Casco Viejo: the Second Season


Chapter Eight

The sun rose over the Pacific. It took Mitch Multusky a while to get used to the idea, but that’s what happens in a country that basically runs from west to east, with two coastlines along the north and south. Casco Viejo is on the western side of the Gulf of Panama, so the view of the rising sun was obviously due east but the bright line of morning glitter sparkled the Pacific defying a lifetime of logic. The Caribbean, with much less severe tides and often calmer seas, runs along the northern coast and leads to the Atlantic. Mitch remembered the time Barb and he were walking along the Amador Causeway, when they first visited Panama, and the sun set behind their view of the city. It was disorientating because the Pacific was at their backs. It was like his compass had gone haywire. “Hey, wait a minute,” Mitch had said. “How is this possible?” Had the world tilted in a different direction on its axis? No, but coming from the US, with an East Coast—Atlantic sunrise and a West Coast—Pacific sunset, it did feel as if his gyroscope was out of kilter. “Stop the presses,” Barb joked. “I think we have a scoop. Sun sets in the North.” Sometimes it still felt odd, another element that gave Panama an exotic feel.

A few fishing boats were silhouetted against the glare as they sped into port with that day’s catch. First one flock of pelicans, then another soared smoothly, effortlessly, just inches above the morning-calm water. Mitch never tired of calling them “the Panamanian air force,” because they usually flew in graceful line or “V” formations.

It was difficult getting up before seven every morning to take the dog for her walk, but after he was actually up and out, Mitch appreciated the beauty of a new day. Panama is near enough to the equator that there is basically the same amount of daylight and night, year-round, with the sun coming up around 6:30 every morning and setting every evening at about 6:30 p.m. There was no need for daylight-savings time because there was no more or less daylight to save. None of this seemed to affect Carmen, who pulled on her leash just a bit as she appeared to always enjoy being out and about sniffing the cellophane wrappers and Styrofoam cups that had collected along the promenade during the previous cool, breezy evening.

Most Panamanians were not careful where they threw their trash, so the streets, gutters, sidewalks and grassy patches were usually strewn with a plethora of Styrofoam cups, plates and boxes, with the added chance of chicken parts, which made such items irresistible to Carmen who loved pollo. Looking over the railing at the small beach, which was already strewn with tires that had floated in on high tide (“from I wonder where,” Mitch thought); the sandy area looked as if it had been decorated by a number of red, green and blue balloons, maybe two dozen that had blown in from a party somewhere across the bay. These colors mixed with the ubiquitous plastic bags, mostly white, shocking pink or lime green that littered much of the Panamanian landscape.

Every morning, Mitch and Carmen would encounter a crew of workers, mostly hefty women, in bright yellow tee shirts with “Aseo” printed in bold red lettering across their backs. When Mitch looked aseo up in his Spanish/English dictionary it translated to cleanliness and most of the gals seemed determined to scoop up as much debris as possible with their ragged brooms and rusty dust pans. The clean-up crews apparently did not appreciate dog doo, because, more than half the time, Mitch and Carmen not only were greeted with dirty looks, but often one of the gals would say something to Mitch in a peeved voice. Even though he didn’t know exactly what she was saying, Mitch got the drift and made an educated guess and pulled out the plastic bag he always carried to show that his intentions were honorable. Seeing a plastic bag clutched in one of Mitch’s big hands usually placated the workers. A garbage truck also came by almost every day to unload the bulging dumpsters that were scattered around the neighborhood. The result was that the town was both clean and filthy depending on the time of day in a before-and-after sequence that was repeated on a daily basis.

Mitch wondered which came first—the routine street sweepers, who might be even considered enablers of the litterbugs; or vice versa, the propensity of the average Panamanian to simply discard their trash, sometimes even just steps away from a rare, but not unheard of, can that necessitated daily cleanups. Most evidence led Mitch to believe that the latter was the case since he had numerous opportunities to observe people tossing cigarette packs off balconies and virtually anything and everything from condoms to beer cans from the windows of their cars. Cigarette butts formed rings around park benches and outside of restaurants, since a new law didn’t allow smoking inside. Some of those butts even probably belonged to his wife, Mitch figured. He had never smoked, but couldn’t give Barb a hard time about “her one vice” as he referred to her smoking habit. Mitch concluded that there was no Suzy Spotless, no Susanna Inmaculado in Panamanian culture to caution folks with the admonition “Don’t be a litterbug.”

