“The Russian Union,” Gaines said. “The other side of the world. A present from our friend Joe.”
He walked to the office’s small kitchenette. Sarat heard the tick-tick-tick of the toaster oven, and soon he returned with her favorite, honey on toast. He sat beside her and watched her eat. He seemed to have an endless capacity for watching.
“I have a new book for you,” he said. He went to the bookshelves and returned with a hardback. Sarat inspected the book. It was brand new, as though it had been published that day. The book was called A Northern Soldier’s Education in War and Peace. It had a picture of a handsome man on the cover. Most of the books Gaines had given her to read until then had nothing on their covers but the names of the authors and the names of the books. But on this one, the image of the man dominated the cover, as though his face itself were the subject of the book. The portrait of the man was cropped at his chest; Sarat saw the medals and marks of a military uniform on him.
“The man who wrote this book is named Joseph Weiland Jr.,” said Gaines. “He’s the son of the Blues’ most senior general.”
“What do I have to read a Northerner’s book for?” asked Sarat. “It’s all lies, anyway.”
Gaines pointed at the picture on the cover. “This man, quite recently, decided to run for office. And it’s customary that when a man like him runs for office, he puts a whole lot of words on a whole lot of pages and stamps his picture on the cover and sends it out into the world. That way, by the time election day comes around, a very well-manicured version of himself has already been foisted onto the people who do the electing.
“But that’s not why we read it. We read it because he’s our enemy. And half that book that’s supposed to be about him, it’s really about us, because we’re his enemy. We read it to read beneath it, and in doing so, find out what it is about us that scares him.”
Sarat watched Gaines intently. She loved to hear him speak, loved the cadence of his voice and the vast unseen world of which his diatribes so often hinted. Even when she lost track of what he meant, even when she failed entirely to understand him, she smiled and listened and wished only for more.
Gaines rose from the table. “I have one more thing for you,” he said.
He retrieved something from his briefcase. And then he was behind her, his hands and what they held brushing against her neck.
It was a hemp necklace, made of black and white and red threads purled tight. He clasped it around her neck and gave her a small hand mirror. She looked at her reflection; the necklace felt rough and worn against her skin.
“What’s it mean?” she asked.
“It used to belong to my daughter,” Gaines said. “I want you to have it.”
“Thank you.”
The girl looked in the mirror a while and for a moment she no longer saw the necklace, only the old man’s hands on her shoulders: the knuckles weathered and cracked, the fingernails cut down to the nub. His palms seemed to radiate and the heat slowly filled the space between Sarat’s shoulder blades and spilled down her back.
Before he let her leave, Gaines gave Sarat more envelopes to distribute among the refugees. He paid her in advance for the errands. She slipped the crisp Northerners’ currency into her messenger bag and bid her teacher goodbye. At night she made her rounds. By dawn she was back in her tent. There, for the last time in her life, she slept soundly.
WHEN SHE WOKE in the afternoon, Sarat saw her tent was empty, her mother and sister gone. She sat up and reached under her bed for the box of rations. She retrieved the tube of apricot gel from her bedside drawer and squeezed some of the saccharine paste into her mouth. A few minutes later the grogginess disappeared.
She changed into her jeans and an Orascom T-shirt and left the tent. Outside, the refugees were busy fixing their homes, assisted now by a few of the rebels. The smell of mildew hovered in the air but also the smell of steak and the sound of singing and pleasant, drunken conversation. All the acrimony of a day earlier seemed now to have melted away.
Men and women sat on chairs and tables made from sandbags, drinking Joyful and eating meat with their bare hands, the juice running down their chins. Sarat joined them for a few hours, and for a few hours she was well-fed and happy and a little drunk.
In the evening, after the alcohol had worn off, she walked north to check on her pet. When she arrived she saw the same empty tents of northern Alabama, but beyond them something was different.
The massive floodlights of the Blue checkpoint to the north were alight, their beams blanketing a million shadowed outlines in the ground ahead. Sarat hid behind one of the tents and peered out, watching.
She saw the men at the gate. Hundreds, perhaps a thousand, clad in black, their faces covered. They arrived in a sloppy formation of old trucks, carrying rifles and pistols and machetes. In the floodlight the men appeared as shifting inkblots, black limbs on black torsos. In their totality their movement was of a single squirming organism, writhing under and through the gashes in the fence. She saw them and at once she knew.
As the men approached, Sarat sneaked out from behind the tent and sprinted back into the heart of the camp. She ran in the shadow of the tents, faster than she’d ever run before, the air a maelstrom in her lungs. Where she saw men and women she screamed at them to run, to hide. She said the militias were coming, but no one seemed to listen.
As she approached her tent, Sarat heard the first crack of gunfire—not the distant rifle shots she’d become acquainted with over the years, but a close burst, a deafening metal rattle. And then she heard shouting; a high-pitched scream; more shots, this time closer.
Sarat burst through the door to find her sister sitting on the bed, tablet in hand. She was watching footage of a charity concert in Kennesaw to benefit the Mothers of the Southern Republic. The old country star Cherylene Cee sang her hit song. Dana sat on the bed, eating Virginia oranges and singing along.
“You remember how we used to go nuts for her, back when we were little?” Dana said. Then she saw her sister’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“The militias are here,” said Sarat. “They broke through the northern gate.”
“How many?” asked Dana.
“Hundreds. Get up, quickly. Where’s Mama?”
“I don’t know. Playing cards at Erica Yarber’s tent, maybe. Maybe out with Lara. I don’t know, I don’t know.”
Sarat grabbed her sister by the arm and together they ran from the tent. Outside, the sound of gunfire echoed, its source ever closer. Some of the refugees stepped out of their tents and asked about the commotion, but this time Sarat said nothing.
She led her sister to the administrative building’s side door, and unlocked it with Albert Gaines’s key. She locked the door behind them and they ran down the stairs to the office in the basement, turning the hallway lights off as they went.
When they were inside the office, Sarat and Dana pushed one of the large bookshelves against the office’s front door, and then the table against the bookshelf. Sarat turned off the lights in the room. She led her sister to the closet, and then made to leave.
“No, no, you can’t go out there,” Dana said, holding on to her sister’s arm.
“I gotta go find Mama,” Sarat replied. “I’ll nudge the shelf and the table enough to open the door a little, and then you push it closed behind me.”
“Please, please,” Dana begged. “You know you won’t find her before they find you. They’ll kill you out there. I can’t lose my whole family, I can’t lose everyone I love. Please don’t go out there.”
Sarat looked at her sister, astounded not by the black-glistened tears on her face or the panic in her voice, but at the dark calculation she’d already made. Sarat led her sister into the closet; they huddled together on the floor.