“A woman who looks like you? I scared already.”
Henry splashed water in Jeb’s face. “That how you talk to your superiors? Where the others at?”
“Where you think?” Jeb indicated the mess hall with a jerk of his head.
Henry rubbed himself dry with Jeb’s towel. The little girl on the beach had stayed with him, her green eyes so open and friendly despite his appearance. And her mother’s expression, so familiar to him from his years on the road. He imagined what she would make of the veterans when they arrived at the barbecue after hours of drinking beer in the mess. It would fulfill her every fear and expectation. He was surprised to find it bothered him, as he had long become used to reactions like hers. Maybe it was seeing Missy again, or being in the familiar place of his past, but something felt different. He wanted it to be different, and not just for one silly white woman, but for the men themselves. For Selma. For Missy. And yes, for himself. “We’ll see about that.”
• • •
Henry entered the mess hall and said, “Evenin’, gentlemen,” in his best parade ground voice. The faces at the tables glanced up briefly, then returned to their drinks. Inside the hall was a miasma of sweat and beer fumes. The men looked and smelled like vagrants.
“Oh, hey, Henry,” said Sonny, a big placid fellow from Alabama with a lazy eye. “Want a beer?” Sonny had spent the war humping loads from supply ships on the docks of Bordeaux.
“Time to get ready,” Henry said. “Anyone goin’ to town needs to be cleaned up and standing in formation at 1700 hours. We gonna show these folks we ain’t the animals they think we are.”
“What do we care what a bunch of Conchs think of us?” This from Two-Step, a heavyset troublemaker from South Carolina with pale eyes and a permanent sunburn, famed for his uncanny ability to evade both bullets and blame. He had spent more time in prison than out since the end of the war. “It’s the Fourth of July, motherfucker! They should be kissing my sorry white ass.”
Murmurs of assent from the others. Henry’s eyes traveled around the room. No one would meet his gaze until it rested on a big, square gunner from Missouri called Max Hoffman. Although he was wide as he was tall, Max had not had an easy time in the camp. Known as “Kraut,” he was the target of practical jokes and worse, but he was no pushover. Henry had witnessed him stand up to Two-Step, despite the beating that inevitably followed, which was a rare sight indeed in the camp. Max’s eyes registered disgust at Two-Step’s performance. He opened his mouth to speak but then, with a small shake of his head, closed it again. Clearly this was not a battle he wanted to fight.
Henry’s boys, Franklin and Lemuel, looked uncomfortable but said nothing. Henry understood. They had to live and work alongside these men, who had shown themselves capable of extreme violence over the pettiest excuse.
“You can go fuck yourself, Henry Roberts,” Two-Step said with lazy insolence. “You ain’t in charge of us.” When he was bayoneted in the Argonne Forest, Two-Step had pulled the blade from his body and stabbed it straight into the German’s mouth. He and his crew would sooner shoot themselves in the head than take orders from a black officer.
This was too much for Lemuel. “Now, Two-Step, that ain’t the way to talk to a officer.” Lemuel flicked through the Bible that accompanied him everywhere, including into combat, where it had proved its worth. The stained leather cover was scored with the indentation from a bullet. Lemuel’s quotations, however, usually confused rather than illuminated. “Ecclesiastes tell us, Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.”
“Shut up, you fat baboon,” said Milos Dubcek. One of Two-Step’s crew, he was a large man with a surprisingly delicate constitution, which had earned him the nickname Sick Bay. He slammed the book shut. “All I know is we gonna have us a good time tonight, ain’t we, boys?” And he rubbed his crotch with meaningful slowness.
Henry caught a sideways glance from Franklin’s one eye. Franklin had been a carpenter in Pennsylvania before he enlisted; now he spent his free time carving delicate sculptures of birds and animals from driftwood. Henry had carried him from the battlefield when Franklin lost an eye in a grenade attack. The scarred socket itched when he was nervous. Franklin scratched at it now.
