ARALEN DREAMS
by Charles Thompson
Aralen Dreams
Copyright © 2011 by Charles Thompson
Printed in the United States of America
for the Volunteers
1 The Third World for the First Time
44 The Toughest Job I Ever Loved
Chapter 1 – The Third World for the First Time
I stepped off the plane with the vague goal of becoming a better man.
And little else. I had no idea where I’d sleep that night. I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t even speak the language.
Fortunately, as soon as I entered the terminal, a woman approached me. She wore khaki cargo pants and a white button-down. Chestnut hair framed her deep brown eyes and sharp nose.
“I’m Christine Katz, your training director. Welcome to Panama.”
Passengers continued to spill out from the plane and the terminal filled with commotion. I looked around to make sure she was talking to me. “Is it that obvious I’m the one you’re looking for?”
She shrugged. “Pretty much. I’ve been doing this for a while now. You guys always seem to have a dazzled look about you.” Her eyes sparkled with mischief. “Besides, there’s a picture in your file.”
“I’m John Dillon, but I guess you know that. It’s nice to meet you.”
She took my outstretched hand and gave me a firm, brisk handshake. “You too, but let’s get moving. You’re the last to arrive and the rest of your group is waiting for us. It’s almost midnight; I think they’re getting impatient.”
“Sorry. My connecting flight got delayed.”
“Don’t worry about it. Someone had to be last, and they’ll get used to waiting. You will too. Life tends to move a little slower down here.”
Christine, however, was anything but slow. She whizzed through the airport like a hummingbird, flitting here and there, dodging weary travelers and their wheeled belongings. I struggled to keep up with her as she skipped the line at immigration, flashed her identification to the official, whisked me through customs, and led me outside.
Just beyond the airport’s doors, a policeman stood in the middle of the street and blew a shrill whistle, over and over again. He tried to keep traffic moving, but his efforts went largely ignored. A taxi lurched to a halt in front of me, and the driver that followed had to slam his brakes to avoid a certain crash. They started yelling at one another in rapid Spanish while the taxi driver tried to wave me into his cab. The policeman, meanwhile, began to blow his whistle even louder. Christine looked back to make sure I was still following her.
“Try to keep up, will you? There will be plenty of time for sight-seeing later.”
“How can it be this hot out here?” I asked, wiping my brow with my forearm. “It’s the middle of the night for God’s sake.”
“Like I said, welcome to Panama.” She stopped in front of five white Land Cruisers idling at the curb. A gallery of glassy-eyed colleagues stared out at us through the vehicles’ windows. Christine jerked open the door of the lead car and motioned for me to climb in.
***
The Land Cruisers pulled away from the curb, escaped the chaos at the airport, and rolled along a dark road. It was a quiet ride. Eerily quiet. The others, I told myself, had to share my nervous excitement. I leaned forward and tapped the driver on his shoulder.
“Me llamo John,” I said. “Como se llama?”
“Carlos. Mucho gusto.”
“You like my Spanish, Carlos?”
He chuckled. “It’s very impressive.”
“Good, ‘cause that’s all I know.”
Christine laughed. It got a laugh out of the guy sitting next to me too. He nudged me with his elbow. “It’s wicked da’k out here, huh?”
“It is wicked dark out here,” I agreed. “You from Boston by any chance?”
“How’d you know?” The blue glow from the dashboard lit up his toothy smile.
“Lucky guess. I’m John.”
“I’m Kyle. It’s good to meet ya. And don’t let the accent fool you; I’m a man of the world. After all, I’ve been to New Orleans. And Cancun.” He winked. “Stick with me. I’ll take care of you.”
“It’s a deal.” We shook hands and he made sincere eye contact. I liked him right away. “You speak any Spanish?”
Kyle sat forward in his seat and squinted into the distance. “Hey Carlos, what’s that?” He pointed to a small clearing exposed by powerful floodlights. As we passed alongside it, I could see a crumbling stone tower, sad and alone.
“That’s Panama Viejo,” Carlos answered. “That’s where the Spanish built the first Panama City.”
“The first Panama City?”
“Yes. The pirate Morgan came here with his men. They stole everything and burned the city.”
“You mean Captain Mawgan?” Kyle asked. “The guy on the rum bottle? That’s awesome!”
“Yes, I suppose. Because of him, the Spanish had to rebuild Panama on the other side of the bay.”
“How far away is that?”
“Not far.” Carlos drove around a curve in the road and Panama City – the real Panama City – rose from the darkness. A modern skyline, with thousands of brightly lit windows, spanned the horizon.
“Whoa! I wasn’t expecting that. It looks like . . . I don’t even know. Miami?”
“It’s nice, no?” Carlos smiled proudly.
***
Glass office buildings and condominium towers loomed over our heads while we weaved through the busy streets. Glittering casinos, awash in colored lights, clamored for tourists’ attention and dollars. One casino even had a full stage show, with a live salsa band, set up over the sidewalk. Panama City lived. Captain Morgan should have stayed longer.
Carlos pulled up to the entrance of an underground garage where a pair of helmeted guards, armed with heavy machine guns, waited at the gate. “What’s up with that?” Kyle asked. “Did you tell them I was coming?”
“Don’t worry about them,” Christine answered. “They come with the bank that owns this building. We just rent the top floor.” Carlos showed his I.D. and the humorless guards waved our small caravan through the gate.
Once Carlos parked and our twelve-person group gathered around the vehicles, Christine ushered us across the garage, through a pair of elevators, and into a conference room.
Floor-to-ceiling windows offered an impressive view of the bay. Moonlight broke through gauzy clouds and cast its glow upon fishing boats bobbing in the water. Off in the distance, lights twinkled on massive container ships waiting their turn to enter the Panama Canal. The hair on my arms stood on end. Panama. You are in Panama. The very name crackled with romance and magic.
