Panama (19 page)

I can't bear it anymore and I say to Harry, "Tell him about Federico."

"Ah, yes..." Fork down, elbows on the table. He leans forward. "I understand you know this fella, Federico Malero."

"Why, sure..."

"Well, you won't believe this story..." Harry tells him what happened and Father shakes his head in disbelief. "You know looking at him the Spaniard couldn't have done it."

"Course not. He's a first-rate fella."

"Will you vouch for him so I can cut him loose?"

"Why, sure. That's the craziest thing I've ever heard of. That boy has no more business in a jail than—"

"I know, I know. I just need a reason to let him go. Have to put something in the report, and your vouching for him will do the trick."

"What do we do?"

"We go to the station soon as we're finished. Don't think he wants to spend another night behind bars, do you?"

The jail cell is not at the city's jail by the curving seawall, the place with the gruesome history that's no longer gruesome because it's topped with a grassy promenade now, where Federico and I've walked on breezy Sunday afternoons. He's far from there.

He's in a holding cell in the back of Ancon Station a few feet from where Harry and I sat talking two hours earlier. Unbelievable.

I huff and pant to keep up with the two men—longer legs than mine. They talk about Federico and how absurd and unjust all this is, yet the way the system works and can't be avoided. That's my Federico they're talking about, and they have no idea. What a whopper of a secret. My heart beats hard as I walk fast and pant.

We climb the steps to the station in the moonlight. The rain has stopped. The air is soft and warm and clean.

The lieutenant greets us. "Good evening."

"Gotta talk to the prisoner," Harry says and breezes by him.

He takes a key from a wooden box on the wall and we go back to the cell and finally...

There sits Federico on a cot, reading as though the last thing on his mind is his life being interrupted by accusations of attempted murder. He looks up calmly, a little surprised to see me.

I want to weep, go to him and curl against him, my best friend in the world, the person I love most. It's overpowering, but I don't move. I stand beside Father and watch.

"Mr. Hailey here is going to vouch for you," Harry says, "and I'll be able to write up a release. Shouldn't take more than a few minutes and you'll be out of here."

Harry has respect for Federico. More than anyone except maybe me, he understands him and envies him. It strikes me that the three most important men in my life are standing together in one room—not likely I'll see that again. My face is hot.

I frown, look at the floor.

Father and Harry talk quietly and write out the official report. Federico looks over at me with a slow, lazy smile at all of this—child's play for him. I smile back.

The document is completed. "Now, we'll need your signature," Harry says. "Have to show we've released you."

Federico signs. So does Father. Harry initials on a bottom corner. As Federico turns, he gives me that penetrating curious look, two seconds of it.

What's he thinking?

***

We move into the front office. Harry gives Federico a train pass and returns several personal articles to him. "Here you go. This'll get you to Peter Miguel. Sorry about this whole thing," he says.

"It's quite all right. Not your fault." Federico shakes Father's hand. "And once again you've been a help," he says. "Thank you." Federico's a gentleman, gracious and calm.

"Well, it never should have happened. Sorry you had to go through it," Father says.

Federico turns to me and makes a quick, courteous bow. He's about to leave and Harry stops him.

"I'm wondering ... could we get together sometime and talk, maybe on a Sunday? A café somewhere? I'd like to pick your brain about labor practices here, working in the Cut, that sort of thing."

Federico raises his eyebrows with interest. "I'd like that. Any Sunday, then. You know where I live." A little smile between them—the enumerator knows where everybody lives.

Harry's happy and says goodbye.

Federico nods to the three of us, gives us another courteous bow and walks out. Harry takes a deep breath. "Well, I'm looking forward to that."

He puts the paperwork in a filing cabinet, clears the top of his desk, and locks the drawers. The lieutenant says good night to us and we start down the hill.

Harry's feeling good and says, "There's a shooter out there who was so drunk he probably doesn't remember the incident, but at least Malero's not sitting in a jail cell for him. I can sleep better."

