'Oh Jesus' and walked away, looking around for something to photograph.
A Negro with a felt hat was leaning on the porch rail of a wooden house built on a dirty limestone foundation. I was across the street under a movie marquee. Every time I prepared my camera he would lift his hat and look at me, muttering insane imprecations. I finally snapped him from behind a pillar. On a balcony over this character a shirtless young man was washing. I could see the Negro and Near Eastern blood in him, the rounded face and cafe-au-lait mulatto skin, the smooth body of undifferentiated flesh with not a muscle showing. He looked up from his washing like an animal scenting danger. I caught him when the five o'clock whistle blew. An old photographer's trick: wait for a distraction.
I went into Chico's Bar for a rum Coke. I never liked this place, nor any other bar in Panama, but it used to be endurable and had some good numbers on the juke box. Now there was nothing but this awful Oklahoma honky- tonk music, like the bellowings of an anxious cow: 'You're Drivin'
Nails in my Coffin'— 'It Wasn't God Made Honky Tonk Angels'—'Your Cheatin' Heart.'
The servicemen in the joint all had that light-concussion Canal Zone look: cow-like and blunted, as if they had undergone special G.I. processing and were immunized against contact on the intuition level, telepathic sender and receiver excised. You ask them a question, they answer without friendliness or hostility. No warmth, no contact. Conversation is impossible. They just have nothing to say. They sit around buying drinks for the B-girls, making lifeless passes which the girls brush off like flies, and playing that whining music on the juke box. One young man with a pimply adenoidal face kept trying to touch a girl's breast. She would brush his hand away, then it would creep back as if endowed with autonomous insect life. A B-girl sat next to me, and I bought her one drink. She ordered good Scotch, yet. 'Panama, how I hate your cheatin' guts,' I thought. She had a shallow bird brain and perfect Stateside English, like a recording. Stupid people can learn a language quick and easy because there is nothing going on in there to keep it out.
She wanted another drink. I said 'No.' She said, 'Why are you so mean?' I said, 'Look, if I run out of money, who is going to buy my drinks? Will you?'
She looked surprised, and said slowly, 'Yes. You are right. Excuse me.'
I walked down the main drag. A pimp seized my arm. 'I gotta fourteen-year-old girl, Jack. Puerto Rican. How's about it?'
'She's middle-aged already,' I told him. 'I want a six-year-old virgin and none of that sealed-while- you-wait shit. Don't try palming your old fourteen-year-old bats off on me.' I left him there with his mouth open.
I went into a store to price some Panama hats. The young man behind the counter started singing: 'Making friends, losing money.'
'This spic bastard is strictly on the chisel,' I decided.
He showed me some two-dollar hats. 'Fifteen dollar,' he said.
'Your prices are way out of line,' I told him, and turned and walked out. He followed me onto the street: 'Just a minute, Mister.' I walked on.
That night I had a recurrent dream: I was back in Mexico City, talking to Art Gonzalez, a former roommate of Allerton's. I asked him where Allerton was, and he said, 'In Agua Diente.' This was somewhere south of Mexico City, and I was inquiring about a bus connection. I have dreamed many times I was back in Mexico City, talking to Art or Allerton's best friend, Johnny White, and asking where he was.
I flew up to Mexico City. I was a little nervous going through the airport; some cop or Immigration inspector might spot me. I decided to stick close to the attractive young tourist I had met on the plane. I had packed my hat, and when I got off the plane I took off my glasses. I slung my camera over my shoulder.
'Let's take a cab into town. Split the fare. Cheaper that way,' I said to my tourist. We walked through the airport like father and son. 'Yes,' I was saying, 'that old boy in Guatemala wanted to charge me two dollars from the Palace Hotel out to the airport. I told him uno.' I held up one finger. No one looked at us. Two tourists.
We got into a taxi. The driver said twelve pesos for both to the center of town.
'Wait a minute,' the tourist said in English. 'No meter. Where your meter? You got to have a meter.'
The driver asked me to explain that he was authorized to carry airline passengers to town without a meter.
'No!' the tourist shouted. 'I not tourist. I live in Mexico City. ?Sabe Hotel Colmena? I live in Hotel Colmena. Take me to town but I pay what is on meter. I call police. Policia. You're required by law to have a meter.'
'Oh God,' I thought. 'That's all I need, this jerk should call the law.' I could see cops accumulating around the cab, not knowing what to do and calling other cops. The tourist got out of the cab with his suitcase. He was taking down the number.
'I call policia plenty quick,' he said.
I said, 'Well, I think I'll take this cab anyway. Won't get into town much cheaper. . . . Vamonos,' I said to the driver.
I checked into an eight-peso hotel near Sears, and walked over to Lola's, my stomach cold with excitement. The bar was in a different place, redecorated, with new furniture. But there was the same old bartender behind the bar, with his gold tooth and his moustache.
'?Como esta?' he said. We shook hands. He asked where I had been, and I told him South America. I sat down with a Delaware Punch. The place was empty, but someone I knew was bound to come in sooner or later.
The Major walked in. A retired Army man, gray-haired, vigorous, stocky. I ran through the list crisply with the Major:
'Johnny White, Russ Morton, Pete Crowly, Ike Scranton?'
'Los Angeles, Alaska, Idaho, don't know, still around. He's always around.'
