Under A Dark Summer Sky Part 2

"Hilda," he said, as soon as she kissed him, "I got something to tell you."

"Later," she said, not really listening as she led him up the stairs. A bed! They were going to do it in a real bed, for the first time! Just like it would be when they were married. "Tell me later."

"No," he said, and something in his tone cut through the haze of l.u.s.t in her head. People never said no to Hilda. "I need to tell you now." He took both her hands and stopped halfway up the stairs. "It's important. Let's sit down." He settled on the step above hers. She looked up at him, trying to detect some sign of their usual warmth, but his head was turned to the side. "You know I love you, honey..." He stopped, cleared his throat.

Her stomach felt like it was full of angry wasps.

"The thing is," he said, "I never thought I'd meet someone like you... You're so beautiful, and young, and oh, so"-he shrugged helplessly, like he had no choice-"and I'm..."

"Whatever it is, Nelson," she had said, leaning forward, now full-blown scared, "just tell me. Whatever it is, we'll figure it out."

"Leaving."

"You...what?" Of all the things he could have said, this was the last thing she had expected. They were going to be together; he said so all the time. She had put a hand to her face, so sure was she that he had slapped her.

"Hilda, I never meant to stay so long. I was just pa.s.sing through that day. Then you appeared on the sidewalk like a vision... What's a man to do?" Again the helpless look. "But I've got business up in Miami, long overdue now, thanks to you." He stroked the side of her face. She jerked away from his hand. "Oh, don't be like that, sugar. We had a good time-"

"What about our...our plans?" The tears came, big sobs that fractured her words. "You said...you said you loved me."

"I do, honey, I do, but we cain't be together, not like that. Your daddy has big things in store for you. You could do anything, get outta Heron Key, go to New York. You don't need me. And I've... There's stuff I gotta do."

"Take me with you." She clutched his leg. Miss Palmetto, two years in a row, was begging, and she did not care one bit. Her life would end when he walked out that door. "Oh, please, Nelson, take me with you. I'll do anything-"

"I cain't, baby girl. I'm sorry, but I cain't." He looked away again, and she realized that some part of him had already left.

"You mean you won't!" After all the weeks of feeling so grown-up, she suddenly felt like a helpless child.

"All right," he said and looked at her, but his eyes saw somewhere else, someone else. "You gonna make me say it." That look made her feel so cold and alone. "Someone's waitin' for me in Miami. I've dawdled here too long."

That's all I've been to him, a dawdle. "Oh, no," she sobbed. "No, no." She hugged her knees, wished her parents were there. Daddy would make it right. Nelson's promises had all been lies, all the whispered endearments, just so much malarkey.

Then she looked up at him again and the tears stopped. His black hair had fallen forward over one eye. His lips were moist. She could see right down the open neck of his s.h.i.+rt to his bare chest, which moved with each breath. She felt the heat from his skin, imagined the taste of his mouth. Tobacco and the cinnamon chewing gum he liked so much.

"I'm sorry, darlin'. I'm-" he began.

"Can she do this?" She pushed him back on the stairs, tore open the front of her dress. His expression changed. His eyes danced with excitement, pupils blacker than black. She unzipped his pants. His breath quickened. He groaned at her touch. She rubbed against him, used her hands, her mouth, used everything he had taught her over the past weeks. She felt powerful, womanly, to have him on his back. Under her control. He would not forget her so easily.

But then with a roar he was on top of her, the edge of the stair hard in her back. His mouth was hot on hers, her hands pulled him closer, ever closer, and with every thrust, she knew they would be together always.

When finally he rolled off her, his face was closed. "Oh, Hilda," he breathed, "what have you done?"

Her pregnancy had become apparent almost immediately. There was just time, before Daddy died, for him to meet Nelson. It was not a success. Daddy just sat in a corner with his oxygen, too weak even to rage, the room filled with the gasps of his ruined lungs. He was gone by the time of the hastily arranged wedding. Momma had given her away, and she was gone too by the time Nathan arrived. Without Missy, whose services she had inherited with the house, Hilda would have had a nervous collapse.

