Saffire (2 page)

January 10, 1909

Col. Geo. W Goethals,

Chairman, I.C.C.

Culebra, Canal Zone

Sir:

I have the honor to report concerning the members of the Police Department smoking while in full uniform and on actual duty.

My attention is attracted every day by this breach of discipline. For instance, yesterday, the 22nd inst. 1st-class Sergeant Carter, in command at Empire, while in full uniform with badge on, was walking up and down in front of the railroad station at that place smoking a cigar. Today, at railroad station at Gorgona, 1st-class policeman No. 42, while on active duty, was leaning against building with one hand in pocket smoking first cigarette and then a cigar.

At same time and place, Policeman No. 77, also on active duty at time, walks up with a cigarette in his mouth.

These are only a few instances. Most every day at some of the depots a policeman can be seen lounging against something or even sitting down smoking.

It is certainly not a military position to assume and if there is no rule in regard to this matter, it would look like they could be instructed along this same line.

I also noted for the past month, the train-guard of train numbers 6 and 7, has worked up quite a flirtation with a Mrs. Wilbur of Bohio, wife of a former policeman. On last Saturday, he assisted her train at Bohio and on arriving at Colon, he immediately joined her after having reported to his station. On return trip, he sits with her the entire time on train entirely neglecting his duties. Today she again gets on train at that point and on arriving at Colon, takes a cab for Pier No. 11, Cristobal. He joins her there. On return trip he again sits with her and the conductor is obliged to hunt him to have an unruly passenger ejected.

These, while small matters, cause comment from bystanders and passengers, causing the police force, for lack of discipline in same, to be a subject for gossip.

Respectfully,

T. B. Miskimon

R
eporters called it Hell's Gorge, the world-famous Culebra Cut of the canal dig, in the American Zone of the Republic of Panama.

My view was from an observation deck, with a dozen tourists alongside me at the rails. Like the solitary woman walking on a path below us, they had stepped off the train with me.

Stairs from the top of the hill led down to the observation deck where I stood. The deck perched on the side of the dig, and a footpath, like a goat track, led away from the base of the stairs. The woman had been picking her way along, lifting her skirt slightly to keep the edges from getting soiled.

But…why was she down there alone?

Instead of admiring the sight of Hell's Gorge or speculating on some woman's actions, I should have been in the town on the ridge above, across from the train station, at the main administration building. That's where I was to attend a meeting that had required weeks of travel, first on horseback from my ranch, through the Dakota Badlands, to the train stop in the closest town, Medora. Then nearly two thousand miles east by rail to New York, followed by a steamship a similar distance south to Colón, and finally rail again for a short journey south, across the isthmus to Culebra.

But this view of the dig would be my only sightseeing of the entire six-week journey, and only because I'd arrived early enough this Sunday morning for the indulgence.

If only my young daughter Winona could see what was in front of me. She would have been fascinated by the giant chasm filled with apparent chaos, at the shovel gangs and track gangs and surfacing gangs and dynamite gangs. Everywhere—on the floor of the man-made valley, on the sheer walls of cut rock, on the railroad tracks, and on the railroad cars—scrambled gangs of all nationalities, all dressed in the blue shirts and the khaki trousers that marked them as possessions of the Isthmus Canal Commission. Possessions of the man with absolute control over every aspect of it, an Army Corps engineer named Colonel George Washington Goethals.

If Winona were here, she would talk about it for days after. My daughter was nothing if not enthusiastic. I could have been like many of those on the observation deck with me, using a folding pocket Kodak or a Brownie to take photographs to show her, but I had neither. But then, Winona loved to read, so I would write a wonderful description in my journal and read it to her when I returned home. As usual, I would enjoy our conversation, for her quick mind would spur her to ask about details until she could see it as clearly as I did now.

Perhaps if her mother were alive, I wouldn't worry so about her. But it was just the two of us. And no job, no request awaiting me in the administration building, would keep me from her for one more day than necessary. I would do what I came here to do, refuse the offer, and immediately head back to Colón to board a steamer to begin my journey home—

I frowned. Something was wrong. No, not wrong…

Missing. The constant noise that had assaulted my ears was gone. Silence had fallen upon the gorge. Drills ceased thumping and workers scurried to a collection area. The observation deck had to be a safe place to witness why the workers had begun to scurry, otherwise it wouldn't be here. Was I the only one to understand the cessation of work and the movement of workers as something significant?

