“He’s real slow,” I said, embarrassed at my pet’s reluctance to even show its head. “Some days he doesn’t even move at all.”
“She’s a girl,” Sarat said.
I asked her how she knew, but she didn’t answer.
Finally she broke from her trance and stood up. I wiped the dirt from the knees of her pants.
“Is it true you were in prison?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“They never told me.”
“How long were you there?”
“Seven years.”
The number was incomprehensible to me; a lifetime.
“What are you gonna do when they get that cast off you?” she asked.
“Play basketball,” I said. For weeks I’d thought about little else. “My team’s in first place, and if we win the rest of our games, we get to go to the championship in Atlanta. They have a water park there, got the biggest swimming pool in the whole country.”
“You like swimming?” she asked.
I nodded. “I go twice a week to the pool in Lincolnton. I’d be there today if I didn’t have the cast.”
“What you doing in a pool in Lincolnton when you got the river right here?”
I laughed. “You can’t swim in the river, silly.”
She looked at me as though I’d come from some other planet, and then that vague confusion turned to pity. She walked past me to the levee, shuffling slowly in that way of hers, the frame hunched and the knees threatening to give.
Where the seawall passed our backyard, my mother had painted a crude mural, the kind they have in kindergartens. It was of stick-figure children playing in the field among the apple trees, a smiling sun watching over them. She had given the children names and sometimes she’d talk to me about them as though they were real. I never understood why.
Sarat stood by the side of the levee. She was tall enough to see past the wall and through the willows. She watched the river. It wasn’t until many years later that I understood the courage she was struggling to summon, the demon she had to bury before she could set foot once more into the moving water.
She turned to me. “C’mon, then,” she said. “Let’s go swimming.”
Instinctively, I turned to see if my parents were around. Going over the levee was the one thing I was forbidden to do above all else. Beyond the wall lay death by drowning and death by disease and all the monsters that populated my mother’s stern warnings. My feet froze to the soil.
“I can’t swim with my cast on,” I said, but it was not the cast that scared me.
“Yeah you can,” she said. “C’mon, I won’t let nothing bad happen to you.”
Slowly she climbed down the other side of the levee, and soon she was walking among the willows to the riverbank. Suddenly the sight of her fading behind the braided leaves filled me with panic. I imagined she might step into the river and never return, taken by that green snake to the end of the world. My feet unfroze, a newfound courage took me, and I chased after her.
From atop the levee I saw her walk into the water. She walked barefoot and fully clothed. I climbed down the wall and ran with my head to the ground, following her footsteps in the soft riverbank soil.
And then I looked up, and the monster was upon me. For the first time in my life, I was at the river. Its sound and size astounded me, the banks wild and wide, the speed of the current readable in the branches and leaves that raced along its surface. I had never seen water move this way.
She stood waist-high in the river, the water curling around her. I remember the way she looked in that moment, that violent euphoria barely sheathed behind the lips. The water curled around her wounded body and as it moved it did not heal her wounds, it cauterized.
She was motionless. I waved at her to come closer to the riverbank, but she seemed not to see me at all. She was breathing hard though she had not run. She looked in that moment like a child, wide-eyed, uncertain. Then it dawned on me: she was afraid.
And then she was gone, fully submerged as though weighted with anvils. When she surfaced, her baggy shirt held fast to her skin and pins of light glimmered on her shaven head.
“Come here,” she said.
I shook my head. “I’m scared.”
“Good,” she said. “Now you have something you can kill. Come here.”
I faced down the river. Everything I had known of the world suddenly felt very far away. I saw that beyond the river there was a high wall, lined with razor wire and manned by guards. And although I wouldn’t be able to articulate what I felt until much later, I knew then that the bulk of the world was just like this: wild, unvaccinated, malicious. I stepped into the river.
It was only a few footsteps before the soft polished floor fell from beneath my feet, and I was taken by the current. I screamed, but her hands were quickly on me. She held me afloat and carried me in further. The sound of water was like a million invisible mouths all whispering at once. The water was alive; I knew it because the water was moving.
I looked at her then, and I saw a thing I’d never seen before. My aunt was laughing.
Excerpted from:
THE CIVIL WAR ARCHIVE PROJECT—REUNIFICATION DAY CEREMONY INVITATION LETTER (CLEARED/UNCLASSIFIED)
Governor Timothy Combs 391 West Paces Ferry Road Atlanta, GA 30305
Dear Governor Combs, At the direction of President Joseph Weiland Jr., it is my pleasure to formally extend to you an invitation to the National Reunification Summit in Columbus, Ohio, on Friday, July 3, 2095.
As the President has previously stated, the Summit will turn the page on a dark chapter in our great nation’s history. Civic leaders, including yourself, from across the Union will gather in Columbus to declare what has been, since the dawn of this country, self-evident—that we are a nation forever indivisible.
For security and logistical reasons, travel to Columbus from several states, including Georgia, will be restricted in the months preceding and immediately following the Summit. As such, please respond at your earliest convenience with details of your travel party (maximum 4), so as to allow the Peace Office time to perform the necessary security checks and issue the required travel permits.
This is a momentous day for our Union, Governor. A day to celebrate the courage of all Americans who fought so gallantly for what they believed in, but also a day to put years of heartache behind us and begin the difficult but vital work of healing. A day to rejoice and to rebuild. I look forward to meeting with you and all the other delegates from the great state of Georgia at the formal Reunification Ceremony and the grand parade to follow.
Sincerely,
Malcolm Kaysen
Deputy Secretary to the Director of Southern Affairs Peace Office, Department of Defense One Columbus Commons Columbus, OH 43215
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
In late May, Scott came through and devastated Lincolnton. It was a small storm, but powerful, and although it just missed our home, it disrupted our daily routine. With the community center and the elementary school badly damaged, I found myself confined to the farm. I was thrilled with my good fortune—I had more time with Sarat.
One day I found Sarat in the woodshed, hammering boards. The night before, my parents had gone to a party hosted by the fledgling Southern arm of the New Reunificationists, who in those days were among the first to speak of peace as though peace meant victory. My parents decided to spend the night in Atlanta; my aunt and I had the farm to ourselves.
I found her kneeling by the place where once she had removed the floor to expose the earth. She had beside her a fresh stack of fake-cedar planks.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Putting the boards back in,” she said. “You take any more wood from this shed, the whole thing will come down.”
“Can I help?”
“Sure.” She waved me over. I sat between her knees and she put the hammer in my hand. She held the nail in place.
“One soft one to set it, one hard one to drive it,” she said.