American War(98)

“You bitter they don’t hold a table for you in Augusta no more?”

“Ha! Augusta the way you knew it don’t even exist. Ships come up through the Northern ports now, and the Blues decide what we get to keep. Just one more concession the proud patriots of the Free Southern State agreed to in exchange for peace—the Great Reunification, they call it. Sold their country out for a seat at the kids’ table in Columbus.”

“The girl you came here to recruit is gone,” Sarat said. “Go, and don’t come back here again.”

“Honey, you and I both know you’re too broken to recruit,” said Bragg. “I saw you hobble over here from that shed, and we all heard what they did to people in Sugarloaf. Three of the girls they set free with you are already dead, and no Northerner had to come down and kill them, they did the job themselves. Hell, even if I wanted to recruit you, half the rebels still left are dead sure you ratted out the cause in exchange for freedom.”

He waved over one of the boys standing by the car. “No, Sarat, I didn’t come to recruit you. I came to give you a gift.”

The boy brought over a photograph. He was strange-looking, his skin too white and his hair buzzed close to the scalp. The rest of Bragg’s entourage made an effort not to stare at Sarat, but this one looked at her dead on, shards of malice in his eyes.

“You don’t remember him, do you?” said Bragg. She tried to recall why the boy looked familiar, but could not.

“This here is Trough,” said Bragg, “the last living member of the Salt Lake Boys. Every single one of his brothers is dead or worse than dead. He keeps trying to join them, but I think they’re watching over him from the next life, keeping him here with me against his will. Ain’t that right?”

Trough said nothing.

Bragg showed the photograph to Sarat. She saw it and froze. She took it from him and held it close until even her feeble eyes had no doubt who the man was that stared back at her. Even blindfolded and bloodied, his face was more familiar to her than her own. It was the face of the thick-necked guard from Sugarloaf. Bud Baker, the man who’d drowned her.

“How did you find him?” she said.

“Damn idiot tried to take his wife and kids on a road trip to Zion and wandered into Mexican Protectorate territory,” said Bragg. “When the Mexicans found out who he was, they shopped him around. I figured you two must have overlapped in that place, and that maybe you’d be interested in saying hello.”

Her eyes never left the photograph. “Where is he?”

“We got him in a safe place down south,” said Bragg. “You can tell us what to do with him, or you can come down and do it yourself.”



OVER MY PARENTS’ OBJECTIONS, she left with Bragg. They drove five hours southwest to a cabin hidden among the stripped and bleached trees near Lake Seminole. The cabin stood at the edge of an algae-covered watering hole. A thin dirt trail led to its door. In the distance to the south, the Georgia coast gave way to the savage Florida Sea.

She found four people tied and blindfolded inside the cabin—Bud the guard, a woman who must have been his wife, and their two teenage children. All four were shackled to their chairs, their eyes covered with strips of black cloth. All their faces bore the blood and bruises of recent abuse, but none more so than the man she had come to see.

Bragg and his entourage waited outside; she entered alone. The blindfolded woman, at the sound of the door opening, broke into whimpered pleading, but Sarat ignored her.

She knelt near Bud. Up close, she could see the outer rings of deep black bruises around his blindfolded eyes. He was drenched in sweat, his heartbeat shook him.

She put her hands on his knees. He jerked back as though touched with a live wire.

“Just let my family go,” he said. It was a different voice than the one she remembered—slightly thinner, free of resolve. “Just let them go, they did nothing wrong.”

Gently she lifted the blindfold from his eyes. For a moment he looked at her as though trying not to recognize her face, as if by burying the memory of her he could bury the reality of her too. He closed his one working eye and when he opened it again and saw that she was still there, he straightened in his chair and tried to steel himself against what he knew was coming.

From her pocket Sarat retrieved her rusted folding knife. She cupped Bud’s chin in her hand and stroked his cheek.

“Sweetheart, sweetheart,” she said. “I’m going to make you sing.”



SOON THE SURROUNDING WORLD evaporated and with it the screaming that filled the room. Only her wrath remained, her unquenchable want. She wanted the blood inside him. He looked different now than when she’d last seen him: the early shadows of a beard growing on his face, his hair longer. But the blood inside him was the same.

She took it all. Rising, she looked at the hollowed remains of the guard and she felt the inverse of fulfillment—the empty undoing of a castaway who, rabid with thirst, resorts to drinking from the ocean.

When what revenge there was to be had was had, she turned and made to slit the throats of her other captives. She went first to the children. They looked about sixteen or seventeen: redheads, both with curly hair and the same jaws as their father. The shorter of the two had soiled himself and was shaking and sobbing. The other sat still, looking forward at his captor though he could not see.