Two-Step leaned back in his chair, hands linked behind his head. This was not the first time he had gotten in the way. Henry had met many like him in the army, both white and colored, men just out for what they could get. Even among the hard cases in the camp, Two-Step had a reputation for calculated, cunning brutality. His frequent stays in the federal pen had made him an artist of manipulation and subterfuge. Henry avoided him as much as possible, but there had been inevitable clashes, some petty and others not. I should walk away, just walk away. As he had done so many times in the past.
But an unfamiliar feeling crept up on him: the feeling that something mattered. He thought again of the little white girl on the beach. He could easily imagine the kind of evening that Two-Step and his crew had in mind. Resolve solidified inside him. Even if it was only for one night, he was determined they would behave like men. He held Two-Step’s cold gaze while making fast calculations of weight, angle, and speed. The silence in the tent rang with anticipation.
Henry saw his chance and pushed hard on Two-Step’s chair. The man went over on his back, limbs flailing. Before he could react, Henry’s boot was on his neck with almost enough pressure to crush his windpipe, but not quite. Franklin grappled with his thrashing legs.
Pale eyes bulged up at Henry, lips bared across a mouthful of ocher teeth. “Help me, boys!” gasped the prone Two-Step. “Help me!”
No one moved.
“Now listen to me!” Henry said. “Those of you not from Florida won’t be familiar with our giant cockroaches. They get BIG down here.” Two-Step squirmed under his boot just like an insect. “The only way to deal with them is to stomp on ’em. Hard.”
Quiet chuckles flickered around the room. Henry did not turn his head to look. He knew he would pay for this at some point. Two-Step could not let this insult go unpunished. But he didn’t care. “So I say again: all the human beings should be ready at 1700 hours to march into town, and I do mean march. Then we’re gonna have ourselves a civilized evening with the other humans. And you know why?” He scanned the faces, one at a time. They had come here from every part of the country, joined together by a desperate hope for something better. Some of them were too far gone to reach, sunk in their swamp of despair, but a few seemed to pay attention. “Not even because of what the town thinks of us, but because we owe it to ourselves. The bugs”—he pushed off of Two-Step’s neck—“should stay here in this shit hole where they belong.”
Two-Step coughed and gasped on the dirt floor, a deep tread pattern on his throat. Henry saw in his almost-colorless blue eyes a promise: this ain’t over.
Trent Watts, camp superintendent, observed all of this from the doorway of his office, an unlit stump of cigar clamped between his teeth. Two-Step he knew to be a vicious thug who would as soon cut your throat as look at you, and sly with it. Despite his best efforts, Trent had never managed to tie him to any of the many crimes he had almost certainly committed since joining the project. His enemies suffered terrible accidents, like being crushed by falling timbers that mysteriously loosed their bonds. Property went missing; nothing valuable, of course, as the veterans owned nothing of value. Just little things, like packs of cigarettes or a picture in a tarnished frame. Yes, Two-Step was a slippery son of a bitch who usually got other people to do his fighting for him, patsies like Stan Mulligan and Tecumseh “Tec” Brown, who at that moment were helping Two-Step regain his feet. No, Trent was not at all displeased to see Two-Step on his back under Henry’s boot.
But much as Trent would have liked to get Two-Step taken away in handcuffs, Henry was a worse problem for him. For it was Henry who constantly complained to him about everything, from the food to the latrines to the arran
gement of the cabins to the goddamn way they folded the flag when they took it down at night. Henry always had a better plan, with that polite smile, that way of talking that managed to sound both respectful and patronizing at the same time. Trent had always known that nothing good would come of having niggers in the army, especially not nigger officers. Henry Roberts was walking proof. He threw down the cigar and moved silently away.
• • •
At 1700 hours sharp, Henry emerged from his cabin, ready to lead his men on the march to town. In one respect, Two-Step was right: Henry was not in charge of them, not anymore. The trouble was that nothing had filled the vacuum left by army discipline—and army order—in this desolate camp. In the service, the badges on a man’s uniform told you how to behave toward him. Now they were all equals in misery. The supervisor, Trent Watts, had no interest in anything except getting the bridge finished on time and on budget, by any means possible. He did not seem to grasp, despite Henry’s repeated pleas, that the revolting food, the ever-present stench of shit, and the cabins that flooded every time it rained were not the best things for getting men to work long and hard in the hot sun. With better food and living conditions, Henry reasoned, the work would get done better and faster, but Watts gave this argument no credence at all. “These men are animals,” he had said. “Put them in a palace and they’ll still shit in the bed.”
