“I came as soon as I heard,” he said. “Did your family survive?”
“My mother’s dead, but I can’t find her body,” Sarat said. “My brother’s dead, but I can’t find his body.”
“They call themselves the Twenty-first Indiana,” Gaines said. “They’re a militia, not enlisted, but there’s no doubt the Blue commanders knew what they…”
“Stop talking about them,” Sarat said. “I don’t wanna hear about them anymore. I don’t wanna read about them or memorize their capitals or learn how they did us wrong.”
“Then what do you want to do?” Gaines asked.
“I want to kill them.”
Sarat buried her head in her hands. She never saw the faint smile that, in that moment, crossed her teacher’s lips.
Excerpted from:
WAR OFFICE—FINAL COMPENSATION RULING ARCHIVE
Case Number: 091682
Applicant Name: Chestnut, Martina (Deceased/NOK Application)
CASE SUMMARY:
A) Claim Agreement
The Final Compensation Ruling issued by the Condolence Payment Department of the Joint Compensation Office (hereinafter referred to as “Payer”) is issued under the Domestic Claims Act in the case of MARTINA CHESTNUT and 3 dependents (1 FA Male; 2 Pre-FA Female) (hereinafter referred to as “Payee”). The Ruling is accepted by both parties and constitutes final and irrevocable settlement in relation to the incident outlined in Section B. The Ruling and claim payment determination are made at the sole discretion of the Payer and are nonnegotiable.
B) Incident Details
Payee was impacted by an incident at a Red Crescent–administered Mississippi refugee facility (“Camp Patience”). As determined by the Investigation Office, the incident is classified as Class 2—Serious; Contained. Incident Attribution is Other/Undefined.
C) Nature of injuries
Chestnut, Martina (FA Female): Deceased
Chestnut, Simon (FA Male): Displacement; Class 1 Injury (Head) Chestnut, Dana (Pre-FA Female): Displacement
Chestnut, Sara (Pre-FA Female): Displacement; Class 4 Injury (Left Hand)
D) Payment Schedule
Payee is hereby granted residence allotment (Charity House 027, Lincolnton, Georgia) for Displacement (3 or more). Payee is also granted $5000 for Death. Payee is also granted $2500 for Class 1 Injury. Payee is also granted $100 for Class 4 injury.
E) Release and Withdrawal
This Ruling implies no admission of fault by any arm or agency of the Federal Government (See Appendix A “Gesture of Regret Policy: Terms and Conditions”). The Payee hereby relinquishes any right of recourse in relation to this matter.
III
October, 2086
Lincolnton, Georgia
CHAPTER NINE
There was a mark where the devil left him. They came from miles to touch it, to kiss and caress the fissure in the forehead, to see the broken Miracle Boy. Sometimes they sat in silence, the only sounds coming from the kitchen, where the caretaker Karina Chowdhury hummed ancient gospels as she worked. Other times the men and women who came to see the boy prayed, and other times they too sang. And sometimes in the grip of paroxysm they cried and called him by their own children’s names. The boy let himself be their vessel. He sat unspeaking, the shivering hands upon him, serene as a cloud.
The house was built by the river, near where sunken Joy Road once met Chamberlain Ferry. There were others like it, northwest as far as Elijah Clark and southeast almost to Augusta. They were simple ranch houses of cheap wood and vinyl siding—prefabricated homes: the material brought in on barges that floated down the Savannah. Only thirty had been built since the start of the war, and in the years that followed, one had burned to the ground at the touch of lightning and another was erased when a war Bird fell from the sky, defunct but still deadly. The rest of the Charity Houses were occupied by refugees from the furthest reaches of the Southern State—winners of a dark lottery; survivors.
In the spring, when the storms were weak, the Savannah ran brown with mud. Although Augusta marked the last deepwater port along the river, often the smaller carriers went as far inland as Hartwell. They moved upriver in the shadow of the quarantine wall that sealed off South Carolina. The ships moved slowly, their cargo of grain and solar panels and smuggled weapons guarded by Mag soldiers or rebels or freelance arms.
KARINA ARRIVED in the morning, her Tik-Tok bouncing along the dirt road that led from Lincolnton to the edge of the spit where the Chestnuts lived. She arrived at the house to find its occupants still asleep.
She turned off the television and cleaned up the plates from the previous night’s dinner, then she went to the kitchen. Everything was in its place, just as she’d left it the night before. A dusting of sorghum flour lay on the island counter. Every night she sprinkled a little on the counter and memorized the shape in which it rested. And every morning she checked the landscape of the flour against her recollection, and in this way was able to deduce the passing of ghosts. She looked at the flour; none had come.
A back door and three sagging steps led from the kitchen to the sloping riverside yard. It was not a yard, in truth, but an expanse of land—seemingly unlimited in all but the river’s direction. It stretched outward from the home’s small garden through the shrubbery and into the spits and slivers of nearby woodland through which the Savannah constantly cut new avenues of egress.
There were no neighbors for miles, no spillover from the fierce fighting up in Tennessee, and no visiting townsfolk from Lincolnton or anywhere else. But for the people who came to touch Simon’s wound and pray, there were almost no visitors of any kind. The only eyes that watched this place belonged to the family that lived there, the guards manning the towers along the Carolina wall on the other side of the river, and the rebels who came by boat every week with food and supplies.
Once, during a rare moment of candor, Miss Dana told Karina that all their lives the Chestnuts had lived at the feet of rivers and walls. Always bounded, always trapped—trapped by movement, trapped by stillness.
In the yard, the morning light burrowed deep into the gray trunks of the maples. The trees were thin and sickly and shivered in the passing breeze. Every once in a while the branches would shed a blood-colored leaf, and Karina would chase after it for safekeeping. Secretly she set her collection to dry between the pages of an old Bible she hid under Simon’s bed. When the leaves were crisp and brittle she crushed them into the boy’s chamomile tea. She believed the red leaves healed, and she believed Simon was healing.
This was her job—a caretaker of the Chestnuts’ home and a caretaker for Simon Chestnut, the Miracle Boy. She was, nominally, an employee of the Free Southern State, although she could never rely on Atlanta to pay her wages on time or pay what she’d been promised. But still she did the work. She was a nurse by training and in the early and middle years of war she nursed Southern survivors.
ON THIS MORNING the river was blue and rippled white with the reflected undersides of clouds. The air was moist and smelled of earth and exhaust and the other smell, the one that came from beyond the wall. A dredging barge lumbered slowly upriver, a black tail in its wake. In the months following the storm seasons the barges moved up and down the river, altering the geography of the riverbed.