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Zone Policeman 88

H >> Harry A. Franck >> Zone Policeman 88



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ZONE POLICEMAN 88

A CLOSE RANGE STUDY OF THE PANAMA CANAL AND ITS WORKERS

BY HARRY A. FRANCK

Author of "A Vagabond Journey Around the World" and "Four Months
Afoot in Spain"





TO A HOST OF GOOD FELLOWS THE ZONE POLICE

Quito, December 31, 1912





CHAPTER I


Strip by strip there opened out before me, as I climbed the
"Thousand Stairs" to the red-roofed Administration Building, the
broad panorama of Panama and her bay; below, the city of closely
packed roofs and three-topped plazas compressed in a scallop of
the sun-gleaming Pacific, with its peaked and wooded islands to
far Taboga tilting motionless away to the curve of the earth;
behind, the low, irregular jungled hills stretching hazily off
into South America. On the third-story landing I paused to wipe
the light sweat from forehead and hatband, then pushed open the
screen door of the passageway that leads to police headquarters.

"Emm--What military service have you had?" asked "the Captain,"
looking up from the letter I had presented and swinging half round
in his swivel-chair to fix his clear eyes upon me.

"None."

"No?" he said slowly, in a wondering voice; and so long grew the
silence, and so plainly did there spread across "the Captain's"
face the unspoken question, "Well, then what the devil are you
applying here for?" that I felt all at once the stern necessity of
putting in a word for myself or lose the day entirely.

"But I speak Spanish and--"

"Ah!" cried "the Captain," with the rising inflection of awakened
interest, "That puts another face on the matter."

Slowly his eyes wandered, with the far-away look of inner
reflection, to the vacant chair of "the Chief" on the opposite
side of the broad flat desk, then out the wide-open window and
across the shimmering roofs of Ancon to the far green ridges of
the youthful Republic, ablaze with the unbroken tropical sunshine.
The whirr of a telephone bell broke in upon his meditation. In
sharp, clear-cut phrases he answered the questions that came to
him over the wire, hung up the receiver, and pushed the apparatus
away from him with a forceful gesture.

"Inspector:" he called suddenly; but a moment having passed
without response, he went on in his sharp-cut tones, "How do you
think you would like police work?"

"I believe I should."

"The Captain" shuffled for a moment one of several stacks of
unfolded letters on his desk.

"Well, it's the most thankless damned job in Creation," he went
on, almost dreamily, "but it certainly gives a man much touch with
human nature from all angles, and--well, I suppose we do some
good. Somebody's got to do it, anyway."

"Of course I suppose it would depend on what class of police work
I got," I put in, recalling the warning of the writer of my letter
of introduction that, "You may get assigned to some dinky little
station and never see anything of the Zone,"--"I'm better at
moving around than sitting still. I notice you have policemen on
your trains, or perhaps in special duty languages would be--"

"Yes, I was thinking along that line, too," said "the Captain."

He rose suddenly from his chair and led the way into an adjoining
room, busy with several young Americans over desks and
typewriters.

"Inspector," he said, as a tall and slender yet muscular man of
Indian erectness and noticeably careful grooming rose to his feet,
"Here's one of those rare people, an American who speaks some
foreign languages. Have a talk with him. Perhaps we can arrange to
fix him up both for his good and our own."

"Ever done police duty?" began the Inspector, when "the Captain"
had returned to the corner office.

"No."

"Military ser--"

"Nor that either."

"Well, we usually require it," mused the Inspector slowly,
flashing his diamond ring, "but with your special qualifications
perhaps--

"You'd probably be of most use to us in plain clothes," he
continued, after a dozen questions as to my former activities; "We
could put you in uniform for the first month or six weeks until
you know the Isthmus, and then--

"Our greatest trouble is burglary," he broke off abruptly, rising
to reach a copy of the "Canal Zone Laws"; "If you have nothing
else on hand you might run these over; and the 'Police Rules and
Regulations,'" he added, handing me a small, flat volume bound in
light brown imitation leather.

I sat down in an arm-chair against the wall and fell to reading,
amid the clickity-click of typewriters, telephone calls even from
far-off Colon on the Atlantic, and the constant going and coming
of a negro orderly in shiningly ironed khaki uniform. By and by
the Inspector drifted into the main office, where his voice
blended for some time with that of "the Captain," At length he
came back bearing a copy of the day's Star and Herald, turned back
to the "Estrella de Panama" pages so rarely opened in the Zone.

"Just run us off a translation of that, if you don't mind," he
said, pointing to a short paragraph in Spanish.

