Panama by Shelby Hiatt

workers hack away at a feverish pace and pay us no attention. As many as fifteen holes in a single trunk, put in two or three sticks of dynamite, add cap and fuse, then plaster it over with mud until all the holes are filled and they go on to the next trunk. We watch the furious work—hundreds of men surrounding us, hacking the trees and packing in dynamite, no talk, only hard labor.
    Federico holds my hand with the grip of a parent. He's excited, his eyes shining, darting across the men and the dynamite sticks bristling from the trunks. We watch for a time, then a work whistle sounds and everything stops.
    A pall drops over the whole area and the workers move off to the side. Federico squeezes my hand and pulls me away, forces me behind him, his glance still darting around the alien landscape.
    In moments the laborers come back carrying lit torches in each hand. They stand at the farthest row of loaded trunks and wait. "We'll run with them," Federico says and squeezes my hand again.
    I don't know what he means until it starts.
    A whistle sounds and workers run back in among the trunks, and we run with them. Each worker lights his fuses, some trunks so large they have sixty-five or seventy dynamite sticks, and they run from one row to the next, from tree to tree, lighting fuses as fast as they can, the two of us with them at the edge of the wave of men moving across the stubbled forest, torches dipping and flying from trunk to trunk. Then behind us the first trunks begin to blow.
    Chunks of trees fly into the air. Dirt rises and rains down. Red streaks the sky, and the men with us are still lighting the rows ahead.
    The blasts creep forward in a wave from behind, my heart is bursting out of my chest. Federico never lets go of my hand—he pulls me along while the drum booms send spinning chunks of wood sky-high—thunderous, magnificent, one after the other. We reach the end gasping for breath and turn and watch the advancing explosions move across the blackened terrain—irregular, massive, huge clumps of wood lifting into the sky, branches and dirt and more blasts, and then the last explosions and quiet. The air clears and the workers move back in—they aren't finished. They do this every night.
    Federico leads me to a grassy hill off to the side. He lets go of my hand and we sit and watch. The laborers gather the splintered wood and pile it into gigantic heaps. They douse the heaps with crude oil, waves of the acrid scent drift to us, then one by one they touch off the stacks and the bonfires flare, looping high into the sky with crackling, breaking sounds. Federico never once looks away. The hell roars boom in front of us. The closer fires snap and pop as they eat through the remaining wood.
    What I know of blasting is in the Cut where Father does his work, and it's mild compared to this—battalions of tripod and Star drills run by compressed air pounding and grinding and jamming holes into the rock, followed by gangs of powder men, always black, of course, with boxes of dynamite that they carelessly throw down and then pound the drill holes full of explosives. They blow at 11:30, when the men are at lunch, and at 5:30, when they've gone home—mighty explosions, twice a day in addition to the ongoing smaller ones that make our porch chairs rock and Mother's cakes fall and are heard out at sea.
    But this, the clearing of the woods, I've never seen, only heard about vaguely. It's not a difficult part of the dig and Father has never mentioned it. To me it's staggering. And I don't know why Federico has me sitting with him to watch it.
Fifty
    The bonfires finally die down and still Federico stares at them. He's transported and pensive, somewhere else. Finally he takes a deep breath and turns to me.
    "What do you think?" A quaver in his voice.
    I shake my head, amazed, still breathless from running and the exhilaration of what I've seen. I smile, go serious, smile again, and shake my head in confusion.