A squat woman in her fifties stood at the far end of the room. She had short, red hair and a weather-beaten face. She smiled broadly with clenched teeth, as though the expression didn’t come naturally.
“Welcome to Peace Corps,” she said. “My name is Grace Landau and I’m the Country Director here. I know it’s late and you’ve been traveling all day, but I wanted to take this chance to quickly introduce myself. Also, I want to give you an idea of what you can expect over the coming weeks.
“You are Peace Corps Panama’s newest group, Group 44, and we’re glad to have you. Nonetheless, before you go through training, you need to understand that you have made a serious decision. You should already know that, but it bears repeating.
“Once we send you out to your communities, if you get injured, or sick, you will likely have to travel for hours to obtain medical care. Also, Panama is generally a safe country, but like anywhere, we have our fair share of crime. Volunteers get robbed or mugged from time to time. And, although rare, Volunteers have been sexually assaulted or even killed. If any of you have reservations about this commitment, you should say something sooner rather than later. We’d rather eat the price of a plane ticket than waste the time and cost of training you.”
I followed her pale blue eyes as she surveyed her audience. A few faces expressed doubt or bewilderment, but no one said a word. Grace looked satisfied.
“Good. Tonight you’ll stay in a hotel here in the city, but first thing tomorrow, Christine will take you to a site in the interior where you’ll spend a week for orientation.”
Grace then bid us goodnight and Carlos drove us through a less polished part of the city. Concrete tenements, covered in mold and grime, crowded both sides of the narrow streets where laundry hung from nearly every window, like flags of surrender from the poor. A middle-aged woman leaned out one window, desperate to escape her airless apartment, if only for a moment. She had a baby in one arm and fanned herself with the other. Her weary face watched the Land Cruisers drive by towards something that had to be better, if only because it was different.
What was her story? Did she clean toilets all day in one of the shiny casinos? Did her husband break his back as a construction laborer to maintain their little piece of squalor? I knew nothing of her land, and I loved it.
I watched a street vendor sell a late-night snack from his push cart, an old woman trudge home under the weight of her shopping bags, and a trio of rambunctious teenagers bound down the sidewalk, laughing and shouting. I rolled down the window and took a deep breath of the unfamiliar air. A new, exciting world welcomed me home.
It was nearly one in the morning when we finally checked-in at the Hotel Mocambo. “Does this hotel have a ba’?” Kyle asked.
“There is a bar, but it closed hours ago,” Carlos told us.
The lobby sagged with collective disappointment.
“That’s ok.” Kyle said. “I’ll go see if I can’t sweet talk the woman at the front desk into selling us a few cases of bee’ah.”
We spent the rest of the night crowded into Kyle’s room, drinking beers and talking too loud. There were seven women and five guys, and everyone except me was straight out of college. Kyle suddenly climbed on top of a writing desk in the corner.
“I wanna say a few words,” he announced. People stopped their various conversations and looked up to hear what he had to say. “I know we’re all just gettin’ to know each other, and everything is new and strange, but it seems to me we got real good people here.” He raised his bottle high and toasted, “To group fawty-fuckin’-faw!”
I woke up in a rickety bunk bed in a mildewed dorm in a decrepit training center with no hot water, and I wondered what the hell I was doing there. Back in the States, just two years out of college, I lived in an apartment on Central Park West with a tassel-clad doorman. I worked at a plush Wall Street job with a comfy leather chair. Sleek Town Cars took me to sparkly places with one-word names like Fuel, or Taj, or Baron where men in dark suits unhooked velvet ropes, and waiters handed me black cloth napkins so I wouldn’t get white lint on my fancy pants.
My friends thought it was pretty cool. My mom was proud. And I had no interest in any of it. I wanted something different. Something more . . . significant. I wanted adventures in unfamiliar places with eccentric characters.
I also wanted breakfast, so I made my way to the dining room where a large woman in a light grey apron greeted me. “Buenos días!” she called out enthusiastically from her position behind a serving table. She used a pair of tongs to pluck a fried yellow hockey puck out of a stainless steel bin, and she waved it back and forth under my nose. “Tortilla?” she asked. Before I could answer, she dropped it on a plastic plate, covered it with a slice of processed American cheese, and stuck it in my hand.
“Try not to look so excited,” someone said.
I looked up from my plate to find a young woman smiling at me. A half-eaten tortilla puck sat on the dish in front of her. I recognized her from my training group, but we hadn’t yet met. She’d gone straight to bed when the rest of us drank beers in Kyle’s hotel room, and she kept to herself during the first day of training. “It’s really not that bad,” she added. “But it’s not that good either.” She scrunched up her nose and laughed.
“Thanks for the warning. Do you mind if I sit down?”
“Not at all.”
“I’m John.”
“I’m Elena.” We shook hands. She had big, attentive green eyes and an unpracticed smile. Maybe breakfast wouldn’t be so bad after all.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“No one’s ever heard of it.”
“Try me.”
“Feather Falls.”
“You’re right. I’ve never heard of it.”
“Told you. It’s in California, northeast of Sacramento.”
“Small town, huh? What do you do for fun there?”
“Fun? In Feather Falls? Nothing, really. Just go to church with the rest of the Mormon kids. I’m glad to be one of the few to get out. It is pretty though.”
“It sounds nice,” I said. But I really thought, Shit; she’s a bible-thumping teetotaler! A pagan like me didn’t stand a chance with a woman like that. As I resigned myself to admiring Elena only from afar, she rose and handed her plate back to the lady with the apron.
“I hope you don’t think I’m rude,” she said, “but I’m gonna try to get some yoga in before training starts. Do you mind?”
“No, of course not. I’ll see you later.”
“Ok. Thanks. Enjoy your breakfast. It was nice to meet you, John.”
***
Later that day, we received a medical lecture from the Peace Corps doctor, an intense Belgian named Bernard. He spent a while frightening us with video clips about Volunteers from around the world who had contracted AIDS or been raped, or both, during their Peace Corps service. He spent another hour scaring us about Yellow Fever and Dengue and the horrible venereal diseases that lurked in Panama’s heart of darkness. He finished strong with a lecture about malaria.
