THERE AND BACK AGAIN
Our driver, Dracula, has a thick slack body, and his head leans heavily to the right. One eye wanders and looks only up and left. The other is covered with an opaque membrane. His ungainly body is covered with a loose, soiled shirt and pants. It is a hot day in March 2007, and Dracula is taking me to get provisions for our Island Packet 420, Hope and Glory, where he and three other line handlers will live on our deck for the next four or five days on our journey through the Panama Canal.
Cars and buses fight for space on the streets of Colon. Drivers blow their horns and curse each other in Spanish, a language I don’t understand, driving over sidewalks and median strips to cut each other off. Dracula narrowly misses a pedestrian, but a cyclist is not so lucky. We knock him down and leave him on the ground, his bike a twisted wreck, without a
