Panama (21 page)

In the hall where we can talk, Harry's still grinning.

"They've got their pitcher and the shovel man's got his job ... You've got to hand it to the old man. Course, he had to do that. He's the one pushing for baseball, says it's a morale builder, but he can't condone an unjust firing—he can't let that happen." He shakes his head in admiration. "He took care of it."

"I didn't know you were interested in baseball, Harry."

"It's the justice I'm interested in. Well, I'm playing shortstop..." He gives me a wink and suddenly stops walking. "Malero!"

I look up. Federico is standing in line.

Harry pumps his hand and smiles. "It's good to see you."

"Nice to see you again, Harry."

I smile at Federico; my chest tightens.

"Why are you here?" Harry asks him.

"It's nothing much. I've been on the wrong pay scale since I came back to work after being sick—a clerical error, but it still isn't corrected."

Harry waves it off. "He'll take care of it in seconds. I didn't know you were sick."

"Months ago. I'm fine now." Then, to me as though we are simply acquaintances, "How is your father?"

"Very well, working hard."

"Thank him for me again, will you?"

"Yes, I will."

Two workers push us from behind, wanting to get by, and the line moves Federico ahead. We're separated. "Good luck," Harry calls back to him. Federico nods and is gone.

Our shoes click on the hall floor. Harry muses. "He's a mystery..." We're working our way through the crowd. "Hard to know. He's political, we think along the same lines, but ... something else is there—I don't know what it is. And you can't get close to him—he keeps his distance. There's something ... inscrutable about him." Then, after a moment, "You'd have to know him to see it."

"Of course."

We emerge into brilliant sunlight.

"Shortstop, huh?" I say.

Harry grins, forgets Federico. "I'm pretty good," he says.

***

On the train we chat and I look out the window trying to actually see what is passing, but inside I am roiling and later can't remember what Harry and I talked about, though we laughed a few times.

In my diary that night I add to my Goethals's court account:
I'm willing to sleep, but I'm not willing to wake up. That's just asking too much. Teenage angst, no doubt—a word I've learned from Dr. Freud by way of Federico.

This angst is getting worse—bigger, darker, more unescap-able. It doesn't help that there's a sense of heightened excitement in the air. The men take increasing pride in the work they're completing; people now talk about the end, who's staying on and who's leaving and where they're going, et cetera. Goethals tells journalists about the great accomplishment and how people are fired up to be near the end. It's a common topic of conversation:
the final days are on us.
But it's the end for me, and I use the word
cataclysmic
in my diary because I'm in a dramatic state of mind and having painful and disturbing dreams.

Men are reporting to work early and staying late without overtime—mostly the American work force. The workers of color continue as always with their daily backbreaking labor, only vaguely aware of the accomplishment.

***

On May 20, 1913, I make note that two shovels digging toward each other in Culebra narrow the gap all day long, digging and shoveling like mad, and people gather to watch when they hear what's happening. In the afternoon the shovels stand nose to nose and all hell breaks loose. Whistles hoot for miles along the Cut, the noise heard all over the Zone.

I read about it in the
Canal Record
because it's too painful to watch, and hearing talk about it in our house is more than enough.

The Cut is as deep as it will go—forty feet above sea level, the locks handling the difference—and now it goes all the way through, ocean to ocean.

Much is made of this at school—it's our last two weeks, with graduation and summer break coming up. Alice Kirk, daughter of shovel man Joseph Kirk, driver of shovel No. 222, is instructed to write the names of the shovel drivers on the board: her own father's and that of D. J. MacDonal, shovel No. 230.

"Remember those names," says Mrs. Ewing, more than aware that history is being made.

Eleven days later we're instructed to write about more history: the upper gates at Gatun are complete and function perfectly. Father reads aloud from the
Canal Record:
"...the gates swung to a position halfway open, then shut, opened again wide, closed completely, all noiselessly, without jar or vibration, at all times under perfect control." He looks up, beaming. I try to smile back.

It's another accomplishment moving the whole monstrous project toward its final day, and I have to excuse myself and go upstairs.