Some two minutes later I handed him the English version of the
account of a near-duel between two Panamanians, and took once more
to reading. It was more than an hour later that I was again
interrupted.

"You'll want to catch the 5:25 back to Corozal?" inquired the
Inspector;" Mr.---, give him transportation to Culebra and back,
and an order for physical examination.

"You might fill out this application blank," he added, handing me
a long legal sheet, "then in case you are appointed that much will
be done."

The document began with the usual, "Name----, Birthplace----, and
so on." There followed the information that the appointee "must be
at least five feet eight; weigh one hundred and forty, chest at
least thirty-four inches--" Then suddenly near the bottom of the
back of the sheet my eyes caught the startling words;--"Unless you
are sure you are a man of physical appearance far above the
average do not fill out this application."

I was suddenly aware of a sinking feeling in the pit of my
stomach; the blank all but slipped from my nerveless fingers. Then
all at once there came back to me the words of some chance
acquaintance of some far-off time and place, words which were the
only memory that remained to me of the speaker, except that he had
lived long and gathered much experience, "Bluff, my boy, is what
carries a man through the world. Act as if you're sure you are and
can and you'll generally make the other fellow think so." I sat
down at a desk and filled out the application in my most self-
confident flourish.

"Go to Culebra to-morrow," said the Inspector, as I bade the room
good-day and stepped forth with my most military stride and
bearing, "and report back here Friday morning."

I descended to the world below, not by the long perspective of
stairs that leads down and across the gully to the heart of Ancon,
but by a short-cut that took me quickly into a foreign land. The
graveled highway at the foot of the hill I might not have guessed
was an international boundary had I not chanced to notice the
instant change from the trim, screened Zone buildings, each in its
green lawn, to the featureless architecture of a city where grass
is all but unknown; for the formalities of crossing this frontier
are the same as those of crossing any village street. It was my
first entrance into the land of the panamenos, technically known
on the Zone as "Spigoties," and familiarly, with a tinge of
despite, as "Spigs"; because the first Americans to arrive in the
land found a few natives and cabmen who claimed to "Speaga dee
Eng-leesh."

To Americans direct from the States Panama city ranks still as
rather a miserable dawdling village. But that is due chiefly to
lack of perspective. Against the background of Central America it
seemed almost a great, certainly a flourishing, city. Even to-day
there are many who complain of its unpleasant odors; to those who
have lived in other tropical cities its scent is like the perfumes
of Araby; and none but those can in any degree realize what "Tio
Sam" has done for the place.

Toward sunset I passed through a gateway with scores of fellow-
countrymen, all as composedly at home as in the heart of their
native land. Across the platform stood a train distinctively
American in every feature, a bilious-yellow train divided by the
baggage car into two sections, of which the five second-class
coaches behind the engine, with their wooden benches, were densely
packed in every available space with workmen and laborer's wives,
from Spaniards to ebony negroes, with the average color decidedly
dark. In the first-class cars at the Panama end were Americans,
all but exclusively white Americans, with only here and there a
"Spigoty" with his long greased hair, his finger rings, and his
effeminate gestures, and even a negro or two. For though Uncle Sam
may permit individual states to do so, he may not himself openly
abjure before the world his assertion as to the equality of all
men by enacting "Jim Crow" laws.

We were soon off. Settled back in the ample seat of the first real
train I had boarded in months, with the roar of its length over
the smooth and solid road-bed, the deep-voiced, masculine whistle
instead of the painful, puerile screech that had recently assailed
my ear, I all but forgot I was in a foreign land. The fact was
recalled by the passing of the train-guard,--an erect and self-
possessed young American in "Texas" hat, khaki uniform, and
leather leggings, striding along the aisle with a jerking, half-
arrogant swing of the shoulders. So, perhaps, might I too soon be
parading across the Isthmus! It was not, to be sure, exactly the
role I had planned to play on the Zone. I had come rather with the
hope of shouldering a shovel and descending into the canal with
other workmen, that I might some day solemnly raise my right hand
and boast, "I helped dig IT." But that was in the callow days
before I had arrived and learned the awful gulf that separates the
sacred white American from the rest of the Canal Zone world.
Besides, had I not always wanted to be a policeman and twirl a
club and stalk with heavy, law-compelling tread ever since I had
first stared speechless upon one of those noble beings on my first
trip out into the world twenty-one years before?

