The Travelers
By
Lee Hunnicutt
To my loving supportive wife
Eva
Preface
This story begins in the 1970s Panama Canal Zone. I grew up and later worked in the Canal Zone. As a kid it was a magical exciting place. In the summers I spent my time fishing, swimming, skin diving or exploring the jungle.
The first Indians appeared in Panama around 10,000 years ago. There is no telling how many cultures came and went in those 10,000 years. Panama is home to the smallest Indians in the Americas and at one time a race of seven foot giants lived there.
This is the environment in which the three youngsters in my book grew up. When reading my book remember they start off as 12 year olds and end up as 17 year olds and live through very trying times so forgive them when Jack breaks down and cries and embraces his loved ones.
Also I am asking you to cut me a little slack. Although I have edited my book many times, I am sure there are mistakes. After all it is my first attempt at writing a book.
I hope you enjoy my book as much as I enjoyed writing it.
After you have read my book, please leave a review on Amazon.
Friday night was special to the youngsters of the Canal Zone because every Friday night the Diablo Clubhouse Theater held the midnight movie. They showed old flicks like “The Bride of Frankenstein” and “Casa Blanca.”
Tonight they were showing the horror classic “The Mummy” with Boris Karloff.
The Friday night movie was a big event for Beth and Sonny Mc Lane and Jack Williamson. It was the one night of the week that they got to stay up late and see most of their friends. Being home schooled, they didn’t have normal school interaction with other children so Friday nights were a big deal, an opportunity to have a soda and to see and talk to kids their own age.
After the movie they said their good-byes and started to walk the two hundred yards back home. As with most of the time during rainy season, the skies were overcast, and tonight it looked like a storm was blowing in. The winds were kicking up. In the distance they could see great sheets of lightning getting closer. With the exception of the streetlights, it was pitch dark. Jack and Beth were in deep conversation about the movie when, as they passed a bush next to the sidewalk, something jumped out, yelling and grabbing at them.
Both Beth and Jack screamed and jumped back. They realized it was Sonny standing in front of them, laughing. While Beth and Jack were engrossed talking, Sonny had run and hidden in the bush. At first they were terrified, and then they were mad.
Beth was fuming. She thumped Sonny hard on the shoulder with the heel of her hand and said, “You’re such a dork, Sonny. Someday, someday ….” She didn’t finish the sentence. She just glared at him.
Sonny stood there rubbing his shoulder with a self satisfied grin.
Jack took a step back and watched the twins. He didn’t want to be too close in case Beth really unloaded on Sonny. It was Sonny’s habit to pick at Beth until he got a rise out of her. Sometimes it was not a pretty sight. It had always amazed Jack that Sonny had survived this long.
“Hush, shhhh,” Sonny said. He pointed towards Jack’s house on the corner.
They looked to where he was pointing. They could barely make out two figures in the shadows behind Jack’s house.
The kids froze. “Who are they?” Beth asked.
“We sneak over and try to see who it is,” Jack said.
“What if they are thieves and they see us?” Sonny said.
“They won’t see us, and if they are thieves we’ll go to your house and call the cops.”
The wind was getting stronger, and the storm was moving closer as the kids made their way to the hedge that ran around Jack’s back yard. From the shape and outline of one of the figures and his voice, they recognized Jack’s uncle Frank. The other figure was hard to see in the deep shadows. All they could make out was that he was tall, very tall.
Frank was talking in a low voice to the tall figure. The kids could barely hear him. He spoke a language they couldn’t understand, even though they spoke several languages fluently. They strained to see who or what Frank was talking to when a huge sheet of lightning shattered the darkness. They could see the other figure: a giant of a man dressed in nothing but moccasins, leather leggings and a long loincloth that hung from waist to knees. To their horror the giant was looking directly at them, and they knew he could see them.
The lightning was immediately followed by an ear splitting clap of thunder. All of the lights in Diablo died in the storm, plunging Beth, Sonny and Jack into total darkness. Screams were stuck in their throats. They had involuntarily grabbed hold of each other afraid to do anything, their minds numbed with fear.
Lightning lit up the area again. The giant was gone and Frank was heading back under the house. As quickly as the lights had gone out in Diablo, they were back on. The kids looked around. There was no trace of the giant Indian.
They sat, shaking, gradually letting go of each other. They crawled to the sidewalk and retreated back up the street to the next street light.
“What are we going to do?” gasped Beth. “What are we going to do?” She was close to panic, her voice high pitched.
“Did you see that guy?” said Jack.
“How could you miss him?” said Sonny.
“And his eyes,” said Beth. “Did you see his eyes? They looked right through you. It’s like he could see right into your soul.”
“A little dramatic isn’t it Beth?” Sonny said with a low chuckle.
“Shut up Sonny!” his sister snapped. “You’re just as scared as Jack and I.”
“Listen up,” said Jack. “We go back home just as if we saw nothing. We go into the house. If we see Frank, we talk to him normal like. OK?”
“What if that guy’s still hanging around? Then what?” asked Sonny. The prospect of going back seemed to shave off his bravado.
