Chapter 14

14

OMAR FOUND THE MEN IN HIS GANG AT A PLACE FARTHER SOUTH FROM WHERE THEY usually stood, next to a massive heap of red-and-pink clay that, to his recollection, had not existed the last time he was there. It was raining, and they were all—Clement and Prince and Joseph and Berisford—standing in front of the clay, holding their picks down at their side, waiting for the morning whistle to blow. Omar made his way toward them through the mud.

“Look who here!” Berisford said, smiling widely when he saw Omar walk up.

Prince waved. Solemnly, Joseph nodded hello and tipped his hat. Clement, standing with his arms crossed over his chest, merely shifted his gaze sideways at Omar without so much as turning his head.

Berisford clapped Omar on the shoulder and said, “Happy to see you, brother. I fearful you resting in peace.”

Omar smiled. “I was resting in the hospital.”

Berisford looked shocked.

“I had malaria,” Omar said.

“Malaria? Even with all the quinine you drink?”

Clement said, “This again?”

“What? Prove my point that the quinine don’t work.”

Clement looked at Omar. “Answer me this. What you have in the hospital make you well?”

“Quinine,” Omar said.

Clement smirked at Berisford. “Prove my point.”

Berisford turned so that only Omar could see him and dramatically rolled his eyes. Omar smiled again. It felt good to be back, to return to the things that had become familiar to him—the steady click of railcar wheels, the feel of the pick in his hands, even Berisford and Clement’s bickering. He may have been digging in a new spot, but otherwise not much had changed, and he found some comfort in that.

Berisford gestured to the heap of clay. “You hear about the slide?” he asked Omar.

Berisford explained that one night while they were all off sleeping, part of the mountain wall had come undone and crashed down. It had buried two steam shovels and plenty of track. “We here fighting the earth,” he said, shaking his head.

Prince stuck his neck out. “And the earth fighting back!”

When the whistle finally blew, Omar raised his pick and sank its point into the gargantuan mountain of clay. All down the line, one by one, every man cranked his arms and started to dig. The feeling of that movement was familiar to Omar, too, and between it and the way Berisford had welcomed him back, he felt the tug of belonging—however slight—that he had been seeking when he first came here.

Yesterday, after two weeks in the hospital, Omar had been discharged and had walked all the way home. It was the middle of the afternoon, and when he got to the house his father’s boat was not at the shore. Omar had gone inside and taken off his boots and clothes and hat and washed them and laid them all out to dry. In his underclothes, he had walked to the kitchen and eaten a few soda crackers from the tin that his father kept on a shelf. Then he had ambled through the house, trailing his fingertips over the things he had missed—the square kitchen table, the bowl filled with salt, his father’s rusty machete, the pebbles buried in the clay of the walls. He was the only one there, but the house did not feel empty to him. Through the windows, he could hear the birds singing their songs, he could smell the saltwater air of the ocean. His father never talked about his mother, but Omar knew that she had taken care of him in this house, that she had fed him and walked with him upon the earthen floors, and sometimes Omar imagined that her footprints lingered beneath the surface and that her breath was still in the air. He felt closest to her when he was at home, where he knew she had been. He walked into his father’s bedroom and sat on the bed. His father’s comb was on the windowsill. Omar leaned forward and picked it up. He ran a finger over its tines and smiled when it made a sound.

He had hoped that when he walked through the front door, his father might be there, waiting for him, but of course his father had been out at sea. What had his father thought while he had been gone? Surely he had been worried, no? Unless his father somehow believed that Omar had stayed away of his own will, that he had chosen not to come home. In which case his father was probably upset, but his father was already upset, so that would be no different from how it had been before. But if his father had been worried, then when he walked through the door later that night and saw Omar again for the first time in weeks, he would be elated, wouldn’t he? Omar imagined the moment, how his father, after an instant of shock, would succumb to his elation and without even thinking would say something to him. Just like that, the Reign of Silence would end.

Dusk had fallen by the time his father walked into the house. Omar was sitting at the table, and at the moment his father stepped through the front door and saw him, he stopped. Omar, who all afternoon had been holding on to his hopeful dream, the dream in which his father, overjoyed at seeing his son, would pull him into his arms, ask him where he had been, what had happened to him, say ?Gracias a Dios!, say My son has returned!, say something, anything, even hello, sat at the table and stared across the room at his father who was staring at him. For the span of one agonizing minute it all seemed so possible, but while Omar waited, at some point he saw his father tighten his jaw and lift his chin, and with that, all possibility came to an end. His father had walked through the room and past Omar without saying a word.

***

“I HOPE YOU came ready to work today, boys!”

