Copyright © 1992 by Maureen F. McHugh, All rights reserved.  First appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, April 1992.  For the personal use of those who have purchased the ESF 1993 Award anthology only.

Protection

Maureen F. McHugh

When the train gets to the camp I'm scared out of my mind, but I'm trying to act smooth, you know?  I was supposed to go to Green River, an all women camp out in Wyoming, but there was some kind of jack-jockey mix-up and I end up going to Protection in Kansas.  I've never heard of Protection--I've heard of Green River, of course.  I guess in a way I'm kind of pissed, I was supposed to go to this famous, badass labor camp and instead they send me to this place nobody ever heard of.  Like it's some kind of contest, you know, and people are going to give a damn what camp I end up in.  Still thinking outside, and I'm inside.  But I don't know that yet.
I think of myself as one ticklish bitch, let me tell you.  I think I'm hard-circuited.  I'm not doing anything the whole way out from Wichita to Protection except I've got a seat on the train by the window and I'm just sitting there.  Nobody will climb on me, even though a lot of people are sitting in the aisle and stepping on each other.  That's because  I managed to shove a pen down the side seam of one of the three pairs of pants I'm wearing and everybody knows if they come near me I'm like as not to shove it in them, so nobody bothers me.  
But there's nothing to see outside the train window except all this dead, brown grass.  Kansas must be a hell of a place.  The train trip is about five hours, because we don't go very fast, and the whole time there's nothing outside but dried grass and once in awhile we go over a place that used to be a road before the Corridor dried up, back when it used to rain out west and there were farms.  People keep stepping on each other because they've got to go to the bathroom, but I figure I can wait pretty long because I know the moment I get up someone is going to have my seat.
We all look real wonderful.  They let us keep our clothes, which kind of surprised me, I thought they'd make us wear gray coveralls or something, but all they did was shave the back of our heads and put these implants in.  I don't know what they're for.  Maybe they can always tell where we are, hell maybe they can tell what we're thinking.  Anybody who'd had their metabolism stabilized was de-stabilized, too.  I guess nobody worries about being overweight in a labor camp.  The back of my head itches, and I've been wearing these clothes for two weeks.  I'm wearing like three of everything, it looks really stupid and it's hot.  I worried about that, you know, you want to look smooth, but when they told us that we could only keep what we had on I thought it might take me awhile to get out.  I mean, I'll probably bust out before winter, you know?  But just in case.  And since I don't know what the hell I'll be doing when I get out, I think I better have extra clothes.  It's not like the officials don't know I intend to be out, they probably assume everybody wants to get out, and when I do they're not going to let me just buy an Amtrak ticket home, I could spend a lot of time getting back to Cleveland.  I may have to walk part of the way, and that could take a hell of a long time, so I could be really glad I kept this stuff.  
So we get to Protection.  It's nothing, not even fence, just this concrete platform as long as the train and a dirt road and dead grass.  The train stops and we sit.  I figure it's got to be Protection, what else would be out here?  Where else would a convict train go?
After we sit for awhile, maybe twenty minutes in the train with the blowers off, sweating, and far off I see this plume of brown smoke.  Except it's not smoke, it's dust, and it's coming off the road.  Buses, bunches of them.  A whole long elephant trail of dark green buses, humping up and down these kind of rolling hills.  Until now I never knew what they meant by rolling hills, but they're like ripples, all covered with dust colored dead grass.  They stop on the road, the first one is almost nose up against the platform.  It's a gas bus, with a big methane gas bag on top, half inflated, kind of sagging in a cage.  I never saw one before, we don't have them in Cleveland.  Guards in army colored coveralls get off the buses, lots of heavy arsenal swinging around.  Deal guns, which isn't what I expected, I thought they'd have projectile weapons, but what do I know?  Maybe disruptive guns are less messy, that's why city cops use them.  But out here in a labor camp, who cares if they bloody up the landscape?  
They fiddle around for a moment, crack the door on our car and three of them charge in screaming at us not to move and swinging those deal guns.  Hey, I'm not going anywhere, not until I find out what's going on.  "You're going to go out on the platform, in two lines!  You assholes understand me?"  this woman is screaming at us.  "I been working out here in this goddamn place for five years, maybe if I kill enough of you they'll think I can't be trusted and transfer me somewhere, so I'm looking for an excuse!  Now move!"
So we start streaming off our train car, all up and down the platform the other train cars are doing the same.  When I get to the door, a guard signals I should get in the left line so I do.  There doesn't seem to be any difference between the left and right line.  So there we all are, all lined up, and it's hot and I gotta go to the bathroom.
They make us stand there in the sun while they prowl up and down the platform.  Yeah, I'm getting scared.  I know what's going on, I know what I'd do in a situation like this.  If I had a bunch of scum to take care of, first thing I'd do is show them what a badass I was.  So we stand and I wonder what they're going to do to us.  
Finally the woman who was head screamer stops in front of our two lines.  I think of her as 'Helga.'  "You," she points that deal gun at a guy in the right line.  Tall, skinny looking guy, the kind who didn't get a seat.  He doesn't have any expression on his face at all, almost like he expected this.  "GET UP HERE!" she screams.  He shambles forward.  He's got his ankles shackled, they only do that for psychos and politics; they wouldn't pull a psycho out of the line unless they were going to roast him, besides, he just doesn't act psycho, so I figure he's politics.  They probably don't mind roasting a politics, either.  
"TURN AROUND," she screams.  He does what he's told so he's standing with his back to us.  "You shitheads like his haircut?  Well, let me tell you, the perimeter of the camp is wired."  All up and down the platform every car is getting the same thing screamed at them.  I look back at the guy, his hair is kind of long so it covers part of the shaved place.  "I'm going to show you what happens if you cross the perimeter."
She puts her hand in his back and shoves him off the platform and he falls off, hands out, flat into the dust around the concrete.  "WALK!" she screams at him.  I'm leaving out a lot of what she called us, just because it was pretty much the same thing over and over.  Anyway, he struggles to his feet and looks up at her.
"Why should I walk if you're going to kill me anyway?"  he says in this normal, reasonable way.  You can tell he's scared, but his voice is just as nice and adult.  
I like people who give the world lip.  
"WALK!"  she screams at him and shoves her deal gun in his face, so he kind of stumbles back, then suddenly his whole body goes stiff.  Like a board.  All the muscles in his neck stand out and his hands make claws and he falls over like a frigging tree, straight.  Then he goes all loose.
I look up and down the platform, except for one guy who they're having to push, all up and down are these people lying in the brown grass.  Two guards hop down and I catch my breath expecting them to keel over, too, but they just pick up the guy by his arms and legs and sling him on the bus.
"Cross it often enough and you'll fry your frigging brains to scrambled eggs," the woman says with satisfaction.  "That is, if any of you assholes have brains."
We don't get on the bus until Helga has told us the rules, which takes forever.  When we get on our bus nobody wants to sit next to Political but he's sitting near the front so I do.  Buses make me sick, the closer I am to the front the better off I am.  He's still out, head against the window, and I have to move him to sit down.  He has nice clothes, real ragged but good stuff, Chinese or something.  He's wearing a sweater and pants and under the dust they're both this kind of maroon color, with little flecks of gray in them.  They've taken the shackles off and thrown them back on the train.  He's got real long fingers.  Something about him I like, maybe it's the way he turned around and talked to Helga.  I could understand if he got mad or freaked, but he was just real reasonable.
Everybody is looking at me because I sat down next to Political, everybody knows he's already marked for trouble.  I figure if I don't care it marks me as a real hard-circuit and then nobody will bother me.
Besides, something about him really attracts me, so I figure he's mine.
#
He doesn't really come to in the time it takes us to get to the camp, so I have to sling his arm over my shoulders and half-carry him out of the bus.  I'm not that big a girl.  He's skinny, but 180, maybe 190 centimeters and weighs more than I do.  He's not completely out, and I keep talking to him.  His eyes are barely open.  "Come on," I say, "steps, get your feet under you, you son of a bitch or they'll take it out on my kidneys."  I just keep pressing on him, get him down the steps and into the barracks.  The barracks are new, concrete block and the beds are just like metal bookshelves.  I sling him into a bottom bunk and take a middle one.  I watch everybody else mill around before settling in.
Scared, man I'm scared.  I sure as hell didn't want a mixed camp, in a woman's camp it's not like I'll be out-massed by over half the inmates.  On the bus it was about two guys to every woman.  Men are bigger, the only hope I have is to get a reputation as crazy, or else to come up with something everybody needs.  Worrying about Politics gives me something to do other than worry about myself.  The only time I leave is to go to the bucket.  I never pissed in a metal bucket before, it's an experience, not to mention that it's loud.  They turn the lights out before I get back to my bunk, which is also exciting.  
I don't sleep that night.  I want to be in a real bed.  I want to brush my teeth.  I know that's a bad way to think, 'cause when I did two years of juvenile reform, I learned, you don't think about what you miss--and it isn't really as good as you remember it anyway.  Hell, most the time I sleep on someone's couch, or floor.  But it's different.  
It's still dark when the lights come back on.  Helga told us we have half an hour in the morning, then roll call, then breakfast.  I don't know what the hell the half an hour is for, most everybody spends it sleeping.  I hop down out of my bunk--Goddamn Marx and Lenin, every bone in my body aches from sleeping on a metal bookshelf--and check Politics.  Most of the night he was just sprawled the way he landed, one leg half off, but now he's curled up like he's cold.  He moved, I figure that's a good sign.
"Hey," I shake him gently.  "Come on, wake up."  For the first time it occurs to me that maybe he's brain damaged.  Helga made it sound as if you had to do it a couple of times, but how do I know?  I don't want him to be brain damaged, I need him.  "Come on," I say, "look at me.  Politics, look at me."

