The World Without Flags

For the past two days, there hasn’t been any time for quiet thinking. It’s been arguments and anger and shouting and crying. Yesterday Eric agreed that both lookout towers should be manned toward the south. It’s been a long, long time since we used both. Right now, Patrick is standing up there, looking toward the south for signs of war, clouds of smoke, an approaching…what? An army? A band of soldiers? A diplomat with an entourage? None of us know what to expect. Fear is the only language we seem to be able to speak. All work has stopped, even though the fields need to be sowed. Our lives depend on planting those fields, but no one is doing it.

Randy tells us what happens when war comes. Burnt houses. Corpses in the street. Women screaming. Children crying. There doesn’t seem any reason for it. I mean, we haven’t done anything, but Randy says it won’t matter. He says that war is like a wildfire. It eats up everything it touches. Eric still likes to think that we can avoid it, but the more I listen to Randy, the more I see war as a kind of disease that’s spreading. Just like the Worm. And like the Worm, it doesn’t care what your opinion is. It will destroy you.

I sit down with my back to the tree. From here I sometimes imagine that I can hear the rust eat away at the Land Rover. In my imagination, it makes a sound like termites in wood. I will be glad when the truck is gone, when the earth takes it completely. Some things should pass away. Some things should be forgotten.

I breathe in deeply. The air coming over the lake is cold. There is no ice on the lake anymore, but it’s still frigid and dark. Through the pine trees, I can see the island, and I picture for a moment, without wanting to, the image of Lucia’s face: dark but smiling, and, for an instant, I can smell her again, feel her presence. The feeling is gone before I can remember her clearly. It’s just the beginning of her now, that’s all that’s left. I brush the thought away with my hand.

I should be thinking about this war. I know how to shoot, how to use my knife, how to bite and claw and punch and scratch. I won’t be taken prisoner and dragged from my home. I won’t let anything happen to Eric either. I feel in my heart that I’m ready to die. It’s a hard thought. Maybe it comes from the Land Rover. These are not just dark thoughts. I know it as I touch them. These things are necessary to prod and explore. If war really does come, I will be better at what I need to do if I give these thoughts time to bloom. If I don’t try to crush them out of fear.

I am ready to die. I don’t want to die. Who does? But I imagine if they come and there is fighting and they threaten Eric, I will have to fight. If I must fight, then I must be prepared to die. I can’t let the thought panic me. I can’t let it have that power. If war comes, then these are things to know. Like the rust on the Land Rover. Like the smell of the dead you can’t remember. Like the cold wind coming off the lake.

These are the things that will save me.

They are not pleasant.

8

On the way back, I run. I run as fast as I can. I feel like I outrun the wind. I feel I could run into the sky. I feel like I could disappear into the clouds. But I don’t. Instead it all comes rushing toward me faster, and I’m home again too soon and everything is just the same as it was before like I haven’t made a pact with war and death.

“You don’t know what’s coming, Eric,” Randy is saying as I come in the door. He’s sitting at our table, and Eric is sitting on the other side. “Everyone thinks they have nothing to do with this war and it comes anyway.”

Eric is quiet for a second, staring at the table like he sometimes does before he speaks, as if he’s rehearsing everything a few times before he opens his mouth. “Maybe,” he mutters finally. Even he seems unsatisfied with his response. I shut the door behind me softly.

“Look,” Randy says. “Both sides think they are inevitable. They think that it is only a matter of time before someone unites the people again. They both think they are the ones meant to do it. So they imagine there are only two sides to it.” Randy leans forward. His long nose seems to point right at Eric. “Don’t you see? If you don’t choose a side, each will assume you are choosing the other.”

Eric makes a sound somewhere between a huff and a laugh. “It’s absurd.”

“Is it?” Now I detect a little annoyance in Randy. He studies Eric for a second, sharply, incisively, almost violently. I haven’t seen Randy like this and it scares me and makes me angry at once. I step closer to Eric. But the look vanishes, or at least softens, and Randy continues. “Is it really absurd, Eric?”

“We just want to be left alone,” Eric insists, laying a hand flat on the table.

“And who do you trade your surplus food with?” Randy asks.

“We don’t have much surplus,” Eric says.

“But when you do, which side are you going to trade with?”