She looked again at the enemy in the mirror, cheeks flushed, eyes bright in some cruel parody of her old self. Her once-fine figure, now buried under mounds of fat. It was no wonder Nelson preferred to sleep alone.

She was hungry, always hungry. There would be such a feast tonight. And she would take a tiny plate and pick at it all evening, while others piled theirs high and went back for seconds. The food called to her like a lover, promising pleasure and comfort and an end to sorrow.

With a last flick of her still-s.h.i.+ny blond hair, she prepared to face the stares, the ridicule, the barely concealed contempt for the oddest couple in town. She planned to get very, very drunk indeed.

Chapter 5.

By the time Henry finished helping with the gator cleanup, it was late afternoon. They had left no trace of the butchery on the lawn and dispersed just as the big Cadillac carrying Hilda Kincaid crunched down the drive. Missy's secret was safe. Selma had taken the meat home to prepare for the barbecue, trying as usual to persuade Henry back to her house. "Why you want to go all the way back to camp?" she had asked. "You can get washed better in my bathtub. Just look at you; you need a good soak. And I got some of Jerome's clothes to fit you."

"You make good sense, as always, Sister," he had said as he wiped his machete on the gra.s.s. "But I got to go back. It's important I be there, for the men." He slipped the machete into his belt.

Her mouth was set in a disapproving line. She seemed to have aged fast while he had been away, but then, he reckoned, eighteen years was half her life so far. At the same age, his mother had seemed like an old woman. There was gray in Selma's hair and tiredness in her walk. He leaned in to kiss her cheek, which she accepted with a glare. He whispered, "See you later...Sunny." The choice of this relic from their childhood was deliberate, what he used to call her whenever he was in her bad graces, which was often. It almost never failed to deflect the worst of her ire, like throwing sand over flames. But he always knew they were not extinguished, just smoldering, and could rise up again at any moment.

The muscles in her face fought against the smile. "Git." She slapped his shoulder. "You got a lotta walkin' to do."

Henry headed for the coast road, where there would be a breeze to dry the sweat on his face. The sun was still fierce and seemed to get stronger as it sank toward the horizon, on its way to the sudden, spectacular tropical sunset. He had forgotten the way the sun seemed to laze all afternoon in a slow arc toward the ocean and then, around supper time, drop the world into night like a rock into a barrel.

He was tempted to jump straight into the ocean, clothes and all, it looked so cool and inviting, but this stretch of beach was for whites only. Families had already begun to set up their picnic stations. Fathers fought with beach umbrellas, mothers flicked sand off the blankets, children ran screeching into the waves. A few of the parents eyed him with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion, as if he were an exotic but dangerous animal at the zoo. A little girl sped over to him, a brown ring of melted chocolate around her mouth, stubby legs making hard work of the sand. She offered him her bright red bucket and a shy smile. Right behind was her mother, out of breath and windblown. She grabbed up her daughter roughly and marshaled her back down the beach. He heard the little girl cry, "Why, Mommy?" "Because he's a bad man," hissed the mother, with a backward glance at Henry. "That's why." Her glance took in his blood-soaked T-s.h.i.+rt and filthy pants. He tipped his hat, but she had already rejoined the husband who stood on their blanket, alert, hands on hips.

Henry stepped up his pace, eyes narrowed against the glare off the water.

He fell into the familiar rhythm that had taken him on foot across the country and back. The soft crunch of his boots freed his mind like nothing else. A pelican skimmed the water in an effortless, silent glide alongside him. He realized there was a debt to be paid, to Selma, to Missy. A debt of explanation, for why he had stayed away so long, why he had chosen to ramble aimlessly around the country after the war rather than return home to his people. And why, even after he came to the camp, it was months before he made contact, and after that, only venturing into town rarely. He was grateful Selma had not demanded payment of this debt, but everything in her voice and body said to him, "We have unfinished business, you and me."

