“What about our clothes?” somebody asked.

“Clean clothes inside,” the officer said. “Get out of them duds! Move it!”

Despite the cold wind, Scipio was glad to shed the suit in which he’d gone to church. High-pressure hoses played over the black men. He feebly tried to wash and drink at the same time. He got a couple of swallows of water, and he got rid of some of his own filth. When he stood there naked and dripping, the north wind really did cut like a knife.

The blacks who’d hauled away corpses took charge of the discarded clothes, too. Some of the men whose clothes they were pulled long faces. Maybe they’d managed to hang on to money or valuables. Since Scipio hadn’t, he was just as well pleased to be rid of his.

Bins of shirts and trousers and drawers and shoes and socks waited for the black men. As Scipio found clothes that more or less fit, he wondered who’d worn them before and what had happened to him. This time, his shiver had nothing to do with that biting wind. Better not to know, maybe.

Losing his clothes also lost Scipio his passbook. In a way, that was a relief. Without it, he could claim to be anyone under the sun. In another way, though, it was as ominous as those bins of clothing. A Negro couldn’t exist in the CSA without a passbook. If the inmates of this camp didn’t need passbooks…If they didn’t, wasn’t that an argument they didn’t exist any more?

“Line up in rows of ten!” a guard shouted. “Rows of ten, y’all hear? We got to get you coons counted. Soon as we do that, we can get your asses into barracks.”

“Food, suh? Water?” Several men called the desperate question at the same time.

“Y’all can get water once you’re counted,” the guard answered. “Food comes at regular time tonight. Now line up, goddammit. Can’t do anything till we count you.”

Another man fell over dead waiting to be counted. More ragged, skinny Negroes seemed to materialize out of thin air to drag off the body. Would the clothes he had on go back into the bin? Scipio would have bet on it.