American War(29)

Marcus watched in silence for a moment.

“Should we be looking at them like this?” he asked. “Won’t they shoot us?”

Sarat had never considered this possibility before. As she thought about it, a squirrel jumped somewhere in the trees and the branches shook. The two children nearly jumped out of their skins.



SARAT FOUND HER SISTER and four of her friends near the camp’s administrative buildings. They were perched on the closed lids of large garbage bins in the narrow alleyway between the cafeteria building and the director’s offices. For much of the day, the alleyway was deserted—at this hour especially, as staff and refugees alike congregated within the camp’s easternmost building, the chapel. No matter the position of the sun, the alleyway was always draped in shade, and on summer days was often ten degrees cooler than any other outdoor space in the camp.

Dana waved at her sister as she approached. “Hey, beautiful girl,” she said. In the moments before Sarat’s arrival the children had been looking at something on an old tablet, but they covered it now.

Sarat waved back. She recognized the others as tenth graders: the Mailer girls, who were the only other twins Sarat knew of in the camp; a boy named Avery and another named Bishop, both of whom she knew as friends of Simon and frequent escapees through the badly guarded marina near Sandy Creek.

In almost every other way, the older children were alien to her—possessed of a dramatic concern for things that seemed inane and devoid of adventure: the color and style of skirts, the arrival of facial hair, the mysterious topology of flesh.

“Mama says we have to come home now,” Sarat said.

“Why us?” Dana replied. “Simon’s been out all day and he doesn’t get in trouble for it.”

“I don’t know. That’s just what she said.”

“They let boys do whatever they want,” said one of the Mailer twins. A beauty spot on the left cheek distinguished one girl from the other but Sarat could not remember which was which. “Last year Bill and Mark Hernandez tore down half the loudspeakers in Alabama and threw them in the creek, and they didn’t do a thing to them.”

“Didn’t they get sent home in January?” asked Avery.

“Yeah, but that was just because their parents had to go,” said the moleless Mailer. “It wasn’t because they were being punished.”

“It’s easy, really,” Dana said. “All the boys, when they turn fifteen, they give them a gun and send them out the north gate. You have to survive out there one week, and if you come back you can stay.”

“Why do we have to go?” Bishop said. “We didn’t do anything.”

“But if you wanted to do anything, you could,” said Dana. “That’s why.”

“All right, all right, how about this?” Bishop said. “Can I send Sarat in my place?”

“You would, wouldn’t you?” Dana replied.

“I’ll go,” said Sarat. “I know where the snipers are.”

At this the boys and the Mailer twins laughed wildly.

“You hear that?” Bishop said. “Give her a chance. She’ll end the war tomorrow!”

Dana made a gesture at Bishop that Sarat had been taught by her mother never to make. She stood up. “I’ll see you losers tomorrow,” she said.

“We’ll be out by the snipers. Bring Sarat,” Bishop replied, to a roar from the Mailers.

“Screw you, Bishop,” said Dana.



THE CHESTNUT TWINS RETREATED from the alley, headed in the direction of Mississippi. They walked in the shadow of the cafeteria building’s tin awning, against the tide of departures from the chapel. Men and women in their Sunday best shuffled toward their tents, orange cups in hand, talking about all the things the Baptist minister had said—Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice—and here he said it twice more, with his hands as much as his voice—Rejoice! Rejoice! Insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.

The men leaving the chapel wore prewar suits and ties—not the cheap, three-star ties manufactured in bulk and handed out by the Free Southern State at every opportunity, but fine ties of wool and sometimes silk, imprinted with smooth gradients or arabesque geometry or even just the logos of old American football teams. The women wore their least faded floral dresses and swoop-brimmed sun hats they decorated with pressed flowers or paper made to look like flowers. In these last vestiges of older, better lives the refugees sweated and were terribly uncomfortable, but they wore the clothes anyway, because there were no other occasions to wear them except Christmas or Southern Independence Day.

Sarat and Dana sat on the steps of the now deserted chapel building. They watched a couple of camp workers lead a shell-numbed woman and her baby girl to their new home in the furthest outskirts of the Mississippi slice.

A Tik-Tok, marked with a large red crescent, rumbled along the dirt remnants of Highway 350, which split the camp almost down the middle. A couple of FSS soldiers sat inside and another two stood on the back fender. The tiny, three-wheeled vehicle struggled for traction, its feeble motor squealing, its tires kicking up dust.

“I bet they’re going to repair the gate,” Sarat said. “Bet a militia rocket hit it again.”