“This is Aralen,” he said, holding up a large, fluorescent pink pill between his thumb and forefinger. “It is your malaria prophylaxis.”
Kyle snickered.
“Not prophylactic,” Bernard continued, “but if you need any of those, we have plenty. In fact, I encourage you to use them.
“What I said, however, is ‘prophylaxis;’ though I suppose the pill is sort of like a malaria condom. You must take one every week. We are very serious about this. If you do not take it, and we find out, you will be administratively separated.”
“Administrative separation” sounded too ridiculous to be real. I’d learn soon enough that the Peace Corps had an endless array of authoritative, contrived phrases to describe such simple ideas as getting your ass fired and sent home. Meanwhile, “administrative separation” conjured images of being dropped on a deserted island without so much as a photo copier or a fax machine. It sounded great.
“Moreover,” Bernard continued, “if you do not take your medicine, and you get malaria, you will be very, very sorry. Malaria is not fun. And if you get it, we will have no choice but to send you home and it will be the end of your Peace Corps service.”
“Why are you threatening us about taking Aralen?” asked Elena. “I mean, I know you’ve been scaring us all day about all kinds of things, but who wouldn’t take that medicine?”
“You would be surprised. Some people do not like the side effects, so they stop taking it,” he explained. “Aralen can give you headaches, diarrhea, unusually intense dreams, and visual disturbances.”
“Wait a minute,” Kyle interrupted, “when you say ‘visual distu’bances’ you mean like hallucinations?”
“Hallucinations are one possibility.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad. Hell, it might even be fun. What do you say group fawty-faw? Should we trip-out on some Aralen tonight?”
“That’s a terrible idea,” Bernard answered. “If you have an allergic reaction or an overdose, you could experience seizures or even cardiac arrest.”
“That sounds awful!” Elena exclaimed.
“It does sound pretty awful,” Bernard agreed, “but allergic reactions are very rare. And malaria, I assure you, is worse. Just take the medicine when you’re supposed to, and you’ll be fine.”
***
On the last day at the training center, we met individually with the Spanish teachers. They assessed our skill level and assigned us to one of three groups: beginner, intermediate, or advanced. I took Spanish for four years in high school, but I’d been a terrible student. Based on the few words I managed to retain, the teachers put me in the intermediate group. Kyle and Elena, to my delight, were also placed in the intermediate group. For the next three months, we would live in Cerro Verde, a small town in the watershed of the Panama Canal, just a few hours west of the capital city.
That night, after the girls had retired to their dorm and we were in ours packing up and preparing for bed, Kyle made an announcement: “I’m gonna take my Aralen tonight . . . and I’m gonna take two of ‘em.”
“You’re serious?” I asked.
“Shaw,” Kyle answered. “I’m hoping I’ll have one of them dreams Bana’d was talkin’ about.”
I’d known Kyle for only a couple of days, so I couldn’t tell if he meant it or if he was just trying to get a rise out of the rest of us. “You’re full of shit,” I told him.
“Yeah?” he asked, looking me in the eye, unblinking, as he tossed two of the large pills into his mouth and took a long pull off his water bottle.
“Were you at the same lecture as me!?” another trainee asked him. “Didn’t you hear all the stuff that medicine can do to you?”
Kyle grinned. “I shaw did. It sounds intrestin’, don’t you think?”
I couldn’t help but like the crazy bastard, and soon we’d be thick as thieves. In the meantime, I looked forward to hearing about his Aralen experience.
Unfortunately, by the time I woke up in the morning, he had already left for our training community. I wondered if he’d had any intense dreams in the middle of the night. Or diarrhea.
Chapter 3 – Less than Gospel
On the way to Cerro Verde, Carlos stopped at the supermarket so we could buy gifts for our host families. He handed each of us an unmarked envelope that contained fifty-six dollars in small bills. “You’ll get a new envelope each week,” he explained. “Give thirty-five dollars to your host-family for your room and board. The rest is your spending money.”
I had no idea what to get for my new “family.” I couldn’t even figure out how much to spend. Three dollars a day for spending money seemed like nothing to me, but maybe that was a lot of money where I was headed. I considered buying flowers, but Carlos suggested food was more practical. Ultimately, I settled on a couple of pineapples.
A short time later, he walked me to the front door of my new home where he introduced me to my host mom. She looked to be in her early forties. She was plump and had a kind face. “Hola, mucho gusto,” I said, pushing the outer limits of my Spanish. She smiled. The exchange was mutually shy and awkward. She and Carlos talked for a minute, but they were speaking quickly and I didn’t understand anything they said.
The living room was painted mint green. The walls were adorned with family photos, various crosses, and other religious artifacts. The scent of cooked chicken filled the house.
“Juan.” Carlos turned to face me. “You will be good here.” I wasn’t sure if he meant that I was in good hands or if he wanted me to behave myself.
“Ok.”
“We will see each other this weekend,” he added before turning around and walking back to the Land Cruiser. My colleagues peered out the car’s windows and waved goodbye. I smiled at my new mom. A few bald chickens puttered anxiously around, clucking and picking at anything that might prove digestible.
My host-mom gave me a brief tour around the house. My room was attached to the rest of the house, but could be accessed only from an exterior door on the front porch. The room had a lumpy, full-sized mattress on the floor in the corner. A plywood dresser occupied the rest of the small space.
I dutifully unpacked my clothes, not wanting to make a first impression that I was uncomfortable or untidy. I sheepishly placed my clothes into the drawers and arranged my toiletries on top. My mom looked satisfied and disappeared into the back of the house.