How could he explain when he did not really understand it himself? Where to begin? How could he make her feel what it was like, when men you've trained with, lived with more intimately than any woman, get mashed to gristle, their blood in your eyes, your nose, your mouth? What it was like to harvest body parts, instead of cotton, from the fields? What happens to your feet when they're immersed for weeks in a trench filled with mud and s.h.i.+t?

Equally, he lacked the words to tell her about the thrill of fighting alongside white soldiers as valued comrades-French soldiers, because his own countrymen would not have them, but still. The French locals had treated them like heroes, like their own brothers. His boys had played "le jazz" to ecstatic, gyrating crowds in packed clubs. And the women...the women. He thought of Therese, the last morning before he was s.h.i.+pped home. Her red hair s.h.i.+ning in the sunlight on the pillow, the smell of fresh bread from the boulangerie below. How to explain that he could step out with her in any bar in town and be greeted with cheers and free drinks, rather than the lynching rope?

He pulled his hat down to shade his eyes and loped on. At first, the homecoming had seemed to meet all his expectations. It looked like everything was really, finally going to be different, just as they had hoped. Even now, he had to smile at the memory of that parade, right up Fifth Avenue. His men had marched proudly in step, exchanged slightly disbelieving glances, nervous grins saying, "Is this for real?" Happy, flag-waving crowds lined their route, the cheers ricocheted like bullets off the tall buildings. There was Li'l Joe, and Franklin, and Sammy, Tyrone, Lemuel, and Jeb. Jeb's little legs had to make two strides for every one of the bigger men's. Together they had marched in hopeful formation toward their future. Henry's plan afterward had been to visit the folks in Florida, but then come back north-to do what, he was not exactly sure, but opportunities for someone like him seemed to ooze from the sidewalks. He would make enough money to give Grace and Selma a comfortable life. Then he would go back to Therese, to the room above the boulangerie that always smelled of warm bread.

A fine plan. When did it first go wrong? he wondered. When the killings started in Was.h.i.+ngton and Chicago, the very places where he had thought to try his luck? They heard that Li'l Joe got strung up in Mississippi. Sammy was dragged to death behind a car in Illinois. Tyrone was burned alive for taking part in a labor rally. So he and Jeb had started to walk, away from the riots, away from the burning smell of hate and the rank terror of change. They had worked in fields, slept in barns, sometimes hopped a boxcar, but mostly walked.

During those lost years, he often thought of his mother, his sister, and Missy and the others in Heron Key. If he tried to imagine going back, it was Missy's face he saw, the day she waved him off at the station. The shock and disappointment in her eyes if she could see what he had become-gaunt, weathered, in shabby clothes stiff with dried sweat. He had let them down, all of them. The proud officer, in his s.h.i.+ny shoes, who they had seen off at the station all those years ago, was dead. He sank into the clammy embrace of failure. It was best for everyone if he stayed away. He no longer had a plan. He and Jeb simply existed. They slept in vacant buildings, scavenged in garbage cans for food, did odd jobs. And then one day, while they were in Georgia on a fruit-picking crew, came the call to march on Was.h.i.+ngton. The government had decided that it would not, after all, pay them the long-promised bonus now, when they really needed it, but rather in 1945, which seemed a century away. This final insult had provoked a reaction, even from the weary veterans. A protest had been organized to explain why this was not acceptable. And so they trekked north to join in.

He could still feel the anger, after all these years, like the smell of smoke that just won't go away. When he and Jeb had arrived at the marchers' shantytown in Was.h.i.+ngton, it was thick in the air. Thousands of veterans, with their families, had pitched tents in front of the White House. When the army troops arrived to disperse them, at first the veterans milled about in confusion at the sight of their old comrades. Then the soldiers began to fire gas grenades at them, and mounted troops moved in to slash with bayonets, led by a major who someone said went by the name of Patton. The Was.h.i.+ngton skyline turned orange with the fires of burning tents. Henry saw women and children trampled beneath the horses' hooves. And finally, when it was clear they had lost, he and Jeb joined a slow-moving river of dejected, defeated humanity heading back across the Potomac. Hope gone, faith gone. Only anger remained.