He groans and opens his eyes.  
"Come on," I say, "sit up."
He sits up and grabs his head with those long fingers.  Spider fingers.  
"What's your name?"  I ask.
"Paul," he says.  Well, at least he understands.
"I'm Janee," I say, "and we're going to stick together, okay Paul?"  If he's brain damaged I'll ditch him later.  
He looks at me; his head is really killing him, but the way he looks at me, kind of judging, figuring, and I think, well, if he's brain damaged he must have been a genius before.  "Janee," he says, hoarse sounding.  "Okay, Janee."
I prowl up and down the barracks.  Out in the yard is an old fashioned water spigot.  I don't have anything to get water in, not even a juice bulb, but I open the door--it's dark and clear, the stars are still bright except off to the east--and check.  The perimeter is brightly lit but our door isn't locked and I don't see anyone walking a beat.  I sneak out to the spigot.  It's got weeds right around the base, then the rest of the ground is dry and cracked.  It's real hard to turn on, and the water comes out in a trickle.  I soak the outermost shirt I'm wearing, rinse it out real good, then bring it back in.  I crawl into Paul's bunk and hand him the shirt.
"It's wet," he says, sounding surprised.
"There's a spigot outside."
He wipes his face and holds it against his forehead.  "Thanks Janee," he says.
"I told you, we stick together."
"You don't want to stick with me," he says.  "I'm political."
"Yeah, I know," I say.  "I'll let you know when it's a problem."
The guy in the bottom bunk across from Paul's is watching us.  I look right at him, then give him a long, slow, skitzy smile.  He looks away first.  Little victories.  
#
The camp is hell.  That's all there is to it.  And Protection isn't as bad as Green River, or so they say.  I can't see how that could be true.  All the time I'm hungry, and either too hot or too cold.  My bones hurt from sleeping on a shelf.  I figure out the reason why the lights go on half-an-hour early, so we can lie there hungry and dread the day.  We get up every morning and wait half-an-hour to go out to roll call.  Roll call takes twenty minutes if there's no lecture, and then we get twenty minutes for breakfast.  The first day we are all given a cup, a bowl and a spoon.  We march in lines to the mess, which is just a roof, no walls.  For breakfast we get something that's mostly water and a steamed roll.  And coffee, if you can call it that.  When they pour the soup stuff into my bowl I think it's some kind of yeast soup, it's just brown watery slop.  It doesn't have much taste.  In the bottom are a couple of tablespoons of barley or something.  The coffee is clear, like tea.  
I look at it, ten years of this if I don't figure out how to cross that perimeter.  This is day one.  I have 3,650 days, plus a couple of leap days.  
Paul gets his and goes to a pole holding up the roof and squats down sliding against it.  He hasn't bothered to get coffee, I can't understand it, I'm so dry I could drink a gallon and I got water in the morning at the spigot.  He hands me his bowl.  
"What," I say.
"I can't eat it," he says.
"You got to," I say.
"I'll get sick," he says.  Then with this kind of sickly smile.  "I like mine with milk and sugar anyway."
"What is it?"  I ask.
"Oatmeal," he says.
Oatmeal?  I sniff at it.  It does smell sort of like oatmeal.  I take his cup and pour some of the liquid into it.  "You've got to have something in your stomach."
"I'll get sick," he says.
"So you get sick.  Maybe then you'll feel better."
"It's not a hangover," he says.  But while I'm eating our breakfast, he drinks it.  I stash the rolls in my bag, I could eat them but I figure he's going to get hungry eventually.
That first day we go to the 'factory' and learn how to stitch quilts on these old black sewing machines with 'Singer' on them in gold letters.  I guess because of the noise they make, although it doesn't sound like singing to me.  I sit next to Paul.  We put the backs on, the blank, not-pretty parts.  We're supposed to finish three an hour.  I don't know jackshit about sewing, I mean, I didn't sit around doing this a whole lot, you know?  So I ruin the first one, big time, and the second one looks like hell, but the third one isn't too bad.  It's not hard, just, ziiiip, up one side, ziiip, across the top, ziiip, ziiiip, side and bottom, a big square.  
The first day Paul is so sick he's lucky to be able to do one an hour.  By the third day we're doing six an hour, but that first day I can do two extra for Paul.  The problem is getting them into his basket without getting caught.  He doesn't say anything about my doing them.  His basket is always the first one they check.
I think I'm pretty fast at making quilts.  It never hurts to be good at something.  But that day and the next day, I don't push, there's no reason to work any harder than I have to.  
By the third day Paul's doing as well as anyone, long spider fingers aren't shaking anymore.
We work until two-thirty, then we get a twenty minute break, then we work until seven.  By dinner I'm so empty I echo.  We stand in the wind with our plates and cups.  Dinner is two rolls each, pale beans with a bit of white pork fat and bitter coffee.
The second day, Paul says we should take pick grass and use it in our bunks, but it's hard to find much in the camp.  That's the problem with politicals, people like that are always thinking, but the stuff never works in the real world.  
The third day they let us mix with the people who've been here for awhile.
I know we're in trouble when Paul and I squat down by our pole.  I happen to look around and most of the guards are gone, only a string left to protect the mess cooks, who are turning the stinking stuff they use to rinse the kettles onto the ground.  "Hey," I say.
Paul looks up.
The walking dead are headed towards us.  All these skinny people in filthy clothes, maybe fifty of them.  The first time, I don't know catshit about the walking dead, I think everybody looks like that after they've been here awhile and I feel sick.  I'm still planning to get out of here before winter, but the business of crossing the perimeter is a real problem, and besides, it's beginning to dawn on me that I'm not going to just going to walk to St. Louis and hitch a ride on a transport.
"Keep eating," I whisper to Paul, so we do.  When they get to the edge of the mess I notice that the last of the guards and the cook detail are disappearing.  I keep eating.  The first dead gets to a guy who's holding his half-empty bowl and without much ado, kicks him in the ribs, and two of them fall on top of the guy, steal his food.
They start moving through and jumping people.  They don't jump everybody, somebody looks big, they just go around them.  Man, I've got to do something.  Some of them have sticks and I think to myself, I got to find out where they get those sticks.  The walking dead don't make much noise.  They're either all nuts or they're trying to scare people.  It's creepy, watching them come through.  I got  a feeling that Paul and I are people they'll press.  
I've got to do something.  We're going to loose our dinner no matter what we do.  I could just put down my bowl and then maybe they wouldn't touch us, but that's a bad thing to do.  You don't give in, or you become a pushover.  So I've got to make myself so much trouble that after this they don't mess with me.  
So I look right into the face of one skinny bastard walking towards me and I smile.  Then I start screaming and running, right at him, just screaming as loud as I can, and battering at him with my bowl, beans spattering.  It wasn't exactly what he expected, he's not ready for some lunatic and I get him down, one hand pressed against his throat and keep hitting him in the face with my bowl.
Then another one of them grabs my arms and tries to pull me off.  They're real skinny, these walking dead, and I'm all pumped up, so he's having real trouble, even with the one I'm sitting struggling like mad.  Then Paul tries to grab the one pulling on me, and a guy named Carlos starts whacking on the one Paul is pulling on (which is good because Paul is a lousy fighter.)  
I guess that's when the guards decide enough is enough and start moving in, swinging the butts of the deal guns.  I end up with a split lip and a black eye and the next morning all of us in the fight have to stand for an extra hour and miss breakfast--plus, we're not supposed to get behind on our quota of quilts even though we missed forty minutes.  But I also get a stick one of the walking dead dropped.  And I have a good idea people are pretty much going to leave me alone.  
#
My Paul.  My Paul.  He has long spider fingers and his skin is so thin you can see the copper-green stain of his neural jacks on his wrists.  He never asks what I did to end up in a reform through labor camp.  "Don't you want to know?"  I ask, curled up against him in our bunk.
"No," he says, "that's outside, we're inside."
He was a history teacher, a middle school teacher I think.  He's older than I am, I'm twenty-three and he's almost thirty.  He's here for twenty years, I'm here for ten.  He wouldn't have a chance if it wasn't for me, he doesn't have the first idea how to protect himself and he's a Political, that makes him a target because the guards don't care what happens to a Political.  Nobody messes with him now, because everybody knows that Janee is crazy.  Sometimes if I'm careful I can hook an extra bun and split it with him.  I wonder about his life outside.  "Did you have a girlfriend?"  I ask.  "Where did you live?  What kind of flat did you have?"  He's from Pennsylvania, I think.  "Did you have any brothers and sisters?"
"That's outside, Janee, it doesn't matter here."
He sounds like our political instruction meetings.  Our old lives are outside, now, inside, we have a chance to put together new lives.  
We have political instruction meetings a couple of times a week, the twelve rules are painted on the wall of the barracks.  
#1.   We are not strong enough ourselves,
 we must rely on a  power greater than ourselves.  

