Read Panama for Free Online Page B

condescend to him, call him 'spig,' and he's European and better read than any of them..." He mutters on. Of course, he's right.
    No doubt the shovelers patronize Federico the way they do all the diggers, treat him like an animal because he's beneath them. Call him "spig" because all the immigrants say "spigadaEnglish." Degrading.
    But Malero is no pig-English laborer. He's got a story—it's obvious. And more than that, he's beautiful. And that is what I'm visualizing: Federico sitting at his desk with a book, perfect, like a photograph. In my brain his image comes into focus with the one that's been floating there for years—a spiky urging in me since Father first spoke the word Panama. A smoky, intuited vagueness that formed slowly and became a shape that represents all I don't know. Outside the cabin I realize Federico Malero is that shape. At least, I think he is.
    I'm fully awake for the first time. Fully conscious, the fog blown away. Everything is sharp.
    Calm, intelligent Federico, a few yards away, is now that image, my center of gravity. I no longer feel I have to get somewhere else or escape. I'm present, in the moment. In the middle of the worst stubble and grunge of Panama, everything has stopped.
    I may be exaggerating, but it is a dramatic moment.

Federico
Twenty-Three
    Obsession.
    I think about him day and night, during classes, on the train, trying to figure out a way to see him again. Write about him at length in my diary.
No one like him in Dayton, no one who looks like him or talks like him
... I go on for pages about his face and manner:
his quiet calm and deadly serenity—a good deadly, exciting deadly.
    Of course I'm no longer sullen or morose. I'm thoughtful and conniving.
    I've definitely entered the world of misdemeanors, because seeing him will have to be secret and that heightens my fever of stealth.
    Grinding away at it constantly, I try to come up with an idea that will take me back to that cabin (or wherever he is), but days go by and I come up with nothing. He's slaving away in the Cut six days a week and I don't know where he is on Sundays. That's the day I'm with my family. My brain sizzles.
    Nobody knows this is churning in me. I cover it well. School work continues—turned in on time, high marks. I know the trust and freedom that buys me.
    I can't go to Father for help on this one. I'll have to get to Federico on my own.
    I won't give up, of course. I'm obsessed.
Twenty-four.
    Sunday. A huge group of laborers is coming along the track toward our house. Mother and I are sitting on the porch and she watches them a minute. "Spanish, aren't they?" she says. We know the dress of different nationalities by now.
    I'm suddenly alert. "Looks like it," I say. I don't see Federico among them. We watch them approach.
    I've been hearing Father praise the Spanish all along, saying they're the real thing, genuine workers, stocky with strong shoulders. "Good boys. They can take directions and they're well liked, dependable. Heat doesn't bother them a bit and they're strong. I saw a Spanish fella put an iron cookstove on his shoulder and walk up a hill with it. Quartermaster's using them now, too. Every department wants them."
    And there they are, these stocky Spanish workers, but no Federico. These are only desperate Spaniards from Cuba and Spain, rough peasants who found work on the canal when they couldn't get it at home. I can see there are several hundred of them, and they've come along the track from the north toward our house. They wear rope-soled cloth
alparagatos.
Some wear velvet berets and colorful sashes, their Sunday best.
    "It looks like the entire Spanish work force," Mother says.
    But still I don't see Federico, and when they're close, we see something strange. Every man is carrying a plate.
    Mother says, "What do you suppose...?"
    They climb our hill and two of the men come to the door.
    "El jefe,"
they say. They want the boss.
    Father's wearing a robe, reading his paper in