American War(101)

But inside the greenhouse, I saw almost nothing. Under the silver cast of the moon, there was only the faint outlines of footsteps in the barren soil. I craned to see beyond the square of dirt lit by the moon, but there were no signs of whatever it was she came here to do.

As I readied to give up, a burst of red light caught my eye. It came from far to the north, from a place beyond the river. I turned to search for it but in an instant it was gone.

I stood perfectly still on the ladder, observing the boundary of our property. Past the levee, the river emitted a soft hushing sound as it moved. But there was something else, a break in the darkness on the far bank. It was almost impossible to see, but there was a demarcating line along the horizon—below it, the blackness was uniform and unnatural; above it was the imperfect darkness of sky, streaked with clouds and spotted with stars.

I stared at the line in the horizon, trying to make sense of it. Suddenly, the same red flash of light shone directly at me, sharp and blinding.

As I fell, I thought I saw the outline of a guard tower.

Then came the sky. I watched it as the ladder tilted. In the darkness I reached out with my left hand to break my fall.

A spear of fire unlike anything I’d ever felt before ran up my arm. I lay in the dirt and screamed. I looked away from my arm and toward the gate at the end of the driveway. I yelled for my mother, even though I knew she wouldn’t hear. I was alone.

Then I heard footsteps coming from the direction of the woodshed. For a moment I didn’t believe it was her, but when I saw that towering frame looming above me, I knew.

I was still crying in pain. I asked her to help me, but I had no idea what I wanted her to do. I only wanted the fire in my arm to end. She knelt down beside me.

“You broke your arm,” she said.

The words terrified me. I had no idea then that broken things can be repaired. Whenever something broke on the farm—a vase or a lightbulb or a greenhouse panel—my parents did not repair it; they tossed it away and bought a new one.

“Look at it,” she said.

I refused.

“Look at it.”

I turned to look at the place from where the fire came. When I saw the unnatural way in which my right arm was bent, I passed out.



WHEN I CAME TO, I was in my own bed. She was sitting beside me.

“Take this,” she said, handing me a couple of white pills. “It’ll make the pain stop.”

I swallowed the pills and within a few minutes I felt a strange, body-wide bliss, a warmth radiating outward from my stomach to the end of every limb.

“Still hurts?” she asked.

I shook my head. The world around me was hazy and unfocused, but the fire in my arm was gone.

“What were you doing out there?”

“I was trying to look inside the greenhouse,” I said.

“Why?”

“I saw you going there sometimes, and I wanted to find out what you were doing.”

I knew she’d be angry at me, but I thought she’d be angrier if I lied. And I was certain she’d be able to tell if I lied.

But she didn’t look angry, and she didn’t say anything in response. Instead I thought I saw a passing flicker of admiration in the way she observed me. And then it was gone.

“You fell off that ladder?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

She chuckled. “You really are your father’s son.”

I turned to my ruined arm. I saw it had been straightened against the spine of a wooden plank. The plank and the limb were tied together with strips of torn cloth.

It seemed such a crude prosthetic. I began to wonder if I’d ever be able to use my arm again. In all the times my parents had taken me to swim and play basketball with the other kids in Lincolnton, I had never seen a boy with a wooden limb.

“Have you ever broken a bone before?” she asked me. I bristled at the silliness of the question—obviously I hadn’t; there were no other wooden planks tied around me.

“No,” I said. I tried to lift my arm, but it was as though the lines from the brain to the limb had been severed.

“I can’t move it,” I said.

“In time,” she replied. “The board’s there so the bone sets right. It doesn’t matter how a bone breaks, it matters how it sets.”

“I’m sorry I looked at your things, ma’am,” I said.

She shook her head. “Don’t call me that,” she said. “My name’s Sarat.”

“I’m sorry, Sarat.”

“Why’d you do it?” she asked me.

“I just wanted to know.”

“Don’t ever apologize for that,” she said. “That’s all there is to life, is wanting to know.”

We heard the sound of the doorbell chimes; the front gate opened. I knew my mother and father had returned, and although I dreaded their reaction once they learned what I’d done, I was unconcerned. The strange bliss that enveloped me remained.

My mother came upstairs and when she saw me her eyes turned wide as wells.

“What did you do?” she said, over and over. For a moment she ignored her sister-in-law’s presence entirely, and I thought she was asking me. Then some accusatory deduction must have revealed itself to her mind, and she turned around.

“What did you do to him?” she said.