Omar glanced over his shoulder to see Miller marching up behind them in his black rubber boots. Miller was one thing Omar had not missed.

Berisford stood tall and yelled. “We always ready, sir!”

“What’s that?” Miller said.

Berisford cleared his throat. “We always ready, sir,” he repeated, less loudly this time.

Miller sauntered up until he was close enough that if he had held his arm out straight, the tip of his fingers would have touched Berisford’s chest.

“You being smart?”

“No, sir.”

“No,” Miller said. “No chance of that.”

Omar glanced at Berisford’s face, but it was stony and still. Rainwater dripped off the brim of his hat.

Miller stayed where he was but looked sideways down the line as he shouted, “Another day in the wet, but you have to push through! The first hurdle to clear is to dig out from the slide. Once you do that, there is still the matter of the one million cubic yards to be dug.”

They had not met the goal last month, but Miller swore to himself that this month not even a slide would get in their way. By hell or high water, this division would be at the top of the rankings, and that sparkling number—one million—would be printed for everyone to behold. After that, he felt sure, people would see him as more than just another man turning the wheel.

“And if you can’t do the job,” he went on, “I’ll replace you with someone who can.”

“Yes, sir!”

Miller snapped his gaze back to the man directly in front of him, the one always wearing the same red handkerchief. “Why are you saying ‘yes, sir’ so cheerfully? You think that’s a bluff? There’s a thousand like you who’d be happy for this job.”

At that, Miller saw the man’s face twitch, and he knew he had gotten to him. In matters of gambling, which Miller enjoyed, a twitch like that was what they called a tell.

Miller grinned. He took several steps back and looked out at the massive mountain of rock and clay. “Dig like hell, boys!”

***

ONCE UPON A time, in what seemed like another life, Miller had been a gambling man. He didn’t typically have enough money for alcohol, which was where the gambling came in. If he played his cards right or made a smart bet, he could win enough for a whiskey or two. A whole bottle, if fortune was on his side. But then the whiskey made him more likely to place another wager—it loosened his mind and his rational self—and if he won big, he rewarded himself with yet another drink, and if he lost big, he consoled himself with the same, provided he had money to spare. He didn’t always, and that was a problem. But the two were linked in his mind—whiskey and wagering. In the end, it was the wagering that got him. And actually it wasn’t the wagering but the man with whom he had wagered. That’s who Miller blamed. A Negro whom Miller discovered one evening sitting at the bar at Jensen’s Saloon out near Boise, Idaho. For every night of the three weeks Miller had been in Boise he had gone there after work to kick up his boots and let off some steam. Occasionally, he could persuade one of the other men to buy him a drink, but more often than not Miller had to play a few hands of poker before he acquired enough money for the sweet stuff. What little Miller earned on the railroad he sent back to his poor mother in South Carolina, who was the only woman he felt any affection toward. He’d had relations with other women, more than a few, but affection was not part of the equation those times.

The Negro who had been seated at the bar that night had his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows and his bare forearms resting on the lacquered bar top like he belonged there. He also had a drink in one hand when Miller did not, and that seemed unfair.

Miller walked over and asked the bartender, “Why you serving him?”

“He come in,” the bartender replied.

“You serve everyone who comes in?”

“We do if they have money.”

“He had money?” Miller asked sourly.

“He did.”

The bartender was lanky and wore a bow tie, which Miller had not cared about before but which struck him as suspect now. What sort of bartender wore a bow tie these days?

“Well, you ask where he got it?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Never know with them kind. Probably thieved it if he has any at all.”

“You thieve it?” the bartender asked.

“I did not,” the Negro answered. He had a low voice.

“You see,” the bartender said.

“Why you believe him?” Miller asked.

“Got no reason not to.”

Miller eyed the Negro, who was hunched over, sipping his drink. Miller licked his lips at the sight of that whiskey. It just did not seem right.

“How much money you got?” Miller asked.

“Excuse me?”

“How much money you got?”

The Negro’s eyelids were heavy. If he was that drunk it meant he must have had a bundle to spend, and it might mean he had more. How he acquired it Miller still did not know, but now his only thought was how to get that money for himself.

“I got what I got,” the Negro finally said.

“Ten dollars? Fifteen? Twenty? Twenty-five?”

Impassively, the Negro took another sip of his whiskey.

“Goddamn. Fifty? You got fifty dollars to your name?” Miller shook his head. How could that be? The world had turned plumb upside-down if this man had fifty dollars to his name and Miller at that very moment had none.

“Tell you what,” Miller said. “I’ll make you a bet. I’ll bet your fifty dollars that you can’t stand up upon that rail for five seconds straight.”

