Underground Airlines(89)

The doors opened at either end, and two men came in, one at each end, black men, like the one from the platform who’d led off the forty-five-plus. Petty authorities, whatever they called them here. One of them had a dog. They wore uniforms, the same color scheme as the one worn by the guard who’d gone over me in the lobby, the same as the carpeting in Newell’s office: cotton white and blue-sky blue.

“All right, y’all,” said the first, from the forward end of the car. “Who’s feeling good today?” The man talking was the taller of the pair, with a broad chest and dark shining eyes. His voice had a rousing, rolling cadence. “Who’s feeling good?”

Everybody answered together. “I am.”

“Good. Who’s feeling strong?”

This time I was ready. I joined in. “I am!”

He nodded again, beaming. “Now, you all know this: GGSI loves you.”

Every man on that car spoke it in unison: “Thank you, GGSI.”

“Now, GGSI is here to take care of you.”

“Thank you, GGSI.”

The other overseer, down at the back end, was nodding heartily at everything, mouthing the answers, too. He stood there holding the dog’s leash. His attentive expression matched the dog’s.

“Let me ask y’all something.” The overseer who was running the show here, he licked his lips. He bounced on the balls of his feet. The dog poked its nose around. I was scared of that dog. “Who is it that gives us these clothes?”

“GGSI.”

“Who puts food in our bellies?”

“GGSI.”

“That’s right. Sing it, brothers. Sing it with me now.”

And we were back into it, hands and backs and spirit, too, everybody singing with noticeably more verve now, in the presence of the law. While we sang the two overseers worked their way down the line, one on either side, checking everybody’s papers. This was not perfunctory, either—they were holding pens, checking carefully, while the singing went on around them.

“You good.” Looking each man in the eye, then looking at the paperwork, nodding. “You good. You good.”

My pass was incomplete. As the trusty on my side drew closer, he and his dog, I managed a good, clear look at the Temporary Intracampus Travel Certificate of the man beside me, and I could see how Newell had f*cked me. At the bottom, not in any box, just jammed in where there was space for it next to the signature, this man’s pass bore an inky thumbprint. By accident or by design, Newell had left mine off.

I kept singing. I considered my options. My hands were shackled. The snare was sprung, the lock in place. I had no options. I continued to sing.

I watched the overseer moving down the line, watched my madman’s game sailing toward its end. I should have felt scared, I knew. I should have felt the horror of the man trapped in his fate.

Instead I was just thinking I failed you, a quick burst of felt thought, like a prayer—but I wasn’t sure who I was praying to. Whom had I failed?

The overseer was in front of me now, running his eyes over my face. He took the piece of paper from between my fingers and looked at it closely. His expression did not harden; his round cheeks did not change. “As Thou hast done in times gone by,” I sang. “Oh, Lord, protect GGSI.” The man turned very slightly back toward the other overseer, to check where he was, then he took my pass, and when he placed it back in my hand it had a thumbprint on the bottom.

“You good,” he said and kept moving.

When the men were done the shackles loosened, just enough for us to withdraw our hands, but they stayed dangling, jostling and swinging in front of our eyes as the train lurched back into motion.

The next stop was Free White Housing, and I got off.



That is one of the moments I still think about. Lord, I do.

I’ve tried to enact it. The small, quick, dangerous motions: to pop his thumb quickly in and out of his mouth, drag it through Newell’s signature, jam the smeary thumb pad into the corner of my paper. Furtive movements. One, two, three.

I think about that moment all the time, how nice it would have been to say thank you. To say something. This man a stranger to me. My hero. I would have kissed him. I return in my mind to Bell’s, to Chicago, to the thousand small kindnesses with which we armored ourselves against the world.



Free White Housing area 9 was visible from where the train doors opened, an ugly apartment block surrounded by a high chain-link fence. I booked it over there, hustling quick, eyes front, knees up. I ran past a high guard tower, ran with my back erect and my paper held out in front of me, thinking, One way or another, this is almost over.

The fence was unlocked. As I was going in, a pair of whites was coming out, rumpled blue work clothes marked GGSI, and I stepped aside, angled my eyes down. They took no notice. The buildings of Free White Housing were pale sandstone apartment houses, the kind of undistinguished clustered residences you see on the outskirts of poor towns—every apartment with a tiny balcony facing squarely forward, overlooking a concrete courtyard below. Four balconies per floor, six floors up. Apartments like cages, like drawers in a rolltop desk, identical and interchangeable, like pigeonholes in a wall.

I found building B and pressed the button for apartment 8. I had to stand calmly; I had to force my body to be still. Pressed the button again and waited.

They found him out, I was thinking. William Smith. He made a run for it. He’s dead.