"Me, too," says Father.

"I'm going to have a chance to eat with him and talk. I've been wanting to do that for a long time." Harry nods and smiles to himself, no doubt anticipating lunch with the Spaniard.

I'm anticipating a little time with the Spaniard myself.

Three days later, on a Sunday, I'm sitting on the porch.

One foot is propped on the railing, the other swings from the edge of the rocker. I'm wearing my nicest white muslin dress, the lady of the house, watching the activity below, fanning my face.

He'll find a way to get us together again. Federico knows how to manage things—I know that now and I trust it. I have only to wait and be available.

Occasionally people pass on the track below: a local woman with two small children carrying a basket of fruit on her head; an American couple arm in arm; three boys of color with sticks, hitting anything in reach—weeds, rocks, the rails...

A figure approaches from the north and grows larger. It's Federico.

I sit up and watch.

He keeps a normal pace as he comes closer, and when he reaches our house, he starts up the steps without hurry or caution, or any sign of concern. He has the same calm as in the holding cell, his cabin, the Tivoli—that quality I've tried to learn from him. The calm of an adult who's seen something of life.

He mounts the steps the same way he did when he came to honor Father, deliberately and with resolve. We finally stand face to face at the screened door.

"I just had lunch with Harry. He tells me you're alone," he says.

"I am, yes. How was lunch?"

He comes into the porch as though he's done it a hundred times and pulls another rocker close to mine and sits.

"Lunch was good. Harry's interesting ... I like him."

"Me, too."

"Where is your father?"

"You know where he is—making out railroad passes for your compatriots."

"Ah, yes. Why so late in the day?"

"He knows some of the men can't get away until afternoon, so he stays. He says they've earned their leave."

"He's a good man." He puts his hand on my thigh. "Where is your mother?"

"Still in Dayton. How did you know where I was when I went away?"

"I tracked down your father and he told me."

It's peaceful and like I imagined it would be when Mother and Father went to Taboga and we'd have the house to ourselves. He doesn't take his hand off my thigh. We sit awhile longer making small talk, then I lead him inside and we go up to my room. Like a married couple we undress and make love quietly in my bed. We lie there and talk. He's concerned about me, he says, and wants to know how distressed Mother would be if she knew about us.

"Very," I say. "She'd be upset because she doesn't suspect anything like this and she trusts me and she believes a relationship outside of marriage is wrong."

"She was a virgin when she married?"

"Of course. So was Father."

"No." This he doesn't believe.

"Don't you see it in him?"

"Maybe, yes."

"My mother worries that I don't have a boyfriend. She wants me to find someone at school."

"Why don't you?"

That hurts. "Because they're ... boys. Boys."

A soft smile. "I know," he says. "And if your father knew?"

"He would do whatever Mother tells him to." We lie there naked, a nice breeze across us after the morning rain. "He's not weak, you know—only where Mother is concerned, and it's not exactly weakness. He's just so devoted to her that he does what she wants to please her. He has great qualities."

"I think he does."

"He's thorough."

"That's good, yes." I can tell this is amusing him.

"Last year when he was visiting the building site at the dam he told the workmen to shake the cement bags—they weren't getting everything out. And then when Goethals heard about it he got everyone doing it, and they saved fifty thousand dollars in recovered cement."

"Your father did that?"

"Yes, he did."

"Good for him."

It strikes me I've told him a childish story and I twist my head up to look at him. He still has a half smile so I say it again: "He's not weak at all."

"I didn't say he was and you don't need to apologize for him—he's a good man. He has character, stands up for the workers; he's strong. Weakness is ... something else—my mother choosing comfort over reality, that's weakness. Your parents are good, honest. I like them."

"The Commission gives Father more responsibility every year, you know—they need people like him."

"They do, yes. They certainly do." He goes quiet, and then he says, "You think the Commission is a fine group of men, do you?"

I look up at him again. "Isn't it?"

"They get away with ... murder."

"No."

This is like old times at the cabin. He smiles and tells me all about it.