Miller pointed to the wooden handrail that ran all around the edge of a second-story walkway that looked down over the saloon, like a balcony of sorts.

The Negro rolled his head back on his neck and smiled. “You give me fifty if I can stand up on that rail?”

“For five full seconds, no less. And if you can’t, you give me your fifty instead.”

“You have fifty?”

“Of course I do.”

The Negro worked his jaw like he was pondering it, then he stood and climbed the staircase to the second floor, a bit more steady than Miller would have thought he would be. When he got to the top nearly everyone in the saloon was watching from down below. He hoisted himself up on the rail, one foot and then two. He let go of his hands and straightened up, and then he was standing, like a king lording over them all. Miller held his breath while the bartender started to count out loud. “One, two...” Everyone joined in. “Three.” The Negro swayed. Miller clenched his jaw. “Four.” Then the man toppled. Some people gasped. Miller let out the breath he was holding and grinned. Fifty dollars to him. That would buy drinks for close to a year. The cracking sound that came next seemed to run up the walls and puncture the air. People crowded up around the man, and Miller leaned forward, trying to see. Someone screamed. “He busted open his head!” The grin dropped off Miller’s face. “He’s bleeding a river!” There were shouts for a medic and for rags and for giving the man space. Miller looked all around. The bartender said, “You landed yourself in some real trouble now.” He pointed at Miller. “It was his idea!” the bartender yelled, and enough folks turned that Miller took a step back. When he glimpsed two men pushing toward him through the crowd, Miller bolted away. The one good thing—maybe the only good thing—about being sober while everyone else was not was that he had his wits about him and could run. He ran as fast as he could for a long, long, long time.

He had never told anybody about that evening, though it did haunt him sometimes. It came back to him in dreams that felt, by their very occurrence, that they were damning him, but in the light of day, he told himself he had done nothing wrong, that if a man was fool enough to climb up on a two-story railing when he was three sheets to the wind, well, that was his own fault. What happened after, Miller was unaccountable for.

***

AFTER AN HOUR of digging, Omar was drained. He had started the day feeling strong, but the malaria had taken something out of him, and by midmorning his pace had slowed. He only hoped Miller would not notice.

Prince whistled a song that the other men knew, and they sang as they worked. Nattie oh, Nattie O gone to Colón. Berisford encouraged Omar to join in, but Omar shook his head and said that he just liked listening. “Come on now,” Berisford goaded. Omar had heard the song dozens of times, enough that he knew the words, and to make Berisford happy he opened his mouth and sang a few. Berisford yelped with glee, which made Omar blush and laugh. Clement frowned and told them to keep their heads down and work if they knew what was good for them.

The noise in the Cut was the same as ever—constant and shrill—so when a train whistle blew, none of the men so much as flinched. It was not until Miller barked at the men to stop what they were doing that they glanced all around, unsure what was going on. By the looks on their faces, the other men were just as confused as he was.

“Hold your picks! Line up!” Miller yelled, signaling them back. “And smile so he can see how goddamn happy you are.”

Omar and the others took several steps back as the train whistle bleated again. When the men were all shoulder to shoulder, Berisford untied his handkerchief and mopped his whole face. Whatever was happening, Omar was relieved to have a moment to rest. Certain men kept craning their necks to peer down the track, but Omar could tell by the sound that the train coming toward them was chugging slowly. Only when it was close enough did he see that it was not a typical train but a black motorcar draped with bunting that had the same stars and stripes as the flag of the United States.

“It the colonel?” Berisford asked.

Omar said, “No, the motorcar of the colonel is yellow.”

Joseph said, “That Oswald, I believe.”

“We supposed to do something?” Berisford said.

“Like what?” Prince asked.

“Wave hello?”

“Be still,” Clement growled.

Together, standing at attention, the men watched as the motorcar inched by, letting off thick gray smoke. As it passed, Omar saw through the window a man staring out, saw his white hat and the glint of his spectacles and the expression on his face, which was cheerless and grim. He had heard the name Oswald, but he had never seen him before. As Omar stood in the mud with his pick in his hand, a strange feeling came over him. In the midst of the work, the men had all stopped what they were doing and stood to the side. It was just that, nothing more. They stood to the side. Here, in the country where Omar had been born and had lived every day of his life, a man had arrived, and Omar stood to the side.

***

WHEN THE LUNCH whistle sounded, all of the men climbed up out of the Cut and walked to one of the thatched-roof kitchens where, for the cost of 27￠ a day deducted from their paychecks, their meals were supplied. The kitchens were furnished with neither tables nor chairs, so the men ate outside on the ground, sometimes leaning up against trees, which gave cover from both the sun and the rain.