It was not without effort that I rose in time next morning to
continue on the 6:37 from Corozal across another bit of the Zone.
Exactly thus should one first see the Great Work, piece-meal,
slowly; unless he will go home with it all in an undigested lump.
The train rolled across a stretch of almost uninhabited country,
with a vast plain of broken rock on the right, plunged
unexpectedly through a short tunnel, and stopped at a station
perched on the edge of a ridge above a small Zone town backed by
some vast structure, above which here and there a huge crane
loomed against the sky of dawn. Another mile and the collectors
were announcing as brazenly as if they challenged the few "Spigs"
on board to correct them, "Peter M'Gill! Peter M'Gill!" We were
already moving on again before I had guessed that by this noise
they designated none other than the famous Pedro Miguel. The sun
rose suddenly as we swung sharply to the left and rumbled across a
girderless bridge. Barely had I time to discover that we were
crossing the great canal itself and to catch a brief glimpse of
the jagged gulf in either direction, before the train had left it
behind, as if the sight of the world-famous channel were not worth
a pause, and was roaring on through a hilly country of perpetual
summer. A peculiarly shaped reservoir sped past on the left, twice
or thrice more the green horizon rose and fell, and at 7:30 we
drew up at the base of Culebra, the Zone capital.

On the screened veranda of a somewhat sooty and dismal building
high up near the summit of the town, another and I were pacing
anxiously back and forth when, well on in the morning, an abrupt
and rather gloomy-faced American dashed into the building and one
of the rooms thereof, snapping over his shoulder as he
disappeared, "One of you!" The other had precedence. Then soon
from behind the wooden shutters came a growl of "Next!" and two
moments later I was standing in the reputed costume of Adam on the
scales within. At about ten-second intervals a monosyllable fell
from the lips of the morose American as he delved into my personal
make-up from crown to toe with all the instrumental circumspection
known to his secret-discovering profession. Then with a gruff
"Dress!" he sat down at a table to scratch a few fantastic marks
on the blank I had brought, and hand it to me as I caught up my
last garment and turned to the door. But, alas--tight sealed! and
all the day, though carrying the information in my pocket, I must
live in complete ignorance of whether I had been found lacking an
eye or a lung. For sooner would one have asked his future of the
scowling Parques than venture to invoke a hint thereof from that
furrow-browed being from the Land of Bruskness.

Meanwhile, as if it had been thus planned to give me such
opportunity, I stood at the very vortex of canal interest and
fame, with nearly an entire day before the evening train should
carry me back to Corozal. I descended to the "observation
platform." Here at last at my very feet was the famous "cut" known
to the world by the name of Culebra; a mighty channel a furlong
wide plunging sheer through "Snake Mountain," that rocky range of
scrub-wooded hills; severing the continental divide. At first view
the scene was bewildering. Only gradually did the eye gather
details out of the mass. Before and beyond were pounding rock
drills, belching locomotives, there arose the rattle and bump of
long trains of flat-cars on many tracks, the crash of falling
boulders, the snort of the straining steam-shovels heaping the
cars high with earth and rock, everywhere were groups of little
men, some working leisurely, some scrambling down into the rocky
bed of the canal or dodging the clanging trains, all far below and
stretching endless in either direction, while over all the scene
hovered a veritable Pittsburg of smoke.

All long-heralded sights--such is the nature of the world and man
--are at first glimpse disappointing. To this rule the great
Culebra "cut" was no exception. After all this was merely a hill,
a moderate ridge, this backbone of the Isthmus the sundering of
which had sent its echoes to all corners of the earth. The long-
fed imagination had led one to picture a towering mountain, a very
Andes.

But as I looked longer, noting how little by comparison were the
trains I knew to be of regulation U. S. size, how literally tiny
were the scores upon scores of men far down below who were doing
this thing, its significance regained bit by bit its proper
proportions. Train after train-load of the spoil of the "cut"
ground away towards the Pacific; and here man had been digging
steadily, if not always earnestly, since a year before I was born.
The gigantic scene recalled to the mind the "industrial army" of
which Carlyle was prone to preach, with the same discipline and
organization as an army in the field; and every now and then, to
bear out the figure, there burst forth the mighty cannonade, not
of war, but of peace and progress in the form of earth-upheaving
and house-rocking blasts of dynamite, tearing away the solid rock
below at the very feet of the town.

I took to the railroad and struck on further into the unknown
country. Almost before I was well started I found myself in
another town, yet larger than Culebra and with the name "Empire"
in the station building; and nearly every rod of the way between
had been lined with villages of negroes and all breeds and colors
of canal workers. So on again along a broad macadamized highway
that bent and rose through low bushy ridges, past an army encamped
in wood and tin barracks on a hillside, with khaki uniformed
soldiers ahorse and afoot enlivening all the roadway and the
neighboring fields. Never a mile without its town--how different
will all this be when the canal is finished and all this community
is gone to Alaska or has scattered itself again over the face of
the earth, and dense tropical solitude has settled down once more
over the scene.

