American War(39)

She fell asleep thinking about it, seated against the wall, curled up like a cashew with her knees for pillows. When she woke it was well past midnight, and the camp was quiet.

She walked around the infirmary building to where a large waste disposal bin sat below a small window. She climbed up and stood at the window. The pane made a square barely big enough to accommodate her circumference, and she worried that even if she managed to slide the glass open, she would get stuck trying to climb inside.

The lights overhead glanced sharply off the window. Sarat saw her reflection in the glass.

With her hair shaved, her face looked fuller, rounded in a way that unveiled its symmetry. There was a smoothness in how the jaw became the skull, and the skull an almost polished half-mirror to the light.

Sarat observed her new face a long time. In the back of her mind swirled all manner of looming irritations—her mother’s wrath, the ceaseless teasing of the children who’d seen or by now heard what she’d done. But in this moment, alone with her reflection, she felt new and impossibly light.

The pane was of a flimsy plastic and gave slightly when Sarat pushed on it. But in the groove on the other side there was a thick wood block, and it prevented the window from sliding open. She tried to dig her fingers in and lift the pane out entirely. She became so caught up in this task that she didn’t notice the shadow climbing up the wall, a shadow in the shape of a man who now stood behind her.

“Whatever it is you’re looking for,” he said, “I doubt you’ll find it here.”

Sarat jumped and stumbled back, nearly falling off the waste bin. She turned to see a man of about sixty, dressed in a black prewar suit lined with white thin stripes. She’d never seen him before.

He was short, a half-foot shorter than Sarat, even aided by the thick heels of his polished dress shoes. He wore a stiff black homburg. Its brim kept the overhead lights from illuminating his face.

“I’m not stealing,” Sarat said. “Are you gonna tell?”

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell on you,” the man said. “What’s your name?”

“Sarat.”

“Hello, Sarat. My name is Albert Gaines.” He had a slightly low, even voice with a sliver of Mississippi drawl, one wide vowel cozying up to the next. It reminded Sarat of the announcer on the Peachtree Variety Hour her mother liked to listen to on Friday nights: a soothing, familiar voice.

“How old are you, Sarat?” he asked.

“Twelve.”

“And why are you dressed in someone else’s clothes?”

The question caught her off-guard, and for a moment she wondered if the old man had been watching when she went in the creek. But she knew he hadn’t. Every face that watched her was etched in her memory now; she’d remember every single one, every smile, every snicker, forever.

“I jumped into Emerald Creek.”

“And why would you do that?”

“A dare.”

Gaines smiled. Along the skin between the ends of his lips and the dark crescents beneath his eyes Sarat saw small craters, markers of time and damage.

“Come down from there,” he said. “I have a business proposition for you.”

Sarat climbed off the waste bin and approached the man. She imagined him a dignitary—one of the representatives the Free Southerners dispatched from Atlanta every now and then to gauge the mood of the refugees and spread word of recent concessions by and humiliations of the Blues. But those were different beasts; they dressed in cheap, formless shirts and wore pins in the shape of the Southern flag and stammered for hours without saying anything of value. In the eyes of the refugees, those men were little more than dull sparks launched off the gears of some distant machine.

Gaines retrieved a small yellow envelope from his breast pocket. “I have an acquaintance to whom I need this letter delivered,” he said. “His name is Leonard and he lives in row nine, tent nine, in the South Carolina sector.”

“All right,” Sarat said.

“You’re not afraid of going to South Carolina?”

“No.”

“Don’t you want to know how much I’m willing to pay?”

Sarat paused. The man chuckled. “Don’t worry, this isn’t a dare, it’s a job. Jobs pay.” He handed her the envelope. “Go on, then, let’s see how you do.”

Sarat took the envelope. On its back the name Leonard was written in impeccable cursive. She walked southeast, past the administrative buildings and in the direction of the camp’s main gate.

Like the rest of the refugees from the other states, she’d never ventured into South Carolina. She had only heard stories of it: of mean, bitter people, the last uninfected remnants of their quarantined state.

Once, years earlier, the South Carolina slice was the largest in the camp. But over the years the sector had shrunk, ceding its northern and western borders to Alabama and Georgia—because from those states there was still a regular flow of refugees, but nobody else was leaving South Carolina. The whole state was walled off, sealed.

Sarat walked past unadorned tents, their tears left for the most part unmended. A few men sat on plastic chairs, reading and playing dominoes. They observed her as she passed.

She reached her destination to find a couple of boys playing cards on a rice sack table. They were perhaps fourteen or fifteen, the one with his back to her a buzz-cut redhead, the other a spindly blond naked but for a pair of Double Star shorts.