“Rice and beans,” Berisford said, nodding toward his plate when Omar walked outside and sat down next to him. “All the time rice and beans. How them expect a man to live on so much rice and beans?” Berisford was sitting cross-legged beneath a large banyan tree. He had taken off his hat and placed it next to him on the soggy ground.

Prince, who was sitting there, too, stopped shoveling food into his mouth long enough to say, “Careful. They arrest you if they hear you complaining too loud.”

“Arrest me?”

Prince nodded. “Plenty rules here. Rule against where a man stand, rule against how long he standing there for. Soon they going to outlaw a man standing at all!” He laughed.

Omar took a bite of the food. It was bland, and the rice was too hard, but at least it was warm.

Clement was with them, lying on his back with one arm slung over his eyes. Joseph usually ate elsewhere before going to a midday church service.

Miserably, Berisford stirred the beans on his plate. “There better food in the penitentiary at least?”

“You know what the Yankees eating in them hotels?” Prince asked.

“What?”

“Plum pudding and tomato soup and mashed potatoes, too.”

Berisford clutched his stomach and moaned with envy.

“Spaniards and them getting wine. They eating as kings!”

“And here we eating like paupers!” Berisford said.

From the ground Clement said, “Be glad you eating at all.”

Omar hunched over his plate and shooed away the flies that came near. Lunch was the only meal he ate with the men, and though he sat with them and they let him, he never talked much. He was grate ful for their chatter, though, especially since his meals at home were so quiet now.

Omar listened as Berisford and Prince began talking about the camps where they lived, how the cots sagged, how there was but one long shelf upon which everyone stored his things, how men were packed in tighter, Prince said, than fleas on a dog. But the worst, Berisford said, was the watchman who came round every night at nine o’clock sharp to make sure they were sleeping, as if they were children.

Berisford turned to Omar. “You live in the camps?”

“No,” Omar said.

Prince and Berisford stared at him, as though they were waiting for him to say more.

Prince chuckled. “Like he being charged by the syllable.”

Omar felt his cheeks warm.

Kindly, Berisford asked him where he did live.

“With my father. Outside of the city.”

“The city of Panama?”

“Yes.”

“And every day you come here?”

“Yes.”

“For what reason?”

Before Omar could answer, Prince said, “Same reason as all you! Money, of course.”

Berisford told them that when he had enough money, he was going back to Barbados to buy a house and get married.

“You have a sweetheart?” Prince asked.

Berisford nodded. “Naomy her name, and she all in my head.”

“That mean she not real?” Clement asked. His arm still covered his eyes, but Omar saw him grin.

“Course she real. Look.” From under his belt, Berisford pulled out the black-and-white photograph that he carried with him so that anytime he wanted, he could open it and see Naomy’s face gazing back up at him. The two of them had known each other since they were young. They used to go out picking gooseberries together, and with her teeth Naomy always peeled the skin off the berries and chewed it up separate from the part underneath. Berisford liked watching her do it, that careful act of unwrapping, and when he asked her once why she didn’t just eat the gooseberries whole, she replied that some things were worth taking your time. That turned out to be true. It took a long time, years and years of being no more than friends, before Berisford mustered the nerve to tell her how he felt about her, but to his surprise, Naomy had smiled bashfully and confessed that she felt the same. They had been sitting outside, and Berisford had said, “I should like to kiss you if I may,” and softly Naomy said that he may, and when they both pulled away, with his eyes still closed, Berisford murmured, “I should like to kiss you forever,” and with a smile that even his closed eyes could detect, Naomy said, “You may.” They were both twenty years old, ready to marry, but Berisford had wanted to earn money first to give them a comfortable life. Naomy had put up a fuss about him leaving, had begged him not to go, but he had promised that when he returned from Panama, they would have each other and more.

Berisford unfolded the photograph and handed it to Prince, who made a sound of approval before passing it to Omar, who said, “She is very pretty.”

Without sitting up to look at the photograph, Clement said, “Man, keep your pretty. Me gal beautiful. Beautiful as the day long.”

“Oh?” Berisford said. “Then what happen at night?” He screwed up his face so that it was crooked and ugly with his tongue stuck out and his nostrils flared.

Prince laughed so hard that finally Clement sat up. Berisford contorted his face even more, and Prince fell over in hysterics. Omar tried and failed to hold back his own laughter.

Clement waited for the three of them to compose themselves, then calmly he said, “At night? Hooooboy. She wild at night.”

Clement winked, and Prince howled. Victorious, Clement lay back down on the ground.