When he had rechained the door Turner sat down, scratching absently around the bandage, and thought. After a time he put the cap back on the bottle and went back to bed.
It got dark outside the window about nine. No one other than Bo had come by all day, and Vyry, he knew, would not be back from the House till three or four in the morning, this being a Friday night. He got up and limped into the kitchen and drank some more water and looked at the kitchen knife. It would fit so well inside his shirt… but no, it was insane to carry a blade. A routine search by a patroller, and… there would not even be a hearing. CEs were not allowed to carry weapons, though the longshoremen had work knives that were kept at the docks. And firearms… for a colored to be caught with one was a capital offense. He left the knife where it was.
Okay, Turner. So you going to the meeting. Then let's go. He pulled on the green work pants and shirt and clipped his pass to his left pocket. It wouldn't be good being out after curfew but maybe if he talked Tom he could convince any curious patrollers he was on the night shift. He eased the door open and slipped out, hearing the lock click shut behind him. Now he had to go on. Vyry had the only key.
West Main was a maze of narrow, poorly paved streets and refuse-littered alleys. In the previous seventy years hundreds of thousands of farms and plantation Negroes from farther south had been sucked toward the growing government industries of the Tidewater. It was not a free life, nor a luxurious one, but there were no other choices for CEs reassigned from farm chores in Tarboro or High Point or Lawrenceville to the new factories; and it was better than starving when the white landowners turned you out and brought in the tractors. They would have gone north, to Detroit or Phillie or New York, but the Wall barred their way. So they migrated — to Atlanta, to Selma and Augusta and Charleston and Macon, and especially to Tidewater and to the sprawling war-born Tredegar Works in Greater Richmond. And were everywhere channeled into the downtown slums — the Colored Areas.
Now he walked in the shadows and felt at home. No white patroller would enter West Main after dark. Families sat together on sagging unlighted porches and talked softly. A radio blared a hymn from a darkened alley. A swaying female form called to the limping man, who joked back, taking no offense and giving none.
He walked south, down unlit zigzag streets, toward the waterfront district of the East Elizabeth River. Faintly he could already hear the sounds of ships in the channel. Three short whistles; there was a ship backing out into the stream, filled with North Carolina tobacco, or pulpwood, or coal; or heavy machinery or weapons from Tredegar, bound for India or South Africa or Borneo. A longshoreman saw them going out, the heavy wooden boxes like long coffins. The Confederacy was the arsenal of the Empire; and all of it, he reflected, keeping the black and yellow and brown man down….
Shit, Johnny, you gettin' to be a motherfuckin' philosopher. Let's keep our 'tention on gettin' to the meeting on time.
The streets broadened and became straighter and better paved as he crossed the eastern end of downtown. Here and there a bar spilled music and colored light out into the street. Street lamps began to appear as he turned onto Highland Road and crossed the Norfolk and Western tracks. He was beginning to feel relieved when a motor rumbled behind him. He stiffened but forced himself to walk on as the light swept over him and then brakes squealed.
"You there! Nigger!"
He stopped and turned. An old two-tone Dixie. Four white faces, pale behind the windshield. A shotgun's double barrel draped out the rear window. A beer can in the driver's hand.
Patrollers.
He grew suddenly shorter by a couple of inches. His arms hung foolishly. He shuffled closer to the car, and smiled.
"Yassuh?"
"Git that shotgun inside the car," said one of the men, in a tone of authority.
"Fuck you, Billy, and the horse—"
"You, nigger," said the man on Turner's side, the man they'd called Billy. Johnny could see him in the light of the street lamps; a thirtyish man in a dirty, short-sleeved white shirt. Narrow suspicious eyes over a wide mouth, fixed to an unshaven face with a cigarette. "What you doin' out after curfew been passed? Answer up quick, boy."
"Suh, I's gwine to de waterfront. I works down dere, suh." He grinned. The muscles of his back and neck were rigid with hatred, but if he had to play Tom to survive — to strike that blow he dreamed of — he was willing to grin and shuffle and sweet-talk like any old coon just in off the farm.
"Lemme see your workpass."
"Yassuh. Here 'tis, boss."
"Says you work at the docks."
"An' that's where I is goin' to now, suh. Got me the night shif' this week. If the gennulmans will let me, suh."
"They working you boys at night down there now?" said the patroller, holding out the card. Turner reached for it. The man dropped it in the road.
He bent, slowly, and smiled as he came up. "Yes, boss, they sure is."
"Let's go," said the driver. Turner stepped aside as the Dixie's wheels shrieked. He looked after the car with the anger almost uncontrollable in him and his big hands fumbled with the card and dropped it again. He almost left it there.
Some ten minutes later he faced another barrier: the twelve-foot chain-link fence that surrounded the warehouse and dock area. The "night shift" story, he knew, would not fool the security guards at the yard gate, so over the fence was the only way in. Well, it would hurt, but… he found a part of the fence shadowed from the streetlights by a power substation shed and began to climb. His weight bent the steel mesh outward, and he clung tight, fearing that it, and he, would fall; but it held and at last he was over, and running crouched toward the rows of shipping containers that lay like giant dominoes stacked in the freight yard. When he was safe from view he stopped and felt his leg, and cursed; it was wet. Climbing the fence had torn the half-healed wound apart again.
But it wasn't far now. He took a short cut through one of the warehouses and found himself at R R Smith's. A dim glow came from one of the rear doors. He waited for several minutes. When nothing happened he moved up to it and gave the Railroad knock. The light went off and a moment later the door opened.
"It's Turner."
"Hey, Johnny, come on in. We was just starting."
Inside the office eight oddly assorted men sat or stood among the desks and filing cabinets and worn hand dollies. Most wore working greens and had their hair cut government short. A few were in civilian clothing, almost like the free white workers, and one wore the uniform of a noncom in the police. But one stood out: a wiry young octoroon — he looked almost white — who stood easily in the center, watching Turner.
"Who's this?" he said.
"This a man from the Road, Johnny. Says his name's Leo."
"Leo what?"
"Just Leo," said the octoroon. He was tall, very thin but well-built, almost too carefully dressed in anonymouslooking cotton twill pants and a mismatched work shirt. His voice sounded odd and then Turner realized why: his accent, too, was almost white.
"What you want with us?" Turned asked him.
"Something important," said the man, Leo, looking Johnny up and down. He seemed to like what he saw; he smiled and held out his fist. Turner touched his hand to it warily. "You the leader of this bunch?"
"Yeah."
"I'm glad we waited, then; this man" — he motioned toward Finnick, who nodded at Turner — "said that you were hurt, might not show up. Say, is that blood on your leg?"
"Don't pay that no mind. Let's get on to what you came for." He looked around; one of the men in work clothes quickly got up from his chair. He sat, put his hands on his knees, and looked at Leo, waiting.
"Here's the situation, then. The Road, as you know, has its own sources of information. Some outside the Confederacy, and some inside."