And then, when it had seemed they could sink no lower, a lifeline had found its way to them in the form of a letter from Lemuel. He wrote that a government construction project in the Florida Keys was hiring, for real pay. Not as good as the bonus, it seemed, but better than picking fruit. More than that, Henry decided the location of the project was a sign that the universe wanted him to go home. If it was going to work that hard, he figured, then the least he could do was see what purpose it had for him.

But when he arrived back in Heron Key, he was unprepared for the shock of so many familiar sights and smells, having long ago given up on ever seeing the place again. It looked exactly like it had all those years ago, as if he had only stepped away for a few minutes. He half expected to see his younger self stroll by. It was eerily disconcerting, like an endless attack of deja vu. He felt like a ghost, haunting a former life where he didn't belong anymore. His men went to town, especially on payday, but he made up excuses to stay behind. The months went by, and still he made no contact. Although his cowardice shamed him, he could face no one from the past, no one who had known him as he was. The extra shame barely registered, just got added to the great big well of it inside him. He was unwilling to face the questions and curious stares of the people he had left behind, even the ones he cared about. The only place he had felt at home was in Doc's kitchen, drinking bourbon after dark. Only Doc, who had served and understood. So once in a while, he snuck into town like a thief.

And then it happened. One night, on his way back from Doc's, he saw her. At first he thought it was a drunken hallucination. Missy pa.s.sed by in the direction of her Mama's house, head down, weary feet shuffling on the dusty road. Although she hummed under her breath, it was not a happy sound. And then she was gone around the corner. Suddenly he felt completely sober...and very, very foolish. The next day, he had presented himself at Selma's house, as protocol demanded. Reporting for duty.

He thought back to the scene at the Kincaids' house. So now Missy was all grown up. His little Missy, no longer little. She used to leap into his arms each time he arrived to help with her homework, fairly vibrating with the excitement of learning. Even smeared head to foot with gator gore, she was still pretty. And the embarra.s.sment made her prettier still. She was a girl no more, not even a young woman. He had missed all of that. Still working for the Kincaids and living with Mama, Selma had said with a sad shake of her head. He ran his dirty cloth around his neck. Missy could have been something. There had even been talk of her getting a scholars.h.i.+p to college at Howard. And then her useless daddy got himself drowned. Still, where was her husband, her babies? He had wanted to ask Selma, but that would have alerted her extremely keen senses to an interest he was not sure he felt...or even deserved to feel.

The coast road bent around the curve of the point that brought him within sight and smell of the camp. The sulfurous stink of the latrines caught in his throat. On the colored side, he could see Jeb sluicing his skinny torso at the pump. The last of his men were here. His men. There was Jeb and Franklin, Lemuel and Sonny. That was all.

Henry noticed that his shadow had lengthened on the walk from town. He marched faster, boots kicking up puffs of coral dust. There was just enough time to get clean before they would need to turn around and go back for the barbecue. He did not mind the walk. It was something he knew well how to do. It seemed he had done little else than walk for years and years-always away, never toward anything.

Jeb looked up as he approached.

"Hey, man." He straightened with a grin. "You look like s.h.i.+t." Jeb, whose survival was down to one part blind luck and three parts Henry's protection, was the smallest of them. He joked that he had lied about his height to enlist. By all rights, he should never have even pa.s.sed basic training, much less been deployed to France, yet he turned out to be fearless in combat and a great comfort to the dying. When Henry caught the shrapnel in his neck, it was Jeb's small hand that stopped him bleeding to death, under fire so intense that it kept even the medics away.

Henry peeled off his s.h.i.+rt. "Guess who's having gator steaks tonight? I had to help Selma get him ready for the grill. Outta the way, Shortstop."

