Panama (20 page)

And because the canal is nearly complete, the Commission is lobbying to keep Americans for ongoing maintenance, the dredging, the increased work of administration when the passage of ships and the real commerce begin. They want Father in the worst way, but he knows it's out of the question and doesn't try to change Mother's mind. He didn't make a deal with her to stay indefinitely, only to the end of construction. He's happy he's had that much.

I let all this go over my head, shut it out. But talk is everywhere, the end is near, and one day I can no longer avoid it. The thought of leaving seizes me and I'm nearly paralyzed.

I'm eighteen, about to graduate, receive a diploma signed by the president of the United States, and it means nothing. I want everything to go on. Time needs to stop. I have what I want now and I can't remember ever feeling so assured or happy or like myself before.

But Oberlin College has accepted me and Mother begins talking about clothes, since everything I have is thin and cool and mostly white, except for jodhpurs and brown leather high-top shoes, which she hopes I'll never put on again. I've long ago outgrown my warm Ohio clothes. I'm more than two inches taller after three years in Panama and I need an entire winter wardrobe. But I don't want to think about clothes or Ohio, and I certainly don't want to accept the fact that canal construction is almost complete. That's when I have to go home.

When Mother talks about college and clothes I nod my head and agree to shopping trips when we're back in Dayton. I try to keep my mind in the present, in Panama, with Federico in the Cut somewhere.

There is no date to sail—it's still months away. The canal is not completed or officially open or filled with water; these are all events yet to come. But resistance to passing time gets a grip on me, and to make it worse, I see Federico less often, sometimes only a few minutes in front of the Tivoli and only twice again in his cabin alone—
only twice.
It's not his fault. Laborers are working longer hours and I have fewer excuses to go out at night. Finally I have none.

There's an acceleration of activity and fervor in the Zone, a time of records and groundbreaking events and newsworthy incidents. Thirteen automobiles now cruise the narrow streets of the towns, each registered at one hundred twenty-five dollars, a small fortune to most.

"Not much for a fella rich enough to buy the autocar in the first place," Father observes.

Colonel Goethals starts building macadam roads—a military and tourist necessity, he says.

Mr. Russel from the post office in Ancon hikes across the Isthmus in fourteen hours—a record.

"We could do that, Harry," I say. I'll redirect my anxiety to some physical activity with a goal, challenge myself.

Harry isn't interested. "Second place doesn't count in that kind of thing."

"But just to say we've done it..."

"I don't need to say I've done it. I walk everywhere, across whole countries, and fifty miles isn't a challenge. China would be—not the Isthmus."

"You're no fun," I say. He laughs and tells me a flier has come to town. "A flier?" He takes me to meet the pilot.

Mr. Robert G. Fowler shakes my hand, a man with a single-engine hydroplane. He's nice looking, only a little older than Harry and neat as a pin like the Wrights.

"Glad to meet you," I say. "I live next door to the Wrights in Dayton."

"Is that a fact? I was trained at their school, flew on their exhibition team."

"Did you, really? Harry, did you know that?"

"Course I did."

We talk. He's from San Francisco, but he spent time training with Wil and Orville, knows them well, worked with them—small world. He offers to take me up in his plane; he's been barnstorming around Balboa for days. "Have to stir up interest."

I agree. At last I'll fly.

Fowler's machine is nothing like anything I've ever seen. It's called a Gage tractor biplane and sits in the water on floats with an eighty-horsepower Hall-Scott engine, he tells me. Does Orville know about this? I wonder. He must.

I like Fowler. He's a good man with interesting ideas, and much like the boys and Harry, he gets things done.

"My mother's starch box was part of the model for their first wind machine," I boast. "I fetched that box."

Fowler laughs and helps me in. He puts goggles on me. I love it. I'm decked out in jodhpurs again, feeling very much the aviator, and Harry watches from the dock, arms crossed on his chest. For the first time ever I see real concern about my safety on Harry's face; I can see this air travel doesn't appeal to him. For all his being an adventurer, something about flight doesn't sit well with Harry.

