Chapter 76
Jack-Jack-No-Take-Backs
It was such a simple dinner.
Joseph spent all afternoon smoking three kinds of meat.
We had invited two of my co-workers over for the evening.
Under normal circumstances, I would have loved the company and conversation. One of them was someone I considered my best friend.
The other one…
Well, when they eventually broke up, my nickname for him became Satan.
I think my dislike of him was probably unfair.
He was ex-military, and there was an aura of overconfidence about him that somehow felt akin
to Robert.
My dog loved the man.
Usually, Bowie had better taste than that.
My cat had to be locked upstairs.
We had a sign on the door:
Caution, Do Not Open… Demolition.
Demolition was my cat.
At any given time, there was about a fifty percent chance he would try to bite someone.
Those odds increased considerably when he sensed I didn’t like that person.
That brings me to the evidence portion of my story.
It has been said about me, often and by people who know me well, that I have an extreme lack of curiosity.
I have to own that one.
If something is none of my business, I don’t ask.
If what I am doing is none of your business, I’m genuinely surprised if you ask.
Every time.
Total shock.
As the years passed, I told fewer Panama stories.
People looked at me funny.
Eventually, I mostly stopped bothering.
Then Satan got into business that was none of his.
He had once worked in military security.
Exactly what he knew, how he knew it or why the subject came up that evening, I cannot tell you.
I didn’t ask.
Extreme lack of curiosity.
Exhibit A.
The two of them were trying to explain something to me that I was only marginally interested in when my friend suddenly blurted out,
“Why are you on a No-Fly List for Costa Rica?”
My world stopped.
I didn’t know I was on a No-Fly List for Costa Rica.
But I knew why.
Apparently, knowing why seemed much more important to me than wondering how the man sitting at my dinner table knew the list existed.
So I did what I do best.
I talked too much.
“Because if you’re under the main drug lord’s protection in Panama, you aren’t supposed to go back into Costa Rica. Well, you can go back, but then you could get kidnapped, tortured and maybe killed. His son made it very clear in the rules: if I went into Costa Rica, nobody was coming in after me. Protection didn’t extend that far.”
Silence.
Joseph was looking at me, surprised I had pulled that much detail from thirty years ago out of my head that quickly.
Then something happened that offended me far more than the No-Fly List.
Both of them looked at Joseph.
For confirmation.
“Excuse me?” I’m insulted.
“Joseph? Did that really happen?”
“Every word,” he answered.
“Stop that!”
I jabbed my finger toward my poor husband, completely forgetting that he had spent the entire afternoon smoking three kinds of meat for these people.
“Why are you asking him like you don’t believe me?”
They looked confused.
“He wasn’t even there!”
That did not appear to help.
They turned back to me.
“You were under drug lord protection?”
I had already forgotten that none of this was their business.
My mind was back in Panama.
“Only while I was living there.”
Pause.
“Want some pie?” I’m still hungry, but for something sweet.
Have you ever seen Satan surprised?
I have.
“Yes, I want pie. But you can’t just say that and not tell us the story!”
Actually, I could.
For thirty years, I had.
“I was told by a general that it was probably best if I didn’t talk about it.”
Another pause.
“But thirty years is a long time,” she said.
So I told them.
A fight in my classroom.
An offer.
An acceptance.
And one very confused general.
That dinner marked the return of the Voodoo Teacher.
Word got around to some of the other teachers.
One of them later went to Florida and met a tugboat operator who had lived in Panama during the drawdown.
She gave him my name.
He said he didn’t know me.
I laughed.
“Tell him the shoe-stealing-mud-hole teacher. The one who had a fight in her classroom and ended up under drug lord protection.”
She called him.
His response:
“The Voodoo Teacher? My brother was in her class!”
A few weeks later, he came to the North Georgia mountains to visit me.
Okay.
That wasn’t even a good lie.
The teacher who reintroduced us was a knockout of a woman—looks and brains.
I think I was the excuse.
But after Panama, it was strangely wonderful to have someone else remember.
Someone outside my family.
Someone who had been there.
Confirmation.
Angel had warned me before I ever interviewed for the job:
Panama could swallow you whole if you weren’t looking for the signs.
It almost did.
But as for the rest of it?
Jack-Jack-No-Take-Backs, Panama.
Thanks for the memories—
and you can keep the shoe.