Panama (12 page)

We exchange an intimate smile.

He tells me the doctor is a "devoted Hegelian." "Imagine discussing dialectic in this morass of—" Federico stops himself. "I won't complain. I'm happy to be alive and he gave me the suit. He's put on weight and can't wear it."

The suit is a very fine light wool. "Absolutely cool in the heat and the fit is nearly perfect, except for the length of the pant legs. He arranged for the alterations."

Through the streets of Ancon we walk. I listen to his story, love being close to him, take pride in the looks we get, both of us in our best white garments. Quick nods from passing businessmen, jealous looks from two young women on their way to the commissary, obsequious nods from vendors. We appear to be tourists. Then, at one of the vendors' carts, the truth bites us.

"Dos,"
Federico says and pays for the guava drinks with silver coins. And there it is: he's a silver-roll employee. Only Americans are paid on the gold roll. Everyone else is silver—two lines on payday.

The vendor looks perplexed, a worker, not working, in such a fine suit? But the vendor goes back to his cart and we continue walking. I dismiss the little event. No one else knows the color of coins in Federico's pockets.

We pass Mamie and get a double glance. She gives me an approving smile, then moves along. I pretend I don't see her.

***

Finally, back in his cabin, Federico slumps on his cot and breathes hard. I can see how weak he is. He's trembling.

"You should rest," I say.

He looks at me suddenly and sees my worry. "Can you come back tomorrow?"

"Of course. What do you need?"

"Nothing ... you."

A walloping flop in my chest. "All right," I say.

He pulls me to him and gives me a chaste kiss. I'm afraid he'll feel my heart going and know that I'm shaking because I'm still not sophisticated about any of this, especially this day of reunion and secretive walking and not really knowing who we are together.

He must perceive all that because he gives me a smile as he watches me leave, and for that I'm grateful.

***

Outside the cabin, walking along the track, I make the quick assumption we're still a couple, lovers after all these weeks. I'm important to him. The books are important, but I am too now.

I'm soon walking on air—that's exactly how it feels, and those sappy expressions that always made me roll my eyes, they're right on the money. Who's the fool now? And the long, enthusiastic entry in my diary that night sounds like a fool's babble. That's fine with me.

Next day in his cabin: "She runs a brothel and knows about these things," I say to Federico. "I trust her."

He's smiling, almost laughing, and pulls me against him. "You really aren't like anybody," he says—that perplexed/amazed look again.

"I'm a tomboy."

"But I don't see that in you. There's no boy in there..." He begins peeling off my clothes piece by piece, smiling, looking at me, enjoying the looking especially when I'm stripped down to nothing. He pulls off his own clothes and I see how thin the sickness made him. He lays me on his cot, then puts himself beside me and presses my back to his chest. He tucks his knees behind mine and we're quiet together, his hand on my belly just grazing the bristle between my legs, his sex neatly fitted against my backside.

It's midafternoon, still two hours until the work whistle goes and another forty-five minutes after that until Augusto arrives. We have plenty of time. As for Mother, she thinks I'm still at school doing special-assignment work. And the work camp where we are—nobody is around; it's empty. We're alone in limbo.

He holds me quietly, breathing softly. A jungle bird squawks somewhere and dogs bark. A double explosion goes off in the Cut. He begins to caress me, his strong grip gradually pressing me to him.

We make love in a different way, not with the desperation I felt from him in the gazebo, but slowly, something luxurious that takes a long time.

I am an apt pupil and have no sense of time or place, no sense of the heat except our own, and I'm lost in sensuality. I follow his lead—I'm willing, focused, totally without self-consciousness, and I can't imagine we'll stop, ever, my sexual fever so roused, my brain so numb. Our sexual play goes on a long time, or it seems to, judging by my limited experience, and then it does end as it should and I find I like the viscous warmth he's pooled on my belly in spite of what I've told him about Mamie, and I rub my hand in it and across my breasts—a slick, wonderful feel. He watches me do that with a look of pleasure and slight amazement, and we are finished. I've pleased him, and he has most certainly pleased me, which wasn't hard to do—I can see he likes that. I'm good at this.