What would I say to these people? What could I talk about when I hardly spoke or understood the language? I told myself that I was there to learn and interact with them and that they probably felt just as nervous as I did, so I mustered my courage and walked into the living room. A teenager who hadn’t been there when I first arrived sat on a sofa, husking a mountain of beans while watching a soccer game on the television. The grubby sofa had holes in the cushions; the old, boxy TV sat precariously atop a homemade bookshelf.
“Hi. I call myself Juan,” I said. “How do you call yourself?” It occurred to me that simple things in Spanish, like asking a name, seemed beautifully circuitous when compared with the English, no-nonsense way of getting the same information. I embraced the flowery formality of Spanish and its reflexive verbs. But my musings took a backseat when the boy looked up at me and shook my hand.
“Antonio,” he answered. His grip felt limp and fleeting, but at least he forced a smile. I wondered if he resented my presence or if he was just shy about having a stranger in the house. Maybe both.
“I can help you?” I asked.
He nodded almost imperceptibly, so we sat in silence, watching television and husking beans. I remembered his name from the information Christine had given me back at the monastery. Antonio was my 18-year-old ‘brother.’ He was tall and sinewy, but he had his mother’s soft, kind face and clear skin. His t-shirt looked a little bit too small and his jeans were faded. His flip-flops were dirty and worn. I wanted to talk to him, but I had nothing to say. More to the point, I had nothing I could say. After wracking my brain I asked as casually as I could, “Soccer is pleasing to you?”
“Está bien.”
The conversation stalled and the minutes passed slowly. How the hell are you going to spend three months in this house? As the pile of husked beans grew higher, I tried to figure out how I’d get through the next three hours, let alone the next three months, but I was eager to get along.
“What are?” I asked, pointing to the shrinking mountain of unhusked beans.
He couldn’t hide his smirk. “Guandu,” he answered, probably wondering how this idiot gringo would teach anyone anything if he didn’t even know what guandu were.
“Wan-do,” I repeated.
He nodded approvingly. I felt the need to make more conversation and I would have asked about the town, or the game on the TV, or anything at all, but I didn’t have the vocabulary.
The air was still and thick and impossibly hot. I could feel the sweat running down my brow and neck. My shirt stuck to my back. I couldn’t understand how anyone could live in that heat, but Antonio looked perfectly cool and comfortable.
A short time later someone knocked on the door and called out my name. I went to the door and saw Meliza, my Spanish teacher, standing there along with the other trainees assigned to Cerro Verde. I’d never been so happy to see English-speaking acquaintances.
Meliza had bright eyes behind big glasses. She always pursed her lips in a way that made it seem she was listening carefully and found everything interesting. When she spoke, she spoke slowly, cheerfully, and deliberately.
Meliza used her fingers like little legs and pantomimed a person walking in a circle as she said, “We are going to walk in the town so that each trainee knows where all the other trainees live. You want to come?”
“Sí!” I answered gleefully.
“Juan can come with us for a time?” Meliza asked my mom.
“Está bien. Will he be home for dinner?” In retrospect, at 24 years old, it was infantilizing for the two women to discuss me as though I were a small child, but at the time it seemed perfectly normal and I was too excited to give it a second thought. I joined my peers and we walked around town. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I had it pretty good. Not only did I have a private bedroom, but my house was built of painted cinder blocks. Some of my colleagues were living in mud houses on the outskirts of town. We had a TV and a refrigerator, but they didn’t even have electricity. We were rich.
I found my mom and brother sitting on the sofa watching professional wrestling. My mom looked up and hopped to her feet.
“Do you want to eat?” she asked me as she wiggled her closed fingers towards her mouth.
“Sí. Gracias.” I prayed for something identifiable.
Much to my surprise, Antonio went into the kitchen and spooned out a plate of food from the pots on the stove. He motioned for me to sit at a small table in the kitchen and he placed a plate of rice, beans, and stewed chicken in front of me. Then he poured me a glass of sugary, homemade orange juice out of a plastic pitcher from the fridge. He sat down and watched me eat.
“It’s pleasing to you?” he asked.
“It’s delicious. Thank you.”
“I cooked it,” he boasted, tapping himself on the chest with his index finger.
“You aren’t going to eat?”
“I already ate.” He smiled and rubbed his flat stomach.
As soon as I finished, Antonio cleared my plate, washed it, and left it in a plastic drying rack next to the sink. Christine had told us that Panama was a country built on machismo and that Panamanians generally considered cooking and cleaning to be women’s work. Antonio was a head taller than me and twice as muscular. I wasn’t about to ask him why he did women’s work. My trainers’ guidance, I realized, was less than gospel.
After dinner, Antonio invited me to take a walk. He showed me the school, the store, the health center, and the payphone. I understood only one of every ten words, but I listened carefully. And I appreciated his efforts. He suddenly stopped talking and stood frozen on the dark dirt road. I looked at him to see why he’d stopped and he used his lips to point up ahead. Two police officers lowered the Panamanian flag from a flagpole near the center of town. I followed Antonio’s lead and we remained still and quiet until the officers had folded the flag and walked away.
On the walk back to Antonio’s house we passed the town’s only bar. There was an area set up outside for cock fighting, but it looked like it hadn’t been used in a long time. I asked Antonio if he wanted a beer by using my thumb to act out drinking a bottle. He held up his index finger and said “uno” with a smile and suspicious eyes.
***
The paint was chipped and fading. The room had no television. No music played.
Three men sat close together at one end of the bar. One had his head down and appeared to be unconscious. The other two hunched over a bottle of clear liquor in front of them. They watched us walk from the door to the bar. They didn’t look away until we’d taken two stools. I wondered how they felt about a gringo crowding their turf.
“What are they drinking?” I asked Antonio.
“Seco Herrerano.”
“It’s pleasing to you?”
He crinkled up his nose and shook his head.
Seco, a sugar cane liquor, is the national drink of Panama. And even though it tasted like turpentine, I’d eventually drink gallons of the stuff. For the time being, I’d have to settle for the beers Antonio ordered.
