Before the war, the road ran straight into Tennessee, but now the only things visible above the waterline were two slim concrete barriers that once marked the edges of the highway. They peered just above the surface like stone tightropes. In the distance, beyond a series of large red signs prohibiting passage, the razor-wired fences and tree-camouflaged snipers’ towers marked the beginning of the Blue country.
Sarat approached Marcus and his father. When the man saw her he turned hurriedly to see if there were others watching, and when he saw none he motioned for the girl to leave.
“What are you doing?” Sarat asked.
“It doesn’t matter to you what we’re doing,” he said. “Go on now, this doesn’t concern you.”
“It’s all right, Dad,” Marcus said, setting his grocery bags down. “Let me just say goodbye.”
“No time,” his father said. “They’ll be back at the gates soon.”
“Just one minute, promise.”
Marcus eased his backpack from his shoulders. He’d grown a little in the last year, but still stood only as high as Sarat’s chest. He put his hand on her arm. “We’re leaving, Sarat,” he said. “We’re going to the North tonight. We’re not coming back.”
“Are you crazy?” Sarat said. “You go anywhere near that gate, they’ll shoot you dead.”
Marcus shook his head. “Dad’s been watching. There hasn’t been a single guard at the gate in the last two days. Not one Blue soldier anywhere along the fence. I don’t know where they’ve gone, but they’ve gone.”
Sarat looked out at the gate in the distance. The foliage-covered towers and the old chicanes looked the same as they always did.
“Something’s going to happen,” Marcus’s father said. “They’re getting ready to storm the fence—they’re getting ready to finally come through here.”
“You’ve been saying that for years,” Sarat said.
“They’ve been getting ready for years.”
Sarat turned to Marcus. “You were just gonna go like that? Without even saying goodbye?”
“I knew you were busy with what you’ve been doing,” Marcus said. “We haven’t really talked much in the last little while. I didn’t wanna bother you.”
“But you’re my best friend,” Sarat said.
Marcus turned from her gaze, his eyes to the ground.
“Pick your bags up,” Marcus’s father said. “We got no time to stand around.”
She watched Marcus pick up his belongings. One of the grocery bags was weighed down with ration packs and a water thermos and a couple pairs of underwear; the other had a headlamp and a small camping stove.
“You’ll take care of Cherylene, right?” Marcus said.
Sarat nodded.
“Don’t tell nobody,” Marcus’s father said. “They’ll come back and kill us all if everybody starts trying to get through.”
She watched the man and his son as they traversed the concrete tightrope to the forbidden country. The path jutted only a few inches above the waterline and was a little more than a foot’s width across. They walked carefully, their arms occasionally rising from their sides in an effort to keep balance. As she watched them pass the warning signs, Sarat waited for the snipers’ rifles to ring out, for the man and his son to fall dead in the river. But no shots came.
Soon they crossed past the chicanes and disappeared into the brush. Sarat stood for a long time after they were gone, watching the unmoving land on the other side of the water.
She tried to imagine where her friend and his father would go. Perhaps beyond the brown and scrubby ridge there lay bustling Northern towns brilliant with electric light. Or vast fragrant rows of farmland full of oranges and mandarins and exotic Blue-grown fruit of which she’d never even heard. Perhaps the two pilgrims would find refuge working in one such farm, or maybe their accents and sun-cracked skin would give them away and they’d be shot dead at the gates of the very first town.
And as she imagined these possibilities, Sarat thought of something else: of desertion, of treason against one’s own. But what the man and his son had done didn’t feel to her like treason, only the grim work of the hopeless. As she’d learned from Albert Gaines about her people’s history of mistreatment at the hands of the North, Sarat had grown to loathe the enemy nation beyond the Tennessee line. But in this moment, as she watched her closest friend disappear into that alien land, she wished only that he be safe there. That he live, that he simply live.
AFTER MARCUS and his father disappeared behind the distant foliage, Sarat walked east in the direction of Chalk Hollow.
The rebels were at the edge of the creek. She heard them before she saw them, a cackle of singing and laughing and loud conversation. Usually they were quiet when they came in across the creek at dusk but this evening they made no effort to hide their presence.
They were Simon’s clan, the Virginia Cavaliers. But in reality there was nothing much to distinguish them from the Mississippi Sovereigns or the New Zouaves or any of the other rebel groups. They were simply boys with guns, fanned out across the border, picking fights with Northerners.
She found them, about a dozen in all, at a clearing a few hundred feet past the broken highway. They had come over on three Sea-Toks and a larger fossil-powered skiff, all of which were docked now in the sandy beachfront, partially hidden among the sweetgum trees. Beside the boats the men were unloading box-crates sealed shut with nails.
“Hey, Sarat!” yelled a half-drunk Cavalier named Eli, a boy of about nineteen who’d come to the camp from Dalton four years earlier. “Hey, Simon, your sister’s here.”
“Yell a little louder,” said Simon, lying on the sand with his back against the black-painted hull, the lapping creek water at his feet. “They didn’t hear you in Tennessee.”
Eli was perched over a small bonfire, grilling. A set of thick steaks sat atop the fire on a charred cookie tray, the flames licking at its underside. The juice of fat and blood set the fire dancing; the tinder crackled and burst.
“Where did you get that meat?” Sarat asked.
“One of their generals was kind enough to hand it over,” said Eli, a wide smile across his face. He was missing one of his upper incisors; his hair was unwashed and matted across his forehead in an oily wave. Like the others he went days without cleaning himself but on this evening the reek of him was overwhelmed by the warm sweetness of the fire and the intoxicating scent of grilling meat.
“You know those pigs up there, they eat like this every night,” said Eli. “Girl, tell me, when did you last eat steak like this?”
“Maybe once back in Louisiana,” said Sarat. “Never had it here.”
“Those pigs eat it every single night,” said Eli.
He leaned down and cut a piece of the steak. It was dense with fat and severed easily under the blade of his bowie knife. He handed it to Sarat. She chewed it slowly, savoring the warmth and the way the marbled flesh both gave and resisted against her teeth. The taste of wood smoke was thick in the charred exterior, the meat beneath it pink and tender.
How could it ever be, thought Sarat, that a person could eat this well every day and not die from the very shame of it—when just a few miles away there lived so many subsisting on so little.
“You gotta be careful,” said Sarat. “They smell that in the camp, they’ll come running.”
“Oh we got some for them too,” said Eli, pointing at the crates along the bank. “We can’t go around handing it out like it’s Christmas or nothing, but we’ll get it to them. God knows they deserve it.”
Eli pierced the steaks with his knife and turned them over; the fire hissed and set its curled fingers upward. He leaned close to Sarat over the flame.
“Hey, are those Southern State boys they sent up here after the storm still around?” he asked.
“Nah,” Sarat replied. “Soon as the rain stopped they were gone.”
“That’s good,” Eli said. “Goddamned if they’re gonna get any of this. Let them go back to Atlanta. They get fed well enough there.”
“So did you steal this, or what?” Sarat asked.