I feel my body settle and we lie quiet, like dolls in a box, on that tiny cot, drifting, half dozing, with no thoughts—none for me, anyway.

In time we begin to talk about my parents.

"They have no idea," I say.

"What if they find out?"

"They can't. They cannot."

It's a serious matter—we know it.

We watch two beetles wobbling along the windowsill beside us. It makes us laugh—sexual camaraderie again. Everything is all right.

The next weeks of his recovery we spend in long erotic afternoons. I learn a lot and he's happy.

After sex we talk about how isolated we both feel; he's literally distant from the people he knows and cares about, and I feel remote from my parents even though I see them every day. He won't talk about his family, but he tells me about friends in Madrid.

"We sit in cafés and rail against Spanish politics and the Church and the whole mess ... We're on fire, all of us. Our little band is not so little anymore from what I hear, and it will be even bigger when I go back."

It sounds important and worldly and weighty to me. "Our neighbors, the Wrights, they're my little band, I guess, but they're not remotely rebellious. Wil and Orville Wright, the fliers—you know them?"

"The brothers Wright?"

"Next-door neighbors, my best friends." Frederico raises his head and looks at me with frowning disbelief, and I realize that without trying I've impressed him at least as much as his country's miserable Church has impressed me. "I grew up hanging out with them, not with my school friends or my parents. I can't talk to my parents at all."

He's still on the boys. "The Wrights?" He can't believe it.

"They lived next door is all."

"Amazing." He laughs and gives my chin a jiggle. "Listen, you're not supposed to be able to talk to your parents. Every generation is different. We have to find parents in the life we lead."

"Is Miguel the father you found?" I can say this kind of thing to him now—sex does that.

"I guess he is—was."

A moment passes and I say, "How did it happen?" He knows I mean the explosion that killed Miguel.

He sits up and braces his arm across me. We're both shiny with sweat from sex and dry-season heat.

"We were leaving for the noon meal—fifty-two holes loaded, charges tamped in, fuses set, everything ready. Nothing was different that I remember, just another day. The last holes went down fifty feet through solid rock for two hundred yards along the Cut, but there was nothing different about that. It's a big blast to set but we do it all the time. It was supposed to go off while we were at lunch, and then, when we were still climbing out..."

"What did you do?"

"Started digging soon as the blast settled. I knew where he was—the lowest channel. Had to be tons of rock on him. We got a few men out alive, the ones near the surface, but Miguel..." He takes a moment remembering, seeing it again. "He was almost decapitated."

He lies back and pulls me on top of him. I sprawl there, his arms holding me, thinking he'll tell me more, but he doesn't. I feel him slowly relaxing, and after a while he sighs and I close my eyes and we both doze off.

When we wake a little later there's no more talk about Miguel or Spain. Only about sex—my fine legs, which he says should be noticed for as long as I live.
Typical of tomboys, are they?
he says.
No? Just your own gift, then?
More stroking, a mention of our fine fit, more sex involving the innocent hammock, and then it's time for Augusto to return. I wash and dress and sit on Frederico's lap.

"Do you dream about me?" I ask. Even if he doesn't, I want him to say he does.

"Of course."

I choose to believe him.

After that I go home and we never talk about Miguel again, or dreams, or need to.

In my diary that night I record the whole afternoon—the sex, the conversation, everything I can remember—in vivid detail, going on and on for pages, then add,
All this is passing way too fast. Can't let myself think about that.

It's an afterthought from nowhere and it's disturbing.

I'm getting really good at lying. That's because it gets a lot of deliberation. I plan things at night before I go to sleep, and I've developed a system that works because it's executed perfectly. After all, the payoff for success in seeing Federico is huge and the penalty for getting caught is catastrophic, so I can't and I don't make errors. I am thoughtful with my parents, think carefully before I speak without fail, and always cover my tracks.

