“I’m not a child,” Simon replied. “I’m a man.” His voice was louder than his mother and sisters had ever heard before, as though the louder he said it the more true it became. “I’m a man, I’m a man, I’m a man.”
He tore the front door open and stumbled back out of the tent and when he was gone his mother sat on his bed and wept. Instinctively Sarat and Dana sat by her side to comfort her and in that moment Sarat had never hated anyone more than she hated her only brother. In the weeks and months to come both mother and son would dismiss what happened that night; both would say that it was just one of those fights every family has, that they didn’t really mean what they said. But Sarat knew each had meant every word.
Soon that old hardness set in and Martina was herself again. That night she stayed up well into the morning talking with her daughters. She told them about that day when Benjamin Chestnut went up to Baton Rouge and never came back. She told them about the night she went to see the rebel commander about refuge, and the night the falling bombs chased them from their home.
SARAT WOKE AROUND NOON, drenched in sweat from the midday heat, to the sound of Marcus at the door.
“You been sleeping this whole time?” he asked, handing her a juice cup he’d smuggled from the old cafeteria building.
“Long night. What’s up?”
“I was out by Chalk Hollow looking for turtle food for Cherylene and I saw a whole bunch of rebels out by that island across the lake,” Marcus said. “They had a ton of stuff with them, boxes and boxes.”
“They’re out earlier than normal,” Sarat said. “Can’t be coming into the camp in the daylight. People will see.”
“That’s right. I heard one of them say they’ll come back for their stuff after sundown.”
It took Sarat a moment before she realized what her friend meant. “So, you wanna go see what they got in those boxes?”
Marcus smiled.
They walked to the eastern edge of the camp. They passed Marcus’s tent, where his father sat on a plastic garden chair, a sweat-soaked rag over his balding head. With a pair of binoculars he was watching the Blue soldiers who lay hidden among the trees beyond the northern fence. Every few minutes he’d mark something down in an old notebook, like a birdwatcher deep in observation.
Marcus entered the tent and returned with a small Donald Duck backpack, into which he’d stuffed a couple of water bottles and apricot gel sandwiches. He walked briskly, a step ahead of Sarat. She was a full foot taller than he was, and the manner in which he walked—almost hunched, his eyes focused on the ground—only exacerbated the difference in height between them.
When he was with her he was a little more confident, but otherwise he seemed perpetually hobbled by shyness and anxiety. Some of the boys in the camp had started a rumor that, because of his size, he was forced to wear hand-me-downs from some of the girls in Patience. To Sarat, this kind of drive-by cruelty was a normal part of camp life (and even if it were true he wore younger kids’ clothes, what did it matter? Who cared?), but Marcus seemed especially distraught by it—so much so that she’d seen him walking around a few times dressed in jeans and shirts that were entirely too large for his frame, a decision that prompted a whole new round of ridicule from the boys.
But when he was with her he was himself. She enjoyed the feeling it gave her to know it, to be his protector, his confidante.
But there was something else, a comfort he unwittingly afforded her. It was the comfort of his smallness. The meekness and harmlessness of him allowed her to explore without fear her fluid feelings on attraction and companionship and boys, the hormonal gauntlet of adolescence. Other than him, she had almost no friends her own age, but she wondered if the thing he gave her wasn’t friendship’s only useful purpose—a testing site for new and unfamiliar emotions, free of hazard, free of judgment.
When they reached Chalk Hollow they climbed over the fallen trees and down to the bank. Marcus pointed to the small uninhabited island north of Smith Branch, about a quarter-mile ahead of them in the water.
“You see it?” he asked.
Sarat squinted. Barely visible beyond the shore was the edge of a raised tarp, although the things it covered were hidden.
“They said they wouldn’t be back till after sunset?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Marcus said. “I don’t know how we get over there, though.”
Sarat shrugged. “We swim.”
Marcus’s courage seemed suddenly to abandon him. With trepidation he looked out at the water, thick and murky, its surface the color of the soil.
“Well, how did you think we’d get out there?” asked Sarat.
“I don’t know,” Marcus replied. “I thought we’d get a boat or something.”
Sarat laughed. “What boat you ever see round here didn’t have a man with a gun on it?” She stripped down to her underwear and stepped onto the remains of a small dock, whose planks teetered unevenly into the water. “C’mon,” she said. “It’s not so far.”
“But my bag will get wet.”
“Give it here, then.” Sarat held the bag high over her head like a sacrificial offering. She stepped off the edge of the plank and into the water. Marcus took off his clothes until he too was only in his underwear, and then he followed.
The water was as warm as the children’s bodies and so thick with soil and mud that it hardly felt like water at all. With Sarat leading and Marcus struggling to follow, they shuffled along like paddling dogs. Marcus’s arms flailed wildly as he swam, but Sarat appeared to move with little effort, the backpack held high above her head, her legs doing all the work beneath the surface.
When they finally arrived at the island’s shore they collapsed on a small stretch of beach. Marcus lay as though crucified, breathing heavily. Sarat lay beside him, her legs burning.
The island had no name. It was small and had never seen much use. Once it was covered end to end with thick foliage, but now only the detritus of trees remained: browning stalks of deadwood, waist-high weeds, and ancient leaves, brittle as crackers. Near the middle of the island some of the tree trunks were still thick and tall, but nearer the shoreline they were short and sickly.
The children walked inland, following footprints in the soil. The trail led them along a jut of land that curled around the island’s western shore like a comma, partially hiding a small parcel of beach from the sightline of anyone standing on the other side of the water.
There they found the large blue tarp, held up with branches and planks of wood. The tarp covered about a half-dozen wooden crates. Most of the crates were nailed shut but one sat on the ground with its lid slightly askew.
The children approached carefully, listening for the sound of nearing boats. Sarat eased the crate’s lid aside, and peered at its contents. Marcus stood behind her, his attention split between the crate and the path leading inland.
“What’s in it?” he asked.
Sarat picked up one of the metal disks stacked inside the crate. It looked familiar, but she couldn’t quite place where she’d seen it before. It was heavy and circular, like a thick dinner plate, colored the same shade of brown as the land on which they stood. Its edge was lined with equidistant markers and in its center there was something that looked like a fat black button.
“I don’t know,” Sarat said.
“Maybe there’s something inside,” Marcus replied. “Can you open it?”
Suddenly Sarat remembered watching the hopeless Red grunts with their metal detectors, clearing the earth near the camp’s northern fence.
“It’s a bomb,” she said.
“What?”
“It’s a bomb. They bury them under the ground and when someone steps on them they blow up.”
She could feel Marcus freeze behind her. “Walk away,” she said. “Go on down that path over there. I’ll be there in a second.”
“I’m not just gonna leave you with a bomb in your hand,” Marcus said.
“Just go, for God’s sake. What’s the point in both of us getting killed?”