Walk in Hell

not in the Pacific.”

“That’s right, you told me. I just remembered he was in the Navy, is all.” Winter shook his head in chagrin, whether real or put on she couldn’t tell. Then he went back to business, which relieved her: “Machine behaving all right?”

“It seems to be, yes.” With someone else, Sylvia might have joked that saying it was working well would make it break down. The thought was in her mind, but she kept it there. The less she had to do with Mr. Winter outside of things that were strictly business, the better she liked it.

He nodded to her. “That’s fine, then.” With another nod, he headed over to the machine Isabella Antonelli ran. “Hello, ’Bella. How are you this morning?”

The paste reservoir on Sylvia’s machine ran low just then. She had to bend down, pick up the bucket of thick white paste, and refill the reservoir, all without missing a beat on the three levers she had to pull for every can of mackerel feeding through to be labeled. While she was doing that, she felt like a juggler with too many balls in the air.

It also distracted her from the conversation the foreman and Isabella Antonelli were having. She couldn’t have heard all of it anyhow, not over the unending clatter and rumble of the line that moved the cans ahead and the racket of the machines along the way, but she might have heard some. She wanted to hear some. She’d never noticed Mr. Winter using a shortened version of Isabella’s name before. Did that mean he hadn’t done it before, or that she hadn’t noticed?

Like everyone else at the canning plant, Isabella Antonelli had taken off her hat when she started work. That was all the more necessary for her, what with the veil depending from the hat. Before heading toward the next machine on the line, Mr. Winter chucked her under the chin, said something Sylvia didn’t catch, and made as if to kiss her on the cheek but didn’t. He was laughing when he left her station.

Sylvia concentrated on her own machine with a fury whose intensity startled her and was only made worse because it was so futile. She jerked the levers so hard, she jammed the machine, which shut down the whole line till she could clear it.

Mr. Winter came over at a limping trot. “Thought you said it was going good,” he said. “You shut us down, it costs the owners money. They don’t like that, Mrs. Enos. They don’t like that even a little bit.”

“I’m sorry,” she lied. “It was behaving fine till a minute ago.” She used a screwdriver to lever a tin can out of the works. “Let me just check.” She pulled the lever that had started the trouble. It functioned smoothly now. “You can start things up again.”

“All right.” He gave her a grudging nod. “You fixed it fast enough, I will say that.” Cans started flowing once more.

Restraining the anger she’d taken out on the labeling machine made her stomach hurt. She was glad when the lunch whistle blew. Picking up her dinner pail, she fell into step beside Isabella Antonelli. It was hot and muggy outside the factory building, and the view was only of another canning plant across the street, but that still meant cooler weather and a prettier prospect than inside.

They sat down on a bench. Sylvia had a fish sandwich-leftovers from the night before-and Mrs. Antonelli some sort of funny-shaped noodles in tomato sauce. After they’d eaten for a while, Sylvia asked, “Is he bothering you?”

“Who?” Isabella was intent on her food. They had only half an hour before they went back to work.

“Him. Mr. Winter. The foreman. I saw him, what he did this morning. That’s not right.” Remembering, Sylvia got angry all over again.

To her own mortification, a certain amount of relief accompanied the anger. He’s not bothering me, thank God, was the nasty little thought somewhere near the bottom of her mind. Recognizing it for what it was only made her more furious, both at the foreman and at herself.

“Mr. Winter?” Isabella’s eyes grew wide for a moment. Then, to Sylvia’s surprise, she laughed. “Oh, that. No, that is nothing much. I do not worry about it. He is a lonely man, Mr. Winter. And I, now I am lonely, too.” She set down her fork and touched the sleeve of the black dress.

“But-” Sylvia began. She stopped, not knowing how to go on. If, God forbid, something had happened to George, she wouldn’t have been able to look at a man for years. She was sure of it. She was so sure of it, she hadn’t imagined anyone else could be different.

Isabella Antonelli said, “I do not think anything will come of it. If anything does come of it, that would not be so bad.” For a moment, she looked altogether pragmatic. “He is a Catholic. I have found out.”

“Is he? Have you?” Sylvia didn’t scratch her head, but she felt like it. The more you looked at the world, the more complicated it got.

The white man in the munitions plant hiring office scribbled something on the form in front of him, then looked across the table at Scipio. “Well, boy, you sound like you’ll do,” he said in the sharp accent typical of Columbia, South Carolina. “Why don’t you let me have your passbook so we can get this here all settled right and proper?”

Scipio’s heart leaped up into his throat. He’d expected the demand. No Negro in the CSA could have failed to expect the demand. Since the start of the war, things were supposed to have loosened up. That was how it had looked when he was the butler back at Marshlands, anyhow. God only knew what the aftermath of the rebellion had done toward tightening things again, though.

God knew, and he was about to find out. Donning what he hoped was an ingratiating smile, he said, “Ain’t got none, suh. I used to, yes suh, but I plumb lost it in the ruction.”

“I bet you did,” the clerk said with a thin smile. “You talk like a nigger from further down on the Congaree- that right, Nero?”

“Yes, suh,” Scipio said. Nero was one of the commonest names Negro men bore. He wondered what the white man-whose desk bore a little placard proclaiming him to be Mr. Staunton-would have thought had he suddenly started his other way of speaking. He didn’t intend doing anything so foolish. Talking like an educated white might give him away and would surely get him tagged as uppity. He couldn’t afford that, not if he wanted work.

“Let’s see your hands,” Staunton said suddenly. Trying not to show any reluctance, Scipio displayed them. That unpleasant smile flashed across the clerk’s face again. “Not a field nigger-a house nigger, I reckon. And you don’t have a passbook? My, my. What were you doing, these past few months?”

That hit too close to the center of the target. Scipio said, “A minute ago, suh, you says you wants to hire me. Now you talkin’ like I was one o’ dey bad niggers raise all de ruction.” He wanted to flee. Only a well-founded suspicion that he wouldn’t make it outside the door kept him standing where he was.

“Oh, I’ll hire you,” Staunton said. He lowered his voice. “For niggers without passbooks, though, we got a special arrangement. Have to get you a new book, right? Lots of patrollers around these days, that’s a fact.”

“Yes, suh,” Scipio said again. Now he stood at ease once more. Staunton wasn’t going to betray him, just shake him down. “How much I gots to pay you, git de new book?” He also spoke quietly.

“Ain’t you a smart nigger?” By the way the clerk’s pale eyes sparked, that was more warning than compliment. “Half your pay the first month,” Staunton said, greed evidently overcoming suspicion. “End of the month, you be a good boy, you get yourself a book. Understand?”

“Yes, suh.” The repetition was getting monotonous. Scipio let out a mournful sigh. “Not much left fo’ me.” At the start of the war, a dollar and a quarter a day would have been good money for a Negro, and half that survivable for a month. Wages and prices had gone up a good deal the past two years, though.

“Nigger without a passbook ain’t gonna get a better deal no place else,” Staunton said, and that, odds on, was true.

Scipio sighed again. He’d be drinking water and eating cornmeal mush for the next month, no two ways about it-and that with sleeping in the cheapest flophouse he could find. After Marshlands, even after the hectic life as part of the ruling council of the Congaree Socialist Republic, it had all the earmarks of a thoroughly joyless existence.

“God damn the Reds,” he muttered. Nobody had bothered to listen to him, though he’d warned again and again that the uprising would lead only to disaster. Having acquired a fair smattering of a classical education at Marshlands, he found himself wishing Cassandra were a masculine name. He would have used it for an alias instead of Nero.

Mr. Staunton heard what he said, and interpreted it his own way. “God damn the Reds is right, Nero,” he