American War(72)

Bragg laughed. He was looking at Dana but watching her sister. He carried an effortless charm wielded almost exclusively by those born into comfort or those who rose from nothing to achieve it. He smiled by default, teeth sheathed, eyes like pistol barrels, as though a camera lens stalked constantly on his periphery. He was gifted with a very rare and advantageous talent for seeming to speak intimately, every word a precious secret between old friends.

Others came to the table, but were turned away: rebels and would-be rebels and the kin of both, all in need of favors; dockhands and laid-off reef pilots looking for smuggling work; refugees wanting a room in the Atlanta slums, refugees wanting out.

And then there were those men aligned with the groups who’d refused to come under the United Rebels’ umbrella—they watched from tables at the other end of the room, observing the delicate fracture lines of the divided, wartime South.

To Sarat, it was all nonsense, the petty turf wars of insecure men. Rarely a day passed without news of some fresh dispute between the Free Southern State and the United Rebels and the myriad fringe fighters who controlled swaths of territory in the border battlegrounds—disputes over who should run the schools, collect the taxes; whose dead should place first on the murals. She had seen them do these things both publicly—in defiant, chest-thumping speeches—and privately, pragmatically, in the backrooms of Atlanta and Augusta. She saw them do these things and she was disgusted by it. They were to her nothing more than prideful, opportunistic captains, arguing over the boundaries of long-obsolete star maps as all the while the opposing armada’s cannonballs tore their hull to shreds.

For Sarat Chestnut, the calculus was simple: the enemy had violated her people, and for that she would violate the enemy. There could be no other way, she knew it. Blood can never be unspilled.

“Anyway, the old man will be glad to hear you made it out alive from Halfway…” said Bragg.

“Keep your voice down,” said Sarat. “You want everyone in the place to know?”

“Don’t worry so much,” replied Bragg. “You’re still new, still a ghost. Only people in this room who understand what you’ve been up to are at this table. And believe me, they’ll have their tongues cut out before they say a word of it to someone who’s not supposed to hear.”

He turned to the two Salt Lake Boys sitting at his side. “Ain’t that right?”

The boys said nothing. They sat as though encased in wax, no smile or frown on their lips. The elder of the two wore his hair parted down the middle—a child’s haircut that made him look younger than his sibling, who had his hair buzzed close to the scalp.

“You know their two older brothers are already dead?” said Bragg, speaking as though the boys were not at the table. “One got taken during a FOB raid near Fayetteville—Lord knows what hellhole the Blues are keeping him in now, if they haven’t already killed him. The other strapped on a farmer’s suit and sneaked himself past the wire. Made it all the way up to Kentucky then got himself shot dead outside a checkpoint before he could even get the damn thing to blow.

“My old man signed off on both too. Neither kid had so much as fired a pistol in his whole life, but he okayed it anyway.”

Bragg turned to Sarat. “But with you, he wouldn’t hear it. Couldn’t imagine a girl out there fighting. If it wasn’t for Gaines’s pull with him, no way he would have changed his mind. Anyway, he’ll want to see you, so you can plead your case to him. Maybe he’ll give you a second chance.”

“I don’t plead with no one,” said Sarat. “Your old man is nothing to me. He ain’t my boss, ain’t my father. I don’t need his permission. You got something you need to say to him, go on and say it yourself.”

“I’d rather just wait for him to die, if I’m being honest,” said Bragg. He waited on the sisters for a reaction and got none. “You know he was fifty-six when he had me? Fifty-six! There’s a goddamn half-century between us—how am I supposed to bridge that? He’s caught up in the old way of doing things, still thinks he’s in the desert, still fighting that old, faraway war. All that tradition he’s saddled with, it’s too late to shake it off. Better just to wait him out and hope they haven’t raised the Blue banner over Atlanta before he finally has the decency to die.”

The conversation was interrupted by a chorus of hooting and applause on the other side of the room. A piece of gossip moved around the dining hall, and all those who heard it responded with happy cursing and calls for another round.

“What are they so pleased about?” Bragg asked one of his bodyguards. The guard inquired with a waitress and returned to whisper something to his boss. The shine came off Bragg’s smile. He turned to Sarat.

“Was it you who did it?” he asked.

For the first time that evening, Sarat afforded herself a smile.

“Jesus Christ,” said Bragg, and then he finally did lower his voice. “You poker-faced bitch. You’ve gone and changed the whole damn war.”

Sarat winked.

Bragg turned to his bodyguard. “Free up another couple of seats at the Citadel,” he said. “We got some real celebrating to do.”



A LONG LINE FORMED outside the doors of the Citadel. It was mostly young men, waiting on the fight. A roving squad of doormen monitored the crowd; whenever anyone got too loud, or an altercation broke out, the bouncers quickly removed all parties involved.