“We have no other choice.” Jack said. “We have to get home.”
“OK,” said Beth. “But if I see anything, anything at all, I’m running for it.”
“Beth’s right,” said Jack “If anything goes wrong and we have to run for it, we meet back at the theater.”
Beth and Sonny agreed.
The house was a large wooden tropical home built off the ground, supported by nine-foot-tall treated wooden timbers. This large downstairs area was used as a car port and in Jack’s family’s case a recreation area with a table and wooden Adirondack chairs and a maid’s room.
They walked around the front of the house and entered through the carport. To the left of the carport was a large open space with the table and chairs. The overhead light was on. Frank was sitting in one of the chairs.
“How was the movie?” he asked.
“Fine,” piped Jack. His voice squeaked. He cleared his throat and said, “Fine, just fine.”
“Do you have a minute? Sit down,” Frank said. Frank was sitting just out of the light, his face masked in the shadows.
The kids nervously pulled chairs up to the table and sat down.
Frank, the man who never aged, Jack’s father once joked. And indeed it was true. He was born in 1906. It was now 1978 and Frank didn’t look a day over thirty-five.
He was a mystery, but that didn’t bother the kids. To them he was their salvation. He was the one who insisted that there was more to life for the children than being turned into little geniuses.
Every year he showed up around June or July and took the kids on adventures. He taught them how to fish and how to survive in the jungle. He took them in dugout canoes into the depths of the Panama jungles where they would live with the Darien Indians for weeks at a time. He would take them gold panning and, most exciting of
all, into the burial caves. Caves used to bury the dead of Indian civilizations long past. He taught them of the Indian cultures and of the magical history of Panama. He would stay for a month or two, and as soon as he left, the kids would start wishing that it was June again. All year long they would relive what they had done on their adventures with Frank. Most kids their age dreamed of Christmas. Jack, Beth and Sonny dreamed of Frank’s return.
“I’m sorry, but you can’t come with me to the bush tomorrow. You’ve been up late and you can sleep in.”
“That never mattered before,” said Beth. “We always went with you no matter how late we stayed up.”
“Well tomorrow’s different. I’ll be going alone.”
They knew that it was no use arguing. When Frank said no, he meant it. They were disappointed, and it showed.
“Don’t look so long in the face. There’ll be other times,” Frank laughed.
“Well I have to get up early tomorrow, and had better get some sleep.”
Frank stood up and started for his room.
“You leaving at the regular time?” Jack asked.
“Yeah,” said Frank. “I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.”
He went into the maid’s room, closing the door behind him. All of the older houses in the Canal Zone had maids’ rooms built in the space under the house, complete with a bathroom that had a shower and toilet. Jack’s parents had converted their maid’s room into a guest bedroom where Frank stayed when he was in town.
Sonny started to say something but Jack held his finger to his lips. He pointed that they should go upstairs.
Jack then said in a fairly loud voice, “Let’s go up for a glass of milk.”
They all pushed their chairs back, stood up and went upstairs.
Beth was the first to speak. “He’s going to meet the guy we saw tonight.” Her words came in a rush.
“Yeah,” said Sonny. “We gotta follow him.”
“How?” Jack asked. “We don’t even know where he’s going.”
“We have to try,” Beth said. “Right Sonny?”
Jack said, “Look I don’t know about this. Frank has always been straight arrow with us. Spying on him is not right.”
“You’re right Jack,” said Beth, “but we’ll kick ourselves in the butts the rest of our lives if we don’t try and find out what’s going on.”
Jack thought that over for a few long seconds. Beth and Sonny were looking at him. He said, “You’re right. I don’t feel good about this, but I’d never forgive myself if I missed out on this.”
Beth and Sonny exhaled together and smiled. Beth was jumping up and down. She could hardly contain herself.
“OK, here’s the plan,” said Jack. “We pack tonight and we meet under your house tomorrow morning at 4:30. We then walk up to the Balboa bus stop and wait for the 5:30 bus to Gamboa. We tell Garcia not to tell Frank we’re on the bus and we hide in the back seats. If Frank gets on the bus and then gets off past Summit, we’ll have Garcia stop the bus a couple of hundred yards down the road and we’ll follow him in.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Beth.
“Well we’d better get some sleep,” said Jack.
That night they could hardly sleep, and all of them were up before their alarms went off. They met under Sonny and Beth’s house and set off for Balboa. The excitement between them was electric.
They waited at the Balboa bus stop about twenty minutes. They hoped that, Garcia, the bus driver wouldn’t tell Frank that they were following him. Garcia had been driving the Gamboa bus every time Frank took them to the bush on Gamboa road.
Jack noticed something pass between Garcia and Frank each time they rode with Frank on that bus. Like Frank and Garcia knew or shared something other people didn’t. Jack asked Frank about it, but Frank would always deflect his questions.
At 5:28 on the dot, the bus pulled up, and Garcia opened the door. In a rush of Spanish, Beth told Garcia their plan. He started to protest, but Beth pleaded with him to go along and he caved.