A power greater than ourselves is society, of course.  The first time we go there's this lecture, about how we are all maladjusted, and how we are all denying that we are maladjusted.  And the first thing we have to do is admit that we are.  So we have to go all around the room and stand up and say our first name and what our problem is.  Well, Catalano, one of the guards is standing there, so everybody mostly just stands up and says their name and why they are there.  
First couple of guys aren't much, they stand up and say things like, "My name is Derrick and I am a thief."  
But then it gets to be a contest.  Guys stand up and we kind of hold our breath to find out what sort of badass crime they'd committed.  If a guy stands up and says he's a thief or a pimp or that he's in for assault everybody just sits there.  But then this guy gets up, just a normal looking guy, not very big, and he says, "My name is Vincent, not Vinny, Vincent.  And I am a hijacker."
Everything gets real quiet.  Even though the guy is supposed to sit down he sort of smiles and says, "I hijacked a city bus and killed the driver."  
"That's enough," Natalie says.  She's a prisoner too, but she's been here for years, and so she leads our political discussion group.  She knows that Vincent is putting the whammy on us, and she makes a little note in this notebook she carries.  
Some people stand up and say their crimes real fast and sit down.  One woman, she's in for prostitution, but she's not a hard case, you can tell.  Maybe some smalltown girl who puts out, who got somebody bothered.  She stands up and she's crying and she says in this real little voice, real fast, "MynameisNancyandI'maprostitute," and sits down.  
But Natalie makes her stand back up, and there she is crying, and makes her say it again, slower.  Nobody can understand what she's saying, she's scared so bad and crying so hard.  It's just mean to make her stand up, a little piece of white meat like that, 'cause the little girl knows, and she's right, that these guys are going to be all over her once lights are out.  
But I'm thinking about my reputation.  I'm only in for larceny and assault, which isn't going to sound like much.  And I've got a reputation between me and big trouble.  
Paul doesn't have to stand up and say anything, politicals aren't allowed to say anything in political instruction for the first two years, which is another weird rule.  You'd think they'd need it worse than us.  
So I'm thinking, while it gets closer and closer to my turn, and finally I've got to stand up.  I stand up and stand there a moment, thinking if I really want to go through with this, and just before Natalie says something, because I can see she's going to, I say, "My name is Janee, and my problem is that I'm stuck in this goddamn camp."  And I sit down.  
A lot of guys laugh and a couple of them whistle and I don't smile or anything.  Catalano, the guard, reverses his deal gun and starts coming towards me, so I stand back up and say, "I'm in for larceny and assault."  Which makes it sound like there might be other stuff that they never got on me.  And then I sit down and Natalie scribbles in her little book.  
The next morning, Vincent and I have to stand at roll call for an extra forty minutes, which was what Natalie was scribbling down.  But Paul hooks an extra roll at breakfast, and gives me his and the extra.  I'm real proud of him, he's learning a little, too.
At lunch he tells me that the political study is based on Alcoholics Anonymous.  
"Give me a break," I say.  "Alcoholics Anonymous isn't about politics."  
"No," he says, "it's about changing behavior.  They use most of the old rules, maybe change them a little.  Rule No. 1, about relying on a power greater than ourselves, that's straight from AA.  Except that traditionally the power greater than ourselves was God, not society."  
"I knew they meant society," I say, he probably thinks I'm stupid, and I'm not, I know a lot more about staying alive than some goddamn history teacher.  
But he isn't paying any attention at all.  "It backfired big time last night," he says.  "You and Vincent."  He grins at me.  I thought he might not understand about what I did, he didn't say anything when we crawled into our bunk the night before, but he does, he thinks it's all right.  
#
I gotta think about getting out.  Paul keeps shaking his head every time I say something about it.  "How are you going to get across the perimeter?"  he asks.  
"I got in," I say.  
"Are you going to wait until there's a shipment of new prisoners and then just walk past them?"  he says.  Which is a point.  I don't know if the whole perimeter shuts off when prisoners come in or not.  
"I can test it," I say.  
"Fry your brains?"  he says.  
"Nah," I say, "shove one of the walking dead across."  
He laughs, but I'm serious.  The walking dead don't care about each other, they don't care about anything.  I can go snag me a walking dead and the others will just look at me.  
So I'm waiting.  The only problem is that it isn't like they post an arrival schedule for new prisoners.  The first time we get new prisoners, we're inside sewing quilts.  We come out for dinner, and there are new people, so we have to wait because we can't mix with them.  Standing there in the wind, shivering, while these stupid people, looking even stupider with the backs of their heads still new-shaved, are getting their dinner.  
But it's early October, I think, and we're out for our break and somebody says, "Look."  
There are a couple of the big green buses, rolling up to the perimeter.  I start up, look around, can I get to one of the walking dead before the perimeter gets back up?  Walking dead don't wander far from their factory work room.  I can't even imagine one of them working.  Most of them are in group six, which is officially the group for incorrigibles.  Group six is pretty far from us, we're group thirty-six.  
I don't see how I can get to one and back, I look back at the perimeter, the first bus slows down and then speeds up and crosses.  There are bunches of guards and deal guns at the road, but nothing between us and the perimeter.  Maybe I should just try it?  Helga made it sound like I'd have to get fried a couple of times before it would hurt me permanently.  
But this guy in Group thirty-three makes his decision before me, takes out running for the perimeter, away from the buses and the guards.  I look back at the guards, expecting them to start firing.  Deal guns aren't real accurate if you're too far away, he might still make it.
But they don't do anything.  That tells me right there.  I should have known, they'd be guarding if the whole perimeter went down.  We all sit and watch the guy, he hits the perimeter, it's just a bunch of white stakes with a string about ankle high, just to mark it.  He leaps the wire and goes down.  We can see him spasm in the grass, just beyond the wire.
The guards aren't in any hurry.  After awhile two of them finally walk from the road across the compound to the guy.  
It's time for us to be called back inside to sew more quilts, but the loudspeakers are still quiet, just that hum that means they're on.  I look up at Natalie, who is supposed to be calling us back inside and she's looking at her feet.  
This is a lesson I guess.  I figure they're going to roast the guy.  
The guards walk across the perimeter like it wasn't even there.  It's not for them.  They grab the guy by the arms and drop him across the wire, and walk back, leaving him there.  
"What are they--"  I say.  But I know.  
"They're leaving him to fry,"  Paul says.  
Right.  "Can he feel anything?"  I ask.  
Paul doesn't say anything for a moment.  "No," he says finally, "probably not."  
We sit out there for a long time, Natalie looking at her feet, some of us watching the guy.  Every so often he jerks around for awhile and stops.  Finally we go in to work until dinner, and when we come out to get our slop, the poor sucker is gone.  
#
It's not going to stop me, you know?  There's always a way.  Once I get out of Protection, all I got to do is get to Saint Louis, then I can hitch with a transport and be in Cleveland in no time.  In Cleveland I know some people who'll hide me.  
People get in, people can get out.  
But it dawns on me that it's getting on to winter and I'm not real sure about my chances of getting to Saint Louis in the winter.  Besides, if I winter over in Protection, then the hair on the back of my hair will grow out better and I won't look so much like a goddamn escapee.  My clothes'll get worse, but maybe next spring I can steal the clothes off a newcomer.  And during the winter I can watch and plan, so I can figure how to get out of here.  
Anyway, if I'm going to be spending the winter here, I've got to start playing the game different.  Got to work the system a little better, score some points with the guards and the upper orders, you know?  When I was in juvenile detention they made a big thing about political instruction, so I try to pay attention.  
Thing is, all that stuff about ideology and infrastructure and shit goes right over my head.  And Natalie is always asking me things like, "Why are we here in Protection?"  
"Cause we screwed up," I say.  
Natalie shakes her head and asks somebody else and they answer with one of those slogan kind of answers about society and bourgeois mal-a-dap-ta-tion.  And I look at Paul and roll my eyes.  I can't keep this stuff in my head.  I mean, it's all just words that don't mean anything.  I can't understand why anyone would ever get in political trouble because none of it ever seems to mean anything.  Maybe if I'd finished High School it would be easier.  
I can't figure out what's so awful about capitalism in the first place.  Back when America had capitalism we were rich and powerful.  Now we're not.  So isn't capitalism better?  
One night I waited until lights out and I asked Paul.  
He laughed.  "It's not that simple, Janee."  
"So why not," I whisper.  
"Because we lost our power while we were still capitalist.  You've heard about the Second Depression."  
Sort of.  "When New York City used to turn off the electricity at night?"  I used to watch this show called Stormtime, it was real popular, with that cute guy, Sam Basarico.  They were always turning the electricity off and people always had to go to the hospital in the middle of the night or die, and Sam Basarico was always waking up doctors and stuff.  
"Yeah," he says.  
"So," I say.  
"So what?"  he says.  
"So what's wrong with capitalism?"  
He sighs.  For a minute I wonder if maybe he's a capitalist.  But then he says, "It's not a fair system."  
"That's stupid," I say.  Things aren't fair.  Only little kids expect things to be fair.  
"I'm tired," Paul says.  "Go to sleep."  
"No," I say, and start kinda making up to him, scrunching up against him, playing with him.  And when he's starting to get all hot I say, "You want to go to sleep?"  
"Jesus, Janee," he whispers.  So we hump a little in the dark.  I should be worried about getting pregnant.  I wonder what they do if someone gets pregnant?  But I haven't had a period since I got to the camp, which is strange.  Maybe the implant.  
"Okay," I say, "now tell me about capitalism and what's wrong with it."  
"Tomorrow."  
"No," I say.  
And the guy on the rack above us hisses, "You two shut up!"  
So we're quiet for awhile and then I say real close to Paul's ear--he's falling asleep and I'm tired, too, but you can't give up on stuff like this-- "Come on, tell me about capitalism."  
"If we talk politics, I'll get in trouble and you'll get in trouble," he says.  
"If I don't figure out how to say the right stuff in political instruction I'm going to get in trouble anyway."  
He kind of laughs.  I can feel him shake, even though he doesn't make any noise.  "Okay," he whispers.  "But tomorrow.  Go to sleep."  
So he starts by asking me what I know about capitalism.
"People were rich and there was a lot of corruption and a lot of crime," I say.  "And now we have socialism and people are poor and there's a lot of corruption and a lot of crime."  
He laughed.  Evidently anything I say about politics makes him laugh.  
"You think I'm not that smart," I say.  "Just because I'm not book smart."  
"You're not stupid Janee, you just never had much chance."  
I don't know how to answer that so I don't say anything, I mean, is it an insult or what?.  So he tells me about capitalism, and people making money.  And he tells me about people having to pay rent for the places they lived.  That sounds pretty screwy.  People had to pay for water, too.  People could sell anything.
I make him tell me how capitalism caused global warming and he tells me all about how people wouldn't give up things because if they stop buying capitalism doesn't work, so the technology and the pollution made the earth heat up and now the whole corridor, Texas and Kansas and Oklahoma and Idaho and all those states that used to have farming don't have enough rainfall.  Protection used to be a farming community.  Now it never rained.  
Which explains a lot of what was wrong with capitalism.  I get the idea that people knew all this bad stuff was going to happen, but they wouldn't stop buying gasoline driven cars and stuff, and the government wouldn't stop them.  So now people like me have to suffer for it.  
Except none of that helps in political instruction.
"What class are you?"  Natalie asks me.  
"Proletariat," I say.  I know that one, I remember that from when I was still in high school.  
Wrong again.  None of us know what class we are.  Natalie sighs.  We're 'criminal element.'  Right, I should have got that.  
We have a stove in the barracks, and it's getting real cold at night.  I keep hoping that they're going to start heating the place a bit.  It's been cold enough that one night water froze.  And we may sew quilts all day but we never get to take any of them back to the barracks at night.  
"Hey," I say in political instruction, "one of the big differences between capitalism and socialism is that in capitalist times people had to pay for stuff like where they lived and water and heat and all that, right?"  
"Yes," Natalie says.  
"So if we live in Socialism, how come we don't have heat?"  
Natalie scrunches her mouth together in a line, real flat.  Paul looks down at his hands.  I screwed up again, and I don't even understand why I'm wrong.  
Finally Natalie says, "Girl, I'm telling you, you've got an attitude.  You should be thinking about working on that."  
All my life people have been telling me about my frigging at-ti-tude.  Seems to me, a lot of times, my at-ti-tude has been all that's been between me and the world making me part of the pavement.  Seems to me, here in Protection, my at-ti-tude is about all I've got.
#
I'm cold all the time.  Out here in Kansas, the wind blows all the time.  It's sunny, but the sky is real pale blue and real far away.  Natalie says that long about January we'll start getting dust storms.  
When the lights come on in the morning, none of us bother to get up.  I stay right up against Paul, trying to get a little warm.  We got two blankets because they're are two of us, but they're really not big enough to cover two people, even when I lie right up against him.  Still, we get some overlap.  So my legs and feet are cold, and his backside is cold, because those are places where there isn't enough cover, but we're okay.  
We take our blankets to the factory, all wrapped up like Indians.  If you do it right, part of the time you are sewing a quilt you can have it in your lap, but if they catch us doing that they chew us out.  Nancy gets in trouble because when she's finished sewing a quilt, instead of putting it in her basket, she keeps it on her lap.  
We've been doing quilts a couple of months, it's not real hard.  We're supposed to do twelve an hour, one every five minutes.  You got to fold a little, pin a little, then zip, zip, zip, zip, four seams and you go on to the next one.  When you run out of thread you have to signal Natalie and she brings you thread.  If you don't do twelve an hour, then you have to stand for detention.  So I do fourteen or fifteen the first hour, just in case I have a problem, and then twelve an hour for the rest of the day.  Our hands get so cold it's hard to do them right.  If you make a mistake, the bad quilt is called 'waste.'  I asked if we couldn't keep a couple of the 'wastes' to use ourselves but Natalie said that unscrupulous people would ruin quilts on purpose just so they could have them.  