Like the girls I scorned at school whispering about their boyfriends, in a constant fever of romance and heightened emotion, I collapse on my bed and weep, sobbing and choking. I can't change what's happening. I can't change Federico and his life or mine or Colonel Goethals's damned unstoppable, unflappable leadership toward the great Yankee achievement, breaking the back of the Divide. The canal is going to be complete. And soon. What nature did to thwart the work has had no effect. The slides continue but so does the dredging, and Goethals orders it to continue as long as necessary, forever if need be. He'll match nature with endurance and he'll beat her. What do I do about that?

I understand it for the first time and I accept it that evening, beaten, like nature, my heart breaking. Like a child who's lost a parent, I weep secretly and inconsolably. There's no one to talk to about it, only Federico, who's the source of the pain and my most intimate friend and confidant. What would I say to him? Not something silly like "Will you write?" Or "Let me come with you." Dime-novel stuff.

But I want to say
something
—beg him to keep in touch with me, send Spanish newspapers because I'll never find
El Unico
in Oberlin, tell me what he's doing, how the rebellion's going, something, anything. I'll have no real information unless war breaks out—only that will make it to our Midwestern papers.

What if I arrange to come to Spain to study? There's an idea. But he'll be busy fomenting rebellion. Maybe we could meet somewhere else—London, Paris, even ... Am I likely to get to those places? Could he take time off from fomenting to visit me?

After sobbing on my bed and running through a list of alternatives, I pull myself together, wash my face, and go back downstairs. Harry's come by. He's talking about a rescue expedition he's going on the next day. The lake is rising and some of the indigenous Panamanians are too stubborn to leave. I want to see this and it'll keep me busy.

"Can I come along?"

I'm in jodhpurs again, this time in Harry's thirty-foot Zone police launch, American and Panamanian flags flying fore and aft, a canvas canopy supported by four poles over our heads.

An unimpressive gasoline motor pushes us across the unbroken expanse of rising Gatun Lake, moving us through the top of the submerged forest, an otherworldly scene. No matter how I feel, I will not waste my last days in Panama. I will see this unnatural event—make myself see it. Something grim and hard is forming in me. Reality, maybe?

The top of the jungle under us—the tips of trees—rises out of the lake. Royal palms stand up to their necks in water; corpulent century-old giants of the jungle on tiptoe with their jagged noses just above the surface, gasping their last.

Mango trees laden with fruit are descending into the flood. The lake is so mirrorlike that we can see the drowning palms and blue sky as plainly above the surface as on it.

A protruding stump of palm looks like a piece double its length, a water thermometer.

An angle of wood floats at exactly the same angle in perfect distortion.

We cruise through this strange waterscape in silence.

"What's the matter?" Harry asks me. He's pretty somber himself, but I'm unusually quiet.

"I'm sad to be leaving," I say, blurting out to Harry what I can't say to Federico because I'm afraid of upsetting some invisible balance between us.

"You're leaving? I thought there was another year's work after it opens."

"The Commission wants us to stay, but Mother wants to get back and I'm going to college."

"Ah," he says.

I look at him hard. Something's different with him. He's disturbed and quiet.

We putt across the glassy lake a few minutes longer, then he says, "You've been like family to me, you know."

There's a deep feeling in his voice I've never heard before, but I can tell it's not about me or my family.

"We won't go for a few more weeks ... end of summer, for certain. Father may stay on a little while."

He nods and looks out over the glassy surface.

"You'll come see us," I say.

"I won't be in the neighborhood, I don't think..." He means Dayton. His plans are worldwide, a bitter joke.

He'll be off in some other country on a new adventure, but he has an uncharacteristic, angry look on his face and I know my gloomy mood hasn't brought that on. I'm about to ask what's bothering him when a snow-white slender heron rises from the water as we bear down on him, and then we're suddenly surrounded by acres of big codlike fish floating dead on the surface among branches and forest rubbish.

"Rising water has spread some poisonous mineral from the soil. It's killing everything," Harry says.

We pass a jungle family on their way to market in their
cayucas
laden with mounds of produce—mangoes, bananas, plantains—and a duck and a chicken tied by a leg standing on top. They gaze complacently at the scene with the air of experienced tourists. I envy them. I want their cocky oblivion.

