American War(111)

“If I told you I could turn it all around—kill every last one of them who run the Blue, wipe out the North, make it so they don’t see the sun for a hundred years—would you believe me?”

“Yeah, I’d believe you,” said Bragg. “I wouldn’t believe anybody else who said it, but I’d believe you.”

Trough placed a cup of coffee on the table and returned to his post, watching.

“I need you to get me across the border,” my aunt said. “I need to be in Columbus for the Reunification Ceremony.”

“Christ, Sarat, it can’t be done,” said Bragg. “They got more men guarding the Tennessee line ahead of that goddamn ceremony than they did during the height of the war. Every crossing’s a fortress, and they ain’t letting a single Southerner through, probably not until the end of the year.”

“What about the tunnels?” my aunt asked. “The ones we used to crawl through to get near Halfway Branch?”

“Sarat, they demolished those years ago. That world don’t exist no more. Hell, other than Trough here, I got three, maybe four good men left. They wore our people down; everyone’s tired and hungry and they all lost the will for war. Go see it for yourself on your way back home—drive into Atlanta proper, look at all those billboards the Free Southern State put up—‘Peace With Dignity,’ ‘Respecting Our Past, Securing Our Future.’ All that horseshit, and people eat it up. You know they don’t even call themselves the Free Southern State anymore? They just use the acronym, never spell it out, like the letters don’t mean nothing. They’re waving their cowardice around like a goddamn flag—”

“I know a way,” said Trough. “I know how you can get to Columbus.”

Bragg fell silent.

“How?” my aunt asked.

Trough came to the table. “There’s a medical shuttle that goes up north. St. Joseph’s has a deal with a hospital up in Lexington. They get to ship a few people up there on the first of every month. They cap it at a dozen patients, and they keep it quiet. But I know the guy who runs it; he and my brother spent some time up at the Tennessee line together. He owed my brother a favor from back then, and there’s no one but me left to collect. I’ll tell him I got a friend who’ll die if she don’t get treatment up north. He’ll bump someone and put you on. Then soon as you cross the border, you can make your way to Columbus.”

Bragg stared at his lieutenant, dumbfounded. He turned to my aunt. “But if you’re really gonna kill as many as you say, that means you’re gonna take something with you—a weapon, a bomb, something. And just because it’s a medical shuttle don’t mean the Blues won’t search it.”

“They won’t find what I’m bringing,” my aunt said. “They can search me all they want, they won’t find it.”

“I have one condition,” said Trough.

“What’s that?” my aunt asked.

“I go with you.”

“The thing I’m going to use, you can’t aim it. It’s a sickness, a kind that will spread to every last one of them in Columbus. Nobody going on this trip is coming back.”

“I go with you,” said Trough.

“No.”

“Let him, Sarat,” said Bragg. “He’s been rotting here praying to be with his family for going on ten years. Give him what he wants—you owe it to his brother, just like that man from St. Joe’s.”

“I don’t owe anybody a single thing,” my aunt said.

Bragg sighed and rubbed his temples. “Let me ask you something, Sarat. During all that time you spent in Sugarloaf getting interrogated, did they ever once ask you whether you had anything to do with the killing of that Blue general, Weiland?”

“No.”

“But that’s the one thing you actually did. All that other stuff they must have asked you about, you probably didn’t have a single useful thing to tell them. But the one guy you killed, they never once asked you about him. Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know,” my aunt said.

“I’ll tell you why. They didn’t ask you about it because two days after they picked you up, that boy Attic walked right up to the Blue border guards at Harrogate and turned himself in. He told them it was him who killed the general. He made them believe it—told them all the details he knew from listening to us talk about it, except with him as the shooter. Now they got him locked away in Sugarloaf too—in a place called Camp Sunday where they keep the ones they won’t even do the mercy of killing. That’s why they never asked you about the one thing you did, Sarat. That’s why you’re free.”

“That was his choice,” my aunt said. “I never asked him to do it.”

“Nobody asked him to do it, but that don’t change the fact he did. And it don’t change the fact that you’re alive and sitting here now because of it.”

Bragg pointed at Trough. “I know you’ve been through hell, Sarat. I know you had things done to you and I know you were a different girl before. But these boys never even had a before. They were dead before they got a shot at living. Give him what he wants. Let him be with his brothers.”

Trough stood at the table, eyes blue and still, his face unchanged.