The Grapple

He got a couple of sips from a dipper of water that went through the miserable throng, but nothing more. If the boxcar held any food, he never saw it. By the time the train finally got wherever it was going, his nose told him the car held dead bodies.

Had they made this journey in high summer, everyone would have died. He was as sure of that as he was of his own name-surer, since he’d gone by Xerxes for many years. Scipio was still a wanted man in South Carolina for his role in the Red Negro uprisings during the Great War.

But it was February, so heat and humidity didn’t add themselves to starvation and overcrowding. What a mercy, Scipio thought.

“Bathsheba?” he croaked through a dust-dry throat. “Antoinette?”

He heard no answer from either of them. Maybe they were dead. Maybe they were just too dry to talk. Maybe they couldn’t hear his husk-filled voice. Or maybe the noise other people were making covered their replies. His ears weren’t what they had been once upon a time. He was getting close to seventy. He’d been born a slave, back in the days before the Confederate States reluctantly manumitted their Negroes.

There was a bitter joke! Technically free, blacks didn’t have a prayer of equality with whites even in the best of times. Here in the worst of times…Scipio wasn’t worried about seeing another birthday now. He wondered if he would see another day, period.

Then what seemed like a miracle happened. The door to the boxcar opened. A cold, biting wind blew in. Fresh air hit Scipio almost as hard as a slug of whiskey would have. His eyes opened very wide. He thought his heart beat a little faster.

“Out!” White men’s voices, harsh as ravens’ croaks, roared out the word. “Come on out o’ there, you goddamn shitty niggers! Form two lines! Men on the left, women and pickani

A few people stumbled out of the boxcar. A few corpses fell out. That eased the pressure that had held Scipio upright for so long. He started to sag to the planking of the floor. If he did, though, he didn’t think he’d be able to get up again. And the way these ofays-guards; he could see they were guards-were screaming at people to come out, he could guess what would happen to a man who couldn’t rise.

He wanted to live. He wondered why. After what he’d gone through, dying might have come as a relief. But he stumbled forward and awkwardly got down from the boxcar.

“Men on the left! Women and pickani

Somebody touched Scipio’s hand. There stood Bathsheba, with Antoinette beside her. They looked like hell, or maybe a little worse. Scipio tried not to think about what he looked like himself. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except that they were all alive.

“We gots to get in our line,” Bathsheba said in a voice like ashes. “The good Lord keep you safe, darlin’. We see you when we can.”

His wife had always been a churchgoing woman. She’d got Scipio to go with her a good many times. They were captured in church, in fact. Education and Marxism had corroded Scipio’s faith. If they hadn’t…Well, the trip he’d just finished would have turned St. Thomas Aquinas into an atheist. Somehow, though, it hadn’t shaken Bathsheba, not that way.

“You move, old man.” The Mexican-looking guard who gave the order had three stripes on the left sleeve of his gray uniform tunic. “You move, or you be sorry.” He didn’t sound particularly mean. He just sounded like a man doing his job-and a man who would do it, whatever that took. Was it better that he didn’t seem to enjoy tormenting his captives? Or did that make it worse?

The guard sergeant (no, in a gray uniform he’d have some kind of silly Freedom Party rank) waited to see if Scipio would obey, or maybe if he could obey. His wife and daughter had already gone off to their line. Nothing held him here except exhaustion, thirst, and starvation.

“I goin’,” he said, and discovered his feet still worked after all. The Mexican guard nodded and went to prod another sufferer into moving.

Standing in line wasn’t easy. Several men begged for water. The guards ignored them. One of the Negroes fell over. A man in a gray uniform kicked him. When the Negro didn’t respond, the guard peeled back his eyelid, then felt for a pulse. The white straightened, wiping his hand on his thigh. “Son of a bitch is dead as belt leather,” he said. “Gotta haul his worthless carcass outa here.”

A ski

A guard stood over the live Negro and fired a burst from his submachine gun. “Sandbagging fucker is now,” he said. The man who’d a

“Jesus God, you are the smelliest, most disgusting bunch of niggers I ever seen!” a guard officer shouted. What else could we be? Scipio thought. He knew how filthy he was. He knew he didn’t have any choice about it, either. None of the lurching unfortunates in the line had any choice. The officer went on, “Strip naked and we’ll hose you down, get the worst shit off you.”

“What about our clothes?” somebody asked.

“Clean clothes inside,” the officer said. “Get out of them duds! Move it!”

Despite the cold wind, Scipio was glad to shed the suit in which he’d gone to church. High-pressure hoses played over the black men. He feebly tried to wash and drink at the same time. He got a couple of swallows of water, and he got rid of some of his own filth. When he stood there naked and dripping, the north wind really did cut like a knife.

The blacks who’d hauled away corpses took charge of the discarded clothes, too. Some of the men whose clothes they were pulled long faces. Maybe they’d managed to hang on to money or valuables. Since Scipio hadn’t, he was just as well pleased to be rid of his.

Bins of shirts and trousers and drawers and shoes and socks waited for the black men. As Scipio found clothes that more or less fit, he wondered who’d worn them before and what had happened to him. This time, his shiver had nothing to do with that biting wind. Better not to know, maybe.

Losing his clothes also lost Scipio his passbook. In a way, that was a relief. Without it, he could claim to be anyone under the sun. In another way, though, it was as ominous as those bins of clothing. A Negro couldn’t exist in the CSA without a passbook. If the inmates of this camp didn’t need passbooks…If they didn’t, wasn’t that an argument they didn’t exist any more?

“Line up in rows of ten!” a guard shouted. “Rows of ten, y’all hear? We got to get you coons counted. Soon as we do that, we can get your asses into barracks.”

“Food, suh? Water?” Several men called the desperate question at the same time.

“Y’all can get water once you’re counted,” the guard answered. “Food comes at regular time tonight. Now line up, goddammit. Can’t do anything till we count you.”

Another man fell over dead waiting to be counted. More ragged, ski

He got assigned to Barracks 27, which differed from the halls on either side only by its number. The wind blew right through the thin wallboard. Pails and cups told where the roof leaked when it rained. Bunks went up five and six high. Healthier, younger, stronger prisoners claimed the ones closest to the pot-bellied stove in the middle of the room. Scipio got a miserable bunk in the outer darkness near the wall. The only good thing about it was that it was on the second level, so he didn’t have to climb very high. A burlap bag did duty for a blanket. Another, smaller, one stuffed with sawdust made a pillow of sorts. That was the extent of the bedclothes.