With her lived a young corn-haired girl of twenty years whose family lived in Pulpit Hill. Sometimes he went to see her.
Twice a week the troops went through. They stood densely in brown and weary thousands on the pier while a council of officers, tabled at the gangways, went through their clearance papers. Then, each below the sweating torture of his pack, they were filed from the hot furnace of the pier into the hotter prison of the ship. The great ships, with their motley jagged patches of deception, waited in the stream: they slid in and out in unending squadrons.
Sometimes the troops were black—labor regiments from Georgia and Alabama; big gorilla bucks from Texas. They gleamed with sweat and huge rich laughter: they were obedient as children and called their cursing officers “boss.”
“And don’t you call me ‘boss’ again, you bastards!” screamed a young Tennessee lieutenant, who had gone slowly insane during the moving, as he nursed his charges through hell. They grinned at him cheerfully, with affection, like good obedient children, as he stamped, raving, up and down the pier. From time to time they goaded him into a new frenzy with complaints about lost hats, bayonets, small arms, and papers. Somehow he found things for them; somehow he cursed his way through, keeping them in order. They grinned affectionately, therefore, and called him boss.
“And what in Jesus’ name have you done now?” he yelled, as a huge black sergeant with several enlisted men, who had gathered at the examiner’s table, burst suddenly into loud roars of grief.
The fiery lieutenant rushed at the table, cursing.
The sergeant and several enlisted men, all Texas darkies, had come away from camp without a clean bill of health: they were venereals and had not been cured.
“Boss,” blubbered the big black sergeant, “we wants to go to France. We don’t want to git lef ’ in dis Gawd-dam hole.”
(Nor do I blame them, thought Eugene.)
“I’ll kill you! So help me God, I’ll kill you!” screamed the officer, hurling his trim cap upon the ground and stamping upon it. But, a moment later, with a medical officer he was leading them away for examination behind the great wall of sacked oats. Five minutes later they emerged. The negroes were cavorting with joy: they pressed around their fierce commander, seizing and kissing his hand, fawning upon him, adoring him.
“You see,” said the dish-faced checker, while he and Eugene watched, “that’s what it takes to hold a crowd of niggers. You can’t be nice to ’em. They’d do anything for that guy.”
“He would for them,” said Eugene.
These negroes, he thought, who came from Africa, were sold at the block in Louisiana, and live in Texas, are now on their way to France.
Mr. Finch, the chief checker with the ugly slit eyes, approached Eugene with a smile of false warmth. His gray jaws worked.
“I’ve got a job for you, Gant,” he said. “Double-time pay. I want you to get in on some of the easy money.”
“What is it?” said Eugene.
“They’re loading this ship with big stuff,” said Mr. Finch. “They’re taking her out into the stream to get it on. I want you to go out with her. They’ll take you off in a tug tonight.”
The dish-faced checker, when jubilantly he told him of his appointment, said:
“They asked me to go, but I wouldn’t.”
“Why not?” said Eugene.
“I don’t want the money bad enough. They’re loading her with T.N.T. and nitroglycerin. The niggers play baseball with those cases. If they ever drop one, they’ll bring you home in a bucket.”
“It’s all in the day’s work,” said Eugene dramatically.
This was danger, war. He was definitely in on it, risking his hide for Democracy. He was thrilled.
When the big freighter slid away from the pier, he stood in the bow with spread legs, darting his eyes about with fierce eagle glances. The iron decks blistered his feet through the thin soles of his shoes. He did not mind. He was the captain.
She anchored seaward down the Roads, and the great barges were nosed in by the tugs. All through the day, under a broiling sun, they loaded her from the rocking barges: her huge yellow booms swung up and down; by nightfall she rode deeply in the water, packed to her throat with shells and powder, and bearing on the hot plates of her deck 1200 grisly tons of field artillery.
Eugene stood with fierce appraising eyes, walking about the guns with a sense of authority, jotting down numbers, items, pieces. From time to time he thrust a handful of moist scrap-tobacco into his mouth, and chewed with an air of relish. He spat hot sizzling gobs upon the iron deck. God! thought he. This is man’s work. Heave-ho, ye black devils! There’s a war on! He spat.
The tug came at nightfall and took him off. He sat apart from the stevedores, trying to fancy the boat had come for him alone. The lights went twinkling up the far Virginia shores. He spat into the swirling waters.
When the trains slid in and out, the stevedores raised the wooden bridges that spanned the tracks. Foot by foot, with rhythmic pull and halt, the gangs tugged at the ropes, singing, under the direction of their leader their song of love and labor:
“Jelly Roll! (Heh!) Je‑e‑elly Roll.”
They were great black men, each with his kept woman. They earned fifty or sixty dollars a week.
Once or twice again, in the dying summer, Eugene went to Norfolk. He saw the sailor, but he no longer tried to see Laura. She seemed far and lost.
He had not written home all summer. He found a letter from Gant, written in his father’s Gothic sprawl—a sick and feeble letter, written sorrowfully and far away. O lost! Eliza, in the rush and business of the summer trade, had added a few practical lines. Save his