Well, yeah, I would.  
Then one morning, Corbin, who with Natalie, is one of our Group Leaders, says that we're going to have a change.  Corbin doesn't have any teeth in front.  At first I thought he was real old, but then I found out he's only thirty-six, but he's been in labor camps for fourteen years.  I guess that and the fact that his mouth is all caved in from having no teeth is what makes him look old.  
He says that there is rationing outside, like there usually is in the winter.  It's the first time anyone has mentioned outside in a long time.  It seems so far away, outside.  I guess there didn't used to be rationing, before the Second Depression, but I guess if they could farm the corridor there would be a lot more food.  
From now on, he says, if we make 120 quilts a day, we get regular rations, if we make more than 180 we get extra rations, and if we make less than 120, we get half rations.  
I figure maybe I can make 180 quilts, I mean, I've never really tried had before.  I have to make eighteen quilts an hour.  The first hour I make nineteen, raggedy-assed things but nineteen and they're good enough to pass, not waste, you know.  Man, I figure I got this thing licked, and I'm tasting extra rations.  But the next hour I screw up two and I only end up with fifteen.  And the third hour I get up to thirteen and the thirteenth one I screw the thread all to hell, tangled in the bobbin and all, and I got to be real careful or I'll break the needle.  If I break the needle they'll dock me ten quilts because needles are expensive.  I finish the day with 154.  Chris, this big guy from Detroit who killed somebody with a top from a trash barrel, he makes 182.  His fingers just blur.  I'm always afraid that I'm going to end up sewing my own hand if I go that fast.  
This other guy, Nesly, he only makes 114.  He's just a klutz, he goes real slow and he messes some up.  At dinner, Chris gets two extra buns, and I'm disappointed, I thought he'd get more than that.  But Nesly only gets half his beans.
We discuss it at our political meeting.  First the title of the lesson, "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."  Then Natalie has a discussion group and we talk about what it means.  
Nesly says, kind of desperate, "It doesn't seem fair, I work as hard as I can."  
Maybe he does, I don't know.  I don't like Nesly, he's one of those people who you look at and you know they're a screw-up.  He's not very big, and he's got no front, no pride.  And he whines all the time.  
Natalie says, "Think about it Nesly.  People like Chris work harder, they need more food.  Society is like a machine.  A person like Chris makes sure that more people have blankets.  It's for the good of society that if there is only so much food, people like Chris get it, because he's more efficient."  
Some people nod.  I can see it, in a way.  
Mostly I don't care, it's warmer in the bunk, with Paul, and that's where I want to be.  I'm tired all the time, from being cold.  It seems like I just go to sleep and the lights snap on.  
I close my eyes again, not bothering to get up.  
Paul says, "You still want to learn more for political instruction?"  
"I dunno," I say, and then from habit, because he's doing something I want him to do, "Yeah, I guess."  
But he doesn't talk about anything that makes sense, he starts by saying, "What's feudalism?"  
"Bad," I say, thinking about how in half an hour I have to go stand out in the cold for roll call.  When we have roll call in the morning, the stars are still out and it's still dark.  
"Why is it bad?"  
Hell, I don't know, I don't even really know what feudalism is except it has to do with kings and queens.  
So that morning he tells me about serfs, who were like slaves, because only a few people owned all the land, and everybody else had to work for them.  And because if you didn't work for someone you would starve, you'd do anything to work for someone.  But they could pay you whatever they wanted.  
I think I can understand that pretty well.  "People like us," I say, "we're like serfs, because we're trapped, and they don't have to do anything but give us a little food."  
"Right," he says, pleased with me.  Well halleluia, Janee finally said something right.  "The only difference," he says, "is that a feudal economy is based on land.  Since people don't have much money, mostly land, they can't really buy and sell a lot.  I mean, you can't carry a hectare of land in your pocket, you know?"  
I laugh, because I'm supposed to, but he sounds like a frigging teacher.  
"Now a factory is expensive," he says.  "You know how animals and people evolve?"  
"Like people started out from apes," I say.  
"Sort of," he says.  "Anyway, first are primitive societies, like the Indians.  Then there are feudal societies, which are more organized.  And then people get money together and they buy machines and build buildings and you have factories.  But to start a factory you have to have a lot of money, you need capital.  And that's why people who run factories are called capitalists."  
Okay.  So out on the field for roll call, while I'm freezing my buns off, I'm thinking about factory workers and serfs.  And about labor camps.  Paul thinks they're different, because of land and money, but they really aren't.  It seems to me that if society is going to evolve, it should get better for everyone, not just the people at the top, right?  I mean, Indians had it a lot better than I do.  
#
"Where did you live in Pennsylvania?"  I ask Paul.  
He doesn't answer.  
"Did you live in a big city, like Philadelphia or Pittsburgh?"  
He doesn't pay any attention to me.  
"Maybe in a little town, like Allentown?"  Everybody has heard of Allentown, because it's a famous battleground of class struggle.  That and the little town in Kentucky where the miners went on strike.  "Did you have a girlfriend?"  
"That was outside," he finally says.  
"Do you want to know if I had a boyfriend?"  I ask.  
"I'm sure you did."  
"You don't know," I say.  "You try to make it sound like you don't care, but you don't know anything about me.  Maybe I ax-murdered my boyfriend," I say.  
It irritates me, he won't tell me anything.  He doesn't want to hear anything about me, either.  I mean I don't think it's a good idea to always be talking about it, but it's stupid to pretend that we didn't have any life at all out there.  I figure he had a girlfriend, maybe a wife.  Sometimes, people divorce people who go into labor camps.  It's an okay reason for divorce.  
"What's the big secret?"  I say.  "Why don't you want to talk about it?"  
"That's a whole different person," he says, "a whole different life."  
"Why don't you ever talk about politics, I mean, you're here because of politics."  
"I am talking about politics," he says, sounding angry, "I'm teaching you, aren't I?"  
"Yeah, but you never teach me anything subversive," I say.  "We just talk about feudalism.  Natalie doesn't even care about feudalism, I still don't know the right answers when she asks me questions."  
"It's not something somebody can explain overnight," he says.  
"I don't even think you're right," I say.  "You say that feudalism was better than the Indians, and that capitalism was better than feudalism.  But it's not, it's just the same for people like me, we always get shit on.  Except maybe for the Indians.  I'd be better off if I were an Indian."  
"That's the point," he says, exasperated.  "Feudalism and capitalism exploit people like you and me."  
Exploit.  That crops up all the time, exploitation of the workers.  I feel like I've just gotten another piece of the puzzle.  
"So how would you change things, Janee?"  he says.  
I think.  "I'd make sure that...I mean, people still have to work, right?  Or we wouldn't have anything to eat.  But I'd give more to the people like me, like I'd make sure that people had enough to eat and all that.  I wouldn't let some people have a lot and not have to work.  And I wouldn't make people do stupid things.  You know, sewing quilts all the time is boring."  
"But how are you going to have factories if no one has enough money to build them?"  Paul asks.  
He's got a point.  I mean, if everybody is pretty much the same, nobody has a whole lot of money.  I try to think who builds factories.  I get it, all the sudden I get it.  "The Government.  The Government can build them."  
"Why the Government?"  he asks.  
"Because they've got the money," I say.  
"But then the Government just becomes like the capitalists, exploiting people."  
That's what we've got but I don't say it.  
"Think about it, Janee," he says.  
Right.  He knows the answer, but he wants me to guess, stupid son of a bitch playing stupid teacher games.  
If it wasn't for me, the poor sorry bastard would be in real deep shit.  I know he thinks I'm stupid, I can tell by the way he talks to me.  When he's telling me about politics he talks slower, real careful, and he asks questions he already knows the answers to and there I am, trying to guess the right answer when he could just tell me and then I'd know.  And why won't he tell me anything about himself?  Why doesn't he want to know anything?  'Cause I don't really matter, that's why.  He doesn't need to tell me anything because I'm just dumb old Janee.  
"Listen," I say, "what difference does it make?  Why the hell can't you just tell me where you lived?  Huh?  Why do you have to be so goddamn secret about it?"  
"What difference does it make where I lived," he says.  He's in a pissy mood.  When he's like this I'm not supposed to bother him, he kind of sits around and doesn't say anything.  What, he thinks he's the only one whose life is screwed up?  
"Fine," I say.  "You don't want to talk to me?  I don't want to talk to you."  And I don't talk to him.  I just leave him right there and I just start ignoring him from then on, take my blanket, sleep in the goddamn bunk by the door even though it's colder.  I mean, I boot Nesly out, make him sleep in the middle bunk so I can have the bottom, I can't let goddamn Nesly sleep better than I do, not even for Paul.  And the bunk is the pits, there's a draft in from the door and I've only got one blanket, so I have to sleep curled up in the corner trying to get all of me under the stupid green blanket.  
Paul doesn't say anything.  He has that way, like he expects shit to happen, like he always expected I'd dump him.  And the next morning nobody really bothers him.  Nobody really bothers me, either, but then, people don't bother me.  So we just go through the day, not talking to each other.  I even make Nesly sit at my Singer sewing machine, next to Paul.  I see people watching, seeing how pissed I am.  Seeing if Paul is out there by himself.  
At dinner Paul gets in line, he's in front of Marisa, who is okay, and Roy and Sal cut in front of Marisa, which gets her real nervous until they start bumping into Paul and she realizes she's not the target.  She looks back at me, I can see her head turn, but I'm making like I'm not really looking.  Paul looks back, not knowing what's going on, and says something, and Sal and Roy laugh.  So he gets his beans and they get theirs, and I'm still like I'm not watching, and Sal and Roy are leaning on him.  I can't hear what they're saying, but I can tell, they're over there by the kettles and now since it's cold there's always like this steam blowing like smoke.  
And Paul doesn't know what to do, you can see his shoulders up around his ears and he's all elbows and you can tell that Roy and Sal got him running, but he's holding his beans and shaking his head, and Sal pulls on the plate, but Paul won't let go, so it's kind of a tug of war.  Sal's looking a little stupid, and Paul calls to one of the guards, which is a mistake, because it's a guy we call Arkansas who doesn't care what happens as long as he doesn't have to do anything.  He's this short little guy with a big adam's apple and those stupid green guard's uniforms fit him even worse than they fit the other guards.  Paul always says Arkansas is an example of too much inbreeding.  
Arkansas goes deaf and pretends he doesn't know what's going on and the next thing I know Sal flicks Paul's plate of beans onto Paul's face and shirt.  And Sal and Roy are laughing, and I guess it's not as good as getting Paul's beans but it's better than nothing, and Paul yells at Arkansas, "Did you see that!  Are you going to let them do that!"  
Arkansas sort of half reverses his deal gun, so that the metal stock is out there, like he's going to club someone, and narrows his eyes and says, "Politics, you causing a disturbance?" in this real lazy way.  
"I wasn't doing anything--"
"I don't like trouble," Arkansas says.  
And Paul must realize that it's open season when you're political, 'cause he doesn't say anything after that.  
And I'm pretending not to notice anything.  Son of a bitch thinks I'm stupid, let him survive out there on his brains.  
#
Things are really different without me being with Paul.   I guess I kind of look around.  Not that there's a whole lot to see.  Kansas looks like hard, pale ripples, and the sky is light blue, real far away.  The barracks are all in lines and they're low and long and even though they were painted green, now they're just all washed out, a kind of darker Kansas color.  The only colors are the guard's uniforms, which are dark green, all stamped The U.S. People's Army over the pockets.  
I feel so small.  It was okay when I busy watching everybody in group thirty-six and worrying about Paul, but now I feel so small, and I have this awful thing in my stomach, all the time.  Every time I look out past the guard wire that marks the perimeter, and there's dry, empty Kansas, it's like my stomach is trying to swallow me up.  I know I'm going to get out of here in the spring, something will come up, it has to come up, I can't stand it here, I'll die, I'll really die out here.      
People do die.  Nobody from group thirty-six, but sometimes from other groups, like group six, the zombies.  They put the body in a green bag in the morning and we see the guards throw them in a truck while we're standing in line for breakfast, and I realize they've been doing that since it started to get cold.  I've been watching them but it's like I didn't really notice.  
I start thinking about running out, just running, just trying it.  Maybe the perimeter isn't on all the time.  We don't go near it.  Maybe they leave it off.  And if they don't, I'd never know, just zap and then the guards leave you there and Paul thought that you didn't feel anything and he ought to know, since he's been zapped.  
Crazy thoughts, that scare me, but it's so tempting.  Like my mind doesn't really believe anything could happen to me.  
In political instruction Natalie gives us all lapboards and paper and little short stubby pencils.  Even Paul gets a lapboard.  That's real different.  Which makes me more nervous, I don't like different.  Different is bad.  My first thought is that we're going to have a test and I know there's no way I can pass, and I start wondering what they'll do to me if I flunk.  Cut my rations?  I'm trying, I'm trying as hard as I can.  But that's what Nesly always says.  So I clench my pencil and wait to see what she says.  
Natalie says, "We need to see how you are progressing in your self-struggle.  Please write about yourself.  You can write anything you wish, but we will check to see what you have omitted.  Everybody understand?"  
No, I don't understand.  I don't write very good.  I mean, I didn't even finish high school.  I don't know what they want.  But nobody else says anything, so I'm not going to say anything.  So I look down at the piece of paper.  I look up and around the room and I see the twelve rules of self-struggle on the wall.  All that stuff about one day at a time, and denial and all that stuff.  A couple of people are writing but a lot of people are like me, just sitting there.  
Paul is looking at me, and when I look at him, he shakes his head.  No.  
I frown.  'No' what?  But if I keep looking at him Natalie will notice and we'll both be in trouble.  
So I look back at my paper.  I try to write something.  