The bartender was in her early sixties. She had dyed black hair, too much mascara, and deep crow’s feet around her eyes. The skin on her neck sagged towards her wrinkled chest. It was obvious that she’d been a beautiful woman a long time ago, but she wasn’t yet willing to concede the inevitable.
She reached down into the cooler in front of her and put two bottles down on the bar. Antonio started to reach into his pocket, but I quickly placed my hand on his forearm and shook my head.
“Cuanto?” I asked.
“Eighty cents,” the bartender answered in perfect English. I handed her a dollar and she passed me back two dimes. My three dollars per day would suit me fine.
“You’re one of the Americans,” she told me.
“That’s right. I’m John.” Although I liked the idea of speaking Spanish, it was nice not to think about every word.
“I’m Rita. This is my bar.”
“It’s nice to meet you.”
“It’s nice to meet you too. I wanted to have one of you live with me. Maybe one of the girls. I have a nice house and I live all alone. I don’t need the money, but I would have liked the company. I don’t know why they turned me down.”
“I don’t know either,” I lied. A bar-owning spinster wasn’t the sort of host-family the Peace Corps looked for. “Maybe it’s because your English is too good.”
“That’s probably it. I used to be married to an American. We’re divorced now. He lives in Nebraska. Too cold for me.” She shivered at the mere thought of it.
“How’d you meet him?”
“He was a G.I. here before they gave the canal to the Panamanians. I worked as a waitress at the U.S.O. I was very popular with all the soldiers. They used to call me ‘coochie.’” She ballooned with pride at the memory. I assumed, and hoped, she didn’t know what they’d meant.
She seemed to read my mind, for she smiled flirtatiously and winked at me. Then she moved down to the other end of the bar to see if her other three customers needed anything, swaying her ass from side to side as she walked. I imagined her younger and more beautiful, like Zorba’s Madame Hortense, naked, surrounded by admirals who drank champagne from her porcelain tub as she bathed in it.
Antonio looked horribly bored. “Where is our papa?” I asked him. The file the Peace Corps gave me listed a ‘dad’ in my host-family, but I had yet to see him.
“Oscar is your dad, not mine,” Antonio answered solemnly. “My father,” he added, “está muerto.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“It’s ok. It’s been a long time.”
“But Oscar, where is he?”
To my surprise, Antonio used his lips to point to the other end of the bar. Oscar, apparently, was one of the men who had stared at us when we first walked in. He wore a condescending smirk, a navy blue baseball cap pulled low, and a full, well-manicured mustache. He couldn’t have been more than five-and-a-half feet tall, but I could see he was strong. Veins popped out of his dark neck and forearms and stood in stark contrast to the heavy eyelids that blinked lazily over his red, watery eyes. I got the impression he spent a lot more time at the bar than at home.
“We should probably go home now,” Antonio suggested, loud enough for Rita to hear him. “I told my mom we wouldn’t be long.”
“That’s fine,” Rita answered. “Thanks for coming in.”
“It was my pleasure,” I said. “Have a good night. I’ll see you soon.”
“Ok. Anytime you want you can to come over to my nice house.” She used her thumb to point backwards over her shoulder and I realized she could walk straight into her living room from an open doorway behind the bar. “I make you fried chicken and French fries. You can watch TV or relax in the hammock. It is nicer in there than in the bar. And you can bring your friends.”
“I’ll take you up on that. It was nice to meet you. Good night.”
As we walked home from the bar, I wanted to thank Antonio for dinner, for showing me around, and for waiting patiently for me while I talked to Rita, but I didn’t know how to say any of that, so I just said clumsily, “Thank you in order for everything.”
“Está bien,” he assured me. Then he added, while waving his finger back and forth between us, “We are brothers.”
I woke to the jarring sound of crowing roosters. With my clothes and towel slung over my shoulder, I made my groggy, grumpy way outside in the pre-dawn light. The shower stall out back was a patchwork of corrugated steel panels, not much bigger than an outhouse. I pulled back the door to find a fifty gallon drum filled with water. The top half of an empty Clorox bottle, with the cap still on it, floated on the surface. That’s odd. I shrugged to myself and turned the faucet, but nothing came out.
Well this sucks. What do I do now? How long shall I stand here, naked, contemplating this useless faucet?
The Clorox bottle is a scoop! Of course! You figured that out almost as fast as you should have.
Water, I soon learned, was a commodity in Cerro Verde. Like most of rural Panama, Cerro Verde’s aqueduct was just a gravity-fed series of PVC pipes, so only houses located downhill from the cistern had running water all the time. I took the half-bottle by its handle and scooped up as much water as I could before pouring it over my head. The water – still cold from the night air – crashed down on me and washed away my sleepy daze. Splashing water up into my man-crannies was particularly tricky, but after flinging several gallons of water on myself, lathering up, and rinsing off, I was ready to start my day. You, John Dillon, will make a fine Peace Corps Volunteer.
By the time I dressed, my mom had already prepared my breakfast: a hot dog without the bun, a slice of processed cheese, and weak, sugary coffee. I gobbled it up, went back to my room, and grabbed the pineapples I’d bought as a housewarming gift.
“They are for you.” I handed my mom the pineapples. “I forget to give yesterday.”
“Gracias,” she answered as she looked at the floor and blushed. Antonio started laughing at me.
“What?” I asked, genuinely perplexed. I couldn’t imagine what was so funny about pineapples. Were they laughing at my Spanish?
Antonio pointed under the kitchen sink where four milk crates overflowed with pineapples. Oscar, it turned out, worked at a nearby pineapple plantation. He was allowed to bring home all the pineapples he could carry. I couldn’t have picked a worse gift. I shook my head and laughed at myself and said goodbye for the day.
My Spanish class was only a hundred feet away from my house, in a gazebo in the middle of the town’s park, but I arrived to find everyone else already there. I took a seat between Kyle and Elena. Elena wore a tank top, and I noticed for the first time that she had a small tattoo.
