“It’s a labor encampment. They’ll work us. How bad can it be?”
“That’s what I’m afraid of-how bad it can be.”
Since Mike had no answer to that, he kept quiet and looked out the back of the truck. From a sign facing the other way, he discovered they were on US 89. He saw half a dozen cranes standing in a field near the road. They looked even bigger than the herons that hunted in pools and streams in Central Park. There was something wrong about a bird as tall as an eleven-year-old.
After half an hour or so, the trucks turned off the road and onto a dirt track. It went up into the mountains. Mike’s ears popped several times. It got colder as they climbed, too. He began to wish for something heavier than the jacket he’d grabbed when the GBI goons got him.
Pines crowded close to the track. Every so often, branches would swish against the canvas canopy. They weren’t going fast at all now. You might be able to jump out without ruining yourself. But if you did, could you get back to civilization before you starved or froze or got eaten by a bear-or did wolves prowl these mountains? Mike didn’t try to find out. Neither did the mousy little man or anyone else.
At last, the trucks stopped. “Everybody out!” someone shouted. “On the double!” The wreckers were too worn from their journey to move on the double, but out they came.
Behind Mike was the pine forest through which they’d been driving. The trucks had stopped near the edge of a clearing hacked out of the woods. Ahead of them lay the camp where they’d stay.
It put him in mind of the prisoner-of-war stockades he’d seen in books of photos about the Great War. There was the same barbed-wire entanglement around the square perimeter. Guard towers stood at the corners and near the middle of each side. He could see machine guns atop some of the towers, and didn’t doubt that the others also held them.
Inside the perimeter, the barracks and other buildings were made of the local pine, and so new the wood’s bright yellow hadn’t begun to fade. One of the buildings was a sawmill. Mike could hear a big saw biting into logs. A raven flew off a rooftop, grukking hoarsely. Nevermore to you, too, Mike thought.
Men ambled about within the barbed wire. Their clothes were shapeless and colorless. More than a few of them wore beards. One waved at the truck convoy. Whether that was greeting or sarcasm, Mike couldn’t have said.
He didn’t wave back. He didn’t want to do anything the guards might not like. He hadn’t been a prisoner long, but he’d learned that lesson in a hurry.
Armed guards in uniforms that weren’t quite military but weren’t what cops would wear, either, moved prisoners away from the gate by gesturing with their weapons. Then they opened it. “Go on in!” one of the GBI men who’d ridden with the convoy barked. “I hope you rot in there, you fucking wreckers!”
Not too far from the front of one line, Mike inched ahead, up into a building with ENCAMPMENT ADMINISTRATION over the door. In due course, he came before a clerk who said, “Name and number?” in a tone that announced he couldn’t care less.
“Sullivan, Michael, NY24601.” Giving them that way was another thing Mike had learned fast.
“Sullivan. .” The clerk flipped through an alphabetical list. “Here you are. Five to ten, is it?”
“Yes.” Mike didn’t show what he thought of that. Showing anything you didn’t have to was dangerous.
“Okay, Sullivan NY24601. Go out that door and turn right. They’ll tend to you further in the infirmary.”
“Huh? What about food?” Mike asked. The clerk just pointed. Mike went.
In the infirmary, he bathed with a dozen other men in an enormous tin tub whose steaming water stank of disinfectant. As soon as he was dry, though still naked, a barber in those shapeless, colorless quilted clothes-a wrecker himself, Mike realized: his number was IL15160-snatched him bald and hacked off his sprouting beard.
“Go to the building next to this one and get your camp duds,” the barber said when he finished. The slash-and-burn didn’t take long.
“What do I do with the stuff I wore on the way here?” Mike had those clothes under his arm.
“Hang on to it. Try not to let anybody steal it,” the wrecker answered. “It gets cold at night now. Pretty soon, it’ll be cold all the goddamn time. You’ll be glad for whatever you’ve got. Now get moving-somebody’s behind you.”
Mike got moving. They issued him a cotton shirt, a quilted jacket, long johns, quilted pants, wool socks, and boots as hard as iron. Nothing except the boots fit well. They did give him the right size with those, but he had no idea how long the boots would take to break in. For all he knew, his whole term. They also gave him a tin mess kit.
They used stencils and black indelible ink to mark NY24601 on the front and back of the jacket and on the seat of his pants. Then one of them said, “Go to Barracks Seventeen. Find a bunk there. Get used to it. You’ll be in it one fucking long time.”
Everyone in the encampment seemed to take profanity for granted, the way cops and soldiers did. Mike came out of the supply building and went looking for Barracks 17. Each building was plainly marked, so he didn’t need long to find it. He walked inside.
The bunks were four high. You slept on wooden slats-no mattress, no sheet, no blanket. In the center of the hall was an open space around a potbellied iron stove out of a Currier and Ives print. The stove burned wood. Billets of chopped pine were piled near it.
All of the bunks closest to the stove had old clothes or boots or something on them to show they belonged to somebody. Mike wondered what would happen if he moved someone’s stuff and put his own in its place. He didn’t wonder long-chances were he’d have a fight on his hands.
Not wanting one, he threw his junk on the best-sited empty bunk he could find. Some other new wreckers wandered in and staked their own claims. Mike lay down. The bunk was barely long enough for him, and he wasn’t tall. After the trip across the country in the jammed railway car, he didn’t complain. He sure had more room here than he’d had there.
Using his wadded-up slacks for a pillow, he fell asleep, mattress or no mattress. He hadn’t slept more than a few minutes at a time on the train. Who could have? It wasn’t much more than luck that they hadn’t handed him out to the guards feet first. He was hungry, too, but he would worry about that again when he woke up.
When he did wake, it was with a start. He almost banged his head on the slats of the bunk above his. More people were coming into the barracks. Their talking was what had roused him. The light had shifted. Night was coming on. It wasn’t dark yet, but even a city fellow like him could tell it wouldn’t be long.
“We got us some new scalps here,” said a man standing in the narrow aisle near the bunk. He nodded to Mike. “How the hell are ya, scalp?” His voice had a Western twang. The number on his jacket was WY232. Wyoming didn’t hold many people, but the GBI hadn’t wasted any time getting its hands on him.
“I’m hungry. I’m thirsty. I’d murder somebody for a cigarette. My head still hurts from where they blackjacked me. Leave all that out, and I’m fine,” Mike said. “How the hell are you?”
“I’m okay,” the other man answered. “Wasn’t a bad day today. Nobody in the work gang got hurt or anything. We did what they told us to do, and now we’re back. Lineup soon, then supper. They call me John.”
“I’m Mike, Mike Sullivan.” Mike’s mouth twisted. “Sullivan, Michael, NY24601.”
“Dennison, Jonathan, WY232.” John shrugged. “Mostly we don’t bother with any o’ that shit ’cept for first names.” He was in his early thirties, a few years younger than Mike. He wasn’t a scalp-he had longish brown hair and a gingery beard with a few white hairs in it. His forehead was wide, his chin narrow. If he hadn’t seen everything, his pale eyes didn’t admit it. He pulled a small suede drawstring pouch from a trouser pocket. “Let’s find some paper. You can get a smoke, anyways.”