He never could deny Beth anything. He usually had candy for the kids, but he always had something special for Beth. Sometimes it was a flower, an extra piece of candy, or a pastry.
Jack always wondered how did Garcia know when they would be on the bus? How did he know when to bring candy for them? It wasn’t like he carried candy all of the time, and if he did why would he sometimes have a flower or just one piece of pastry for Beth?
When Jack asked Frank about this, Frank would just smile and say, “Maybe Garcia is psychic” or something equally light and dismissive. He would then change the subject.
They had been going with Frank to the jungle behind Summit Gardens for five years now, and no matter what day or time they went, Garcia picked them up. There were other buses that went to Gamboa besides Garcia’s, but Garcia’s was the one that always arrived at the bus stop first. And no matter what time of the day or night, Garcia took them back to Diablo when they left the jungle.
When they were little they just thought that this was part of the nature of the universe. As they got older they knew that Garcia’s bus couldn’t possibly be the only bus to pick them up. It just didn’t make sense. When they asked Garcia about it he would just shrug and laugh his infectious laugh, and Frank would smile and say, “I guess he just knows when we’ll be here.”
Frank and Garcia shared this secret joke and it drove the kids crazy trying to figure it out. They knew it wasn’t right. Something was strange, but they had to let it go because they never got a straight answer.
After Garcia relented to keep their secret, the kids went to the back of the empty bus and hid behind the seats. Garcia checked the mirror overlooking the inside of the bus. When he saw that the kids were hidden, he smiled. He closed the bus door and drove to the next stop. He stopped, opened the door and someone came in.
“Hola Frank, como andas?”
“Bien Roberto y usted?”
The rest was drowned out by the motor noise as the bus drove off.
After about twenty minutes the bus stopped and the children heard Garcia say “Hasta Frank.”
The door closed and the bus began to move.
The children waited a few seconds, then peeked out the back window to see Frank disappear into the forest.
They ran to the front of the bus and told Garcia to stop. They all thanked him and scrambled off of the bus. Garcia smiled at them and said, “Tengan cuidado mis hijos.” He slowly closed the door and drove away.
Sonny and Beth were looking back to where Frank had gone.
“Why did Garcia tell us to be careful.’?”
Sonny looked puzzled.
“Nothing,” Beth said, “He’s always been worried when Frank takes us in the bush. Let’s go. If we stay here too long, we’ll lose Frank.”
“We know where he’s going,” said Jack as they trotted to where Frank entered the jungle. “The old French gold mine.”
“Yeah, but this time it could be different,” Beth said. “He was awfully mysterious last night. He might be going someplace else.”
“Yeah,” Sonny said. “And don’t forget about that big Indian or whatever he was. He might be in there with Frank.”
That brought all of them to a screeching halt.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Beth said.
“Me neither,” Jack said.
“Holy cow,” Sonny said. “I don’t want to meet up with him again.”
“What are we going to do?” Jack said.
“Maybe we oughta call this whole thing off,” Sonny said.
Beth looked at them with disgust. “You wimps, I didn’t get up before the crack of dawn to back out now. Stay here and pee your pants if you want, but I’m going.” She started to walk off. After a few steps she turned and said, “Well are you coming, or are you just going to stand there with your teeth in your mouths.”
Jack and Sonny caught up to her.
Beth said under her breath, “Jeeze”
Jack
took the lead.
Sonny brought up the rear. He looked up the road to see if he could see Garcia’s bus. It had disappeared. It puzzled him. The road was straight and flat for about a mile and a half. The bus should have been there. Sonny shrugged. “He musta hauled outta here pretty fast.” he said to himself in a low voice.
Something didn’t ring right. It gave him an uneasy feeling. He gave a shiver and plunged into the jungle after the other two.
For the first three hundred yards there was a clear trail to a waterfall and a plunge pool. The pool was about thirty yards across. It was a favorite place for Canal Zone youth to come swimming. Sonny, Beth and Jack had swum there many times.
It was covered in a jungle canopy. The water looked clear, cool and inviting. But today was no day for swimming. Today was for adventure.
The stream overflowed the pool to their left. They skirted the pool on the right and climbed a steep embankment to the top of the waterfall.
It was about 6:20 in the morning. It should have been cool but as it often is in the rainy season, the heat and humidity were already oppressive. Their shirts were already wet with sweat and sticking to their bodies.
They looked down at the pool some twenty feet below them. Seconds before the water had looked so tempting but the rainy season clouds had moved in and now the water had taken a slate gray look. Thunder rumbled in the background.
Fear and uncertainty began to creep into their minds.
Beth said, “Well let’s go!”
Her voice broke the spell on Sonny and Jack and the three moved across the stream. The water was only ankle deep. Later on they would have to make several crossings that would be waist deep.
Above the waterfall there was no trail but the kids had been this way many times before. They were headed towards the old French gold mine.
When they crossed the stream, Jack paused and looked down at the ground.
He turned and said, “Frank’s been here.” He pointed at a boot print.
“We’re gonna hafta track him.” he said. “He might be headed to the mine but we don’t know that for sure.”
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