face.

  Forty-Two

  Mother knows Harry's in Gatun for a few more days, so I have no excuse for getting back to the cabin, but I'm on fire. I'm emboldened by the strange near encounter at Federico's cabin.

  The next evening when she's not in the room, I put on Father's hat, a pair of trousers, and walk out the back door, down the steps to the tracks, and resolve to think of an excuse later ... sketching ... silhouettes for art class ... constellations for science ... whatever...

  I'm bristling with excitement. I like it but it's risky.

  I have to remember that Federico doesn't know what I saw. Everything between us is the same as far as he knows. Popping up at his cabin like I'm going to do is different, and given what I've seen, I'd say meeting him at a regular place, like the Tivoli, would be much better, but I can't make myself wait.

  Cut loose on my own, I walk fast along the tracks, books for Federico under my arm, no parental constraints, making my own rules.

  Approaching Federico's cabin I stop and reconsider. He doesn't expect me. Our meetings before this have always been planned and strictly business, exchanging one or two books he's read for new ones he wants. This time it will be different because it's unplanned, and that's where it gets tricky, because he has to be still grieving.

  But I don't even consider going back.

  My plan is to act as though I know nothing and show up with books.

  Forty-Three

  Halfway up the steps I can see in: Federico sitting at the table reading, the roommate on his bunk. The place is spotless. You'd never know this was a death scene—no blood, not even stains. How did he do that? And no disarray.

  I climb the last steps to the door and tap. Both of them look up. The roommate squints at me.

  "Could I see Federico?" I say, an American girl in a man's clothes, almost dark. "I'm sorry to bother you..."

  "No, no. Come in." Federico has recognized me.

  The roommate pushes open the door and Federico pulls out a chair.

  I put the books on the table. He's calm with a slightly puzzled look, and I'm rattled far more than I expected. This is hard, showing up like this with no warning.

  "Two more," I say, meaning the books. "I came by yesterday but I saw ... you know..."

  I've blurted it out. I didn't mean to do that.

  "Ah," he says, calm, unaffected.

  "Actually, I need to get the poetry from you," I say, which is true. I need the book for a school assignment.

  My face feels like it's on fire. This is a huge mistake—everything is wrong and inappropriate. Yesterday, a dead man was lying a foot from where I'm standing, and now I'm talking about "Whitman, for school ... I have to do a report..." Can he see I'm shaking?

  In a normal voice he says, "Of course," and bends down and starts going through books stacked on the floor. "That's Augusto," he says, meaning the roommate. "She's my source for books," he says to him in Spanish.

  Augusto stands and shakes my hand. His face is intelligent, and he's got the stocky shape Father talks about that's common with Spanish workers—nothing like Federico's lean build.

  "My pleasure," I say in my best Castilian, and he says he's honored to make my acquaintance, and then we're quiet.

  Federico straightens with the Whitman in his hand. "Here you are."

  "Thanks." But I don't move or start to leave.

  Federico begins to look at me in that way he has, penetrating and curious, and Augusto stands. He stretches. "Think I'll take a little walk. Get some airefresca" he says and tries to look casual.

  Federico smiles at this. Decades, whole centuries, of European sophistication behind that smile, and I stand lost in his aristocratic aura.

  Augusto goes out.

  Forty-Four

  Now it's really awkward.

  I want to vanish, but Federico isn't disturbed, which helps a little.

  He stands looking at me, trying to figure me out. I'm desperate—need to fill the air with talk—and then I remember. I dig in my pocket.

  "I thought you'd want to see this."

  I give him a clipping from El Unico, the Spanish weekly published in Miraflores. It's a report on the death of a Spaniard in a premature explosion and has to be the man Federico is grieving.

  He takes the clipping, starts reading, and slowly lowers himself into his chair the way he did looking at the Freud when we first met, that evening still locked vivid in my mind. He takes his time, even rereads the article—it's short. Tears well in his eyes at one point but he doesn't seem to realize.

  "May I have this?" he says and looks up at me.

  "Of course."

  "How do you see this paper? It's an anarchist publication. Surely your family doesn't read it."

  "No. I buy it to practice my Spanish. And I like what it says."

  He looks at me and I'm uncomfortable again, but I don't say anything. I let him study me.

  "You are not a typical American."

  I don't know how to answer that, but I consider it a compliment and say nothing. It makes me shy, the whole situation does, and I look away. He edges forward on his chair, leans his arms onto the table, and starts talking to me, urgently, quietly.

  "This was the man, yes. Miguel Blanca y Ortez, a celebrated lawyer in Spain, like a father to me. He was fighting for the people." He lets that sink in. "Have you seen what it's like for the workers here, the labor camps? Lirio?"

  "Yes, with Harry." But he hardly hears me.

  "Tenements, that's all. Wobbly shanties with tin cans and washtubs and rickety chairs. It's the same everywhere—stairways breaking, small rooms, no windows. They hang cheap, dirty curtains to divide something they call the parlor from a five-foot bedroom for the whole family, and that's cluttered with junk and dirty blankets and breaking furniture..." I'm nodding and agreeing through all this. "Probably a prayer book under the baby in the basket, too. Old Voodoo worship—do you blame them? No chance for the children. They'll live the same way." He goes on, even more intense, his jaw muscles flexing, then finally he slows a little and looks straight at me.

  "That's what we have in Spain—masses of peasants like that, living hopeless lives, nothing changing it." He leans even closer to make me understand. "It could change, you know. Everything could be different, bu
t the Church hoards the money. Do you know about this?"

  I want badly to say yes but I shake my head, an obedient good girl, honest. I do not know about peasant life in Spain.

  "It's a terrible injustice, inexcusable, and Miguel was going to change it ... under threat of death, always the threat of death. The Church doesn't like what he's doing. He's educated, a real danger to them, a writer, a lawyer, and he can get things done—could get things done. They have good reason to fear him, so they said cease or die. That was his choice, and we came here so he could stay alive, and now..."

  He opens his arms in a gesture of despair, leans back exhausted, and in a plaintive voice says, "We were going back with money to raise a rebellion."

  He goes completely quiet staring at the floor.

  I have no idea what to say but I no longer want to disappear.

  Forty-Five

  When I finally speak, I humiliate myself.

  "My father says Spaniards are the best workers—no trouble, hard working..."

  He doesn't seem to notice how moronic that sounds.

  "What does your father do?" he says.

  "Railroads."

  "Maybe I've seen him."

  "Maybe."

  "Or worked under him."

  "Could be."

  He looks at me. Again that penetrating stare, like seeing me for the first time. I hope it's as a viable human being, not just the American girl. The book girl, at least. I read El Unico, a wildly radical publication. I read good books. I have to be someone capable of understanding his ideals. I want him to see that. He looks at me with such intensity, I'm shaken, and again I want to bolt, but he starts talking. This time about conditions in Spain and the life of the peasants there, the injustice of the stranglehold the Church has on everything, and I realize that as I listen, the pieces I know about him are coming together. I see better what he's doing in this place, a man of uncommon intelligence working as a common laborer.