MOSES IS EASY to spot the next morning since he’s the only one on the grounds wearing civilian clothes. I’m not sure if I should approach him because I’m not sure who is a spy, reporting back to the guards anything they overhear in exchange for a few extra hundred calories of food. But after I check to make sure Angel’s safe and asleep, I still find myself striding down the dirt path worn between the rows of tents where, at the end, Moses is sitting on a plank of wood.
I call his name, and his head snaps up, sun-blanched hair hanging over his forehead. I subconsciously reach to touch my own botched layers, which are even shorter than his. I miss the weight of the locks the ARC stripped off of me, like they’ve stripped just about everything.
“Hi, Sal,” he says.
Moses’s face is startlingly handsome without his beard, making it difficult to look him in the eye. But I can tell he’s not as surprised to see me here as I am to see him. I take two steps to the right, blocking his view, along with the view of anyone who might be watching in an effort to read our lips. The refugees use gossip not only to barter for food, but also to distract themselves from fear.
“How did the ARC find you?” I ask.
He gives me a rueful look. “They didn’t.”
“What do you mean, they didn’t? Then why are you here?”
“I turned myself in.”
I repeat, “You turned yourself in.”
He nods and stands up, smoothing his sleep-wrinkled shirt, and I’m suddenly filled with such fury, I want to smack his crooked smile straight. “You’ve no idea what you’ve done!”
“I have some idea,” he says, displaying a nonchalance that causes me to understand this was a very purposeful move.
“What are you going to do?” I ask, fear in my voice, but he doesn’t respond to my question. Instead, he turns and unzips his backpack. I see that he’s holding something up. I step closer and see my grandmother’s poison bracelet. I say, “Did she put anything inside it?”
Moses says, “I have no clue. Papina gave it to Leora and said it was for ‘just in case.’”
I put the bracelet on my wrist and bend it tighter, my eyes burning with the contradiction of such a strange gift. My grandmother made an effort to smuggle in poison, but she has made no effort to talk Uncle Mike into freeing me and Angel from the camp. And what is she suggesting I do with the poison? Kill myself? The guards? Surely not the latter, since her son is among them.
Moses says, “Leora and I found out the ARC locked you and the families inside, and we couldn’t stand the thought of you being trapped in here alone.”
“So you decided to trap yourself with me.” I roll my eyes to cover how touched I am.
Moses cocks his head, trying to look cheerful. “Isn’t that what friends are for?”
My heart pounds with hope. “We’re not friends.”
“Yes, we are,” he responds. “Or you wouldn’t be so upset that I’m in here too.”
After the day’s first meal, I go with Moses to the camp’s registration office, where a pudgy woman is sitting inside the old ticket booth. She slides open the plastic door and hands Moses pages of handwritten forms held in place with a paper clip. Moses takes them and clicks the pen. He holds it over the small, square writing. I notice his hands are shaking, in spite of his tireless good humor. He steps away from the booth and sits at one of the weathered picnic tables near the concession stands. I sit across from him.
He asks, holding up the paper, “Did you have to do this?”
“Nope,” I say. “There are too many of us to go through such formalities. They must do this for the ones who straggle in.”
Moses nods and clicks the pen twice. Sighing heavily, he flips through the pages, writing N/A in every ruler-straight line but for the last one. Leaning closer, I see that he wrote Married. On the blank line beside Spouse, he carefully printed, in all caps, LEORA EBERSOLE-HUGHES.
It feels like someone’s kicked me in the chest. “You’re kidding me.”
Moses shakes his head. “We got married,” he says. “Yesterday.”
My mouth goes dry. I make an effort to swallow before asking, “What?”
“Yesterday.”
“I heard you. I just can’t believe it.”
He says softly, “You’re not the only one.”
“And you chose to come here. On your —your honeymoon.”
Moses looks up, his expression brimming with happiness, so I know he’s telling the truth. “That’s why it was so quick,” he says. “I didn’t want to come here unless we were married.”
“That’s irony if I ever heard it.”
“What?” He frowns. “Why?”
But I say nothing because nothing can change.
My uncle files through the serving line the day Angel and I are randomly selected for kitchen duty. Giving me a wolfish smile, he leans across the picnic table. A silver whistle swings like a pendulum in between the tabletop and his chest. “Like your new job?” he asks.
I keep my eyes focused on the pot, scraping out one last greasy scoop. Four prisoners move around him, preferring to eat later rather than disturb a guard. “What do you mean?”
He says, “Yvonne told me you acted like you didn’t know where the community was.”
“Who’s Yvonne?”
“The head guard.”
“So you’re saying kitchen duty’s some kind of punishment?”
That smile again. “I bet you’ll be a little more talkative next time, won’t ya?”
The night the ARC came marching in and, within hours, transformed the fairgrounds into a detention camp, I believed my uncle and I were in the same perilous position, and I was shocked to feel a twinge of warmth for my dead dad’s brother. Now, though, I realize he’s never been in the same position as me and was possibly one of the very people who allowed those guards to quietly dispose of the few refugees who were willing to ask questions or fight back.
“What does Yvonne want with the Mennonites anyway?” I ask.
He doesn’t look at me. “They know how to work the land better than we do.”
“So, what?” I ask. “You’re going to turn them into slaves?”