Panama, they had said, is insupportably hot. Comparing it with
other lands I knew I could not but smile at the notion. Again it
was the lack of perspective. Sweat ran easily, yet so fresh the
air and so refreshing the breeze sweeping incessantly across from
the Atlantic that even the sweating was almost enjoyable. Hot!
Yes, like June on the Canadian border--though not like July. It is
hot in St. Louis on an August Sunday, with all the refreshment
doors tight closed--to strangers; hot in the cotton-fields of
Texas, but with these plutonic corners the heat of the Zone shows
little rivalry.

The way led round a cone-shaped hill crowned by another military
camp with the Stars and Stripes flapping far above, until I came
at last in sight of the renowned Chagres, seven miles above
Culebra, to all appearances a meek and harmless little stream
spanned by a huge new iron bridge and forbidden to come and play
in the unfinished canal by a little dam of earth that a steam-
shovel will some day eat up in a few hours. Here, where it ends
and the flat country begins, I descended into the "cut," dry and
waterless, with a stone-quarry bottom. A sharp climb out on the
opposite side and I plunged into rampant jungle, half expecting
snake-bites on my exposed ankles--another pre-conceived notion--
and at length falling into a narrow jungle trail that pitched down
through a dense-grown gully, came upon a fenced compound with
several Zone buildings on the banks of the Chagres, down to which
sloped a broad green lawn.

Here dwells hale and ruddy "Old Fritz," for long years keeper of
the fluviograph that measures and gives warning of the rampages of
the Chagres. Fritz will talk to you in almost any tongue you may
choose, as he can tell you of adventures in almost any land, all
with a captivating accent and in the vocabulary of a man who has
lived long among men and nature. Nor are Fritz' opinions those
gleaned from other men or the printed page. So we fell to fanning
ourselves this January afternoon on the screened and shaded
veranda above the Chagres, and "Old Fritz," lighting his pipe,
raised his slippered feet to the screen railing and, tossing away
the charred remnant of a match, began:--

"Vidout var dere iss no brogress. Ven all der vorld iss at peace,
all der vorld goes to shleep."

Police headquarters looked all but deserted on Friday morning.
There had been "something doing" in Zone criminal annals the night
before, and not only "the Captain" but both "the Chief" and the
Inspector were "somewhere out along the line." I sat down in the
arm-chair against the wall. A half-hour, perhaps, had I read when
"Eddie"--I am not entitled, perhaps, to such familiarity, but the
solemn title of "chief clerk" is far too stiff and formal for that
soul of good-heartedness striving in vain to hide behind a bluff
exterior--"Eddie," I say, blew a last cloud of smoke from his
lungs to the ceiling, tossed aside the butt of his cigarette, and
motioned to me to take the chair beside his desk.

"It's all off!" said a voice within me. For the expression on
"Eddie's" face was that of a man with an unpleasant duty to
perform, and his opening words were in exactly that tone of voice
in which a man begins, "I am sorry, but--" Had I not often used it
myself?

"The Captain," is how he really did begin, "called me up from
Colon last night, and--"

"Here's where I get my case nol prossed," I found myself
whispering. In all probability that sealed document I had sent in
the day before announced me as a physical wreck.

"--and told me," continued "Eddie" in his sad, regretful tone, "to
tell you we will take you on the force as a first-class policeman.
It happens, however, that the department of Civil Administration
is about to begin a census of the Zone, and they are looking for
any men that can speak Spanish. If we take you on, therefore, the
Captain would assign you to the census department until that work
is done--it will probably take something over a month--and then
you would be returned to regular police duty. The Chief says he'd
rather have you learn the Isthmus on census than on police pay.

"Or," went on "Eddie," just as I was about to break in with, "All
right, that suits me,"--"or, if you prefer, the census department
will enroll you as a regular enumerator and we'll take you on the
force as soon as that job is over. The--er--pay," added "Eddie,"
reaching for a cigarette but changing his mind, "of enumerators
will be five dollars a day, and--er--five a day beats eighty a
month by more than a nose."

We descended a story and I was soon in conference with a slender,
sharp-faced young man of mobile features and penetrating eyes
behind which a smile seemed always to be lurking. On the Canal
Zone, as in British colonies, one is frequently struck by the
youthfulness of men in positions of importance.

