Ted ropes the skiff to one of the scaffold legs and cuts the engine. We all tip off the boat, falling into the water, shoes and all, and then we scale the iron rungs of the tower up to the halfway ledge, which is the only part wide enough to hold all of us comfortably at once.
There’s enough room to stretch out and relax. The water is patterned with the reflection of shifting clouds. I can stare over the entire width of the lock to the messy snarl of jungle that always borders the horizon. I sit and wrap my arms tight around myself. Everyone else is talking, but I let their voices blend over me, turning into one faded color. For a minute I feel like I’m part of a picture that’s existed millions of years before me, and it’s weird to think it’ll just keep being here after I am gone.
I hook my legs over the grilled ledge of the tower and lie back, my hands crossed underneath my head. Mary Jane lies down next to me while Rat lies on the other side, the opposite way. His head almost touches mine. I hear the others clank up the rungs on their way to the very top, to the jump point.
“You coming, Mary Jane?” shouts Steph from above. She has climbed past the halfway ledge to a higher point on the tower. Her voice bubbles with fake sweetness. “We’re all doing the second highest jump for practice before we do the highest.”
“I’m fixing on one jump,” Mary Jane shouts up. She makes her words strong and loud. “So y’all can practice all you need without me.”
“Suit yourself,” answers Steph. “Dan says if you do the highest jump, he will too. He admits he never did the biggie before.”
“We’ll go together. Suicide pact,” shouts Dan’s voice.
“Sure thing,” Mary Jane sings out. She sighs.
“Don’t think about it before and it won’t seem so bad when it happens,” I say to reassure her.
“Tell me one of your stories, Lane.” she says. “Take my mind off.”
“Did I ever tell you about the time Charlie and I cleaned the kitchen?” I ask. Mary Jane shakes her head no.
“Thing was, we didn’t have to clean it but Emily—I’ve told you about her, she was our baby sitter in Rhode Island—Emily always wanted to do these extra things for our mom and dad, being older I guess, so one day she decides we’re going to scrub the kitchen floor. It sounds boring and all, but it ended up kind of fun, see, because she took some string and tied these wood-backed scrub brushes like skates to Charlie’s and my feet, and then she poured the cleaning stuff all over the floor and turned on the radio, and we had a dance contest. Charlie and I were doing the twist and all these other dances and Emily was using the mop as the announcer’s microphone …” I look over and notice Mary Jane’s not really paying any attention to my story. Her eyes stare across the lock in a sort of vague distant way.
“It’s hard to picture Charlie doing something so goofy. He used to be a lot more, though. Goofy, that is,” I say quietly, more to myself.
“Goofy,” repeats Mary Jane. I guess she’s thinking about that jump.
From above, Ted’s tucked body hurtles past us and cannonballs into the water.
“He was younger then,” Rat says. His voice startles me; it takes me a second to realize he’s talking about Charlie. I didn’t think he was even listening to us.
“Yeah,” I agree.
Charlie’s whoop fills the air as he whistles down, following Ted’s splash. Their laughter rises up to us from the water. Dan and Steph jump together, holding hands and howling to their double splash.
“Ted and Charlie even jumped off near the Culebra Cut last year,” I mention. “Charlie said it was better than this jump because it’s higher and it’s more natural, off a cliff.”
“Jumping off this tower, or even Culebra, doesn’t seem so much fun to me,” Rat remarks. He’s so close that I can feel his breath, like dew on my cheek as he talks.
“No.” I stretch out my arms and sit up. “I’d rather listen to the quiet.” And yet, peaceful as it looks, the lock itself, dug out of the earth and soundlessly brimming or sinking with its mechanical tides, is nothing but trouble. The Canal’s the reason my family is here, the reason that all the military bases are here, the reason everyone’s so mad at Jimmy Carter right now; because he’s giving the Canal back to Panama. Supposedly the new agreements with President Torrijos say that by the end of this century no Americans should be in Panama at all. The news stories about the Canal seem so far away from the flat dark path of water stretched out in front of me.
