Saffire

by Sigmund Brouwer

  No.

  I needed to admit to myself what I was trying to avoid.

  I’d been ten the last time I’d felt this shame. My father had been down at the neighbor’s corrals during a summer afternoon, in idle conversation with his fellow rancher. I wandered to a small, dry creek bed with no particular destination in mind, when two of the neighbor’s dogs charged from a curve ahead.

  Their silence unnerved me the most. It signaled a deadly intent, and I scrambled to a tree, barely getting to a safe height as they reached me, jumping and scratching at the tree base.

  My father was within earshot, and I could have screamed for help. I did not. The shame of running from the dogs was compounded by the shame that I had wet my pants, leaving a visible large wet patch. I remained in the safety of the tree for another half hour, hoping my pants would dry in the heat.

  But my father came looking for me before the stain had disappeared. I had no choice but to call out to him when he began to yell for me. That’s when he marched up to the dogs at the base of the tree and kicked them aside.

  When I climbed to the ground, he glanced at the stain down the inside of my pants legs.

  “Know why those dogs ran from me?”

  Shame turned into resentment. “You’re bigger.”

  “From their perspective, they have to look up at you, same as they did to me.” He spit to the side. “Size has nothing to do with it. Difference is, while they have to look up at me, I also made them look up to me. They ran because they knew I wasn’t afraid of a fight and I’d keep kicking no matter what they did.”

  He looked at the stain on my pants again. “If you don’t forget what they did to you, it’s going to tear you up just as surely as if they got their teeth into you. And that kind of damage doesn’t heal. We’re coming back tomorrow, and you’re going to walk around until either you find the dogs or you let the dogs find you. When they come running, if you end up climbing another tree, you’re going to be there until you figure out a way down. I suggest you make them look up to you instead of up at you. And no, I’m not giving you a rifle.”

  This close to the ocean, the streets were set in grids, and finding the National Police headquarters had been as simple as asking for directions, then strolling beneath the palm leaves waving in the breeze.

  I pushed through the main entrance, removing my hat as I stepped inside. There was a front counter, almost like a bank counter, but without a protective grill. The policeman behind the counter had a build that fit his sedentary role. Flecks of gray in his thick hair showed him to be well past his first years on the force. His wide face was remarkable only for the upside-down horseshoe mustache, ragged ends drooping well beneath his chin.

  I walked up to the counter, hat in my hands. Cowboy hats were not usual in Panama, and I caught a flicker of comprehension in his face.

  Señor Vaquero Americano.

  He gave an involuntary glance at my ears. Then a few rapid blinks.

  As I’d suspected, it was not a large police force. Rank-and-file cops, like soldiers, thrived on gossip. If Harding knew about the events of the previous night, it was no surprise that the man at the front desk knew.

  “Is there something with which I can help you?” he asked.

  His recognition of me had probably elicited the deference of heavily accented English instead of Spanish.

  “Last night, away from here, I was having a conversation with someone who is probably now somewhere in this building,” I said. “The conversation was interrupted. I’d like to continue it with that person.”

  The day my father forced me to face the dogs, I learned something. Fear can stoke rage. Cold rage.

  “Such a conversation is, of course, a matter of privacy,” he said. “Please forgive me, however, for suggesting that rumors have made it clear that the need for any more conversation has ended and there is no longer official interest in your activities. You might want to consider this a matter of good fortune.”

  “I have not finished with my end of the conversation.”

  There was a long hesitation. “For the record, señor, it is our policy not to allow weapons in our building.”

  Impressive. He had struck me as clerical, but to raise the issue, alone as he was behind the counter, he must have been prepared to enforce it. I half expected him to raise a pistol.

  “I am unarmed,” I said. “I am simply looking for a man-to-man conversation. There would be no honor in hiding behind a weapon.”

  Another long hesitation. Perhaps he was reevaluating me. Or sensing my buildup of rage.

  “And the policeman’s name?” he asked. “There are many of us here.”

  “I hope he might remember my name. I’ll write it down if you want.”

  More thought from across the counter as he considered the options. He then folded a yellow piece of paper in half, in half again, and in half again. He tore a small square of paper where it had been folded and handed me a pencil and the piece of yellow paper.

  After scratching my name on the paper, I slid it toward him. “I’d be grateful if you passed it along. I’ll take a seat and wait right here. It was a rather intense conversation, so I suspect he’ll remember me. Please let him know I’m anxious to meet him again to resolve it completely.”

  Much as I tried to be casual, I suspected the tightness in my tone betrayed me. He took the paper and studied my face.

  I could feel it inside now and hoped it showed.

  Deadly intent.

  The day after the dogs forced me up a tree, my father delivered upon his promise and, despite my pleading, did not allow me a rifle. But he didn’t expressly forbid any other weapon. I found a broken branch and held it like a club. The dogs found me near the tree of the day before and, as before, silently ran toward me. But this time I advanced on them, my club at the ready, and it had given me great satisfaction to watch them slow as if puzzled. Then I’d realized the club made them afraid, not me. So I threw it aside and let the murder inside me grow, suddenly glad they kept advancing on me—not at a run, but with calculation. The ends of my boots were weapon enough. I was prepared to take whatever their teeth might inflict. I would get my licks in…

  “Do you have a cigarette?”

