“Sure,” Sarat replied.
“Well, that’s why I wanted to introduce you to my friend Joe. Because when you settle on what you want to do for yourself, what you want to do for your people, Joe might be able to help you. I know you said you might want to go to Atlanta one day and work for the Free Southern State, but you might change your mind. And then you might find that you need things, things that are hard to obtain, things even I can’t procure for you. But Joe might be able to help you. So I want you and him to be friends, and I want you to keep your friendship a secret, because there are lots of people who would want to hurt him if they found out he was helping Southerners. Do you understand?”
“All right,” Sarat said, even as she wondered what kind of help Joe might provide. “I won’t tell.”
“I’m happy to have met you, Sarat,” said Joe. “I hope we’ll be able to assist each other one day.”
She stayed with the two men until it was almost dawn, listening to them reminisce about the old war during which they first met. Much of the world they talked about was long gone, the old dynamics of power now inverted, but she enjoyed listening to it.
They talked about the years they spent in the part of the Bouazizi Empire once called the Arabian Peninsula, a place whose desert heart, once home to glittering oil-funded kingdoms, was now too hot for human habitation. Sarat knew from her geography and politics textbooks that these parched sandscapes were now lined with wave after wave of solar panels—blinding amber nets that caught the energy needed to feed and finance the empire. But the old men swore there had been cities—entire countries even—in these places. Millions once lived here, they said, before the temperature soared and the oil ran out.
In the early morning Joe said goodbye and left the camp. Gaines and Sarat were alone together in the office.
“There’s nothing quite as tedious as old farts droning on about the days of their youth, is there?” said Gaines. “You were generous to indulge us.”
“That’s all right,” said Sarat. “Every grown-up in this place talks all day about what it was like when they were young. At least your stories happened someplace far away.”
Gaines chuckled. “Well I guess that’s some relief.” He stood and lifted the blinds and opened the window to let a little air into the room. It was still dark outside.
“I’m glad I was able to introduce you to Joe,” he said. “I owe that man so much.”
“He save your life or something?” Sarat asked. “Back when you were soldiers?”
“No,” said Gaines. “I mean yes, I’m sure he must have, many times over. But that’s not all.”
He sat beside her at the table. From his wallet he produced a small wrinkled photograph, a high-schooler’s graduation portrait. The girl in the picture had Gaines’s smile, his deep-set eyes.
“Even back then, you could see it coming,” said Gaines. “Before the first bombs fell, before the slaughter in East Texas, everyone knew this country was getting ready to tear itself to shreds. I was worried for my family, worried about whether I could keep my wife and daughter safe. It was Joe who helped me. He found a safe place for them to live in the Bouazizi. They hated me for sending them away, but they’re safe there, and that’s the only thing that matters. That’s what Joe did for me. That’s the gift he gave me.”
Gaines folded the picture of his daughter and placed it back in his wallet.
“You know, I’d like to say you remind me of her, or that you two would have been good friends. But the truth is it’s been so long since we’ve spoken. Maybe if we met now she wouldn’t even recognize me. Maybe all she’d see is some old fool, some foreigner.”
He seemed then not to be speaking to Sarat, or even to himself, but to nobody at all. He stared out the half-open window.
They heard the faint patter of footsteps overhead: the camp’s administrators and volunteers, preparing for the morning shift.
“Why did you side with the South when the war came?” asked Sarat. “You were born a Northerner, you fought for the Northern army when it was still one country. Why not side with the Blues?”
“Well, after they finally brought us back from Iraq and Syria for the last time, I wandered around for a while before settling down in Montgomery,” said Gaines. “You see, we have a habit in this country of deciding the wisdom of our wars only after we’re done fighting them, and I guess we decided the war I’d been sent to fight wasn’t a very good idea after all. In the North, whenever anyone found out I’d been a part of that war, they’d want to debate it all over again, as though I was the one who ordered myself to go over there. But in the South, they don’t do that, or at least nobody ever did that to me.”
“So that’s it?” asked Sarat. “They were good to you here, so you sided with the Red?”
“No,” said Gaines. “I sided with the Red because when a Southerner tells you what they’re fighting for—be it tradition, pride, or just mule-headed stubbornness—you can agree or disagree, but you can’t call it a lie. When a Northerner tells you what they’re fighting for, they’ll use words like democracy and freedom and equality and the whole time both you and they know that the meaning of those words changes by the day, changes like the weather. I’d had enough of all that. You pick up a gun and fight for something, you best never change your mind. Right or wrong, you own your cause and you never, ever change your mind.”
“So you think we’re wrong?” Sarat asked. “You think what we’re fighting for is wrong?”
“No,” said Gaines. “Do you?”
“No.”
“But if you did. If you knew for a fact we were wrong, would it be enough to turn you against your people?”
“No.”
Gaines smiled. “Good girl,” he said.
The sound of footsteps grew. Soon they could hear the workers upstairs delineating the day’s tasks: who was to oversee distribution of rations, who was to escort the immunization worker around the camp, who had to deal with the South Carolinians.
Sarat stood to leave.
“Hold on,” said Gaines. “I want you to take something with you.”
He opened one of the desk drawers. When he turned around Sarat saw he was holding a small folding knife. He opened it; the blade was of slightly blemished steel and smooth except at its lower end, where it turned to serrated teeth. There was a monogram etched into the handle: “YBR.”
“Do you know how to use a knife?” asked Gaines, pointing the blade toward her.
“Everyone knows how to use a knife,” said Sarat.
“No, everyone knows how to stab.” He flipped the knife and offered her the worn leather handle.
Sarat turned the knife in her hand. It was light and its lightness made it seem insignificant. She pushed her finger against the edge of the blade.
“It’s rusted,” she said.
“It’s not rusted,” Gaines replied. “It’s dull. But that can be remedied.”
He retrieved a sharpening stone from one of the drawers. The stone was black and rectangular. One of its sides was coarse, the other smooth.
He set the stone on the table in front of Sarat, and then he guided her hands until they held the knife against the coarse side.
“Resistance and stress,” he said. “All it takes is resistance and stress.”
He moved her hands with his. The knife scraped against the stone, even and rhythmic. The sound of it filled the room.
“How do you know when it’s ready?” asked Sarat.
“It’s ready,” said Gaines, “when it does what you need it to do.”