It was intolerable, all of it. And yet they did tolerate it, because the alternative was worse: a place in a freezing soup kitchen line in some gray northern town. It was no surprise to Henry that there were men like Two-Step in the camp; the surprise was that all of them were not like him.
He emerged from his cabin to find a group of men standing to attention by the flagpole, all with their serious military faces on. While they could not be described as smartly dressed, they had each made an effort. They were clean, hair combed, beards trimmed. In a special nod to decorum, Franklin wore a patch over his eye socket. Max Hoffman stood in the mess hall doorway, smoking. Next to him was Two-Step, arms crossed. He spat on the ground as the group passed by, eyes fixed in a hateful stare at Henry.
Henry took his place at the head of the formation. “Gentlemen, now we ready.”
They had traveled maybe a hundred yards from the camp gate when there came a scuffle at the rear. Max Hoffman puffed to a stop next to Henry. “I ain’t a big fan of cockroaches,” said Hoffman.
They fell into step. The sun slanted across the formation, lying in orange bars on the dusty road. Sweat stained their backs and under their arms.
“Henry,” said Max, “I hear you from Heron Key? That so?”
“Yep.”
They trudged on a bit farther. Henry was very much aware that Max expected him to say more. Sure enough, after a few more silent paces, Max said, “That why you came back here?”
Henry glanced at Max. The man had broken ranks to walk with them. Now he was asking personal questions. Although Henry despised all that Two-Step stood for, he didn’t need to go out of his way to find trouble. What’s his game? But Max’s broad face, pink with exertion, showed only open curiosity.
“I woulda gone anywhere there was work,” said Henry. He hitched up his pants, which were too big for his skinny frame, despite Selma’s cooking. “And since the work was here, it seemed like the Lord intended me to see my family.”
Max stared at the sea, hand shading his face, and said nothing for a few minutes. There was only the crunch of boots on oyster shells, the low rumble of conversation from the other men. A pelican buzzed them on its way to the water. Cigarette smoke drifted on the hot breeze. “I had a family too, long time ago. Here.” He pulled from his pocket a yellowed, creased photo of a little boy of about six with a big gap between his front teeth. Same square face, pink cheeks, cowboy hat askew on his head.
Henry studied the photo. “That a fine boy you got there. Where he at now?”
Max returned the picture to his pocket with a shrug. Henry knew that kind of shrug. He had used it many times when asked unanswerable questions. “Dunno,” said Max. “His mother took him away…when my drinkin’…well, you know.”
“Yeah.” A look of understanding passed between them. “Yeah, I do.” Henry hesitated one more moment, conscious that he was crossing some invisible line. “That why you here?”
Max shrugged. “I guess so. When it all went wrong, I just started walkin’. I figured I’d walk till there was no more road.” He squinted into the sun. “Seems to me like that place is here.”
He’s right, Henry thought. This is it, the place where the road ends. It was where you ended up when you had tried everything else. It was a place of last resort. Every man marching with him left a trail of wrecked hopes and shattered lives, like the shells that crumbled under their boots.
They marched on into the deepening twilight.
Chapter 6
When Missy arrived at the beach, Selma already had the gator steaks on the grill, shooing the flies away with one hand while she flipped the meat with the other. A pot of swamp cabbage boiled on the fire with plenty of bacon and sugar. A line of people had formed by the makeshift tables, which were trimmed with red, white, and blue bunting, filling their plates with slaw and fried conch and scoops of sweet coquinas on their way to the grill. A few yards away, a series of posts stuck in the sand ran down the beach to the surf, strung with twine to mark the boundary of the whites’ area. Atop each post fluttered a small American flag.