People gather—Fowler advertises his flights. A local journalist for the
Canal Record
will make another of his daily reports on Fowler's activity:

Time in the air

Where to

With or without a passenger

Weather

Reason for descent (usually low fuel)

And an update: "Still not the right weather conditions

for Mr. Fowler's historic ocean-to-ocean nonstop flight."

Harry doesn't say a word from the shore as Fowler primes the engine. It turns over, catches, coughs once, catches again, and roars, a powerful sound, nothing like the sound of the engine the boys used ten years earlier. That one did the job but this one lets you know it means business; lifting this craft is going to be easy and assured. This is exciting.

Inside the plane behind Fowler, I look out at Harry, who has a grimace on his face and never takes his eyes off me. Fowler guns the engine and it roars and whines, and we turn in the water. The prop wash blows back Harry's hair. He squints, watching us pull away, then I can't see him anymore.

We're skimming along the water.

A motion-picture camera is at my feet and I shout forward to Fowler.

"What's the camera for?"

"Belongs to R. E. Duhem. He's gonna photograph the canal when we make the transcontinental flight."

We're picking up speed. I shout again, can't resist bragging: "Last year I threw away a dress we made from the Wrights' wing fabric."

"I'd have given you a hundred dollars for it!"

We lift off easy, like a kite, into a quick breeze and a brilliant sun, people looking up at us, shading their eyes, pointing us out for their children. They're suddenly a hundred feet below. We climb light and easy for half a minute longer and start making graceful turns and shallow dips over the bay, everything in miniature below us. We're a soaring bird.

So this is what the boys worked on so long. No wonder they stayed with it—a great sensation, floating, wheeling, climbing, diving. What human being wouldn't want this?

I shout forward, "Let's go see the Cut."

Fowler nods and veers north. A smooth ten-mile cruise along rainforest and canal and there it is, the gully teeming with workers and machines, even more impressive from the sky. Men down there are like ants in a trench and Father's among them somewhere. And Federico. I'm two hundred feet in the air and can't get rid of the obsession.

The men stop working and wave shirts and caps and arms. We circle and tip the wings in response. Another circle and we go back to the bay. A few circles there, a breathtaking dive, a grinding climb, and then Fowler taps a gauge and glances back at me. I lean forward and look:
FUEL. EMPTY.

Fowler, unbothered, begins a descent in a wide, smooth circle. He brings us lower until we skim the water and settle lightly onto the surface. We slow and begin pulling toward the dock. The propeller comes to a jerking stop and we glide in.

The crowd's gotten bigger. Fowler grins and waves and helps me out.

"This brings them around," he says.

Two weeks later. 9:45 a.m.

The Gage hydro-biplane takes off with cameraman and pilot. They head for Culebra, circle, and take moving pictures of the men waving and shovels saluting with puffs of steam. They go north, are rained on over Gamboa, where the motor coughs but comes back, cross Gatun Lake at eighteen hundred feet, then race toward Limon Bay and Cristobal, the fuel gauge on empty. They touch down in a silent, fuelless glide among the rocks off Pier 11.

Fowler's report for the journalists: "The trip was uneventful except for that last bit without gas."

They did it in an hour and thirty-five minutes. Another first and another record set.

None of this makes me feel better.

My diary is once again my only confidant, and it fills with pages of everything I feel and do.

Saw Federico a few minutes on the street yesterday after flying—so long without a word from him. He's older and wiser than me and it feels like he's decided to wean us away from each other!!! He's distant but nice, which almost spells it out: we'll be over when the canal is complete. I don't want to think of it. It's a matter of months. I'd rather die.

He told me about seeing a flying machine circling overhead. Did I? Almost didn't believe me when I said I was up there. He gave me that look, the perplexed smile again, trying to figure me out—more mystery in that little Dayton girl than he understands. (That's right!) He mentioned there's more trouble in Spain. Maybe that's why he doesn't contact me more often; maybe weaning doesn't have anything to do with it. I know nothing.