While the little dog and her owner circled the block, government employees who worked at either the presidential compound or the ministries of Justice or Culture began taking all the available parking places, something that never failed to irritate Mitch. Many seemed to arrive even before breakfast, because parking along the narrow cobblestone streets was limited, which was Mitch’s point exactly. Soon, Mitch’s thoughts left the parking problem and went back to the day before and the first game of the season for the youth basketball team he coached.

The Casco Cougars, as they were called, lost their opening game in the 12-13-year-old league to a team from nearby Calidonia, by the score of 36 to 12. Mitch knew his boys weren’t very good and wondered what the rest of the league was like. “Maybe the kids weren’t much worse than the rest of ‘em,” Mitch had hoped. Now he had a suspicion that he had his work cut out for him. The game, which was played on a smallish court in an old church that was converted into a community center and gymnasium, was refereed in Spanish and Mitch suspected he wasn’t getting any breaks either. Even with some old ceiling fans rattling in the rafters, the gym was stifling hot and Mitch’s old coaching shirt from West Saginaw High was soaked in sweat. In a funny way he was relieved that the other team seemed competently coached with a couple of kids who looked like they had some ability. Mitch had been afraid (based on the lack of knowledge and experience of his players) that the whole operation might be too rinky-dink to tolerate. Now, he simply knew he had plenty of work to do to “coach ‘em up” to a standard where they might be competitive. Thank goodness for Tito Romero, who helped with translating the coach for the kids or it probably would be impossible. Actually, Mitch was learning a bit more Spanish and that was certainly a plus. So, if Tito and he could get the boys to show up regularly and take their very tall gringo coach seriously and stop laughing at his Spanish, maybe, just maybe there’s another bad team out there they could beat.

Finally, Carmen squatted and took a dump on the parking lot next to the National Theatre. Mitch looked around to see if anybody had noticed. This was the same lot where he couldn’t procure a parking pass because all the spots were taken up by those pesky government workers. “Well, fuck it,” Mitch thought as he spared himself the sensation of grabbing several steaming turds in his plastic covered hand and left the bag in his pocket. “Good pup,” Mitch said, “good pup.” Especially out on the concrete parking lot, the morning was already getting steamy hot.

When they got back to the apartment, and the report of “number three” was given, Barb handed Carmen a doggie treat and reiterated “Good pup, you’re such a good pup.” Carmen had a few slurps of water and hung around for a while and then casually sauntered over to the window which was open. The security grate on the outside was wet since the maintenance guy had watered the plants out in the small courtyard, but that didn’t stop Carmen from squeezing through.

“There she goes,” Barb said with a smile. Most everything her small, fragile looking black and white dog did, Barb considered cute.

“Write when you find work,” Mitch said.

Carmen was lucky because she had four legs instead of only two, like her people, because this meant that she had no trouble making her way along the sidewalks in Casco Viejo. The dog also didn’t know any better and so it didn’t bother her that the sidewalks were broken up to gravel in places where construction trucks had crushed the curbs. She simply wandered along, stepping over holes in the sidewalk that used to be covered with utility plates, long lost or stolen. Even when the plates were in place, they were sometimes loose and seldom reliable. Mitch had a rule, which Barb followed, to never step on plates or grates. “Watch your step” was a good policy. Cracks in places had widened to fissures. Halfway down a block, a sidewalk might change levels with a small step up or down. Curbs, with no disability access anywhere were never at a standard height. The curb in front of the Super Deli, a popular local sandwich shop, was over two-foot high, for example. At that point, Barb would have to go around, because the step up hurt her knee. Mitch often pretended to be surprised that the streets weren’t littered with the bodies of drunks from the night before who failed to negotiate the sidewalks that reminded him of “a moonscape.”

Often, Carmen simply walked in the street; and she wasn’t alone. The sidewalks were also quite narrow in most places, so the streets, which weren’t that much smoother, at least meant there was no place farther to fall. Okay, there were missing manholes, but these never bothered Carmen either. Some residents would hose off their balconies in the morning with no regard to the fact that the water dripped onto the sidewalk below. So many pedestrians also seemed to feel safer or more comfortable walking in the roadways. For some reason, most tourists sweating under their newly purchased Panama hats treated the streets as if they were on an esplanade and greeted oncoming cars with dumfounded surprise. The locals, children in particular, acted as if there were no cars at all. Mitch figured there had to be a number of pedestrian accidents, but was also fairly certain that the word had not gotten out. It dawned on Mitch that he never realized how trained he was as a child back in the States—look both ways before crossing; always walk facing traffic; always cross at intersections; wear white at night—these were rules he and most other folks followed routinely; but seemed unheard of in Panama.