“Sometimes I feel like we’re a million miles away from everywhere, living here.” I say, almost under my breath. “In a whole other land, off on our own practically forgotten about.”
“Doubtful.” Rat frowns at me. “The army’s not forgetting about the canal anytime soon. We’re here to protect and defend.” He lifts up his chin in a way that reminds me of Steph. “We should keep the canal, anyhow.”
“My dad says Americans run it way better since we have all the money. Jimmy Carter’s just a crooked old peanut farmer. My dad said Jimmy Carter promised not to give away the Canal so that Americans would vote for him, and then he turned right around and gave it back like a true politician.”
“My mom thinks Jimmy Carter’s right,” I say. “She thinks Americans take too much of what doesn’t belong to us, so we have to start giving stuff back.”
“Americans run the Canal better,” Rat says soundly. “Everyone knows that.”
“Jimmy Carter and my mom say the new treaty’s only fair. I think so, too, actually,” I say. I try not to sound too intense about my opinion, like the way Mom gets when she talks about the Canal—all emotional and quivery-voiced.
“We built it—or at least, we decided it should get built.” Rat looks mad. “Teddy Roosevelt did, anyway, and we’ve owned it for almost a hundred years. It was U.S. dollars spent to build it, too. The Canal makes us a ton of money. It’s the only way a ship can get from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean without going all around South Amer—”
“I know that, everyone knows that.” I wave off his words. Anyone who lives here knows exactly how important the Panama Canal is; how much trade is cleared through its locks every day, how convenient it is for ships coming from east to west and back again. “All I’m saying, Rat, is the people who own the country should own the Canal. I mean, Americans would be mad if, say, French people and the French army came into Ohio or somewhere and started trying to run things. Right?”
Mary Jane nods to agree with me, but since her family’s from Georgia, they’re all pro-Jimmy Carter.
“Well, but what if French people were smarter, ran it better?” Rat insists.
“They’re still in Ohio,” I say. “Where they don’t belong.”
“I don’t even think France has an army,” Rat says, and turns his head to squint very hard at the darkening horizon.
“My folks don’t really talk too much about the Canal,” Mary Jane admits matter-of-factly. “But they’d be spitting tacks if they knew I was fixing to jump into Miraflores.”
“Be a snap if you did it before,” Rat assures her.
“True.” She pushes up her sunglasses to the top of her head, catching some of her bangs back with them like a headband.
“I’ll go up to the top with you,” I say on impulse, although just the thought of the top of the Miraflores water tower scares me knock-kneed. “I’ll give you a pep talk or something.”
“That’d be real sweet of you, Lane.” Mary Jane reaches over and touches my shoulder. Then she stands up with a little hop and hauls herself fast up the ladder to the top of the tower, leaving just Rat and me on the grill.
The tower vibrates as all the jumpers, soaking wet and shaking off water like dogs, climb back on. They rattle the built-in ladder rungs as they rise past us, this time to the very top of the tower where poor old Mary Jane is waiting. The whole thing with Mary Jane is starting to remind me of those girls that used to get pushed into volcanoes so that the village would have rain or good crops.
“Check it out!” Charlie’s
voice hollers over me. “Ocean liner! This guy’s huge!” Rat and I have to stand up; our view isn’t as good. We watch as the gray prow of the cruise ship appears from around a jut of land. It kicks up a white foam in its path and sends large waves pulsing out through the water. The men on deck look tiny as toys but we wave at them anyway, hoping they’ll see us.
“You coming up?” I ask Rat.
“Nah, you go on,” he says. He won’t look at me, since he knows I know he’s too scared.
“I’m not going up there to jump, you know. I’m way too scared to jump,” I say.
“Then I hope you don’t fall in,” Rat says, looking out to the water. His eyes follow the big ship as it moves slowly past us and down the channel. His face keeps his thoughts secret. Maybe he’s upset; with me going up he’ll be left all alone, a little chicken on the midway ledge. “It’s going to rain any second now,” he remarks. “You guys better hurry.”
