“What’s going on?”
“I’ll tell you over lunch. Warren too.” He called out to the boy who came running at the sound of his father’s voice.
Little Warren lurched to a stop when he spied the wooden box on the table.
“Later,” Robert said, setting the box aside. “I’ve got big news. Take your seats.”
“So, what is it?” Susan placed a small serving of the fish on Warren’s plate and passed the platter to her husband. “A new banana variety got the office in a twitter?”
“Panama.” He said simply. “They’re going to build a canal through the isthmus, a great feat that will allow ships to pass between the oceans. It’s the biggest thing to happen for world trade, ever! Shipping companies will save months of time and thousands of dollars. Initial surveys have been done and I’ve been offered an engineering position, in consultation with the French.”
Susan blinked a few times, processing the information. When Robert had accepted the position with The Caribbean Fruit Company he’d promised they would move back to America after his five-year contract was finished. She’d imagined going back to life in Chicago, richer for the experience of living abroad, her children able to obtain a first-rate education. After Warren’s unplanned birth she’d taken precautions against having more babies until she could have them at home.
“The pay is fantastic, dearest, and the engineering work should be completed in a year, two at the most.” His eyes glowed with the prospect of the enticing job, the boost to his résumé.
What were her choices? An unthinkable divorce and a return to living under her father’s roof? She swallowed hard and would not meet his eyes.
“That sounds like a wonderful opportunity for you, dear.” Her next bite of food stuck in her throat and she excused herself from the table, clutching her skirts and coughing as she ran to the bedroom.
Robert turned to Dora. “Don’t worry. The company will bring in another man for my position. You and Sammy will always have work here.”
Dora merely gave her usual enigmatic smile.
* * *
The Smiths arrived at the port of Colón in December, with rain pounding at the deck of their ship and runoff water from the inland mountains forcing the vessel to anchor offshore for three days until the rush of mud subsided. Susan’s stomach revolted and she found herself bent over a bucket, losing her breakfast, four mornings in a row. An awful suspicion began to nag at her.
Robert left his wife and son in the cabin and ran up to the bridge to consult with the captain, pleading for a quick landing as he was already late to report for his duties.
“That canal job, she ain’t going nowhere,” the captain replied.
Truer words were never spoken. When they docked a week later, Robert became caught up in the task of engineering a cut through the mountains. After his first horseback ride over the forty-eight mile distance and back, he had a sinking feeling the French plan to cut straight through would never work.
“De Lesseps built the Suez Canal,” Robert’s boss repeated. “The man knows what he’s doing.”
“But—” He stopped. Months had passed and all arguments had failed already. The financiers still stood behind the original plan.
For the next three years, during the day he revised plans according to the hierarchy of La Société internationale du Canal interocéanique, his employer. By night he worked at home, secretly working out the equations and measurements for a different system, one with locks, which he felt would be necessary to raise ships to the elevation needed to cross the spiny mountainous interior of the country. When the French plan failed, as it inevitably would, perhaps his drawings would be useful. He stared at the drafting paper in front of him. There were still so many details to work out.
Susan approached his desk. “I’m going to bed. The children are already asleep. I think Simone’s fever is better.”
“That’s good, darling.” Robert gave her a quick glance.
“Do you even hear me these days?” Her voice sounded weary. “We lost one child to malaria already. I’m afraid that’s what the baby has now.”
He looked up finally. His wife had dark circles under her eyes. “Has the doctor seen her?”
“Yes, but he doesn’t know what to do other than give quinine and cool baths to keep the fever down. What if Warren should become ill as well?”
“He’s a sturdy boy. He will—”
“There is no guarantee for any of us, Robert! Strong, grown men are succumbing to this disease every day. This horrid tropical climate is killing us and I want to go home.”
“My work here is important—”
“And your family is not? Your own safety is not? May I remind you of your original promise—this job was to last a year or two. That time is over and I am at the end of my wits.” Her skirt swiped at the edge of his desk, scattering his pages as she fled the room.
Their bedroom door slammed. Robert planted his elbows on the desk and held his head with both hands. Susan had barely accommodated his wish to come to Panama in the first place. And she was correct; he’d already kept them here a year beyond the agreed-upon deadline. His eyes fell to the papers that lay scattered on the floor.
Completion of the canal was vitally important. Anyone with a wider world vision could see that. But there were rumors of financial problems within the company. The project was millions over budget and the vast excavations already made were only a fraction of what was needed. The workers knew nothing of this, of course, nor did the families but among the engineers there was talk of a possible bankruptcy and the ousting of de Lesseps. No one knew what might happen after that. Perhaps they would all be sent home. Maybe Susan was right; he should pack up his family and get out now.
He gathered the spilled sheets of paper and tamped them into a neat pile on the desk. In the bedroom his wife lay on top of the bed in the muggy heat, wearing her chemise but eschewing a sheet as cover. On the bedside table sat a brown bottle with the cork beside it. Laudanum. He sighed. So this was the reason for the dark circles under her eyes and the gaunt look on her face.