"You know what they did to get the sand for that cement? You won't read about this in any Commission report."

"What did they do?"

"The sand had to be just right, a very fine consistency, had to be perfect, so they searched around and found it in San Blas—"

"Those little islands?"

"Yes, and they went there and took me along to talk to the Indians. They were going to take the sand no matter what, but they took me along to smooth things over, negotiate if they had to. But the Indians stood there with machetes and said the water and sand are God's gift and they wouldn't sell them to the white man."

"You heard all this?"

"I translated it. They said they'd let us stay overnight but we'd have to be gone by dawn—otherwise they'd kill us." He laughs. "We got out of there."

"The Indians won."

"They thought we were lunatics; I could see it in their eyes. 'Crazy white men'—I didn't bother translating that. I liked seeing the Commission intimidated by men in loincloths with primitive weapons and no big speeches. It's gratifying. Those engineers wanted out of there."

"But they didn't get away with murder."

"They would have tried but they were scared."

"I never heard about that."

"And you won't. Not from any public source. They found the sand they wanted at Nombre de Dios—no locals living there. Nobody to give them a hard time."

"What else haven't I heard about?"

"Plenty of things, all the time. The Commission tells us only what it wants us to know."

I think about this for a while, don't doubt the truth of it, then make what I think is a wise observation.

"But they didn't get away with anything in San Blas."

"Because the engineers didn't want their balls carved off. Have you seen the guns they're putting on Perico and Flamenco? Sixteen inches, the largest weapons the U.S. has now, twenty-mile range, and they're on both islands. Aren't you reading
El Unico
any more? It's all there."

"Yes, I read it, I know all about the guns. Maybe the Spanish Church is right and we shouldn't connect the oceans..." I'm trying to be light, make a joke, but he doesn't laugh.

"The oceans have been connected for eons," he says, and he's up on an elbow, his voice raised. "Volcanoes and earthquakes pushed up the Isthmus, that's all. The Church tells us only what it wants us to know, like the Commission—no more, no less."

He's never been angry with me before and I freeze. "I'm sorry," I say.

He realizes how intense he is, takes a minute, then eases back. He exhales and lies still, then pulls me against him; I can feel his heart pounding.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I ruined the week we could have had before, and I don't want to do that again ... I'm sorry."

"It's all right."

"No, it isn't."

After a while he relaxes and soothes and strokes me, and I lie quiet like a child in his arms.

Some time passes, him stroking me.

Do I know how much I excite him, he says. How often he thinks of me at night or working in the Cut.

He eases himself over me, folding my knees against his shoulders, saying he wants more and more of me.

***

Downstairs, when he's leaving, he gives me a kiss. A kiss goodbye and a long embrace at the door, just like a married couple, or some kind of couple. That afternoon is the best time we've ever had together. Reunion, sex, talk of things personal and political, a small conflict, resolution, more sex—that's marriage, isn't it? Isn't that what it is? In my embarrassingly sheltered Midwestern brain I think that's it and I'm happy, and the fact that we're a universe apart doesn't matter.

I watch him go down the steps, unhurried and peaceful, and I feel the calm he has. I've got it finally, the real thing. At the bottom near the tracks he looks up, gives me a wave, and walks on, quickly disappearing behind the foliage. I'm so in the moment, I don't want to budge. Not forward. Not backward. The instant is perfect. We're perfect. Don't let anything change.

***

Father comes home about an hour later and I'm cooking dinner—a baked chicken, a little fryer, actually. Pop it in, take it out in forty-five minutes—easy.

"That smells mighty good," he says coming up the steps, before I can even see his face.

I don't find it necessary to write in my diary that night. I can talk to Federico about the things I'd put on the page.

Mother is back. She never entirely unpacks and that's unsettling. It indicates how near the end we are and how much she wants to go home for good. It puts a new angle on everything. We're past all the big markers—the locks, the lake, the near impossible cut through Culebra; we're looking at the end. It's in the air.