The horizon was awash with apricot light beneath a band of china-blue sky. Ridges of insubstantial clouds mirrored the sand in the shallows. Very unusually, the afternoon thunderstorms had passed over them, driven inland by a strong onshore wind. Missy fanned herself with a paper plate, grateful that at least the air moved.
“Can I help?” she asked. Selma took the plate of Mama’s corn bread and set it on the table. Mama had delivered a bucket of her famous barbecue sauce earlier that day to grace the roasted pig to come from Ronald LeJeune. Every year, he made a big show of his generosity toward the colored folks; he so loved playing the beneficent white man. Some coloreds took against his preening and posturing, but to Selma, it was simple: food was food. “You cain’t eat principles,” she always said.
“In that dress?” Selma eyed her up and down. “I don’t think so.” Selma’s apron was spattered with grease, her wrists marked with welts from the grill, her face shiny with sweat. She slapped at a mosquito on her neck. The air shimmered with them, and their wings filled the air with a constant hum, despite the pots of pyrethrum burning everywhere.
Missy felt suddenly conscious of the pristine yellow of the dress, the scent of oil in her hair. All her careful preparations seemed silly and kind of stuck-up. After all, she was not a girl anymore, someone to primp and giggle at the boys, ribbons in her hair. She was stepping out with no one. She should have come prepared to work.
“You look very pretty,” said Selma with a squeeze of her arm and a warm, soft smile that Missy had only ever seen maybe once before. “And you can help by makin’ sure there’s enough food to go around.” She waved her turning fork at Ike Freeman, who had piled his plate with about twice as much food as it was designed to hold. He gripped a slab of corn bread between his teeth as he shuffled slowly through the sand toward a folding chair in the shade of some sea grapes.
“Where’s Jerome?” asked Missy. He could usually be relied upon to turn up at a party, if not much else.
“Fishing,” said Selma.
A look passed between them. Selma never complained about Jerome. Missy was not sure if this was out of love or pride…or maybe both. Her eyes scanned the crowd.
“Henry ain’t here yet,” said Selma, her tone returned to its normal tartness. “Might not come at all. Get a move on.”
Missy took her place behind a big table covered in bowls and platters. Despite Ike’s gluttony, there seemed to be no risk of any shortages. She wrapped a spare a
pron around her waist and let the chatter of the other women flow around her as she served.
She did not know what to expect from the evening, only that a voice in her head said something was going to happen. It did not say whether it would turn out good or bad. Over time, she had learned to listen to that voice.
Lionel, the Kincaids’ gardener, stepped up to have his plate filled. That afternoon, he had looked like he might collapse with shock when he learned of the gator’s nearly successful raid, then seemed to take special satisfaction in cutting up the carcass. Missy knew he saw the Kincaid family as his personal responsibility. “That a mighty pretty dress, Missy,” he said. She spooned some coleslaw onto his plate. “You look like a princess.” His weathered features folded into a nearly toothless smile, eyes narrowed to moist slits.
“Thanks, Lionel. Here, have some more.” The man was so thin, he looked held together by the ragged clothes he wore every day and washed every night.
He moved away and Missy let her mind wander. She recalled Henry’s wry smile, his haunted eyes, that scar on his neck. Who was she to judge anyone, anyway? A woman, no longer young, but still living with her mama. No husband, no babies, no schooling. And why? Because two men had let her down? That was no reason for anything. Men let people down every day, and folks still made something of their lives. She had done nothing, been nowhere. And if she wanted someone to blame, she only had to look in the mirror every morning.
Eighteen years Henry had stayed away, clearly not in any hurry to get home again, not for Grace, not for Selma…and not for her. All this time, she had waited and hoped…for what, she did not even know. She felt safe when he was there, in ways she could not explain, even to herself. She had not felt safe for a long time.
The line of plates kept coming. Someone put a record on the gramophone, but she didn’t recognize the tune. How could Henry not find her ridiculous? She, who might as well still be eight years old, clinging to his neck as he boarded his train. She began to wish she was home with Mama in the yellow lamplight on the porch, with the soft sounds of chickens settling for the night. This was a mistake. Maybe I can sneak home early.
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