The cop took a brief look at his papers, then gave them back. "Hell, I know who you are," he said. "You been paradin' around in them fancy duds for years. Go on, get your black ass outa here."
"Yes, suh. Thank you kindly, suh." Scipio had taken a lot of abuse from whites for going to work in a tuxedo. Here, for once, it looked to have paid off. He got out of there in a hurry. That was unheroic. He knew it. It gnawed at him. But what could he do against dozens of trigger-happy whites? Not one damned thing, and he knew that, too.
He'd gone only a few blocks when gunfire rang out behind him: first a single shot, then a regular fusillade. He didn't know what had happened, and he wasn't crazy or suicidal enough to go back and find out, but he thought he could make a pretty good guess. Somebody must have figured his chances shooting it out were better than they would have been if he'd gone wherever the cops and the stalwarts were taking people they grabbed.
The fellow who'd started shooting was probably-almost certainly-dead now. Even so, who could say for sure he was wrong? He'd died quickly, and hadn't suffered much. Scipio thought of alligators, and wished he hadn't.
One of the waiters, a skinny young man named Nestor, didn't show up at the Huntsman's Lodge. Jerry Dover muttered and fumed. Scipio told him about the dragnet in the Terry. The manager eyed him. "You reckon they picked up Nestor for something or other?"
"Dunno, Mistuh Dover," Scipio said. "Reckon mebbe they could've, though."
"What do you suppose he did?" Dover asked. "He's never given anybody any trouble here."
"Dunno," Scipio said again. "Dunno if he done anything. Them police, I don't reckon they was fussy." They were standing right outside the kitchen, in a nice, warm corridor. He wanted to shiver even so. Nestor would have been wearing a tuxedo, too. Fat lot of good it had done him.
Jerry Dover rubbed his chin. "He's a pretty fair worker. Let me make a call or two, see what I can find out."
What would he have done if Nestor were a lazy good-for-nothing? Washed his hands like Pilate? Scipio wouldn't have been surprised. He didn't dwell on it. With the crew shorthanded because Nestor wasn't there, he stayed hopping.
And Nestor didn't show up, either. Dover wore a tight-lipped expression, one that discouraged questions. Scipio and the rest of the crew got through the evening. When he went back the next day, the missing waiter still wasn't there. That nerved him to go up to the manager and ask, "Nestor, he come back?"
"Doubt it." Dover sounded as if he had to pay for every word that passed his lips. "Time for a new hire. He won't know his ass from Richmond, either."
"Nestor, what he do?" Scipio persisted. "You find out?"
"He got himself arrested, that's what." Jerry Dover sounded angry at Scipio-or possibly angry at the world. "He picked the wrong goddamn time to do it, too."
"What you mean?" Scipio asked. "Ain't no right time to git arrested."
Dover nodded. "Well, that's so. There's no right time. But there's sure as hell a wrong time. What the cops told me yesterday was, the city jail's full. So those niggers they caught in the Terry-you know about that?"
"Oh, yes, suh," Scipio said softly. "I tol' you, remember? They almost 'rests me, too."
"That's right, you did. Well, I'm damn glad they didn't, because I'd be down two waiters if they had." If the restaurant manager was glad for any other reason that they hadn't arrested Scipio, he didn't show it. He went on, "Jail's full up, like I said. So they went and shipped these here niggers off to one of those camps they've started."
"Lord he'p Nestor, then," Scipio said. "Somebody go into one of them places, I hear tell he don't come out no mo', not breathin', anyways." He'd heard it as gossip between two men he'd never seen, but that didn't mean he didn't believe it. It had the horrid feel of truth.
Jerry Dover shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. What had he heard? Back in the days when Scipio worked at Marshlands, he'd been convinced the Colletons couldn't keep a secret for more than a few minutes before the blacks on the plantation also knew it. Here at the Huntsman's Lodge, the colored cooks and waiters and cleaners quickly found out whatever their white bosses knew. Or did they? Just as blacks kept secrets from whites out of necessity, so whites might also find it wise to keep certain things from blacks.
But if Dover had that kind of knowledge, it didn't show on his face. Scipio thought it would. Dover did what he had to do to get along in the world in which he found himself. Who didn't, except crazy people and saints? But the manager was pretty honest, pretty decent. He was no "Freedom!"-yelling stalwart without two brain cells to rub against each other.
He said, "You want to watch yourself on the street, then, don't you? You know I've got some pull. But it doesn't look like I can do anything about one of those places."
"I watches myself real good, suh," Scipio answered. "You say de city jail full up?" Jerry Dover nodded. Scipio asked him, "They 'rest white folks now, de white folks go to dese camps, too?"
His boss looked at him as if he'd asked whether the stork brought mothers their babies. "Don't be stupid," Dover said.
That was good advice, too. It always was. What worried Scipio was, it might not be enough. He'd escaped the last dragnet as much by luck as by anything else. You could tell a man not to be stupid, and maybe-if he wasn't stupid to begin with-he'd listen. But how the devil could you tell a man not to be unlucky?
Five-thirty in the morning. Reveille blared. Armstrong Grimes groaned. He had time for that one involuntary protest before he rolled out of his cot and his feet hit the floor of the barracks hall at Fort Custer outside of Columbus, Ohio. Then he started functioning, at least well enough. He threw on his green-gray uniform, made up the cot, and dashed outside to his place in the roll call-all in the space of five minutes.
What happened to men who were late had long since convinced him being late was a bad idea. Back home, his mother had made the bed for him most of the time. He'd been sloppy at it when he first got here. Now a dime bounced off his blanket, and bounced high. The drill sergeant didn't have cause to complain about him or even notice him-the two often being synonymous.
He stood there trying not to shiver in the chilly dawn. When the time came, he sang out to announce his presence. Other than that, he kept quiet. Everybody else did the same. For once, the drill sergeants seemed in a merciful mood. They let the assembled soldiers march off to breakfast after only a minimum of growling and cursing.
Everybody marched everywhere at Fort Custer. Armstrong had begun to think Thou shalt march was in the Bible somewhere right below Thou shalt not kill and Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain-two commandments he was learning more about violating every day.
He took a tray and a plate and a mug and silverware, then advanced on the food. A cook's helper loaded the plate with scrambled eggs and hash browns and greasy, overdone bacon. Another one poured the mug full of coffee almost strong enough to eat through the bottom. Armstrong grabbed a seat at a long, long table. He put enough cream and sugar in the coffee to tame it a little, threw salt on the eggs and potatoes and pepper on the eggs, and then started shoveling in chow.
Nobody talked much at breakfast. Nobody had time. The drill here was simple: feed your face as fast as you could. Armstrong had never much cared for manners. He didn't have to worry about them here. Compared to the way some of the guys ate, he might have come from the upper crust. Every once in a while, he thought that was pretty funny. More often than not, he didn't have time to worry about it one way or the other.
As soon as he finished, he shoved his tray and dirty dishes at the poor slobs who'd drawn KP duty. Then he hustled out to the exercise yard. He wasn't the first one there, but he was a long way from the last. Bad things happened to the guys who brought up the rear.