Panama Read Online Free Page A

how respected Father is, how well positioned in the Commission hierarchy. I like it. And I'm nervous.
    A waiter approaches—very tall, very black, with a mellow Caribbean accent. "Good afternoon."
    He places menus in our hands and leaves us to study them.
    "The fish comes from the bay outside the window," Father says. "It's fresh."
    Nice to know. There are chicken plates and salads and cold cuts, a nice selection. We sit silently going over the various dishes, me nervous, and then a voice says, "Hello."
    I look up.
    Harry. It has to be. A big, wide smile—nothing inscrutable there.
    "I'm sorry I'm late. Police nonsense ... paperwork..." He shakes Father's hand and nods to me.
    "You're not late," says Father and introduces us.
    Harry shakes my hand and looks me in the eye, whole sectors of me coming to attention that have been asleep for years, some for a lifetime.
    Chairs scrape the floor and we settle in.
    I can't take my eyes off him. He's of medium height, with clear blue eyes and perfect white teeth. He wears khaki police shorts and shirt, high boots, and the standard-issue wide-brimmed police hat, which he sticks under his chair. He's younger than the Wrights. Midtwenties, I estimate.
    "Sure be glad when the rain starts," he says.
    Father agrees and they make canal small talk. I want badly to join in but can't think of a thing to say, so I listen like a good girl.
    Harry mentions he came down from Costa Rica, not from the States, and was "somewhere else in Central America before that."
    He's an adventurer. This is getting better and better.
    We order: fruit and some kind of chicken for all of us.
    I ask him how he got his job. "Was it difficult?"
    "Not really. I speak Spanish and a couple of other languages. That helped."
    "They just signed you up?"
    "Not exactly. I thought they'd want diggers—didn't know they don't use whites for that. But I filled out forms anyway and said a few words in Spanish and they hired me on the spot. It's the languages they wanted."
    "Amazing."
    "They made me census taker."
    "First census taker I ever met," I say. I get a laugh with that. It feels good and I push the hair off my neck.
    "Enumerator is what they call me."
    "What do you do?"
    "I go through the entire population of workers one by one. I'm doing a human accounting of this great dirt-shoveling congress," he says and laughs.
    It makes me smile. This is a turn of words no common Midwesterner would use. I'm struck. It's not love—I don't have a crush on Harry. I'm knocked out by what he is because it's what I want to be and it's sitting beside me in the flesh, talking and laughing. It's unassuming and leading the footloose life I want so badly.
    "So you meet all the workers?" I say.
    He nods. "Much more interesting than digging," and he goes on, seeing our interest. He talks about the people, the work they do, what their world is like, and about himself.
    "Found out I could go almost anywhere steerage and it's cheap—free if I do a little work on board. I can go where I want if I'm willing to work, and I am." That big grin. He's a vagabond.
    We eat, talk, get into a short conversation about our families back in the States, and Father makes the offhand remark that Mother's people are from Kentucky.
    Harry grins. "My grandfather was a telegrapher for the L.H. & St.L. Railroad in Irvington."
    Father's surprised. "Well, for heaven's sake," he says. "That little town's just down the road from my wife's folks."
    With that Harry becomes the rare man Father can trust with his firstborn or his life savings. It's not wandering freedom that gets Father—that's what gets me. It's Harry's roots—where a man comes from—that Father puts his stock in.
    "Irvington man, eh?"
    "Grandfather was."
    A lull. Our plates are cleared by the quiet black man. I seize the moment.
    "I'd sure like to come along when you enumerate."
    Harry doesn't hesitate. "That's no problem, but it's almost always at night—only time the workers