American War(50)

“Even back then, you could see it coming,” said Gaines. “Before the first bombs fell, before the slaughter in East Texas, everyone knew this country was getting ready to tear itself to shreds. I was worried for my family, worried about whether I could keep my wife and daughter safe. It was Joe who helped me. He found a safe place for them to live in the Bouazizi. They hated me for sending them away, but they’re safe there, and that’s the only thing that matters. That’s what Joe did for me. That’s the gift he gave me.”

Gaines folded the picture of his daughter and placed it back in his wallet.

“You know, I’d like to say you remind me of her, or that you two would have been good friends. But the truth is it’s been so long since we’ve spoken. Maybe if we met now she wouldn’t even recognize me. Maybe all she’d see is some old fool, some foreigner.”

He seemed then not to be speaking to Sarat, or even to himself, but to nobody at all. He stared out the half-open window.

They heard the faint patter of footsteps overhead: the camp’s administrators and volunteers, preparing for the morning shift.

“Why did you side with the South when the war came?” asked Sarat. “You were born a Northerner, you fought for the Northern army when it was still one country. Why not side with the Blues?”

“Well, after they finally brought us back from Iraq and Syria for the last time, I wandered around for a while before settling down in Montgomery,” said Gaines. “You see, we have a habit in this country of deciding the wisdom of our wars only after we’re done fighting them, and I guess we decided the war I’d been sent to fight wasn’t a very good idea after all. In the North, whenever anyone found out I’d been a part of that war, they’d want to debate it all over again, as though I was the one who ordered myself to go over there. But in the South, they don’t do that, or at least nobody ever did that to me.”

“So that’s it?” asked Sarat. “They were good to you here, so you sided with the Red?”

“No,” said Gaines. “I sided with the Red because when a Southerner tells you what they’re fighting for—be it tradition, pride, or just mule-headed stubbornness—you can agree or disagree, but you can’t call it a lie. When a Northerner tells you what they’re fighting for, they’ll use words like democracy and freedom and equality and the whole time both you and they know that the meaning of those words changes by the day, changes like the weather. I’d had enough of all that. You pick up a gun and fight for something, you best never change your mind. Right or wrong, you own your cause and you never, ever change your mind.”

“So you think we’re wrong?” Sarat asked. “You think what we’re fighting for is wrong?”

“No,” said Gaines. “Do you?”

“No.”

“But if you did. If you knew for a fact we were wrong, would it be enough to turn you against your people?”

“No.”

Gaines smiled. “Good girl,” he said.

The sound of footsteps grew. Soon they could hear the workers upstairs delineating the day’s tasks: who was to oversee distribution of rations, who was to escort the immunization worker around the camp, who had to deal with the South Carolinians.

Sarat stood to leave.

“Hold on,” said Gaines. “I want you to take something with you.”

He opened one of the desk drawers. When he turned around Sarat saw he was holding a small folding knife. He opened it; the blade was of slightly blemished steel and smooth except at its lower end, where it turned to serrated teeth. There was a monogram etched into the handle: “YBR.”

“Do you know how to use a knife?” asked Gaines, pointing the blade toward her.

“Everyone knows how to use a knife,” said Sarat.

“No, everyone knows how to stab.” He flipped the knife and offered her the worn leather handle.

Sarat turned the knife in her hand. It was light and its lightness made it seem insignificant. She pushed her finger against the edge of the blade.

“It’s rusted,” she said.

“It’s not rusted,” Gaines replied. “It’s dull. But that can be remedied.”

He retrieved a sharpening stone from one of the drawers. The stone was black and rectangular. One of its sides was coarse, the other smooth.

He set the stone on the table in front of Sarat, and then he guided her hands until they held the knife against the coarse side.

“Resistance and stress,” he said. “All it takes is resistance and stress.”

He moved her hands with his. The knife scraped against the stone, even and rhythmic. The sound of it filled the room.

“How do you know when it’s ready?” asked Sarat.

“It’s ready,” said Gaines, “when it does what you need it to do.”



FIRST LIGHT CAME. Sarat said goodbye to her teacher and made for home. Outside, a soft morning breeze lifted swirls of dust off the ground. Sarat looked across the vast sea of tents; they looked not all that different from the ones that littered the background of the old photograph of Gaines and Joe. Maybe all tents looked the same in wartime.

In the distance, she saw two refugees fighting. One man, drunk and stumbling, had knocked over the other one’s jug of fermenting Joyful. The two men cursed and threw feeble punches at each other but Sarat did not stick around to watch. It seemed such a petty thing to fight over, so inconsequential.