Apparently so, for those around me scarcely paused in their discourse.

I turned my attention back to the woman who had ventured onto the hillside below and to my right. “Ma'am,” I called, “I'd suggest you hurry back up here.”

She did not respond.

I set my valise on the floor of the deck and moved to the base of the stairs, raising my voice.

“Ma'am, can you hear me?”

On top of the hill, a strong constant breeze from the Pacific up to the Continental Divide whistled through the canopies of the palm trees. While the patterned bark trunks and notched broad leaves were new to me, wind was wind, something that seemed to have a life of its own. I had grown up with long grasses that rippled to the horizon, wind that rustled the leaves of cottonwoods, flashing the pale underparts of leaves like minnows scurrying from a heron.

No, the wind hadn't sent me from the top of the chasm down here into the Culebra Cut. Rather, it was the fact that down here I was away from the gaggles of tourists with the dangerous points of their careless parasols, nattering like geese out of range of a defeated coyote.

The tourists had come, even this early in the morning, because this, the acclaimed seventh wonder of the world, drew them from every point on the globe. They clogged hotels and restaurants at the anchor ports of Panama City and Colón on each end of the Canal Zone, these tourists determined to send postcards as markers of pride. It was said that the only accomplishment that might ever be more wondrous than connecting the oceans would be a flight to the moon, and since that was impossible, the digging of the canal would be the pinnacle of human marvel.

But I had regretted my descent into the cut almost immediately. On the observation deck, it seemed like I'd dropped into Hades. Another hundred yards past the woman, the dig had exposed pyrite on the hillside. Tropical sun and moist atmosphere exacerbated the oxidation process, heating a narrow patch of ground the length of dozens of railcars. Blue smoke, rotten with the smell of sulfur dioxide, rose from fractures, adding to the haze of heavy clouds of soft coal dust that hung over all the machinery.

The woman, it seemed, wanted to get closer to the pyrite out of curiosity or idle boredom, both dangerous prospects.

“Ma'am!”

I did not like where I was. It had taken my exile years to appreciate that I preferred the solitude of canyons and mud flats where rivers cut through badlands. Horses were my choice, not machines. And yet here, stretched as far as I could see in both directions along the chasm, were the biggest machines in the world. Modern miracles. Steam shovels with buckets capable of filling a flatbed train with two scoops. Beginning at the top, these monstrosities had cut a widening gap, turning each of the opposing sides of the valley into sets of massive steps, with a series of parallel tracks on each level, the flatcars supplicant for their loads of dirt, ready to follow the belching locomotives.

I missed the soft haunting sounds of coyotes and owls and mourning doves, the snort of a startled deer. Before Sharps shooters had massacred the buffalo, the thunder of moving herds might have been an apt comparison to the deep rumble of the steam shovels below me, but now the screech of steel wheels against steel tracks was like bone grating against bone, and the hillside shrieked in protest as the steam shovels tore at its flesh. House-sized boulders tumbled into the shallow black water collecting at the lowest point of the cut.

Intense tropical heat induced the sweat that soaked my shirt and hatband. I missed my arid badlands.

A few hundred yards away, the woman kept picking her way toward the burning ground and the blue sulfurous smoke. What was she seeking? A souvenir?

I took a half step. Perhaps I should chase after her. Then, as my front foot touched down, it came.

A rock-heaving blast of epic proportions.

I
clutched the rail of the steps to keep my balance and felt the steps shudder beneath me. The shuddering stopped moments later, and I saw that the woman was down.

Motionless.

I ran toward her, my boot heels clacking on the goat track. I prayed there would be no second blast.

When I reached her, she was struggling to sit.

I knelt and held out my right hand.

She took it with two small hands that nearly filled my single hand and pulled herself to her feet as I straightened.

She looked unharmed, this woman whose chin would have rested against the center of my chest during an embrace. A woman dressed in the finest spoils of current fashion. Dark hair spilled from her sunbonnet, and she wiped it away as she took in my unshaven face. I was wearing my cowboy hat, a plain shirt, and the riveted denims made by Strauss, well faded from use. Her gaze lingered on my nose.