My name is Janee Scott.  I am a theif and I asalted a person.  I am...

I don't know how to spell maladjusted.  So I change my sentence.

...a criminol elamint.  

That looks wrong, too.  So I make the 'i' and 'e', 'elament' looks better.  So now what am I supposed to do?  Natalie said that we would be checked for stuff we left out.  So maybe I should tell about my arrest?  So I write down about the woman I beat up and about stealing her purse.  
I used to steal from the grocery, too.  In the winter it was easy.  I got picked up a couple of times and I spent a couple of nights in jail.  So I better tell about that, too.  I can't spell grocery so I write 'store.'  
Finally I write;

I am sory for my crimes, and for the bad things I did to sosiaty.

I haven't written very much, not even half the page.  Some people are still writing.  Some people have written most of a page already.  I wonder what else I'm supposed to write.  Natalie said we'd get in trouble if we left things out, but I don't know what kind of things.  What else could I say?  Maybe I'm supposed to write about the things I did in camp?  About the fight with the walking dead and about standing up in political instruction and saying that my problem was that I was in a labor camp?  
Other people are asking Natalie questions, they kind of wait until she is looking around and then they half raise their hand and she comes over.  So I wait and when she looks at me I put my hand up, feeling stupid.  Natalie already knows I'm stupid, what difference does it make?  
"Are we supposed to write about things we've done at camp?"  I whisper.  
"Whatever you want," Natalie says.  
Somebody else raises their hand and she goes to them.  
I don't know what to do.  But she said that we'll get in trouble for the stuff we leave out.  So I try to think of how to say what I've done at Protection.  

I have a bad atitude.  I was in a fite with some pepoul from gr. 6 becase they tried to take my beans.  Also, in our meeting, I say that my problim is I am at a laber camp, but my problim is that I am a theif and I asalted the person at the store and I stol food.  When I stol food from the store, I hurt sosiaty.