  I looked at the policeman. “I do not.”

  “Pity. I’ll have to use my own.”

  There was a gate in the counter. He lifted it and walked through. “Outside, señor. First, a cigarette, no?”

  He was a head shorter than I, yet probably outweighed me as if he were a head taller. By the way he walked, I saw that his width was not necessarily the softness of indulgence. Would my fight begin with him?

  I followed him to the shade. He offered me a cigarette. I was not a smoking man, but it would have been rude to turn down an offer of hospitality.

  He lit my cigarette first, then his, both from the same match. He handed me my cigarette.

  He inhaled deeply and then blew out a long stream of smoke.

  I had not drawn from my cigarette.

  He grimaced on my behalf. “Yes. A shame I cannot offer American cigarettes. So much better than ours. But too expensive.”

  “I am interested in continuing my conversation of last night, not in comparing the merits of tobacco.”

  The first dog had lunged at me, and my first kick was a matter of luck. As it leaped, I punted it fully in the chest with my foot. My knee, unintended, connected squarely with its jaw.

  “I am a family man.” The policeman drew another puff, then patted his belly with his other hand. “At the end of the day, I love to go home and sit at dinner with my wife and daughters. Some find the sound of children bickering annoying, but I listen and smile because someday I know I will be old and the girls I adore will no longer be in my home.”

  He looked down the street, then back at me again. “Are you impressed at my command of your language? I am educated and belong to an old family here. With ambition, I could be like some of the young ones, the hungry ones who get promotions
and better pay. Sometimes I endure insults from those who think it means I am weak, but I know what matters to me, and that is my family. You, señor, do you have children?”

  “A daughter.”

  “How old?”

  “Nearly seven years old.”

  “I suspect we are much the same, you and I. At night, if someone broke into your house or mine to try violence against our children, would we lack courage to fight?”

  I kept a level gaze. All those years ago, the first dog had scrambled backward at the guttural rage coming from my throat. The second dog curled its tail under its belly. I turned and saw my father, observing. He didn’t smile. Only nodded. I’d realized then how angry I was at him too.

  “You and I”—the policeman in front of me was halfway through his cigarette—“to defend our children, we would fight until we were dead, no matter the odds. The younger men at the station, who are not yet fathers, they don’t understand that kind of love. But even as they insult me at how fat and soft I might appear, they know never to insult my family.”

  His conversational tone was languid. It didn’t fool me.

  “To survive the bite of the alligator is one thing, but to go back into the pit with a dozen alligators is another. Especially if you are risking death to prove you are more man than the one who inflicted the bite, a death almost so certain that some might call it suicide.”

  From his pocket, he took the small yellow piece of paper with my name. He held the embers of his cigarette to the paper and sucked air through the cigarette, heating it to a deeper glow until the paper began to burn. He dropped the curled, blackened paper and crushed it beneath his heel on the cobblestone.

  “I would suggest, señor, that pride is worth far less than ensuring your daughter will be protected by your presence each night. Is it enough for your pride that I will be the only one in this world to know that walking away from this city with the bite of the alligator on your ears is a far braver act than facing the alligators again to prove you are a man?”

  He drew a final puff of the cigarette and crushed it beneath his heel as he had done with the burned paper. He met my gaze. “Señor, already I admire you for putting your name on that paper. I will admire you more if you permit me to go back inside alone.”

  He walked up the steps without looking back.

  I finally drew on the cigarette he gave me. I tasted acrid bitterness.

  I did not follow.

  A half hour later, back in the hotel suite, I paced again. This time not from bottled frustration and anger but from a need to work the trembling out of my muscles. It was more than relief that made me weak. It was a feeling much like I’d had in Cuba during a hot afternoon when most of the other Rough Riders were doing their best to nap in the drowsy heat.

  I had sat on one low stump, facing the camp cook, who sat on another stump. Between us was a third stump that held cards and some scattered matchsticks serving as gambling tokens. We weren’t playing for big stakes, keeping the poker friendly.

  I drew a four of clubs to fill a straight and grinned as I flipped the cards over. In fake exasperation, the cook tossed his own cards onto the dirt, so with exaggerated courtesy, I insisted that I help him clean up his mess.

  The cook laughed as I leaned over to grab the scattered cards. His laughter became a choked cough. An instant later came the snap of rifle fire. I dove and rolled. Shouts told me that the other soldiers in the camp were reacting to the sound of the single shot.

  Sniper.

  When I found my feet, the cook was on his back, dead. When we opened his shirt, the entry wound looked innocent, clear of blood because the man’s heart was shredded by the slug and had stopped pumping.

  Cooks were not targets for the Spanish snipers; soldiers were. I’d been saved from the sniper bullet by a four of clubs.

  I’d felt guilty that I didn’t feel more guilt, because my overwhelming reaction had been trembly relief at how close I’d come to filling a casket.

  Now I had the same reaction. What had I been thinking? That, to preserve my honor, I could walk into the headquarters of the police force of a foreign country and challenge someone to a boxing match?

