He will rest.
June has tickets on a steamer from New York to Panama. But at the last minute, Father refuses to board. He’s too anxious; even drink won’t steady his nerves. He insists he can’t manage. He needs Edwin. The ship sails without them while Edwin is fetched up from Baltimore.
This is crushing. Edwin arrives in a bad mood and everything about the journey will keep him glowering. After insisting that Edwin is absolutely necessary, Father all but ignores him in favor of the raucous company and sentimental reminiscences of Old Spudge. June, too, shows little interest in him. Edwin’s not spent time with Hattie before. She’s dark-haired and beautiful. He can’t help but notice this. Which makes it all the more offensive when she treats him like a child. Hattie is younger by some months than Edwin, yet she seems to think she’s the same age as June. It’s insulting.
Sometime during his earlier travels, Edwin’s caul mysteriously disappeared from Mother’s cupboard. He is naked without it. Anything could happen to him now.
* * *
—
The passage across the Isthmus of Panama is about forty miles as the crow flies. This is the quickest route west, but still takes a traveler several perilous days. The Chagres River is full of snakes and caiman. Fevers are common and often fatal. Worst of all are the Derienni, highwaymen who rob and kill travelers on the trail. Edwin consoles himself that June and Hattie have crossed two times now and are voluntarily doing a third. How bad can it be?
It makes sense, given his age and experience, that June take charge of the trip and also of Father. Edwin watches June attempt to keep Father in line by continually reminding him of all the money about to be made. Good luck with that! Hattie’s fa?ade of good cheer is fooling no one and Edwin wonders why she bothers with it.
She makes several attempts to talk to him. She asks if Asia might ever want to act. She asks what role he’d most like to play. She tells him that when gold was discovered in San Francisco, the sailors all abandoned their ships to go look for it and now an uncanny ghost fleet floats about the bay. She’s already not as pretty as when the trip started, her hair in oily braids, her fingernails torn and filthy. But her eyes are as lively as ever, her mood unsinkable. Edwin answers in uninformative monosyllables until she stops trying. For the whole of the trip, Edwin hardly speaks to any of them.
In some ways, their timing is providential. Back in 1850, the railroad had hired Randolph Runnels, an ex–Texas ranger, to deal with the problem of the Derienni. Runnels was a young man, but experienced in murder; he’d served in the Indian Wars. Two years earlier, a Pentecostal preacher prophesied that a call would come for him, asking him to travel in a strange land over a river of demons and monsters to battle a dark and deadly pestilence. It was the Lord’s will that this call be accepted. When the railroad man arrived to fetch him, stammering out his request, Runnels said, “What took you so long?” His bag was already packed.
William Nelson was the American consul stationed in Panama City at that time. He met with Runnels and secretly empowered him to deal with the Derienni by whatever means he chose. Maybe take care of some labor unrest in his spare time. Runnels formed a society of vigilantes who called themselves the Isthmus Guard. In 1852, Runnels gets a message from Nelson. Now.
Next morning, the residents of Panama City wake to find thirty-seven bodies hanging along the seawall. These men were dragged from the brothels, gaming halls, and their homes in the night by masked members of the Isthmus Guard. In October, an additional forty-one men will be hanged.
The locals keep their distance from Runnels. If he speaks to them, which they desperately try to avoid, they look at the ground while answering. They call him El Verdugo, the Executioner, because, Runnels thinks, they don’t know the fist of God even when it strikes them in the face.
The Booths travel the Isthmus in the period between these two mass lynchings. This is a period of relative safety for travelers, but no one has told Edwin this. Nothing that happens feels safe to him. He’s more and more astonished at June and Hattie’s willingness to repeat the trip.
Eleven days after leaving New York, they arrive at the mouth of the Chagres River. Crowds of gold-seekers mob the beaches—some of them coming, some of them going. Those on their way home can be identified by their infirmities and their filth. Some of them are filthy rich.
On the hill above the beach is the ruin of Fort San Lorenzo, its ancient battlements crumbling, the jungle thrusting greenly through the embrasures. Bits of old cannon are scattered on the sand below. The ruined fort is the first thing Edwin sees and the main thing he remembers of Chagres. They are passing quickly onwards. In Chagres, the threat of yellow fever is so high, many insurance companies carry a rider canceling the policy if the holder spends the night here.
June hires men to pole them in the dugout canoes called bungos up the river to Gorgona. The rain is nearly constant, hitting the green tunnel of leaves above them with a sound like rattling beads. Also constant: monkeys, mosquitoes, and malaria. The water of the river is gritty with mud and the current runs slow.
June, Hattie, and Father share a bungo. Edwin is with Old Spudge. Edwin feels as if he’s stepped inside the pages of one of Rosalie’s adventure novels. He’s never imagined a place so alive, so crawling with every kind of creature; the landscape is in continual motion. Whenever the sun comes out, the colors dazzle—bright trees, vines, birds, butterflies. He hears the calls of parrots, the chatter of monkeys, the soughing river. Even the wildest vistas at home seem timid by comparison. Edwin finds himself constantly turning to catch the things he sees moving in the corners of his eyes. He’s deeply unsettled by this, half awe, half fear.
And wholly uncomfortable. Rosalie has good reasons for preferring to read about adventures rather than have them. The men who pole the boat wear almost nothing, which makes sense in the heat and the rain, but is an option closed to Edwin. His own clothes stick to him. He sweats, he shivers, and rain drips continually from his hat brim onto his nose. The bottom of the bungo is always an inch deep in water; it seeps through his boots and into his socks, turning the skin on his feet a nasty ash color that itches horribly and peels in strips.