“What’s that on your shoulder?”
“It’s the symbol for ‘Aum’ in Tibetan script.”
That seemed pretty cool. I had nothing clever to say, so I smiled at her and tried to be handsome.
“Are you laughing at me?” she asked.
“No, I’m smiling at you.”
She looked unconvinced.
***
The weeks went on like that. Unhurried and hot. We met in the morning in the gazebo and had our informal Spanish lessons. Meliza guided the conversations and we did our best to keep up despite our limited skills. Every so often we broke into English to joke or bicker and Meliza sweetly scolded us back into Spanish.
We took breaks and pulled oranges down from the trees. Then, in the afternoon, Carlos picked us up in the Land Cruiser. He took us to farms and taught us about the local produce. He also taught us simple techniques regarding planting, reforestation, soil conservation, and organic fertilizers. After a morning of sitting still in Spanish class, I liked sweating and getting my hands dirty in the fields. I ate fresh sugar cane and milked a cow and used a machete, all with varying degrees of success. At the end of the day my mom washed my muddy clothes in the sink behind the house and hung them up to dry.
In the evenings, Antonio served me dinner and kept me company while I ate it. Then we sat in the park and talked with neighbors or played cards. Sometimes I’d go to the bar with Kyle where we’d drink beers and talk with Rita all night.
“What do you think of Elena?” I asked Kyle one night.
“Not as much as you do, but she’s kind of sexy.”
“What do you mean ‘not as much as I do?’”
“I see you tryin’ to make eye contact with her.”
“So?”
“So, do you try to make eye contact with any of the other girls here?”
“Fair enough.” We sat in silence for a minute as we contemplated our beers. “But you know what the ocean looks like on a calm, sunny day? When the reflection is so bright you can look at it for only a fleeting moment? That’s what it’s like when I make eye contact with Elena.”
“Wow. That’s deep . . . and I had no idea you were such a pussy.”
“Now you know.” I laughed. “But it doesn’t much matter, does it? It’s not like I have anywhere to take her. All I need is my host mom to walk in on us.”
“You neva know.” Kyle shrugged. “Maybe your host mom will get turned on and join in.”
“Dude, that’s sick. She’s my mom.”
***
Kyle had the special gift of making everyone around him comfortable. He was intelligent, hilarious, energetic, and kind, and could tell fantastic yarns about himself without bravado or shame. One night at the bar he revealed to me that his father had been a crack addict. The only thing that helped his mom get through each day was a bottle of Popov and a soft pack of Winstons.
At just 12 years old, Kyle called social services on himself, shattering an already broken home, because he thought it was the only way to save his father’s life. The State of Massachusetts became Kyle’s parent, so he spent his teenage years bouncing from foster home to group home and back. His call to social services had been both brave and desperate, and it got his father sober for a few months. Eventually, however, his father succumbed again to his addiction and died, homeless, on the streets.
Kyle was only 22 when we met, but he seemed much older. I couldn’t understand how he managed to overcome his adolescence, but he did well enough in high school to win a scholarship to Loyola where he played business and studied rugby. Moreover, I admired his carefree, unembittered approach to life. When you’ve had problems like his, you get perspective on what real problems are. Even though he was two years younger than me, I felt like the little brother in the relationship.
Rita also took a liking to Kyle. A carnal liking. Night after night, Kyle fended off Rita’s advances while I played with her dog and fascinated the drunken locals with tales of shoveling snow. Sometimes I thought about Kyle’s parents and the problems they had with booze and drugs. I worried that maybe all the drinking we did wasn’t good for him, but he was never an angry or sloppy drunk. In fact, he held his liquor as well as anyone I’d ever raised a glass with. And we always left Rita’s bar in a better mood than when we arrived. We often invited Antonio to join us. Once in a while he even said yes.
Kyle’s host-mom, Mafalda, was a completely different story. She was a 68-year-old woman with nine kids from six different fathers. Sometimes one of the fathers would stay for a couple of weeks, but he always left again. Meanwhile, the younger kids who still lived under her roof ranged in age from seventeen to three. They’d earned a reputation all over town for their wild ways, but it seemed to me the town’s folk should cut Mafalda a break. All things considered, she held it together pretty well.
But if anything got Mafalda worked up, it was the thought of me and Kyle at the bar. She claimed that Rita was a witch and it would be only a matter of time before she used her black magic on us. And Mafalda convinced herself that Kyle would come home too drunk one night, under an evil spell, and beat her or rape her. The thought of Mafalda’s fat, wrinkled body was enough to make my root wilt, but Mafalda somehow sold Kyle on Rita’s dark powers. I was shocked at Kyle’s superstitious streak and inexplicable allegiance to Mafalda’s dubious dogma, but I had to admit that Rita, with her dyed black hair and thick black mascara, certainly looked the part.
Regardless, we still went to the bar several times a week. The only thing that changed was the farewell at the end of each evening. Kyle stopped bidding me goodbye at the foot of the park. Instead, night after night, he begged me to walk him home. He believed that if I left him alone, Rita would appear from the shadows and whisk him into her lair, or some netherworld, or some such silliness.
“But my house is right next to the bar,” I told him. “You live all the way out of town.”
“Come on man . . . please.”
It was pathetic watching a grown man plead for a chaperone in a sleepy, rural town. But it was also fun. I made him squirm for several minutes before invariably giving in. Then I tortured him the whole way back to Mafalda’s house.
“So,” I teased as we walked along the dark, dirt road, “will she appear as herself or take on some other form?”
“I don’t know,” he moaned. “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it. Let’s just go.” A few minutes later I threw my arm across his chest to stop him in his tracks.
“Wait a minute!” I told him in a hushed voice.
“What is it?” he whispered back in a panic.
Then, furrowing my brow and thrusting out my chin, as though to peer into the bushes on the side of the road, I whispered, “What is that? Do you see it? . . . Is that her?”