"I'll probably assign you to Empire district," the slender young
man was saying, "there's everything up there and almost any
language will sure be some help to us. This time we are taking a
thorough, complete census of all the Zone clear back to the Zone
line. Here's a sample card and list of instructions."

In other words kind Uncle Sam was about to give me authority to
enter every dwelling in the most cosmopolitan and thickly
populated district of his Canal Zone, and to put questions to
every dweller therein, note-book and pencil in hand; authority to
ramble around a month or more in sunshine and jungle--and pay me
for the privilege. There are really two methods of seeing the
Canal Zone; as an employee or as a guest at the Tivoli, both of
them at about five dollars a day--but at opposite ends of the
thermometer.

There remained a week-end between that Friday morning and the last
day of January, set for the beginning of the census. Certainly I
should not regret the arrival of the day when I should become an
employee, with all the privileges and coupon-books thereunto
appertained. For the Zone is no easy dwelling-place for the non-
employee. Our worthy Uncle of the chin whiskers makes it quite
plain that, while he may tolerate the mere visitor, he does not
care to have him hanging around; makes it so plain, in fact, that
a few weeks purely of sight-seeing on the Zone implies an
adamantine financial backing. In his screened and full-provided
towns, where the employee lives in such well-furnished comfort,
the tourist might beat his knuckles bare and shake yellow gold in
the other hand, and be coldly refused even a lodging for the
night; and while he may eat a meal in the employees' hotels--at
near twice the employee's price--the very attitude in which he is
received says openly that he is admitted only on suffrance--
permitted to eat only because if he starved to death our Uncle
would have the bother of burying him and his Zone Police the
arduous toil of making out an accident report.

Meanwhile I must change my dwelling-place. For the quartermaster
of Corozal had need of all the rooms within his domain, need so
imperative that seventeen bona fide and wrathy employees were even
then bunking in the pool-room of Corozal hotel. Work on the Zone
was moving steadily Pacificward and the accommodations refused to
come with it--at least at the same degree of speed.

Nor was I especially averse to the transfer. The room-mate with
whom fate had cast me in House 81 was a pleasant enough fellow, a
youth of unobjectionable personal manners even though his "eight-
hour graft" was in the sooty seat of a steam-crane high above
Miraflores locks. But he had one slight idiosyncrasy that might in
time have grown annoying. On the night of our first acquaintance,
after we had lain exchanging random experiences till the evening
heat had begun a retreat before the gentle night breeze, I was
awakened from the first doze by my companion sitting suddenly up
in his cot across the room.

"Say, I hope you're not nervous?" he remarked.

"Not immoderately."

"One of my stunts is night-mare," he went on, rising to switch on
the electric light, "and when I get 'em I generally imagine my
room-mate is a burglar trying to go through my junk and--"

He reached under his pillow and brought to light a "Colt's" of 45
caliber; then crossing the room he pointed to three large
irregular splintered holes in the wall some three or four inches
above me, and which I had not already seen simply because I had
not chanced to look that way.

"There's the last three. But I'm tryin' to break myself of 'em,"
he concluded, slipping the revolver back under his pillow and
turning off the light again.

Which is among the various reasons why it was without protest
that, with "the Captain's" telephoned consent on the ground that I
was now virtually on the force, I took up my residence in Corozal
police station. 'T is a peaceful little building of the usual Zone
type on a breezy knoll across the railroad, with a spreading tree
and a little well-tended flower plot before it, and the broad
world stretching away in all directions behind. Here lived
Policeman T----and B---." First-class policemen" perhaps I should
take care to specify, for in Zone parlance the unqualified noun
implies African ancestry. But it seems easier to use an adjective
of color when necessary. Among their regular duties was that of
weighing down the rocking-chairs on the airy front veranda, whence
each nook and cranny of Corozal was in sight, and of strolling
across to greet the train-guard of the seven daily passengers;
though the irregular ones that might burst upon them at any moment
were not unlikely to resemble a Moro expedition in the
Philippines. B--- and I shared the big main room; for T----, being
the haughty station commander, occupied the parlor suite beside
the office. That was all, except the black Trinidadian boy who sat
on the wooden shelf that was his bed behind a huge padlocked door
and gazed dreamily out through the bars--when he was not carrying
a bundle to the train for his wardens or engaged in the janitor
duties that kept Corozal station so spick and span. Oh! To be sure
there were also a couple of negro policemen in the smaller room
behind the thin wooden partition of our own, but negro policemen
scarcely count in Zone Police reckonings.

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