The Rebel sergeant loosened his collar and slung his rifle over his shoulder. “Buy if you have money,” he said to the prisoners, “but stay on the platform. We’ll shoot the first man who wanders. We’ve had enough running for today.”
The sergeant walked past the colored women, up the steps and through the depot door.
Greene looked at the food. “I could eat it all,” he gulped.
“We’d better buy what we can and save what we can,” Tim said. “We may have to make it last a while.”
The prisoners clustered around the women. Tim noticed Dawson eating and stuffing his pockets with food. The woman in the center was big and fat. She was wreathed in smiles. “We give you good exchange,” she said, “five Confederate dollars to one greenback for Yankee gentlemen.”
Tim bought some yams and molasses cakes, and Greene cradled five big oranges in the crook of his arm.
The mean-faced Confederate corporal yelled, “Fall in at the center of the platform where I can keep my eyes on you.”
The prisoners drifted away from the bright little island of smiling, brown-skinned women and did as they were told.
Greene fumbled for his money and paid for his oranges. As he slipped his wallet into his pocket one of the oranges fell to the platform and rolled toward the track. He chased the orange, clutching the others against his blouse. Tim had pocketed his food and he started toward the orange as it rolled to the edge of the platform. The Confederate corporal watched the orange with cold indifference as it bumped onto the track. Greene scrambled after it. Suddenly the corporal swung his rifle around and caught Greene in the side with the point of his bayonet.
The wounded boy cried out in pain, the other oranges dropped from his grasp and bumped and rolled onto the roadbed, bright spots against the stones.