“Ford nothin'! He sold an ammunition train. He was a railroad man. He was a mason, that's why he only got five years.”
“I guess five years in Leavenworth's enough for anybody,” muttered Hoggenback, scowling. He was a square-shouldered dark man, who always hung his head when he worked.
“We didn't meet up till we got to Paris; we was on a hell of a party together at the Olympia. That's where they picked us up. Took us to the Bastille. Ever been in the Bastille?”
“I have,” said Hoggenback.
“Ain't no joke, is it?”
“Christ!” said Hoggenback. His face flushed a furious red. He turned away and looked at the civilians walking briskly along the early morning streets, at the waiters in shirt sleeves swabbing off the cafe tables, at the women pushing handcarts full of bright-colored vegetables over the cobblestones.
“I guess they ain't nobody gone through what we guys go through with,” said Happy. “It'd be better if the ole war was still a' goin', to my way o' thinkin'. They'd chuck us into the trenches then. Ain't so low as this.”
“Look lively,” shouted the truck driver, as the truck stopped in a dirty yard full of cinder piles. “Ain't got all day. Five more loads to get yet.”
The guard stood by with angry face and stiff limbs; for he feared there were officers about, and the prisoners started unloading the garbage cans; their nostrils were full of the stench of putrescence; between their lips was a gritty taste of cinders.
The air in the dark mess shack was thick with steam from the kitchen at one end. The men filed past the counter, holding out their mess kits, into which the K. P.'s splashed the food. Occasionally someone stopped to ask for a larger helping in an ingratiating voice. They ate packed together at long tables of roughly planed boards, stained from the constant spilling of grease and coffee and still wet from a perfunctory scrubbing. Andrews sat at the end of a bench, near the door through which came the glimmer of twilight, eating slowly, surprised at the relish with which he ate the greasy food, and at the exhausted contentment that had come over him almost in spite of himself. Hoggenback sat opposite him.