I think the last sentence is pretty good, but when I think I've done something right in political instruction, I'm always wrong.  
#
After the political instruction meeting, Sal starts ragging on Paul about his bunk, telling him he's going to throw him out.  Sal has a bottom bunk, so he's really just leaning on Paul.  I figure if Sal is going to take Paul's bunk, I'll take Sal's, so I grab my blanket and throw it there while Sal is facing down Paul.  
Paul is going to come here first, thinking that Sal's bunk is empty.  I'm going to tell him to try near the door.  Actually, maybe I'll let him stay, maybe I won't, it depends.  If he acts mealy-mouthed and just slinks down the door, he can freeze for all I care.  
And he will, too, cause Paul's so tall that his blanket isn't long enough, and when he scrunches up it seems like his knees always stick out.  And he's thin, the way some tall guys are, even thinner now.  We're all even thinner now.  He's going to end up all bones and joints, like his long fingers, stuck down there with Nesly.  And Nesly'll latch on to him, and he won't have the sense to tell Nesly to get out of his face.  
He'll feel sorry for Nesly.  And he'll be nice to him, cause Paul's like that.  He's decent.  Even if it drives me nuts sometimes, like maybe that's why he doesn't want to know about me before I came here, like he'd prefer to think nice things about me or something.  Or maybe that's not it at all, it's hard to know what he's thinking.  He'd have to be pretty stupid to think nice things about me.  But I do know, if someone doesn't take care of him, being decent will get him in deep.  
And then all the sudden I'm thinking all these things at once, like what if Paul got like the zombies, what if he stopped caring, and I'm wondering if it could happen, although I can just see him, all raggedy-assed and blank-eyed, stick-like and smelling like piss, specially because he's thin to begin with.  And at the same time, I keep thinking of Kansas out there, all pale colored, and us so little, and wondering if I might not end up a zombie, 'cause worrying about Paul, I never thought about people ending up zombies.  I never thought about running for the perimeter.  It's like my cousin said about her kid, when you have a baby, you don't have a chance to know how screwed up you are because you got to think about milk and diapers and all that shit, and the baby just keeps loving you.  
So, not even meaning to, I pop out of Sal's bunk and just grab my blanket and go to see what's going on.  And what's going on is this:  Paul has my stick, the one I got from the living dead, which I keep stuck in the frame under our bunk, and he doesn't really look like he's sure what to do with it.  But Sal isn't sure how to get around him, because there isn't a lot of room between the bunks, you know.  And Eddy, who has the bottom bunk across from ours, and Marisa, who has the bunk above Eddy's, are both swearing like mad, telling Sal to leave everything alone, 'cause if Paul starts swinging that stick in that little space people might get their heads knocked.  
So I just walk up and say, "Sal, get back to your own bunk."  
"Stay outta this," Sal says.  
Paul doesn't say anything, so I just walk past Sal.  The stupid dick elbows me and pushes me into the bunk, so I pop out again and grab the stick from Paul and stick it like a sword right into Sal's stomach and then start smacking him with it, bap, bap, bap, not really hurting him, but real fast, so he can't get a hold of it, and he puts up his hands trying to keep me off and keeps walking backwards until he's clear of the bunks and I say, "Listen, mess with me again and I'll put it in your teeth."  
That's the way you deal with trash.  
So then I just walk back and sit down on the bunk and lean down and shove the stick back in the frame.  
Paul stands there a moment and I look up at him and say, "What?"  
He's got a kind of funny little smile on his face, but he just says, in that real reasonable way of his, "Are you back or do you just want the bunk?"  
"It's warmer with someone else," I say.  "And I've already got you broke in."  
"Okay," he says.  And sits down.  
Eddy says, "Shit," and turns over with his back to us.  Marisa is looking over the edge of her bunk.  Marisa is with Kirk, I don't know where he's been all through this.  
"Janee," Paul says, real quiet.
I look up at him, wondering, wondering what he's going to say, and feeling kind of funny, and maybe a little embarrassed, just because of the way he said my name.  
"What did you write?"  he says.  
For a moment I don't follow, because it wasn't what I expected at all.  Then I figure out he means that stupid thing at political instruction, and without even thinking I kind of look over towards where the twelve rules are written on the wall, even though you can't see them from the bunk.  
I'm irritated.  Here I just saved his balls and he's going to play teacher games.  "None of your business," I say.  
"Janee--" he says, and takes my shoulder and kind of pushes my hair away from my face, nice, something he's never done before.  Not like humping, but nice, like just for me, Janee.  "It's important, what did you write?"  
I shrug.  "Just about being a thief and about fighting with the guys from group six and then about the time I said that my big problem was being in a labor camp."  
He nods.  "Good.  When they give it back to you, just write the same thing, only in different words."  
"Why are they going to give it back to me?"  
"It's something they do," he says.  He's real tense, real scared.  I can't figure out what the big deal is.  I know he's rattled from Sal, he doesn't know that the Sal's of this world are really just looking for someone to tell them what they can and can't do.  
"Hey," I say.  "Don't worry about it.  Come on, sit down here with me.  It's cold enough in this barn."  Saying that makes me smile.  "My mother used to say that," I tell him.  "She'd say, 'Close the door, it's cold enough in this barn.'"  
He smiles a little.  "Mother's say that sort of thing.  Mine used to say, 'Close the door, you weren't raised in a barn.'"  
"Must be a Pennsylvania thing," I say, even though I've heard it before, people in Cleveland say it.  
"Yeah," he says, "must be a Harrisburg thing."  
"You know," I say, real quiet, "you can be a real pain in the ass, but sometimes, you're all right."  
"Janee," he says, "you've got to be real careful.  I don't know why you adopted me, but you don't want me telling you things.  You think you do, but I tell you about my life and then I'll be talking about things, things I think and believe, and you'll spend the rest of your life in a labor camp.  You've got to just say back to them whatever they say to you, okay?"  
He looks sad, he looks lonely.  Well I'm lonely, too.  All the time I'm lonely here.  "Most of what they say is crap," I say, and I can feel myself getting irritated at him, getting irritated at all of it, I'm cold all the time, and hungry, damn it.  
"I didn't say you had to believe it," he whispers.
#
Finally, they start the little electric heaters in the factory where we sew quilts, mostly because it's so cold that our fingers are stiff and our production is falling.  It doesn't make the place warm, but I can't see my breath anymore.  
I think about being warm all the time.  I get these bruises on my legs, most of us do, from the cold.  Chilblains.  They hurt, real bad.  Get up in the morning and it hurts to move my legs, and when I'm standing out there for roll call, the wind comes whipping over those little ripply Kansas hills and my legs hurt so much I have tears in my eyes.  Then we cripple on over for breakfast and take it into the factory.  Paul and I sit together against the wall, one blanket around our shoulders, the other across our legs, and eat.  
I still haven't gotten to 180 quilts.  I get 177 once and Corbin calls time to quit. I'm so mad I almost cry.  Really, I never understood that saying, but I can feel the hot tears.  I want to hit something.  Nesly's doing real bad.  He's coughing all the time, and spitting.  He's on half rations, because his production is so low.  I know when I'm losing my concentration because I can hear Nesly back there, coughing his lungs out.  
I sew quilts.  I can mostly sew without thinking, just zip, zip, zip, zip.  I think about a lot of things.  I think about what Paul said, about saying whatever they want me to say.  And I think about what they want me to say.  And I think about the question he asked me, when I said that it seemed to me that the Indians had it the best, that factory workers, and serfs and people like me, we all had it just about the same.  
I keep trying to think about what would make it better.  Everybody has to work, or people wouldn't have anything.  Even Indians had to hunt or something.  Like quilts, there's a lot in a quilt.  There's the cottony stuff in the middle, somebody has to make that, and then somebody has to put it in the middle of the quilt.  Somebody like us has to make the plain part, that they put the stuffing in.  And somewhere, somebody has to put together all the little pieces of cloth and make the top part.  Sometimes I imagine the way my plain shells will look when the top goes on them.  I don't know if they'll be the kind with the patches, or if they'll be the ones with the stars, or the fans, or the pin wheels...  There's a lot of different patterns.  
I'd like making quilts a lot better if I could do different things, like the top part, too.  If I were going to make a new society, I'd have people do different things, not the same things all the time.  So that somebody wouldn't always get stuck doing the stuff that no one likes to do.  
At break one day, I tell Paul about my idea.  
"That's a good idea," he says.  "But who would make the schedule?"  
I shrug.  "Maybe everybody could talk about it.  Like consensus."  In political meetings we've been talking about consensus, having everybody come to agreement.  It means that when you know you're out-voted, you give in, because you know you're not going to win.  First you talk, and everybody kind of finds out what everybody else thinks, then when you vote, it's not really a vote, you consent.  And if one person says no, then you have to talk about it until everybody agrees.  But you shouldn't say 'no' unless you really have to.  Everybody has to kind of trust everybody else, you have to decide, you may disagree, but do you disagree enough to stop everything?  
"Quaker socialism," Paul says.  For a moment I think he's laughing at me, but he's not.  Things strike him funny that aren't funny to anyone else.  
"What's that mean?"  I ask.  
"Quakers were a religious group that practiced some socialist techniques," he says.  
"Religion is anti-socialist," I say, which everybody knows is true.  Opiate of the masses and all that.  
"A lot of Christian groups experimented with communal living," he says, "and some of the ways they found are very practical, like consensus.  And Socialism uses a lot of--"  he stops.  
"What," I say.  
He shakes his head.  "So you would use consensus to establish your schedule.  I think that's a good idea.  Have you figured out how to build your factories yet?"  
He's changing the subject, because it's wrong to say that socialism is like religion.  "No," I say.  "I'm still working on it."  
And then we have to go back to work.  But the nice thing about going back to work after our two-thirty break is that it's only four more hours until dinner.  And I'm thinking about what Paul said, about socialism being like religion.  Which is very, very weird, because everybody knows that religion is all superstition.  
But I don't say anything about religion to Paul.  I just kind of store that away.  And then I go back to thinking about my quilt factory.  
Dinner is some sort of stew with floury dumplings, we don't always have beans.  There's a bit of fatty meat in my bowl and I save it for last.  Fat tastes so good to me.  That sounds disgusting, but it does.  I think I could eat straight fat.  I'm hungry when I'm done, but I save my roll, because Paul and I always eat our bread right before we go to sleep.  Some people save their cornbread from morning, they save it all day.  
The next morning Corbin says that Nesly doesn't have to work.  
Nesly says he'll work, it's okay, even though he's really sick and he's not even making eighty quilts a day.  He's real thin, the bones in his chest are real sharp and his wrists look like sticks and his skin is real dry and scaly.  His hair is coming out, too.  Sometimes when I look over, he isn't even sewing, he's just got his head down on his table.  Sometimes his eyes are closed, sometimes they're open.  
We all know why he wants to go to work, if he doesn't go to work he'll be on infirmary rations.  
Corbin says he should stay and rest and it's like Nesly just doesn't care.  Like the walking dead.  
Nesly is going to die.
When we're sewing, once in awhile I hear someone coughing--a lot of people cough--and then I think, 'it's not Nesly.  Nesly is going to die.'  
Nothing I can do.  
In my society, Nesly wouldn't go on half rations, not if everybody felt Nesly was really trying.  I think about what group thirty-six could do.  If everybody gave Nesly a spoonful of their food, that would be thirty-one spoonfuls.  That would be a lot, added to his half-ration, then he wouldn't starve.  If everybody does it, that spreads it out, so nobody has to do a whole lot.  Not that I think people really would, not for Nesly.  
I don't tell anybody, though.  They'd think I'd gone soft in the head.
#
Natalie hands out lapboards again, and the little stubby pencils.  I've still got the pen stuck in the seam of my pants, it's been there since I stuck it in the seam of pants when they told us we could only take what we were wearing.  I never even think of it.  Sometimes, Paul used to kind of play with it through my pants, but we don't do anything anymore but sleep.  I look over at Paul, and he looks scared.  
Which makes me real nervous.  
Natalie just hands all back those pieces of paper that we wrote before, and I look over mine.  It really looks stupid.  
Natalie says.  "All of you left things out, things that we know about, so please explain further.  Please tell us more about yourself and your self-struggle."  
My self-struggle?  I look up at the twelve rules.  Look back down at my lapboard.  It's real lousy plastic, bumpy with scrapes and scratches so that when I write my pencil will catch in the indentations.  What do they know about that I didn't say?  Juvenile reform?  

I was in jewvinile reform becase I stol a player and some chips.  I had a chanse to reform at Brigum House but I did not.  Sosiaty had to pay mony to fed me and give me cloths and when I got out of Brigum House I did the same bad things.

I know I'm doing good, now.  At Brigham House they were always talking about our debt to society.  And here they talk about that to.  In a way we're like Nesly, we never make our quotas, so now society has to pay for us, like a spoonful from everybody.  

