Chapter 20
Panama
April 1854
The parrots on the isthmus were driving Victor mad. Their screeching grew louder as the hollowed-out logs—bungoes—floated up the Chagres River. Tormenting him.
Parrots screeched, and the monkeys chattered like a rabble of women, following their bungo through the jungle as twelve of the ship’s passengers skirted around rapids and branches and the hulls of boats abandoned in the water. Another bungo followed them with their luggage.
Patience, he tried to tell himself. Soon they would be on another ship, cruising toward California. In just a few weeks, he would be in Sacramento City.
Three days ago, the ship from Boston had anchored far off the shore of this godforsaken wilderness. He and the other passengers had climbed down a rope ladder into a skiff that brought them to a muddy village, where they’d secured transportation across the sixty miles of isthmus.
Though a bungo was hardly a decent source of transportation. If he could carry his belongings, he’d walk through the jungle instead of creeping up the river in a log.
The first day of their river journey, the passengers around him had talked endlessly about the spectacular greens in the foliage, of the colors on the birds that flew down the river before them, but the fascination was long over for all of them. They’d been promised a two-day journey by river, but the crew didn’t seem in any hurry to rush their trip.
Two half-naked natives—one in front of the boat and one behind him—dragged, towed, and sometimes appeared to row their passengers around the curves in the narrow canal. Mosquitos swarmed around Victor’s head, biting his neck. The sun burned his hands.
He’d purchased a ridiculous-looking hat called a Panama to keep the sun off his head, but the rays found every other spot of bare skin and scorched it. The makeshift canopy over them, made of dried leaves, did nothing to keep the sun off him either.
He’d packed swiftly back home for a trip in the snow, not for a journey across this stifling country. If he were back at his plantation, he’d strip down to his trousers like the natives. Then roll his pants up to his knees.
Yesterday he’d tried to cool off by dipping his hand into the river, but one of the crew slapped him with a long pole. Victor had started to rebuke the man until he pointed at an ugly creature sunning itself on a rock, its beady eyes watching their boat.
A crocodile.
The sole woman passenger shrieked, but Victor just stared back at the animal. Until then, he’d only seen pictures of crocodiles, and none that he remembered did justice to this creature. Thorns peaked across its armored back, and its checkered gray scales blended into the rock. Sharp teeth were curved like a dozen sickles outside its mouth and bent into a strange sort of smile.
Victor had smiled back and then dipped his fingers into the water again.
An hour later, the boat floated out from the muddy banks and noisy canopy of the jungle. The land beside the river flattened as they drifted beside a field of sugarcane, the shoots emerging from the morass. He could almost taste the sweetness of sugar in his mouth.
Tonight they were supposed to arrive in Panama City, where there were restaurants and American hotels. After three nights sleeping on a hammock, covered in scratchy mosquito netting, he would rent a decent bed. Then he would eat pork loin, perhaps, or some sort of mutton. A nice cream or pie for dessert.
He turned to talk to the man sitting on the bench behind him. Levi Brooks, the agent of a bank in San Francisco, had made this trip three times already to escort shipments of gold to New York. “Are we almost to Panama City?” Victor asked.
Levi chuckled. “Hardly.”
Victor stiffened. He hated people laughing at him. “When will we arrive?”
“In another day or two, we’ll get to the trail,” Levi said.
Victor disliked the man, but he needed more information. “What sort of trail?”
“Didn’t they give you a travel pamphlet when you booked passage?”
“Of course.” He’d packed it into the leather portfolio now clutched in his lap. “But I thought this river went all the way across the isthmus.”
“We have to take an old mule trail over the Continental Divide before we go down into Panama City. You can rent a mule, but I don’t recommend it. Too many of them fall off the cliffs and . . .” He stopped.
“I’m not afraid of a mule trail,” Victor said.
“That’s good. Most people get skittish when they see it.”
The faster he could get down the trail, out of this dreadful place, the better.
The rower pointed out a cluster of primitive huts on the side of the river, each one sewn together with dried grass and bamboo, the roofs thatched with palm leaves. Perched on one was a black vulture. “We stop here.”
Levi called out to the man. “We paid to travel six miles today.”
The native shrugged. “Someone else paid us more to return to the last village.”
“But we had an agreement—”
“We will send someone for you.”
The native directed the bungo closer to the bank, and they had no choice but to disembark. The men rolled up their trousers and waded through the mud. One of the natives carried the woman passenger and then all the luggage to shore.
Victor turned toward Levi. “Can we walk to the trail?”
“You can try, but I doubt you’ll make it.” Levi set his bag on the grass. “We’ll hire another bungo in the morning.”
The aroma of fish stew seeped out from a hut as one of the villagers came forward, welcoming them. They would host the visitors here—and feed them—for a preposterous fee. Victor rented a hammock inside a hut and then sat down under a palm tree by himself, a temporary relief from the infliction of sun.
Once he got to Sacramento, he would book a room in a nice hotel. One that would cater to a gentleman. The natives here might not have an appreciation for Americans, but California would be civilized. No more sleeping in huts or traveling through the jungle. No more eating half-cooked fish or beans.
He pulled out a sketchpad from his bag and began to draw a picture of Isaac so he could show people when he arrived in Sacramento. He outlined the boy’s face and shaded in part of his skin. Then he pulled out the picture he’d drawn of Mallie long ago. Isaac had his mother’s eyes. Her smile. Isaac’s nose was easy to draw. He saw it staring back at him whenever he looked in a mirror.
When he finished the picture, he began sketching Mallie again. Instead of posing at his house, he drew her on the steps of Scott’s Grove, her silk-clad arm draped over the banister.
He glanced back and forth between the portraits of Isaac and Mallie as the sun began to set, at the two people who meant everything to him. The two people who were supposed to love him back. And his blood began to boil again.
Isaac would never run away from him. Alden—like Eliza—must have forced him to leave. Kidnapped him from Scott’s Grove. Or maybe he’d tricked him into going west. Alden probably lied, telling Isaac that he’d take him home to Victor before forcing him onto a ship. Isaac was probably crying for Victor right now.
A scorpion crawled over the sandy ground as the afternoon darkened. It was moving toward the sugarcane field.
He would find Isaac, no matter how long it took to get to California. Then he’d make Alden pay for stealing his boy.