American War(54)

“Are you crazy?” Sarat said. “You go anywhere near that gate, they’ll shoot you dead.”

Marcus shook his head. “Dad’s been watching. There hasn’t been a single guard at the gate in the last two days. Not one Blue soldier anywhere along the fence. I don’t know where they’ve gone, but they’ve gone.”

Sarat looked out at the gate in the distance. The foliage-covered towers and the old chicanes looked the same as they always did.

“Something’s going to happen,” Marcus’s father said. “They’re getting ready to storm the fence—they’re getting ready to finally come through here.”

“You’ve been saying that for years,” Sarat said.

“They’ve been getting ready for years.”

Sarat turned to Marcus. “You were just gonna go like that? Without even saying goodbye?”

“I knew you were busy with what you’ve been doing,” Marcus said. “We haven’t really talked much in the last little while. I didn’t wanna bother you.”

“But you’re my best friend,” Sarat said.

Marcus turned from her gaze, his eyes to the ground.

“Pick your bags up,” Marcus’s father said. “We got no time to stand around.”

She watched Marcus pick up his belongings. One of the grocery bags was weighed down with ration packs and a water thermos and a couple pairs of underwear; the other had a headlamp and a small camping stove.

“You’ll take care of Cherylene, right?” Marcus said.

Sarat nodded.

“Don’t tell nobody,” Marcus’s father said. “They’ll come back and kill us all if everybody starts trying to get through.”

She watched the man and his son as they traversed the concrete tightrope to the forbidden country. The path jutted only a few inches above the waterline and was a little more than a foot’s width across. They walked carefully, their arms occasionally rising from their sides in an effort to keep balance. As she watched them pass the warning signs, Sarat waited for the snipers’ rifles to ring out, for the man and his son to fall dead in the river. But no shots came.

Soon they crossed past the chicanes and disappeared into the brush. Sarat stood for a long time after they were gone, watching the unmoving land on the other side of the water.

She tried to imagine where her friend and his father would go. Perhaps beyond the brown and scrubby ridge there lay bustling Northern towns brilliant with electric light. Or vast fragrant rows of farmland full of oranges and mandarins and exotic Blue-grown fruit of which she’d never even heard. Perhaps the two pilgrims would find refuge working in one such farm, or maybe their accents and sun-cracked skin would give them away and they’d be shot dead at the gates of the very first town.

And as she imagined these possibilities, Sarat thought of something else: of desertion, of treason against one’s own. But what the man and his son had done didn’t feel to her like treason, only the grim work of the hopeless. As she’d learned from Albert Gaines about her people’s history of mistreatment at the hands of the North, Sarat had grown to loathe the enemy nation beyond the Tennessee line. But in this moment, as she watched her closest friend disappear into that alien land, she wished only that he be safe there. That he live, that he simply live.



AFTER MARCUS and his father disappeared behind the distant foliage, Sarat walked east in the direction of Chalk Hollow.

The rebels were at the edge of the creek. She heard them before she saw them, a cackle of singing and laughing and loud conversation. Usually they were quiet when they came in across the creek at dusk but this evening they made no effort to hide their presence.

They were Simon’s clan, the Virginia Cavaliers. But in reality there was nothing much to distinguish them from the Mississippi Sovereigns or the New Zouaves or any of the other rebel groups. They were simply boys with guns, fanned out across the border, picking fights with Northerners.

She found them, about a dozen in all, at a clearing a few hundred feet past the broken highway. They had come over on three Sea-Toks and a larger fossil-powered skiff, all of which were docked now in the sandy beachfront, partially hidden among the sweetgum trees. Beside the boats the men were unloading box-crates sealed shut with nails.

“Hey, Sarat!” yelled a half-drunk Cavalier named Eli, a boy of about nineteen who’d come to the camp from Dalton four years earlier. “Hey, Simon, your sister’s here.”

“Yell a little louder,” said Simon, lying on the sand with his back against the black-painted hull, the lapping creek water at his feet. “They didn’t hear you in Tennessee.”

Eli was perched over a small bonfire, grilling. A set of thick steaks sat atop the fire on a charred cookie tray, the flames licking at its underside. The juice of fat and blood set the fire dancing; the tinder crackled and burst.

“Where did you get that meat?” Sarat asked.

“One of their generals was kind enough to hand it over,” said Eli, a wide smile across his face. He was missing one of his upper incisors; his hair was unwashed and matted across his forehead in an oily wave. Like the others he went days without cleaning himself but on this evening the reek of him was overwhelmed by the warm sweetness of the fire and the intoxicating scent of grilling meat.

“You know those pigs up there, they eat like this every night,” said Eli. “Girl, tell me, when did you last eat steak like this?”