It said something to own a vehicle that still ran on prohibition fuel; it spoke not only of accumulated wealth, but of connections, of status.
“Mornin’,?” Smith said as he ushered the boat to the foot of the Chestnuts’ landing, throwing a loop of nylon around the docking pole. Like Benjamin, he was tall, but boasted broader shoulders and a full head of brown hair made copper by too much time in the sun. Before the war his father owned a dozen fossil car dealerships between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Those businesses were now long gone but the wealth they bore still lingered, and Smith lived a comfortable life on the other side of the river. Among the families that still dotted the flooded south of Louisiana and Mississippi, he was known as a facilitator, a man who had plenty of friends. He knew Free Southern State government men in Atlanta and the smugglers who ran the tunnels across the Mississippi-Arkansas line; he knew consuls in the federal offices that dotted the tamed and broken parts of the Union-aligned South. He even claimed to know the right-hand men of senators and congressmen in the federal capital in Columbus.
“Mornin’,?” Martina replied. “Come on up, we got some sandwiches left, coffee too.”
“Thank you kindly, but we’re already late. Come on, Ben. Blues don’t like waiting.”
Benjamin kissed his wife and children goodbye and stepped inside to kiss the feet of the ceramic Virgin. He descended to the river with great care so as to keep from slipping in the clay and dirtying his good pants. He carried with him his old leather briefcase and the half-ladder. His wife watched from the edge of the flat land.
“Dock south and walk into the city,” she told the men. “Don’t let any government people see that boat.”
Smith laughed and started the motor. “Don’t you worry,” he said. “This time next week you’ll be halfway to Chicago.”
“Just be good,” Martina said. “Be careful, I mean.”
The men pushed the skiff from the mud and pointed the hull north in the direction of Baton Rouge. The boat rumbled into the narrowing heart of the great brown river, twin spines of water rising and spreading in its wake.
Excerpted from:
FEDERAL SYLLABUS GUIDELINES—HISTORY, MODULE EIGHT: THE SECOND CIVIL WAR
MODULE SUMMARY:
The Second American Civil War took place between the years of 2074 and 2095. The war was fought between the Union and the secessionist states of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina (as well as Texas, prior to the Mexican annexation). The primary cause of the war was Southern resistance to the Sustainable Future Act, a bill prohibiting the use of fossil fuels anywhere in the United States. The bill, championed by President Daniel Ki, was in part a response to decades of adverse climate effects, the waning economic importance of fossil fuels, and a deadly oil train derailment in Williston, North Dakota, in 2069.
The war’s key precipitating events include the assassination of President Ki by secessionist suicide bomber Julia Templestowe in Jackson, Mississippi, in December of 2073, and the deaths of Southern protesters in a shooting outside the Fort Jackson, South Carolina, military base in March of 2074.
The secessionist states (unified under the banner of “The Free Southern State”) declared independence on October 1, 2074, the date often considered to mark the formal start of the war. Following a series of decisive Union military victories in the first five years of the war—primarily in East Texas and along the northern borders of Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia (“The Mag”)—the fighting largely subsided. However, rebel insurrectionist groups continued to engage in sporadic guerrilla violence for another half decade, aided in part by foreign agents and anti-American saboteurs. After a drawn-out negotiation process that was settled largely in the Union’s favor, the war was set to formally conclude with the Reunification Day Ceremony in the federal capital of Columbus, Ohio, on July 3, 2095. On that day, a secessionist terrorist managed to cross the border into Northern territory and release a biological agent (“The Reunification Plague”) that resulted in a nationwide epidemic. The effects of the plague, which claimed an estimated 110 million lives, were felt throughout much of the country for the next ten years. The identity of the terrorist responsible remains unknown.
CHAPTER TWO
On the porch railing the Chestnuts kept a bowl lined with oil to trap mosquitoes. Lured by the glistening liquid, the insects landed and became ensnared.
Sarat stood on the porch, the sun hot on her forehead. She watched the mosquitoes squirm. They were heavy black dots, plump as grapes. She picked one between her thumb and forefinger. She held it close to her eye. It showed no signs of what the little girl associated with living things; it said nothing, made no sound, unlike the chirping crickets or the chickens when they were worked into a frenzy. But she knew, nonetheless, that the thing between her fingers was alive.
Sarat pressed her fingers together and the mosquito burst under the pressure, leaving behind a black stain.
“What are you doing?” Dana asked, her approach from within the house unnoticed by her twin.
Sarat startled. “Nothing,” she said.
Dana inspected her sister’s fingers. “That’s gross,” she said finally, and walked away.
Sarat wiped her fingers on the rough denim of her overalls. They were hand-me-downs from her brother, their copper buttons turned black with age. She wore them plain with nothing underneath. When the weather was very warm, she undid the straps and tied them around her waist as a kind of belt, where they held at most for a few minutes before coming loose and dragging in the dirt.
She couldn’t understand why her sister derived no fascination from exploring the tiny living worlds all around them—worlds whose myriad secrets lay ripe for the taking: the flying balls of blood trapped in the bowl; the eyes of the pine floorboards laced with honey; worms picked by her father’s hand and impaled on hooks to teach the children a ritual from the days when the river still carried fish. Dana found such things tedious or repulsive, but to Sarat they were the veins and arteries through which life’s magic flowed.
MARTINA CHESTNUT stood on the grass between her home and the sorghum field. She hung wet clothes on a line drawn between a hook in one of the porch beams and the remains of a beach umbrella wedged into the dirt. Like the tarp that covered the roof panels, the beach umbrella had washed up on the shore a couple of years earlier and was immediately put to use.
Martina folded each garment over the line, pinching the clothes in place with pegs. Droplets fell from the cuffs of the pants and the ends of the shirts; here, under the line, the grass grew a little greener.
The clothes were plain, inoffensive: white and beige of varying shades. After so much use, many of the garments had taken on a ghostly translucence. In some parts of the Mag, where the rebels held most sway, there were families who dyed their denim red to avoid trouble. But to the sleepy Louisiana coast, such concerns had yet to come.