“The rest of the country has forgotten this place exists,” Nick said. “We need to remind them somehow. There’s got to be some way of getting news to the rest of the country. Radios, satellite phones, something.”
Manon shivered and turned away, hugging herself with her arms. “There’s nothing I can do.” She said. “I went to college. I’m not a fool. But I’m useless. I don’t have any skills that apply in this situation. All I can do is watch.”
Nick came up behind Manon and put his hands on her shoulder, began to work the iron-taut muscles.
“Look after yourself, that’s your job,” he said. “Look after the children.”
“I can’t even do that!” Manon said. “Not in a war! I don’t know how!” Nick felt her muscles leap under his hands. “Then save yourself for after the war,” he said. “Save yourself for me.”
Her muscles leaped again, and she cast him a glance over her shoulder. “Oh, Nick,” she said. “Let’s not.” Nick sighed. “Okay, baby.”
“There are reasons we’re divorced.”
He let his hands fall from her shoulders. “You know,” he said, “I’m not too clear on what those reasons were. Other than the legal ones, ‘irreconcilable differences’ or whatever.” She sighed. “We discussed it at the time.”
“You discussed it. I don’t think I discussed it much.” She half-turned toward him, gave him a resentful look. “You were a sweet man when I married you, Nick. But you changed.”
“I—” he began in anger, then said, “I changed?”
“When your father began to die. You got frantic. You kept turning into him—turning into a general, into a man who gave orders and wanted everything exactly his way and no other.”
“I didn’t do that,” Nick said.
“Yes, you did. Sometimes you were yourself—kind, loving—and then you’d snap. And you’d turn cold and start barking out orders.”
Nick stared at her. “Why are you blaming my father? There was nothing wrong with my father.”
“There was nothing wrong with your father, Nick, except that he wasn’t the one I married. I married you, not the General.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “Then I realized, okay, the General was a part of you. I tried to accept it, I really did. But I couldn’t.”
He looked at her and wondered why he couldn’t think of anything to do with his hands. “My father was dying. Why couldn’t I mourn him?”
“Mourning I could deal with. Being in the military, I could not. I didn’t marry the Army, I didn’t marry McDonnell, I married Nick Ruford.”
“I never said things would be like Toussaint.”
She lifted her chin. “Toussaint wasn’t easy. You think being a David is easy?”
“You were in charge in Toussaint. Your family owned everything. Folks are a little more insecure out in the world. People outside Toussaint don’t understand that you’re supposed to be some kind of French royalty. People on the outside lose their jobs.”
Manon’s lips compressed in anger. “What’s wrong with being in a secure place? I wanted Arlette to be secure. Growing up with her own people in Toussaint, having all the advantages I had.”
“I wanted her to be in the real world.”
“The real world can be so unkind to a young girl! It doesn’t even know she’s human. This is the real world!” She jabbed her finger emphatically at the soil, at the camp with its armed guards.
“And the bayou put Toussaint under water,” Nick said. “You can’t live in your magic kingdom anymore.” They fell silent for a moment, each communing with the sullen, solitary resentment that each cherished in their heart. Then Manon shook her head.
“Look, Nick,” she said. “You need to be the General now, okay? That’s what will save us. I understand that.” She put a hand on his chest. “So you go and be a general. And when you don’t need to be Army anymore, we’ll talk about…” She hesitated. “Our future.”
Nick looked at her without speaking. He was too weary and heartsick to find the words, perhaps too weary and heartsick even to return to his war.
He felt like he’d been fighting the war for years. Forever.
“I love you, Nick,” Manon said. “I know you love me. But I don’t know what’s possible besides that.” He took her hand in his own, squeezed it, turned away. Knowing what was possible seemed the key thing. Nick didn’t even know if life itself was possible, if anything was possible more than living a few hours.
“’Scuse me?” a young man approached, carrying a heavy metal toolbox. He had light skin, a scraggly beard, and a Spanish accent. “Are you Nick? The Escape Committee sent me—my name’s Armando Gurule. They said you needed some wiring done, and I’m an apprentice electrician.”
“Well, Omar, some of it worked, and some didn’t,” Knox said. He gave a jittery little smile. “I know you had hopes for that camp committee bungling the food distribution, but they seem to have done a decent job—no complaints, no sign of dissension. Maybe some of the white folks in there taught them how to do it. And the niggers inside are getting more and more surly—I had hoped to keep ’em divided a little better, but it’s not happening. Are you okay, Omar?”
Omar sighed. His skull was splitting. After his conversation with David last night, he’d got a bottle of bourbon out from under the sink and started hitting it pretty hard. And he hadn’t been feeling so good to start with.
Knox’s peculiar, semi-industrial body odor was making Omar’s stomach turn flip-flops. Knox smelled worse than usual today.
“Maybe I’ve got a touch of that camp fever they’ve got at Clarendon,” Omar said.
“Anyway,” Knox said, “things didn’t go so good this afternoon, with our third shipment to Woodbine Corners. We ran out of single men, that was the trouble. We had to start taking away families. There was resistance—we had to go in shooting—but we got our quota.” He shook his head. “I think it’s time to make a maximum effort. We need to liquidate that camp. Everyone there. Just get the whole thing over with.”
It was early evening. Swallows flitted through the growing darkness. After the previous night’s toad-strangler of a rain, the air seemed unusually soupy. Beyond a nearby fence were the massive machines of the John Deere dealership, all strange half-lit looming angles. Omar and Knox met here, in secret, every evening.
“People are going to—” Omar rubbed his aching head. “They’re going to wonder where the camp’s gone.”
“Those Mud People are more dangerous if they stay,” Knox said. “If a whole bunch of ’em bust out of there, we’d get most of them for sure. But what if there were survivors?” He shook his head. “No survivors. That’s the plan. Then we deal with the cars—sink them or bury them or whatever—and we’re home free.”
Omar looked down at the little bouncing crop-haired man and he felt his insides clench in hatred. “No survivors,” he agreed, and narrowed his eyes as he looked at Knox from behind his shades. And this means you, he thought.