Now I am here...

I want to say in Protection, but I'm not sure how to spell it,

...and Sosiaty gives me food and has to buld a camp so I have to work hard and make alot of quiwlts so I can give back to sosiaty.  When I go home, I have to be a productiv member of sosiaty.  Soshalisum means everbody together in sosiaty.

I underline the part about everybody together.  I understand what Natalie had been trying to teach us, socialism means that everybody shares.  The way to build the factory was to share, if everybody gave a little bit, like if we all gave a teaspoon of food to Nesly, nobody would notice the little bit.  But put all the little bits together, and then you have a lot, and you can build a factory.  I had figured it out, all by myself.  I want to tell somebody, I want to tell Natalie, or Paul.  
Paul is just sitting, looking at his lapboard.  Natalie is answering someone's question.  Natalie looks up at Paul, then walks over to him and says, "Aren't you going to add anything?"  
Paul shrugs.  "I added something."  
Natalie looks walks beside him, so she can read it.  "I have failed to renew my commitment to the revolution each day," she says, in a funny voice.  "Is that all you can think to add, Paul?"  
"That's all," he says.  
Natalie flicks open her notebook, "What about Kevin Hanrahan?"  
Paul says, like he doesn't care,  "What about him, Natalie?"  
"Why don't you write about him?"  
He bends over his lapboard.  We're all watching.  Natalie always ignores Paul, she never says anything to him.  Politicals aren't allowed to say anything in political meetings for the first two years.  
She reads; "Natalie has asked me to write about Kevin Hanrahan.  Kevin Hanrahan was a student of mine six years ago.  After he left my class I had no further communication with him."
She shakes her head.  Natalie looks mean.  I think of when we first had political meeting, when she made Nancy stand up and say she was a prostitute.  I wonder what Natalie did to get sent to a labor camp.  I mean, Natalie always just seemed like a person who you felt sorry for, a chump, I was never afraid of her before.  
"Paul," she says.  "Wasn't there a letter?"  
He doesn't say anything.  Then he says, "I don't remember a letter."  
"You're holding out," she says.  "You realize, holding out on us will only hurt you, and hurt Kevin Hanrahan."  
"Maybe when Degraff--"  the camp guard I always called Helga "--used me as a demonstration model on the perimeter there was brain damage, Natalie."  He says her name sarcastic, like he's being polite, and he's not.  
"This isn't a camp for politicals," Natalie says.  "This camp is easy.  You don't want to end up somewhere like Rushville."  
"Why don't you go help the kids with their compositions," he says, but this time he doesn't sound sarcastic at all, he just sounds like he doesn't care.  
But he does, because when we climb into our bunk, he's shaking all over, all tense and scared.  And I don't know what to do, so I don't do anything.  And after awhile he goes to sleep.
#
A couple of days later they take Nesly to the infirmary.  He can't walk anymore, and he mutters all the time, talking, talking, but he doesn't know what he's saying and nobody can understand him.  
"We could have done something," I tell Paul.  
He shakes his head.  "There's nothing you could do, Janee."  
"No," I say, irritated, "not me.  Us.  All of us, group thirty-six."  So I explain to him about if everybody gave him a spoonful.  "That's socialism," I say, "that's how you build the factory."  
He nods.  "So who owns the factory?"  
Owns the factory?  "The people who work in it, I guess."  I think a moment.  "No, everybody, because everybody put a spoonful in.  It's everybody's factory!"  
He grins, "That's right, that's it, Janee.  That's socialism."  
"Yeah," I say.  "And the people who work there decide the way to do the job, and they use consensus to make the schedule, and everybody takes turns, I mean, except for the jobs that someone can't do, like you know, if they have to fix a sewing machine, I can't do that, but all the rest of the jobs, people all trade around, so nobody has to do the boring stuff all the time."  
"And there are no bosses," he says.  
"But it doesn't work that way," I say.  At least, I never heard of it working that way, I mean, we're supposed to be socialist, even in Cleveland, and Cleveland isn't like that.  
"No," he says, "it doesn't."  
"Why not?"  
He shrugs, looks at the floor.  "I don't know," he says.  
But I don't believe him, he could answer me.  He could tell me why it's not working.  It's one of the things he won't talk about, like that stuff about religion.  
We're sitting in the factory, eating our breakfast.  Corbin comes in.  "Corbin's not a prisoner," Paul says.  
Which is stupid.  "What, you think he's a guard in disguise?"  I say.  
"No, Corbin was in on a ten year sentence.  Chick, over in group thirty-one told me."  
That doesn't make any sense.  Why the hell would someone stay here after he's served his time unless he's soft upstairs?  Corbin even told us that he's served time in seven different work camps, some as far west as Colorado, out where there's no water.  Corbin is a little weird, in the summer he doesn't wear shoes so he can save the people the cost of shoe leather.  Corbin is a first-class chump.
Corbin makes us all go to our sewing machines and then he tells us that the camp director has asked us all to show some unity, to show some spirit.  "Today is our chance to show the rest of the camp that group thirty-six is not slacking," Corbin says.  It's some sort of production push.  "If you normally make 120 quilts, try to make 160.  If you make 160, try to make 200."  
Then the big news.  "You'll get extra beans at 2:30, because of your extra effort," Corbin says.  "But think, if you earn those extra beans, maybe this will happen more often."  
Hell, for extra beans, I'd make 500 quilts.  
In the first hour I make nineteen, which is great, but my shoulders are killing me because I'm working the foot of the threader right at my fingers and pushing the cloth through as hard as I can and I'm afraid I'm going to get my fingers under the needle.  
The second hour I make twenty, which is the most I ever made in an hour.  I can feel myself sweating.  I mean, it's cold in that stupid factory but I'm sweating, I'm concentrating so hard.  And the third hour I mess up two in a row, and I only make sixteen.  I tell myself I can still make 180.  Chris makes 180 all the time, and he's just some stupid dickhead from Detroit.  When we break at 2:30 I've made 114 quilts, which is a personal best.  Paul has made 106, which is good for him.  Corbin makes us count, then we go for beans.  
Beans at 2:30, it's wonderful.  I can't believe we get to eat again at 7:30.  "We get beans at dinner, right?"  I ask Corbin.  
"Yeah," he says, "you do."  But he's talking to some other group leaders.  
As soon as we eat the beans, Corbin hurries us back to our factory building.  "Group fourteen is making an average of seventeen an hour," he says.  Then he makes us tell our figures out loud.  Chris has made 127 quilts.  Thirteen more than me.  Two more an hour than me.  But I'm okay, not the fastest, but not the slowest, either.  I'm up in the top five.  The slowest is Roy, who has only made 91.  
Everybody gets real quiet when Roy tells how many he's made, everybody is thinking that he'll pull our group average down.  
"We'll stop for dinner, but then we'll work late, so everybody has a chance to meet their quota."  
We go back to work.  Usually the four hours between 2:30 and dinner just drag by, but today they go fast.  At dinner Corbin has us figure again.  I've made 185 quilts, the most I've ever made.  A lot of people have made more than they ever made before.  
Marisa says, "Maybe we should just take ten minutes for dinner and then come back, so we have more time until lights out at ten."  
Corbin nods, and says we have to decide.  So we vote, and decide we will, although some people don't want to.  I think about consensus.  But first of all, if we wait until we have consensus it will take too much time.  Second of all, a lot of people in the group don't understand about consensus, they're selfish.  
Anyway, we gobble our food--normally I never eat fast, normally I eat real slow, trying to make it last--and hurry back.  Other groups are doing the same thing.  It's weird to be back in the factory with the clamp lamps on, and my table isn't in good light, so I can't see very well, so I have to go slower.  I'm real tired.  I'm so tired I can't see good.  I can't focus.  I get tired more easily.  And if I try to comb my hair with my fingers, some of it comes out.  I can't concentrate on sewing, I keep thinking about Cleveland, about riding the bus down I-90 past Martin Luther King Boulevard, and how right before Dead Man's Curve you can see the lake, and the rocks.  Sometimes the lake's real clear, and sometimes, if there's been a storm or something, the water's real brown.  
So I start to cry a little, which is stupid.  I hated the bus.  I only took the bus when the rapid broke down--which it did fairly often.  And then I had to stand because all the people who took the rapid were on the bus.  
Finally we stop, and I've only made 39 quilts.  That's 224.  I don't even remember falling into the bunk.  
The next morning some of us even get extra cornbread, because we went over 180 quilts, and after work we get extra beans, although my production is way down after the day before.  I'm still tired from the push.  
And we have political instruction.  I figure I'm just going to do nothing during political instruction, maybe I'll sit in the back and go to sleep.  
But Natalie sees me in the back.  "Janee," she says, first thing, "what have you learned from all this?"  
The questions are all trick questions and I always get them wrong anyway.  "That we work better for rewards," I say.  Natalie gets this little smile she has when she's going to roast somebody's ideology, "and that shows we need to analyze our own motives better," I say, quick, because that's always good.  I'm just beginning to figure out what we're supposed to be analyzing for.  
And all the sudden it's like I know the right answer.  Capitalism is selfish, our problem is that we are still selfish.  What has to happen is that we have to be less selfish, otherwise socialism will never work.  "If we were truly socialist," I say, "we would work for the good of everybody, that's society, but we still have old-fashioned, uh, capitalist ways of thinking and we work for rewards."  
Natalie looks surprised, then she looks at Paul--who is staring at his long spider fingers and doesn't look at me even though you think he'd be happy that I finally gave them back an answer they wanted.  She thinks he told me what to say.  
"I've been thinking about it a lot," I say.  "I think that socialism is a really good idea, you know, everybody sharing, and everybody being equal and everything, but what I want to know is, why isn't it like that on the outside?"  
Natalie frowns.  I've made a mistake.  
"What I mean is, socialism says that, say, if we had a real quilt factory, everybody would own it, right?  And the people that made the quilts, they'd like, trade jobs, so that sometimes you have to do the boring stuff, but sometimes you get to do the more interesting stuff, like putting the piece work, the stars and stuff, on the top.  And that everybody would vote, like we did last night about coming back from dinner to work on our quota.  But outside, things don't work like that, there are bosses and people don't trade.  In a way," I say, "we're more socialist than they are outside."  
Natalie looks really surprised.  "Well, Janee," she says, "the difference is that inside, we really analyze ourselves, and we really work together."  
"So maybe everybody ought to have to do what we do," I say, "but that makes it sound like everybody ought to come to a labor camp, which isn't what I mean.  But if I hadn't come here, I'd have never figured this out."  
Natalie writes awhile in her notebook and I figure I'm roasted.  Then she looks up and says, "Janee, when you first came here you had a very negative, a very ego-centered attitude.  I want you to know I'm astonished and impressed at the progress you've made."  And then she smiles at me.  
Some people are nodding to themselves.  Some are like Paul, staring at their hands.  Roy is looking at me, naked hate on his face.  
In bed, after lights out, Paul says to me, "Why did you say that?"  
"Because I figured it out, from what you told me."  
I think he'll at least say something nice, but he just sighs.  
"I figured it out, myself," I say.  
"I know you did," he says.  
"You told me to tell them what they wanted," I say.  Even though I didn't just say it because it's what they want me to say.  
He doesn't answer me.  Sometimes I don't understand him at all.  
The next evening, at dinner, I get two extra chunks of cornbread.  I must look surprised because Ears, one of the cooks, says, "Camp Director's orders, Janee."
After dinner Natalie says, "I made a report on your progress in self-analysis and self-education."  
For a moment I think, I owe her.  Then I think, she looks good for having someone make progress, so maybe we're even.  I try to give Paul a chunk of cornbread.  
"You earned it," he says.  
"You act like I did something bad," I say.  "You told me to tell them what they want.  You told me to think about it.  Things would be better if everybody was socialist, wouldn't they?"  
"Yeah," he says, just agreeing with me.  
"You don't believe in socialism."  
"Janee," he says, then stops.  "Janee, you don't ever talk about escaping anymore."  
"I am," I say.  "I'm still thinking about it.  But I can't do anything about it until spring."  I sound kind of whiny, even to me.  "You never talk to me," I say.  "You think I'm stupid.  I figured that stuff out myself, nobody told me."  
"I don't think you're stupid," he says.  
"Bullshit," I say.  "Look at you, Mr. Schoolteacher.  You still think you're special, an intellectual.  Well, if it wasn't for me, people like Sal would have you for lunch.  And I can figure things out, too.  And I can figure out that you gotta be here for a reason and you didn't off no street-jock with the lid of a trash barrel.  But you don't want to talk about it.  Why don't you ever talk about it, huh?  What are you afraid of?  'Cept you think none of us dumbshits can understand."  
All the time he's shaking his head, standing there shaking his head, no, no, no, no.  "I wrote a couple of articles on socialist trends in America before the revolution," he says, "about attempts to establish Christian utopias along socialist lines.  I didn't toe the party line."  
"Yeah?  How come when I say something like I did at the political instruction last night you act like you're all disappointed in me?"  
"I'm not disappointed in you," he says.  
"Bullshit, jack-jockey.  I been in your bunk for a couple of months, I know you pretty well, even if don't use twenty dollar words to say what I'm thinking."  
"I don't care about your vocabulary," he says.  "Janee, Janee.  You're tough and you're smart.  I'm glad you're figuring out what they want.  But when you say that you that the labor camp helped make you a better citizen I'm not going to like it."  
"I didn't say that," I say.  He twists things.  He twists them around.  Listen to television, that's what political people do.
"In political instruction," he said.  "What do you think you got brownie points with the Camp Director for if not your impassioned defense of re-education?"  
"That's not true!"  I say.  "That's not true!  I said I didn't want everybody to go to labor camps!"  
"But if you never went to a labor camp, you never would have learned about socialism!"  he says.  
"So?  So I might have said that.  So it's true.  Maybe I had to come to a place like this, where I had to learn about it, or I never would have paid any attention."  
"And what, all of society has to go through re-education?"  he says.  "That's what I was studying, in the nineteenth century, people used to try to establish socialist communities, they were all people willing to give up everything.  And not one of those communities worked.  Not one.  They all died out after a few years, the Oneida Colony, the Shakers, all of them."  
"So you don't believe," I say.  Which scares me, I don't know why, but it scares me.  Because what if he's right, what if it's all wrong?
He shakes his head.  "I don't believe in re-education.  I don't know, I don't know what I believe.  But I know one thing, I mean, look at you, practical, tough little Janee who saw this goddamn system for what it is, slave labor!  And now you're talking about re-educating all of society!"  
"I don't even understand what you're talking about.  You said that we were evolving," I say.  "First the Indians, then feudalism, then capitalism, now socialism.  We still have all of these capitalist ideas in our heads, how are we going to get rid of them?"  
And all of the sudden I start crying.  I never cry.  I mean, I feel like crying sometimes at the camp, but I never cry.  And I don't even know why I'm crying except I am.  I want socialism, I want things to be better.  I want to go home.  Paul hugs me.  
"I'm so scared," I tell him.  "I'm so scared we're all going to die, like Nesly."
#
In political instruction Natalie has lapboards again but only certain people have to write, all the rest of us can do whatever we want.  Paul is one of the people who has to write.  I lie in the bunk, wrapped up in both blankets and doze, waiting.  
Lately, when I'm half asleep, I sort of dream.  It happens when I'm sewing, it happens at break sometimes.  I'm not really sound asleep, just barely into sleep.  Nothing ever happens, sometimes I dream I'm at work.  I always dream about things that are at the camp, and usually I'm just doing something real.  This time I dream about morning, when it's blue.  While we are getting our breakfast, when the sun is just coming up and some of the sky is black and still night off in the west, Kansas turns blue, like water, like air.  
It's real beautiful when that happens.  I never knew places could be blue.  The lake could be blue, the sky could be blue, but I never knew hills could be blue.  Blue isn't a solid color, it's an air color, a water color.  If something as big as Kansas can turn blue, I feel like I can disappear.  Nothing happens while I am dreaming, Kansas is just blue and I feel like I could disappear.  
I wake up scared.
So I get up, wrapped in both blankets, and sit on the concrete at the foot of the bunk beds where I can see the end of the barracks where the political instruction is going on.  I can see Paul, he's not writing, and I can see Natalie when she walks in the part of the room where the bunks aren't blocking my view.  
Finally she stops in front of Paul and she says, "Is that all?"  
He doesn't say anything.  
"You're resisting."  
"You want me to accuse people," he says.  
She shakes her head,  "No, we don't need you to accuse people, we already know.  We are trying to help you."  And when he doesn't say anything she says, "You're only one person.  You're full of egotism.  You're saying everyone else is wrong and you're right."  
He is only one person.  Natalie and Corbin and a lot of people believe in socialism, why should Paul be right and everybody else wrong?  
Eventually Paul comes back and lies down, all tense and shaky.  
He's cold when I curl up against him, but we get our blankets all in the right place and I go right back to sleep, like falling down, like slipping under water, and Kansas is blue.  Soft, without having real edges, blue.  I don't dream about anybody else, and nothing happens, just Kansas, rolling away towards the sunrise, blue.  
In the morning when we get our breakfast, Kansas is blue.  
When we take our break, I sit down where I can lean against the wall, and when I close my eyes, Kansas is blue.  

