American War(65)

And what she understood—what none of the ones who came to touch Simon’s forehead understood—was that the misery of war represented the world’s only truly universal language. Its native speakers occupied different ends of the world, and the prayers they recited were not the same and the empty superstitions to which they clung so dearly were not the same—and yet they were. War broke them the same way, made them scared and angry and vengeful the same way. In times of peace and good fortune they were nothing alike, but stripped of these things they were kin. The universal slogan of war, she’d learned, was simple: If it had been you, you’d have done no different.



SHE LED THE WOMEN into the living room. “Something to drink?” she asked.

“Water,” Leslie said. The teenage girl slumped on the couch on the end furthest from where her mother and grandmother sat. She stared out the window at the moving river.

“We’re just happy to see Simon, sweetheart,” the Widow Bentley said. “You can bring him in now.”

Karina left the women and went outside to the backyard. She found Simon sitting at the muddy landing where the rebel skiffs docked, tossing broken branches into the current.

“You know I told you not to sit this close,” Karina said. He looked up at her and smiled. He had chubby, hairless cheeks and when he smiled the smile displaced them in a way that made him look awestruck.

“You got guests,” she said, helping him to his feet and brushing the wet mud from the back of his pants. “Paying guests.”

“Paying guests,” Simon said.

She led him back into the house. When he entered the living room, the Widow Bentley nearly jumped from her seat to touch him.

“Hello, Simon,” she said

“Hello, Ms. Bentley,” Karina told Simon.

“Hello, Ms. Bentley,” he mimicked.

The Widow Bentley put her hand on Simon’s face. “How are you feeling today, honey?”

“He’s doing real well,” Karina said. She knew the Widow Bentley hated it when she interjected, so she did it as much as possible.

“Karina, sweetheart, could you make Mama and I some tea?” the Widow Bentley said. “She’s had a bad throat all morning.”

Karina left the women with Simon and went to the kitchen. She set the water to boil and took a couple of bags of Mississippi Breakfast from the pantry; she had no intention of wasting the good Chinese stuff on the visitors. In the living room, the Widow Bentley continued to stroke Simon’s cheek.

“How did you sleep, honey?” she asked. “Did you sleep all right?”

“Like a baby!” Karina yelled from the kitchen.

When she returned to the living room, the women were already engaged in the ritual. The Widow Bentley, a Bible on her lap, took her mother’s hand in her own and placed her other hand on Simon’s forehead. Together the three of them resembled the centerpiece of some spasmodic faith healer’s sermon, the evil cast out, out from the soul.

Karina set the teacups on the table but the women ignored them. The Widow Bentley recited the same prayer she recited every time she came to visit, the psalms she knew by heart:

For you will command your angels concerning me to guard me in all my ways;

They will lift me up in their hands, so that I will not strike my foot against a stone…



The Widow Bentley closed her eyes as she spoke and her hands shook and her voice quivered. Her mother looked on with resigned tolerance; her daughter stared out the window at the moving river.

When they were done, the Widow Bentley wiped her eyes and, gripped by a deep, post-cathartic ennui, sought to remain as long as possible in Simon’s company. But the time she’d paid for had run out.

Karina walked the three women to their car. Before she left, the Widow Bentley paid the visitation fee: five hundred Redbacks. Karina took the money and thanked her.

“There’s one more thing,” the Widow Bentley said. “A favor we wanted to ask.”

The woman reached under the Tik-Tok’s backseat cushion and retrieved a shoebox. She opened it for Karina. Inside were rolls upon rolls of Red currency—a hundred thousand dollars, maybe more.

“We took it all out of First Southern this morning,” she said. “Bank manager put up one hell of a fight, but we said, It’s our money, you can’t hold it hostage.”

“What do you want me to do with this?” Karina asked.

“Just keep it for us, is all,” the Widow Bentley said. “Ever since what happened at Patience, things have gotten bad again. In Atlanta you got the Free Southern State and the United Rebels fighting over who’s gonna run the country, but neither of them got much control over anything no more. The fighting’s gotten real bad and everybody’s just waiting on the Blues to push south past Tennessee. Then you know there’s gonna be a run on the banks and President Kershaw’s gonna lock us out to keep the whole Mag from going broke. All we want you to do is keep it for us—just keep it where the boy is. That’s all. Don’t think we won’t pay you for it.”

The woman put the shoebox in Karina’s hands. From the corner of her eye, the helper could see the look of disdain on the widow’s daughter’s face.

“He’s just a boy, Kristin,” Karina said. “He’s not a bank. He’s doesn’t pay interest or buy stocks or anything else. He’s just a boy.”