American War(37)

Near the northern edge of Alabama, she saw a group of about half a dozen men seated around an old folding table. Upon the table sat a tablet connected to a small speaker.

The men were watching a recording of the previous week’s Yuffsy. It was a title fight at the Citadel in Augusta, one of the better ones in recent memory. All twelve fighters had managed to stay on their feet for the first seven and a half minutes before one was finally knocked out.

One of the men watching said there had been a boy from Patience who came close to making the undercard, but lost a fight two nights earlier in the qualifiers.

“It was one of the Carolina boys, a kid named Taylor,” the man said. “Mean as hell, they say.”

“Yeah, but I bet you the whole time he was busy being mean, the other guys were busy fighting,” another replied. “Mean don’t mean nothing.”

Marcus Exum stood on the periphery of the men’s viewing circle. He was perched on an upturned laundry basket, craning for a look at the screen. When he saw Sarat he jumped down and ran to her.

“Hey, hey,” he said, tapping her on the elbow. “What are you doing?”

“Don’t touch me,” Sarat said. Marcus recoiled. She saw in his eyes a sudden burst of confusion and hurt.

“I don’t mean it like that,” she said. “I’m covered in shit. I stink.”

“So what?” Marcus said. “Take a shower, then.”

“Got no clothes to change into. My mom won’t let me in the tent. Says I embarrassed her.”

“I bet if you go say you’re sorry she’ll—”

“I’m not sorry,” Sarat said, loud enough that a couple of the men watching the fight looked up. “I’m not sorry and none of them can make me sorry. They’re liars and cowards, all of them. They pretend like this is normal, like it’s normal to live this way. But it’s not normal. Your dad’s right. We’re just waiting to die, waiting for the Blues to come up over that fence one day and kill every last one of us. I’m not sorry. I’m not the one who’s wrong.”

“I don’t think you’re wrong,” Marcus said. “I’ve never thought you were wrong. Go to the shower trailer. I’ll get you some clothes from our tent. My dad’s not that much bigger than you anyway.”

Sarat walked up the dirt path to the northernmost shower trailer in the Alabama slice. It was a rusted metal and vinyl shack on blocks. Inside, it smelled of mildew and the candy-cardamom scent of the cleansing lotion packets that arrived by the boxload every month from the Augusta docks. They were small clear packets like the kind condiments come in. They littered the ground, caught in the drains, and stuck to the undersides of feet. All but the most well-connected of Camp Patience’s residents used the packets to wash their hair and skin, and yet none of the residents ever smelled like the slimy amber liquid, only the shower trailers did.

Sarat entered the trailer and stripped down. She piled her clothes on the ground under the showerhead in one of the three stalls and turned the hot water tap. In a minute, steam began to churn about the room. The water melted the crust of filth from the clothes, and a briny, sulfuric smell filled the trailer.

Sarat stepped into the adjacent stall. She turned the tap. The water was cold; her skin erupted in goose bumps and the fine hairs on her forearms rose.

She stood with her head bowed, watching the milky-brown water swirl around the drain. On the back of the stall door there was all manner of graffiti: symbols of the Southern militias, genitals drawn cartoonish and grotesque, addresses of tents in which lived the whores and thieves and traitors. Soon the water ran clear.

Sarat heard the trailer door open. She heard Marcus walk inside, his footsteps almost indecipherable under the rush of water and squealing pipes. She heard him set the clothes on the bench by the wash basin, and then she heard the squeak of the trailer door once again opening and closing.

But when the sound was gone she knew Marcus had not left. She knew he was still standing inside the room, and through the tiny sliver where the door hinges met the stall, she could feel his eyes on her.

With her head still lowered she saw what he saw. The topography of her body: the shoulders wide and thick; the breasts that on any other girl her age would have stood as mounds but on her frame were modest; the hips in line with the shoulders, in line with the thighs, the body big and uncurved. A brick of a girl. And to his eyes she knew the strangest prize was the place between the lines, the place that had in this last year turned against her in a way so sudden she thought at first she was dying. The place that in an instant made her a stranger to herself.

And she knew that if she were simply to look up and catch his stare, the boy would flee, would not even beg forgiveness later but instead would die right there of shame. For the first time in her life she owned a pair of eyes other than her own, and with her head bowed she kept them locked upon her. In the thick sweat of steam both boy and girl for a moment were entranced by the same skin.

The flow of water began to weaken and the pipes let out a rumbling whistle. Sarat shut the tap. As the water died she heard Marcus scurry from the trailer.

Outside the stall she found an Alibaba shirt and a pair of slouch jeans worn white at the knees. The shirt fit her well enough but the pants were loose around her hips. She picked her old shirt from the soaked pile on the floor and tore it apart. She took one half of the ruined fabric and braided it; wringing the water out as she did. Then she ran it through the belt loops and tied it tight.