“Of course you can count on me.” Sam knew it was probably true, and he wished it weren’t. He hated that Hugh was more sure of him than he was of himself.

When he stepped onto solid ground, his legs were uncertain. He could feel the wharf swaying under him, and he lurched for a few steps like a drunken man. He wasn’t used to boats. If he’d thought about it at the time, he probably would have been sick. Now, he was thinking about it, and the adrenaline and the cordite stink and the bursting pumpkins backed up in his throat. He had tasted this at Las Guasimas.

I finally got to see an alligator, he thought.

He leaned into the gutter and heaved away his breakfast.

Then he went back to the office to write up the story.

Chapter Seven

If something is not done to put down the surly and rebellious attitude of the Negroes towards the whites, we will have a repetition of the Sepoy [India] Rebellion, which was ended only after the British authorities had shot some of the mutinous leaders out of the mouths of cannon.

C H A P T E R   S E V E N

Friday, October 7

THE RIVER RAN FILMY under dirty-shirt clouds this afternoon. Sam sat in Poison’s Saloon with Harry Calabash and watched the stevedores on the wharf work lethargically, like automatons. They seemed to be hauling the same crates back and forth. There was no joshing. The steamships on the river seemed painted in place. The river itself was slowly congealing. The air smelled watery. Sam breathed it into his lungs, and it tasted like rusty pipes. He could not get his breath.

The government weather office predicted the heat would break any day now. It was unseasonable, the kind of breathless, oppressive calm that preceded a hurricane. But nobody down the coast was reporting any hurricanes. Everybody waited for a good nor’easter to blow away all the bad air.

Today’s Messenger reported that certain New York businessmen were reneging on a major investment in Wilmington railroads and factories. The reason? Too many Negroes were flocking to the city, destabilizing the labor base. Whatever that meant. The situation, said the article—datelined New York—was volatile.

In another piece, datelined Raleigh, John Dancy was reported to advocate intermarriage between whites and blacks. Dancy was the Negro who had taken over Bill Kenan’s old job as customs inspector. He denied ever making such remarks, but the denial didn’t make the paper.