Saffire Read Online Free PDF Page A

about the girl’s mother, I slid my journal from my valise and pulled the pencil out from the coils of the journal. It was here I recorded all the things I thought Winona would like to hear about on my return. On the steamship tonight, I’d write a description of Saffire and Mrs. Penny and how Saffire had shown a high degree of class by playing along. Winona would like the story. She would like Saffire.
    I used the pencil to spell
Saffire
in the front pages of the book for her, two
f’
s, no
p
or
h.
I saw that my attention to the correct spelling gave her satisfaction.
    “My mother gave me the name Safrana,” she said. “But nobody remembers when I was called anything but Saffire. I decided to spell it the pretty way, not the way that the jewel is spelled. A
p
and an
h
is a silly way to spell the
f
sound. I think the people who invented the dictionary could have been more sensible about how to spell words. Like
colonel.
Do you see an
r
anywhere in that word in the dictionary?”
    I touched my knee.
    “Yup,” Saffire said. “In my dictionary that part of your leg would be spelled
n-e-e.
”
    We traded smiles.
    “And your grandfather’s name?”
    “He’s not my real grandfather, but he’s just like a grandfather to me. Ezequiel Sandoval. He has always helped me and my mother.”
    She spelled out Ezequiel’s first name and his surname.
    During my exile years, show after show, I had signed thousands of souvenir leaflets for
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World.
As I signed this novel, I forced myself not to use the automatic flourish in my signature that I once used with such misplaced pride.
    James Holt.
    I dated the inscription.
Sunday, January 10, 1909.
    I gave Saffire the book, and she accepted it gravely, as if the gift was a great honor. Then she opened it and immersed herself in the story again.
    I doubted Mrs. Penny would bother us anymore.
    So I began reading
The Game
and stayed inside the story until Billy May told Saffire that Colonel Goethals would not see her and that since Mr. Holt was the next person in line, it was time for Mr. Holt to have an audience with the colonel.
    She would not be dismissed that easily and asked, “Did the colonel read the note I left for him last week? He’s the only person who can help me.”
    “I have no answer for you,” Billy May said.
    “Then tell him I am going to keep coming back until I hear his answer. And if I don’t get an answer soon, tell him I meant what I put in the note.”
    Twenty minutes, I told myself as I stood to walk past Saffire, who said nothing to me.
    Twenty minutes. At most, that was all it would take to turn down whatever Goethals asked me to do and for me to begin my journey home.

T wo men waited in the office. The man behind the desk I recognized immediately from newspaper photos and because I had expected him there—Colonel George Washington Goethals.
    In the photos, he wore his military uniform, rounded collar fully buttoned up. Here, the uniform jacket was hanging on a hook on the wall, and he had on a white shirt already showing wrinkles from the heat and humidity, the sleeves rolled up. He had a squarish face with a thick, immaculately trimmed mustache as gray as his equally trimmed hair.
    The other man I recognized too, but for different reasons. It was the prissy man whose face was set in permanent disapproval of life. He must have gone around the building to come in through the office’s other door, at the back wall.
    “Mr. Miskimon,” Goethals said to him. “This will be a private audience.”
    A slight flinch crossed Miskimon’s face. He probably had not expected to be dismissed, but that was the extent of his protest. Without a sound, he departed through the rear door of the office.
    “Welcome to Panama.” Goethals gestured at a straight-backed chair opposite his desk.
    I remained standing. I wanted him to understand that while he might be the highest authority in the American Zone, I was