Jeb nudged the discarded s.h.i.+rt with a disdainful flick of his boot. "Might as well burn that thing. It ain't never comin' clean."

"No chance-that's my best one. My sister can work miracles." Henry stuffed the s.h.i.+rt under the side of their cabin. "She'll be there tonight."

"A woman who looks like you? I scared already."

Henry splashed water in Jeb's face. "That how you talk to your superiors? Where the others at?"

"Where you think?" Jeb indicated the mess hall with a jerk of his head.

Henry rubbed himself dry with Jeb's towel. The little girl on the beach had stayed with him, her green eyes so open and friendly despite his appearance. And her mother's expression, so familiar to him from his years on the road. He imagined what she would make of the veterans when they arrived at the barbecue after hours of drinking beer in the mess. It would fulfill her every fear and expectation. He was surprised to find it bothered him, as he had long become used to reactions like hers. Maybe it was seeing Missy again, or being in the familiar place of his past, but something felt different. He wanted it to be different, and not just for one silly white woman, but for the men themselves. For Selma. For Missy. And yes, for himself. "We'll see about that."

Henry entered the mess hall and said, "Evenin', gentlemen," in his best parade ground voice. The faces at the tables glanced up briefly, then returned to their drinks. Inside the hall was a miasma of sweat and beer fumes. The men looked and smelled like vagrants.

"Oh, hey, Henry," said Sonny, a big placid fellow from Alabama with a lazy eye. "Want a beer?" Sonny had spent the war humping loads from supply s.h.i.+ps on the docks of Bordeaux.

"Time to get ready," Henry said. "Anyone goin' to town needs to be cleaned up and standing in formation at 1700 hours. We gonna show these folks we ain't the animals they think we are."

"What do we care what a bunch of Conchs think of us?" This from Two-Step, a heavyset troublemaker from South Carolina with pale eyes and a permanent sunburn, famed for his uncanny ability to evade both bullets and blame. He had spent more time in prison than out since the end of the war. "It's the Fourth of July, motherf.u.c.ker! They should be kissing my sorry white a.s.s."

Murmurs of a.s.sent from the others. Henry's eyes traveled around the room. No one would meet his gaze until it rested on a big, square gunner from Missouri called Max Hoffman. Although he was wide as he was tall, Max had not had an easy time in the camp. Known as "Kraut," he was the target of practical jokes and worse, but he was no pushover. Henry had witnessed him stand up to Two-Step, despite the beating that inevitably followed, which was a rare sight indeed in the camp. Max's eyes registered disgust at Two-Step's performance. He opened his mouth to speak but then, with a small shake of his head, closed it again. Clearly this was not a battle he wanted to fight.

Henry's boys, Franklin and Lemuel, looked uncomfortable but said nothing. Henry understood. They had to live and work alongside these men, who had shown themselves capable of extreme violence over the pettiest excuse.

"You can go f.u.c.k yourself, Henry Roberts," Two-Step said with lazy insolence. "You ain't in charge of us." When he was bayoneted in the Argonne Forest, Two-Step had pulled the blade from his body and stabbed it straight into the German's mouth. He and his crew would sooner shoot themselves in the head than take orders from a black officer.

This was too much for Lemuel. "Now, Two-Step, that ain't the way to talk to a officer." Lemuel flicked through the Bible that accompanied him everywhere, including into combat, where it had proved its worth. The stained leather cover was scored with the indentation from a bullet. Lemuel's quotations, however, usually confused rather than illuminated. "Ecclesiastes tell us, Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."

"Shut up, you fat baboon," said Milos Dubcek. One of Two-Step's crew, he was a large man with a surprisingly delicate const.i.tution, which had earned him the nickname Sick Bay. He slammed the book shut. "All I know is we gonna have us a good time tonight, ain't we, boys?" And he rubbed his crotch with meaningful slowness.

Henry caught a sideways glance from Franklin's one eye. Franklin had been a carpenter in Pennsylvania before he enlisted; now he spent his free time carving delicate sculptures of birds and animals from driftwood. Henry had carried him from the battlefield when Franklin lost an eye in a grenade attack. The scarred socket itched when he was nervous. Franklin scratched at it now.