“That’s not cool man.”
“But it is kind of funny.”
“C’mon. Let’s hurry.”
Chapter 6 – Antonio Isn’t
One Sunday afternoon towards the end of training, Antonio took us on a hike to a quiet part of Lake Gatun, the man-made lake that feeds the Panama Canal. We spent the day there laughing and horsing around, tossing each other off the dock and into the lake, sipping on Seco on a sunny afternoon. Most of us jumped clumsily off the end of the dock or swung from a rope tied to a tree branch, but Antonio, lithe and muscular, dove into the water with perfect form. He climbed back up onto the dock, dripping water, smiling his easy smile.
“Dude,” Elena elbowed me, “your brother is hot.”
I shrugged and pretended not to be envious. Some pretty Panamanian girls were sitting nearby, watching us, whispering to one another and giggling. I managed to trade a few glances with one of them. We exchanged a couple of shy smiles before Antonio caught me.
“She’s pleasing to you?” he asked me.
“Yes.”
“I know her.”
“Really?” With Antonio’s help, maybe I could land a date and make Elena jealous.
“You want that I present you?”
“Of course.” I’d already grown fond of my Panamanian brother. If he could start fixing me up with local beauties he’d take our relationship to a whole new level.
“I’ve known her since she was a little girl. She’s 15 years old.”
“Tell me you’re joking.” I felt like a lecher.
“And she has a 1-year-old son,” he added, just to twist the knife.
“Jesus.”
“No. Miguelito.” Antonio flashed the knowing smile I’d seen several times a day for the last few weeks.
Antonio graduated from high school, but didn’t have money for college. He was smart, handsome, and kind. And he had no future. There were practically no jobs in Cerro Verde. Manual labor didn’t seem in his nature, so it was hard to imagine him getting work at the pineapple plantation with Oscar. He had no family in the city to help him find a job there. So he spent his days helping his mom around the house or tagging along with us as we attended Peace Corps training at nearby farms. If Antonio’s dismal situation bothered him, he didn’t let it show. He was a good influence on me.
***
Late that night, a scratching at my door woke me up from a sound sleep.
“Who’s there?” I whispered. The scratching continued.
Once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I realized that someone was using a twig to try and unhook the wooden latch on the inside of my door. I instinctively jumped out of bed, jammed my foot against the bottom of the door, and pushed the latch back into the closed position.
“What do you want?” I hissed, but he didn’t answer. The twig came back through the door and tried to lift the wood latch again, but I pushed it back down and kept my hand there.
“Who’s there?” a man’s voice demanded. He sounded drunk. Is he dangerous? Is he out to rob me? Maybe he wants to fight me and rob me. One can feel that vulnerable only in the middle of a dark, silent night.
“I’m Juan,” I answered defiantly. “Go!”
“Who?”
“Juan. The Gringo. Go!”
He thumped the door angrily.
I dashed to the other side of my small bedroom and grabbed my machete. I told myself that if he came through the door I’d have to hurt him. I tightened my grip on the black, plastic handle.
“Deja me entrar!” he growled.
“Go,” I insisted. I wished I had a better grasp of the language, so that I could tell him to fuck off and get away from my room, but my pidgin Spanish would have to do.
“Who are you?” His voice grew louder.
“Juan. Go.”
“Who?”
I wondered if I’d be crouched in the dark all night, wearing only my boxers, clutching my machete in both hands, waiting for a drunk to smash through the window for reasons I couldn’t figure out. If I cut this man up, at best, I’ll be sent home and my Peace Corps service will be over before it starts. At worst, I’ll be the gringo boy toy in a Panamanian prison. Let's get on with it then.
I heard the front door of the house swing open. The porch light snapped on and seeped through the crack around my bedroom door. “Who’s there?” my mom shouted angrily. “You . . . get out of here!!! Don’t come around here anymore!!!” I heard footsteps run away across the park. Through the window I could see other porch lights pop on. Marina shouted something else into the night, but I didn’t understand. “Are you ok?” she called softly through the door.
“I’m fine,” I answered, feeling dumb but grateful. “Everything is good.”
Mom had come to my rescue.
Chapter 7 – The Pineapple Incident
“Good night, Rita.”
“Buenas noches, Rita. See ya tuh-marra’.”
“Good night, boys. Thanks for stopping in.”
I snapped on my flashlight and lit up a sliver of an otherwise moonless night. The beam of light bounced ahead of us as we walked towards Kyle’s house.
“It’s pretty da’k tonight, huh?”
“Yeah. Real dark. A person could get away with anything out here, don’t you think?”
“Like what?”
“Like anything. Like witchcraft. Like a human sacrifice.”
“Why you gotta say shit like that? . . . Hey! Turn that light back on!”
“Uh oh. I think the batteries are dead.”
“Don’t tell me that.”
“Fire burn, and caldron bubble.”
“What? What are you talkin’ about?”
“Nothing. I’m just messing with you. Here, look.” I switched the flashlight back on. “You happy now?”
“Sorta.”
“Why don’t you have your own flashlight anyway?”
“I do. I just leave it at home.”
“Are you serious? Why?”
“‘Cause I have you to walk me home.”
“You’re unbelievable.”
I delivered Kyle safely to his front door and headed straight home, smiling to myself about Rita and Kyle and my new life. My musings didn’t last long. I heard shouts and screams. I recognized my mom’s voice and broke into a run.
“You are a disgusting sinner!” Oscar bellowed. Neighbors were gathering to witness the commotion. I pushed through them and bounded onto the porch.
I reached the front door to find Antonio on his hands and knees on the living room floor. Oscar yelled down at him. “You give shame to your mother!” Antonio had blood caked around his nose and mouth. One eye was already swollen shut. “I don’t want a maricon living in my house!” Oscar swayed back and forth with clenched fists. He looked even drunker than usual.