  My relief was tempered by my guilt. It shouldn’t have taken a pudgy and friendly policeman to remind me that my greatest duty was to protect Winona.

  I continued to pace until I could sit without feeling my legs twitch.

  I made a call to the front desk, requesting a plate of fresh fruits and cheese. I’d settle my stomach and perhaps nap after that. All I had to do was find a way to pass time until the steamer sailed the next day. I could leave with a clear conscience. Goethals didn’t need me, and I’d resolved the issue of my honor against my unknown torturers.

  But as I waited for the fruit, I could not escape what else was nagging at me.

  Saffire.

  Much as I wanted to get home, I knew I would feel better if I’d first done my best to help her.

  Despite the heat, I would have preferred to walk. Inactivity and laziness did not suit me.

  However, I was unsure of how to reach my destination, and I suspected that once I arrived, appearances would matter. To knock on the door drenched in sweat and to appear that I couldn’t afford a carriage ride would work against me.

  Outside on the plaza, in the shade of the hotel, I spoke to a tiny doorman. “I don’t have the address. Will you be able to direct a carriage to the residence of Ezequiel Sandoval?”

  “Of course.” He smoothed his mustache, as if he were charging into battle on my behalf, and blew a whistle at a line of carriages. The nearest hack flicked his cigarette butt to the cobblestones before swinging up onto the carriage to take the traces. With an expert flick of the reins, he sent the single horse forward, then stopped the carriage so that all I needed to do was grab the rail and hoist myself up the step to the rear-facing bench seat behind the hack.

  I stepped forward, then looked at the doorman. “Could you request that the horse and carriage wait at the residence for me?”

  The hack said, “I speak English. That will be no problem.”

  There was insolence in his voice. I knew I was tired and on edge, because of my instant flare of irritation. I met the man’s eyes. Yes, I was overreacting. My assumption about his language skills had been an insult to him.

  “Name your price and it’s yours,” I told the hack. “But you’ll charge it to my hotel bill, understood?”

  He nodded.

  “One more thing.” I fought a wave of exhaustion. “I don’t need a tour guide. Directly there. Directly back. No conversation.”

  Another nod.

  I was reading insolence into the man’s every action, and I told myself that this, too, was a function of my general irritation.

  It was just past the hottest part of the day, and the streets were nearly silent. The carriage took us higher into the hills and away from the crowded buildings in the commercial district to the landscape of the larger houses with verandas and rotating fans. Birds screeching and insects buzzing among the leaves made it seem like a ride through innocent countryside, and I enjoyed the fragrances of blossoms that I could not identify. Still, I ached for the scent of sage crushed beneath a horse’s hoof and the squeaking of prairie dogs sending alarms as they dove into their burrows.

  It took perhaps ten minutes for the hack to settle our carriage in front of a large villa with a cobblestone drive. Like all the other enclaves of wealth, the villa showed no activity. Just the pastel outer plaster; small, high windows with bars; and a large door at the entryway, all framed beneath red clay tiles.

  When I reached the portico, I welcomed the shade, glad for my decision to take a carriage. In front of me, a bronze panther head served as the knocker for a door that was easily ten feet tall. A circular Judas window was chest high to me.

  I lifted the panther head and let it fall. The sound of bronze against wood echoed in the portico. I removed my hat, preparing for a wait of a minute or two, based on my assumptio
n of the size of the villa.

  It took five.

  Someone on the other side slid open the Judas window. There was brief light through the circle, then darkness again as the person peered through.

  I bent so that my face was visible for inspection. “I apologize that I have no appointment. I’m an American. James Holt. If possible, I would like to speak to Señor Sandoval about the mother of a girl that I know named Saffire. The mother’s name is Jade. She was, I believe, employed as a cook for Señor Sandoval.”

  I half expected to be told to leave, based on my sense that society here was much more formal than in the badlands of Medora. Instead, there was a sound of a bolt scraping against wood, and the door swung open. I caught a glimpse of tile floor, a wide hallway, and large paintings on the walls.

  I waited to be invited inside, but instead, a magnificently tall black woman, old enough to have almost completely gray hair and dressed in a maid’s uniform, stepped out into the courtyard and shut the door behind her.

  Her face was tight. She spoke in a whisper that didn’t disguise a West Indies accent. “Señor Holt, it is not my position to tell you what to do, but even if Señor Sandoval was in the city, this is not a household where people off the street are welcomed inside. I only speak to you now because of the kindness you have shown to Saffire. It wouldn’t be proper for me to allow you inside the house.”

  “It was a risk I thought I would take.” I put my hat back on and tipped it to the maid. “You have my apologies. If I wrote you a note with a place to meet, would you be willing to discuss this with me at another time?”

  “Please, I have already spent too much time with you. Saffire roams the streets, but she is welcome in Señor Sandoval’s home at any time, so there is no need to be concerned for her.”

  The woman retreated, shutting the door, and I stood there, staring at the expensive wood.

  At the carriage, Saffire was leaning against the rear wheel, arms crossed, a package in plain brown paper pressed between her arms and her body. Bare feet, spindly legs, faded dress. I should have expected she would find me. I found myself grinning, lifted out of my malaise by the sight of her.