Harry just showed up to take me to Colonel Goethals's court. For three years I've been asking to go and now that I've lost interest, he appears at the door. Oh well.

"I'm so glad you're going to see it," says Mother. "Another Zone experience before it ends, and I want to hear all about it."

Goethals's patriarchal Sunday court, foolish to miss it after being here so long. And it will be a major distraction.

Harry and I hop the train to Ancon early. The court will end around noon. By then the colonel will have seen a hundred people with their various grievances and, acting as both judge and jury, will have made a hundred decisions. I've heard about it since we got here. Few will complain they've been denied justice. Forty thousand workers speaking forty-five different languages, and they all know the colonel's office door is open to them on Sunday morning.

I'm not going to think about Federico. I'll just ride along with Harry and keep my mind on what I'm about to see.

Midmorning we climb the thousand steps of the administration building. Beside us the line of waiting workers snakes out the front. Goethals's big office is on the right in a wide hallway hung with maps and blueprints, and there they stand, men and women of every color, speaking dozens of languages, some with children in hand, all patient, all reasonably quiet though every sound echoes.

We keep walking and Harry leads me past the line and directly into the office; he's been there many times in his capacity as policeman/enumerator/interpreter. He finds a spot inside the door where we can observe.

The room is hot, insufferably hot. Tall windows on one side are open but the air is still—there's not a breath of movement. I feel irritable but I know I feel no more heat than everyone else, so I stand quietly and endure it.

Goethals in his customary white suit sits solemnly behind his desk and listens to each worker present his grievance. Then, after a short consideration, he hands down justice—efficient, dependable, undisputed. It's pretty amazing, and gradually I forget the heat and lose myself in watching the process.

A wife has marital woes, which are quickly dispensed—Goethals handles civil as well as minor criminal matters.

The social-committee chairman sets a date for a Tivoli ballroom dance and Goethals gives the okay.

Harsh treatment by a foreman is resolved.

Failure to get a promotion is taken care of.

A request for special privileges is denied and another is granted.

Then a builder steps up and the rhythm changes. This man has attitude. You can see it in the way he stands and speaks. He takes himself seriously, above these petty domestic disputes and social arrangements, and he makes that clear to the colonel.

"I cannot possibly complete the pump house in the time allotted," he says with authority.

"What time would that be?" Goethals says.

"The time in your letter, sir."

"I don't recall the letter."

"A letter about the work in Miraflores." The builder produces the letter—he's ready for this.

The secretary gives the letter to the colonel, who glances at it, then looks up.

"This is not a letter. This is an order."

The builder blinks. "Sir...?"

"It's a deadline. Get it done," he says. "Do you want to talk about anything else?"

The builder stammers, "N-n-o," and the secretary touches his arm to make him move aside. He's stupefied.

Next case.

Can't help liking Goethals.

It moves fast and I keep my mind on the proceedings—the various human appeals, the deferential complainers, the colonel himself, so assured through all of it. I like this, the way it's done and the justice. I wonder if Federico's been here. He'd like it and Harry clearly loves it.

Two more complaints resolved, then Harry leans toward me and whispers, "Here—this is what we came to see."

It's a shovel engineer, and he tells Goethals he's been discharged unjustly. Harry straightens and tilts his head to see Goethals's face more closely.

"What was the reason for your discharge?" the colonel says.

"Because I can't play baseball."

"That's the reason?"

"Yes, sir." Harry nudges me. "They've hired another shovel operator with a better pitching arm, sir."

There's a half smile on Harry's face as his eyes flick from the colonel to the shoveler and back to the colonel. Goethals hesitates a moment longer than usual, then speaks. "They want shovelers on the Pacific end. Report in the morning for work." The colonel turns to his secretary. "Ring them up; arrange it."

The shoveler steps over to the secretary and they begin taking care of the matter. Harry nudges me again, smiling. "Let's go."