Panama (4 page)

"Name?"

"David Providence." The man speaks English—he's clearly from the islands.

"Metal number?"

He recites his number. The others are mute.

I want to see all this and I move closer. I peer in: two rows of double-sided three-story bunks—strips of canvas on gas pipes that can be hung up like folded swinging shelves when they aren't in use. At two tables, eighteen or so Negroes are in undershirts and trousers—their card game suspended, anxiety in their eyes, looking at two white faces usually seen only when there has been a crime. Harry isn't threatening. He's respectful, but they still look uneasy. They sit barely moving.

Harry finishes with David Providence and starts with a new worker.

"What's your name?"

"Levi McCarthy."

"Metal-check number?" McCarthy recites his number. "Haven't I seen you in the Canal Club, McCarthy?"

"I am a waiter."

I take a closer look. There is our waiter from the day I met Harry. He lives here in Cunette.

I'm shocked. I don't know how I pictured him. Going home, maybe, to a nice little house or apartment somewhere, the way a waiter might in Dayton, but not like this.

He speaks with dignity, answers Harry's questions. But it looks all wrong. In the club he is tall and quiet, seems perfectly correct. But here, among the hanging canvas cots in a laborers' barrack, he seems displaced. In his uniform he's impressive—could pass for the leader of an African nation. Here, in an undershirt and loose trousers, his skin shining with sweat, he's diminished, unimportant, his footprint on planet Earth a few square feet of cot and belongings.

Harry moves to the next man. I don't take my eyes off McCarthy.

Harry's voice: "Your name?" The man doesn't understand.

"Cummun t'appelle?"
Harry switches to Cajun. It works.
"Caje-vous?"
His age, the kind of work he does, how long he's been there—Harry gets it all with his easy authority.

I don't say a word. I stand behind him trying to be invisible, watching McCarthy and the others. From time to time the eyes of laborers flick toward me.
Who is she? Why is she with Harry? His woman? His daughter? His tightlipped assistant?

Mostly they watch Harry going from man to man. They're all from different locales, speak various languages. Some don't understand the simplest queries, but Harry is efficient. He finds some hybrid of dialects that works and every man responds.

"Beresford Plantaganet." (No need to ask if he's a British subject.)

"'Rasmus Iggleston." (From Montserrat.)

"Smith." (From St. Vincent.) "Married, but my wife and child haven't arrived yet—a baby born last week." Harry moves his pencil to a new spot on the form.

"Will they be living with you?"

"Yes, in the married quarters."

"What's the name of the child?"

"He was just baptized..." Smith has to refer to an entry in the Bible by his cot. "Hazarmaneth Cumberbath Smith."

Not a flinch from Harry. The impressive name goes on his record. He gives the man a nod and moves on.

I look again at our waiter, McCarthy. He's watching all this silently with the others.

So my new Panama life begins, what I wanted all along. Very nearly.

Eyes wide open I see men from Costa Rica, Guatemalteco, Venezuela, Trinidad. From barrack to barrack that night for hours, I see and hear more different kinds of humanity than I've ever seen or read about in my life.

In the early hours of morning we're at the last place, a small cabin. We wake five Punjabis. They're drowsy, can't make out what Harry is all about. He says three words in their language and they spring to life. They can't believe their ears. We're invited in, lights go on, we're offered tea. They smile and talk, but Harry keeps it respectful and businesslike—census work only, not a social call. He completes their forms, and they stand at the door watching with wide grins as Harry tacks a red completion tag on the outside of the cabin. The whole thing has taken no more than a quarter of an hour.

"They're going to think they dreamed the visit from a white man who spoke their language in the middle of the night," he says.

"No, they won't."

"I mispronounced the Punjabi."

"Don't think they noticed."

We hurry along the track toward my house. I can't get the workers out of my mind. "Why aren't there any American blacks?"

"Canal Commission doesn't want them. They only want men from the islands and Europe and the Orient. Skilled whites from the States only, no blacks."

"Why not?"

"They call them 'corrupting States niggers.'" He glances at me. Sees I'm shocked. "You never heard anything like that in Dayton, did you?"