That happened often.

“Oh my.” This accompanied a slight widening of her eyes and a frank examination of me. “So this is how it feels when a woman is swept off her feet.”

She had an accent I easily placed: New York. She had the New York awareness in her eyes too. During the travels of my exile years, I had learned to understand accents—and this kind of look from this kind of woman.

“Dynamite will do it every time,” I said.

“Of course,” she answered, unabashed. “Dynamite.”

“They are building a canal here. Dynamite.”

Nothing about her smile dimmed. “I'm glad you were here to help. Just wait until I tell my friends. A genuine cowboy.” She paused a moment. “You
are
a genuine cowboy. I can safely conclude that, can't I?”

“Take an elbow, if you need it.” I pointed back to the observation deck, turning so my right side was nearest to her. “There might be another blast.”

I wasn't really worried anymore about a second blast. Already the workers were resuming their positions. I just wanted to get her back to the observation deck.

I turned my left wrist and glanced at my watch. The administration building would be opening at any moment.

“That's a wrist watch.” Her words held a contrived touch of breathlessness. “Yes? A person doesn't often see one on a man. Although I understand they are becoming popular with soldiers. Are you a cowboy
and
a soldier?”

My watch was of Girard-Perregaux manufacture, the first watch commercially produced when ordered by Kaiser Wilhelm I for his German naval officers. It had become evident that modern warfare would be more efficient if officers could coordinate operations with precision. As a soldier, I had learned it mattered at San Juan too for land-based skirmishes.

The face of the watch was black, with thick orange numbers, protected by a grill of silver seamlessly soldered to the round rim of silver. The black patent-leather straps had lost some gloss, but the timepiece itself ran with precision. I remembered my father once saying that only women wore wristlet watches. I remembered my father once pulling out his pocket watch and saying he would sooner wear a skirt than a wristlet watch. That was long before San Juan. Long before the blizzards of 1887. When I was young enough to adore my father.

I also remembered the store in London on a crooked street off Trafalgar Square where this Swiss watch had been purchased and engraved. I remembered why it had been purchased and engraved. And who had purchased and engraved it for me. That had been at the height of my exile years. When it didn't feel like exile. It had been when I believed I craved crowds and noise and the adrenaline that came when a woman looked at me like this New York woman was looking at me now.

“Yes, it's a wrist watch.”

She took my right elbow and drew closer as I walked her toward the safety of the observation deck.

“What's your name, cowboy?”

“James Holt.”

“James, I'm Nancy Edwards.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said.

“So you are a cowboy and a soldier?”

“Just here to see the cut.”

“As am I. Already I find there is very little to do. But the Zone hotel in Culebra has a wonderful band, and a Sunday night is upon us. While it's dreary that no alcohol of any kind is available in the Zone for us, I hope you don't think it's forward that I ask if you will be here long.”

She was hugging my right arm to her ribs, with occasional indiscreet contact of her elbow to my body that had enough ambiguity to be construed as accidental. Or encouraging. Yes. A bold, wealthy New York woman, interested in a safe and discreet adventure with someone who didn't use pomade and cologne and didn't have soft hands with manicured fingernails.

“Not long at all, unfortunately,” I said. “Steamship waiting in Colón.”

“Such a shame that we can't get together.”

“Shameful.” I expected each of us meant something different.

Then I saw a man whom I'd noticed earlier when he had followed me from the steamship wharf onto the train.

He was my height, a thin man with tiny round spectacles. Some thin men appear wiry, others prissy. This man, despite his height, landed on the prissy side, perhaps because of the disapproving set of his mouth, wrinkles already established despite an age that I estimated to be midthirties. He wore a white shirt and dark pants. His sleeves were not rolled up despite the heat.

He stood almost at attention. Every hair ordered, in place. No creases in his clothing except where creases belonged. Quite an accomplishment in this humid heat. He adjusted his round eyeglasses with a practiced flick of his right index finger and alternated glances between me and the woman on my arm. Then that bespectacled gaze came to rest firmly on me.

“Mr. Holt,” he said, “I believe your instructions upon arrival in Colón were to go immediately to the administration building.”