"I'm going, Leo."
"Damn you — that hurts!" The thin man curled like a dying spider as the grip tightened on his upper arm. "Let me go! Vyry — can't you—"
"I never could tell him anything. You can try, you want."
"Turner — all right, damn you, ease off — you'll go!" Leo rubbed his arm as he stood up. He threw her a furious look. "He's in no condition."
"I know that."
"You're strong, but you need rest. You look like hell. You need—"
"Need to," said Turner, his mouth moving slowly and with obvious pain, "Need to pay them off, more."
"Leo? Come over here." She moved toward the bedroom, a niche Willie's part-time profession of trash collector had filled with a hideous pile of dirty, broken furniture, heaps of rags and discarded mattresses. "Mister, he's going to go. I know when he's got his mind set. I don't want him to go and you don't neither but if we try to stop him there only be trouble."
"Look, I'm responsible to the Road for the success or failure of this job. I don't mind taking him along, but — the way he is — well, I just don't want to have to worry. What if he goes crazy all of a sudden?"
"I don't even know where you're going," she whispered. "Guns — boats… can you tell me?"
The bedroom was quiet and he looked at her, and in the next room she could hear China clashing pots and pans.
"All right," said Leo.
In low quick sentences he told her everything. She shook her head in astonishment and started to speak but from the other room they heard a heavy tread that she recognized as Johnny's, yet slower and… more deliberate, somehow.
She lowered her voice. "I think I can handle him. If he goes, I got to go, too."
The Railroad man rolled his eyes. "What? Why not take every CE in Norfolk? I can't take a woman. Those boys'd be fighting over you the minute you step in the boat."
"Not if Johnny's with me. You got to take me if he goes. You know that's the only way."
Finally he nodded. "I don't like it, but — all right."
Turner lurched in then, and they fell silent, looking up at him. She put her hand to her mouth. Thinking, again, This is not the man I knew. This is somebody else… somebody held together, controlled, only by his own powerful will.
Had Quidley burned everything else out of him in the humming quiet of the cellar? Everything but will, everything but — hate?
"Johnny, I'm leaving." Leo, moving around him toward the door.
"Where's the boat?"
"Finnick's picked one out at the yacht club. White man hires him spare time to keep it running, keep it cleaned up. We'll meet just before curfew at the main gate to Smith's. I've got things arranged from there." He reached the door. "So long," he said, and vanished.
She covered the two steps between them and threw herself against him, reaching her face up to his. "Johnny—"
But his arms didn't come up for her in the crushing hug that made her fear for her ribs. The hardness that should have been growing against her belly as she clung to him wasn't there. He didn't even look down at her. Slowly she let her hands slip from around him and backed away, almost tripping over the stack of mattresses. "What's wrong?"
"I can't tell you," he said.
"Something they did? Does it still hurt?" She could hardly speak with fear. "Johnny, please, try to tell me."
But he just stared at her. Just stared.
There was something wrong with his head.
There was something missing.
He knew who she was. He knew the syllables of her name. Vyry Lewis. But he didn't feel anything for her.
It was hard to look at things. Something back behind his mind, where he'd once been, had been replaced by the emptiness.
What was she asking now? Her voice came from far away, from a place he'd never go again.
He thought: What did they do to me?
First there'd been the pain. He remembered that. His lips moved without his knowledge, forming again and again one syllable: no. No. Nonono.
But then there'd been something else. After the pain. He couldn't quite pin it down. When he tried to remember it something in his mind seemed to turn and snap open just as he was about to come to that memory and
went off
went on
went off
He flickered. He saw the woman standing in front of him and then he saw the brilliance of the sun inside his brain. It was the sun because it was bright but it was blue instead of white. Then it too flickered and his mind reeled with the unimaginableness of… nothing.
There was nothing in his mind. He wasn't Johnny Turner any more. Someone named that had lived here but now he was empty as the bleached crab shells where the old men threw them along the piers. There was only one thing left to him; only one desire; only one compulsion. It was the memory of a face, pale, thin, with a small auburn moustache. And one overmastering emotion:
Hatred.
At nine that night, leading him by the hand like a child, Vyry moved out into the street.
The lingering warmth was the only thing left of the late afternoon sun. Where the buildings that lined the narrow streets of the Colored Area cast their shadows it was dark. The white glare of electric lights and the softer, ruddier glow of kerosene lighted where people had left their shades undrawn. Nobody out, but she could sense the teeming life that surrounded them; could hear it in the distant coughing of a sick child, the curses of a couple fighting, the muted jazz that spilled from an open door of a joint. It was reassuring, this music, this presence of unseen thousands of her own kind, but at the same time it was lonely. The saxophone wailed behind them and was lost, echoing between the crumbling buildings and rusting fire escapes heaped with garbage.
"Johnny, you all right?"
He was big, dark, menacing beside her. A teenage gang fell silent as its members saw him. They eddied around them, giving him distance. A long time passed before he answered. "Yeah. I'm great. What time's it, girl?"
"Not much after nine. We got time."
"Don't want to be late."
Down the east-west streets at times came the throb of engines and the probing white fingers of headlights. When they came too near she pushed him toward an alley, behind reeking trash piles, and shielded him with her own body till the patrollers were past. It was not quite curfew yet. But she knew instinctively that they were after the two of them now. By name. By description.
"… Further."
"No, not far now. Stay on the dark side of the street."
Like moving shadows they slid through the downtown streets. Thronged in the daytime by office workers, the tall buildings and the wide streets and the stores were abandoned at night to fear. Traffic lights clicked and changed, sending red and green and orange down empty avenues. A police car rolled by as they crouched behind the squat marble wings of the Secession Monument. THAT THESE NOBLE SONS OF VIRGINIA SOIL GAVE THEIR LIVES TO PURCHASE FREEDOM FOR ALL TIME. "Now run with me, Johnny," she whispered, and they raced through dead streets down to the river.
"Down that way," Turner said.
A block away she stopped, drawing him into a shadow again. At the R R Smith gatehouse brilliant lights flooded the street, and men — white men — strolled slowly about with guns.
"Johnny! Vyry!"
She turned at the hoarse whisper. Behind the building were several dark figures and a large rectangular silhouette.
"It's us. Hey, Johnny! You come back!"
They touched fists, punched him in rough welcome. As they reached the large object, she saw it was a standard green flatbed pickup with the city of Norfolk seal on its side. A city roads truck. Of the men, she recognized Bo, Willie, Leo, a couple of the others; there were seven in all. Leo pulled out a flashlight and consulted his watch. "Might as well get on with it. Climb in, boys."