"No."

"American blacks might expect too much, being free now," he says. "Labor has to be cheap, keep the cost down. Desperate men work for nearly nothing—for food if you give them a little." We're walking so fast that I'm out of breath, and my real education has begun, the one about the world. Maybe that's what took my breath away. He talks some more about the poor black workers, then at my back door I say: "I want to come again. Can I? Please?"

He smiles at my enthusiasm. "Sure, just let me know." He says goodbye and starts back down the stairs.

He likes me, I can tell—likes my questions. I'm not a pest and I'm earnest. And he won't mind my company from time to time.

Mother is in her robe in the kitchen. "It was wonderful," I say. "Did you wait up?"

"No. I heard your voices." That's it. She's satisfied—I'm safely home. "Take a shower and jump in bed." This is not the time to negotiate more outings.

I go up the steps two at a time. The 4:30 whistle sounds for the laborers—another hellish day for them in the Cut. More than ever I wonder how they do it.

School. I make an announcement to Mrs. Ewing: "I've been to the workers' camps with the enumerator." She looks at me a little shocked. "Cunette and some others. I'm doing an extra-credit paper on it."

"How in the world...?"

"My parents allowed it. I want to go again, a lot more times." She's perplexed. Her sullen but dutiful student has come to life. "I've only seen a little, so I need to go again and learn more."

"How did you arrange it?"

I tell her about Harry—meeting him through Father, what he's doing. She's impressed and I pop the question.

"Would you encourage Mother to allow me to go a few more times? Teacher to teacher—you know, send a note?" She hesitates. "It's good research training and I'm going to need that in college..."

"Yes, you certainly will..."

***

I skid into the kitchen and lay the note on the counter next to Mother, who's kneading dough. I know the letter's contents.

• A unique opportunity.

• The loss of sleep well worth what she'll learn.

• Safe with the enumerator, a respected member of the police force working directly with the quartermaster's office.

(Mrs. Ewing's husband works there—she knows all about Harry. A huge bonus.)

• Please allow the visits with Harry to continue. The class will benefit, et cetera, et cetera. (Straightforward, clear, persuasive.)

Mother looks up at me. "How often do you want to go?"

"Twice a week."

"You'll be half asleep in school the next day."

"I'll nap on the train."

She thinks it over. Rolls out the dough.

"A pie?" I ask. She doesn't hear me. I see her thinking hard. Then:

"We'll try it. But only once a week."

Once a week and now there's momentum.

Every week I go with Harry barrack to barrack, and he tells me what he's learned firsthand in his years of wandering—my education continues. He talks about how hard it is for the poor. How the destitute outnumber the rich. How "someday they'll rise to justice, but not in my lifetime, or in my children's, even. The rich are too strong. They have all the advantages." I've never heard anybody talk like this. It's a wild world I'm learning about, and it's not just in books.

"...peasants in every country," Harry says, "and their back-breaking labor is what makes the aristocracy rich, even in America." This grinds inside him. He'll go on and on about it if I encourage him, which I always do. I need to hear it and he must need to talk about it, because he has plenty to say.

"I've seen cruelties you wouldn't believe. Thousands of workers doing soul-crushing work to blast a road through a mountain, or a tunnel through some elevation"—flings his arm toward the Cut—"or a canal through igneous rock that's not meant to be split by anything but continental drift, and all so commerce can make the privileged richer." We walk toward my house, the end of another night's work. "Americans are reaping the profit of cheap labor all over the world—I've seen it." He shakes his head. This eats at him the way being sequestered from the people ate at me.

I want to say something, put in my two cents, but I don't. I'm a student. A provincial girl from Dayton, Ohio, and I listen. On nights like this I want to be just like Harry; gender has nothing to do with it.

At the end of the long evenings, Mother meets me in the kitchen. She shakes her head and says nothing. I'm sweaty, unladylike. It disturbs her. The furrow between her eyes deepens—this is no way for a young lady to grow up. She hopes I'll lose interest but I don't.