We putt toward a mound of land still above water and a solitary old native sitting on a knoll near his thatched shelter.

"He took to the bush when he heard the lake was rising," Harry says. "He refuses to leave."

"Does he have to?"

"He's on U.S. public domain."

I snort with contempt—the absurdity of public domain to a man rooted for centuries in this land. Harry shoots me a warning glance—the old man might not know I'm on his side. But the old man's face is passive.

We pull the launch onto the grass and walk toward him, Harry speaking in some skilled mix of Spanish and Indian dialect. They understand each other. Once more Harry amazes me.

The old fellow barely nods, holding a bundle in his arms. Harry knows he has to move quickly—there are others he has to save—but he takes a minute anyway. He looks around, finds a stick, and pounds a mango tree till it drops most of its fruit, and he does the same with red
maranones
and fills a basket lying abandoned by the shelter. Harry puts the basket in the launch for the old man, then helps him in. The man sits, not once putting his eyes on me. He watches mournfully as Harry touches a match to the thatched roof of his home, comes back to the launch, and shoves us off.

In minutes the roof is pouring a column of smoke straight up into the air. Even the old man's table and chair and barrel of odds and ends outside the hut catch fire. We move away and start across the lake, losing sight of the knoll, but the blazing four poles that supported the roof can be seen against the sky.

Whole villages have been burned in the lake territory, owners paid condemnation damages by the
yanquis
in plenty of time to leave, but some don't, like this old fellow, who shows no emotion at his loss.

We're soon caught in the top branches of a tree.

Harry and I work up a sweat poling the boat free, pushing against submerged limbs, twisting, grunting. The old man hardly raises his eyes to watch our struggle. Finally free, Harry pulls the gas motor into action and we deliver the old man with his bundle and basket of fruit to safe ground. Several people there are passing on their way to market and he joins them. A small boy quickly takes charge of the basket, seeing a little profit for himself if he puts in an effort.

We move out again and little thatched cottages begin to appear on knolls along the way, the inhabitants waiting to be boated to safety. This is higher land, so the lower branches of the trees stand out of the water, though a death sentence is on them, too.

"In the deepest parts, there's a forest larger than ten Fontaine-bleaus already submerged," Harry says. "Lake's rising two inches a day and the colonel guarantees an eighty-seven-foot level. A hundred and sixty-five square miles of lush green will disappear forever. In the future—way in the future—men'll dive down and take a look at the sunken cities. They're older than Pizarro, you know, so they'll really be ancient by then. They'll want to see what it was like. Antiquity."

We motor several families to higher land, some with possessions, some empty-handed—our contribution to the complete removal of their lives by encroaching empire and world trade. Harry does his work—firm and helpful, but he doesn't like it. One by one we take the indigenous inhabitants to safety, stopping only a few minutes to drift and eat sandwiches, then we're on our way again. The transporting continues until it's late and time to start back.

"It'll get dark fast," Harry says and turns the launch.

Within minutes two raging showers pass over us, moving discs of pelting rain like the shadow of the sun in an eclipse.

We encounter several flocks of little birds in the tops of trees, sitting at rest, watching the late afternoon.

"They're not far from land—what's the matter with them?" Harry says. He pulls out an army rifle that could kill an elephant and blasts into the sky. Echoes roll across the silent, flooded world and the birds scatter and fly landward. The echoes fade.

We motor on and Harry is sullen, pondering. I'm consumed with my own problems. Finally he speaks.

"A bunch of foreigners show up, say they're turning your world into a lake, going to float steamers over you. You've never heard of steamers, don't need them, but sure enough one day we come snorting down on you in a motorboat as you're lying under the thatch roof your grandfather built. We tell you to get out of here, we're going to burn your house, going to make a lake, right over these banana trees you played under and that
ciega
tree your mother got married under and this jungle path you've been courting your girl on—it's all going to disappear, come on. We give them a bag of metal disks and they want to know what they are. That's money, brother, coinage, lucre, good anywhere in the world ... Better get used to it." Harry steers straight toward the dam, his voice even and angry.