Two-Step leaned back in his chair, hands linked behind his head. This was not the first time he had gotten in the way. Henry had met many like him in the army, both white and colored, men just out for what they could get. Even among the hard cases in the camp, Two-Step had a reputation for calculated, cunning brutality. His frequent stays in the federal pen had made him an artist of manipulation and subterfuge. Henry avoided him as much as possible, but there had been inevitable clashes, some petty and others not. I should walk away, just walk away. As he had done so many times in the past.

But an unfamiliar feeling crept up on him: the feeling that something mattered. He thought again of the little white girl on the beach. He could easily imagine the kind of evening that Two-Step and his crew had in mind. Resolve solidified inside him. Even if it was only for one night, he was determined they would behave like men. He held Two-Step's cold gaze while making fast calculations of weight, angle, and speed. The silence in the tent rang with antic.i.p.ation.

Henry saw his chance and pushed hard on Two-Step's chair. The man went over on his back, limbs flailing. Before he could react, Henry's boot was on his neck with almost enough pressure to crush his windpipe, but not quite. Franklin grappled with his thras.h.i.+ng legs.

Pale eyes bulged up at Henry, lips bared across a mouthful of ocher teeth. "Help me, boys!" gasped the p.r.o.ne Two-Step. "Help me!"

No one moved.

"Now listen to me!" Henry said. "Those of you not from Florida won't be familiar with our giant c.o.c.kroaches. They get BIG down here." Two-Step squirmed under his boot just like an insect. "The only way to deal with them is to stomp on 'em. Hard."

Quiet chuckles flickered around the room. Henry did not turn his head to look. He knew he would pay for this at some point. Two-Step could not let this insult go unpunished. But he didn't care. "So I say again: all the human beings should be ready at 1700 hours to march into town, and I do mean march. Then we're gonna have ourselves a civilized evening with the other humans. And you know why?" He scanned the faces, one at a time. They had come here from every part of the country, joined together by a desperate hope for something better. Some of them were too far gone to reach, sunk in their swamp of despair, but a few seemed to pay attention. "Not even because of what the town thinks of us, but because we owe it to ourselves. The bugs"-he pushed off of Two-Step's neck-"should stay here in this s.h.i.+t hole where they belong."

Two-Step coughed and gasped on the dirt floor, a deep tread pattern on his throat. Henry saw in his almost-colorless blue eyes a promise: this ain't over.

Trent Watts, camp superintendent, observed all of this from the doorway of his office, an unlit stump of cigar clamped between his teeth. Two-Step he knew to be a vicious thug who would as soon cut your throat as look at you, and sly with it. Despite his best efforts, Trent had never managed to tie him to any of the many crimes he had almost certainly committed since joining the project. His enemies suffered terrible accidents, like being crushed by falling timbers that mysteriously loosed their bonds. Property went missing; nothing valuable, of course, as the veterans owned nothing of value. Just little things, like packs of cigarettes or a picture in a tarnished frame. Yes, Two-Step was a slippery son of a b.i.t.c.h who usually got other people to do his fighting for him, patsies like Stan Mulligan and Tec.u.mseh "Tec" Brown, who at that moment were helping Two-Step regain his feet. No, Trent was not at all displeased to see Two-Step on his back under Henry's boot.

But much as Trent would have liked to get Two-Step taken away in handcuffs, Henry was a worse problem for him. For it was Henry who constantly complained to him about everything, from the food to the latrines to the arrangement of the cabins to the G.o.dd.a.m.n way they folded the flag when they took it down at night. Henry always had a better plan, with that polite smile, that way of talking that managed to sound both respectful and patronizing at the same time. Trent had always known that nothing good would come of having n.i.g.g.e.rs in the army, especially not n.i.g.g.e.r officers. Henry Roberts was walking proof. He threw down the cigar and moved silently away.

