American War(76)

“So they’re just sitting there?”

“Been there since dusk. FSS shipping authority folks being real hardasses about letting other ones go round it. I think they finally saw a chance to flex their muscles. So now everybody’s just waiting on them to pull her out and tow her in.”

“Christ,” said Sarat. “Can’t run a ship up a river. How we supposed to win a war?”

She picked at the bowl of frickles. Layla, who swore up and down that nobody could tell the difference, made them with cricket flour. But Sarat swore she could. There was a stale aftertaste to it, a dishwater echo on the tongue.

Layla called on her daughter to bring over a carafe of Joyful. The girl poured Sarat a cup.

“How are those boys doing?” asked the mother, pointing to the reef rats at the corner of the bar.

“They’re asking if they can start a tab on next month’s ships, if these ones end up turning around.”

“What did you tell them?”

“You know what I told them.”

“Good girl.”

Layla Jr. walked back to the other end of the bar. Sarat watched her. She had her hair in a thick, braided ponytail. Behind it, on the back of her neck, lay a small tattoo of the state of Georgia that her mother had yet to discover.

“How’s your family?” asked Layla Sr.

“They’re all right,” said Sarat. “Gaines’s friend Dr. Heller came by again last month, talking about how they’re working on a program with the Red Crescent where they send injured Southerners up to the good hospitals in Pittsburgh. I told him I’d rather Simon die.”

“What’s the harm in it? It’s not like you’re turning on your people. What if they got something up there in those hospitals can fix him?”

“Unless they got a time machine in those hospitals, they ain’t fixing him.”

Layla sighed. She poured herself a glass of Joyful. “How about the letters? Gaines said you’ve been sending them back.”

“We don’t need donations,” said Sarat. “Every week they come in from all over the Red. People I’ve never met before—some of them I know don’t even have a pot to piss in, and they still send us envelopes stuffed with cash, like we’re a church or something. Well we ain’t a church—we don’t need their charity.”

Layla laughed. “Oh honey I know that. Knew it the minute Gaines first introduced us. But what you need to know is, it isn’t about you. It’s about them. You really think those folks are too dumb to know they’re poor? Of course they know. And they send you that money anyway, because it means that much to them to be connected to you.”

“What do they know about us?” Sarat replied. “What they read in the papers? What those FSS politicians said in those rallies? For all they know, they’re mailing their cash to a hole in the ground.”

“The only thing they need to know is you’re clean,” said Layla. “You and your sister and your brother. Especially your brother. You’re clean because of what was done to you at Patience. All the politicians and the rebels and even the preachers, they might say the right things, but they haven’t been made clean like you. That’s why they send you money, that’s why they write you those letters saying you’re in their prayers. Because you’re clean.”

“That’s not true,” said Sarat.

“Oh it’s true. It might not be reasonable, it might not be fair. But it’s true.”

“If they want to be clean so bad, why are they sitting in their homes writing letters? Why aren’t they out fighting, or even saying they’re proud of the South, proud of their own side? Every time I read the J-Con or any other one of those Southern newspapers, they’ve got some article about a new poll showing more and more people in favor of those cowards at the FSS and their phony peace plan—a plan that don’t ask for nothing but free movement over our own land. If they’re so worried about being clean, whatever that means, they’d hang those cowards in Atlanta with their pocket linings stuffed in their mouths.”

A cheer erupted from the other corner of the bar. At first Sarat thought the river workers had been listening to what she said, but it was the movement of the ships they were cheering. The red dot that had been stalled atop Hutchinson Reef finally turned green, and to the east the waiting freighters began to move upriver. The month’s parade of gift ships was under way.

“Won’t be needing that credit after all, sweetheart,” said one of the dockhands as he raced from the bar.

“Wasn’t gonna be getting it anyway,” said Layla Jr.

The dockhand blew her a kiss as he left, and she returned it with a finger.

Soon the bar was quiet save for the murmuring of the war pensioners. The men—a half-dozen on this night—were between ten and twenty years older than Sarat, but looked older. She knew them only vaguely: the one missing his legs was Nathan Something. The one next to him was named Jeb, and was paralyzed on his left side. Others who drank in the Belle Rebelle’s dark corners on this and other nights were broken in other ways, some cracks visible, some not.

Layla Sr. pointed to the men. “You want people who’ll never stop supporting the war? Talk to them over there. The war will never be over for them. The people who’re sending you those letters, I bet you most of them aren’t yet damaged that way. Maybe they’ve been touched by it, lost a friend or heard about some massacre, but it’s not the same. The truth is, they’re on the other side of the river from where you are, they haven’t been through what you’ve been through. And they don’t want to. They’re not young like you; most of them are old enough to remember when it wasn’t like this, when there was peace. And if you’d known that, you’d want it back too.”