“Up,” said the overseer or trusty to the man. “Let’s go.”
The forty-five-plus nodded and lowered his hands and allowed himself to be led through the crowd, toward the exit at the end of the platform, and his face remained as impassive as all the other faces. But his eyes: I saw it, a flickering in his eyes—I saw it—a slight widening. Absolute and abject terror. I had read about the up-to-date disincentive programs that were run in plantations now; all that shit that had come online since my days at Bell’s. They were permitted now to tie you to a plank, pour water in your mouth to simulate drowning. They were permitted now to employ electric shocks; the science was in place to precisely measure out the voltage. All the uses of darkness. Of noise. Everything was carefully regulated, of course, BLP officials on hand at all times.
That man, that forty-five-plus, they took him away. At no clear signal, we all got on the train.
It was twenty-four men to a train car, twelve on either side. There were no seats. We stood, staring straight ahead. The train pulled away from the station, and we all began to sing again: endless choruses of the same song, no variation. There were no windows on the train. The man across from me was barrel-chested, with a thick bull neck and deep-set eyes. The train was loud in the tunnel, rushing and roaring through the darkness. It was hard to think with the singing and the rattle of the train.
The train ran in a simple circle around the plantation, fourteen stops in all, but I just had to make it through four of them: headquarters to facilities maintenance; facilities maintenance to stitch house 1; stitch house 1 to stitch house 2; stitch house 2 to Free White Housing. I looked past the big barrel-chested man. Behind him, in small letters, where one metal plate of the car’s structure met the next, were the words STIPELY FABRICATING SERVICE, LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY. Just beneath the word Kentucky, one tiny machine screw was coming loose—I saw its head, a flat silver insect, poking like a secret from the surface of the train wall. I watched the screw as we juddered along.
At the first stop, facilities maintenance, a middle-aged white woman got on in the bright orange jumpsuit of the Bureau of Labor Practices. The singing stopped, but the train began to roll again, and she made her way down the center aisle, counting heads, clicking a small handheld clicker, one click for each of us. She did this while whistling slightly to herself distractedly, the way you might move through a crowd of chickens in a pen. Nobody looked at her. Nobody looked at anybody else. We just kept singing. I stared at the tiny loose metal screw. “All right, folks,” she said brightly. “Thanks very much,” and she moved through to the next car. At stitch house 1 nine slaves got off, and nine new slaves took their places. I did not look at the new faces.
I was going to find William Smith, and I was going to ask him my questions. Find out where that package was, get the fuck out of there—How? How are you going to figure it out?—and go and get it.
I should have felt something. I should have been excited, I should have been reveling in a moment, an opportunity that had at long last arrived.
But there on the train car, surrounded by men who would ride this train forever, I did not feel shit. I just wanted to get this done. Get it over with and get out.
Between the third and fourth stations the train stopped again.
“Hands in,” said an intercom voice, and before I could wonder what that meant, a pair of shackles dropped and dangled in front of me and in front of everybody else on the train car. One pair per passenger, they appeared and hung there like oxygen masks coming down when a plane has lost cabin pressure. I followed the others. Did what they did. Raised my hands and stuck them through the holes. The manacles tightened automatically, biting into my wrists. I still had my pass, my Temporary Intracampus Travel Certificate. It was tight between my forefinger and thumb.
The doors opened at either end, and two men came in, one at each end, black men, like the one from the platform who’d led off the forty-five-plus. Petty authorities, whatever they called them here. One of them had a dog. They wore uniforms, the same color scheme as the one worn by the guard who’d gone over me in the lobby, the same as the carpeting in Newell’s office: cotton white and blue-sky blue.
“All right, y’all,” said the first, from the forward end of the car. “Who’s feeling good today?” The man talking was the taller of the pair, with a broad chest and dark shining eyes. His voice had a rousing, rolling cadence. “Who’s feeling good?”
Everybody answered together. “I am.”
“Good. Who’s feeling strong?”
This time I was ready. I joined in. “I am!”
He nodded again, beaming. “Now, you all know this: GGSI loves you.”
Every man on that car spoke it in unison: “Thank you, GGSI.”
“Now, GGSI is here to take care of you.”