School children hurried by in uniform white shirts and navy blue trousers or white blouses and blue jumpers. Men in short sleeves and ties sat on stools in front of storefront counters and sipped their coffee and chewed a bit of fried beef or crunched patacones, crispy fried plantains. Shop owners rolled up the corrugated steel shutters that protected their windows and doors, while various concierges swept the foyers and hosed down the steps of the buildings they tended. Carmen’s black and white ears were tuned to the constant murmur of automobile tires. Many horns honked, but mostly in a friendly greeting of two short bumps of the driver’s fist. Red Devil buses would stop at intersections and add more pedestrians to the uneven cobblestone thoroughfares and side streets and then rumble off in a cloud of dark grey diesel exhaust. Carmen’s black tail curved up behind in a crescent moon shape that made her appear alert and perky.

Carmen’s first regular stop was the Central Hotel construction site. This was the place that was supposed to revitalize Casco Viejo, by giving tourists some place to stay within the old city. There were a couple of bed and breakfast places and two or three hostels, but most of the time, tourists were bused in and led around in groups of 12 to 20. Often they left after bumping around the streets and stalling traffic, without buying anything and not stopping for lunch. The Hotel Central would change all that was the hope. Guests of the hotel would provide a more meaningful type of foot traffic—the type that stuck around for more than a couple of hours; browsed the gifts shops and actually purchased a souvenir or two; and whose plans included lunch at a sidewalk café; dinner at a restaurant and a few drinks at a bar. Until then, the bars, cafes and restaurants had to count on Panamanians coming in from other parts of the city on Friday and Saturday nights and the relatively few expat residents who did their best to patronize the local spots.

At that point in time the Hotel Central was a big dusty promise. When most of the interior was demolished, some of the unsupported exterior walls collapsed, leaving an incomplete shell of what was once one of Panama City’s best hotels. One whole corner of the façade was gone. Crews spent endless days (at least that’s how it seemed to nearby residents) pouring new concrete floors from an ingenious but noisy spout held by a boom that loomed over the steel girders. One after another wide cement mixer trucks would back up to the site, and the concrete would be emptied into a pipe that led to a pump. The workers in their Red hard hats and heavy boots were Carmen’s buddies. Before the first truck arrived, the men, mostly young Indians or blacks, would sit on the curb or park benches in the park across the street and toss crusts of bread to Carmen, who always acted grateful. Barb would have been mortified since it looked as if Carmen had not eaten in days, rather than less than a half hour. Some of the guys called her “Periodico,” because she was black on white like a newspaper. The rest called her simply perra, which was what she was. Nobody seemed to mind that she was around and to Carmen’s credit; she didn’t over stay her welcome and kept moving.

Soon, she found Horace aka Jamon sitting with his head in his hands in a back doorway not far from the gate to Beth’s backyard and Carmen’s ultimate destination. Jamon smelled of puke, and stale whiskey and regular old body odor, but Carmen didn’t seem to mind even after a sniff. “Buenas dias, Carmelita,” Jamon said with a weak but sincere smile. Carmen leaned her shoulder into Jamon’s damp shin in what Mitch called a “dog hug,” and accepted a friendly almost grateful pat from a man at the bottom. It is doubtful if the guy could give a name to it, but what Carmen provided instinctively was unconditional love. All the dog expected in return was a bit of affection, which was just about all Jamon had to offer. “Ciao, mi amiga,” Jamon said, when Carmen headed off toward Beth’s gate at the other end of the alley. When Jamon looked away for a moment, Carmen was gone under the gate. There was no way for the dog to know that the gate was locked tight. The normal smells of bacon and eggs were not present, but Carmen climbed the steps anyway. There was something there. One chair was knocked over and blocked the top of the stairs. Carmen paused for a moment and sniffed the air. In a quick vertical leap, she cleared the chair and landed next to Beth, who was sprawled on the deck. Beth Page was motionless, with her chest on the floor, with one arm beneath her and the other, elbow out and awkward to the side. Her left cheek was flat against a floorboard, and a trickle of blood dripped from her nose. Carmen licked some of the blood and also licked Beth’s pale cheek and closed eyelids.

Outside the locked gate, somebody called “Senora Beth, Senora Beth,” in a somewhat insistent, somewhat worried tone of voice. Carmen stood still and listened. It was Tica the maid, not in her usual spot. “Senora. Senora!” Carmen could not possibly understand, but might have sensed something was wrong. With her paw, she ever so gently nudged the breakfast lady on her shoulder, but Beth did not move. Twice more “Senora Beth! Senora,” and then Tica was gone.