At 1700 hours sharp, Henry emerged from his cabin, ready to lead his men on the march to town. In one respect, Two-Step was right: Henry was not in charge of them, not anymore. The trouble was that nothing had filled the vacuum left by army discipline-and army order-in this desolate camp. In the service, the badges on a man's uniform told you how to behave toward him. Now they were all equals in misery. The supervisor, Trent Watts, had no interest in anything except getting the bridge finished on time and on budget, by any means possible. He did not seem to grasp, despite Henry's repeated pleas, that the revolting food, the ever-present stench of s.h.i.+t, and the cabins that flooded every time it rained were not the best things for getting men to work long and hard in the hot sun. With better food and living conditions, Henry reasoned, the work would get done better and faster, but Watts gave this argument no credence at all. "These men are animals," he had said. "Put them in a palace and they'll still s.h.i.+t in the bed."

It was intolerable, all of it. And yet they did tolerate it, because the alternative was worse: a place in a freezing soup kitchen line in some gray northern town. It was no surprise to Henry that there were men like Two-Step in the camp; the surprise was that all of them were not like him.

He emerged from his cabin to find a group of men standing to attention by the flagpole, all with their serious military faces on. While they could not be described as smartly dressed, they had each made an effort. They were clean, hair combed, beards trimmed. In a special nod to decorum, Franklin wore a patch over his eye socket. Max Hoffman stood in the mess hall doorway, smoking. Next to him was Two-Step, arms crossed. He spat on the ground as the group pa.s.sed by, eyes fixed in a hateful stare at Henry.

Henry took his place at the head of the formation. "Gentlemen, now we ready."

They had traveled maybe a hundred yards from the camp gate when there came a scuffle at the rear. Max Hoffman puffed to a stop next to Henry. "I ain't a big fan of c.o.c.kroaches," said Hoffman.

They fell into step. The sun slanted across the formation, lying in orange bars on the dusty road. Sweat stained their backs and under their arms.

"Henry," said Max, "I hear you from Heron Key? That so?"

"Yep."

They trudged on a bit farther. Henry was very much aware that Max expected him to say more. Sure enough, after a few more silent paces, Max said, "That why you came back here?"

Henry glanced at Max. The man had broken ranks to walk with them. Now he was asking personal questions. Although Henry despised all that Two-Step stood for, he didn't need to go out of his way to find trouble. What's his game? But Max's broad face, pink with exertion, showed only open curiosity.

"I woulda gone anywhere there was work," said Henry. He hitched up his pants, which were too big for his skinny frame, despite Selma's cooking. "And since the work was here, it seemed like the Lord intended me to see my family."

Max stared at the sea, hand shading his face, and said nothing for a few minutes. There was only the crunch of boots on oyster sh.e.l.ls, the low rumble of conversation from the other men. A pelican buzzed them on its way to the water. Cigarette smoke drifted on the hot breeze. "I had a family too, long time ago. Here." He pulled from his pocket a yellowed, creased photo of a little boy of about six with a big gap between his front teeth. Same square face, pink cheeks, cowboy hat askew on his head.

Henry studied the photo. "That a fine boy you got there. Where he at now?"

Max returned the picture to his pocket with a shrug. Henry knew that kind of shrug. He had used it many times when asked unanswerable questions. "Dunno," said Max. "His mother took him away...when my drinkin'...well, you know."

"Yeah." A look of understanding pa.s.sed between them. "Yeah, I do." Henry hesitated one more moment, conscious that he was crossing some invisible line. "That why you here?"

Max shrugged. "I guess so. When it all went wrong, I just started walkin'. I figured I'd walk till there was no more road." He squinted into the sun. "Seems to me like that place is here."

He's right, Henry thought. This is it, the place where the road ends. It was where you ended up when you had tried everything else. It was a place of last resort. Every man marching with him left a trail of wrecked hopes and shattered lives, like the sh.e.l.ls that crumbled under their boots.

They marched on into the deepening twilight.