“It doesn’t matter what we’re going to do. You need to tell me where they are.”
I hold his gaze steady, a challenge in my own. “I don’t know.”
Spider veins on Uncle Mike’s nose and cheeks disappear as his face grows red. “You’re lying through your teeth. Where was Colton the whole time you were staying at the warehouse?”
“Everything okay, Sal?” I automatically turn at the question and see Moses staring my uncle down. My uncle lifts his chin, padded with fat, since he’s consuming more than the minimal daily calories the ARC distributes to keep us tired but alive.
“Be careful,” he warns. “Blood ties might not be as thick as you think.”
I grip the ladle tighter. “I already know that, Uncle. Or I wouldn’t still be in here.”
Moses
I could swear I haven’t slept, but I can see the fairgrounds swirling with the pale-gray mist that always seems to rise with the dawn. A few refugees are already sitting up in their tents, their dark shadows drawn across the white canvas like old-fashioned daguerreotypes. The fairgrounds, even at night, never grow quiet. Someone is always crying or fighting or making up the fight. So I don’t sleep as much as I doze in between these nocturnal interruptions. This is why I see the ARC guards cross the campground over to me. I’m lying on my side next to the fire, which has burned down to nothing but a round bed of hot coals. The grass is my sleeping bag; my backpack, my pillow. I get up before the guards reach me and face them head-on. The guards, each carrying a gun, stop walking. But they are mannerly enough not to point the weapons right at me.
The guard on the left asks, “Are you Moses Hughes?”
I nod.
“You’ve been called in for questioning.”
I smile in an effort to keep the mood light. “Don’t tell me I’ve already broken the rules.”
The guard on the right I recognize as the one who was all business when I came here to see Sal before the camp was locked down. He says, “You’ve not broken any rules. There’s just some information in your profile we need you to clarify.”
“Before sunrise?”
The guard on the left says, “It’ll be easier on you if you come along.”
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll go.” But the compliance is subterfuge. They know I have no choice.
The guards don’t touch me until we reach the cement path leading up to the white tin building. Then they each seize an arm and force me toward the entrance. I have made no effort to resist them, so I’m not sure if they think I’m suddenly going to run for it (and where could I run with the gates locked?), or if the manhandling’s for the benefit of someone watching from inside the building. Perhaps the same someone who had them bring me in.
The tin door slides open, and we walk into the square of darkness. The cement floor is cold against my feet. A kerosene lamp hangs from the rafters, which cross overhead, but it’s not enough illumination to see the warehouse clearly. The building is almost empty, but as my eyes adjust, a long white table becomes visible toward the back.
The guards lead me toward this, their fingernails in my arms communicating nonverbal warnings. Three guards, dressed in black, materialize and take seats at the table. A pale woman —dark hair and severe features —sits between two men. The man on the left is Sal’s uncle. The sight of him causes my stomach to tip with fear. The guards on either side of me step back. I turn and see they’re standing with their guns bracketed over their chests.
The female guard says, “Do you know where the Mt. Hebron Community is located?”
I look at her, trying to gauge her motivations and, therefore, my approach. “No.”
The woman sits up. The folding chair supporting her creaks. “Is that true?”
“Yes.” I hold her gaze. Mike slides a page across the table, and the woman picks it up. One of the guards behind me turns on another kerosene lamp, and the room flares bright. I blink against the shift.
The guard resumes her interrogation. “It says here that Leora Ebersole-Hughes is your wife.”
I grimace at my stupidity. I wrote Leora down as my spouse partly because seeing it printed helped me believe my luck, and partly because I knew Sal was reading my answers, and I sensed the importance of letting her know where things stood. But now I understand that I have inadvertently risked my wife by wanting to protect her, and us.
Mike says, “I know Leora’s dad, Luke Ebersole. He used to work for me.”
A Doppler of my heartbeat roars in my ears, causing me to wonder if it’s audible to the five gathered here. “Leora left the community,” I say. “Before we were married.”
The woman just watches me, her dark eyes as brittle as a beetle’s husk. “So you’re still insisting that you have no idea where the community is.”
“Yes.” I clear my throat. “I have no idea.”
The woman’s lips press together, blending the twin slashes into her skin’s colorless hue. She flicks out a hand. I turn to see what she means when the guard gives me the courtesy of showing me by driving his fist into my stomach. Breath drains from my gasping mouth. I hunker over in an effort to protect myself, but the other guard takes hold of my shoulders and forces me up. The first guard pummels me again. This dual assault is so perfectly coordinated, it’s clear they’ve performed it many times. The frame of my vision is edged in black. I blink hard, wheezing, and the woman repeats, “Are you sure you don’t know where the community is?”
I spit out, “No.” I brace my abs, so the punch to my face takes me by surprise. Pain explodes across the bridge of my nose. Warmth trickles through my tented fingers, and then my teeth are coated in the nauseating, salty wash of blood. A chair pushes back. Boots march across the floor. Someone stops in front of me, but my eyes are streaming too much to look up.
“You get one more chance.” It’s the woman. Her breath is redolent of the kind of dental hygiene only available in the old world.
I force my eyes up to hers. “I already told you the truth.”
The woman nods. A force comes down on top of my head, as if intent to cleave my skull. Before the lights go out, the screen of my mind defaults to my last image of Leora.