“Enough!” my mom screamed. “You’re going to kill him!” She tried to grab Oscar’s arm, but he pushed her away and she fell to the ground. Then he cocked his leg back and unwound into Antonio’s middle with his steel-toed work boot. I could hear ribs crack, but Antonio hardly made a sound. He merely sucked air as the wind went out of him.
“Mi hijo!” my mom cried. She hugged Antonio around his midsection, trying to cover him up and use her own body as a shield to protect him. But Oscar grabbed my mom by a handful of hair and started to yank her to her feet. He was going to strike her too. I didn’t know what to do. I spied a knife on the kitchen counter.
I disregarded the knife, reached under the sink, and grabbed a pineapple by its long, waxy leaves. The sharp spines cut into my palm, but I squeezed only tighter as I swung the pineapple into Oscar’s temple with all of my might. The pineapple careened off his brow and rolled to safety under the sofa. Oscar crumpled like an empty duffle bag.
I didn’t realize that I still clutched the leaves in my fist until I saw Marina staring at them. She looked as shocked as I felt. But she got her bearings first. She helped Antonio to his feet and took his battered face in her soft hands.
“I’m fine, Mama,” he told her.
I shrugged at Marina, dropped the pineapple leaves on the floor, stepped over Oscar, and went to bed.
***
I needed only a few days in Cerro Verde to realize that Antonio was gay, but I hadn’t broached the subject with him or anyone else. I wasn’t even sure if he’d figured it out himself yet. But he had.
My visitor from the previous night hadn’t been looking for me at all. He was Antonio’s lover. And in his drunkenness he forgot that Antonio wouldn’t be sleeping in his room as long as I lived in the house. When he heard my voice, he probably thought that Antonio had jilted him. And he grew determined to confront the new object of Antonio’s affection. My host-mother, along with the neighbors, put it together the moment she opened the door and chased him off. It quickly became the town gossip and the family shame.
When I woke up in the morning, I tip-toed into the house and tried not to make a sound. I expected Oscar would still be on the living room floor, sleeping off the Seco and a possible concussion, but the room showed no sign of the prior night’s drama. No drops of blood marked the floor. No pineapple rested under the sofa. I found my mom, alone, sitting at the kitchen table.
“Are you ok?” I asked her.
“We’re all fine. Thank you.” She forced a smile, served me some lukewarm coffee, and took her seat again. I sipped on the coffee and we sat in awkward silence for a couple of minutes.
“And Oscar?”
“He must have woken up and left in the middle of the night.”
“Where did he go?”
“I don’t know. Probably to one of his girlfriends.” Her cavalier comment about a mistress caught me off guard, but compared to Antonio’s public outing, a cheating husband was relatively uncontroversial. Being gay, on the other hand, in a small town, in a devoutly Catholic country, had to be miserable.
I worried Oscar would come back and get rough again. “How long do you think he’ll stay there?”
“I don’t think he’ll be back, ever. He’s too proud.”
“So what will you do? How will you eat?”
“I’m going to stay with my sister’s family.”
“Is Antonio going with you?”
“No. They don’t have room for him there.”
I wondered if that was true. I suspected they just didn’t want the town queer under their roof.
***
The Peace Corps would surely want to know about the turn of events. But if I told Grace what happened, she would find me a different host-family. I liked my mom and I liked Antonio. The thirty-five dollars I paid each week for my room and board was a substantial sum for them, especially if Oscar was gone for good. So I decided to keep the news to myself. I didn’t even tell Kyle what happened.
When I got back from class that afternoon, Antonio sat alone in the house. “It’s good to see you,” I said. He made an effort to greet me, but winced in pain. “How are you feeling?”
“Mas o menos.”
“I’m surprised Oscar hasn’t come back to kick you out.”
“Oscar can’t kick me out.”
“How so?”
“Because this house doesn’t belong to him. It is the house of my grandmother. Oscar can’t say anything about it.”
That settled it for the time being. Antonio and I stayed in the house together while his mom lived across town at her sister’s. I gave Antonio the money for my room and board and he did the cooking and washed my clothes while I went to training each day. My dysfunctional host-family fit me fine.
I didn’t know what Antonio would do after I left Cerro Verde. He’d still have a roof over his head, but without any income – whether from Oscar or the Peace Corps – the food could last only so long. And the ten dollars per day that I’d get from the Peace Corps once I became a Volunteer wouldn’t be enough for me to support myself in my new town and still have something left over to send to him.
I approached Carlos. “You know my brother?”
“Of course. He goes to the farms with us all the time. He seems like a good kid. He’s done a pretty good job teaching you Spanish too.”
“Right. I think my host-father has it in for him. I’m worried for his safety.”
“Why?”
“Well, . . . he’s gay. And his step-dad isn’t exactly understanding about it.”
“I see.” Carlos shuffled his feet. “It’s not easy to be that way in the campo.”
“I’m sure it’d be a lot easier for him in the city, but he doesn’t know anyone there. Do you know where he might find a job?”
“Hmmmm. I’m not sure, but I’ll think about it.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.” I couldn’t tell if Carlos judged Antonio or if he just loathed getting involved in family politics
Carlos must’ve picked up on the half-heartedness of my gratitude or seen the consternation on my face, for he added, “in the meantime, you can tell him that he can stay in my apartment if he keeps the place clean for me. But he’ll have to find a place of his own within a few weeks.”
“Thank you, Carlos. You might be saving his life.”
“Don’t mention it.” A broad grin stretched across his face. “Besides, training you clowns keeps me on the road most of the time anyway. It’ll be good to have someone I can trust looking after my place.”
Chapter 8 – Jack and the Giant Beach
We spent the last week of training in Panama City, undergoing a battery of medical tests. Shimmering glass and steel buildings towered downtown and stood in stark contrast to the rural communities where we’d spent the last three months. It was the last time for a while that we’d get the chance to hang out with fellow Americans or have regular access to simple conveniences like drug stores or electricity.