“Say what you mean,” my aunt replied.
“For several years, I cultivated a relationship with a young man in the North,” said Joe. “A man named Tusk, a scientist who has dedicated his life to finding a cure for the disease the Blue government once used to silence the people of South Carolina. But even though he spent many years trying, he failed, and in the process he created something far worse—another disease of sorts, capable of wiping out entire cities, entire nations. He is in many ways a broken man, Sarat. And last year I arranged a deal with him—in exchange for the thing he created, I have offered him refuge in my home country, away from the war and everything he has had to endure.
“The Reunification Ceremony is coming up in a few months. The war will be over, and no matter what your new Southern politicians say, it will have been won by the North. But if someone were to go to Columbus and release this disease, it would change the tide of the war, change the victor, change everything. I want to know if you wish to be the one to do it, Sarat.”
A silence shrouded the room. Light turned to heat on the still uncovered soil. He waited on her answer.
“You don’t need me to do it,” she said.
“That’s right. I could have one of my contacts in the North do it. It would be much easier to do it that way, I suspect. The Blues have thousands of new guards on patrol at the border crossings, and the ones I used to have some influence with are gone. But I wanted to offer it to you first, because I know how much you have fought and how much you have suffered. You want something the size of your vengeance, Sarat? This, I believe, is the size of your vengeance.”
They heard a fleeting sound outside. A laborer wheeling fresh soil to the greenhouses. Then it was quiet again.
“Tell me your real name,” my aunt said.
“My real name is Yousef Bin Rashid. I am seventy-one years old. I work for the government of the Bouazizi Empire.”
“Yousef,” Sarat repeated, letting her tongue whip every syllable. “You-sef.”
“It doesn’t really matter to you, does it,” she asked, “who wins this war?”
“No. It does not.”
“Then why? Why be a part of it?”
“I come from a new place, Sarat,” Yousef said. “My people have created an empire. It is young now, but we intend it to be the most powerful empire in the world. For that to happen, other empires must fail. I think by now you understand that, if it were the other way around—if the South was on the verge of winning—perhaps I would be having this conversation in Pittsburgh or Columbus. I don’t want to lie to you, Sarat: this is a matter of self-interest, nothing more.”
Sarat smiled at the thought. “You couldn’t just let us kill ourselves in peace, could you?”
“Come now,” said Yousef. “Everyone fights an American war.”
They were both quiet, and in the silence Sarat was reminded of something Albert Gaines had told her. He asked her once if she knew how the word Red came to be shorthand for the South. She said it was politics, something to do with who voted for the old Republican Party back when it was all still one country.
But Gaines said it was older than all that, older than the country itself. He said it was about the dirt: in the South there’s a mineral in the ground that turns the dirt red. He said when you’ve leached all the good from the earth, all the nutrients that a seedling needs to grow, the last thing left is the stuff that turns the dirt red.
She wondered now if maybe that was the only honest thing he’d ever told her.
“It’ll kill everyone it touches, this sickness you have?” she asked Yousef.
“You have my word,” Yousef replied.
“I’m never going back to that prison. No matter what happens, I’m never going back.”
“You have my word.”
She stood from her stool and walked to the doors and flung them open. Blistering daylight flooded the shed. She looked out at the new house that stood where the old one used to be, and at the wilting trees and the river imprisoned by walls. The world about her shook with heat.
“Do you ever get sick of this place, Yousef?” she asked. “Ever wish you could just be done with it, just go home, back to your family, back to the world you know?”
“Of course,” Yousef replied. “I hope to go home one day soon.”
“Me too,” she said.
FROM THEN ON she was distant. Once more she barricaded herself in that shed, just like she did when she first arrived. This time the door was closed and locked; I couldn’t see inside.
I was so desperate to reach her that I spent hours kneeling outside the shed’s back wall with my ear against the boards, listening. All I ever heard was the scratch of old pen on paper.
I lay awake at night wondering what I had done to drive her away. Was she disappointed in me—had I failed to defeat the river current one too many times? Had I nagged her with too many questions? Did I bore her? In desperation, I scribbled the word “Sorry” on a blank sheet of paper and slid it under her door. She made no reply.
ON A SATURDAY in the middle of June, while my parents were at a farmers’ trade show in Montgomery, she left the house for a day. We kept a used Tik-Tok on the property for emergencies; she took it.
She drove to the market in Lincolnton. It was a smaller crowd than usual, the town still cleaning up the last of the damage from Hurricane Scott. She walked past the half-empty stalls to the end of the road, where Marcus stood watch.
Without speaking they went to the church nearby. This time she went in first and he followed.
“Goddamn I’m glad you showed up today,” said Marcus. “You know what I just heard from one of the Free Southerner boys? You remember that old man Prince Wendell, used to run a coffee shop out in the middle of the ocean? They’re gonna name a street in Atlanta after him. Guess someone on one of those Reunification prep committees heard about him, and they decided to do it. Thought it would look good to honor a man who worked with both sides. I thought you’d get a kick out of—”
“Sit down,” my aunt said. “I need to talk to you.”
Marcus sat beside her on the pew. “Sure,” he said.
My aunt handed her friend a small folded piece of paper. On it was written the name and contact information of a man.
“There’s someone I know. I want you to go talk to him. He can arrange for you to leave this place, to leave all of this, and go start a new life on the other side of the world.”
Marcus stared at the paper, confused.
“Sarat, it’s all coming to an end,” he said. “In a few months there’s going to be no more war. It’ll all be one country again. And then, I swear to you, you won’t believe how quickly everyone forgets all about this.”
My aunt shook her head. “Please, Marcus. Just go see him.”
Marcus took the paper from her hand. “The war’s over, Sarat,” he said, and this time it didn’t sound as though he was trying to reassure her.
“I know, Marcus,” she said. She kissed him. She stood. “I know.”
SHE LEFT LINCOLNTON and drove west to the outer suburbs of Atlanta, in the shadows of the factories and the vertical farms. She went to Stone Mountain, on the easternmost outskirts of the city. Near the dilapidated, flat bungalows of the old village there stood an unmarked, redbrick storefront. It was to this meager slice of real estate that the United Rebels had been relegated.
When she arrived she found only Adam Bragg Jr. and Trough in the office. It was a small space—once a restaurant or a bakery—and longer than it was wide. Chairs stood upturned on their tables, except for where Bragg sat, nursing a cup of coffee.
He stood when he saw her. “Well hello there,” he said. “Who’d have thought the great Sarat Chestnut would come visit us in our new home.”