He walked to the open window and poured the contents of the bottle on the ground outside. The bottle and cork went into the waste can. There would be a fight over this.
He shuffled to the other bedroom and looked in on the children. Warren, at seven, was indeed a sturdy lad. He performed well in school and loved to read. Simone’s forehead felt hot to the touch again and he replaced the cloth on her forehead with a fresh one dipped into water from the nearby basin. Between these two, another boy had been born, seven months after their arrival by ship. Poor little Alexander had not lived to his first birthday.
A mosquito buzzed through the room; Robert swatted it but heard the ominous buzz of another. Tomorrow he would enquire about getting some netting for their beds.
But in the morning, little Simone had become unconscious. The doctor came and pronounced a coma without much hope of recovery; Susan retreated to her room where she could be heard her rummaging about; Robert fed Warren his breakfast and sent him out to play while he sat with his infant daughter until she took her last breath.
* * *
Three graves on a hillside, rain pouring down and turning the freshly-moved earth into a mire. Robert Smith stared at the two small mounds and the larger one. Numb.
Perhaps Susan had been right—they should have left Panama and taken up a normal American life in a normal place. She would have never been happy here and he’d been too blinded by his own satisfaction with his work to notice until it was too late. On the night Simone succumbed to her disease, Susan had located her secret extra bottle of laudanum and downed the entire contents. Where she’d kept it hidden, Robert did not know but he suspected the carved wooden box on the top shelf of the clothes cupboard, the box he had bought from old Sammy Avila.
He walked back to the house, a mile in the driving rain, uncaring that his only suit was soaked through as he tried to calm his mind and make a plan
for the future. Only two things mattered to him now—his son and his work. An unhappy wife had only added to the number of burdens a man had to bear. Two of those encumbrances were now gone. In a peculiar, probably sick, way he found this comforting. He felt freer, lighter.
At home, Warren sat in the living room bay window with a book. The neighbor who had brought the boy home after the funeral was in the kitchen, filling a kettle with water.
“He’s said nothing to me, Mr. Smith,” she said. “Just picked up his book and went to that seat.”
“It’s his way,” Robert said. “I wouldn’t worry.”
“You’ll get chilled in those wet clothes. Change out of them and I’ll have the tea on in a jiffy. Don’t want you catching the fever as well.”
No, we wouldn’t want that.
He dried his skin and put on fresh clothing. Drank the tea, responded to the woman’s conversational attempts until she left. The boy had not moved from his window seat but Robert watched long enough to assure himself that his son was not upset; he did seem genuinely engrossed in the book. Robert wondered how much attention Susan had really given the little ones. Her unhappiness had run so very deep. Their son had found engagement and enthusiasm from another source.
Robert stood beside his desk. “Reading anything good?” he asked as a way to let Warren know he cared.
“An adventure story,” the boy answered with only a quick glance up. “And you, Dad? Are you all right?”
Robert’s eyes welled up for the first time in days. He and his son were so much alike; emotions stayed inside both of them.
“I’ll be all right. One day.”
Warren nodded and went back to his story. Robert sat behind the desk and paged through his design sketches.
* * *
Warren Smith shrugged into his jacket, rolled up his set of blueprints and headed for the kitchen. Rosa was pouring coffee—that deep Panama roast he loved to savor—into his favorite cup.
“Off to work early, mi amor,” she said, pecking a kiss on his cheek.
“As always.” He grinned. “I don’t think Roberto is awake yet.”
“Ah, the way of the teenage boy. They sleep all day and want to be up all night.”
“Fine with me,” Warren said, wrapping an arm around his wife’s waist and pulling her close.
“There is no time,” she teased as he nuzzled her neck. “You have meetings.”
“It’s hard to believe the Canal is nearly done. It’s taken my lifetime, do you realize? My father started after the initial surveys were done, and still … It has still been so many years.”
“Will your father be at the meeting today?”
“Oh yes, they cannot hold the man down even though he should probably be retiring. He wants to see it through. I understand.”
She set a plate of toast on the table. “You and your father—very much alike.”
“I don’t know what either of us will do once the Canal opens and our jobs are finished. Stay on, I suppose. Well, I know you and I will. All of your family is here and I have no one at all in America. Roberto—well, who can say? He’s American by birth but aside from those few years at Windlyn, he’s lived the Panamanian life. He may decide to stay too. The Canal will provide jobs of some sort … forever, I suppose.”
“Our son did not seem to care much for boarding school in America,” she said with a regretful expression. “He never confided whether the boys shunned him or picked on him. I suppose his decisions about his adult life will tell us something.”
“It won’t be that long.” Warren brushed the toast crumbs from his hands and picked up the roll of blueprints. “Anyway, I’m off for Gatun. See you later.”
His father joined him, along with three Army engineers, for the short train ride to the Gatun Dam. By noon they had reviewed the blueprints and inspected the latest work to be certain that it met their specifications. The other three set off for the nearby canteen where lunch was served each day for the workers, while Warren and Robert held back to recheck one last item.
