So he lifted and grunted and sweated with the others, grumbling occasionally, as was his style, complaining about officers who lived like royalty, and bullshitting about how he’d stayed in plenty of joints that’d make this place look like a flophouse. They finished up at 1730 with a few more hours of work to go. A strict curfew was in place from 1800, however, so Mohr herded them back onto the bus for the trip back to the cane field.

The bullshitting wasn’t nearly as loud or energetic on the way home. Talk turned to Midway, to curiosity and speculation.

“I heard they put a new heart in Smithy,” said a voice from the dark in the rear of the bus. “Like a fucking windup clock it is, I heard. All gears and wires.”

“Crap,” said someone else. “It’d rust in there.”

“No,” said Chief Mohr, “that one’s true. I visited Smithy myself on that big Marine Corps flattop they got. They split him right open, took out his old heart, and put in this new one, made of some kind of miracle plastic or something. Reckon it’ll be beating a hundred years after he’s gone.”

“I heard they all got machines inside them, that they can talk to each other without even speaking out loud.”

“No way.”

“Yep, and they can grow you new skin and muscles and stuff, if you get a piece shot out of you—”

“—or burned off.”

“That’s right. And they got that jelly they put on the burns. You seen that shit? It smells something terrible but I tell you what, guys got that stuff on them, it’s like they can’t feel a damn thing from those burns, and when it comes off they just patch you up with some o’ that skin they grow in a bucket. It’s like you never got burned.”

“What if they fucked it up, though. Gave you some nigger skin when you’re meant to get white. You’d be a sorry-looking piece of shit then, wouldn’t you? Like a zebra.”

“It wouldn’t take,” said Moose, quite earnestly, over the laughter. “You couldn’t put black on white. They’s two different types. Wouldn’t work—just like if you got the blood types wrong and mixed ’em. It’d kill you.”

Moose was particularly pleased with himself for that analogy. And for Moose, it was a decidedly sophisticated piece of reasoning.

“We coming back in tomorrow?” Slim Jim asked Mohr. “To finish the job?”

“I don’t know, Davidson. Could be that some of the others need a break, too.”

“Screw them,” someone called out, saving Slim Jim the trouble. “Those lazy bums didn’t put their hands up today. Why should they get a reward tomorrow?”

Mohr said he’d think about it.

“Hey,” said Slim Jim, “did anyone hear about the pill they got gives you a boner for three days straight?”