BREAKING IN272Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡya07UX790x
272Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡI7PBzjuFCd
Yoshihiro led Robinson to the small bitter guard with the gun, being careful, as a gesture of respect, not to touch Robinson.  The guard held his ground and let them come to him without change of expression.  Thatcher, the engineer, had stormed out of the tent behind the guard and left the work area, Robinson had noticed, his face and frame a reflection of agitation.  The man is suffering, Robinson thought, but suffering is as private as death.  He thought that Thatcher looked at him for a moment before walking straight out of there but it didn't matter.  He doubted that the white man, even this white man, perceived them at all.  "This is Robinson," Yoshihiro was saying to the little guard.  "He is here to work."272Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡITOj1xWEIj

The guard looked at Robinson and then away.   "You speak English, hill?"

"I do," Robinson said.

"Good," the guard said. "Say something more."272Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡf57iWKvtRG

"Yes, I do speak English," Robinson said flatly.

The guard seemed to tense and for the first time looked at Robinson fully, his expression complex and somehow disturbed.  Neither challengingly nor obsequiously.  Robinson returned his gaze.

"We'll pay you seventy-five cents a day," the guard said, "plus food, if you want it."  He grasped his rifle absently. "It's not much of a job."

"Mr. Thatcher said that he may have work," Yoshihiro said.

"I don't give a damn about Mr. Thatcher," the guard said and paused.  "All right.  Put him on."

"Thank you," Yoshihiro said.  Robinson noted that the man's face had taken on overwhelming gratitude.....and for what?  The lives of those workers were so bitter, he decided, that any recognition from those who controlled them was received gratefully.

"You move out of line, that's where I come in," the little guard warned.

Robinson stared at the man, willing him to look at him not as an object but as a person, and this must have done something to the guard, for he shook his head and turned aside.  Yoshihiro was touching him lightly on the sleeve, leading him now.  "Do not defy them," Yoshihiro was saying, "they mean no harm, it is only what they understand of us---they must be hard," and Robinson allowed the man to babble on as they walked through the swarms of laboring Japanese toward the roadbed.  No rest.  No attempt to take him into quarters.

They were putting him directly to work.