The World Without Flags

As we slog through the rain and mud, I keep an eye on Eric in the cart. His head is pressed against the wooden slats of the cart, his jaw hanging open, his black tongue coiling out, trying to capture the rainwater as it falls. I shiver and look away, hoping that none of the onlookers decide to throw a rock at him. If these bastards hurt him, I think to myself, I’ll have a new goal rather than escape. I’ll burn every single one of these sons of bitches to the ground. The anger gives me strength and I straighten up a little as I walk, not enough to bring any attention my way, but enough for my own good. Enough to know that I’m still alive and thinking for myself.

Our pathetic caravan stops in front of the warehouse. I look up to see Squint swing off his horse. He looks back toward us with his good eye. I can see he’s proud of what he’s accomplished. He’s brought back his goods, untouched—mostly—just as he was told. He gives us a smile. I look away, but can’t help but watch him out of the corner of my eye as he disappears into the warehouse. A moment later the large doors clatter open and the cart is maneuvered inside, with all of us prisoners following. I look over to see the woman and the young girl walking close together with their heads down. I have a terrible feeling they’re already dead and don’t know it. Maybe we all are.

I can’t think that way. I can’t. I have to keep it together for Eric. I can’t lose it. I can’t lose hope. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. In my mind, I try to remember better days. Summer days at the lake with Eric. Swimming. The warm waters all around me, comforting, cool, fresh. The way the water drops sparkle like jewels when I come out of the water. The fireflies over the fields. Eric reading to me in the cabin by candlelight. His voice in the night answering mine. “Good night, chipmunk.”

I’m not done yet. Eric has no chance if I give up. None.

I won’t be defeated so easily.

79

Inside, the comfort of dryness is replaced with claustrophobic fear. I’d rather be soaked to the bone. The warehouse is a steel and wire labyrinth of rooms and passages that turn this way and that. We are brought through several turns to a long corridor of small rooms with steel doors. The place smells like an outhouse that’s never been cleaned. But there’s something else beneath, something rotten and sweet that makes my stomach turn. I’m familiar with the smell of death, but I’m not used to it and I hope I never will be. At the end of the corridor, Squint opens a door, and shoves the woman and little girl inside. Then he pushes the diseased young woman with the wrecked eye inside after them and shuts the door. He locks it with a brutal little twist of his wrist.

The next room is ours, and it’s the only one where the entire door is made of bars. He opens the door with a clang and pushes Eric inside. Then he makes a face and glances at me. “Hold her,” he tells the other bandit behind me, one of the new ones I don’t know. I feel his arms grasp me tightly by the shoulders. It hurts but I don’t show it.

Squint moves inside and I can’t see what he’s doing. My heart stutters with the fear he’s doing something to Eric, something horrible just to prove he can, the way the man poked that poor woman’s eye out. I’m shaking despite myself, but not out of fear. I feel energy pulse through me, and I begin to think, to plan what I’ll do if I hear him do anything to Eric. I will drop out of this idiot’s grasp, turn around and punch up quickly right between the moron’s legs, and when he bends over, I’ll push my thumbs through his eyeballs. Then while he’s screaming and cursing, I’ll deal with Squint as best I can…

But that doesn’t happen.

Squint walks out of the prison cell holding something. I can’t tell what it is for a second and then I recognize it: it’s the maple and oatmeal bar that Randy gave me back at the Homestead. I forgot all about it. Now I remember slipping it in one of the pockets of Eric’s overalls before we left the Homestead. I’d totally forgotten it was there. It seems like another life.

“What’s this?” Squint asks me. I shrug. He crouches down in front of me, and unwraps the bar. The smell of the maple sugar makes me weak with hunger, but I hope I don’t show it. He’s staring at me with his one good eye. The other one is milky blue, with a dark center, like the yolk of an egg that’s gone very, very rotten. “How long you known about this, eh?” Squint asks. I shrug again, and he smiles and then takes a bite out of the bar. He chews it slowly in front of me. “Niggers don’t know how to share, do they?” I try not to move, not to clench my jaw or my fist. Not to have any reaction, nothing he can use as an excuse to beat me, which is what he wants.