“Don’t ask me that,” my aunt replied.
An impotent Bird flew overhead, invisible in the evening sky. She remembered the first time she’d heard one of them after she’d been released from Sugarloaf—how she instinctively dove to the ground, covered her ears, breathed out lest the pressure wave of a nearby blast shatter her lungs. And then later, rising from the floor, wondering how it could be that in all her waking hours since the day they drowned her she felt not an ounce of will to live, and yet in that moment of perceived danger she had so quickly sought to protect herself, to stave off death. Why did the thought of violence against her only terrify her when it came at the hands of anyone but herself? She did not know.
“I want you to do something for me,” she said to her brother.
“All right,” my father said.
“I want you to forgive me.”
“Forgive you for what?”
“For doing something terrible,” my aunt said. “For taking so much away from you.”
“You never took anything away from me, Sarat. You took care of me, after Patience. Karina told me how you came back for me, how everyone thought I was dead but you and Dana wouldn’t give up…”
“That’s a lie. I wanted you to be dead. The first time I saw you after they brought you home, saw how badly they’d hurt you, I wished you’d never survived. That’s what I am, Simon. Makes no difference now how I got to be that way, it’s what I am. I don’t want you to love me, I don’t want you to tell me I did nothing wrong. I want you to know I did wrong, and I want you to forgive me. Please, I’m begging you, just say you’ll forgive me.”
“I forgive you,” my father said. “I forgive you.”
She sank then into her brother’s arms. And for the first time since she was a little girl at Patience, stained with the blood of the first man she ever killed, she wept.
She never saw her brother again.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING I woke just before dawn, startled by the sound of our car moving up the driveway. In the twilight I saw my aunt park near the unused greenhouse in which she hid her secret things. I inched the bedroom window open and watched.
She opened the trunk, then she disappeared inside the greenhouse, shovel in hand. For a while I saw nothing, but soon she emerged, her hands black with soil. I watched her take dozens of dirt-stained diaries from the greenhouse and pack them in the trunk of the car. Then she drove away from the house. The front gate opened but the doorbell made no sound.
She was gone the whole day. She returned in the early hours of the following morning. In the darkness I heard her cavernous footfalls on the stairs. My bedroom door creaked open. There was no light but I knew it was her.
She came close to where I lay and knelt by my bedside. She turned on the lamp. It had been a long time since I’d seen her face so close. I felt the heat of her on me. I stared, wide-eyed.
“Hey,” she said, “you want to go on an adventure?”
At the sound of that word, all the fog of sleep instantly left me. I nodded.
“Follow me,” she said, “and be very quiet.”
I watched her open my dresser drawers and pack a few changes of clothes into a small backpack. “Here,” she said, handing it to me, “you’ll need this.”
Still in my pajamas, I trailed her to the car outside. Slowly she drove up the driveway, and I saw the wires hanging from the panel she’d broken, the one that made the doorbell ring. We slipped silently past the gate.
I asked her where we were going, but she said it was a surprise. We seemed to drive forever, away from the sun. The sky was blue behind us but black ahead.
Eventually I fell back asleep. When I woke it was early afternoon and we were in unfamiliar country. The highway along which the car raced was hugged by endless browning fields. I saw broken-down signs for motels and restaurants of which only wreckage remained.
We were coming up on water. I could see it in the distance—a vast brown river, thick as honey. Again I asked her where we were going, but she would not say.
Before we reached the water, she pulled onto a small dirt road that scythed a path through the myrtle trees. The trees had lost their color but the ground was littered with the remains of pink baptisia. We parked near one of the trees, around which a white strip of cloth had been tied.
She got out of the car. I followed. For a while she just stood there, saying nothing. I begged her to tell me what we were doing, but she simply told me to wait. I was still electric with the sense of adventure.
A dark sedan rolled up the road to meet us.
Two men emerged from the car. One was tall and burly, the other short, both bearded. The short one came to where we stood and looked me over.
“That him?” he asked.
“Yeah,” my aunt said. “You know what to do?”
“Won’t be a problem,” the short man said. “Be about a month getting out to the coast, then however long the smugglers take, but we’ll take good care of him, don’t you worry.”
I watched her give two envelopes to the man. He opened one and counted the cash inside. The other had my name on it, and was sealed.
“Don’t give that one to him until he’s a man,” she said.
I asked her what was going on.
She knelt down to face me. “You have to go with these men for a while,” she said. “They’re going to take you to a safe place. Don’t worry, everything’s going to be all right.”
“I don’t want to go with them,” I said. “I want to stay with you.”
“I’m sorry, Benjamin,” she replied. “It has to be this way.”
The short man picked me up. I screamed and kicked at him, my heels driving into his shins. I begged her not to let me go.
As the short man carried me to the waiting car, I saw the tall one shake Sarat’s hand.
“I just want to say it’s an honor to finally meet you, Miss Chestnut,” he said. “I heard what you did at Halfway Branch way back when. You’re a true patriot of the South.”
“Make sure he gets a good life up there,” she said.
“Yes ma’am,” the man replied. He returned to the car. We started moving. I slammed my hands against the rear window as the hulking frame of my aunt grew smaller and finally disappeared.
The men drove toward the Mississippi River. I cried and called out for my mother. As soon as we were away from the meeting place, the shorter of the men turned around and slapped me across the face.
“I don’t give a shit whose nephew you are,” he said. “You keep squealing like that and I’ll break your goddamn jaw.”
I slunk back, stunned. I tasted the dull iron of blood in my mouth. It was the first time anyone had ever hit me.
The men waited till nightfall to cross the river. They crossed in an old rebel skiff, under moonless night.
“Welcome to Purple country, kid,” the short man said. “Nothing but cowards and traitors, far as the eye can see.”
For weeks, we drove westward. The men refused to travel during daylight hours, or to take major roads. The landscape turned alien—vast trays of sand, pierced by mesas colored caramel and orange. The desert was endless and littered with the wreckage of tanks and planes and makeshift camps from the earliest days of the war. They fed me nothing but old ration packs: meat in the form of powder and sickly sweet apricot gel that was designed never to go bad.
Sometimes we stopped in small, run-down villages manned by soldiers whose uniforms I’d never seen before. The people spoke a different language and I couldn’t read the street signs. Sometimes the soldiers pointed their rifles at my two kidnappers and asked them what their business was in the Protectorado. It was during these times I thought of screaming for help, but the shorter man told me if I opened my mouth he’d kill me.