To begin with, I lard the whopper of the day with a sliver of truth. It puts me at ease, and the look I give Mother is clear-eyed—I've learned to do that. Some of my excuses to leave school early and arrive home late in order to extend the afternoons with Federico are true, they just don't take as long as I lead her to believe. And all the excuses are logical—that goes without saying. I don't allow any pattern to develop that might rouse her suspicion. I keep the excuses listed in a notebook, which I lock away, tick each one off as I use it, keeping them in random order. No pattern—that's important. It goes something like this:

1. Long hours in the library

2. Working on a report

3. Studying for a test (with a friend or on my own, rotated)

4. Working with another student on a project (at the friend's house)

5. Working on a project on my own (at school)

6. Helping Mrs. Ewing (always true)

And there are more, all of them based on simple Midwestern horse sense. How can I go wrong?

My marks on tests and reports are higher than ever and Mother doesn't question me. Still, I give her my schedule every morning whether she asks for it or not, further confirming my depend-ability
—what a remarkable girl
—while other teens are running wild. She's grateful for my obedience but doesn't say so—it's no more than she expects.

My grades buy an enormous amount of freedom, and I see no harm in using it any way I want; I don't even see harm in the deception. I'm breaking away from my family gently, without mutinous rebellion. One day they'll be grateful for this. If they ever know about it.

The days go by, each one in the following order. I arrive at Federico's cabin after school. By then he's completed his exercises. He's disciplined and never fails to go through the program he created for himself to rebuild his strength. He lifts logs, climbs a hanging vine several times, pushes a tree trunk up his hill over and over like Sisyphus, takes long hikes. I admire his ability to do this. I think I have the same discipline but have never had the chance to test it. And he reads.

There are designated hours for these exercises of his. They start at first light, about four thirty. He and Augusto get up with the work whistle. Augusto goes down the hill to catch the work train; Federico goes up the hill to his climbing vine. The drill begins. He does some basic exercises to loosen his muscles (he's explained all this to me seriously), then climbs the vine. He goes through the whole routine, rests, regains his strength, then starts again. This goes on until eleven when he eats with the other workers. The doctor recommended he get on the workers' diet as soon as possible—his body needs to accustom to the rigors of pick and shovel. So he waits by the track and hops on the labor train when it comes by, headed for the mess hall.

This train has two enclosed "gold" coaches for Americans and open cattle cars with long benches for the sweating "silver roll" workmen. Six hundred of them jam onto flatcars, riding in the sun to the mess halls. Let there be no mistake: Americans are kept as comfortable as possible. Workers of color are simply processed with the greatest possible efficiency. I've become acutely aware of this, thanks to Harry.

The wooden mess-hall tables are stocked with rough food, the kind needed for prolonged physical labor, and Federico eats with his Spanish buddies and enjoys their company. All this is part of his regimen; he judges his recovery by how much he needs to consume. When he eats as much as he did before the sickness, he'll know he is expending the same amount of energy in his exercises as he uses for work. He will never quite burn the energy of
pico y pala,
but he's rebuilding his muscles, and eating with his Spanish friends is stoking his political fire.

"We talk politics," he tells me, "and I get news about the king and the atrocities..." He shakes his head. "They never end." His eyes flash; the insurrectionist in him kindles. I can see him in the streets, leading the workers, urging solidarity. It excites me. Always.

After lunch Federico goes outside the mess hall, lies in the grass, and dozes until the screech of the labor whistle. Exertion, food, rest—he is building back daily.

When the train comes by, he rides to his cabin, where he showers and reads and waits. I arrive an hour later.

This is our honeymoon.

Neither of us has any particular responsibilities. Our daily rendezvous is the center of our lives. The time is limited, a few weeks at most, having whole afternoons together instead of secret evenings, and we make the most of it. I have access to everything, so I bring treats from the cold storage plant at Cristobal.