American War(110)

She stood from her stool and walked to the doors and flung them open. Blistering daylight flooded the shed. She looked out at the new house that stood where the old one used to be, and at the wilting trees and the river imprisoned by walls. The world about her shook with heat.

“Do you ever get sick of this place, Yousef?” she asked. “Ever wish you could just be done with it, just go home, back to your family, back to the world you know?”

“Of course,” Yousef replied. “I hope to go home one day soon.”

“Me too,” she said.



FROM THEN ON she was distant. Once more she barricaded herself in that shed, just like she did when she first arrived. This time the door was closed and locked; I couldn’t see inside.

I was so desperate to reach her that I spent hours kneeling outside the shed’s back wall with my ear against the boards, listening. All I ever heard was the scratch of old pen on paper.

I lay awake at night wondering what I had done to drive her away. Was she disappointed in me—had I failed to defeat the river current one too many times? Had I nagged her with too many questions? Did I bore her? In desperation, I scribbled the word “Sorry” on a blank sheet of paper and slid it under her door. She made no reply.



ON A SATURDAY in the middle of June, while my parents were at a farmers’ trade show in Montgomery, she left the house for a day. We kept a used Tik-Tok on the property for emergencies; she took it.

She drove to the market in Lincolnton. It was a smaller crowd than usual, the town still cleaning up the last of the damage from Hurricane Scott. She walked past the half-empty stalls to the end of the road, where Marcus stood watch.

Without speaking they went to the church nearby. This time she went in first and he followed.

“Goddamn I’m glad you showed up today,” said Marcus. “You know what I just heard from one of the Free Southerner boys? You remember that old man Prince Wendell, used to run a coffee shop out in the middle of the ocean? They’re gonna name a street in Atlanta after him. Guess someone on one of those Reunification prep committees heard about him, and they decided to do it. Thought it would look good to honor a man who worked with both sides. I thought you’d get a kick out of—”

“Sit down,” my aunt said. “I need to talk to you.”

Marcus sat beside her on the pew. “Sure,” he said.

My aunt handed her friend a small folded piece of paper. On it was written the name and contact information of a man.

“There’s someone I know. I want you to go talk to him. He can arrange for you to leave this place, to leave all of this, and go start a new life on the other side of the world.”

Marcus stared at the paper, confused.

“Sarat, it’s all coming to an end,” he said. “In a few months there’s going to be no more war. It’ll all be one country again. And then, I swear to you, you won’t believe how quickly everyone forgets all about this.”

My aunt shook her head. “Please, Marcus. Just go see him.”

Marcus took the paper from her hand. “The war’s over, Sarat,” he said, and this time it didn’t sound as though he was trying to reassure her.

“I know, Marcus,” she said. She kissed him. She stood. “I know.”



SHE LEFT LINCOLNTON and drove west to the outer suburbs of Atlanta, in the shadows of the factories and the vertical farms. She went to Stone Mountain, on the easternmost outskirts of the city. Near the dilapidated, flat bungalows of the old village there stood an unmarked, redbrick storefront. It was to this meager slice of real estate that the United Rebels had been relegated.

When she arrived she found only Adam Bragg Jr. and Trough in the office. It was a small space—once a restaurant or a bakery—and longer than it was wide. Chairs stood upturned on their tables, except for where Bragg sat, nursing a cup of coffee.

He stood when he saw her. “Well hello there,” he said. “Who’d have thought the great Sarat Chestnut would come visit us in our new home.”

He beckoned her to the chair opposite him at the table. Even stripped of its old cash register and front counter, the place felt claustrophobic, the walls lined with cheap dark wood and decorated with ancient posters that urged: “Have a Coke.”

Trough stood in the back of the room, near where the chairs and tables gave way to stacks of unopened moving boxes. The first time she had seen him after her release from Sugarloaf—on the day they took her to meet her old captor—she hadn’t recognized him. But he looked familiar now, thin like his older brother; eyes numb and accusing.

“Can you believe it’s come to this?” said Bragg. “Cast out into the wilderness, disowned by our own people. You know what they put in that building we used to be in—the one downtown, under the highway—after they forced us out? The new office of the Reunification Celebration Committee.”

He laughed and shook his head. “They got a whole building of people deciding where to hang the balloons and send the marching bands to celebrate the day we surrender. Jesus, I wish my dad was alive to see it. It would have killed that old bastard twice.”

“I need your help,” my aunt said.

Bragg motioned for Trough to make more coffee. With his eyes still on my aunt, the young man complied.

“Name it,” Bragg said. “We ain’t got much, but what we got is yours.”