I’ve never climbed to the very top of the tower, and once I set my foot onto the rusty rungs leading up, up, up, I feel like I might puke. My fingers wrap tight over the railing and I squeeze away visions of the water.
Once I’m at the top, though, my eyes spy the initials’ board, which I’d always heard about. It’s a small prize for letting myself get so far away from the water, but I’m glad to get a look. Everyone who’s ever climbed up and jumped down has scratched something into a piece of weathered wood that’s nailed crooked to the scaffold.
“Aha, I thought I’d never see the day Elaine Beck stood on the top of this tower.” Ted grins as I inch my way closer to Mary Jane. Her hands are sealed tight as Tupperware lids over a metal cross bar.
“I’m just here for M.J.” I assure him, and everyone else. “I’m not jumping or anything.”
“Climbing’s half the battle, Lane-a-tic.” Ted coaxes me. “I have my Swiss Army knife with me—let me add your initials after I’m finished with Dan’s.”
“Hey, you know what? Forget about me.”
We all turn. Dan’s face looks marshmallow white beneath his tan and he gives us a lopsided smile. “I can’t jump it, at least not today anyway. For one thing I have an ear infection and I’m also not feeling that good,” he apologizes to Steph. “My stomach. I think it was too many raviolis. So maybe next time.” We’re all quiet, embarrassed for him and his bad excuses.
“This ledge’s too small for so many wimps,” Steph grunts. “Who ever heard of climbing up and not jumping down?”
“Look, I never said I was going,” I repeat. “I’m just here for Mary Jane.”
“Scratch my initials in again.” Charlie nudges Ted. “Since you don’t have to do Dan’s ones.”
“You don’t get to put ’em in twice, Charleston.” Ted waves the knife high in the air. “Just the new people’s initials, like M.J.H.”
“Yeah, only brand-new jumpers who never jumped before,” Steph says, looking right at Mary Jane. She and Charlie move close to watch over Ted’s shoulders as he begins to carve out the M, so careful you’d think he was some crazy old woodcarver, old Gepetto or something.
The sky has turned pencil gray. I sneak a look down at the shadowed water; so flat, it could be ice. Everywhere is the same color of gray and shadows; it makes me think of one of those fuzzy black-and-white war movies. When I was little, I used to think that the olden times were actually lived in black and white and that’s why you never saw color. Now, looking at all the gray, I feel like I’m in olden times; it’s kind of scary.
I turn to Mary Jane and try to smile as I search for more stories.
“Bjorn Borg, he’s that tennis player right, with the long blond hair?” I say softly.
“Right, I know. Real cute.” Mary Jane shifts closer to me.
“Well my baby sitter Emily and I thought he was so great; I even had a poster of him in my old room in Rhode Island. Emily always said she was going to marry him.”
“Isn’t he already married?” Mary Jane asks.
“Is he? I don’t think he was when Emily liked him. But anyhow, we used to design wedding dresses on this special art paper that would turn to paint if you brushed over them with water, and Emily thought up this amazing dress once—she told me she was going to open a wedding boutique after she married Bjorn Borg, and I could go work for her. But that was a while ago, when we were living in Rhode Island.” My mind washes over the dim old pictures in my memory. “I’d still like to work at a boutique, though.”
“Except no one would ever hire you, because you’re always shooting your mouth off,” Charlie says under his breath.
“Why don’t you shut up, Charlie?”
“Actually, I was thinking why don’t you shut up, Lane?”
“Why don’t you both shut up?” growls Steph.
“I can talk about whatever I want.” I speak to the flints of Charlie’s eyes. He doesn’t move out of my stare, but then he leaps to where I’m standing and his hand grabs at me, his fingers lacing tight around my wrist like whipcord. I try to wrench myself free and he pinches his fingers in tighter.
“Excuse me, will you let go of my wrist?” I use a more sarcastic version of Steph’s teacher-voice, but Charlie just smiles his happy delirious smile.
“Will you let go of my wrist?” he mimics.
“I’m not kidding, Charlie.” I start flipping my wrist up and down furiously.