“An amazing feat, I have to say.” Robert Smith stared over the man-made lake where ships would wait after negotiating the first set of locks that raised them a hundred meters above sea level, before sailing to the western set that would lower them to the Pacific. “I do swear, son, there were times it looked as if it would never happen. The French scandal, the opposing viewpoints about straight-cut versus the locks …” He paused—his son knew he’d been on the side of installing locks right from the start. “… the endless bureaucracy. Theodore Roosevelt had vision for this, but the Congress and the Army could not keep their fingers out of it. I thought they would never get it sorted out.”
Warren followed his father’s gaze, imagining a day when dozens of ships would use the Canal. “So sad about all the losses along the way.”
“Tens of thousands to malaria alone, until they figured out that the mosquitos were behind it all.” He had long since accepted the sad fact that two of his children had succumbed to the disease and that it may have been a factor in Susan’s death as well. As there was no way to undo those tragic events, Robert had taken the practical stance: move on.
“Not to mention the construction accidents. We’ve learned a great deal, haven’t we?”
Robert nodded, his gaze still far away.
“We’d better get inside before the food is all gone,” Warren finally said. “I’m starving.”
“Yes, and tell me what Roberto is up to these days. I haven’t seen the boy in a few weeks.” They began walking.
“I have a hard time reading him. His friends consist of the other Canal families’ sons. The other day two of them were at the house, listening to something on the wireless. I heard Johnny Jamison say something about enlisting in the Army. There’s a bit of tension going on in Europe, as I understand it.”
Robert held the door to the mess hall open for his son. “I don’t like what I’m hearing.”
“I don’t either. I don’t want to think of America becoming tangled up in all that. I doubt it will happen—I hope it won’t.” Warren accepted a metal tray of meat and potatoes from the server, distracted by his thoughts. It was the significant difference between himself and his son—while Warren had always kept to himself and studied, Roberto was a follow-the-crowd sort. He was likely to do whatever his friends did.
“Our boy is nearing that age,” Robert said as they took seats at the end of a long table. “He’ll be old enough to enlist if he chooses.”
Warren thought of the rumblings about that German Kaiser in Europe. Suddenly his hunger vanished.
Chapter 8
A Field Trip
Aurora Potts walked away from the post office staring at the envelope she’d just received. Smith? she thought. What Smith is this? The paper carried a faint musty smell, explained by the foreign stamps and Panama return address. There is one way to find out, she chided herself. Simply open the thing.
She lifted the hem of her skirt as she ascended the steps to her office building. The red brick structure had changed little on the outside, with The Vongraf Foundation neatly lettered on a white sign near the door, but Aurora was proud of the changes she had wrought within these walls since accepting the directorship five years ago. Science was a man’s world, by and large, but she was one of the few with a background in both science and in business, not to mention connections in academia. She could study specimens under a microscope with the best of them, but she could also track the Foundation’s financial progress and knew whom to tap for donations, whose trust fund was well enough endowed to spare the money to support Vongraf’s work.
Her secretary handed her a stack of correspondence. “For your signature, Miss Potts,” Charles said.
She thanked him and walked through the laboratory, taking quick stock of the projects currently underway, before stepping into her private office. Through the large windows she had installed the previous year—no more sitting behind a closed door wondering what was happenin
g in the lab—she admired the new equipment, the finest microscopes with German lenses and the small centrifuge that was the pride of the lab. Along the walls, neat racks of bottles held the chemical compounds they needed for testing. Of course, many of the requests involved more detective work than chemistry, and The Vongraf handled them all. Three scientists (besides herself) and two lab assistants kept the place in top form.
She removed her jacket and hat, placing them on the rack near the door, then took her seat behind the simple wooden desk. Charles had neatly organized the letters for her signature, but the piece that drew her attention was the letter from her personal mailbox. She picked up her pearl-handled letter opener and slit the envelope.
A single page of quality cream paper came out, along with a photograph printed on stiff paperboard.
Dear Miss Potts,
We have never met, but I believe you may remember my son, Roberto, from Windlyn. He mentioned you as one of his favorite teachers. We recently saw the news of your leaving the academic world (sorry, news reaches us slowly here in Panama), and taking a position in which you study unexplained phenomena. It is in this regard that I am writing to you today.
My family is in possession of an artifact that puzzles me and I hope it might be of interest to you. This wooden box came into my grandfather’s possession more than fifty years ago and the story that went along with it was that the box had performed several miracles. This would have been in the Yucatan region of Mexico. In one event, it is said that a woman stranded at sea was saved by holding to the box and that it guided her ashore. I know this sounds vaguely plausible, but if you saw the box, a mere twelve inches in length, you would question this claim, as I have over the years.
In later times there were other stories—of people being healed when it was thought there was no hope, of the box changing its appearance seemingly at the mere touch of someone’s hand. I can tell you of these events in greater detail, although I must admit that I have never experienced it myself.
The Woodcarver's Secret (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) Page 19
