"Hey, Jeff!" One of the whites waved to him. "Freedom!"

"Freedom!" Pinkard echoed. "When you gonna get your ass to another Party meeting, Travis?"

"I be go to hell if I know," the other steel worker answered. "When they take me off swing, I reckon, but God only knows when that is. Remember me to the boys tonight, will you?"

"Sure will," Pinkard said. "That's a promise." He walked on. When he got to the cottage, he lit a kerosene lamp (there was talk about putting electricity into the company housing, but so far it was nothing but talk), got a fire going in the coal-burning stove, and took a ham out of the icebox. He cut off a big slice and fried it in lard, then did up some potatoes in the same iron frying pan. The beer in the icebox was homebrew-Alabama had been formally dry since before the war-but it washed down supper as well as anything storebought could have.

He put the plate and the frying pan in the sink, atop a teetering mountain of dirty dishes. One day soon he'd have to wash them, because he was running out of clean ones. "Not tonight, Josephine," he muttered; he'd started talking to himself now that he was the only one in the house. "I got important things to do tonight, by God."

He scraped stubble from his chin with a straight razor, splashed on water, and then shed his overalls and work shirt for a clean white shirt and a pair of butternut wool trousers. He wished he had time to shine his shoes, but a glance at the wind-up alarm clock ticking on his nightstand told him he didn't, not if he wanted to get to the meeting on time. And there was nothing in the world he wanted more.

The trolley stopped at the edge of the company housing. Looking back over his shoulder, Jeff saw the mills throwing sparks into the night sky, almost as if it were the Fourth of July. A couple of other men came up to wait for the trolley. They too wore white shirts and khaki trousers. "Freedom!" Jefferson Pinkard said.