He and Herodotus lifted a crate. It was heavy enough to need two men on it, sure enough. "You niggers want to watch out what you're doin'," Lieutenant Kennan said as they started up the gangplank. "Anybody who drops one of these here crates, he doesn't just get his ass fired. He gets himself blacklisted-no work at all for him. And you want to know what I think about that, I hope the fucker starves, and all the little pickaninnies he's spawned, too."

"Give that man a whip and put him in the cotton field, he get five hundred bales to the acre," Herodotus said.

"Yeah, till one fine mornin' they find him with his head broke in, and what a shame, nobody knows who done it," Cincinnatus said. "Wouldn't take long, neither." Herodotus nodded. That sort of thing happened, every so often.

But Lieutenant Kennan had more than a whip to back him up. He had the United States Army on his side. If anything happened to him, the Yankees would take hostages and shoot them. That had happened before, too.

Cincinnatus and Herodotus loaded the long, narrow crate into the back of a motor truck. Whatever it was, that said it had a certain amount of importance, because things that weren't of high priority got hauled to the front in horse-drawn wagons. More than the usual number of U.S. soldiers were standing around the trucks, too, keeping an eye on the loading but not, of course, deigning to help with what they, like whites in the CSA, called nigger work.

Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Cincinnatus was glad he was wearing leather gloves. His hands were hard, but the rough boards of the crates would have torn them up anyhow. He didn't want to stop for the dinner break. He'd got into a rhythm. Pausing to eat took him out of it. When you were working like a machine, that happened sometimes. But stop he did. If you didn't take whatever breaks the Yankees doled out to you, they were liable to figure you didn't need 'em and not dole out any; they were nasty in a more efficient, cold-blooded way than Confederate whites.

Sure enough, when he went back to work after his sowbelly and greens and his canteen full of cold coffee, he needed a while to get used to things again, and he never did quite find the trancelike state in which he'd been working before dinner. Thinking about what he was doing made the afternoon seem to last three times as long as the morning had.

About halfway through the afternoon, another big barge came across the river from Cincinnati. It too was loaded almost to the wallowing point with long, skinny crates stencilled BATTERY F and DISINFECTION. AS the Negro labourers unloaded the crates, U.S. soldiers strung up electric lamps so another crew could eventually replace them and keep working through the night.

Herodotus raised an eyebrow. "Ain't never seen 'em do that before," he said. Cincinnatus nodded; he hadn't seen them do that before, either.

At last, Lieutenant Kennan shouted, "All right, nigs, knock off. Anybody back here even one minute later than seven o'clock tomorrow morning, he can kiss my ass, but he still won't get any work. Go on now, get the hell out, and we'll put some fresh mules on the job."

"That's how he thinks of us-mules," Cincinnatus said as he and Herodotus lined up to get their day's pay. Cincinnatus knew he'd busted his hump, but Kennan wasn't handing out fifty-cent bonuses to anybody, not today.

"Mus' be his time of the month," Herodotus said. "He's sure enough cranky like that."

Some of the work gang stood at the trolley stop and waited for a ride back to the Negro district of Covington. Others-men who saved every nickel-left them with waves and weary calls of, "See you in the mornin'," and started walking south, away from the Ohio. Cincinnatus was one of those. He hadn't ridden the trolley since he found out Elizabeth was in a family way.

A little south of downtown, he peeled off from the group of labourers. "Got to buy me some new laces for my shoes," he said. "Got so many knots holding these ones together, it's like puttin' rocks in my shoes."

"You could pick a better place," Herodotus said. "Conroy there"-he pointed to the name on the awning above the storefront-"he don't like black folks much. Feldman down the street, he's a better bet."

"I ain't never had no trouble with Conroy, an' he's cheaper to buy from than the Jew," Cincinnatus answered. Herodotus shrugged, waved, and kept on walking.

Conroy's general store was typical of the breed. The proprietor, a big, red-faced fellow with a formidable grizzled mustache and a wad of tobacco in one cheek, looked a lot more pregnant than Elizabeth did. He had dry goods at the right of the store, yard goods at the back, groceries to the left, with barrels of flour, sugar, and crackers in front of his counter. Cigars and candy reposed in glass jars on the counter.

A white man and a couple of white women were in the store. Cincinnatus took off his cap and waited till Conroy served them. Another white man came in after Cincinnatus but before the storekeeper was done taking care of the others. He got served ahead of Cincinnatus, too.

At last, the labourer's turn came. The storekeeper got him three pairs of shoelaces and gave back ninety cents change on the day's dollar Cincinnatus handed him. Some of the coins were Confederate, others U.S.

"Seen somethin' interesting," Cincinnatus remarked, making sure Conroy hadn't short-changed him. Casually, as if it were no particular import- and, for all he knew, it wasn't- he described the unending loads of crates he'd hauled all day long, and the curious words on them.

Conroy tugged at one end of his mustache. "That a fact?" he said. "Well, you're right. Mebbe that is interesting." He spat, and fell a little short of the cuspidor. By the brown stains on the pale pine boards near the spittoon, he missed a good deal of the time.

With ninety cents in change clinking in his pocket, Cincinnatus irrationally felt richer than he had with a single silver cartwheel. He got out of the store as fast as he could; passing the time of day like that with a white man felt unnatural to him, and, by Conroy's attitude, to the storekeeper as well.

When he got home, Elizabeth had a stew of chicken and okra and rice waiting for him. "I was startin' to be worried about you," she said, and then yawned. She'd been tired all the time since she was expecting, but she hadn't worked any less. With everything more expensive because of war and occupation, she couldn't afford that.

"Put in some extra time," Cincinnatus explained. "Didn't get any extra money for it, but I didn't have no choice, neither. And afterwards, I stopped by Conroy's, bought me some shoelaces."

"Did you?" Elizabeth said, and let out a long sigh. "Dear God, I wish we didn't have to have nothin' to do with Conroy or any of the other people still spyin' for the CSA up here."

"Lord have mercy, so do I," Cincinnatus said, "but after we didn't give Tom Kennedy to the Yankees, they got themselves a hold on us."

"No good will come of it," Elizabeth predicted gloomily. "No good at all."

Cincinnatus couldn't argue, and didn't try. While Kennedy was in the house, he'd had the upper hand on the white man. Once Kennedy had left, though, despite whatever profuse thanks he gave, the upper hand was his again, because he could blackmail Cincinnatus and Elizabeth, threatening to let U.S. authorities know what they'd done. He hadn't ever made that threat, but when he asked Cincinnatus to let Conroy the storekeeper know about anything intriguing he picked up on the wharfs, his former driver didn't see how he could say no.