And then, though I couldn't ask for anything more, more finds me.

It begins with Mrs. McManus.

Harry becomes a regular at our house for dinner, an avuncular presence. It's clear he sees me as a student, a good-natured niece. He's family. And we learn more about him, some rather unexpected news. He tells us he's seeing Mrs. McManus from Nebraska.

"She was widowed last year, wasn't she?" says Mother.

"A locomotive went wild." Harry holds a forkful of green beans in midair. "He was crushed between two flatcars."

Father looks up, knows all about this incident.

"They tried to keep her from seeing the body but she insisted. That's why she took it so hard, I think, seeing her husband that way." He chews the bite of beans, studies his plate.

Mother leans forward. "And she had some kind of ... breakdown, was it?" Even Mother can't resist these further details.

"I wouldn't call it a breakdown." Those are neurotic-sounding words to Midwestern ears, even to vagabond Harry's. The scent of Mother's just-baked lemon pie hangs in the air. Harry ponders a moment longer, then says, "She was grieving is all, no breakdown. I'm not sure how much she's over it. She feels things ... deeply."

"Of course."

He shakes his head, swirls a neat chunk of pork in the sauce. "We are..." He wants to go on but hesitates, then says, "I find her a very bright woman. We have people in common, friends of mine that know her people." Another swirl in the sauce. "I've been calling on her. It's a comfort for her to have a friend." The chunk of pork goes into his mouth and he chews, thoughtful.

So Harry's got a quiet love affair. Secretive. Revealed to us in confidence.

"Of course," says Mother.

I have goose bumps on my arms.

***

A few days later I find out her full name standing in line at the commissary. The cashier calls her Ruby and she pays keeping her eyes down. Ruby McManus, about thirty, is extremely pretty, and she doesn't look at me or anyone else directly. It gives her a mysterious appearance, something that's not at all Midwestern. I can see why that attracts Harry. Mystery is seductive. To some of us, anyway. Good for Harry. His relationship with the widow McManus is about to work in my favor.

I hear Mother talking to Father that evening in their room: "...more comfortable seeing her go out at night with Harry knowing he has a female companion." I realize I'll be going withHarry more often, which is just what I've wanted, and I feel a bump of elation, then, suddenly, anxiety, which I can't figure out. It's strange. It's not about Harry—being with Harry more often can only be good. The anxiety is about me. I sense something.

The planets are aligned. Everything is in place. Something is coming and I'm uneasy about it. That's what it is. Look, I don't believe in the dreamy premonitions people talk about—my feet are planted squarely on the ground—but something is imminent. I can feel it and it keeps me awake. I don't eat well and I'm easily distracted.

Something is close,
I write in my diary.
Don't know what it could be.

I begin going with Harry twice a week, and on a dark, moonless night of the second week, this imminent thing happens. I don't see it coming at all. It is an evening like many others with Harry.

"We'll be going to worker cabins this time," he says, and off we go in a different direction, across a field of stubble, through some trees, along the Cut. We come to a long line of small structures, the cabins housing laborers by their country of origin. Harry goes to work.

He knocks at the doors, calls out greetings in Spanish. The responses come in various tongues—Chinese, Greek, Danish, Portuguese, in the first hour alone. Harry impresses me all over again with his uncanny ear. He has an amazing gift for language.

Chinese almost stumps him, but with hand signs and a few words in Mandarin, he gets his questions answered.

"I'll go there one day," he says as he tacks the red tag on the Chinese cabin.

"It's so far."

"Steerage."

"Ah, right." And he'll learn the language, too, I have no doubt.

We hike to a dozen cabins with workers jammed into junk-jumbled rooms, very different from the barracks. Fewer men, smaller spaces. These are wretched shacks, not cabins. But none of this figures in my premonition—not so far, anyway.

I busy myself taking notes: the look of the place, the total lack of hygiene, everything filthy and broken. And the whole camp reeks. Cans and papers are thrown out doors. Boxes litter the space between structures. Bits of rag hang off sagging rails. Maybe shirts or what's left of them out to dry—a hopeless process in a sultry jungle.