Free Under a Dark Summer Sky by Vanessa Lafaye

together by a desperate hope for something better. Some of them were too far gone to reach, sunk in their swamp of despair, but a few seemed to pay attention. “Not even because of what the town thinks of us, but because we owe it to ourselves. The bugs”—he pushed off of Two-Step’s neck—“should stay here in this shit hole where they belong.”
    Two-Step coughed and gasped on the dirt floor, a deep tread pattern on his throat. Henry saw in his almost-colorless blue eyes a promise: this ain’t over.

    Trent Watts, camp superintendent, observed all of this from the doorway of his office, an unlit stump of cigar clamped between his teeth. Two-Step he knew to be a vicious thug who would as soon cut your throat as look at you, and sly with it. Despite his best efforts, Trent had never managed to tie him to any of the many crimes he had almost certainly committed since joining the project. His enemies suffered terrible accidents, like being crushed by falling timbers that mysteriously loosed their bonds. Property went missing; nothing valuable, of course, as the veterans owned nothing of value. Just little things, like packs of cigarettes or a picture in a tarnished frame. Yes, Two-Step was a slippery son of a bitch who usually got other people to do his fighting for him, patsies like Stan Mulligan and Tecumseh “Tec” Brown, who at that moment were helping Two-Step regain his feet. No, Trent was not at all displeased to see Two-Step on his back under Henry’s boot.
    But much as Trent would have liked to get Two-Step taken away in handcuffs, Henry was a worse problem for him. For it was Henry who constantly complained to him about everything, from the food to the latrines to the arrangement of the cabins to the goddamn way they folded the flag when they took it down at night. Henry always had a better plan, with that polite smile, that way of talking that managed to sound both respectful and patronizing at the same time. Trent had always known that nothing good would come of having niggers in the army, especially not nigger officers. Henry Roberts was walking proof. He threw down the cigar and moved silently away.
    â€¢ • •
    At 1700 hours sharp, Henry emerged from his cabin, ready to lead his men on the march to town. In one respect, Two-Step was right: Henry was not in charge of them, not anymore. The trouble was that nothing had filled the vacuum left by army discipline—and army order—in this desolate camp. In the service, the badges on a man’s uniform told you how to behave toward him. Now they were all equals in misery. The supervisor, Trent Watts, had no interest in anything except getting the bridge finished on time and on budget, by any means possible. He did not seem to grasp, despite Henry’s repeated pleas, that the revolting food, the ever-present stench of shit, and the cabins that flooded every time it rained were not the best things for getting men to work long and hard in the hot sun. With better food and living conditions, Henry reasoned, the work would get done better and faster, but Watts gave this argument no credence at all. “These men are animals,” he had said. “Put them in a palace and they’ll still shit in the bed.”
    It was intolerable, all of it. And yet they did tolerate it, because the alternative was worse: a place in a freezing soup kitchen line in some gray northern town. It was no surprise to Henry that there were men like Two-Step in the camp; the surprise was that all of them were not like him.
    He emerged from his cabin to find a group of men standing to attention by the flagpole, all with their serious military faces on. While they could not be described as smartly dressed, they had each made an effort. They were clean, hair combed, beards trimmed. In a special nod to decorum, Franklin wore a patch over his eye socket. Max Hoffman stood in the mess hall doorway, smoking. Next to him was Two-Step,