American War(28)

Sarat put her sandals on and walked east into Alabama to find her sister. Deliberately against her mother’s wishes, she veered north and walked along the fenced boundary. It was near this fence where she spent much of her free time, alone and watching the young men charged with de-mining the land between the northern end of the camp and the Tennessee line.

They were hopeless-looking men, sub-privates by rank, and because they were technically in the employ of the Free Southern State they were not allowed to wear the white vests stamped with the red crescent; those were reserved for the neutral aid workers. Instead they wore yellow cycling jackets and helmets covered with reflective decals, and these they hoped would signal to the Blues across the border a kind of unofficial noncombatant status.

Even with these uniforms, it was too dangerous to do the work at night, and so the men worked in the daytime. They became friends with the girl watching them, and offered her whatever interesting false positives their detectors uncovered. She was a curiosity to them—a big-limbed, wild-haired girl who’d taken an insatiable interest in their slow, wartime metallurgy.

In Alabama, Sarat came across a boy playing with a washtub half-full of brown water. By the northerly location of his tent and the rattlesnake on his T-shirt—for which he had not yet been reprimanded—she knew him to be a recent arrival. He had green eyes and light brown hair in a neat part down the middle. He appeared about twelve years old, if a bit runty for his age. But in fact he was two years older than Sarat.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

The boy looked up, startled. “I’m making water clean,” he said. “My father said you can do it with just some plastic wrap and the sun.”

Without asking, Sarat took a seat in the dirt beside the boy, her curiosity piqued. In the tin washtub the boy had poured a couple of bottles of water and a few handfuls of dirt. In the middle of the tub stood one of the empty water bottles, weighed down with a couple of pebbles. The boy had sealed the tub with a layer of clear wrap, also weighed down at the center with pebbles, such that the wrap dipped just above the mouth of the bottle.

“The heat’s gonna lift the water, but not the dirt,” the boy said. “And since the clean water can’t get out, it just slides down and falls in the bottle.”

Sarat inspected the tub. She saw droplets moving slowly down the wrap, the sun fashioning tiny rainbows in their bellies.

“It’s called heat evaporation,” the boy said.

“You just moved here?” Sarat asked.

“Yeah, two days ago,” the boy replied. “We don’t know anybody yet.”

“My name’s Sarat Chestnut.”

“My name’s Marcus Exum,” the boy said. “You Alabaman?”

“No. We’re in the Mississippi slice. Been here six years.”

“Six years!” Marcus repeated. “My dad says anyone who stays more than a month is gonna die here.”

“It’s not so bad. Pretty boring most days. They got a schoolroom but they don’t care if you go or not.”

The children’s attention turned to a nearby tent, from which Marcus’s father emerged. Like many of the men in the camp, he was potbellied and possessed an unruly beard that hid the contours of his neck. And like all the men, he registered as vaguely anomalous in a place inhabited predominantly by women and children. He wore brown overalls and a white undershirt recently washed but to which the old stains still held. The man approached his son.

“This is Sarat Chestnut,” Marcus said. “She been here six years.”

Sarat waved hello. The man looked her over, neither warm nor cold.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Twelve,” Sarat replied.

“You don’t look it.”

“I’m big for my age. Grew five inches last year.”

“You been here six years, you say?”

Sarat nodded. The man pointed to the northeast, where the remains of old Highway 25 ran straight into a phalanx of razor wire, guards’ quarters, and bright red signs warning against trespass.

“You know where that road goes?” the man asked.

“Sure. It’s the northern gate. Leads up to the Tennessee border. They get real mad if you go anywhere near it. My brother says the Blues got snipers in all the trees right on the other side, and they’ll shoot anyone who crosses, don’t care if it’s kids or women or anybody.”

The man watched the gate a little longer, squinting in the midday sun. He walked a few feet toward it and then changed his mind and turned south, to where a group of four recent arrivals were arranged around an upturned cardboard box, playing cards.

Marcus turned to his new friend. “They really got snipers on the other side?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Sarat replied. “You wanna see?”

Marcus nodded. Sarat led him to a spot along the northern fence where three of the links had broken, leaving a gap just big enough to fit a head through.

“Look here,” Sarat said. “Up at the tallest tree over there. You see it?”

Marcus inspected the horizon. Up-field the trees were thin but in one place the foliage thickened. In this small patch of forestland there rose a tree about ten feet higher than the rest.

“The minesweepers say that’s not a real tree, and that’s not real leaves or anything,” Sarat said. “They call it like a bird’s nest but for snipers. They’re up there all day and all night, just waiting on someone to try to cross. Then they shoot them dead.”