So I work, and I eat, and I conduct self-analysis.  Now in political instruction we are testifying.  That means that people get up, and they say their name and what they did wrong, like when I testify I will say, 'I am Janee Scott, and I am thief and a criminal.'  And then we have to tell about our life.  
It's not like it was when we stood up at the first instruction and said that, now only people who want to stand up and testify.  Sometimes someone will stand up to testify and Natalie will say, "No, you're not ready."  
I figure I'm not ready.  But one day Natalie says to me, "Janee, why don't you tell us your story."  She says it in the nice way she sometimes talks to me now, real gentle.  So I stand up and I say, "I am Janee Scott and I am a thief and a criminal.  I was born in Lorraine, Ohio, but my mother moved to Cleveland when I was real little."  
I tell my whole life, just standing there talking.  My voice just goes on and on.  And I tell about the things I did, and how unhappy I was sometimes, and how I hated people who were just normal, and I start to cry.  Like I never realized how much I wanted to be like the people on television.  I tell about the woman I assaulted, and how I never thought about how'd she feel, and I keep crying.  It's awful, but it feels good.  And the group understands, nobody says anything, everybody just listens, we are all together.  
And when I'm all done, I'm so tired, but I feel so light and empty.  I feel pure.  Paul is watching me, and I think he'll never understand this feeling.
That night, when I sleep, I don't dream about Kansas being blue. 
#

Summer in Kansas is almost as bad as winter, it's so hot in the factory buildings that people faint.  But when we wake up it's already getting light, and I never feel like I'm going to drown in the blue while we're getting breakfast.  
It's been hot for awhile, it's maybe July, and Natalie says one morning, "Paul, get your things together and don't go over to the factory building today."  
I know what it is, he's being transferred.  I grab hold of both Paul's hands.  
"They're transferring politicals," Natalie says.
Paul nods.  He looks thin and sad.  His hair is long and he looks scraggly.  
"Natalie," I say, "I'd like to give Paul a haircut so that group thirty-six will make a good impression when he is transferred."  
She knows I just want to say good-bye, but she nods.  So Corbin lets me have a pair of scissors and I try to cut his hair.  
We don't say very much.  I'm not a good barber, but he looks better when I'm finished.  I even trim his beard.  I don't know what to say.  I keep thinking of political instruction, sometimes I think he's looking at me, that way he does, like he's disappointed, but most of the time when I look at him, he is looking at his hands and he just looks sad.  
I carry his blanket roll out for him, even though he could carry it himself.  There are some other people waiting, other politicals from other groups, all standing by themselves.  He touches my shoulder and then my face with his long spider fingers.  
"Be careful, okay?"  I say.  
"You pick better next time," he says, "okay?  No politicals."  
"You find someone to look out for you," I say.  
Then I have to go back to the factory.  In a funny way, I'm relieved.  No one is watching me anymore.  
But that night, I have a hard time falling asleep by myself.  And when I do, I dream of blue Kansas, and Paul's in my dream.  Just one person, way out in the blue, hard to see.  
But I know it's Paul, who else would it be?
# # #