One by one the men hoisted themselves into the bed of the pickup. "You too," Leo told her. "Get in next to the cab, so there'll be men all around you. Here, put on this hard hat."
When they were all in the light-skinned man closed the gate. "Listen now," he said in the same hoarse whisper. "All these roads trucks have the Labor Transport option for when they take the gangs out. There should be a chain back there somewhere."
"Here 'tis," came Willie's voice. "Lemme do this. I done time on the roads." Steel links rattled on sheet metal. "Here, Johnny. Put this cuff round your leg. Pass the loose end through that there padeye on the bed. Good."
"Listen now," said Leo again. "You're a road gang coming off for the night. We get stopped, let me talk. I got the accent down pretty well. If I can't joke them out of it — " he pulled up the lid of a tool box and revealed, gleaming within, the shining barrels and smooth dark wood of six Tredegar submachine guns. "They're loaded. But we only use 'em if they reach for the radio. Otherwise use those picks and crowbars.
"It's about fifteen minutes' drive to the yacht club. You'll be bouncing around in that bed a little, they didn't design it for comfort, but it's all for the Cause."
"Amen," someone said, half sarcastically.
"Johnny Turner come back," Leo went on. "Patrollers picked him up, but he didn't say a word. Vyry got him out, I don't know how, but she did it and she's coming with us tonight, too."
"Let's get movin'," said Turner.
"All right." Leo stared up at the chained men for a moment more, then walked round to the cab. The motor ground, the truck lurched, and they slid out into the open street. Leo turned left, directly toward the bright lights at the gate, the pacing sentries.
"Damn," someone in the back — a thin silhouette, Bo Finnick? — whispered. "Hey, if this guy wants to turn us in, brothers—"
But they rolled steadily past the gate. One guard, shotgun butt resting on his thigh in a stance as old as the South, raised his hand to them. Leo waved back. They were past.
The chains rattled across the truck bed as they swung onto Brambleton Avenue and picked up speed. One or two private cars passed them, their drivers' faces glowing pale in the truck's headlights.
"This goin' to be easy."
"That Railroad fella's not so dumb."
"Won't nobody look twice at a road truck full of darkies."
Leo leaned out of the window and shouted something back.
"What he say?"
"Says he wants a song."
"Song! Kind of song he want?"
"Willie, what they sing out on the road gangs?"
"Same shit we sing down the docks. How 'bout 'Fifty Dollars'?"
" 'Fifty Dollars.'"
"Sing 'Fifty Dollars,' he says."
Over the sound of the engine, the harsh rattling, the curses as Leo failed to see a pothole in time, the words of the song rose in a sad refrain to a tune that had been old before there had been a Confederacy.
"If I had me a fifty dollar,
Fifty dollar all in gold,
Buy me-ee a ticket back to home,
Buy me a ticket home.
Look where the train done gone, oh Lord,
Look where that train done gone.
Gone on to Richmond, gone to Tredegar,
Gone never to return."
Behind them: lights. An older make of car. "Sixty-eight Dixie," someone muttered.
"Sing, damn it!" Leo cried back against the wind.
"Do that John Turner one," said Willie. They glanced at Johnny. It was half a joke, a song they'd made up on the waterfront to the tune of 'John Henry.' They'd sung it half in praise and half to get under Johnny's skin. But now he stared sightlessly and didn't shut them up with a roar the way he'd done before. "Sing," hissed Leo, and so they did.
"John Turner was a little baby,
You could hold him in the palm a your hand,
Well, the first word they heard that little baby say,
He said, "I wanna be a longshorin' man, Lord, Lord,
I wanna be a longshorin' man."
The car was close now, just behind them. Its headlights picked out their tired faces in cruelly sharp shadows and glares. They leaned back into the sides of the truck and looked at each other in the white light and lay their heads back and bellowed it out.
"John Turner tol' his mother,
'You better cook my breakfast soon,
A dozen freighters come in las' night,
I'm gonna get 'em loaded by noon, Lord, Lord,
I'm gonna get 'em loaded by noon.' "
In the middle of it the Dixie pulled into the right lane and streaked by them with a throaty roar.
"Muffler's shot," said someone.
"Them patrollers should be shot," said Willie.
Besides her she felt Johnny tense. "What is it?"
"Those the ones picked me up," he said. "Open that toolbox, Willie, and give me one a them guns."
"No, Johnny—"
"Hell, let 'em go. You'll give us all away."
She felt him hesitate, then sink back against the cab, mumbling something.
"That Johnny Turner, he a real bad man."
"He a real guinea nigger, all right."
"Hell, you knowed that. Remember down pier ten once, he—"
She searched his dark profile as the streetlights whipped by. Yes. Her Johnny was bad. But he had sense, he had caution. Who was this beside her now?
"Got a new one," Willie shouted. "Listen, you black sons of bitches! New one, remember it!"
"John Turner tol' the President,
He said, 'A man ain't nothin' but a man,
And before I'll let you drive me down,
I'll die with a gun in my hand, Lord, Lord,
I'll die with a gun in my hand.' "
The truck slowed. They sat up in back. Tension flickered among them. The truck slowed some more and then turned left.
"We 'bout there?"
"Yeah," said Finnick. "Let's get these chains off."
At the rattle of metal Leo leaned out. "Keep it quiet back there now — some of these boats, the people live aboard 'em."
"Where's your yacht, Finnick?"
"Fifth from the right. I filled her up this morning and ran up the engine. She ready to fly."
The pier, a long wooden structure smelling of old fish and fresh creosote, seemed deserted, brightly lit but empty, though music and laughter came from the clubhouse farther up the river's shore. Leo braked quietly near a gate that cut the road off from the pier and got out. "Finnick? Where's Bo?"
"Here."
"Say you know the watchman?"
"Sure do."
"Colored?"
"Like a bucket a tar."
"Can you make a deal with him?"
"I'll try. Stay here."
From the truck they could all see the conversation, though the words were too muffled to catch. The watchman, a middle-aged, very dark man, finally nodded. Finnick held out something; the man took it and looked about, then went into a gatehouse and closed the door. When he came out again he nodded once to Bo and turned his back on him. Finnick removed a cosh from his pocket. He caught the man as he folded, and dragged him behind the shed, out of sight of the road.
"Let's go," hissed Leo. "Fifth on the right?"
"That's it," said Finnick, looking at the cosh and then putting it back in his pocket.
They moved stealthily along the pier. One of the larger boats, not far away, was strung with colored lights. The voices of women and the cheerful clatter of a piano came from it over the still water.
"Here," came Finnick's hoarse whisper.
It was a tuna boat, not a yacht, but that was just as good and perhaps better. Vyry followed Johnny, jumping quietly down from the pier.
"Bo?" Leo's voice.
"Here."
"Start her up. Rest of you get out of sight till we get out on the river. Does that door open?"
But Finnick looked past him, to where Johnny, immense, quiet, stood in the stern. "Johnny?"