“Yes, suh?” Cincinnatus said warily. Kennan sounded more filled with bile than usual, which was saying something.
“Don’t I remember you bragging once upon a time that you could drive a truck?”
“Don’t know about braggin’, suh, but I can drive a truck,” Cincinnatus said. “Been doin’it for a while before the war started.” Before the war started. Here it was barely sunup, and that phrase had already crossed his mind several times. It was going to be a dividing line for his life, for everybody’s life, for a long time to come.
Lieutenant Kennan looked as if every word he was about to say tasted bad. “You see that line of trucks over yonder? You get your ass over there, ask for Lieutenant Straubing, and tell him you’re the nigger I was talking about.”
“Yes, suh,” Cincinnatus said. Were the Yanks finally getting smart? If they were, they’d taken their own sweet time about it. Better late than never? Cincinnatus wouldn’t have bet on that, not till he saw for certain. “If I’m drivin’ a truck, suh, what do they pay me?”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Kennan said, as if washing his hands of Cincinnatus. “You take it up with Lieutenant Straubing. You’re his baby now.” No, he didn’t want to have anything to do with Cincinnatus. He rounded on the rest of the men in the labor gang. “What are you coons doing, standing around gaping like a bunch of gorillas? Get your nigger asses moving!”
Cincinnatus had all he could do not to spring over to the trucks to which Kennan had directed him. Nobody, he told himself, could be a worse boss than the one he was escaping. But then, after a moment, he shook his head. Since the war began, he’d learned you couldn’t tell about things like that.
A sentry near the trucks wore one of the helmets that made U.S. soldiers look as if they had kettles on their heads. He carried a Springfield with a long bayonet, which he pointed at Cincinnatus. “State your business,” he snapped, with a clear undertone of it had better be good.
“Lieutenant Kennan back there, suh”-he pointed toward the wharf where his old gang, under Kennan’s loud and profane direction, was beginning to unload a barge-“he tol’ me to come see Lieutenant, uh, Straubing here.”
For a moment, he wondered if there’d be no Lieutenant Straubing, and if Kennan, for reasons of his own (maybe connected with Cincinnatus’ dealings with one underground or another, maybe only with Kennan’s loathing for blacks) had sent him here to get in trouble, or perhaps to get shot.
But the sentry, though he didn’t lower the rifle, did nod. “Stay right here,” he said, as if Cincinnatus were likely to be going anywhere with that bayonet aimed at his brisket. Then he raised his voice: “Hey, Lieutenant! Colored fellow here to see you!”
Colored fellow. It was just a description. Cincinnatus, not used to being just described, heard it with some incredulity. Out from around the row of trucks came an ordinary-looking white man with silver first-lieutenant’s bars on the shoulder straps of his U.S. uniform. “Hello,” he said to Cincinnatus. “You the man Eddie was telling me about last night?” Seeing Cincinnatus’ frown, he added, “Lieutenant Kennan, I mean?”
“Oh. Yes, suh.” Cincinnatus had labored for Kennan for well over a year without learning, or wanting to learn, his Christian name.
“He says you can drive a truck,” Straubing said. He waited for Cincinnatus to agree, then went on, “How long have you been doing that?”
“Couple-three years before the war started,” Cincinnatus answered. “Haven’t had the chance to do it since.”
Lieutenant Straubing cocked his head to one side. “You don’t hardly look old enough to have been driving that long.” For a moment, Cincinnatus thought he was calling him a liar. Then he realized Straubing meant he had a young-looking face. “Come on,” the lieutenant said, and walked him past the sentry. He halted in front of one of the big, green-gray White trucks. “Think you can drive this baby?”
“Reckon I can,” Cincinnatus said. The White was a monster, a good deal larger than the delivery truck he’d driven for Tom Kennedy. But it was still a truck. A crank was still a crank, a gearshift still a gearshift.
“All right. Show me. The key’s in it.” Lieutenant Straubing scrambled up into the truck, sliding over to the passenger’s half of the front seat.
Cincinnatus had no trouble starting the truck. It was a bare-bones military model, without even a windscreen, which surprised him when he climbed in behind the wheel, but he didn’t let it worry him. He didn’t ask Straubing about pay, either, not right then. That he wasn’t hauling heavy crates was plenty to keep him happy for the moment.
“Pull out of the line and take me on a spin through town. Be back here in, oh, twenty minutes or so,” Lieutenant Straubing told him over the growl of the motor.
“Yes, suh,” Cincinnatus said. He put the truck in gear and got moving. Every once in a while, he sneaked a glance over at the soldier beside him. He wanted to scratch his head, but didn’t. Something in the way Straubing dealt with him was peculiar, but he had trouble putting his finger on it.
They didn’t get back to the parked trucks in twenty minutes. They had a blowout not five minutes after getting on the road. Cincinnatus fixed it. Straubing helped, not the least bit fussy about getting mud and grease on his hands or on his uniform. “All right, where were we?” he said when the two of them got back onto the rather hard seat.
Cincinnatus didn’t answer. He didn’t feel he had to answer, even though a white man had just spoken to him. When he realized that, he realized what was funny about how the U.S. soldier was treating him: as one man would treat another, regardless of whether he was white and Cincinnatus black. No wonder Cincinnatus had taken so long to figure that out: as best he could remember, he’d never run into anything like it before.
Some white men hated Negroes, plain and simple. He’d met a good many of those before having the imperfect delight of busting his hump for Lieutenant Kennan for so long. But that kind of out-and-out hatred wasn’t the most common response he’d had from whites over the years. More treated him as they would have treated a mule: they gave him orders when they needed him and made as if he were invisible when they didn’t.
He’d even had white men grateful to him: Tom Kennedy’s image rose up in his mind. After he’d hidden his former boss and kept U.S. soldiers from finding him, Kennedy had been nice as you please. But it had been a condescending sort of niceness, even then: a lord being kind to a serf who by some accident of fate had been in position to do him a good turn.
He didn’t feel any of that from Lieutenant Straubing. The way Straubing was acting, they might both have been white-or, for that matter, they might both have been black. He’d never run into that from Confederate white men. He hadn’t run into it from Yankees, either, not till now. He didn’t know how to react to it.
Straubing suddenly spoke up: “You can go on back now, Cincinnatus. I’m sold-you can drive a truck. Better than I can, wouldn’t be surprised.” As Cincinnatus turned back toward the riverfront, the lieutenant went on, “Dollar and a half a day suit you?”
“It’s what I’m makin’ now, most days,” Cincinnatus answered, “but yes, suh, it suits. Work’ll be easier.”
“I thought longshoreman’s rate was a dollar a day,” Straubing said with a small frown. Then he laughed-at himself. “And I’m a dimwit. I think half the reason Kennan sent you over to me is that you were ruining his accounts, getting the extra half-dollar so often. The other half, unless I’m wrong, is that you were getting the extra half-dollar so often, you were ruining his notions of what colored people are like. He probably hasn’t figured that half out for himself yet. Tell you what-I won’t tell him if you don’t.”
Now Cincinnatus did stare at him. He almost ran down a horse and buggy before he started paying attention to the road again. Never in all his born days had he heard-or expected to hear-one white man discussing another’s attitude toward Negroes, and discussing it in tones that made it obvious he thought Lieutenant Kennan was a damn fool.