Layla sighed. She poured herself a glass of Joyful. “How about the letters? Gaines said you’ve been sending them back.”
“We don’t need donations,” said Sarat. “Every week they come in from all over the Red. People I’ve never met before—some of them I know don’t even have a pot to piss in, and they still send us envelopes stuffed with cash, like we’re a church or something. Well we ain’t a church—we don’t need their charity.”
Layla laughed. “Oh honey I know that. Knew it the minute Gaines first introduced us. But what you need to know is, it isn’t about you. It’s about them. You really think those folks are too dumb to know they’re poor? Of course they know. And they send you that money anyway, because it means that much to them to be connected to you.”
“What do they know about us?” Sarat replied. “What they read in the papers? What those FSS politicians said in those rallies? For all they know, they’re mailing their cash to a hole in the ground.”
“The only thing they need to know is you’re clean,” said Layla. “You and your sister and your brother. Especially your brother. You’re clean because of what was done to you at Patience. All the politicians and the rebels and even the preachers, they might say the right things, but they haven’t been made clean like you. That’s why they send you money, that’s why they write you those letters saying you’re in their prayers. Because you’re clean.”
“That’s not true,” said Sarat.
“Oh it’s true. It might not be reasonable, it might not be fair. But it’s true.”
“If they want to be clean so bad, why are they sitting in their homes writing letters? Why aren’t they out fighting, or even saying they’re proud of the South, proud of their own side? Every time I read the J-Con or any other one of those Southern newspapers, they’ve got some article about a new poll showing more and more people in favor of those cowards at the FSS and their phony peace plan—a plan that don’t ask for nothing but free movement over our own land. If they’re so worried about being clean, whatever that means, they’d hang those cowards in Atlanta with their pocket linings stuffed in their mouths.”
A cheer erupted from the other corner of the bar. At first Sarat thought the river workers had been listening to what she said, but it was the movement of the ships they were cheering. The red dot that had been stalled atop Hutchinson Reef finally turned green, and to the east the waiting freighters began to move upriver. The month’s parade of gift ships was under way.
“Won’t be needing that credit after all, sweetheart,” said one of the dockhands as he raced from the bar.
“Wasn’t gonna be getting it anyway,” said Layla Jr.
The dockhand blew her a kiss as he left, and she returned it with a finger.
Soon the bar was quiet save for the murmuring of the war pensioners. The men—a half-dozen on this night—were between ten and twenty years older than Sarat, but looked older. She knew them only vaguely: the one missing his legs was Nathan Something. The one next to him was named Jeb, and was paralyzed on his left side. Others who drank in the Belle Rebelle’s dark corners on this and other nights were broken in other ways, some cracks visible, some not.
Layla Sr. pointed to the men. “You want people who’ll never stop supporting the war? Talk to them over there. The war will never be over for them. The people who’re sending you those letters, I bet you most of them aren’t yet damaged that way. Maybe they’ve been touched by it, lost a friend or heard about some massacre, but it’s not the same. The truth is, they’re on the other side of the river from where you are, they haven’t been through what you’ve been through. And they don’t want to. They’re not young like you; most of them are old enough to remember when it wasn’t like this, when there was peace. And if you’d known that, you’d want it back too.”
“It ain’t coming back,” said Sarat. “If they wanna dream, that’s their choice.”
Layla cupped her hands on Sarat’s. There was a warmth to her palms that seemed to emanate from her eyes. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe. But let me ask you this, and be honest: if they did have a time machine up in that Northern hospital, and you had a chance to go back—back to a time when none of what happened to you happened, a different world altogether where there had never been any war—wouldn’t you take it?”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Sarat. “They can’t ever make that happen.”
“But if they could…”
“They can’t.”
The bar owner smiled. It was a sad smile, and behind it Sarat suspected something akin to pity. “It’s getting late,” she said. “They’re gonna be out on the docks unloading all night, and then tomorrow the shirt factory dealers are gonna join them, and it’ll be a carnival for three days straight.”
She passed a set of room keys to Sarat. “Get some sleep while you can,” she said. “Room’s all set up how you like it.”
Sarat thanked her. They hugged and Layla retired to her own home, which stood about ten blocks south of the boardwalk, insulated from the riverside cacophony.
Layla Jr. rang the bell: Last call. Sarat finished off the Joyful in her cup and she stumbled off her chair. She climbed the stairs near where the pensioners were getting ready to leave for the dime-bag motels and the VFWs, repurposed now as VDWs. As she climbed the stairs, she leered at Layla Jr., who caught her eyes but said nothing.
The bedroom upstairs was small. The bed was made of a steel bunk salvaged from a ruined Southern destroyer. The bunk bed’s frames had been severed from each other and reset side by side to make a crude double bed. A lamp lit the room, its light sinking into the brown-painted walls. A ceiling fan spun, its bamboo arms warped and wobbling. A small window overlooked the boardwalk and the docks and the river.
Sarat smelled the sheets. They’d been recently washed and they smelled of jasmine. It was the first thing she did whenever she stayed at the Belle Rebelle; the scent of other people on the sheets disgusted her. If she ever detected it—even the slightest remains of another body’s signature—she stripped the sheets from the bed and slept on the naked mattress, or on the floor, where the dust tempered all other scents.
On the nightstand there was an old music-player, the kind that carried songs in its own memory instead of fetching them from the clouds. It had once belonged to Layla’s mother, and had reached that useless middle age between novelty and antique—it was simply old.
Sarat searched it for a song she’d heard before, a slow number she liked. The player had a little display on its face but that had long ago stopped working. Instead she listened, and skipped past song after song until she found the one she wanted. From the speakers came the sound of bourbon-clouded piano keys. A shredded nightgown of a song. You moved like honey, in my dream last night.
Sarat undressed. She set her shirt over the lamp shade, and the soft light turned from amber to blood. The shirt depicted the flag of South Carolina, drawn against a red background instead of blue.
Sarat listened. Layla Jr.’s footsteps were light against the stairs outside. She opened the door. With her apron off she appeared even smaller, a milk-skinned apparition under Sarat’s looming shadow. She closed the door behind her.
“Come here,” said Sarat.
“Say it nicer,” Layla replied.
“No.”