Three of the derelicts crawled into the car and collapsed like half-empty sacks of meal.
While Kautz had been talking Red had sagged and fallen asleep. “I’ve had a little sleep,” Tim said to Kautz, “you sleep now and I’ll stand watch for an hour or so.”
“Fine,” Kautz said. He rested his beard on his chest and went to sleep.
Tim smiled to himself. He even sleeps efficiently, he thought. As he smiled his eye was caught by the gaze of one of the derelicts. The man stared into Tim’s face with vacant, luminous eyes. Tim took three of Greene’s oranges out of the pocket of his blouse and held them toward the man. “You’re hungry,” he said. “One of these for each of you might help.”
The man’s emaciated hands shot out, grasped two of the oranges and clutched them to his body. He reached for the other with something in his pitiful face that made Tim draw the third orange back. “One to each,” he said.
The man’s lower lip quivered. He grasped the oranges and turned his back and started to claw at one of them. Another derelict saw his chance, plucked the other orange from the man and tore at the skin with his teeth. He sucked and bit as the juice ran down his tattered shirt.
The train whistle gave a sudden, piercing shriek and the cars bumped together with violent jerks. The third Yankee derelict, a boy still in his teens, opened his eyes. Tim leaned over and handed him the third orange. He took it silently, turned it around and around as if it were a ball of gold—as if spending the wealth would take some thought. He put up his knees to make a shield, and with his thumb and forefinger gently peeled off the first strip of skin ... and the second ... and the third. When the orange was peeled he quartered it and ate deliberately, gasps of pleasure punctuating every gulp.
Now the shouts of the guards and the roaring, cracking voice of the captain rang along the platform, and the train moved slowly forward. The door on the right was left half open.
Tim watched the shadow of the train as it moved along beside the tracks. It must be past noon. Was it this morning they’d attacked the fort?
The train jerked and stopped. With a squeaking and clanking of tortured couplings it started again and gathered speed. Warehouses and sheds flicked by in a blur, like bits of faded glass in a kaleidoscope.