“I’m not kidding, Charlie.” He’s strong, stronger than I am, and he won’t let go, although the fingernails of my free hand are now digging and prying at the human handcuff he has made.
“Cut it out, guys,” Ted says, but his voice trickles in from a distance. It’s just Charlie and me now. I can see a faint blue in Charlie’s lips and in the dents just beneath his eyes; his entire body is trembling slightly from the cold of the water and the disappeared sun. He won’t let go and I want to punch him. My trapped hand curls into a fist.
“I hate your voice.” Charlie spits out the words. “And your stupid boring stories and your stupid boring worries and your dumb poster of Bjorn Borg.”
“Let go of my wrist!”
“Why do you talk and talk when you know I can’t listen to you? When you know I’m telling you in my head just shut up shut up shut up—talking about your baby sitter and stupid wedding dresses. Just shut up, okay? Just don’t talk about stupid boring stupid stupid—”
“I can talk whatever, whenever, howev—”
“Stupid stuff when you know what that does when I hear those—”
“I completely hate you.” My voice is only a soft shadow to the shapes my lips form. And in that next second, when we both know what he’s going to do, when in his eyes the knowledge of what he is going to do is mirrored by my mind’s vision of what I know he’s going to do, I think, Yes I do hate you.
He leaps first, so that my resistance won’t be any match against the weight of his body. His fingers unlock once I’m launched into the air. My head’s full of screaming, but no sound comes out, like in those nightmares when you’ve lost your power to speak or to run or call for help. I fall without noise, watching Charlie fall with me in a blur of limbs and crazy eyes. And in that roaring silence before the Canal swallows me, I suddenly feel water everywhere, and I realize that it’s raining. The drops spatter clean against my skin for an instant, and then I meet the water with a smack and a plunge.
10
CHARLIE’S BOBBING HEAD IS the first thing I see after I thrash myself up from darkness. My ears and nose and mouth are full of water, and I shoot out into the air and an explosion of noise that is the rain and me screaming at last. My scream is a relief, almost happy, but it scares my brother. I narrow my eyes against the rain, now gunning down on us in stinging pebbles, and lunge for him.
Charlie darts down under the surface and away from me in a fierce wiggle, swimming farther out from the tower. I’m sort of laughing, from relief I guess, as I beat through the water after him. I yank my head and look every which way to find him, but he’s gone. I thrash my legs, hoping I’ll ra
m into an eye, a leg, anything. In a weird way, though, I also want to shout, “I did it! I jumped!” and I’m sort of proud of myself, although jumping wasn’t my choice.
Charlie’s slick pale head surfaces again; now he is even farther out. I push myself closer to him, pumping my arms and legs. If I could get even a quick cuff on his ear or the back of his head I’d feel better. He’s closer to me, this time, when he comes up for air.
A massive crash and then another, both from behind, veer me off-course and Charlie slips below the surface of the water just as Ted and Steph push up from it. They catch up with me in only a few, sure strokes.
“You okay?” Steph shouts hoarsely. The rain nearly drums out her words.
“Charlie!” I scream. But the rain and the water everywhere hides him from me.
“Take it easy, Lane. Your body’s in shock. Link your hands around my chest and I’ll swim you in.” It annoys me when Ted talks like he’s some doctor. I’m not in shock.
“I’m okay.” I breathe.
But Ted takes hold of my arms anyway and ducks in front of me, repositioning himself so that he’s dragging me along as he swims an awkward sidestroke back to the tower. Steph paddles next to us. My eyes comb the water for Charlie, but he can slip and glide underwater forever, furtive as a minnow. He’s probably swimming right underneath us, all open-eyed and laughing. Still, every second he doesn’t surface gets me feeling more uneasy.
“That was a crummy stupid thing Charles did,” Ted shouts over his shoulder through the thrumming rain. “Way out of line, way way out of line.”
“Soon as he grabbed you, Ted and I climbed to the midway and long-dived out,” Steph tells me. “I knew Charlie’d do something crazy like try to drown you. Where’d that kid go, anyway?”
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